A/N Soooo, you would think that with everything shut down and class hours reduced from 30+ a week plus an hour a day in transportation to ten and the trip to school a walk to my desk that I'd have more time to write right? Yeah, at first. Then I went home an dhad a ton of other stuff to do. I've been wanting to write but in the past weeks (yes I know it's been almost 2 months) have been woefully uninspiring and I couldn't string much together in a straight line. I hope this worked out and that the bouncing around isn't too confusing.

Enjoy. PS- what's that? oh yeah, not mine.

PPS Remember how I said I'd start sharing my favourite works and then did it once? I remembered. See the end.

10 November 1973

It had been nearly a month since Remus had slumped into his seat in potions and told them about Nelson's letter. Since then, Remus had been impossibly restless. He could not sit still and his temper had been razor thin. Peter had taken to gripping his arm when the Slytherins began their inevitable jeering in the corridors while James and Sirius had their fun.

So far, the pair of them had lengthened Snape's nose to the point that he tripped on it, tied Lestrange up in a tapestry, turned Avery's tongue into a frog's, tripped up umpteen Slytherins, and- well, Peter wasn't entirely sure what they'd done to Macnair. Whatever spell had been used was apparently unpleasant and the fourth year had been walking with an unnaturally wide stance for days now. The other two were off prepping for the quidditch match that was set to begin in an hour, and Peter had the task of tracking down his third roommate. It was only after learning that Remus had been kicked out of the library that Peter returned to the dormitory to find the subject of his search laying by the loose floorboard with a chocolate frog in his hand.

"Remus!" Peter exclaimed, wincing when Remus clapped his hands over his ears. "I've been looking everywhere for you" he continued at a whisper. "The match will be starting soon and I'd like to get a good seat to watch Pike get clobbered." The tensions between Gryffindor and Slytherin had been especially high this week with the match coming up, but the Snakes had been taunting Remus about his brother since the news had trickled out that he was missing.

"I don't suppose James and Sirius will notice if I'm not there?" Peter merely replied by reaching out a hand to help Remus to his feet. "Right, right, I'm coming" he grumbled.

Peter watched his friend dig through his trunk for a pair of noise-cancelling earmuffs and a scarf, wondering if he really should be heading out. Remus looked a bit ill and his hands shook slightly as he wrapped the scarf around himself and fumbled through his gloves with the clasp on his robes. Peter also knew better than to tell Remus that he shouldn't come because he knew that it would get him smacked, and that James and Sirius would be disappointed. Resigned, both headed through the castle at a brisk pace, hoping to get decent seats before the match began.


"Lupin!" Minerva called after a moment's hesitation; the boy had been rather twitchy in class lately and his stature indicated that the noisy quidditch pitch wasn't the first place he should be whether he wanted to or not. She strongly doubted that he'd thank her for what she was about to do though.

Lupin and Pettigrew paused and turned to face their professor. "Yes Professor?" Lupin offered.

"May I have a word"

"We're going to be late for…" Pettigrew began in his whiny voice.

"Lupin. You need to come with me." Lupin shot a glance to the pitch where figures on brooms could be seen zooming in and out of sight. "I received a letter from your father today, asking if you could be released for a few days; your grandmother is rather ill." She tried to make her tone gentle enough that the other latecomers to the game wouldn't hear the pointedness that she also embedded in her words.

Confusion flickered on Lupin's face for only a moment before he let it fall. "Oh." Was all he had to say.

Pettigrew on the other hand while he knew, had not caught the intention in her words and who kept asking questions.

"Peter, you head on, I'll see you in a few days." Minerva had to give her student credit; he was a decent actor, and Pettigrew finally headed up the stairs to the stands with a worried nod.

They carried on in silence until they'd reached the castle. "I'm going to guess that since both my grandmothers are long dead that you wanted to talk to me for some other reason?" Lupin had stopped walking and was standing with his arms crossed. Minerva suspected that had he not looked ill that he would be intimidating to some.

"You need your rest Mr. Lupin, and a quidditch match isn't going to help you today." His shoulders relaxed slightly and he turned back to the stairs. "Where do you think you're going?"

Lupin's shoulders slumped and Minerva suspected that he had assumed what he was about to be told. "If you head back to your dormitory I fully expect that you'll be pestered until dusk and I suspect that you're in for a rough enough night as it is."

The corners of his mouth turned down and Lupin hesitated a moment before abruptly turning and trudging towards the infirmary, leaving the transfiguration professor thinking that she'd better check in on the hospital wing in a few hours to make sure that Lupin and Pomfrey were still alive.


Fink was speeding his way with the quaffle, and- there was Sirius, right on time with the bludger. James leaned into the wind and rushed towards the ball before the other snaky chasers could get to it. He caught it- barely- and sped upwards and towards the Slytherin goal, scanning the stands as he passed. He spotted the bright red hair in no time at all. Up and to the left was Peter, sitting with-Longbottom? Why's Peter with Longbottom? Where's Remus? James found Lily again, thinking that perhaps Remus had chosen to sit with her but the only thing he saw was a beautiful redhead-

"OI!" Koffman, the team's senior beater and captain screamed as he intercepted a bludger from its collision course with the chaser. "Focus on the game Potter, or you can sit with her next time!"

That snapped James's attention back to the task at hand, though, perhaps when Hufflepuff faced Ravenclaw he could sit beside-

"Duck!"

He did, and he felt Sirius and a bludger ruffle his hair on their way over his head. Without another thought, James bobbed his broom down, rolled out of Fink's way, and lobbed the quaffle at Brown. He could hear the school cheer and he could hear that there was an announcer, but the words and cheers were lost to the wind as he raced to intercept the Slytherin keeper's throw back into play.


"Evans!" Lily turned away from the voice calling her and began to walk back towards the school. "Evans!" It was beginning to snow, and the wind was picking up which made for a bitter walk when it was blowing across the lake. "Evans, did you see my save?"

She smelled him before she saw him beside her. Why couldn't boys learn to bathe after they'd been sweating? "I'm not a quidditch expert Potter, but don't keepers do the saving?" she asked in a bored voice as she kept walking to the castle.

"Oh, come on." Potter whined. "You can't tell me you didn't see it…" Lily snugged her scarf around her neck. "Alright, fine." Potter stopped following her but his tone was pleading.

She turned. "What?"

"Have you seen Remus?"

"Pettigrew said McGonagall came to send him home to visit his grandmother." She suspected that he'd been sent to the infirmary because the full moon was that evening, but if his roommates couldn't figure that out for themselves, she wasn't about to tell them.

"Oh." he frowned. "I thought Peter was kidding. He's not very good at tricking people."

"Well, I did see McGonagall walking him back to the castle so I'd assume he's telling the truth."

"Thanks Evans." Then he disappeared with a wave and a smile and was tearing across the lawn to say something to Black.

Lily spent her afternoon in the library working through their coursework. Her plan once she left the library was to go up and see if she was right about Remus and see how he was but she was intercepted on her way there.

"Lily!"

"Sev," she said, shaking her head, "what are you trying to do? Storm the castle?"

Severus crossed his arms and the armour he was wearing creaked and groaned. The sword that the suit had been displayed with clattered to the floor and rang out through the corridor. "No, but I'd consider storming Gryffindor right about now…" he grumbled.

The smile fell off Lily's face. "Who put you in there?" she asked, incredulous.

"Who do you think?" he snapped, pulling his head up.

The visor of the helmet snapped down and Severus yelped.

Lily sighed. "It was Potter and Black wasn't it?" She didn't need verbal affirmation.

The glare she was getting through the slit in the helmet was enough to tell her that she was right. "Sit tight, I'll be back with a teacher to help."


Walter stifled a snort when he pushed open the door to the hospital wing to let the First year he was escorting through. The earmuffs that had been missing from the greenhouses for months were stretched over the ears of a student who was slinking around the infirmary with a tray of potions that apparently needed to be reshelved. Lupin froze when he opened the door. The cabinet he was restocking wasn't immediately visible when one entered the room, but Walter was in a position that he could see the boy nonetheless. Lupin carefully set the tray on the chair by the cabinet and began to quietly retreat to the bed nearest it.

"Just you in here Lupin?" Walter called out, waving the first year ravenclaw into the room. Lupin relaxed instantly and went back to his stocking. "I'll be right back," Walter told the first year, who's name he thought was Wilson, after he'd guided the girl to a bed. She nodded and Walter wandered to the corner of the wing that Lupin was working in.

"I was wondering where these had gotten to." Waltre said, taping the earmuffs.

Lupin turned, wearing a guilty expression. "I haven't left you short have I? Because you can have-"

"No, it's fine. No one likes wearing those ones anyway." Walter glanced to the back of the wing where Madam Pomfrey was likely working in her office. "I'll let you get back to wherever you're supposed to be before I call her out here, hmm?"

Walter got a sheepish smile in response, and true to his word, let the Gryffindor return to the bunk at the back of the hospital wing before fetching the nurse. When Poppy did come out, she eyed the potions tray critically before the herbology professor was able to guide her over to the Ravenclaw who reported monochromatic vision. Before he left the infirmary, he glanced back to the bed that Lupin had chosen and winked. Then he picked up his pace because he was pretty sure that Poppy had seen the exchange.


He didn't have a window in the cell that had been his room for, well months at least. At least now he knew why, although a case of mistaken identity wasn't a great reason to be held prisoner like this. There was however a window across the hall and even if the brightness of the ground outside hadn't hinted at the phase of the moon, then the sounds of snarling and howling from elsewhere on the campus would. He didn't think they were in the same building, otherwise he'd likely be dead by now. It was the fourth time he's heard the tortured screams turn into howls and couldn't fathom what it actually felt like.

"No, no" a woman was screaming. "Back! Off! NO!"

He clapped his hands over his ears to block out his mother's screams for help, wanting nothing more than to help her and to save her from the monsters that were tormenting her. Then the tone of the screams shifted. No longer were they the desperate pleas for help and mercy, but they were cries of agony. He couldn't take it anymore. Just before the screams ceased entirely, he felt like the walls were closing in around him and pushing against him and then everything went black.


The moon would be setting in about twenty minutes, and Poppy, as usual, was preparing her supplies for her regular patient. Once she was sure she had everything, she grabbed the satchel that held her emergency healing supplies and her cloak, and made her way through the castle, across the grounds, and towards the Whomping Willow. When she reached the end of the tunnel, she paused and knocked at the door; occasionally he was already up and tended to get grouchy if she simply 'barged in'. There was no answer. Not even a groan or a scuffle on the floor, so she opened the door and almost vomited.

Now, the cage of an animal- which is essentially what the shack was- never smells particularly pleasant, but this was something Poppy had not been prepared for. Her student wasn't in sight, but there was a distinctly pungent smell coming from somewhere, and blood smeared about. The ground floor had only one room, and was void of Lupin. Poppy had never had cause to venture upstairs before, because Lupin generally managed to drag himself back downstairs or he just wound up there when he woke, regardless of the fact that he had been advised on several occasions to stay put and that she'd come and tend to him wherever he found himself to be. The stairs creaked and groaned despite the structure being relatively new. There were gouges in the wood of the steps and the walls, and the carcasses of small rodents littered the landing.

The smell turned sour and coppery as she neared the top of the stairs, and despite having been in healing for a few years, her stomach turned when she poked her head in the bedroom nearest the stairs.

The first thing she saw was a puddle of blood and vomit. It took a moment for her to register that Lupin was the source of the puddle. He was asleep, or more likely unconscious due to blood loss, on the far side of the room. He was, thankfully, on his side, so the bile was dripping out of his mouth instead of suffocating him. The first thing Poppy did upon entering the room was vanish the puke on the floor. Then she surveyed her patient. She could barely see the boy for all the mess that he was covered in, and figured that he was in desperate need of first aid.

The satchel was slung off her shoulder with haste and with a little siphoning of the blood that had yet to dry, the extent of the damage became readily apparent. His arms and legs were shredded from claws and teeth. His head had a few scratches and there were splotches of green and purple manifesting on his face; the nose was surely broken, and one ear was half removed. But it was his torso that held the worst of it. His chest was marred and gouged and the source of the smell seemed to be a deep cut to his belly.

With a breath, Poppy steeled herself and set to work.


James scowled at the note on his desk and picked up his quill.

Well, if someone had remembered to set the alarm then we'd have been up with enough time to see him.

A quick glance around the room told James that McGonagall was at her desk grading papers. We can go at lunch.

"Ventus" James whispered, and a puff of wind sent the note floating over to Sirius's desk.

Sirius read it, and shot Peter a look that said just who had been responsible for setting the alarm the previous night. Peter deflated and pointedly returned to the reading they'd been assigned.

With a shake of his head, James tore the corner off another scrap of parchment.

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

When I think of flowers, I think of you.

Would you do me the most magnificent pleasure of accompanying me to Hogsmeade on the next trip? I think it's in three weeks.

J.P

Another, slightly stronger, gust of wind sent the aeroplane soaring across the room to land neatly on Evans's desk.

Remus had shown their muggle studies class how to fold them a few weeks ago and James was fascinated. He'd set dozens loose in the corridors and classrooms. Muggles, apparently, could fly. And they could fly more than one person on their aeroplanes than you could fit on a broomstick. One contraption could fly over three hundred people over the ocean for merlin's sake! And people said that muggles were stupid.

He twitched with anticipation when he saw Evans reach for the note. She read it, wrote something back, and folded it back up. The little plane was back on his desk in mere moments and James was eagerly unfolding it once again. He took a moment to admire her flowing script before the words sank in. His face fell.

Not in a million years.

"Something you'd like to share, Mr. Potter?" James winced and looked over his shoulder at McGonagall.

"Would you care to learn how to make an aeroplane out of parchment?" he asked with a confident grin.

The double period seemed to last forever, and when the bell finally released them to lunch, James, Sirius, and Peter made a beeline for the hospital wing.

The door had barely started to creak open and the school's matron was poking her head through it.

"Potter, Black, Pettigrew," Pomfrey scrutinized them for a few moments. "Do you need something?" She sounded tired.

"Um, no, not particularly" James said and Peter nudged him with his elbow.

"We'd like to see Remmy." Sirius intervened.

"I'm afraid Mr. Lupin is currently resting." said Madam Pomfrey, stepping out into the corridor. "He won't be having any visitors."

"We don't need to talk to him." Peter said, rather convincingly, "We just want to see him to make sure he'll be alright." Both James and Sirius glanced at Peter, somewhat surprised with the strength with which the words had come out.

That didn't seem to matter to Pomfrey however, as she refused them entrance. "Lupin will be fine,-" she said, her voice not entirely confident. "-he just needs his rest, and he won't be getting it if you boys are in here riling him up all the time. Or god forbid you convince him to head out." She gave all three a hard glare, as if daring them to try and break him out.

"But-" Peter began, only to have the glare turned onto him. He shut up rather quickly.


"Final question for review on this topic; what is the only proven way to deal with dementors?"

The class was quiet. I bet Remus knows the answer. It was likely that he did, and Remus as a result, was often asked to keep his hand down. Then, as timidly as anyone had seen him do so, which was never, because Sirius had never seen the boy's hand raised before and only knew the name because it had been confused with James's a few times, Jamal Polter raised his hand.

At Professor Patton's nod, he spoke. This was also the first time Sirius had heard Polter speak, and as such, he was curious to hear what the rather large boy sounded like. "A patronus?"

"Are you asking me or telling me?"

"Telling." stated Polter with more confidence.

Sirius was only really half listening, the rest of his focus was being spent trying not to drop his wand as he twirled it over and under and around his fingers- Peter was on note-taking duty for Remus in defense, but he always tuned back in at the end for announcements regarding homework assignments. "Alright, that's it for dementors," Patton sat herself on the corner of her desk "we'll be continuing magical creatures on Wednesday with the Beast Division. First one'll be werewolves. Spirits test next monday." The class groaned in unison and were dismissed with a shooing motion.


The world was dark, and it felt foggy, but he could hear faint voices drifting into the hospital wing. "Do you think we should tell him?"

"Yes Peter, and while we're giving him a reason to panic, let's remind him that his brother's…" The voices faded away, and when he surfaced again, Remus heard different voices.

One voice he distinguished after a moment, and it didn't smell like the sterile hospital wing anymore. No, Remus smelled pine and damp earth. He could hear streams trickling nearby and birds calling through the trees. The ground was painfully bright and he was cold. The cold shocked the dreariness out of his body and Remus's ears perked at the sound of ragged and shuddering breaths. His hand felt funny as he raised it to wipe the bleariness from his eyes, almost as if it was a little bit too long.

His head jerked up as soon as he contacted his face and his mouth moved of it's own accord. "No, don't-!" only, it wasn't his voice. Is almost sounded like-no, he had to be dreaming. That wasn't possible. Without commanding his body to do so, Remus stood and walked through the wet snow to the stream. I am dreaming, Just as he reached the edge of the stream, Remus pinched himself. Hard. Harder than was likely necessary, but he felt stiff as he moved and his mind swam with confusion.

"Ouch!" He yelped, kneeling by the stream. Only, he hadn't yelped. His mouth said it, but he didn't think it, and it didn't sound like his voice, it didn't even sound English. "What the bloody-" I'm not asleep am I? No, I'm-


A/N Thanks for reading! As usual, let me know what you think- good, bad, ugly- I'm sorely deprived of sarcastic comments from my classmates (not about this, just in general).

This week? Month? I'll go with eddition. This eddition's favourite story recommendation is actually an author. ShayaLonnie has written (or is in the process of writing) a ton of stuff but my personal favourites(in order) are Misplaced Moony, The Debt of Time, The Reclamation of Black Magic, and A Bit of Sky. They're on AO3 and FFN. Note that there are mature scenes that some readers may want to skip.

That's it from me for now, and I think I've got something to write about between my spurts of class, cleaning, packing, and walking the dog, so maybe I'll be back soon.

Thanks for tuning in, One Eyed Wolf- OUT 6 April 2020

PS Stay safe and for merlin's sake STAY THE HELL HOME UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY NEED TO GO OUT. Now I'm going to peace out and avoid the news. Goodnight.