The weather got cold earlier than usual this year. To his friends, this meant that it was harder to get seats together in the increasingly crowded common room. To Remus, this meant that he was going to be freezing at the next full moon.

He considered telling his friends in advance that he was going to be gone, but he knew they wouldn't stop pestering him with questions until they were satisfied with his story, and he didn't feel like dealing with it. He would just tell them that his grandmother had gotten sick quite suddenly, and he had to go home to see her. He wondered what would happen if he started punching them if they asked too many questions. Somehow, he thought it wouldn't go over as well as it always did when James did it.

"Here are some blankets," Madame Pomfrey said as they approached the Whomping Willow. "I reckon it'll be awfully cold when you wake up tomorrow."

"Thank you." She was looking at him with a mixture of concern and pity, and he looked away. In hospitals, he had generally been looked at with disgust or fear, but he found the pity just as intolerable.

"I'll come for you in the morning," she said as she levitated a stick to poke the knot on the tree.

"Thank you," he said again, and headed for the tunnel.

It wasn't bad, really. No worse than the shed in his parents backyard. He had furniture to bite and scratch, and Dumbledore had done so many enchantments on the building that it was completely impenetrable. He was a danger to no one here.

He stripped off his clothes and left them with the blankets in the tunnel just outside the door. If he took them inside, he would shred them during the night. Shivering violently, he curled up in a corner and waited.

---------

"REMUS!"

This was a problem he had not anticipated. The morning after a full moon, he always felt awful, and he was usually pretty rough the following day as well. The fact that his friends would not let him sleep it off, that they would insist on ripping open the hangings on his bed and waking him up, was something he had never thought about.

But then, he had never thought he would have friends.

"Go away," he groaned.

"You disappeared on us again!" James sounded offended.

"I had to go home," Remus muttered, burying his head in his pillow. "And I didn't get to sleep, so I'm tired."

"Why did you have to go home?" Peter demanded.

"My grandmother is sick."

"Sick enough you had to go home?" James sounded sincerely worried, the anger gone from his voice. "She all right?"

"Yeah, she's fine. False alarm." Remus's voice was muffled by the pillow.

"So you went home last night, and you're back already?" Sirius asked. Remus turned his head and opened an eye to see Sirius frowning at him curiously.

"Yes," he grunted, hoping that if his answers were short and evasive enough, maybe they would leave him alone.

"How?" Sirius asked.

"How what?"

"How did you go home and get back so fast?"

"Floo powder. Now please, leave me alone so I can get some sleep before I have to get up and do my homework."

Two down, he thought as his friends left the room. Eight to go.

---------

It was becoming deceptively easy to forget, between full moons, that he wasn't normal. Not ever really forget, of course, but for so many years, he had simply seen himself as a werewolf. He hadn't realized that he could ever be something more than that, something other than that, even.

He was Remus Lupin, a very good student.

He was Remus Lupin, friend of James and Sirius and Peter.

He was Remus Lupin, who got caught charming the Slytherin Quidditch team so that technicolor bubbles came out of their mouths every time they tried to speak.

Those last two might have been related.

The incident with the Slytherins was the reason he was now walking alongside James, Sirius, and Peter, following McGonagall into her office. James was trying not to laugh, Sirius looked totally calm, and Peter kept dissolving into nervous giggles. Remus had lost all feeling in his limbs. He sat down in a chair between James and Peter, staring at his hands, which were clasped tightly in his lap.

"They started it!" Sirius said, before McGonagall said a word. "They were trying to jinx Susan Bagshot! That's the third time they've taken a shot at her!"

"And I suppose it was chivalry that prompted the four of you to come to her defense?" McGonagall said tartly.

"Yes," Sirius said firmly. James barely kept in a guffaw. Remus dared a look at McGonagall's face. He had a feeling she knew that there were other factors involved. Factors like James was absolutely obsessed with Qudditch, and Susan Bagshot was very, very pretty.

"It was all in good fun," James said, obviously trying a different angle. "Just some Halloween humor."

McGongall did not look amused by their Halloween humor. "Detentions. All of you. And fifty points from Gryffindor."

"Professor McGonagall?" A voice spoke from the doorway.

Remus recognized that voice. He had heard it at the start of term feast, and he had heard it at his house the previous year, when arrangements were being made for him to come to Hogwarts. Out of the corner of his eye, Remus saw all three of his friends' heads whip around, but he went back to starting at his lap.

"I was wondering if I could borrow Mr. Lupin for a moment?"

"Certainly, Professor Dumbledore. We're finished here." She turned back to the boys. "You three, back up to Gryffindor tower."

James, Sirius and Peter scurried out of the room, glancing curiously at Remus as they went.

---------

"Nothing? What do you mean, nothing?" Sirius demanded.

Remus didn't answer. He was focusing much harder than was necessary on his homework. "He just asked me how school was going, and wanted to know if I liked it. Stuff like that."

Sirius, James and Peter exchange incredulous looks.

"Dumbledore pulled you aside for a private chat so he could ask you if you liked school?" James said.

"Yeah." Remus was trying hard to come up with an excuse, a reason why Dumbledore would want to pull him aside, but he was coming up blank.

"You're a crappy, crappy liar, Remus," Peter said. James nodded solemnly, and Sirius raised his eyebrows and shrugged in agreement.

Remus wasn't lying. Not exactly. Dumbledore had wanted to know how he was adjusting, how classes were, if everything was going all right. Remus had had the sense that Dumbledore had been trying not to laugh when he said that Remus seemed to be getting along as well as any of the first years, even to the point of earning some detentions. He had expected a lecture at that, but Dumbledore had simply stared at him with those twinkling blue eyes, then asked him who he thought would win the upcoming Quidditch game between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff.

"You keeping a secret from us, Remus?" Sirius asked suspiciously. Remus's stomach tightened, and he tried not to panic. He looked up to see Sirius staring at him so intently that Remus jumped a bit, knocking his bottle of ink off the table. It smashed on the floor, glass flying everywhere and ink covering the bottom of Remus's robes.

"Reparo," Remus muttered irritably, still trying to breathe regular and appear perfectly calm. The bottle flew back together, but jagged cracks ran through it, and when he bent down to pick it up, it broke in his hand again. He hissed as one of the pieces of glass cut open his palm.

"Reparo," James said, and the bottle reformed itself properly. Remus felt a surge of annoyance. He had practiced that charm and studied the theory behind it for the last four nights, and he still couldn't get it right. James had been doing it perfectly since the first day they covered it in class.

"You all right?" Peter asked, gesturing to Remus's palm.

"I've had worse," he said truthfully, sucking on the cut.

"Here, Remus," James said, scooting his chair over next to him. "The problem is you're not swishing your wand enough, right? It's more like this." James dropped the ink bottle onto the table, smashing it again. "Reparo!"

"Stop showing off," Remus snapped. James looked taken aback.

"What aren't you telling us?" He asked abruptly.

"Nothing," Remus insisted. He grabbed his books. "I'm going to bed." He bumped the table as he stood up, knocking the ink bottle off again. He hesitated for just a moment. "Reparo." This time he swished his wand like James had said, and the bottle fixed itself perfectly. Remus walked away without looking at his friends.