Remus Lupin is afraid of the moon.
Not that he'll ever admit it; he never talks about it. He never talks about the visceral fear that tears him apart once a month, reshapes skin and sinews and turns him into something snarling and vicious and alien, so far from the mild-mannered boy-nearly-man who smells of dusty books and chocolate that he is. He never mentions the angry, blotchy bruises that make him move gingerly in the days after, or how for every scar on his neck and hands there are a dozen more in places more easily hidden.
He never talks about it, really, but he doesn't have to – his friends know, now. They can feel it in their bones as Remus does, the rise of the full moon.
Remus never sleeps in the nights leading up to his transformation – he's pale, nearly sallow, with fatigue, the lines around his eyes a little more pronounced than usual. Haggard is not a word generally applied to nearly-eighteen-year-olds, but he supposes a lot of words not generally applied to nearly-eighteen-year-olds suit him.
It's always the same – a night or two before the moon, Remus, Sirius, James and Peter lie awake in their respective beds, thinking their separate thoughts. Gradually, and without a word to each other, they slip one by one into the deserted common room, leaving Frank Longbottom snoring tremendously in the last bed.
Remus is always first. He reads, contemplates, silently rails at God by turns before admitting defeat and rolling out of bed to head straight for his favourite armchair by the dying fire which, if he's lucky, will still have enough life in it to distract him from his mind. His mother's voice is in his head, telling him how deadly serious his face looks when he's lost in thought; doesn't he know he'll get crow's feet before he's twenty if he carries on frowning so; he worries too much, thinks too hard. She is laughing but it isn't quite enough to hide the sadness.
Sirius is next. With a glance, so slight Remus never sees, at the moon outside the window, he joins the still-silent vigil in front of the fireplace. He reflects briefly that he and Remus and just different – Remus reads; Sirius smokes cheap cigarettes out the dormitory window. Remus studies; Sirius gets drunk and nearly falls off the Astronomy Tower. He doesn't know what drew them together, doesn't really understand what happened on their first day here, with Remus standing there in his holey, careworn sweater looking that odd mix of nervous and slightly defiant that happens in eleven-year-olds who think they might not like you and don't want to care whether you like them or not; only knows that with maybe you're alright, Remus Lupin, why don't you take the bed next to mine something had been decided. It was just clearer, on nights like this, what that something had been.
James follows. Occasionally, by the time he joins them, Sirius has sat on the arm of Remus's chair and leant in to talk low into his ear or brush fingernails against his forearm, a little too... something – intimate, he supposes – to be strictly Marauderly. He has the decency not to say anything; Sirius is his best mate, but James has a tact that Sirius 'Bull-in-a-China-Shop' Black does not, or at the very least exhibits none too frequently – there are certain Things about which James is wise beyond his eighteen years and on nights like this, for him to be cracking jokes about that sort of thing is not what Remus needs, not with that faraway look on his face. Instead James claps him on the shoulder and takes a seat in the armchair next to his, dutifully pretends not to notice the gratitude softening Remus's eyes. Sometimes they talk, the three of them, in quiet voices thick with the lateness of the hour; terse, meaningless combinations of words, but more often than not they just sit, not quite islands unto themselves, there in each other's company.
Peter is – always, he thinks a little bitterly – last. He can't recall when they started doing this, this odd sort of tradition that they have, but he supposed the when doesn't matter, just that they do it. Only the quiet bothers him, he feels like maybe he ought to say something comforting or that he is missing something important. This is not altogether a foreign feeling to him, but on these nights he is too tired to be sad about it – and sadness isn't very Marauderly anyway, is it, so he tamps it down. And he sits.
Once in a great while the quiet will just stretch and stretch on until Remus snaps at one of them – "Merlin, Pete, stop yawning, just go back to bed if you're so tired" or "don't touch me, Padfoot, please" – and these are the signs that indicate that Remus can't hold it back, the flood of anger and self-pity and self-hatred and blind, crushing sadness; it's like watching a dam break. His white, clammy hands card through hair that's already greying the tiniest bit; worry at stray threads around the hem of his t-shirt and twist the fabric in his palms, and then his eyes close and his brow crumples and the words come.
"Sometimes – I mean, most of the time, especially with Pomfrey here, and you lot and everything – I can almost keep this under control, you know? No one here, present company excepted, obviously – no one here knows, and every so often –" he laughs a little desperately, devoid of any real mirth – "I almost forget, you know, and then it's like, oh. Right." He scrubs a shaking hand across his badly shaven cheek and then speaks through his fingers. "It's like – fuck, I don't know – like I'm always on the edge of something, right, and I'm just... I'm so fucking tired..."
These monologues are all the more heart-wrenchingly awful for their rarity; the air in the common room seems thicker, like it's trying to muffle the sounds of Remus crying, furious tears spilling from his clenched hands where the heels of them are pressed hard to his eyes. And Peter and Sirius and James say nothing, because what do you say? But they move as one, just a little; twitch infinitesimally closer to him, sheltering, so he doesn't have to share the sounds of his ugly, spluttering, helpless anguish with the empty, still silence of the room.
Eventually, the horrible, chest-rending sobs quiet; the tendons in his wrists, standing out against his skin, relax; and he wipes at his face with his fraying sleeves. Skin dry and eyes red, Remus looks up at his friends for the first time in an age, offers a watery, weak half-smile that says everything he doesn't trust his own scratchy throat and hoarse voice to articulate.
And so another sunrise greets Remus, Sirius, Peter and James, and they don't talk about it. They don't mention the bruises, the scars, the tears, or the fatigue and how useless they will be in class later that day and the next. In less than twenty-four hours Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs will be out in Hogsmeade again, but for now they are all content to return to the warmth of their own respective beds and dream their separate dreams.