A/N: This is the longest chapter so far - and about time for me to put up a longer one, even though it's not much longer. If people could review that would be nice, I'll keep writing, but I'd like to know where to improve, what to keep doing and people's thoughts and stuff like that.

With pockets stuffed full of chicken drumsticks Sirius Black and Remus Lupin staggered into the Gryffindor common room laughing. Remus had all but forgotten about his lycanthropy and was enjoying the company of boys his own age for the first time in his life. They climbed the stairs to their dorm room and collapsed on the remaining two beds, the others occupied by two other boys, clearly the same age as them.

"Hullo." Sirius said, through a mouthful of chicken. "Want one?" He offered, waving a slightly furry drumstick in his right hand.

The boy closest to him, wiry with messy black hair and round glasses perched on his nose shook his head. "Are you kidding? I'm stuffed!"

"No I'm Sirius." He said with a wink.

At the pun there was a laugh that was more of a squeak than anything else from the corner. Remus looked to see a slightly pudgy boy sat there with mousy coloured hair and a clearly nervous disposition. He said hunched over, cross-legged while the other boys were sprawled out on their beds. Or rather Sirius and the other boy were, Remus was sat on the edge of his bed, admiring the embroidery on his bed sheets, and remembering the nights that his mother had sat up embroidering tablecloths to sell down at the village market. These were remarkably better than hers, and he wondered if that was why they never seemed to sell very well.

"I know you are, moron." He said, throwing a shoe at Sirius, who counter attacked it with the remains of a chicken leg, before turning to Remus to introduce himself. "I'm James by the way. And this is Pettigrew."

Pettigrew jumped up off the bed and scuttled across the floor to shake Remus' hand. "Peter Pettigrew sir," he stammered, giving a odd little bow. The hand he proffered was pale and clammy, but Remus shook it politely, trying not to grimace at his limp handshake, it was like greeting a dead body. Just as he was about to introduce himself in turn the boys burst out laughing.

"What are you, a sodding house-elf?" Sirius burst out, rolling on his four poster bed in mirth. "Honestly James, what have we landed ourselves with?"

A werewolf, Remus thought silently, but didn't voice anything, or let his dark cynical thoughts show on his face. He pushed himself off his bed and bent down to his trunk, unfastening it and beginning to unpack his meagre collection of clothes. His family had struggled to get enough money to buy anything since his father resigned his job and his mother's Muggle money counted for little in the wizarding world – not that they had much of that either. A flask slipped from his hand as he was hurriedly trying to hide it in a draw and rolled loudly across the floor. He quickly turned to reach it, colour flooding his pale cheeks, but James hand grabbed it before he could get within a few feet of it.

It was in James' hands, his green eyes looking inquisitively at it before Remus could say or do anything about it. "What's this then, eh?" He asked, trying to read the scrawl that labelled the bottle.

"N-nothing." Remus said, hurriedly snatching it out of his hands.

"Christ, don't tell me you stutter too." He sighed, shooting Pettigrew – who gave another small squeak – a dark look. Then his eyes moved back to the bottle held in Remus' hands, then focussed on the hands themselves. He reached out and took one of his hands in his own, and Remus' was too shocked to stop him. "How did you get these?" He asked, turning them slightly so that the silver scars shined in the dim lamplight.

Remus' snatched his hand back and turned back to his bed, shoving the glass bottle roughly into his bedside cabinet. "They're nothing." He muttered, in shock and horror that they'd noticed his scars so soon, and panicking what he was going to tell them if they pressed it any further. Or what he was going to tell them if he gained any fresh ones at the next full moon. His mother had told him to tell anyone who asked that he had been badly attacked as a small child by a savage cat, but he knew that story wouldn't stand up to much interrogation, no, he would have to come up with something more believable than that if he was going to last here and not get caught.

They didn't realise that he had noticed, but out of the corner of his eye he saw James and Sirius share a look at each other, and in exasperation he threw down the moth-eaten jumper he was holding and stomped out of the room, heading down to the common room. Everyone in the common room was older than him by at least one year, everyone his age was busy getting to know their new dorm members and the people they were going to have to share their lives with for the next seven years. Remus glowered at the thought of it, surely it would have been better for him to never get to know his roommates at all, after all you couldn't miss what you'd never known and it would be easier for him if he didn't personally know who he had killed...

"NO!" He hissed sharply at his own thoughts, turning a few heads and as he bustled out of the portrait hole and out of the altogether common room. He didn't know where he was going, the only places he knew in the castle was the entrance hall and the common room, but somehow he felt a pull towards the top of the school, where he knew the heavens were. Usually he hated everything to do with the moon and the stars and night-time, but in this place, surrounded by people he wasn't used to, more people than he had ever seen in his whole life so far all squashed into one tiny pinprick of a place, he wanted to see the one thing that he knew would always have control over his life, the moon.

Eventually Remus made his way back to the dormitories, not sure of the time, but only that he was frozen and uncontrollably shivering from his long spell out in the night air. It had helped him clear his head a little, worsened the fear a little, but he wasn't so bothered about them seeing his scars anymore. That at least was a good thing. He had been hoping that he would be the only one awake by the time he got back, but James and Sirius were still awake, and worse, waiting.

"Sorry mate." They mumbled as he drew his curtains around his four poster sharply, kicking off his shoes and stripping naked before pulling his pyjamas out from under his pillow and stepping into them, grateful that they had enough tact not to burst in on him changing for a joke, it would be the least thing that he needed to have them see the rest of his scars.

"It's alright. Night." Remus said half-heartedly, settling down into bed and praying for a restful sleep.