AN:

Okay so here's chapter 9 (: pay close attention, cause this chapter is from Sirius' POV. i know it's a bit confusing, but every time he talks about James, remember that it's actually Remus, and visa versa. Oh and the last part of this chapter is from James' POV (:

Enjoy!

Chapter 9

Sirius' point of view

Familiar voices of someone struggling with his blanket woke Sirius up in the middle of the night, and he sat slowly in his bed. He was used to wake up like that, and no matter how it had disturbed his sleeping, he'd never complained. Remus usually had nightmares, especially at that time of the month, in the few days before the full moon.

At those nights, when he'd woken up by his friend's cries, Sirius was the one to get to Remus' bed, wake him gently and comfort him until he fell asleep again. He didn't know how it had affected James and Peter, but they'd never said anything, which made him assume they'd never woken up.

So, that night, when Sirius heard those familiar voices he got up and went quietly towards Remus' bed, trying not to wake anyone else. But already half way there he noticed something was different. The voices didn't come from Remus' bed, but from James'.

Sirius stopped and stared at the squeaking bed for a few seconds, but then decided; when a friend is in need, then a friend is in need. He turned around and approached James' bed.

When he got there he saw his friend struggling with his blanket, mumbling things Sirius did not understand. Sirius sighed and sat next to the sleeping boy, resting his hand on his shoulder.

"James…" he whispered, "wake up."

James didn't answer and just turned to the other side, his back to Sirius.

"Prongs!" whispered Sirius into James' ear. "Prongs, wake up!"

The other boy jumped and made Sirius to jump with him with fright. His brown eyes opened widely and stared at Sirius in fear he'd never seen in them before. For a few moments no one said a word, Sirius looked at James and James looked at Sirius while breathing heavily.

"Take this," whispered Sirius at last, when the silence became unbearable, and passed James his glasses. James who still seemed confused nodded and put them on his nose.

After casting silencing charm around the bed Sirius turned back to James, looking at him with a concerned expression. "Are you alright?"

James nodded again and fixed the blanket around him in a convenient way, "just a dream." He said quietly.

"A dream?" Sirius asked with a doubt, "seemed more like a nightmare."

James blushed and lowered his gaze to his legs. Even though Sirius had seen James blush before (only in the last couple of weeks, when he thought about it) it was still odd and uncharacteristic.

But Sirius chose to ignore it and not to mention it, at least not now when James seemed so vulnerable.

"Since when do you have nightmares? It's usually Moony who wakes me up in the middle of the night because of them." he tried to make it sound like a joke, but James' gaze was lowered even more in embarrassment so Sirius hurried to add, "Never mind. So what was it about?"

James mumbled something and when Sirius repeated his question he said in a clearer voice, "I don't want to talk about it."

"You sure?" James nodded once in his head. This behavior was so not James. Since when had he woken up from a nightmare? Since when had he kept things from Sirius? But nothing could be compared to that kiss by the lake a couple of weeks ago. Something weird had been going on with James, and Sirius planned to find out what it was.

They sat in silence for another couple of minutes, and just when Sirius was about to get back to his bed, James started talking.

"Listen, Padfoot, I'm not… I'm not coming tomorrow."

Sirius sent him a confused look, "not coming where?"

"To the shack, I'm not coming."

It took Sirius a few seconds to realize what James had meant but when he finally got it he was very thankful for the silencing charm he'd put on before. "WHAT?" he called, "Why not?"

James flinched, "I can't."

"Can't? What do you mean, you can't? Of course you can! We've been helping Moony for over a year now! Why all of the sudden you can't?"

"I- I just can't…" James repeated, making Sirius even angrier. Ever since they'd learned to become animagi there hadn't been one full moon in which James, Peter and himself hadn't been there for Remus (unless you count the Snape incident and Sirius preferred not to count it). So why suddenly now James's telling him he can't come?

"You have to come!" he declared, "You know I can't go without you, I'm not strong enough to deal with him alone. And we promised, Prongs! We promised Moony we'll always be there!"

James looked full with shame when he lifted his gaze to Sirius' and said quietly, "I know, Sirius, but you don't understand. I just can't."

Sirius stood up and moved away from the bed, "why not?"

James looked away and said nothing.

"Tell me why!" Sirius couldn't keep himself from yelling, he was so angry. "Just tell me why the hell you can't come!"

James didn't reply, and Sirius stared at him unbelievingly. James had always told him everything, why now he wasn't ready to tell him?

"What's going on with you, James?" he called desperately. "This whole past month you're acting not like yourself! You kiss me out of nowhere, you fall from your broom, you blush every other minute and you barley tell me what's going on! And now you're telling me you're not coming tomorrow? Something's wrong here, and I'm going to find out what it is!"

But James still refused to meet Sirius' eyes, and didn't respond to his accusations at all.

"You know what?" Sirius almost screamed, "Fine! Don't come! But if something happens to Moony tomorrow, it will be on your conscience!" at the end of the sentence he turned his back to James, returned to his bed and fell on it with rage.

Something was off, no doubt about that. James wouldn't just decide he didn't want to come with no reason. But Sirius couldn't find this reason. He couldn't think of any reason at all to the change in James in the past month.

He became quiet, didn't share anything with Sirius, stopped interrupting in lessons and instead he wrote every word that came out of the teachers' mouth. He stopped practice in Quidditch, although before he'd never missed even one practice. He didn't come up with new ideas for a prank in two weeks. He even barley spoke about Lily, and James always talked about Lily, all the fucking time!

He didn't know what was going on, but he decided to figure it out before he fell to a dreamless sleep.

On the next morning Sirius decided to ignore James. He thought that in that way he could make him regret his decision. But James didn't change his mind and ignored Sirius as well.

Sirius decided he should ask Remus if he knew what was going on. Remus and James had spent a lot of time together lately and maybe James considered Remus more helpful than Sirius.

"Say, do you know what's wrong with Prongs lately?" he asked him when they sat together in the common room, while putting him arm around the werewolf's shoulder.

Remus tensed and looked around them with concern, like he was afraid someone would see them hugging like that. But the common room was almost empty, everyone were spending their day in the library or out by the lake, like any other Saturday. Peter sat in the couch near them and worked on some essay. James was nowhere to be seen. Sirius wasn't sure where he was, but didn't bother to find out.

"What's supposed to be wrong with him?" Remus asked and Sirius could hear curiosity in his voice.

"He's been acting weird, don't ya think?"

"No, I don't," said Remus and moved Sirius' hand off of his shoulder. "I told you I don't want people to know about us yet."

"But there's no one here but Peter," the raven haired insisted, "and he already knows anyway."

"It doesn't matter, just don't do that." Remus said in a dead serious tone.

Sirius decided it wasn't worth it to mess with him in the day before the full moon, and got back to the original topic he wanted to talk about.

"So back to James," he said, "he's been acting weird and I want to know why. Do you know he's planning on ditching us tonight?"

"Yeah, I know."

Sirius stared at him. So James does tell Remus things. "Do you know why he's not coming?"

Remus shook his head, but Sirius heard him whispering to himself something that sounded like, "But I can guess…"

He chose to ignore it. "Did you try to convince him to come?"

"No, I don't think he'll listen to me." Remus answered and turned to look at the sky outside.

Sirius stared at him. On the days before the full moon Remus had been always stressed, nervous and anxious. He'd been always let Sirius comfort him and used to read all day in order to distract himself. But the Remus who sat next to him right then seemed almost bored.

Just like James, Remus had been acting strange in the past last month. He'd stopped reading, stopped listening in class and talked to Lily every time he saw her. He'd fought with Snape, although usually he was trying to avoid those fights, and he'd talked to Sirius enthusiastically about new pranks.

At first, when he'd just noticed this change, Sirius thought it'd been for the best, because Remus' confident had grew bigger and he'd finally shared others with his thoughts. But as the time passed, Sirius started to realize that Remus had just stopped acting like himself, and it became too much.

When he'd told Remus he loved him, after all that time he'd wanted to do it but was afraid of rejection, Remus had said he felt the same way, and Sirius was happy. But after they'd been together for a few days, Remus hadn't showed any signs of his love. Every time Sirius had touched him he had flinched away, and he'd spent most of his time with Lily, claiming they had to work hard as head boy and girl.

Sirius loved Remus with all his heart, but the things he loved about him had started to disappear one after the other, and he couldn't understand why.

Maybe I've made a mistake when I asked Remus to go out with me, He thought. Maybe he said yes just to not ruin our friendship, and he doesn't really feel the same way I do.

He sighed, and while a decision forming in his head, he turned to the werewolf at his side, "Why did you agree to go out with me?"

Remus seemed surprised and ran his head through his hair nervously. "I already told you," he said, "I l-love you." He didn't sound very convincing.

"You sure?" Sirius asked with doubt.

"Sure," said Remus, "why wouldn't I bee sure?"

"I dunno, Moony, but you haven't been acting like yourself ever since we started going out. I know it's been just two weeks, but you've changed in those two weeks, and I miss the Remus you used to be."

Remus looked at him, worried. "I haven't changed," he said, but now he didn't sound that much confident in himself.

"Oh, really?" asked Sirius. "When was the last time you read a book?"

Remus shifted awkwardly in his seat.

"See? You don't even remember. I'm sorry, Moony, but I think- I think we should break up." It took a lot out of him to actually say it, and he felt like it was the hardest thing he'd ever had to say, even more than confessing his love to that boy. But at the same time he knew it was the right thing to do. He preferred the old Remus as a friend than this stranger who sat next to him as a lover.

"Are you serious?" Remus asked, and when Sirius looked at him he thought he noticed guilt in his wide eyes.

He nodded and got up, knowing it was the right time to end this conversation. "I'm sorry," he said again, "and I'm sorry that we won't be there with you tonight."

"Wait a second, Padfoot, I-" started Remus, but Sirius hurried to cut him.

"Goodbye, Moony." He hugged him and hurried to walk away, turning quickly to hide his new tears. He went out of the room, thought he could still hear Remus calling after him.

James' point of view

James sat on the unstable bed in the shrinking shack. Everything around him was dark, the door and the windows locked. He removed his cloak and hid it under the loose board on the floor, like Remus had always used to do, then sat back on the bed.

Sentences from his earlier conversation with Sirius echoed in his head, and he was sorry for not being able to keep his promise to Remus to go out with Sirius until they would switch back. But he knew he couldn't do anything to stop it from happening, and now all he'd left to do was wait till morning and fix the damage he'd done.

At the moment he had more important things to worry about. He was about to spend the night as a wolf, the very same wolf he'd been hanging out with as a stag every full moon for more than a year. He didn't know how he would feel, or if he would feel something at all. He knew the change itself hurt, but he didn't know what was going to happen after.

He wasn't scared, he was a Gryffindor, and true Gryffindors weren't scared of anything. If Remus could go through this every month, then so could he. And if Remus woke up every time in the end and got back to normal, then so would he.

He was sorry Remus had decided not to come, but he could understand him. When he finally had an opportunity to spend the full moon night as human, why would he want to spend it with the wolf he hated so much?

A sudden twitch went through him and he felt his body begin to shake. The transformation had begun. Hair started to grow on his legs and arms, and his sight became sharper. A yelp escaped his mouth then an excruciating pain sliced his body and he felt all of his bones breaking one after the other. He screamed like he'd never screamed before, praying for the pain to go away, to just go away and let him die in peace. But the pain went on and on and on and just when he thought he couldn't hold on anymore he heard a growl from the back of his throat and his mind stopped thinking.