Remus spent the day after he was rescued from Fenrir's cave in bed, shivering underneath a mound of blankets. He wondered if the cold he'd felt in the cave would ever truly leave him.

"Remus." It seemed like a full year had passed before Sirius returned home, stepping inside the room he shared with Remus with an un-Sirius-like level of concern darkening his expression. "Remus, are you all right?"

Remus didn't answer, burying his face beneath the blankets and pillows. He'd felt lonely before, alone in their quiet house with only the occasional pattering of rain outside to keep him company, but somehow the arrival of Sirius only made the loneliness worse. It felt like a chasm had opened up between the two of them—between Remus and the rest of the world, really.

Remus heard Sirius settling onto the bed; a moment later and he'd flung away the blankets, pressing their faces close together. Sirius's low-cut shirt revealed a set of tiny scars beneath his neck, cursed scars from Remus's nails when the two of them had gotten too rough one night the year before. Sirius had always said that he didn't mind the scars, but Remus couldn't stand the sight of them. And now Peter was scarred, too, by someone just like him, so different and yet exactly the same.

"Are you all right?" Sirius repeated, softer this time. "Did they hurt you?"

"No," Remus whispered.

"Then what is it?"

It was so many things, Remus thought. It was the sight of Fenrir, feral and cruel, and the bite marks he'd seen around his wrist that looked so much like Remus's own. It was the way Voldemort, the most feared wizard in the world, had called him a monster, had even had a bit of fear in his eyes amongst the venom and repulsion. It was the enticing scent of human flesh—his friends' flesh—in the moments before he lost his mind to the wolf. He'd never been so close to humans before in the middle of his transformation, and the battle between the wolf and the wizard inside him had nearly torn him apart.

But even more than that, it was what Caerny had told him in the woods near Dornoch. Dumbledore doesn't care about people like us. It's unnatural for wolves to live amongst wizards. Remus had started his mission pitying the packs of werewolves living on the outskirts of society, but Caerny had wound up pitying him instead. Was he right: would Remus truly have been better off growing up with his own kind, spending his full moons running through the forests with a pack of his own instead of tearing himself apart in his parents' cottage or the Shrieking Shack?

He'd had a pack, for the very briefest of moments: the night before, once the Order wizards had gone and James and Sirius no longer had to fight back Fenrir's wolves, Remus had left the dog and stag behind and ran from the cave with the others. They'd run for miles, he was sure, howling to each other in some language only wolves could understand and feeling the winter wind through their pelts, carrying their scents as they all melted together into the wild, unnamable smell of pack. It had felt even better than his transformations with the Marauders. Then the sun had returned, and suddenly his packmates were Fenrir's wolves again and he was their enemy. They would have killed him if James and Sirius hadn't found him in time and Apparated him away. It was all too much for Remus to process—all he knew was that he felt less human right now than he ever had before.

He also knew that Sirius wouldn't understand any of it. Sirius had been an outcast among his family, but he'd found plenty of wizards like him in the years since he'd rejected the Blacks, Dorcas and Harriet and even his own cousin Andromeda. Remus didn't fit in with anyone, wizards or werewolves. None of them knew what it was like to be him, and that was the loneliest feeling of all.

"Remus, please, just tell me." Sirius reached for him, wanting to caress his cheek, but Remus shrunk back.

"Don't touch me," he murmured. "I…I just want to be alone right now."

"Moony—"

"Please, Sirius, just go." Remus felt tears stinging his eyes. "Please." He turned to bury himself in his pillow, not wanting Sirius to see the emotions playing across his face and not wanting to see Sirius's worry either.

Sirius lay there silently for another minute; then Remus felt the bed shift underneath him, creaking as it relinquished the other Marauder's weight, and the bedroom door clicked gently shut, leaving Remus to relive his incoherent nightmares undisturbed.