*****

Sirius made sure to stay very quiet as the door to the dorm room opened. He and James had sworn earlier to lay in wait for Lupin. If just to pin the kid down and demand to know what in the hell all that had been about earlier. But here it was, almost midnight, and now the door was opening. Judging from the size of the shadow that the person in the doorway cast, it wasn't as if Lupin was alone either.

"Here we go, Brat." That most definitely was Professor Longbottom's voice, Sirius decided. No one else in the school sounded that young or had that much authority.

"M'not a brat," was Lupin's mumbled reply.

"That's what all the brats say." Longbottom chuckled, and Sirius risked opening his eyes, banking on the two of them believing that everyone in the room was sound asleep. As far as he could tell, Professor Longbottom had Lupin thrown over his shoulder and was making his way to toss the kid on the one empty bed in the room.

"Hate you," Lupin mumbled again, a bit sullenly this time as Longbottom flipped him over onto the bed. Which surprised Sirius. He didn't think the kid had the balls to say something like that to a Professor. Granted, up until this afternoon, he hadn't thought Lupin would have had the balls to curse anyone, so maybe appearances were a bit deceiving. The kid certainly was strange though. There was just something about Lupin that was downright weird.

"And here I was thinking you were such a cute, good little boy," Professor Longbottom exclaimed in an exaggerated impression of Professor Sprout as he pinched Lupin's cheek. Sirius smothered a laugh. Professor Longbottom was cool, but he could be such a dork.

"Bastard," Lupin returned with a weak chuckle, and Sirius found himself gaping at the kid's audacity. "Someone's gotta show you what cute and good might look like."

"Kiss arse, kid," Longbottom returned easily as he reached over and messed up Lupin's hair.

"It's gotta be prettier than your face."

"At least people can tell the difference between the two. You," Longbottom paused, "I wonder about."

"Wanker," Lupin gave a soft laugh, and Sirius tried not to fall out of bed as he leaned closer to listen better. Damn them anyway for talking so softly. Enquiring minds wanted to know who the hell had sucked out his dormmate and his Professor's personalities and replaced them with doppelgangers. "I-I didn't mean to."

"I know."

"It's not like I hurt him or anything."

"I know that, too."

"And you have to admit, he really needed the haircut."

"Now you're pushing it."

"Yeah, well, anyway. Just give me detention," Lupin grumbled.

"It wasn't entirely your fault."

"Had the fuckin' scissors in my hand, didn't I?"

"Language, Brat." Longbottom rapped his knuckles lightly against the back of Lupin's head, and Sirius tried to suppress a smile. It was nice to know that Lupin didn't get away with everything. Those caterpillars had been absolutely vile.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I meant to say that I had the scissors in my goddamned fucking hands and had every intention of shaving James bald," Lupin retorted sourly.

"God. You're so damned impossible."

"Ah, ah. What language Professor!"

"Bite me."

Silence descended for a second, and Sirius could almost feel the tension in the room growing as Lupin flipped away from Professor Longbottom and pulled his covers down.

"Remus, I didn't mean," Longbottom reached up to drag a hand through his hair, "I mean I wasn't-"

"It's not a big deal. Forget about it."

"No, no I really didn't mean it like that. Damn it. I wasn't thinking."

"I said it was okay, didn't I? Who cares, right? It's my fault. I let my mouth go. Mum's always sayin' she should wash it out, it's gotten so dirty." Lupin shrugged the Professor's hand off his shoulder and Sirius heard Longbottom sigh heavily.

"Not everything's your fault, kid."

"I'll be sure to tell Potter that when he's whaling on me for that haircut I gave him."

"Er, why don't you just come and find me the next time you get so, um, bored, alright?"

"Right. So I can clean that hole you call a room? Not on your life."

"You'll jump through hoops and like it if I tell you to, Brat," Longbottom said with a soft laugh as he took Remus' pillow and whacked the kid with it. Lupin growled softly in return as Longbottom climbed off the bed. "Try not to go after anymore hapless kids with sharp objects. I just might have to kick your arse otherwise."

"As if you could."

"With my eyes closed and a hand tied behind my back. Easy."

"Night."

"Night. And try to think about what I said, okay, Remus?"

"…Sure."

Sirius waited until after the door had closed behind Professor Longbottom before he slunk out of his own bed and over to James'.

*****

James momentarily resisted the urge to shove Sirius Black off his bed. It was nice and all that the bloke thought of them as friends. In fact, James was more grateful for Sirius' companionship these last couple of months then he'd ever be able to say.

But just because they'd had a few laughs together and just because they got along relatively well didn't mean that James needed Sirius butting into his business. James didn't need anybody. And the next person who even hinted otherwise was going to find out exactly why, he vowed.

It had been humiliating enough that Lupin had managed to catch him off guard like that with the Petrificus. It had been bad enough that Sirius had seen Lupin cutting his hair. As much as he didn't want to admit it, his dignity was hanging on by a very thin thread. A stiff wind looked like it would blow Lupin over, and the kid had still managed to get the upper hand on him. It was embarrassing.

And he sure as hell didn't need Sirius treating it all like it was some fucking game.

"Go away, Sirius."

"But you said…"

"I know what I said," he hissed softly, unable to keep his temper completely in check, "but that was when I thought the prat was going to show up at a decent hour. It's late. I'm tired, and I'm going to bed," he grumbled, purposely rolling over and pulling the covers up over his shoulders.

"Are you sure?"

James could hear the disappointment in Sirius' voice, and he felt a niggling of guilt. He had promised, after all, to include Sirius in on whatever he was planning to do in retaliation. There, of course, being no doubt that there would be retaliation. "I'm sure," he finally returned softly, rolling over to look at Sirius.

"Yeah, sure. Whatever." Sirius gave a stiff shrug of his shoulder before sliding off the bed and padding back over to his own. If anything, James felt worse as he watched him go. But even the guilt tugging at his gut wasn't enough to make him take back the words. It had been a different story when he'd thought that Lupin had done it as a prank.

"And you have to admit, he really needed the haircut."

The hell he did! Maybe he liked his hair long, maybe he liked it messy. Who had asked the little pipsqueak for his opinion, anyway? James fumed silently as he pulled the covers over his head. He'd been just fine with the way things were. He didn't need Lupin's fucking pity. If anyone here was deserving of pity, it was Lupin, not him.

He wasn't the one who was a few bricks short of a wall, after all.

He gingerly reached up a touched the shorn ends of his hair. For a first year, Lupin gave a much better haircut than James would have given him credit for. Not that it excused the little bastard or anything, but he supposed it wasn't half bad. And maybe it was a sight better than the snarled mass he'd sported before, but that wasn't the point.

The point was that he was heartily sick of people feeling sorry for him. He heard the older kids whisper sometimes. And the professors! God, if he could be granted one wish and one wish only, it would be that when they looked at him, they didn't coo at him in sympathy. As if they all knew exactly what he was going through and what he felt. Oh, woe is that poor Potter kid.

It made him want to violently wretch in their general direction. He wanted to see them try to bestow those pitying glances on him when they were covered with projectile vomit.

Maybe he wasn't a whiz at taking care of himself—he was only eleven after all—but it wasn't like he was starving out in the streets or anything. He had a father who loved him. And so maybe his dad was a bit absentminded. So he'd forgotten to get James' haircut before school started, despite the numerous notes James had left all over his study.

But really, the man was just busy. It wasn't like he neglected James or anything.

James snorted angrily as he burrowed down to the foot of the bed. He hated the way that adults worried over him in melancholy voices, and he hated the way that they criticized his father. Like they fucking knew anything! They hadn't been there when she'd died. He and his father had managed—were managing—just fine.

Which was a feat, because to James' way of thinking, there was no replacing someone like his mother.

When he'd thought that Lupin's antics had been a prank, he'd been more than willing to let Sirius in on the retaliation. It wouldn't have been serious. It wouldn't have been personal.

But Lupin's words had changed that. Now it was personal. Now it was serious. No one, James vowed, would pity him and live to pity him another day. Not when he had the power to stop him. And with someone as shrimpy as Lupin, it certainly wouldn't be that big of a challenge to get the point across.

All he had to do now was just bide his time.

*****


"Peter! You're leaving me!" Remus cried out melodramatically before throwing himself at Peter in an attack hug, his voice echoing across the Great Hall. Under normal circumstances it wouldn't have been a big deal, but Remus was loud in spite of his size. His voice had been heard over the noisy din of all the students gathered preparing to go home.

"Remus," he tried timorously, gently shoving Remus off of him in hopes of convincing Remus to lower his voice a few decibels. He hated being the center of attention. He wasn't quite sure if Remus had figured that out or not, or if the other kid just didn't care. If there were anyone in the school who should want to stay hidden, it should have been Remus. The bloke was just odd.

But Peter supposed part of Remus' weirdness was flaunting that oddness for the rest of the unsuspecting world to see. Obviously being the center of attention didn't bother Remus half as much as it bothered him.

"You're leaving me here all by myself for Christmas," Remus wailed, once again drawing the eyes of anyone within hearing distance. Peter blushed, hating the way that, despite the fact that Remus was making an arse out of them both, he still felt a warm happiness at the thought that someone here in this god awful school was happy to see him and sad when he left.

"You'll live," he replied shortly, pulling at his trunk and wishing that he hadn't packed so much.

"No I won't! I'll die if you don't come back, Peter." Remus looked at him with a solemn face, and for a split second Peter took him seriously. They may not be the best of friends, but they were still friends. And Peter had noticed the way that Remus' moods went. It always seemed that just when Remus got to be his happiest, his mum would get sick, Remus would leave to spend a night with her, and then he'd come back depressed and lifeless.

"Remus, I am coming back," he tried to reassure. The gleam in Remus' eyes though told him that the shorter kid had already known that though, and Peter couldn't help but groan out loud as he tried once more to pull his trunk as far away from his crazy friend as possible.

Which of course only incited Remus into making the loudest whoop he could, causing everyone to come to a stop and turn and stare at them. "I'm gonna count the days, okay? I'll make bloody sacrifices every night to the God of Friendship, and then I'll dance naked under the moon in breathless anticipation of your return. And when you get back we'll make waffles."

Remus was just completely nutters.

Peter shook his head chagrined as Remus cast a levitating charm on Peter's trunk before saluting him and running pell-mell back into the castle. Even if the kid wasn't playing with an entirely full deck, Peter had to admit that at least Remus kept things interesting. Maybe it was just that Peter had always been what his mother had termed a 'shy boy'. He'd never really much been for throwing himself into the boisterous fray of the boys his age. He liked the quiet. He liked having the quiet to himself. At home he so rarely had it, that whenever he was away from the multitudes of siblings that lived under the Pettigrew roof all he wanted was to pull up a patch of the world to call his own and sit in the peace and the calm.

But that didn't mean that he wanted to be alone all the time either. It confused him, really. He'd gone off to school thinking that it would be so grand to not have to share everything with his annoying younger brothers and sisters. But once their presence had been taken out of the picture, things had almost been too quiet.

Which was one of the reasons that Peter genuinely liked Remus. Even if the kid was—as Peeves taunted sometimes—a total loony, he made the loneliness disappear. Maybe a bit too loudly sometimes, but he never failed to try and include Peter in things just when it seemed to Peter that the silence had become oppressive.

"God, Lupin's just creepy sometimes."

"Who asked you?" The defensive words flew out of Peter's mouth before he could call them back, and as he turned slightly to face Sirius Black, he regretted his words. Everyone in their class knew that Black hadn't been on very good speaking terms with Remus since the cauldron incident. The debacle with Potter's haircut hadn't done a lot to smooth things over either.

"What do you care? He's just a shrimpy little lunatic," Sirius scoffed, looking down at Peter with disbelief that Peter might actually try to defend Remus.

And okay, so Remus wasn't exactly the poster child for normality. But what right did Black have to get so snippy about it? As a half-muggle, Peter would have thought that the guy would be a bit kinder to those who were different from the rest. He scowled at Black then, his mind made up. He didn't need to get on the good side of people like Black.

"You don't know anything about anything," he retorted quickly before tugging the rope on his trunk and losing Black to the swarm of kids on the platform. Maybe it wasn't the best of comebacks, but he wasn't going to sit still and nod kindly as some kid badmouthed the only person in Hogwarts who'd attempted to make him feel welcome.

*****

Remus sighed heavily as he reached the bottom stair that led to the tower. He really didn't want to have to stay in the rotten old moldy castle for Christmas, but he knew going home wasn't an option.

He'd outgrown the cage in the basement. The last change he'd had at home had rendered the steel bars and locks into nothing but scrap metal.

While his parents weren't poor, they weren't exactly wealthy beyond words, either. Constructing a concrete shed in the backyard that he wouldn't be able to escape from had been a feat that was both straining their funds and their patience. He could read between the lines of the letters his mother sent him. They hadn't been able to afford the down payment until last month, and the shed itself was only half built. With the full moon falling over Christmas this year, they'd agreed that he'd stay at Hogwarts for it.

He wanted to go home.

Staring morosely at the stairs, Remus made a face. That was yet another crappy thing about being a werewolf. What he wanted didn't matter. It just wasn't important. Because safety was everything.

Well, the upside was he'd have the whole common room and dorm to himself. And since it was the week before the full moon, he should start the exercises that Professor Longbottom had badgered him into promising to do.

Adults were so strange. It was just a little extra energy. It wasn't like he was swinging from chandeliers reciting bad poetry. But then again, maybe he was the only one who found it ironic that Peeves could do just that and yet still get away with calling him loony. Fucking ghost.

For the hell of it, he let out a war whoop before charging up the stairs at a dead run. Half the portraits lining the walls jumped in response which made him laugh even as he yelled, enjoying the echo of his voice against the empty halls. It felt so good to just yell and scream. He tried so hard to keep everything pent up inside. Letting all the frustrations, the confusion, and the anger come out in all its savage glory just gave him cheap thrills.

He crashed through the hallway, skidding slightly as the rug on the hardwood floors threatened to slide out from under him. Laughing, he yelped the password at the Fat Lady before barreling through the portrait door and galloping up the stairs to his dorm. He knew exactly what he was going to do first. He was going to jump on everyone's beds with his shoes on until he either broke the beds or someone came in to stop him. That should be enough exercise to get the werewolf in him to relax a notch.

"Buggrit! What are you doing here? God, I hate Christmas." Remus came skidding to an abrupt stop as Potter's voice directed his attention to the picture window of their dorm where Potter was looking out over the school grounds. Without stopping to think, he snarled. Voicing his displeasure, just in a slightly different way than the one Potter had chosen.

"I would get stuck with the basket case," Potter snorted.

"Fuck," was his rather intelligent reply. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

"Your grasp of the English language is astounding," Potter retorted dryly before turning his attention back to the window.

"Screw you," Remus added with a rude gesture which he knew Potter wouldn't see since the other boy was intent on ignoring him. God, he hated it when people ignored him! Growling, he marched determinedly over to Black's bed. It's not like Black would care, he wasn't here anyway. And any damage he did would be repaired by the house elves long before Black even dreamed of coming back.

He climbed on the bed, and then proceeded to jump as hard and as high as he could. The mattress creaked heavily under his weight, but he didn't care. It was like his life. Ups and downs, the exhilarating feeling of being at the natural high, and the funny feeling in his stomach as it flip-flopped on the lows. All the while, he just kept waiting for the mattress to give out from under him, sending everything crashing to the ground. The anticipation only made him jump that much harder.

"What the hell are you doing, you freak?!"

"What's it look like, genius?"

"Get the fuck off of Sirius' bed before you break it."

"Make me, you wanker."

"What did you say?" Potter's voice was low and dangerous, and for a moment, Remus quit jumping to favor his adversary with a calculated smile.

"I said make me. You act like you're so special. All the professors practically fall all over themselves to pay attention to you. You're fucking pathetic. Everyone wants to hold lil' ickle Jamie's hand and make sure he doesn't have a runny nose. Poor baby might stub his ickle toes and hurt himself." Remus gave him a nasty smile before he resumed jumping. Potter had been asking for it. He'd practically been begging for a fight since Remus had cut his hair. Well, being the obliging type of person that he was, he figured he'd give the prat a shot. Beating the crap out of someone was a form of exercise. If Longbottom had a problem with that, then he shouldn't have abandoned Remus the moment everyone started packing for Christmas vacation.

With a snarl of rage, Potter jumped, tackling Remus' legs and sending them both sprawling to the floor with a resounding thud. For a moment, Remus was dazed, letting Potter pound on him as he tried to get the ringing out of his ears that had resulted when his skull had smacked against the floor. The shock didn't last long though, and before Potter had much of a chance to gain the upper hand, Remus was whaling on him just as hard as the bigger boy was landing punches on him.

A part of him thrilled at the violence.

The blood, the anger, the viciousness that crawled up through his veins and let him grind out a satisfying growl as he felt his hand come away from Potter's face sticky and red.

He lost himself in the bloodlust.

Professor Longbottom had him in a headlock and was shaking him rather roughly before he snapped out of it, the black haze disappearing from his grey vision and letting things crystallize back into a more rational frame of reality. It was then that he saw the apprehensive, scared look on Potter's face. The disappointment on Longbottom's.

And it was then that he felt his stomach flip-flop wildly as the knowledge of what had happened sank in. He stilled for a second, feeling Longbottom's grasp on him slacken just enough. Then he bolted from the room, barely making it down the stairs and into the WC before he heaved the contents of his stomach into the toilet.

He was an animal. A fucking, filthy animal.

He heaved until there wasn't anything left in his stomach to come up, and even then, he sank to the cold tile floor of the WC, sobbing brokenly. All he wanted in the entire world was to be normal.

He just wanted to be human.

And it was a wish that no one was ever going to be able to grant him.

He felt rather than heard Professor Longbottom as the man tentatively pulled back his fringe and methodically wiped the excess vomit off of his mouth. How fucking pathetic was this? Some balls he'd had to call Potter pathetic. It didn't get any worse than having a professor cleaning you up like you were a helpless toddler.

"It's going to be all right, Remus. I know it's hard, but it's going to be all right," Longbottom murmured soothingly.

But he didn't feel soothed by the words. How could Longbottom say that it was going to be all right? What the fuck did the man know anyway about werewolves or what it meant to be a werewolf?

It was never going to be all right.

*****