"An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language."

- Martin Buber

The rabbit would not stop looking at him.

Remus glared at it, his homework in his lap. It glared back. The Wild Wind coursed through the meadow, a turbulent breeze that often sent things airborne and away. Remus made sure to hold onto his homework so it didn't fly away. Then he said, "Oh, what do you want?"

The rabbit shot him a look, small red eyes narrowed. Then, it jerked its snout in the direction of Remus's garden, specifically the vegetables and tubers growing in the rich soil. Remus raised an eyebrow.

"What?"

The bunny nodded its head at the vegetable garden.

Remus shrugged. "I don't understand."

The rabbit rolled its eyes like Remus was being stupid. It gave him a look that clearly meant "Follow me," and it hopped towards the plants. Remus dropped his book sand followed, feeling stupid as he walked in the dirt after some random rabbit.

In truth, there were often small animals like rabbits and hares that hopped across the meadow in which Remus's parent's house was in, but none had ever gone so close to him. It had a nice coat of white but odd red eyes that rabbits often had. Remus did not like the look of them.

"You know, my mother won't like it if you eat any of her vegetables, so I suggest you don't," Remus said conversationally. The rabbit tossed him a critical look and then continued bounding away.

The bunny rabbit stopped in front of a Wandering Willow (it hadn't wandered for many years, Remus suspected its roots had lost its locomotive quality) and pointed up with its white paw. Remus followed the direction the paw was pointing.

"I don't see anything," Remus said, peering.

The rabbit almost looked like it rolled its eyes. With its paw it pointed more vigorously. Remus's eyes followed. "I still don't see anything."

The bunny actually growled. Then, with no warning at all, it opened its mouth and said, "In between the leaves, high up."

Remus, for some reason, did not find it surprising that the animal could talk. "Hmm," he said, and shielded his eyes from the harsh sunlight. If he squinted, he could see something smallish and brown tucked under the leaves. An acorn, perhaps, or a ball.

"Oh, is that yours?" Remus asked.

The rabbit nodded its white head.

"Do you want me to go get it for you?"

It did.

"All right, then," Remus said, brushing his sweaty hands on his pants. It would be a bit difficult to climb the tree, but he would manage. Remus did not like heights, but this rabbit would not stop glaring at him as he did his homework. Climbing a tree would be fun, yeah? He did it when he was seven years old, so why not now?

Remus scrutinised the tree. The Wandering Willow was big and thick and its buttress roots flopped around slightly, still being able to move. Hopefully the tree wouldn't move as Remus climbed. Pretty leaves whispered and danced in the wind, layers upon layers of green surrounding a thick trunk. It was easily the largest and tallest thing in the garden, forty metres tall at least.

He began his ascent by finding a big gnarl in the trunk and used it as a foothold. He wrapped a foot and an arm around either side of the tree and hoisted himself up with a grunt.

He grabbed onto a nearby branch and lifted himself up with it, resting his foot on a bark hole. Remus repeated this, one arm lifting up one leg at a time, sturdy determination coursing through his arms. He had barely gone up ten metres before he started to get tired, his arm muscles aching and his thighs pained. Sweat beaded his forehead.

"I'm so unfit," Remus grunted, raising himself up once more.

One time, his hand grabbed a crumbling branch and it broke off at his touch. He barely held on, clinging to the trunk tightly. He looked at the branch as it fell, watched it shatter against the earth and the bunny look up at him. He would fall and shatter like that branch, Remus told himself, if he didn't continue climbing. So he ceased looking down and continued his ascent, grabbing at strong branches and disregarding weak ones.

Halfway up, he became tired and rested on a particularly thick part of the tree, leaning back and panting. If he peered up, he could see the brown object glint in the distance, two dozen more metres up. The Wild Wind whistled in his face and he brushed the hair out of his eyes.

He wiped his forehead and began climbing once more. The thing shined between the cover of leaves.

"Whatever it is, it better be really valuable," Remus said irritably, resentful of how tired and sweaty and dirty and used he felt.

It wasn't. Not at all. The object, Remus meant, was not valuable. Rather, it was just a huge, round nut that had a sheen to it and rolled quite smoothly in his hand. Well, whatever it was, Remus had promised to take it to the rabbit.

The sight at the top of the Wandering Willow was a sight to see. The glorious sunset shone across the whole meadow and Remus could see his cosy house in the distance. The plants and the vegetables growing in the garden looked small and beautiful from way up here, and the bunny rabbit was merely a white speck. He had been wrong; the tree was fifty metres tall, not forty.

He descended carefully, grasping the same branches and gnarls in the tree as he had last time. When he got closer to the ground, perhaps thirty metres away, he turned around so he could see the rabbit and waved down at it.

The rabbit looked far from happy. It was making almost humanlike noises of distress and panic, hopping around madly, and pointing with its front paw at the bottom of the tree. Remus peered down and to his horror saw the Wandering Willow's roots begin to rise and shake.

It would have looked cool if he wasn't about to fall to his death. The Wandering Willow's roots were thick and strong and abundant, and for the first time in years, they began to rise, lifting the entire weight of the willow up. Leaves fell away as the Wandering Willow took its first few slow, gradual steps. Every step it took, the roots slammed into the ground and imbedded itself into it and sent the whole tree shaking.

Remus could not find it within himself to scream, eyes wide as he watched the rabbit run away in terror. He clutched onto for dear life, the tree trembling wildly as it moved. Remus moaned; he had the worst luck.

"Please stop, stop," Remus yelled at the tree, which probably couldn't hear him. The tree's several branches began waving uncontrollably as it stepped, the Wandering Willow's equivalent to people swinging their arms as they walked.

Remus could not hold on for much longer, constantly shaking along with the tree. Leaves fell in torrents and explosions rippled through the trunk.

When the tree passed the garden, he let go of the tree and fell to the hard earth and squishy vegetables with a loud force and a grunt from his mouth. Dusting dirt off himself, he got up and found with amazement that the little nut was still enclosed in his sweaty palm.

Remus looked around and saw the little bunny hop over to him, looking wary. It looked at him appraisingly and Remus tossed the nut over to it. The rabbit's face began chittering its big teeth excitedly. The rabbit began saying stuff like, "Come out, guys, come on!" and Remus did not understand.

He looked as the Wandering Willow walked away, its roots moving and slamming into the earth like a weird insect. Remus did not quite like insects, but his hatred was definitely less than Lily's. Thinking of Lily made him think of Sirius, James and Peter, and made him miss his friends. It was still the summer holidays.

It looked kind of funny, the Wandering Willow crawling away and Remus was kind of glad it was moving. It must have been boring to stay in one place and Remus hoped it found somewhere better. Plus the huge absence and the places where the roots had banged against looked funny.

He turned around to see if the rabbit was still there and then suddenly there was at least a dozen white rabbits, all of them chittering excitedly and climbing upon each other. They all had normal brown eyes except one, so Remus knew the one in front padding close to him was the original one.

"You – you have a lot of friends," Remus said, laughing as they all bounded towards him.

A chorus of cheerful, high-pitched "Thank you!" met him and then the rabbits were playing with each other, tossing the nut around the circle of them, giggling as they played. When it reached the last rabbit, the red-eyed one, they took turns jumping on top of the nut, trying to break open the hard shell.

Remus helped them, shattering it against his knee. He passed the large, golf ball-sized kernel to the rabbits and they took turns biting bits off it off with their funny looking teeth. It was kind of sad.

"Is this your only food?" Remus asked.

The rabbits all stared up at him. Then, the red-eyed one pointed at the grass and shook their head, and also at the vegetables. After careful deliberation, Remus guessed they meant they either couldn't eat the food, or they did not like it, or they had some sense of ownership and did not want to eat it without permission.

"Well, you can eat some if you like," Remus said carefully, "and I'll tell my mum I got really hungry."

Cautiously, the bunnies approached the food and then suddenly they began devouring with vigour, like they hadn't eating in ages. True, the rabbits were skinny and pale, but Remus had just attributed that to physical features.

Only the red-eyed rabbit did not lose itself in swallowing everything in the vicinity, choosing to nibble on the remainders of the nut.

"You're not around here," Remus observed, "because the other rabbit groups just eat whatever they want. My mum takes her plants really seriously and keeps the gate locked a lot. You guys waited for permission. How come? Where did you come from? Why was that one nut there? It definitely doesn't grow there."

Through several re-enactments and chirping and even words, Remus was able to understand the rabbit's and its friends' story. In a far away land, colonies upon colonies of rabbits lived together. From the way the rabbit described it, with English and gestures, these rabbits had quite an advanced society and their ideas of ownership and belonging was quite advanced. The rabbits lived in peace for generations until quite recently, it seemed, something the rabbit called Stingers had come.

Remus had no idea what Stingers were and the rabbit did not know how to explain it but made a weird guttural noise in impression of whatever Stingers were. Remus decided it was okay he didn't know, and all he could gather was that they were dangerous and the rabbits disliked them. The Stingers apparently killed some of them in ways that the rabbit did not describe, but said that one of the things the Stingers did, other than actually Stinging, Remus assumed, was that they ate flesh.

"Why did they attack a rabbit colony?" Remus asked, amazed.

The rabbit's voice was high-pitched and scared. "They were looking for a place. A big place where they could stay and make a home in and control stuff. But they thought our colony was too small so they went away, but most of us were already dead."

The bunny continued, telling him that the remaining rabbits ran away, hoarding as many nuts and vegetables as they could in their stubby little arms, eating the food they had as they journeyed across lands. Remus laughed as he imagined little rabbits hopping through fierce terrain and weather conditions. Days upon days followed without rest or sufficient food. Eventually, all thirteen of them got tired near a meadow next to a house, Remus's parent's, and they all agreed to sleep and take a rest. When they woke, the red-eyed rabbit had seen the Wild Wind pick up the only nut they had left and toss it away, up into the leaves of an unmoving Wandering Willow. They went up to a random human boy and asked him to help them get their only last food resource.

"Wow, okay," Remus said. "Well, all of you have been through a lot. Too much. You can eat all of my food. You can take shelter in my house now. I'll hide you from my mum, because she'll probably not take too kindly having animals in the house. I'll make sure all of you are okay," Remus continued, smiling. "And," he said, poking the red-eyed rabbit's nose lightly, "I'll climb a hundred moving trees just to get you another nut."

Perhaps for the first time, the red-eyed rabbit smiled.

Raising rabbits secretly in his bedroom was not his ideal summer holiday plan.

But as it happened, he realised he liked it. He liked stealing vegetables from the garden and watching his mother get confused at invisible pests. He liked waking up in the middle of the night because a certain red-eyed rabbit saw a spider and began shrieking. He liked giving all of the rabbits names, christening the red-eyed one Ruby, because he was feeling very uncreative that night. He liked nuzzling up with all of them. He liked playing games with the rabbits, throwing sticks and watching them run at full speed and chase one another. He liked tickling them and making them giggle. Above all, he liked learning how to communicate with them.

It was weird. He remembered all the way back to when he understood Archie's every movements and gestures and what they meant, if he was hungry or if he was content. He remembered comprehending what Fawkes meant when he squawked, what he meant when he flapped his arms, and Lily looking sceptical when Remus said he understood Fawkes's expressions.

Even after he had left Hogwarts and mystical creatures, ordinary animals gave off moods that confused Remus. He remembered feeling an external angry atmosphere when he got too close to colonies of insects, like warding him off. He remembered singing along when the birds in the meadows chirped, and oddly enough singing words about it being cold this year, and worms and a lack of roosting places nowadays.

But the rabbits were the closest to him, the ones who actually talked to him. Remus liked trying to learn about his weird … talent.

Was it a magical thing? But then other people would have it. He had heard of Parseltongue, which was when people could speak to snakes, but he could speak to and understand a whole range of animal tongues.

"So is it me speaks rabbit talk or is it you who speaks English?" Remus wondered to Ruby, sitting down in front of the red-eyed rabbit.

The rabbit gave him a look that clearly meant, "How should I know?"

"I think it's me who speaks and understands rabbits," Remus reasoned, "because I can understand other animals too. It's kind of cool."

Ruby did not look like she cared. She attempted to break open another nut by thumping her foot against it, and Remus helped.

Ruby looked quite thankful and smiled at him, dashing off to play with her friends in the meadow. His parents were out, so the rabbits were allowed to run free without fear of Hope Lupin shrieking in fear for her pumpkins. Remus sighed happily, leaning against a tree trunk and letting the sunlight and the breeze wash over him.

This happened until the end of the holidays. He had maintained secrecy of the rabbits living in his house and the meadow around, with a few close calls, Hope once thinking that mice were in the house and going mad.

The rabbits all looked very dejected the day he was to go to Platform 9 ¾, to go back to Hogwarts. Remus liked to think that the rabbits cared about him and liked him enough now. Remus certainly felt that way about them.

"So, you have to be much more secret about stuff when I'm gone," Remus told the crowd of sad rabbits quickly, "but you can still take the vegies and fruit from the garden, and of course you can eat the grass in the meadow. Nuts are going to be harder to find now I'm gone but if it's safe I'm sure you can manage." The rabbits nodded. "Shelter can be in my room, if you like, or you can stay in the burrow we dug together. Water is easy to find, there's always that lake that's like, three minutes away.

"I hope you guys will still be here when I come back over the holidays," Remus said, smiling. "But if anything becomes dangerous, move away, okay? Find water and food and stuff. I love all of you a lot."

And then he began to pack his things for tomorrow. When he looked back, he saw Ruby's red eyes were teary.