Animagi
All in all, my fifth year at Hogwarts was probably the best. The amount of homework wasn't enough to take away the joy I got from being with Sirius, even in secret, as we still were back then. That was also the year when the other Marauders finally managed their Animagus forms enough that they felt comfortable enough to tell me about them. It came as a great shock to me that they had been able to keep a secret of such proportions hidden from me for three years, especially since Sirius and I had been sharing everything since we had started "dating" right after the summer holidays.
They revealed it to me a week before the full moon, probably knowing that it would take time to convince me to let them risk their lives with an experiment that none of us knew for sure would work. Chances were great that I would have killed them all, because they had gotten into my 'territory' during the full moon. But, being the reckless teenagers we were, that thought didn't cross any of our minds at the time.
I was still about to protest to them coming anywhere near me during full moon, but Sirius looked at me with his big, black puppy eyes (his human puppy eyes, that is), and what could I do? I couldn't say no to him when he used his eyes on me that way. And so it was that for my January transformation of my fifth year I was no longer alone, which was to be the start of a whole new era of my life.
Anyway, I think the only reason why I didn't kill them while in my wolf form was that my wolf self was so excited to see Sirius (Sirius later told me this, I had no recollection of it). I just still can't believe how the others could've been so blind to not notice it, when it apparently was so obvious. Despite my first reluctance to let the Marauders near me while transformed, I must admit that they actually helped. My wolf form became distracted, which meant that it didn't seem to need to cut and bite itself open all night. This resulted in me having far fewer bruises and sores the morning after, for which I was eternally grateful.
The morning after my first transformation with company I was to find myself in less pain that I had ever experienced before, but still not remembering anything particular from the night. The only thing I remembered was that once more I hadn't attacked anyone, which would usually have shown itself in the fact that I felt like I had some kind of unfinished business, but this time I only felt relief. When I came around enough that I noticed my surroundings, I was shocked to see only Sirius there, holding my hand. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that the others had finally found out about us, and that they didn't want to be there.
Sirius had a hard time convincing me that they still didn't know and that the reason for their absence was that they had been put in detention for being caught out of bed that night when they returned from the Shrieking Shack. Sirius had only avoided it by staying in his dog form, because he didn't want me to be alone when I woke up. The others had been unable to pull that stunt, because McGonagall would have been suspicious if she had seen a deer and a rat walking the castle's corridors. A dog was, after all, much more plausible.
I usually would have preferred to have all my friends around me after a transformation, but that morning I was sort of grateful that I got to spend the time alone with Sirius. It had been getting harder lately to find time when we could be alone without the others suspecting us of being up to something. So we hadn't even really been able to have a real reunion after the Christmas holidays, when Sirius had been forced to go home so that his family could torture him like they usually did.
Incredibly enough, James and Peter noticed nothing when they came to the hospital wing after they had served their detentions. I think they were too excited about the things that had happened the night before to notice anything. I had a hard time getting all of them to shut up about it when Madam Pomfrey was within hearing range. That night when I got back from the hospital wing, though, I allowed them to fill me in on all the insane things that had happened during the night, which meant that none of us slept before 3 in the morning.
In the time to come I was happier than ever before in my life, perhaps with exception of the time before my bite, but I barely remembered that. I had five great friends, all of whom knew my secret and still accepted me. Three of my friends had gone to the ultimate lengths to make sure that my transformations were as pain-free as possible. Also I had what I guess could be called a boyfriend, even if we had never used that term. You can ask any 16-year-old boy who's in love for the first time, and they'll tell you how awkward it can be, but it was even worse for us, as we also had to figure out what it meant that the person we loved was also a boy. Both of us were still unsure of how to proceed, all we had ever done was kiss, but for then that was enough for us.
It should have come to no surprise to me that the first person to guess what was going on between the two of us would be Lily, as she always seemed to know everything about other peoples' love lives. Apparently she had been spying on us, and saw us coming out of a classroom when we thought we had been alone. She was very understanding, though, more than we had ever hoped anyone would be. She even encouraged us to tell the other Marauders, because as she said, if they could accept a werewolf as their friend, they should be able accept that their best friends were gay. And, as usual, she was right.
We sat down with them one night, in the dormitory, when we were absolutely sure we were alone. We started explaining to James and Peter what had been going on between us for the last 9 months. It was clumsy, awkward and generally not a very fun experience to talk so openly about it, because all we had to look at was two very dumbfounded faces, revealing nothing but shock. It wasn't till afterwards that we found that all of the shock was not caused by the sheer nature of what we were telling them, but just as much by the fact that we were suddenly so open about it.
Peter was the most shocked, probably because he simply didn't have the brain capacity to imagine that such things could be happening. James said he'd had a hunch for a while, which, honestly, didn't surprise me. Sirius and I thought we had been good at hiding our feelings, but apparently this was not quite the case. We had unconsciously revealed enough for James to figure out that our friendship has developed into something more. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he and Sirius has always been so close, like family. And now James, without hesitation, invited me to be part of his family too. I've never felt more loved than at that moment.