Remus didn't respond right away. He couldn't respond. He just allowed all the dread in his chest to fall down and settle into a growing pit in his stomach.

"W– what?" His voice cracked, this time from plain fear more than anything. His mind ran circles trying to figure out how to get out of this, how to lie his way to safety. One thing was for sure, though: he had to find out what Tobin knew before he said anything else.

"You're a werewolf. An actual, real werewolf..." Remus may have misread Tobin's expression. The boy looked more fascinated than scared, but this added no comfort to an already disastrous situation.

"What the hell are you on about?"

"You see it was Jethro who noticed it, but he didn't really care. But I did some reading on it, and, well..." He looked awkward, his previous excitement disappearing as quickly as it had arrived.

"What?" Remus asked, hoping his encouragement wasn't mistaken for confirmation that what Tobin was saying was true.

"I... well, I sort of followed you. Last night." Oh God... this was worse than Remus could have imagined. Tobin saw him?

"What do you mean you followed me? I didn't see you following me." Perhaps Tobin was bluffing, trying to trick Remus into confessing. It wasn't exactly easy to follow a werewolf and go unnoticed the whole time, and Remus was sure that he and Hagrid had been the only two outside.

"Well... let's just say that's James isn't exactly careful about hiding the fact that he's got an invisibility cloak." That added up. James was as careful as could be, but sometimes he slipped up. He'd be talking to Remus and Sirius and fail to notice if someone entered the room. Remus could even remember when James was telling him about a prank he was planning with the cloak, when Tobin had walked in a few seconds before and had almost definitely heard every word. Remus hadn't said anything at the time. He'd let it go and forgotten about it, mainly because he hadn't expected Tobin to be so sneaky. Remus hadn't received that impression from him, but apparently he was wrong. Instead the boy went behind people's backs to steal things and follow people. It was rather unnerving to say the least.

And whatever the case, if Tobin had taken the invisibility cloak to follow him, then surely that meant Tobin was telling the truth...

No. No, he could still be bluffing. Just because he knew about the invisibility cloak didn't mean he actually used it.

"You're lying," accused Remus. "You couldn't have seen anything because there's nothing to see—"

"There's no point. I already saw. I got out of the forest just after you turned into a wolf. Or a werewolf. You didn't look like an actual wolf, your legs are too long."

"You're insane," concluded Remus. He was full on panicking now; there was no doubt about it, Tobin definitely knew. Remus's only options were to either come clean, or question Tobin's own sanity. He chose the latter, and Tobin didn't like that.

"No I'm not! The proof's all there, I saw it!"

"You didn't see anything. You're freaking me out."

"Oh yeah? How d'you injure your leg then?"

"Twisted my ankle on the stairs."

"Liar."

"I'm the liar? You're mad." Tobin was having none of it, and Remus was fairly certain that he wouldn't be getting away with this, but something propelled him to keep trying. Self-preservation propelled him.

"I don't care if you are a werewolf," said Tobin, predictably refusing to let it drop. "I know you're not gonna hurt me or nothing, I can see that. But if you keep calling me a liar, I'll have to prove it, and you don't want that." The two stared at each other, Remus not saying anything. Was Tobin blackmailing him? That certainly did nothing to increase Remus's trust, but he was quickly tumbling down the rabbit hole of disaster, and he really couldn't see any way out of this. He needed time. Time to think. He didn't have an answer to give Tobin right now.

Remus turned over in bed, facing away from the boy. Tobin was smart, hopefully he'd get the hint.

"Fine," Tobin sighed, after a moment's deliberate silence. "I'll leave you alone, but I know what I saw. I'm not crazy." And he left. Remus heard his footsteps receding on the cold, tiled floor, tiptoeing back to the Gryffindor common room.

Remus stayed wide awake for the rest of the night, any previous exhaustion gone in an instant. He hadn't even made it a full year at Hogwarts, and already someone had found him out. What would his parents say?

Nothing. Because he wasn't going to tell them. And he had to make sure that they'd never find out, which meant ensuring that Tobin wouldn't tell anyone either. Unfortunately, that meant confirming to him that he was, in fact, a werewolf. A confirmation that every instinct he had was screaming at him to hide. He didn't think he had a choice, though.

He caught up with Tobin at lunchtime the following day. The morning had been spent avoiding him, although Remus kept spotting the boy trying to catch his eye during lessons. Remus didn't want to speak to him immediately, mostly because he didn't know if he wanted to speak to him at all. He was still in two minds about it, but the longer he stayed silent, the more at risk he was of Tobin getting restless. The boy might end up telling the rest of the school, if only to prove he wasn't crazy.

So Remus went up to him during lunch, and asked if they could talk in the library, which Tobin agreed to at once. The two found the quietest section they could, away from the fifth and seventh years, feverishly studying for their exams.

"I'm not crazy," said Tobin adamantly, before Remus could even get a word out.

"I know, I know," replied Remus, his hand finding its way to the back of his neck as it usually did when he was nervous.

"Listen," he began. "You can't tell anyone." Tobin brightened up.

"So you admit it?"

"Yes, fine. I admit it. Just please... keep it to yourself."

"I will, I promise, but... why is it such a big deal? Isn't this stuff normal in the wizarding world?" Remus had forgotten that Tobin was a muggleborn. It wasn't exactly easy to explain all the anti-werewolf views in wizarding society if Tobin had never been subjected to them before.

"No, it's not," he replied, trying keeping it simple. "People don't accept it. If you tell anyone, I might get kicked out of school." Tobin looked shocked.

"Do the teachers know?"

"Most of them, but the parents don't. If they find out, they'll force Dumbledore to get rid of me, and then the ministry will find out, and the ministry are awful—" Remus was explaining himself a little frenetically, but he was trying to get the situation through to Tobin. He couldn't risk letting him leave thinking that being a werewolf was normal in the wizarding world, and therefore something to talk about.

But then again, he didn't want to scare Tobin into thinking there was something dangerous about him, because then he might tell for the sake of his own safety.

"People hear werewolf and assume we're all bad, like we're gonna eat people or something." He rolled his eyes, remembering an article he read a few years ago in the Daily Prophet from some idiot claiming just that; that werewolves made friends with people for the sole purpose of trying to eat them. It was the stupidest thing he'd ever read, but the confident, self-righteous tone of the whole thing had made him so angry that he'd ripped up the paper. He'd got in trouble with his father for that one, but then again, he declined to explain why he'd done it in the first place. His father thought he'd done it for the sake of it.

"I'm not dangerous, I'm just a kid." Tobin looked at him steadily.

"I believe you," he said, with a small assuring smile for good measure.

"Really?"

"Yeah. And I'm sorry for following you. I weren't trying to be weird or nowt, I just got curious. You don't expect werewolves to be real when you grow up in the Muggle world."

"Yeah, I guess."

"And I put the invisibility cloak right back, and I promise I'll never use it again. Just don't tell James I took it." Remus gave his own smile of reassurance.

"I won't."

"Thanks." The conversation seemed to have gone well, and Remus was able to leave it feeling optimistic about Tobin. Before, the boy's apparent sneakiness and his audacity to blackmail Remus had been off-putting, and rather shocking. But now it felt like Tobin was just being a kid who got too curious one night and decided to explore, and then got defensive when Remus had called him crazy, which was understandable. Remus wouldn't have liked to have been called crazy either, especially if he knew he wasn't.

Did Remus like the fact he'd been the topic of interest to Tobin's exploration? Not at all. And even if Tobin hadn't known anything about how werewolves were treated in wizarding society, it was still a shitty move to fixate on something that Remus obviously wanted to be kept secret. But Remus didn't think he could hold it against Tobin for long, or at least, not until he was satisfied once he'd convinced James, Sirius and Peter into pranking a very unsuspecting Tobin on the following day before class, for a little bit of petty revenge on Remus's part.

It didn't take much to convince James and Sirius. Their notoriety of being troublemakers were ever growing, and out of all the first years— who still retained the notion that they had to be well behaved at all times— they had garnered the most detentions.

James was pretty relaxed about it. Troublemaking was clearly nothing new to him. Sirius on the other hand always became unnecessarily excited at the thought of causing mayhem. His eyes would brighten up and he'd be dedicated to the task at hand. Not to mention how easy it was to lead him astray. In fact, Remus was sometimes under the impression that Sirius wanted to be led astray. Why this was the case, however, Remus didn't know.

But when he suggested to Sirius that they set Peeves on Tobin ("He insulted Glenn Miller," was Remus's entirely fictional reason for his sudden bout of revenge. "Is that a student?" asked Sirius, but a reply wasn't necessary. He was already on board.) Sirius was the one who came up with the idea to have Peeves chase Tobin into History of Magic class where they could pull their classic trick of a bucket of water over the head.

"I've just figured out how to charm the water so it's impossible to dry without the counter spell." It was going a little far, unfair perhaps, especially at the thought of Peeves— who really needed no prompting to chase a student down the halls— throwing ink pots at Tobin for seemingly no reason, and especially considering that Tobin had willingly agreed to not tell anyone about Remus.

But he shouldn't have been snooping around in the first place. So a bucket of water it was. Remus had little conscience over letting Sirius and James take the blame for it when Tobin came looking for the obvious suspects, soaking wet and very pissed off. There was nothing to be guilty of; James and Sirius didn't even try to hide their laughter during Tobin's altercation, and they could be good liars when they wanted to be. Clearly they didn't care whether Tobin knew it was them or not, because they only saw it as a harmless prank among friends. If Tobin knew Remus had been involved, however, he might have opened up a feud encouraged by Remus's own pettiness, so all Remus had to do was sit back and claim that he hadn't been involved at all. People tended to believe him over James and Sirius; they were the troublemakers, and he was the goody two shoes hidden behind a book. Remus found it funny: it was impossible to grow up as a transgender werewolf and not obtain a real knack for lying.

Tobin believed him, and was alright once he'd had a bit of a yell at James and Sirius, and had gone off to see Professor Flitwick for the counter spell to get him dry again. Remus was satisfied that his revenge had been satiated. The two were finally able to go back to being friends, or at least amiable roommates when Remus wasn't spending most of his time with James, Sirius and Peter.

There was one half term remaining until the summer holidays, and Remus was content in the fact that he'd made it through a whole year at Hogwarts. Okay, so one person had found out that he was a werewolf (ever since then, he'd been careful to spend more time in the hospital wing to throw off any suspicion from any other classmates that may have grown just as suspicious), but all in all, it had gone better than he'd been expecting at the beginning of the year, and still no one knew he was trans at least.

He was certainly feeling optimistic. Not to mention his voice was starting to move on from its cracking phase, and he was finally noticing a slight drop. He was sure he hadn't changed that much, but he still felt like his parents would hardly even recognise him by the time summer came around.

Although, as it turned out, he didn't have to wait that long to see them.

It was at dinner, a week before half term. James had disappeared off to the Quidditch grounds to practice— he was practicing more and more these days since he was planning on trying out for the Quidditch team next year. Sirius had gone along with him, so Remus was left sitting with Peter and Tobin. He and Tobin were talking more and more, and they were realising that they had quite a bit in common. They were talking about their backgrounds, and Tobin was telling Remus all about the mining community in County Durham where his family lived, and about the strikes that his father and uncle were involved in.

"The wages are piss shit," Tobin explained, and Remus was soon realising that Tobin's swearing vocabulary was as big as his own. "So all the miners go on strike. Hardly works though, government don't give a damn." The two quickly fell into a mutually disdainful conversation about the English government.

"The English government treats the Welsh like shit," said Remus. "You know, a lot of schools in Wales hardly teach the language anymore. My mam went to this one school for a bit and they said the language was useless. Fancy calling your own language useless just because the English said so. My grandparents homeschooled her after that. They're stubborn, but proud. Made sure she knew how to speak Welsh, and she passed it down to me." And he'd pass it down to his kid he decided, if he ever had one. He didn't think he ever would, though. Regardless of the logistics, he was pretty sure he didn't want one anyway.

"We've got something like that. We've got our own dialect but my teachers in primary school discouraged it because they said it weren't sophisticated enough. Even me mam said that and made me talk more posh. I'm trying to rebel," he concluded, and Remus had noticed that his accent had become stronger over the last few months, to the point where he'd been mocked by the posh kids in some of the other houses. Remus was no stranger to that. His accent was mocked as well sometimes by kids he didn't even know.

"I get that," chimed in Peter, a little unexpectedly. He'd been quietly reading the Daily Prophet and they'd almost forgotten he'd been sitting there. "People think I'm stupid just cos of the way I talk, but it's just me accent. I'd rather have this one than them posh bastards sounding like the Queen." They all giggled at that, mainly because Peter looked a good three years younger than everyone else, so hearing him swearing felt vaguely out of place. Even so, they agreed with the sentiment.

"Anything in the paper?" asked Remus, deciding to change the subject, as he took a bite out of his mashed potatoes.

"Just some more muggle attacks," replied Peter. The boys' faces went grave. Muggle attacks seemed to be becoming more frequent. Every other week there'd be some report in the paper about a muggle family who'd either been attacked, killed, or had disappeared entirely.

"Whereabouts?" asked Tobin, his voice clearly attempting to hide his fear. His family, after all, were muggles.

"Down south, near Hammersmith." Most of the attacks were on muggleborns specifically, but families as well were being targeted, with Death Eaters infiltrating muggle towns and villages and leaving without a trace. It set everyone on edge, but Remus and his friends were still young. Still under the impression that the adults would sort it out, so they tried to put it out of their minds.

For Remus, it wasn't difficult, for at that moment his father's owl came swooping down to the table to deposit a letter.

"You expecting something?" asked Peter. Deliveries weren't very common after dinner. Most people sent their letters at a time when it would reach Hogwarts by morning, at breakfast.

"No." Remus hoped it wasn't an emergency or anything. He opened the letter and read the contents, noting how it was written in his father's handwriting instead of his mum's. A rather rare occurrence.

"Well?"

"It's my dad. He says he and mam want me home for half term."

"Is that bad?" asked Tobin, catching the confused look on Remus's face.

"Well, no... But, they said I didn't have to come home until summer." He didn't like how vague the letter was, and usually it was his mother who wrote him this sort of information. His father relinquished that job onto her because he was too busy, so Remus couldn't think why he'd suddenly changed his mind. Unless something had happened to his mum, but if that were the case, there'd probably be more than just a letter telling him to come home in a week.

Whatever the case, though, the letter unsettled him.