Chapter 4: In Which the Werewolf Rights Committee Takes Action

A/N: This has been revised to fit HBP canon, and I've tweaked some characterization details along the way.

Disclaimer: If I thought I owned any of this, would I be posting it here? No. I'd be selling it to publishing companies trying to get rich off of plagiarism. But I'm not, and I don't. JKR rules too much for me to even consider making money off her genius. I hope she doesn't mind that I play with it a little bit, though.

"They became Animagi...it took them the best part of three years to work out how to do it...Finally, in our fifth year, they managed it..."

"REMUS! RemusRemusRemusRemus REMUS!"

"MR. BLACK!"

Sirius stopped short in his tracks. "Yes, Madam Pomfrey?"

"You are NOT to come running into the Hospital Wing! I cannot believe--"

"But there's something I have to show Remus!"

"He needs his rest, and he doesn't need you jumping on his bed screaming!"

"C'mon, pleeeeeeeeease? I have to give him his notes from class, he missed three days and you know Remus, he's mad about school, he's probably going crazy, and just please let me give him my books and then I swear I'll leave!"

Madam Pomfrey pursed her lips disapprovingly. "All right, you may have twenty minutes, and not a second more! And be quiet, or you'll not come in here again!"

"Yes, Madam Pomfrey..." Sirius put a finger to his lips and tiptoed towards Remus' bed dramatically.

"Good," the nurse said tersely, and left the room before Sirius could see her lips twitching.

Remus was sitting up in his bed, watching Sirius with amusement. "So, if you came to give me your notes, why did you run in here screaming?"

"That's not why I came," Sirius said, then caught Remus' look. "No, I'll give you my notes, too, here, let me dig them out--" He rummaged through his bag, came up with several wrinkled, inkstained pieces of parchment and shoved them in Remus' hands.

Remus looked warily at the parchment. "Um...I think I'll use James' notes..."

"No, keep them, I don't need them."

"I can see that."

"Are you mocking me, Moon-boy?"

Remus' lips twitched. "Maybe."

"Because if you are, I won't show you the great idea I had."

"Does it involve turning Snape's hair pink?"

Sirius gave him a scornful look. "No, in fact, it doesn't, although that's a very good idea, you should write it down."

"I'll do that. So what's your great idea?"

"Here, look at this..." Sirius put a book in his lap and pointed at a passage.

"The werewolf's only prey is human beings. At every full moon, the person will become a wolf and seek to taste human blood. Any human that receives a non-fatal bite from a werewolf will become a werewolf themselves. If the werewolf cannot get any humans to eat, it will resort to trying to eat itself," Remus read. "Sirius, I know all this, why are you making me..."

"No, no, keep reading, you're almost to the good part."

"However, the werewolf is not, in fact, harmful to animals. In fact, in the presence of other animals, the werewolf ceases to be dangerous and becomes almost docile in nature, more like a normal wolf than a dangerous beast." Remus stopped. "Is that it?"

Sirius was beaming at him. "Yes! That's IT!"

"...what's the point?"

"Don't you get it! There's only one way to calm down a werewolf, and that's to put it with other animals!"

"So what are you going to do, catch rabbits and put them in the Shrieking Shack with me? Sirius, I don't think that'll do much good..."

"No, you dolt, we're going to become animals."

"What?"

"Animaguses! We're going to become Animaguses!"

"It's Animagi, Sirius. And that's incredibly hard to do, not to mention that you'd have to get registered and the Ministry would never let--"

"Who said anything about registering?"

Remus gasped. "But that's illegal!"

"So? It's only illegal if you get caught, Moony."

"I thought it was Moon-boy."

"Moony sounds better, and it's less obvious."

"If you say so. And stop trying to distract me!"

Sirius grinned at him. "Ahem. Pot. Kettle."

"Well, your name is Black."

"And I have never regretted anything more."

"Getting back to the point, there is no way you're risking a sentence in Azkaban just for me!"

"Aw, c'mon, Remus, we can do it! Look, if you're really that worried, here's what I'll do. I'll look up every single law on the Animagus transformation and all the penalties and everything, and I'll show them to Peter and James, and I'll let them decide whether it's worth the risk."

"And what about you?"

"I know it's worth the risk," Sirius said with his brilliant grin.

Remus felt an odd sensation in his chest area. "Well...if you're sure..."

"YES! I knew I could convince you!"

Remus grinned at him. "You're crazy. If you get yourself killed, I'll murder you."

"Great threat, Moony. Listen, Old Lady Pomfrey is giving me death glares. I've got to go."

"All right. Listen, Sirius..."

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

Sirius flashed him a smile. "No problem, Moony. Bye!" He bounced out of the room.

"Hey, Moony, you're back!" James said, looking up from his Charms essay.

Remus slid into a chair between James and Sirius and grinned. "No, not really. Madam Pomfrey has locked my body in the Hospital Wing, but I convinced her to send a projection of me into the Common Room so I could do my homework and go to class tomorrow."

"That figures," Peter said, "Moony wouldn't miss a day of class if he was unconscious in St. Mungo's."

"So, you going to help us become Animaguses?" James said casually, pulling a book towards him.

"Animagi." Remus glanced at Sirius. "You don't waste time, do you?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I'm sure. This is why I don't like staying in the Hospital Wing - I come out and Sirius has corrupted all of you to do his evil bidding."

"Mwahahahaha. Exactly. You've discovered my nefarious plan, Moony, I must now destroy you."

"I tremble with fear. So, you even convinced Peter?"

"You know, he is in the room," Sirius pointed out.

"Yeah, thanks for talking about me like I'm not here, Moony."

"You were studying. So how did they corrupt you into doing their evil bidding?"

"Threatened me with death, of course." Peter grinned at him. "James and Sirius said they would help me. What, did you think I'd want to sit alone in the dorm alone once a month? If we get caught, it was all Sirius' idea."

"I'm with you on that one, Pete," James said.

"Hey! Are you all against me?" Sirius protested.

"Yes," they all said at once.

"Fine, but just remember this was my idea."

"Oh, we will," James assured him. "So...what's our plan of action?"

"Well, first we need to sneak into the library and get a few books out of the restricted section..."

"You don't waste time breaking rules, do you, Sirius?" Remus said.

"No, of course not, we might as well do the thing properly."

Remus sighed. "Is there any use in trying to talk you out of this?"

"No," said James and Sirius at once.

Peter just shrugged. "If everyone else is in, so am I."

"Did Sirius show you the laws?"

"Yes, but we decided we think we can get away with it," said James, "When have we ever missed a chance to break the rules?"

"Never, obviously."

"So, we already went to the library and got out a list of books we need, do you think we should sneak out tonight and get them?"

Peter looked up. "But we have three essays to do tonight and I think I'm failing Potions and--"

James and Sirius sighed in exasperation. "Peter--" James began.

"James, he's got a point. This is going to take a lot longer than a few days," Remus interrupted, "Maybe you should go ahead and buy them, so that Madam Pince doesn't try to kill us all when she discovers that some of her books are missing."

"Good point, Moony. When's the first Hogsmeade Weekend?"

"Halloween," Sirius said promptly.

"That's a week from now," James said thoughtfully. "D'you think we can wait that long?"

Remus groaned. "You three have no idea how to do research, do you?"

"No, not really," Sirius said happily, "Enlighten us, O Professor Moony."

"You have to start small. You can get books from the regular library and find out about the basics of the Animagus transformation, and they usually have an index of books that you can get to find out more about certain subjects."

"Moony, you're a genius. All right, we'll go to the library tomorrow and legally get books," Sirius said.

"Thank you," Remus said.

"Can we finish these essays now? I don't understand what this means..." Peter showed James a part of the book he was trying to read, James groaned about how thick he was, and they were back into their regular studying patterns.

That night, as they were getting ready to go to bed, Sirius noticed that Remus was still frowning slightly. "What's wrong, Moony? Something worrying you?"

"No...it's just..are you sure this is going to work?"

"What?"

"The Animagus transformation. Are you positive you can do it?"

Sirius, James and Peter all came to sit next to his bed. "Well, no," said James, "But we've got to try, haven't we?"

Remus shook his head. "Don't you know what can go wrong if you don't do it right? I'm just afraid of what's going to happen if you botch it. You'll be in trouble with a lot more than the law."

"Moony, you worry too much," James said, "If it'll help you, we're willing to risk that."

Remus stared at them. In every single one of their eyes, there was unflinching devotion. He had never had anything like that directed towards him. "You've done enough already," he whispered hoarsely.

"What d'you mean?" Sirius said.

Remus looked down at his knees. "Well, every other person that's found out about...me...hasn't acted anything like this. My family's had to move eight times because somebody in the village found out and chased us out. I've never had any friends for more than a year, and most of them didn't last that long. I just...don't you think you've done enough already? I don't need all this, it's enough that you're...still here."

His friends were quiet, just looking at him. He was afraid to look up and meet their eyes, because he wasn't sure what he would see there, but, again, Sirius surprised him.

"What kind of gits do you think we are?"

Remus' head snapped up. "What?"

"What kind of heartless--" Sirius said a phrase that was unprintable "--would do something like that? Do you really think so little of us?"

"Well, no, but it's a bit of a surprise to me that--"

"We're going to help you, Remus, the rules be damned, your so-called 'old friends' be damned, and--EVERYTHING be damned! It was the damn laws that got you in this situation in the first place, and if it's the same laws that take away the rights you deserve that keep us from becoming Animaguses--"

"Animagi," Remus interrupted.

"--to help you, then to hell with the laws, to hell with the Ministry, and to hell with anything that tries to stop us!" Sirius took a deep breath.

"...well, that's one way of putting it," James said after a long silence. "I think you get the point, Remus. There's no stopping us now."

Remus couldn't stop himself from smiling. "I feel sorry for the poor bloke that tries to put you in Azkaban, Sirius."

"Damn straight." Sirius' eyes were glinting with something Remus couldn't put his finger on.

"Then it's decided," James said in a tone of finality. "We're doing it, and you might as well shut up and let us, Moony."

"Oh God, what have I done?" Remus groaned, putting his head between his knees.

"You've created a MONSTER!" Sirius boomed, and it surprised everyone that there was no flash of lightning to accompany his words. "MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Peter shrieked, and if he had been smaller, he would have tried to hide under the bed. As it was, everyone burst out laughing and he turned three shades of red before James finally clapped him on the back and gave him a Chocolate Frog "to calm his nerves." They ended up staying up half the night eating candy, finally falling asleep at 2 am and again in History of Magic the next day.

Remus smiled to himself at the memories. It had taken them the better part of their third year and all of their fourth and fifth years to do it, but, somehow, they had finally managed to complete the transformation. It had been a great source of amusement when Peter's Animagus form had turned out to be a rat, when he was so terrified of them. Well, that had soon changed. Peter had joked that now that he felt a certain affinity for rats, he was more scared of dogs, at which point Sirius would start pretending to foam at the mouth and try to bite Peter.

Remus sighed as he remembered the look in Sirius' eyes when he was telling him that they cared enough about him to put their lives in danger, and anyone who got in their way could go to hell. "I feel sorry for the poor bloke that tries to put you in Azkaban," he had said.

A sharp wave of bitterness hit him at the thought. It was funny, the way your words came back to haunt you years later. There had been a fire in Sirius' eyes when he had said that, and Remus realized what it was now - loyalty. He had always been loyal to Remus, even if he wasn't to James and Lily. Would Sirius have betrayed him, if he was given the chance? Remus didn't know, but there was no way he could find out. All he knew was that Sirius had defended him, risked his life for him...even when Sirius had sent Snape down into the Willow after Remus, he hadn't said anything outright, and that had been out of pure recklessness.

Sirius. So he was Sirius again, was he? Remus sighed. He was always so careful not to think his first name, but somehow in his recollections of the boy he used to know, Remus could never bring himself to think of his old friend as simply "Black." It was a name Sirius had hated - it was the name of the man who sold out Lily and James, and not the name of Remus' friend. They may as well have been two different people in Remus' mind.

If he betrayed Sirius now, if he told his secret to Dumbledore, he would be committing the same crime Black committed when he sold Lily and James to Voldemort. He would be going back on his friends. He couldn't sink that low. Let the Dementors take care of it. He would help search for him, if he found him, he would turn him in, but he would not give away the secret to Dumbledore. Sirius had always kept his secret for him - he could do the same, no matter how little Black deserved it.

FIN