"Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?"

—Percy Bysshe Shelley [To The Moon]

Rose enjoyed the feeling of the warm water cascading over her skin. Closing her eyes, she allowed her body to slowly relax. Despite her calmness during the interaction with Severus, she had been left on edge all day. The residual uneasiness had caused her to ask Remus to use his shower as soon as she'd arrived. The desire to wash all of it away was overwhelming. Part of her couldn't help but worry that she'd made a terrible mistake by letting Snape in on her little affair.

The creek of the door made her jump, and Remus gave her an apologetic look through the gap in the curtain as he stepped into the bathroom. His eyes traveled down what he could see of her body, and he gave her a wry smile.

"Did I startle you pet?" He asked, beginning to unbutton his shirt. Rose's heart beat faster as she watched each button reveal more of his firm torso.

"Only a little," she replied, her mouth dry despite the moisture in the air.

"I thought I'd join you... if you don't mind," he said, shrugging his shirt from his broad shoulders.

"I don't mind at all," Rose replied, swallowing hard as Remus began unbuttoning his pants and pushing them down over his hips. Remus' smile was positively wolfish as he watched Rose stare hungrily at his body. Her face flushed at the sight of him, already semi-erect in response to the sliver of her body he could see through the curtain.

Rose moved back as Remus stepped into the shower with her, his tall form blocking most of the spray. Wrapping his strong arms around her, he pulled her against him, his member pressing firmly against her stomach. The feeling of him, hot and hard against her, made her body quiver wantingly. Her nipples had become so firm as to be almost painful. She gasped when he cupped her breast in his hand and rolled one of her nipples between his thumb and forefinger. Remus smirked at her.

"Merlin, you are beautiful," he said huskily. Rose slid her hands up his biceps, across his shoulders, and up his neck to tangle in his hair, pulling his mouth to her own.

His tongue entwined with hers, and his breath was hot in her mouth as he kissed her. Wrapping his fingers tightly around her slick waist, his nails grazed her supple skin. She nipped at his lower lip and moaned when he pulled back on her long hair.

"Patience, pet," he said soothingly, trailing kisses across her jaw and down her neck where he suckled on her collarbone. She arched her back and pressed her body into his, raking her nails across the rippling muscles of his back. Remus growled into her breasts as he nipped and sucked at them, his hands sliding lower to massage the skin of her ass and thighs.

Rose let her head fall back against the tile wall of the shower as Remus sank to his knees in front of her, the hot water once again splashing across her skin. He kissed his way down her stomach. One of his large hands splayed out across her lower abdomen, pressing her firmly into the wall. The other lifted her opposing leg and draped it over his shoulder so he could gain better access to her most intimate places.

"Fuuck, Remus," she gasped as he turned his head and kissed his way up her thigh. Her hands reflexively buried themselves in his hair when his tongue slid teasingly across her slit, circling lazily around her clit. She could feel his smirk when her hips bucked against his face. He allowed her to grind herself against his tongue for a few moments before pressing her hips more firmly against the wall to prevent her from moving. Rose mewled in protest.

"Hush pet," he breathed, making her quiver as he slid his finger along her now sopping wet entrance and pushed roughly inside of her. The feeling of him curling his finger within her with each thrust all while his tongue continued to lap at her clit was almost too much.

Remus could feel her clench around his finger when she came, her hands almost painfully in his hair. Remus didn't stop what he was doing until he'd lapped up every drop of her orgasm. When he finally withdrew from her, Rose's knees buckled.

Remus reacted instantly, catching her and enfolding her in his arms as she slid down the wall. Kissing her face as she panted in the haze of pleasure that hung about her, he chuckled in her ear.

"Too much?" he asked with a smirk, and she gave him a wry grin.

"Not even close to enough," she told him, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him hungrily.

Remus didn't need telling twice. Sliding his hands under her thighs, he lifted her up and pinned her against the wall. Rose tightened her legs around his hips, holding herself up enough to allow Remus to guide himself to her slick entrance and push firmly within. Moaning as he stretched her, Rose's nails dug deeper into his shoulders with each thrust. Remus' breathing grew ragged, and he grunted with each movement as he pounded in and out of her.

"Ah! Remus!" She shouted in pleasure as his pace increased. He dropped his head to the crook of her neck, kissing and biting the soft skin he found there.

"Come for me pet," he commanded into her ear, voice deep and gravelly with need.

"Yes Professor," she gasped, smirking at him teasingly even as he fucked her harder. Remus moaned at her words.

"You... little... minx," he grunted, pounding into her with bruising intensity with each word. Rose couldn't stifle the cries of pleasure that accompanied each thrust. Her whole body tensed as sudden waves of pleasure crashed over her.

"I'm coming," she gasped into his ear, and she felt his own body shudder in response as he too surrendered to his body's need.

Panting together, it was several moments before Remus loosened his grip on her enough to let her slide down and regain her footing. Dropping his head, he allowed his forehead to rest against hers while the warm water continued to wash over them. He cupped her face and tilted her chin up, capturing her swollen lips in a gentle kiss. Rose found that she no longer had any doubts about the path she'd chosen.

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"This is my fault, I should have expected it. Muggles are so much better at this type of thinking," Damien, sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Magic always makes wizards rush the process and ignore the logical steps we have to take. You have to start with a question, do research, and develop a testable hypothesis."

Rose felt like protesting his statement but instead bit her tongue. Gina and Rose were his apprentices after all, they were here to learn from Angevin, even if her own personal relationship with him was a bit rocky. It would be foolish of her not to listen to his feedback on their research.

"Rose, Gina, what is the question you are asking about werewolves," he asked. Gina and Rose exchanged glances.

"We're trying to find a cure for lycanthropy," Rose replied slowly making Damien sigh.

"No, that's an outcome, not a question," he rebuked her, causing Rose's face to flush. "Remember, you are researchers, not healers. You can't approach this like Belby did the Wolfsbane potion. No, you have to know what you are asking about werewolves."

"We're asking… why they transform…," Gina said slowly. Rose felt a bit embarrassed by Gina's simple response. It was the question that had been at the heart of her article for Transfiguration Today—that lycanthropy deserved to be studied by transfigurationists because it was at its core a transformation.

"Exactly," he replied. "And what have you observed in your research thus far?"

"The lycanthropy bloodcurse seems to build up in a person during the lunar cycle," Rose responded quickly. "It's at its highest levels just before the full moon and at its lowest immediately after."

She and Gina had been really proud of that discovery. Many people believed a werewolf's bloodcurse operated in a fluctuating way, but most had theorized that it was at its lowest during the new moon and highest during the full moon. But their many samples throughout the lunar cycle clearly showed otherwise.

"Good," Damien replied, giving them a firm nod. "So your hypothesis is that a person infected with lycanthropy transforms in response to a build up of the bloodcurse in their body over the course of the lunar cycle?"

"Well…," Rose began hesitantly. "It doesn't seem to be that straight forward."

"Oh?"

"In our samples, we've been unable to determine any kind of threshold that triggers the reaction. There seem to be some months when the bloodcurse is more highly concentrated and others where it isn't, but regardless of how much has built up in a person's body, they still transform at the full moon," she said. Damien frowned, his eyebrows drawing together in concentration.

"So what is your working hypothesis at this point?"

"We think that the full moon acts as some sort of catalyst, causing a reaction with the bloodcurse that prompts the transformation into a werewolf. Regardless of how much blood curse has built up inside them, a person infected with lycanthropy will transform when exposed to the full moon," she said.

"Well, not exactly exposed…," Gina interjected thoughtfully. "I mean, werewolves still transform… even on exceptionally cloudy nights or when inside."

"Ah," Damien had replied, leaning back in his seat, a smile crossing his face. "Now that sounds like a testable hypothesis—a werewolf will transform at the full moon even without direct exposure to moonlight."

"Don't we… already know that," Rose asked cautiously. He lifted a golden eyebrow at her.

"Do you?" He rebutted. "Can you say for certain? Can you demonstrate it for a fact? Do you know that it is the moonlight which triggers a transformation or the full moon's magical properties?"

Rose pursed her lips together in annoyance.

"Then it sounds like you have the next step in your research," he replied. "Remember, Rose, small logical steps—question, observation, testable hypothesis, experimentation, analysis, conclusion. You wanted to be a researcher. This is what research looks like."

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"This is so frustrating," Rose grumbled to Gina as she lifted her pen from her workbook. It had taken her awhile to get used to writing with the muggle devices, but almost everyone at Angevin's lab did so. The precise pens and thin paper were much more efficient for cataloguing information. They were currently writing out what their experiment of the hypothesis Damien had helped them with would look like.

"Very," Gina agreed, pushing her thick glasses up her nose before glancing over at Rose. "But why in particular this time?"

"Because if you think about it, werewolves don't make any sense," she replied, leaning back and taking a break from planning their full moon experiment.

"Sure," she laughed in agreement. "But go on."

"There are so many reasons," Rose sighed. "For one: why isn't the bloodcurse triggered by sunlight? I mean, moonlight is just reflected sunlight. And Damien's right: why would a person transform if they avoid moonlight entirely? Is it not actually about moonlight at all? It's not like the full moon is changed during the transformation process. It just seems to trigger the bloodcurse to cause the transformation. Yet clearly something goes on in werewolves leading up to the transformation. All of our subjects reported symptoms in the week leading up to the full moon. So why the full moon? Why not the gibbous moon or waxing moon? Damien said we needed a question, but I have so many questions!"

Gina gave her a sympathetic look.

"I know what you mean," she replied. "It's hard because no one's been studying lycanthropy, so we don't have much research to go off of. People don't understand bloodcurses. We don't even know how they work or if bloodcurse is an accurate name for them. Wizards just look at people infected with one and want nothing to do with them."

"That's another thing," Rose said. "How do we know that lycanthropy is an infection? We assume it is because it can be transmitted from person to person, but if that's the case then why wouldn't someone who was bitten by a person with lycanthropy—or even scratched by one—become infected as well? We know that the bloodcurse is still present at low levels during the rest of the month."

"Do we know that they don't," Gina asked curiously, and Rose rifled through some papers, pulling out a report from St. Mungo's.

"There aren't many cases of it happening, but St. Mungo's was able to provide us with a list of some people who were attacked by someone infected by lycanthropy who didn't become infected themselves. They reported some symptoms like discomfort, itchiness, sore throat, and watery eyes along with some other weird ones like increased appetite for rare meats and increased libido around the full moon but there was no transformation."

"Some of those symptoms sound almost like an allergic reaction," Gina joked. Rose just stared at her, her eyes widening. Gina's own joviality waned as she too began thinking over what she just said. "No way…?"

"But why not?"

"You can't infect someone with an allergy."

"But in a weird way, doesn't it make sense? The lycanthropy bloodcurse changes a person's body to be reactive to the full moon. It's like a when a person's body reacts to something benign in their environment and suddenly begins seeing it as a threat," she said excitedly. "It's like the full moon is the allergen for a person with lycanthropy."

"And the allergic reaction is to… what… transform into a werewolf?" Gina asked skeptically.

"I'll admit it's not a perfect analogy—there's still something about lycanthropy that seems virulent. But what if bloodcurses—or at least this bloodcurse—works more like an allergen than a virus? You know, as the bloodcurse builds up, a person becomes more and more reactive to the moon until the full moon causes an all-out allergic reaction. And the reason that the bloodcurse immediately appears lower after the transformation is that the body suddenly recognized it as an allergen and began fighting it off?"

"So a person's body only recognizes the bloodcurse as harmful during the full moon because that's when the allergic reaction takes place? Otherwise the bloodcurse is just seen as benign and is left alone," Gina expanded, still looking skeptical.

"It's… a theory," Rose admitted.

"You know the only way to prove it," Gina asked her with a grin, and Rose smiled ruefully back.

"Research."

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Later that night while Rose and Remus were laying in bed together, sipping glasses of the brandy she had brought him months ago, she turned to look up at him, a playful smile on her face.

"What is it," he asked curiously, tilting his head as she stared at him. A pleasant buzz of intoxication had long ago wrapped Rose in its embrace, and she lifted herself up on her elbow a bit tipsily to get a better look at the man.

"What if I told you, you might be allergic to the moon?" She asked.

Lupin's eyebrows drew together in immediate confusion.