Chapter Six

Remus

…

This week was the week of the Quidditch match, Gryffindor against Slytherin, the first and most highly anticipated game of the season, the one which no on missed, the one which had people fighting in the corridors for the weeks before and the weeks afterwards. It was also the week of my transformation, but that wasn't important.

The match was on Friday. The transformation was two days before. I spent the days leading up to it in the library, trying to avoid everyone. It was one of those weeks; those weeks where you're feeling particularly wolfish and don't really fancy talking to anyone. The person I fancied talking to the least was Sirius, though I couldn't quite pinpoint why. Annoyance had been building up over the first few weeks back at Hogwarts, very slowly, nothing to be alarmed about, but then he'd fallen down the stairs, broken a trophy, and, from what I could gather from his rather hysterical recount of the story, had proceeded to break many of Professor McGonagall's possessions and land himself in three months' worth of detentions with his place on the Quidditch team in jeopardy. It shouldn't have annoyed me. I hadn't even got in trouble. But I couldn't help but grind my teeth at his sheer irresponsibility and idiocy, sending him dark glances across the common room and pointedly closing doors in his face when he was walking behind me. Not that he noticed any of this, being so wrapped up in Kit's little sister, Summer, and for some reason, this annoyed me even more.

So I stayed in the library, and read books and growled at the kids who had stolen my window seat, and didn't talk to anyone until the day before my transformation, the Tuesday, when James, Peter and Sirius arrived in a bundle of dark hair and too many limbs, with hopeful expressions and lolling tongues. Well, the lolling tongue was just Sirius, who was getting ready for the part of the dog for his part in tomorrow night's production of 'Remus grows teeth and develops an insatiable lust for blood.' They piled onto one seat at my table, and all began talking at once.

"Shh, why don't you?" I checked over my shoulder for the librarian. "One at a time please."

"Ooh, listen to Remus getting all official."

"He's been spending too much time with his books again."

"Like we keep telling you Moony, the books aren't your friends."

"I've had many of them disclose to me that they don't even like you."

I rolled my eyes, closed the book I was holding and slid it into my bag before one of them got hold of it and defaced it. "Did you have something worthwhile to say to me or are you just here to be annoying?"

James looked at me blankly. "When did we ever have anything worthwhile to say?"

"We came to talk about the werewolf-ication tonight," said Sirius. "We need a plan and you've been hiding from us all week."

After glancing quickly over my shoulder again, I turned back to them and pursed my lips. "You don't have to come tomorrow, guys. I know you have Quidditch on Friday, and…"

"Shut up Moony," said James, waving the comment away. "Of course we're coming."

"You couldn't leave me," squeaked Peter.

"Course not Pete."

"So it's all on for tomorrow. Same time, same place." The library spun as Sirius cuffed me round the head with an overexcited paw. My balance was never good in the days leading up to the moon. I looked at him, his smiling face fragmented by a grin. Fragmented by my fist. It's all on for tomorrow. It's all on for tomorrow.

…

It is a cold, sharp September evening. The darkening twilight promises a crisp, visible moon and a long night filled with small sounds and the endless hum of the last of the summer's insects. Inside the castle, I can hear the sounds of the feast down the corridor, and the sound of people eating and laughing. I even fancy I can hear the sound of light; buzzing and flickering like the insects against the cold window I've got my back against.

The reason why I'm sitting outside the castle on a window ledge watching the dusk instead of spending the evening inside in the Great Hall is not that clear, even to me. It's something I've never been very good at. The whole social thing. I find I'm very amusing in my head; in fact I could probably make myself laugh for hours, but when it comes to people, I'm suddenly not anymore. In fact, I'm "awkward and uptight and wholly unappetising," to quote Sirius. The only thing that I have the guts to respect about myself is the fact that I'm proud, and I don't believe in true love. Pride and cynicism. Those are bad traits, and I know that but I can't help but like them. Without my pride, I wouldn't be able to hold my own against Sirius and James, and without my cynicism, I'd be very unhappy and might have been forced to commit suicide by now. Oh well.

I feel a warm shoulder press against my own, and I look over and Sirius is there, grinning at me. "Enjoying the moonlight?" He asks, and I know straight away that he's in one of those moods.

"If I was enjoying the moonlight, you wouldn't be sitting here right now." I gestured to the sky. "The moon isn't out yet, Sirius." One hour and fourteen minutes until it is, I added silently in my head, and Sirius grinned like he knew.

"Sure. So." A bat flickered above our heads like a spinning shadow. "What are you doing then?" When I didn't answer, he continued, "you missed the feast."

"I wasn't hungry."

"Huh." He was quiet for a while, and then, with carefully cultured nonchalance, began to kick repeatedly at the dust on the ground at the bottom of the window. Scuff, scuff, scuff. I gritted my teeth.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm scuffin'" replied Sirius amiably.

"Right. Well, could you stop please?"

"Oh, sure."

There was silence for a while. Then unmistakably, the tap, tap of fingernails on the glass behind us.

"Sirius."

"What?"

"Would you stop that?"

"It's not me. It's the bat."

"I can see you doing it."

"No you can't."

Tap, tap. Tap, tap.

"Stop it."

"Stop what?"

"You know what."

"Stop being awesome? Because I can't just turn that on and off, you know Moony."

I know I can't get in a fight with him. It's what he wants, and I like to make a point of never giving him what he wants, even if it's what I want, in which case I just have to go without for the sake of his own unhappiness. While the friendship between James and Sirius is one based on mutual liking, ours is based on mutual misery; it is what we both take delight in inflicting on each other. Hatred. Friendship. I don't know the difference. I want to kill him right now, I really do, and I know it's the werewolf stretching and clawing at the delicate bond between beast and boy, I know it's the hormones and the lack of sleep and heart beating in time to the rise and fall of the ocean, but I can't do it, I can't fight him. I can't give him what he wants.

"I'm going in." I stand abruptly, and begin to walk away from the window ledge, away from Sirius. I hear him jump up behind me, and begin to follow me.

"Where you going Moony?"

"To the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey will want me there now."

"I'll come."

"No you won't."

He grabbed my arm then, and I felt the touch surge around my veins like bright light. I knocked his arm away roughly and turned on him with an animal speed, my neck snapping back to face him, and I felt my lips pull back from my teeth and I couldn't stop them. There was a dark manic delight in Sirius's eyes as he backed slowly away from me, and his shoulders were squared; he was facing me with his hands loose by his sides. The position I recognised as his fighting position.

"Come on then, werewolf," he said quietly. "I know you've been wanting to for weeks now. Try me. Come on. Try me."

"Fuck off Sirius," I muttered, my breath coming in gasps. "What the hell do you even want, anyway. Have you got some kind of death wish?"

"I want to break your face. I want to make you angry."

"You just want a fight, so you come looking for the guy who's about to turn into a werewolf. It figures. I know your type Sirius. I know you."

As I said it, I became aware of just how true that was. Sirius's eyes were black frost, the same colour as the sky, the same crazy colour that electricity would be of it was something you could see, and I realised then that the madness within me was in him too. He knew the slam of the door, the emptiness of a meal eaten in silence, the cold feeling of helplessness you got from watching a parent crying behind a half-closed door, and really, weren't those things the same as being ripped apart every month, having yourself turned inside out to expose the monster that clung to the bones underneath your skin? He was the same as me. Out of everyone, he was the one who truly understood what I went through. And I hated him for it.

The blood was roaring in my ears. I couldn't see Sirius anymore; all I could see was blackness. I felt my legs tensed to spring. I waited. I waited for it to happen. The leap, the hit, the fall and the rip, and I knew then that Sirius was doomed. I was stronger than him anyway, bigger, and now, when I was more werewolf that boy, there was nothing that could help him. The boy part, the part that was still Remus, was screaming at me to stop, to leave, to get to the shrieking shack, but the monster had taken over my instincts and any second now, and second, he would spring, teeth bared, and Sirius would be there, black eyes burning, to meet his hands, feet and mouth.

I opened my eyes.

There was nothing there. Sirius was gone. There was just the growing darkness, the breath of the trees, and my own heart, or the thing that passed as it, beating under my thin skin against the ribs of someone that wasn't really me.