A/N: Uh oh. Chapter 13. Close enough to a full moon, too. Brace yourselves.

Sirius shouted wildly as he was bucked from his broom, his hands clawing through air, plummeting down towards the ground like one of Hagrid's giant pumpkins last Halloween.

Remus stood up with a start, flinging his hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the midday light. Where was James, why wasn't he doing something?

A black speck far above was gradually growing in size as James undoubtedly pelted towards Sirius, but Remus could tell that he'd never make it in time. Remus' heart was frozen in his chest, and he threw his gaze about desperately, looking for some form of help.

Too late.

With an almighty splash that melted Remus' fears of a squished Sirius, the tumbling boy disappeared beneath the lake's surface. A smile of relief dashed across Remus' lips as a tidal wave engulfed a good five metres of the shore. Thank Merlin Peter had insisted on flying out of view of the Slytherins sitting over by the quidditch pitch.

Where was Peter, then? And where, for that matter, had Sirius got to?

As the swells rising across the lake slowly became smaller, Remus became increasingly desperate for a sight of the foolhardy self-proclaimed 'sky-diving champion' who was still submerged. Without dropping the copy of the Daily Prophet clutched tightly in his hand, he began to dash towards the water's edge, swerving past Peter, who had just landed roughly on the shore.

"What happened?" Peter cried, bewildered, staring as the werewolf ran by, but Remus didn't spare the time to respond. All he could think of was Sirius – alongside the niggling perennial fears of deep water and Grindylows. But he'd swim to the centre of the lake if Sirius was drowning, he assured himself, of course – although, he thought, as he tore his robes over his head and almost hung himself on his tie, the water did look awfully cold, but then –

"Ow!" he cried out, stunned silly for a moment, before realising that his protestation had been synchronised with someone else's – a disgruntled-looking Sirius whose sweeping fringe had become a draggle of seaweed-worthy mess against his forehead.

He stared into Sirius' eyes, which seemed as wide as his own, absently feeling the cold water whirl around his ankles and into his shoes. He noticed that they were both clutching their heads and came to the realisation that he must have slammed head-first into Sirius, who had just swum to the shore.

"Oh," he said, too cold to be sheepish. "Are – are you alright?"

"I don't know," Sirius said, dead-pan beneath his bedraggled hair. "I almost drowned. Then I hit my head on a werewolf when climbing out of the freezing water. But yeah, I'm fine, how are you?"

"I'm okay," Remus replied, beginning to unravel his tie from around his neck, "I'm kind of busy. You see, I'm looking for my stupid friend. He just jumped from a broomstick twenty feet above the lake. Have you seen him? He's wearing an idiotic expression."

Sure enough, Sirius had collapsed into shivering laughter, which prompted Remus to do the same, until a wet hand reached forward and unceremoniously pushed him backwards into the water.

"What was that for?" Remus yelped, scrambling out of the shallow water that bit at his skin through his clothing.

"I didn't jump," Sirius said loftily, "someone charmed my broom, I swear. It bucked me off, didn't you see?"

"All I saw was a swandive, Padfoot," said Remus as he ducked away from Sirius' reaching hands, causing the taller boy to trip forward and splash back into the water.

"Oi!"

Remus chuckled, stepping out of the way before Sirius could grab his ankles and pull him down. As he glanced fleetingly back towards the shore, he saw that James and Peter were laughing at them, and behind them –

"It was Snivellus," Sirius said quietly, standing up now, attempting to wring out his sodden robes with unnecessary force. "He jinxed my broom."

Remus frowned towards the shore, unable to contradict Sirius' accusation. Fifty metres away, the dark, hunched figure of Severus Snape glared back out to the water, meeting Remus' eyes with piercing hatred. Before Remus could do more than fling out a hand in useless anticipation, he saw Snape throw back his wand, and a jet of yellow light shot towards the lake a moment later.

Remus felt the instant of heat and knew that the hex had reached its target, but he couldn't tell what Snape had done. He looked to Sirius, desperately, and saw that the sodden boy had started quivering in rage.

"What's he done?" Sirius hissed, his voice seething with anger, and grabbed Remus roughly towards him.

Remus opened his mouth to say that he didn't know, and to let it go, Snape wasn't worth it, but suddenly he could feel the burning on his skin, and his eyes dropped down to his chest. He didn't want to look. He really didn't want to look. But before Remus could make up his mind, Sirius had reached forward and torn half the buttons of his shirt off.

They both gasped. There, emblazoned across the centre of Remus' chest, was a new line of scars, oozing blood.

Dirty Secret.

Slowly, Remus raised his eyes, and was shocked by the intensity of feeling that he found in Sirius' face.

"Come on," Sirius said shortly, grabbing Remus by the arm and towing him out of the water towards the other two, who hadn't noticed that anything was wrong.

As he stumbled through the water, trying not to dwell on the words carved across his chest, Remus felt cold with dread. All he wanted was to find his wand and heal himself with what limited skills he possessed, so that nobody would ever have to read the truth again.

Remus grappled his way to consciousness fitfully. His eyelids scraped against a sweaty pillow, cracking open despite the piercing light. A low groan rose from deep within his chest, which burned in painful patches, like he'd been rolled forcibly through a field of nettles.

This pain was familiar. Worse, this pain was unfamiliar. Or at least it had been for the past three months.

As long as he could cling to the stuffy darkness of sleep, Remus refused to think about the familiarity. He refused to wonder why his clammy skin was sticking to sheets scented with the sterilising potions of the Hospital Wing, rather than the mouldy old bed in the Shrieking Shack. He didn't want to ask himself why his friends weren't curled up beside him, as had become habit.

Unfortunately, as his pulse refused to cooperate, Remus suddenly found himself helpless to his body's desperate impulses, and he jerked up from his reclined position, legs dragging over the side of the bed's iron frame. In a snatch of light and movement, Remus glanced at his pale skin and all became too clear.

No. Please, no.

Slowly, heart slamming against his chest, Remus steered his eyes back to his leg, and forced himself to understand the significance of the image.

There, beside the weeping gouges of tearing claws, lay five narrow abrasions etched deeply into his skin. The lines were spread almost evenly apart, like five fingers on a human hand.

A human hand. Human nails had scratched into Remus' calf. The scratches were fresh. Someone had tried to defend themself against him last night.

As Remus began to shudder violently, a horrific echo of his transformation the night before, he became aware of the person waiting on the other side of the bed, a person who had recently climbed to their feet.

He didn't turn around. His vision began to blur as he stood there, body throbbing in a paroxysm of shock and muted pain.

"Lie down," a calm voice instructed gently from a place that seemed far removed from Remus' immediate anguish. "Nobody has been hurt, Remus."

Fairly thrumming with anguish, Remus spun on his heel to face Dumbledore, whose face seemed distorted through a veil of streaming tears. He could hear himself panting in the sudden stillness of the room. He couldn't contain a small moan that squeezed through his tight chest. He felt like a cornered wolf, battered from a fight, torn and wounded, pathetic and utterly defenceless.

He watched dumbly, paralysed into immobility as the headmaster stepped around the bed with his hands outstretched, compassion bright behind moon-shaped lenses. An involuntary jolt shot through his entire body when Dumbledore's firm grasp came upon his shoulders, but he allowed himself to be steered back into bed.

Finally, collapsed against the rumpled bedspread, as his muscles began to loosen and the quaking eased away, Remus ran his tongue over cracked lips and tried to speak.

"Wh-" he cleared his throat painfully, "who was it?" he asked, his voice fading into a scratchy whisper.

Dumbledore's face, which had remained fittingly grave ever since Remus had noticed his presence, seemed to darken further for an instant.

"Mr Severus Snape found his way to the Shrieking Shack last night, placing himself in a danger that we can both understand." He paused as Remus started violently, gripping his arms in white-knuckled hands. "Fortunately, your good friend James was able to pull him out of danger – quite heroically, it must be noted. Unlike Mr Snape, I believe that Mr Potter was aware of the peril that awaited him at the end of the tunnel."

Dumbledore peered over his spectacles at Remus, who could make no response. He had barely understood anything past the fact that Snape had found him. There was an urgent question hammering desperately against his clenched teeth. He knew instinctively that he didn't want to know the answer, but he had to ask.

"How?" he mumbled, lowering his eyes to the five crimson lines on his leg. An immense reluctance seemed to precede Dumbledore's slow response.

"I believe that a certain Mr Black believed that it would be – er – humorous to inform Severus of the correct method of accessing the Shrieking Shack."

All the blood drained from Remus' face as soon as he heard the name.

"Sirius," he whispered, his voice breaking, and he buried his face in his pillows once more, as if trying to suffocate the betrayal from reality.