Almost a month later, and February has arrived. The weather has lost none of the angry, bitter cold of January. If anything, the frost is sharper, the wind just that little bit more biting.
It's both a Tuesday night, and the night after the full moon; a coinciding that always leaves Remus feeling distinctly melancholy.
Normally Tuesday nights are his haven – the one evening of the week where he can have the dorm to himself and sit and read, or think, or just simply be. Peter has remedial Charms, and James and Sirius are at Quidditch practice.
The night after full however, this becomes something of a curse. Every bone in Remus's body hurts, as though they have been broken in a hundred places and jammed back together again. He supposes in a way they have.
Newly healed gashes are red raw against his usually pale skin, chafing whenever he has the temerity to move, and every hair on his head aches with tiredness.
It's the one Tuesday where he would give anything to have Peter mumbling over Transfiguration, or James reciting mad plans to win Lily's heart, or Sirius running an obstacle course over the beds like a large, hyperactive puppy, just to distract himself from the fact he feels a particularly brutal one hundred and three.
Instead, he is left to stare out of the window, watching the waning moon, and trying very very hard not to move so much as a finger.
He's been doing this successfully for about an hour and a half, when the door to the dormitory flies open with such force that James barely has time to leap through it, before it rebounds off his trunk and slams shut again.
Remus jumps so violently he almost falls off the window ledge he's sitting on, and curses.
'Hey, Moony!'
Bloody James. His hair's stuck up all over the place like a demented hedgehog, his glasses and Quidditch robes are splattered with liberal quantities of mud, and Remus doesn't think he'll learn to do anything quietly, ever.
He manages to pull out a slightly strained smile of greeting. Irritatingly, even this hurts. He sighs.
'Moony?' James prods, 'you okay?'
'Don't call me that,' Remus says automatically.
Sirius's nickname has somehow caught on, and every time it's used he's hit with a cold jolt of panic, doing an automatic check of who's in the vicinity to hear.
'Don't be so paranoid, you goon,' Sirius will tell him, and this frustrates Remus beyond belief. Frustrates him because this is serious damnit, he's an illegal, unregistered Dark Creature, and he's allowed to be a little goddamned paranoid.
Although what frustrates him more is the little flares of warmth that follow those jolts of panic. They aren't as strong, and they're much more subtle, but they're definitely there.
Remus has a feeling they are what his mother would refer to as foolhardy.
'You're back early,' he tells James.
The other boy gives him a look that suggests he's doubting Remus's mental capacities, and nods out of the window. Remus turns to look and realises that despite having been staring fixedly out for the last hour and a half, he has failed to notice that it's snowing.
'Right,' he says, and then, 'why the mud?'
'Sirius,' James replies.
To those who do not know Sirius Black this might not seem much of an explanation. However, to those that do, it is more than adequate.
Remus turns back to the window.
There's a moment's silence.
Then,
'Lupin?' James says, 'Remus? Are you sure you're alright?'
Remus isn't sure. He's tired, he hurts all over, and for some reason, he's achingly lonely.
He feels cold.
Nothing James can fix.
He nods.
'I'm fine, just…you know, usual stuff.'
And because they still don't talk about the werewolf thing, James accepts this and backs off.
'Going to have a shower, mate. Kitchen raid later, yeah?'
'Maybe,' he replies, turning back to the window.
A moment later, he hears the door to the dorm shutting, and knows he is alone again.
He settles back against the cold stone wall. He doesn't understand this feeling.
He's never felt truly alone, not once, since meeting James, Peter and Sirius. But now he feels isolated, like there's not a single person in the world who can reach him.
The feeling has been growing for a couple of months now, and it's always most intense the nights on either side of the transformation.
Whatever the cause, he hopes it passes soon. He can't stand it, these tendrils of gloom and emptiness, creeping insidiously through him.
Behind him, the door opens again, very quietly.
Remus turns. Sirius's head is poking through the gap, warily scanning the room.
'James isn't here,' Remus tells him. 'He went to shower, so you're safe for another, oh, thirteen minutes or so.'
Sirius's head grins at him, withdraws, and then he reappears in full, shivering through the door, accompanied by the smell of wind and snow.
Remus watches absently as Sirius bounds over to his trunk, chattering nineteen to the dozen about Quidditch practice. His voice becomes slightly muffled as he yanks his robes over his head, but the clarity returns in time for Remus to hear the tail end of his sentence, which consists of,
'…right off the back of his broomstick into an enormous puddle! Fucking magic.'
Remus dredges up a laugh from what feels like the dark depths of his soul. Clearly, though, it isn't anywhere near convincing enough, because Sirius halts mid-sentence, and stares at him.
'Moony?' he says, 'you alright?'
Remus has no problem lying to James, but he's always found it much harder to lie to Sirius. This is something that irritates him, because he always tries to keep his affections for the other three on an even footing.
Still, he can't quite find the strength to utter the words 'I'm fine' again. They seem to have lost all meaning in his mind.
He opts for silence instead.
Sirius doesn't say anything else, and for one blissful, strangely disappointing moment, Remus thinks he might just have dropped it. Then he feels his legs shoved violently off the other end of the window sill, as the other boy plunks himself down opposite.
'Was it bad this month?'
Remus snaps his eyes up to Sirius's, but the unreadable expression in the other boy's grey eyes forces him to look away again.
Perhaps it's the disbelief that Sirius has actually dared to start a conversation about what has become The Thing They All Know But Never Mention, but somehow Remus finds himself answering.
'No worse than usual,' he replies, 'not the actual transformation anyway.'
He notices Sirius's throat tightening at the word 'transformation' but he doesn't back down.
'Then what?' he asks.
Remus shrugs, carefully beginning to pick at the fraying edge of his jeans.
'I'm not sure,' he replies. 'Something different…It's more…before and after, than during.'
Sirius reaches out, and stills his hand.
'Are you in pain?' he asks quietly.
Remus shakes his head.
'Not physically,' he replies, and then winces at how pathetic and self-pitying that sounds.
Sirius doesn't laugh though, his mouth doesn't even twitch.
He nudges Remus's leg with his foot.
'Tell me,' he says, 'I could help?'
Remus chokes back a laugh that he's almost certain Sirius would find offensive.
'No,' he says, 'it's nothing. Just depression. Feel detached. Bit lonely. That sort of thing. It'll pass.'
'Lonely?' Sirius says, and Remus can hear the hurt reflected in his voice, his focus on the word making it obvious.
'I know it makes no sense,' he mutters. 'I've got less reason to be lonely now than I have since I was…'
'Since you were bitten.'
Clearly Sirius has the Gryffindor courage that Remus often feels he sorely lacks.
He shrugs.
'It's just around the moon. Fades the rest of the time. Just another part of being a werewolf I suppose.'
It's the first time in this utterly strange conversation that either of them have used the 'w' word, and Remus feels warm inside at the fact that Sirius doesn't even flinch.
'Maybe it's not you,' Sirius says.
Remus raises an eyebrow, unable to follow the other boy's logic.
'Maybe it's the wolf.'
'The wolf?'
Sirius shrugs.
'You said yourself, you aren't lonely anymore. But the wolf still is. Maybe he's starting to feel it more, now that there's a contrast.'
Remus is rendered completely and utterly speechless. He cannot comprehend how Sirius Black, one of the most insensitive, blunt and tactless people he knows, has managed to empathise with a dark creature that is shunned and feared by all.
More than that, he cannot believe that someone else has considered the idea that werewolves might just be something other than a seething mass of darkness.
'Haven't you heard, Sirius?' he says rather sharply, 'we werewolves don't get lonely. We're a medley of evil, anger, and hate with a garnishing of blood lust.'
Sirius tilts his head slightly, grey eyes piercing.
'You were howling last night, Moony,' he says.
'You could hear me?'
Sirius just looks at him.
'I can always hear you,' he says,' and you know what?'
Remus stays silent.
'Last night, you didn't sound angry. You just sounded sad.'