Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

A/N: So this chapter was ready for posting yesterday afternoon, before Word crashed and wiped half of it out not once but TWICE. Then the site was down for a while, and when it came back up I lost my Internet connection. At long last, however, and despite many difficulties, I present to you... chapter 3!


Moonrise

Of course, it's never easy.

James had always visualised Remus's change as similar to theirs: smooth, quick and painless. He had read the books. He knew that a werewolf's transformation is different to an Animagus's. But for some reason, it didn't sink in until the first time they went to the Shrieking Shack together. James was almost too late with the change that month, preoccupied as he was with the obvious agony in front of him.

Therefore whenever he changed, he couldn't help but feel a tiny stab of guilt – he could do it so easily, and Remus suffered so. But what he felt then is nothing compared to what he feels now: silent, helpless, non-existent.

The first sign that the moon has risen is Remus's gasp. His eyes widen and make the final transition from brown to yellow as his neck arches. James draws away, hovering in the corner and wishing he could shield his eyes.

(Because as terrible as the transformation was while he lived, it is a thousand times worse now that there is nothing he can do to help.)

There is a horrible cracking sound as Remus's bones snap and ripple. Then for the briefest moment there is silence. Remus bites down on his lip until he draws blood, and James wonders dispassionately why he continues to muffle the sound when as far as he knows, there is no-one present to hear it.

The next moment James wants the silence back desperately, because Remus throws back his head and screams. James knows there are soundproofing charms on the door, but some part of him is sure that the shrieks are loud enough to overpower even those. (He always does think that.)

The cracks are louder now as the bones in his friend's body break and elongate, turning into something quite different. Remus's hair is lightening to a silvery-grey colour as fur of the same shade sprouts along his limbs. But nothing can distract James from the screaming – an endless song of anguish that seems to just grow louder.

The screaming is the worst.

James will never become used to the screams, but he has learned to analyse them: the way they seem more raw and guttural on bad moons, and the high-pitched continuity on what will be an easy night. The past two transformations have both been dreadful, but somehow James can hear an extra note of sorrow this month. It would be similar to the sound of an abandoned puppy (and he supposes that is what the wolf is – abandoned) except it is loud and strong and awful.

Remus's thin hands are now huge pads covered in course grey fur, his mouth has grown huge fangs and his ears have travelled to the top of his head. He writhes on the floor as his screams begin to sound more canine, but behind the yellow eyes he is still Remus. The mind is always the last to go.

Finally the scream turns into a howl of rage and the wolf springs to its feet. Its eyes gleam and its teeth are bared in a snarl, and anyone with sense would turn tail and run. James never did have much of that, though. He wants to be there, physically, more than anything else in the world.

But the dead don't belong in the realm of the living.

.

Sometimes, there is nothing he wishes for more than a glimpse of the sky.

Sirius's cell is horribly claustrophobic, and he does get sick of finding out the time but gauging the amount of light falling on the floor of the corridor. Tonight, however, he is perfectly happy to do this. The sight of the full moon viewed through his human eyes makes him feel sick.

The corridor floor is being painted silver, and Sirius watches, transfixed, as the moonlight grows brighter. There is something so other-worldly and ethereal about it that sometimes it is hard to associate it with blood and torture and pain. But then Sirius thinks of Remus's bones snapping and cracking, and the illusion of innocence is broken.

He shudders as recollections of the transformation rise unbidden to his mind – the harsh sound of breaking bones (and the uninitiated could mistake it for Apparition but if only it were that), the terror in Remus's eyes and always, always the screaming.

The screaming is the worst.

It echoes through his head, now – the almost primitive agony expressed in those terrible screams. A sudden memory, crisp and sharp as a photograph, appears in front of his eyes: Remus twists and turns on the floor as his bones change shape, his eyes wide and pleading and desperate. The big dog backs away, shaking with horror and beyond grateful that he can only see this in black and white.

(Sometimes he would wonder just how red Remus's blood really was.)

He wants to scream, too. He wants to pour out all his guilt and sorrow to the walls around him. But he has made himself a promise: he will not scream. He will not cry, and he will not laugh. Sirius is a Gryffindor, and he has his pride to think of.

(Remus is a Gryffindor, too. But Remus screams.)

But Remus is in agony, and there is nothing Sirius can do to help, and he hates The Rat so much for doing this to all of them. James is dead and Sirius is trapped, and Remus screams as the full moon's light grows brighter.

A little whine builds up in Sirius's throat: perhaps a sign of how desperately he is aching to turn into a dog, to be with Remus as he changes and try to take away his suffering. What would Remus do, he wonders, if he turned up in the basement right now? Maybe he'd laugh, or smile, or tell him to get-out-this-instant-Padfoot-it's-too-dangerous-alone.

(No. Remus hates him.)

But Sirius can't make any noise, because he promised himself he wouldn't, and being quiet is his own sort of rebellion. Instead his grey eyes burn like stars in the stifling darkness, and Bella just can't meet the intensity of his gaze.

Remus screams. Sirius doesn't have that freedom.

.

A long time ago, Peter thought the moon was beautiful.

It symbolised magic and poetry and things far away, and his childish heart was caught by its pearly effervescence. He used to spend hours gazing at it on full-moon nights; it always was at its loveliest then.

It was the first full moon that the Marauders spent together that shattered Peter's fancies. Oh, he had seen what the moon did to Remus before: he had watched Madam Pomfrey bandage his wounds on the day after, and he could see the misery in his friend's eyes the day before.

But it took the first full moon together for the moon's beauty to be stolen from Peter. Now it is tainted by wounds gushing blood and the crack of breaking bones and screaming, always the screaming, strong and terrible and unbelievably loud as if Remus pours everything he is into that scream.

The screaming is the worst.

So, no, the moon cannot be beautiful. Nothing that makes Remus suffer is beautiful. The moon is evil, and because of it Remus is screaming.

(If the moon is evil, what does that make Peter?)

The wind is picking up now, and the little rat huddles into itself as the huge white orb emerges above the horizon. A few stars twinkle valiantly, as if trying to outshine the moon, but it is effortlessly brighter than them. Peter can almost hear its scornful laughter.

(In his head, it sounds a lot like James and Sirius used to.)

Sometimes Peter thinks back to the old days, when the three of them would sneak down to the Whomping Willow under James's Invisibility Cloak, smirking to each other and drunk on their own cleverness. He remembers the way Remus's whole face would light up at the sight of them, his eyes bright with the joy of having friends. He never did think he was good enough for them.

(Peter wonders what led him to give Remus that message again.)

Peter remembers the infectious excitement that they would feel in the days leading up to the full moon. He wonders what came over them; what made them think it was something to be enjoyed? Why did they laugh when they lived through a nightmare every month?

Peter is only twenty-one, but his seventeen-year-old self feels a lifetime away. That boy thought the full moon was something to be enjoyed; that boy brushed away the bone-snaps and the blood and the screaming and focused on – what? What exactly was happy about it? What is there that makes the full moon beautiful?

(The feeling of friendship, perhaps.)

.

It never does seem real.

Human Remus knows that the transformation is painful. He knows that it is agony, knows that it is far beyond what most people ever have to endure. But he does not know as the other Remus (the feral one, the wolf one) does exactly what it feels like.

Because surely it is impossible to feel this much pain. It cannot be real; if Remus really was in this level of agony, he would have cracked long before now.

(Well. He is stronger than he thinks he is.)

He knows the moon is beginning to rise when a white-hot bolt of anguish shoots through his heart. He gasps; for a moment all he knows is the pain, before his mind clears again. (After all, what he felt on the morning of November the second is far worse than this.)

The first bone to break is his calf. He bites down hard on his lip, because however much it hurts he cannot scream. Screaming is for animals, and Remus has to be a human for as long as he can. Other bones begin to crack – his knee, his wrist, his spine – and his lips are drawing blood but he still can't scream.

He won't scream.

It is the moment that his neck begins to break that he finally gives in to the pain, opening his mouth and letting it all out. In an odd way, it is a relief to be able to scream – he is used to muffling it for his parents or his friends (ex-friends), and it is almost cleansing to be able to truly express what he is feeling.

Even though he hates the wolf, he cannot deny that it offers him a way to vent his emotions when the human is unable to deal with them.

Perhaps it is Remus's overactive imagination, but he is sure that it is the moment that he starts to scream that the wolf-mind emerges. It is almost unnoticeable, at first: smells suddenly seem sharper, and the room flickers into black-and-white.

(As if it had much colour in the first place.)

All his senses are on high alert and his ears have pricked up: the human part of him is desperately battling the wolf-mind for control of Remus's body. He is sure that if he wins this fight (and he has to, one day) that he will be able to keep his humanity.

Because this is truly the worst: the slow slipping away of sanity, the knowledge that everything that makes him Remus Lupin is abandoning him and leaving him with a slavering beast. It is the sick bloodlust that is rising up in him and knowing that he is losing all self-control and dignity.

His vocal chords are fraying; he screams (wails) like a wolf, and the scraps of his human mind cringe to hear the noise. At last the screaming is replaced entirely, and the wolf howls to the moon it cannot see. It leaps to its feet with a snarl, completely itself as soon as the cumbersome presence that tries to restrain it is gone. There is no way it could be mistaken for a human now.

Because however hard Remus tries to fight it, it always is a losing battle.


A/N: Please leave a review!

~Butterfly