Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series or any of its characters

The routine was painfully familiar. He was locked in a cage several hours beforehand with nothing to occupy the time save for his own thoughts. Pain—excruciating pain, the kind that he had yet to become accustomed to, even after six years. Then he retreated far within, looking out through another's eyes. Finally, the Darkness. He was never quite sure whether he welcomed the relief of the Darkness or feared what happened during it, when he couldn't control. When he woke in the morning, he found himself half wishing he had killed himself, and yet he knew he hadn't because surely the dead could not feel so much pain. Someone would come and collect him with those horrible, pitying expressions, telling him it would get better when they both knew it was a lie. And then he would attempt to assimilate back into normal society, avoiding the questioning stares and lying swiftly to those bold enough to ask about his new injuries. No, this was nothing new to him.

Remus sat in the Shrieking Shack, shivering as the new Spring Sun dipped behind the horizon. Taking a deep breath, he resigned himself to his fate and began changing out of his clothes. His parents had spent a great deal of money funding research to find a cure for lycanthropy, to no avail. Remus knew it was irresponsibly wasteful to leave his clothes on for the transformation, only to have them torn to shreds. Folding them neatly, Remus pulled up one of the floorboards to store them in, where the wolf could not reach them. He replaced the floorboard and stood in the center of the shack, arms wrapped around his lithe frame.

Remus glanced out of the small hole it the side of the ramshackle building to gage how much time he had left in his current body. The sky was still a smear of orange and pink, and in that moment, Remus decided it was his favorite color. Remus sighed. He had never thought he would be here, at Hogwarts. He never thought he'd be allowed the same education as other witches and wizards in Britain, even if he didn't have the same opportunities upon graduating. Never would he have even hoped to dream that a headmaster would see his as a boy, just a boy, rather than a vicious monster.

The wait was agonizing, but finally the sky went black and the stars began to peek out. Remus squeezed his eyes shut as a pressure built up in his back. He cried out as the bones elongated, cracking and reforming. His skin stretched farther than he felt should have been possible. Muscles contracted and lengthened, screaming in protest (or was that him screaming?). Remus' jaw began to morph and protract forward as his teeth sharpened. He could feel the hair on his body thicken and grow, tearing at his follicles (it hurts, everything hurts, make it stop, please stop). His vision, smell, and hearing sharpened, his sharpened senses overloading his still somewhat human mind. The wolf's ears picked up on voices outside the shack, whooping and hollering. Remus' brain was becoming sluggish. Something seemed wrong (it's bad, really really bad), but he couldn't figure out what. And then Remus slipped into the Darkness.

When he awoke, it was to a severe white penetrating his every pore. Remus wondered offhandedly if he was in Heaven. But then, of course, like every other month, the ache deep in his bones told him otherwise. Remus kept his eyes scrunched shut, but the light was painful even behind his eyelids. His senses were still heightened, and the smell of antiseptic surrounded and nauseated him. He could hear people something rustling beside him and a recurrent sniff from somewhere to his left. Remus cracked his eyes open slowly, adjusting to the brightness. Once his surroundings came into focus, he found he was in the Hospital Wing, a room that he'd frequented at least once a month for the past two years.

Almost immediately, Remus could sense that something was different. Madam Pomfrey was not hovering over him, minding his injuries, nor was she bustling about worrying about other patients. In fact, she was nowhere in his immediate line of sight. Remus turned his head, grimacing when the muscles all down his back clenched at the movement. He heard another sniff and shifted his gaze to where it came from. There, just inside the doorway of her office, was Madam Pomfrey, crying in the arms of Professor McGonagall. Remus furrowed his brow in confusion. In his two years at Hogwarts, Remus had only ever seen Madam Pomfrey tut at injuries, blanch at the very worst. In his eyes, the matron was unshakable. Yet, she was clutching the professor to her as her body wracked with sobs.

"Did you hear?" Remus whipped his head around at the question. The muscles in his neck cried out and his vision swam for a few moments before clearing up. A boy a few years older than him was propped up in the bed next to him. He arm was in a sling, and his eyes were bright with apprehension and anxiety. Slowly, as to prevent further aggravating his neck, Remus shook his head. "Apparently three students were killed last night."

All the blood drained from Remus' face. Students were killed? Last night? Remus began to hyperventilate. It was him. It was the wolf. He'd heard those voices outside last night. He must have broken loose. He must have—Remus rolled onto his side, ignoring the pain, and threw up over the side of the bed. Even when there was nothing left, his stomach tried to purge more. When he'd regained his breath, Remus wiped his mouth on his sleeve and croaked, "Who?" When the boy didn't answer right away, Remus repeated himself, more desperate this time. "Who?"

"Three second years," the boy answered, lowering his gaze to his hands. "Those troublemakers that were always pulling pranks on the Slytherins. Somehow they managed to find a way into Hogsmeade and some…monster attacked them." He pointed a finger across the room. "They're right over there. The parents are due to be here any moment."

Remus wriggled himself into an upright position. Sure enough, across from him were three bodies, covered by white sheets. He noted grimly that one of them only had one leg. Tears ran uncontrollably down his face. His friends. James, Sirius, and Peter had been his very first friends since he was bitten. He couldn't believe what he'd done to them.

The door of the Hospital Wing opened and Remus turned numbly to see who it was. There stood Albus Dumbledore, the man who had believed he was only a boy. The twinkle in his blue eyes was gone. He looked at Remus with pity, the same pity that he'd seen on his parents' faces and the matron's, only this time it was worse. This time it wasn't just about him. His friends were gone. He would never be allowed to attend Hogwarts again. The Ministry would have him and he'd either be put down or sentenced to Azkaban for life. And it was all his fault.

Remus gasped awake, struggling against the sheets. "Rem, chill out." Remus jumped at the voice and quickly turned to see Sirius staring down at him with bleary eyes and ruffled hair. "'S just a dream," he slurred.

Remus sat up, still breathing heavily. He had always had vivid nightmares, but that had definitely been the worst. It was something he thought about every day. What was Dumbledore thinking, letting an animal into the school? What if he hurt someone? What if someone found out? It had slowly been eating away at Remus for the past two years.

"D'ya want to talk about it?" James asked, getting up from his bed to stand beside Sirius and fumbling to put on his glasses.

"My mum always says talking about nightmares helps to make them go away," Peter added on Remus' other side.

Remus shook his head vigorously. "No," he stated firmly. "No, I don't want to talk about it at all."

Sirius, however, in his usual tactless manner, ignored Remus completely and dropped heavily onto the foot of the bed. "Look, mate, we need to straighten something out." Remus' heart began to pound. Could this be another dream? It had to be. Seeing the warning glace James shot at Sirius, he begged it to be.

"What Sirius is trying to say is—"

"We know," Sirius interrupted, staring at Remus head on.

"Sirius!" Peter gasped, but Sirius ignored him and continued.

"We know you're a werewolf. We know you go to the Shrieking Shack every month on the full moon. That's why you're away, not because your mum is sick. That's why you always come back so banged up. It's because you're a werewolf."

Remus panicked. He had always been a good liar—an exceptional liar—because of his condition, but no one had ever confronted him so directly before. Suddenly the only thing going through Remus' head was to get out and away from the other boys (run, run away, run away now). But he couldn't even bring himself to do that. He was frozen in place, staring back at Sirius' steely eyes, trapped like an animal.

James sat down on the side of the bed, breaking Remus from his trance. Reflexively, he scurried back until his shoulder blades hit the headboard, nowhere else to go. James looked at him curiously. "We're not going to hurt you, Remus."

"I'm sorry." The words were out of Remus before he realized it, and they kept pouring out. "I'm so sorry. I just wanted to go to school so bad and Dumbledore was the only one that would let me and he made me promise not to tell anyone and I'm safe those nights, I swear I am, I don't hurt anybody but myself and—"

"Remus, stop." Sirius' sharp command cut through Remus' rambling. He should have known. He should have known it wouldn't last. He couldn't possibly live in a dorm for so long—especially with boys like James and Sirius, and even Peter, who was clever in his own way—without being discovered. He would miss Hogwarts so much. He loved the castle, the paintings, the feasts, the professors, the ghosts, the books, the grounds, and mostly his friends. He had grown so fond of his friends over the past two years. Taking a deep breath, he whispered, "I'll pack my things now."

"Why?" Remus' head shot in Peter's direction. The boy looked at him in genuine confusion. "Are you leaving?"

"W-well," Remus stammered, "I-I figured you wouldn't want a…m-monster like me here at Hogwarts."

"Don't call yourself that," James all but growled. "Look—yes, once a month you turn into a wolf and you can't control yourself." Remus winced but James continued. "Once a month. That's only twelve days out of the year. So for the other…" James glanced up as he did some quick math in his head, "three hundred and fifty-three days of the year, you're perfectly normal. In fact, you're probably the most humane one of us all. I mean, look at Sirius—he's a psycho all three hundred and sixty-five days of the year, and they still let him into Hogwarts." The corners of Sirius' mouth twitched, but he continued staring intently at Remus. "So don't call yourself a monster. You're not. You're just a boy with a…chronic illness of sorts."

Remus looked around at them, wide eyed. "So you…you don't hate me?"

James laughed heartily. "No, you duffer! I could never hate you."
"I don't hate you either, Remus!" Peter piped up, grinning broadly. "Far from it, in fact."

Remus turned to look at Sirius apprehensively. Though both James and Sirius had grown up in pureblooded households, Sirius' family was much more prejudiced and intolerant of anything deemed beneath them. Certainly Sirius had been taught that halfbreeds were scum. And even though Sirius was breaking away from his family's traditions, he still showed a mean, superior streak now and then. Remus hoped now wasn't one of those times. "Sirius?" he asked quietly. "Do you hate me?"

Slowly, Sirius shook his head, still eying Remus levelly. "No," he whispered. "No, of course not. Remus, you're one of my best friends." Remus' body sagged in relief. "I just wish you had told us," he went on. "I wish you felt you could have trusted us."

James smacked Sirius upside the head, startling the other boy. "What are you talking about, Sirius? Remus can't very well go about telling everybody he's a werewolf! You know as well as I do not everyone takes kindly to information like that, even so-called friends." James glanced nervously at Remus. "No offense, mate."

"None taken." Remus was just relieved that his friends were still his friends.

"Erm, Remus?" Peter asked quietly. The other boys turned to listen to him. "What did you mean when you said you don't hurt anyone but yourself?"

Remus' face flushed as the focus was turned back on him, three pairs of eyes staring at him expectantly. "Well, like you said, I go to the Shrieking Shack to transform so I don't hurt anyone else. And …a werewolf is like any other predator. It wants prey. So when it can't find any, it gets angry and it…it turns on itself."

"What?" Sirius exclaimed, jumping up from the bed. "They—they let you do that? Dumbledore thinks it's okay to let you go at yourself every month?"

Remus shook his head. "There's nothing else he can do," he insisted.

"There's got to be something," Sirius argued. James placed a hand on Sirius' shoulder, grounding him, and Sirius calmed down. "There's got to be."

"We can figure something out, can't we?" Peter asked earnestly. Remus shook his head as James and Sirius nodded.

"Of course we can! We can and we will!" James proclaimed, puffing out his chest. Remus chuckled at his bravado, and James deflated, smiling back. "Seriously, Remus. We're going to find a way to help you through this. We promise." Sirius and Peter nodded enthusiastically.

Remus grinned at the three boys surrounding him. When he was younger, Remus had day dreamed about going to school, learning anything he was presented with, all alongside his loyal friends. And here they were, grinning at him, offering him the world.