Hello, all, I'm back. How is everyone after last chapter? I'm just kidding. But, seriously, how are you all doing? Summer going well? Probably by the time you read this, I'll be incapacitated. Why? I'm missing my eye-teeth, so I just started surgery for it...six-month process, my friends, I kid you not. They say it's painful, but I don't care. Waiting eight years for this moment does that to you. Anywho, I'm not sure this chappie will be as, er, "heated" as last chapter or not...wait...never mind. It does. (sigh) And I didn't even need Their help/persuasion. There will be surprises, to be sure. Just hang in there. We have a long way to go.

Nope, don't own Harry Potter. If there is any confusion, just call up J.K. Rowling at 555-Ara-Laothen-Doesn't-Own-the-Rights. (kidding, kids, kidding).

You know what else? I like writing when there's a full moon...gives the pizazz and the atmosphere of a roaring good time. "You stay frosty...Planet Earth."

-A/R-

Ch. 31: The House under the Full Moon

-A/R-

It took a moment for the wolf to steady himself, still caught up in a strange sensation he hadn't known before. As he glanced around the familiar, cage-like enclosure, he almost bared his teeth until the scent at last wafted to his snout. Lips falling over fangs quickly, he glanced down his nose to the female curled on the bed, gazing up at him from her outstretched paws, grey eyes full of an odd, almost human emotion he could not quite fathom. Sniffing for a moment, he leaned forward until his nose met with hers. She pressed her own against his, and he suddenly did a strange, clearly unwolfish thing.

He barked.

She seemed startled at first, getting to her paws at once, her head cocked curiously to one side. A long moment of silence passed between them both until she, her tail wagging, barked suddenly in return. And he, filled with a strange feeling of recklessness, moved towards her back and nudged her playfully towards the be-damned and creaking door ahead of them. She complied easily, following beside him as they pounced down the hallway, often time leaping carelessly over each other like common house dogs. His mouth opened into a wolfish grin, his tongue lolled, and he barked again, his eyes screwing shut for a brief moment until they opened again to watch this raven-colored wolf pass him like a shadow. Panting, he followed her, watching as she sniffed precariously at the air just before a door. After a moment, she turned to him; the memory of an eyebrow raised came to him briefly, but it was just a strange shadow of vision in his racing, peculiar brain. He almost felt humanly uncomfortable, even embarrassed.

Almost, of course.

She tore off down the stairs, bounding the last two steps in the most graceful leap he had ever seen. His similar path seemed a blessing to be called clumsy, but he clambered after her fleeting shadow nonetheless. She - this new female companion and playmate - sniffed at everything: the torn couch, the floors, the walls, the boarded windows. But her tail wagged, and that was a new thing. Indeed, when she turned to look at him, there was something frighteningly human about the gaze her eyes held. And something frighteningly human seemed to shiver through his entire body, snout to tail and back again.

A gentle trickle of moonlight shone through a flaw in one boarded window, and it was from there that she now sat, looking at him with that strange gaze.

He moved towards her, his nose just inches from the ground, but he didn't need to sniff the floor to know her scent was mingled there, too. She had even soiled a part near the couch - his usual spot to pee - just to entwine their scents together. And he didn't even mind. He rather...enjoyed it, somehow.

And now he could run his face across her neck, her fur bristling at every touch he made. By the very moon, he could just feel her heartbeat, could almost taste it.

The world outside was blanketed full in that white stuff. A brief memory told him it was called something...but it didn't matter to him. For a brief instant he glanced at the window, but it was growing harder and harder to see through it with the growing heat that clouded it. Their playing, their gnawing on as much furniture as they could find, their fun, and even their mating wasn't helping the situation there either. Soon it became too difficult to withstand the heat in that close-knit room, and soon they were making their way upstairs again, the darkness fading fast in the growing light and growing pain in change.

By the time they both made it to the beckoning mattress, they were almost too human to crawl again, too less of wolf to not hold each other as they should. And it was the fur, he remembered later, that went away last.

-A/R-

For the very first time, warm, welcoming sunlight filtered in through the boarded window of the Shrieking Shack. It danced and silently sang as it spiraled down to the dusty, worn, creaking wood floor. Dust scattered on its own, soaring upwards and floating away only to land delicately upon the cheek of a sleeping young man. Flinching, his mouth tightening as he moved against his aching limbs, he slowly opened his eyes and squinted against the unexpected sunshine.

But then, a rarity to him after such a usual monthly evening, he smiled. Human teeth - they could've been fangs for all he cared - flashed unexpectedly in the sun's open gaze. His arm, however gut-wrenchingly sore, moved carefully, as if fearful to awaken the unconscious. Fingertips ran delicately down the soft cheek beside him, shifting the beautiful, messy, black hair away from the closed lids. They stopped just next to the corner of a pale-red lower lip, its complexion relaxed in sleep, slightly apart from the upper companion; and oh, how it ran through his mind when those lips broke into a smile.

He had never considered wolves as beautiful, graceful creatures.

But, then again, he had never been beside one so dear to him in such a way.

Perhaps wolves really were beautiful and graceful after all.

He knew she was, wolf or human.

The tip of his index finger curved under her waiting chin until she half-stirred, moving closer to his chest, her cheek lost again in a black waterfall. A part of him longed for grey eyes, but he was content to watch them behind her closed lids. Yawning, he slipped gently away from her and sat up, stretching as much - or as little - as he possibly could. Running his hands through his unkempt, in-desperate-need-of-a-good-wash hair, he sat at the edge of the mattress they had somehow gotten back to last night. Only that part was a bit hazy.

The rest stayed in his memory in vivid detail.

He grinned. Why the hell had no one told him how great things could get, how wonderful life really could be with someone you really had something for? Who the hell was the moron who told him to wait, anyway?

He never knew there was a side to nature that had such terrifyingly open bliss, such vivid colors, such fantastic sensations that burned and pleasured all at once.

But there are consequences, too, a nagging voice whispered to him.

Guiltily, he stared at his hands, then turned to her sleeping, openly naked form and placed his palm on her stomach, just below her belly-button.

She's only sixteen, he thought guiltily, then rolled his eyes. I'm sixteen.

But what did it matter? If it happened, let it be.

Smiling, he leaned towards her to kiss that spot where his hand had rested on her stomach only moments before. Let it be.

She stirred again, her eyes opening slowly to watch him so near her, a smile on her face. The night had passed so quickly...but memories are eternal. A yawn escaped her as she glided her fingers along his rib cage. Chuckling to himself, he turned to her and smiled, turning onto his side to place his head on her stomach, his feet curling back onto the mattress.

"Hello, Beautiful," he grinned.

The blush seemed pleasantly exotic to him, a flush of a passionate color.

"Hello," she whispered, and the words rolled over him, down his throat and into his waiting heart. She looked exhausted, but there was a fresh, new glow about her he had never seen in her before. Was he glowing, too?

She could see the bright sparkle in his eyes and grinned suddenly until she smiled fully and laughed heartily, reaching towards him to bury her nose in his hair, his neck, his back, his chest, her tongue moving out from her teeth for brief moments until she felt his hands about her jaw, softly drawing her up to his face, to his lips. And as she wrapped her arms about him in the bright sunshine's curtain, her cheek gliding along his, she could only giggle.

-A/R-

"What are you doing?" he asked a few, long moments later; he refused to sit up fully. It was fun to watch her play, apparently, with her black hair.

"Hm?" she asked, turning to him, her hands falling slowly.

Remus' eyes widened.

"What?"

He shook his head. "Nothing...it's just...you've never pulled your hair back before," he replied after a moment.

"I haven't?" she asked precariously, an eyebrow raised. "Looks that bad, huh?"

Remus blinked and shook his head. "No...I really, really, really like it," he grinned and at last sat up. "See, it's almost messy, but it's a pretty messy. You've got these two strands of hair falling down your cheeks that make your eyes glow." He placed his hands just barely along her cheeks and smiled. "But it's here," and he gestured to her ears, "when your ears are exposed like that, that it sort of...makes your whole face rather beautiful...sexy even."

Aya snorted. "Sexy?" she challenged.

"Well, yeah," he answered. "It's a perfect look...you're not trying too hard. It's a natural beauty."

She blushed and stared down at her hands. Suddenly, she looked up, nearly breaking his nose as he tried to kiss her forehead. "What time is it?" she asked, ignoring his startled demeanor and haphazard muttering.

"Dunno...I think it's close to ten, maybe eleven judging by how long we've been sitting here...why?"

"Class!"

"Glass? What glass?"

"School, Remus!"

"Oh...OH! CLASS! SCHOOL!"

He jumped to his feet and fumbled for his clothes. "Remus...Remus, that's my bra," Aya said quickly.

"What? Oh...oh, so it is! Er...here."

"And those are my jeans, not yours."

"Right, of course...what shirt was I wearing?"

"I'll just do it."

-A/R-

"Remus, try not to go so fast," Aya managed to say. "I'm still really sore, and you look ready to pass out."

"Sorry, sorry," he muttered. "What class do we have right now?"

Aya looked about the long hallway and sighed. "Transfiguration, I think."

"Are you sure?"

"Remus, I don't even know what time it is...do you honestly think I'd really know if I were sure or not?" she challenged.

Swallowing, he shook his head. "No...not really...no...no." After a brief moment, he continued. "But if you had even the slightest-"

"Remus."

"Shutting up."

Aya sighed. "We'll just try Transfiguration. Hopefully Professor McGonagall will see us first and think of what to do."

"You don't want to just walk in there?" Remus asked as he led her along by the hand towards their intended - and hoped for - class.

"Remus, the two of us are late and we're holding hands. I'm more worried about what conclusions will soon be made," she answered with a sigh. "We need to make a quick cover-up for everyone else. And it has to be plausible enough so it'll be reasonable when she buys it."

"You're sure she'll buy a lie?" he asked.

She looked at him briefly. "Professor will have to take it, lie or not. What do you expect her to do?"

"Detention, loss of points, loss of my limbs," Remus listed off as he rounded a corner.

"It'll be fine," Aya replied.

"Well, yeah, but what if McGonagall sees right through us! Obviously she'll find out we didn't spend time at Pomfrey's...almost five hours overtime in the Shack, the two of us alone? It's way too obvious, Aya."

Aya could only attempt to shrug. "If she finds out, she finds out."

Remus, stopping, turned to her, his hands on her shoulder. "Aya, we could get expelled for...you know...if a teacher found out. I need you to lie effectively."

"We slept in," she said mechanically.

Remus grinned. "Very good. And we decided we had missed too much class, we skipped Pomfrey's."

"Going in," she continued, "we'll say aloud you had had a bad fall on the stairs and I had to half-carry you to the Hospital Wing after we had both overslept."

"Why overslept?"

"You don't need five hours in the Hospital Wing to recover from a fall, silly," she replied.

"Okay...alright," he sighed. "We're getting detention for this."

"That, or people finding out two things about us that-"

"I get it, I get it," Remus replied as they reached the door.

-A/R-

McGonagall was apparently in the middle of saying something when the door creaked noisily open. Much to the pair's dismay, every single eye in the room turned towards the reddened duo. Aya swallowed and tried her best not to hide behind Remus' school cloak and grab his hand at the same moment. Running up to the dormitories and back down had done a number on them both, but this may just prove to kill them.

Play along, Professor, Aya pleaded silently. Oh, please don't cause suspicion.

"Mr. Lupin, Miss Centaria," McGonagall suddenly said, moving to stand in front of her desk, her wand held frighteningly in both hands. "What is the meaning of such tardiness?"

Aya breathed a little easier. She could feel Remus relax against her.

"Uh..." Remus mumbled.

"A little louder, Mr. Lupin," McGonagall said curtly. Though her face was stern, Aya could see the usual twinkle in her piercing eyes she remembered so well. "I'm sure we shall all get quite a kick out of this."

"Er...well," Remus began, but stopped. He had forgotten the lie!

"We both overslept," Aya stepped in effortlessly, but still slightly behind him. "We had a chance meeting at the portrait hole and decided we may as well be embarrassed together. But Remus took a nasty fall down the stairs when they moved, and I helped him get to the Hospital Wing."

"Yeah," Remus continued, catching on. "Mme Pomfrey seemed unwilling to let me go for a while, and Aya didn't want to go back to class by herself and get in trouble alone."

"Touching," McGonagall nodded, but the twinkle remained. "Detention for you both, but five points to Gryffindor."

"What for?" Remus asked.

"For teamwork," the Professor replied. "Now, if you would please take your cold seats, I might just be able to finish my lecture."

As they both sat beside Lilly and the Marauders, Lilly, eyeing Aya, mouthed, "Where the hell have you two been?"

"Miss Evans," McGonagall said quietly. "I rather like it when students pay attention, don't you?"

"Yes, ma'am. Sorry."

-A/R-

After McGonagall had allowed them to practice the lesson in their text books in groups, Lilly immediately turned to Aya, grasped her wrist, stared intently at her, and whispered, "What the hell just happened?"

"N-nothing!" Aya whispered back, frantically fumbling with her wand. She could see Remus' hand shaking; apparently he suffered the same interrogation under James. Sirius looked ready to keel over with mirth or jealousy. "We overslept in you-know-where."

"Uh-huh," Lilly muttered. "And last night was how?"

"Wonderful," Aya breathed.

Lilly gasped. "Oh, God!" she breathed.

"Nothing happened!" Aya hissed.

"Shut up before someone hears you!" Lilly whispered intently. Aya clamped her lips together in a death trap. Green eyes flashed. "I'm going to ask you nicely...what did you two do?"

"Um...er...we...uh...well, you see," Aya began.

"Still waiting," Lilly hissed.

But before Aya could open her mouth, the door creaked open once again. This time, McGonagall sighed heavily in exasperation. "Yes?" the Professor asked.

A very thin, balding man in rather important-looking wizard's robes poked his head through the doorway. "Is this Professor McGonagall's Transfiguration class?" he said around a moustache. His voice was surprisingly quiet for so imposing a man.

"Yes," McGonagall said.

"Ah," the man replied as he stepped forward. "My name is James Irwin...I'm from the Ministry services...is there a Miss Centaria here?"

All eyes now moved to a very red Aya, who still stood with her mouth open, ready to attempt to explain to Lilly. "I'm a Miss Centaria," she said quietly.

"Ah, Aya Centaria, then. May I have a word with her?" Irwin asked.

"She's missed enough class for it not to count anyway," McGonagall replied, but she now watched Aya curiously. "Anything wrong?"

"No, ma'am...guardian issues, that's all," Irwin replied with a smile, but Aya had seen that smile before. There was something he didn't want to reveal publicly; whatever he had to say, it was for her ears alone. She didn't need to be told what to do; she had done it too many times before anyway. Trying to keep her eyes on Irwin's foreboding smile, Aya followed him outside, the door shutting ominously behind her.

-A/R-

BUM BUM BUM! Hopefully you'll all have an update tomorrow, thanks to Katana (I still want my luncheon!).