The forest draped in sombre, ghostly pale moonlight closes around the Marauders for the last time. As creatures, James, Sirius and Peter don't fully comprehend the heavy feeling in the air, as if the trees are bidding them farewell. The wolf feels it. He snarls, howls and scratches; anxious and frustrated, desperate to hunt. Padfoot understands and he bounds over, pounces and races the wolf through the undergrowth. The hunt nearly always ends the same way. Padfoot bounds around the forest floor, snout down, whilst the wolf echoes his movement with a wilder desperation. Something about the wolf is ancient; this need to dig his claws into flesh and tear with his teeth. Usually some poor, unsuspecting rabbit is the victim of his ritual. Padfoot just enjoys the chase; the cold midnight air whipping like waves through his long fur whilst the hard earth yields under his massive paws. The canines are a sight to behold. They have perfected their movements – they leap and hurl through the trees in a graceful and feral movement, both fighting to lead this dance of death. A fox's neck snaps as the wolf tears into his soft innards, enjoying the feel under his claws. He never eats the animals; he just wants to bite. This is his instinct, the instinct used against Remus when he first became the wolf.
He wont remember any of this. But he knows. There are some instincts, like the pull of the moon, that never really go away. He hates this part of himself, he hates the wolf.
Padfoot doesn't hate the wolf. The wolf is his pack, his friend. There was a time – the first few times – when the boys first transformed with the wolf, when Sirius was afraid and in those instants the boy instinct and animal instinct both told him to run. If Sirius hadn't seen the pain as Remus changed, he would have. Somewhere is there is Moony, he told himself and that was that. He couldn't hate the wolf no more than he could hate Remus and both held such sadness that Sirius knew being a wolf was lonely for both of them. Sirius put all his efforts into making Remus smile whilst as Padfoot he would run and fight alongside the wolf.
James noticed the change in his friend, of course he did. When he asked about it, Sirius looked at him helplessly. 'We saw him change James. It was the worst thing I've ever seen. How can anyone stand that every month? I'm just trying to lessen the pain for him.'
'That's why we became Animagi,' James replied seriously.
'Yeah but that only helps during his transformation.'
James didn't need to ask anything else.
So now, as the Marauders run together under the moon for the last time, the wolf feels it: something is being taken from him. He howls and Padfoot whines. When Remus wakes up in the hospital bed with the boys hovering anxiously over him, he feels it too. The wolf is dormant now but Remus still finds his senses heightened. He remembers that that was the last moon they can share together before they leave school and Remus and the wolf must cope with the transformations themselves again. He looks up.
'Thank you.' Remus exclaims, looking into everyone's eyes and hoping they'll understand without him having to explain. Remus simply doesn't know how he would express himself enough. They smile back at him: they understand.
His eyes settle on Sirius, who is watching him intently. Remus knows the wolf will miss Padfoot most. Remus will miss Sirius most too, the one who slung an arm gently around his waist after their first transformation together and let Remus lean on him for a long time before he was ready to move. The way he did the same thing every month before Remus went to the hospital wing, no matter how long it took for him to recover the strength to walk. He didn't know how to go back to the loneliness of waking up alone, covered in gashes and his own blood.
He would have to find a way; he and the wolf both would.