The morning of the full moon was always different. It was inevitable, when one's body and mind were preparing to change shape in the worst way. Bodies were not meant to do that, and even after nearly ten years, Remus' body still didn't quite know how. He doubted it ever would.

Most of the time, Remus suffered from extreme fatigue; headaches; soreness in organs, bones, and muscles; a low-grade fever that sometimes peaked into a high-grade fever; and sensory overload that prevented him from eating much (if at all).

A couple of times, Remus' lungs had started preparing for the transformation before the rest of his body, which had caused wheezing fits and difficulty breathing, and had once cut off his air completely for about thirty terrifying seconds. Remus' mother had patted him on the back, thinking him to be choking on something tangible, but no—Remus' body had merely been tearing itself apart for no particular reason. Which was, unfortunately, not uncommon for him.

Often, Remus got migraines—awful, terrible migraines that touched every inch of his body. His headaches could get bad, and sometimes just as bad as a low-grade migraine, but migraines were not just headaches. Remus' migraines always started with the fuzzy vision, always made him feel completely and totally nauseous, and always made him want to pitch himself out a window.

A couple of times, Remus had been prone to fainting, which had terrified Madam Pomfrey. Remus didn't mind fainting. When he was awake, it was his problem; when he fainted, it became somebody else's problem. A terrible loss of control and absolutely humiliating, yes—but, as much as Remus hated both those things, he hated enduring the day before the full moon even more. It was best to pass out in a hospital bed. That was the ideal day, in Remus' experienced opinion.

There were a few other odd symptoms, too. There were the muscles that jumped beneath Remus' skin, the limbs that moved without Remus' permission. There was the terrible insomnia that woke him up at four-thirty the day of, almost like clockwork. There was the discomfort and irritability. There was the dizziness. And sometimes Remus just got sad on the day of the full moon—something akin to depression, perhaps, but it was much better, for Remus knew it was completely temporary and purely caused by the coming of the full moon.

Today, though, Remus was chatty.

Chatty full moons were rare, mostly because Remus usually had a sore and raspy throat around that time that prevented him from speaking much. Today was different. His brain was buzzing, he couldn't stop tapping his feet, and he just wanted to talk, despite being in so much pain that he could barely breath at times.

He stumbled out of bed at around four-thirty, just as he always did. James, who was a light sleeper and an early riser, was already awake. "Good morning," James whispered with a grin. "Want to go down to the common room like usual?"

"Yes," whispered Remus, so James led the way to the Gryffindor common room, and Remus followed closely behind, focusing on every step.

Finally, James sat down on an armchair and stretched. "So what kind of day is it?" he asked Remus. "Tired? Sore? One of those days when you hang upside-down off the couch because you can't get comfortable? One of those days that you want to go to the Hospital Wing early? One of those days where you want to do nothing but boring stuff, like reading the dictionary and whining about how terrible your life is? Oh wait, that's every day."

Remus scoffed. "I have the right to whine."

"You do," said James with a grin. "But anyway. What are we feeling?"

Remus took a deep breath. "Well, I slept all right last night. I woke up around four times, but only for a moment. I heard Peter snoring and I almost strangled him. I'm feeling a little sore right now, and definitely nauseous already, but I think I could eat something. Maybe some dry toast and tea. I've already taken my potions—well, you already know. You were probably awake already."

James stared at him. "Are you okay?"

"Yes. What do you mean?"

"Last time, when I asked you that question, you responded with a single word."

"What word? I don't remember."

"It sounded kinda like this." James mashed his face into a pillow and made a pitiful groaning noise.

"Oh."

"Yeah. Couldn't spell it if you paid me, but I think I got the message."

"Well, I just feel like talking today. I can't explain it. I feel terrible, and I'm tired, but at the same time… I have so much energy, and I've no clue what to do with it all. My heart's beating fast, and it's definitely not anxiety, like Madam Pomfrey said it was last time I went to her with a fast heart rate."

"When did that happen?"

"Three days ago. It wasn't a big deal. Have I told you about the Werewolf Registry?"

"A bit. Not much."

Remus stood up suddenly, and James flinched. "Sorry," said Remus. "Need to walk." He started pacing by the fire, tapping one hand on his thigh and gesticulating with the other. "Manard was pretty great, actually. He wrote up a fake transcript so that we didn't even have to talk much. He looked at my file from last year so that I wouldn't have to answer many questions. He even has a handicapped entrance, so the only other person I had to interact with was Ragfarn, who interrupted us, but he wasn't rude or anything."

James looked like he didn't quite know what to do. "Okay."

"I didn't get to see my friend Susi in the waiting room. Oh! I hope she's not worried about me. I see her every year. She's my werewolf friend, have I told you? We were bitten on the same day. She's way older than me, though, so she's not a proper friend. Not really a peer, I mean. I wish I could write to her, but I don't know her surname, and…"

"Moony, I think you need to sit down. You're shaking."

"Am I?" Remus looked at his hand. It was shaking. "Oh, that's funny. I'm fine. Catch me if I fall. You're a Keeper, after all—catching things is sort of what you do. You know, I probably do need to sit down, but I have so much energy. It's like… I'm tired, but I'm shaking."

"So you've said."

"Have I told you about the funny thing that Sirius said to me last week? You were at Quidditch practice, and the rest of us were eating supper, and…"

Remus crashed around eight in the morning.

He'd been pacing wildly throughout the common room for ages, and James had taken him to the Hospital Wing at seven-thirty. When he'd arrived, Madam Pomfrey had forced him to lie down, and he'd stared at the ceiling, tapping his fingers at the speed of light while Madam Pomfrey tended to some students in the main ward.

After about five minutes, he'd given up on lying down, and he'd paced.

And paced.

And paced.

And… at eight o'clock in the morning, he'd crashed completely, and found himself in bed without any hyperactive energy whatsoever.

Madam Pomfrey entered after about five minutes, and Remus heard the door shut behind her, trapped in a sort of half-asleep stupor. "Do you need anything?" she whispered.

He couldn't summon the energy to shake his head, so he just let his eyes slide shut. Madam Pomfrey patted his head and tossed a blanket on top of him, because Remus hadn't even had the energy to crawl under the bedsheets. "I'll be back in an hour," she said quietly, as if speaking loudly would somehow restore Remus to his former energy. "Madam Hooch is teaching the first-years how to dive, and I'm needed on standby. Will you be all right until I return?"

"Mm," said Remus in an affirmative sort of way.

Madam Pomfrey left, and Remus was asleep before he even heard her footsteps fade.

He woke up, and he was absolutely parched. He forced his exhausted arm from the bed and reached for the glass of water on his bedside table—Madam Pomfrey kept it full at all times—but he accidentally knocked it over. There was a mighty crashing noise, and Remus flinched.

"Sorry," he said to no one in particular, and then he went back to sleep.

When he awoke again, there was a horribly familiar scent in the room that immediately made Remus' stomach swoop. His eyes flew open, and he came face-to-face with Fenrir Greyback, who was standing in the puddle of water caused by Remus' glass on the floor.

Remus tried to scream, but his mouth was too dry. He managed to sit up through the power of pure adrenaline, and he coughed. "Why are… you…?" he managed.

Greyback didn't say anything. He merely smiled, and then he pulled his wand from his robes.

"I'm not going with you," Remus croaked. "I… I… where's my wand?"

Greyback's smile grew feral, and he pulled Remus' wand from his robes, too. He'd had it the whole time. He'd already had it. Where had he gotten it?

"Please don't kill me, or my family… I promise I was looking for you… I was trying to do as you said, but you weren't making it easy, and…"

"Calm down," rasped Greyback.

Remus had never before followed the directions of Fenrir Greyback, and he wasn't about to start now, even accidentally. His breath came short, his heart began to beat wildly once more, and he felt full-blown panic slowly creep to the forefront of his mind. "Leave me alone."

The door flew open, and there stood Madam Pomfrey. She looked between Remus and Greyback, eyes wide, and pulled out her wand. And then Greyback moved… toward Madam Pomfrey… and raised his wand…

"Stop it!" Remus yelped.

But Greyback wasn't stopping. He was… blurring? Flickering? There was a pop, and then he was a rock.

Madam Pomfrey released her breath and looked at Remus. "It's a Boggart, dear," she said.

She hardly ever called Remus dear, which meant that Remus likely looked very terrible indeed. "That can't be right," he wheezed, still unable to breathe. "I… smelled him. Boggarts don't have a smell."

"Do you still smell him, Remus?"

"Yes!"

Madam Pomfrey picked up the rock-Boggart and placed it in a large, opaque potions bottle, and then she corked up the bottle tightly. "I'll be right back," she promised.

Remus' breathing was erratic. He sat there, staring at the moving spots on the wall as his vision swam from his irregular air supply… and then Madam Pomfrey returned from the main ward with a strong-smelling flower of sorts. She placed it into Remus' hands.

Remus eagerly inhaled, again and again, and the scent of Fenrir Greyback faded from his nostrils entirely. "Thank… you," he gasped. "Thankyou thankyouthankyou."

"Breathe."

He breathed.

"I'm going to count aloud, and I want you to tap your finger every time I say a number. Ready? Breathe in… two… three… four… hold, two, three, four… breathe out, two, three, four."

It took a while, but Remus could finally keep up with her numbers and breathing, and the panic slowly subsided. "I'm sorry," he said. "I should have known it was a Boggart. I just… I'm not sure what happened."

"You hallucinated, likely because you're so exhausted. You were nearly asleep and anxious, and you smelled what you expected to smell. It's not unheard of. The Boggart was also becoming more powerful due to your fear, and it may have been able to generate some type of secondary characteristic."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"And… about the glass. I dropped it."

Madam Pomfrey pointed her wand at the broken glass on the floor, and a moment later, she was handing Remus a full glass of water. He drank eagerly.

"Did the recent attack on Hogsmeade change your Boggart?" she asked after Remus had finished. "I seem to remember it being a full moon."

"I… yeah." That was a good explanation. "Brought back bad memories. I keep expecting him to show up, especially since… well, the ten-year anniversary is coming up."

"I promise that he will not, Remus. Professor Dumbledore has been keeping close tabs on Hogwarts' surroundings since the invasion, and he assures me that Fenrir Greyback will not come anywhere near this school."

Remus gulped. "He still scares me."

"I know. Now, will you please take a Calming Draught?"

"No."

"All right." She did some quick wandwork on a cloth that had been sitting on Remus' bedside table, and then she handed it to Remus. "There's some lavender and warm water on this cloth. Put it on your forehead—or wherever else is comfortable—and try to take a nap. Do you want a potion to help you sleep?"

"Yes, please," murmured Remus.

Madam Pomfrey gave Remus the potion, and he slept.

He didn't wake up again until four in the afternoon—about an hour and a half until he was to go to the Shrieking Shack.

He heard Madam Pomfrey talking to his friends in the corridor. "I don't really want you coming to see him today," she said. "I'm fairly certain he's sleeping right now, and he needs it."

"What if he wakes up?"

"Then I still don't want you seeing him, Potter. He had a bit of a scare with a Boggart, and I think he needs to keep himself as calm as possible so that the full moon tonight isn't a bloodbath."

Remus grimaced. He wished Madam Pomfrey would choose less colorful words. Then, against his better judgement, he raised his fist to the wall and knocked.

"He's awake," said Peter triumphantly.

"Yes, he's awake, but you're not going to see him."

Remus took a deep breath, and then he called (knowing that nobody else was in the main ward at the time), "Please, Madam Pomfrey."

There was a pause. They'd heard him.

Madam Pomfrey released a long-suffering sigh. "Why do I even bother?" she said. "Go on in, then."

Remus' friends bounded into the room—usually, Remus would sit up at this point to greet them, because lying in bed felt embarrassing, somehow… but he simply didn't have the energy today, so he lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. "You seem to have a lot less energy than you did this morning," James commented.

"You're right," Remus mumbled. "Spent it all, I guess. Gonna let you do the talking."

His friends were all too happy to oblige, and eventually, their energy rubbed off on Remus, and he sat up and talked with them until Madam Pomfrey shooed them away.

There was a storm that night.

Remus sat, curled up in the armchair in the Shrieking Shack, listening to the rain pattering at the walls of the Shack. There was a large slat between the boards, but rainwater never came through. It was impenetrable, thanks to Dumbledore's powerful spells.

Lightning flashed, and the Shrieking Shack lit up, illuminating every object for half an instant. Remus closed his eyes tightly. His head hurt, and his eyes were burning.

A crack of thunder.

Suddenly, Remus got a feeling. It wasn't quite a memory, but it was akin to one—just a flash of deja vu; a sign that something was there to be grasped at. Remus tried to summon the feeling again so that he could sort through the minutiae surrounding the memory and pull it out of the recesses of his mind. There was nothing else to do, really. He'd given up on trying to read long ago.

"Flash," he whispered aloud, trying his hardest to call the memory to his attention. "Boom. Dark… something about a sofa… my parents."

It took a few tries. The feeling would come back every so often, in small sparks, like a flickering candle—but it never stayed long enough for Remus to identify the emotion and pair it to the memory that he knew was there.

But slowly, and then all at once, the memory returned.

It wasn't much of a memory, really. Just some faces and words, and a particular feeling of both fear and comfort. Remus remembered being very young and sitting on the sofa, and his parents had been sitting next to him. He'd jumped every time the thunder rang out, and it had made the Muggle electricity flicker.

Muggle electricity. Remus couldn't quite picture the layout of the house yet, but that narrowed it down slightly.

Remus remembered asking his parents—no, just his father. His mother was doing the dishes—if the thunder would make the house fall down. His father hadn't laughed at him. "It's possible," he'd said, or something along those lines.

That hadn't been very comforting, Remus remembered.

"Lyall!" Remus heard his mother say—actually heard it. He whirled around.

No one was there.

Was he hallucinating again? It certainly wasn't a Boggart.

He closed his eyes, opened them, and then he was actually there, in the body of a boy who was hardly more than a toddler, with his father sitting next to him on the couch. There was a window behind the couch, and Remus was sitting on his knees, hands placed on the back of the couch, so that he could observe the rain.

"Ah, sorry, Remus," said Remus' father, apparently flustered. "The house will be fine."

Remus stared at the rain and commented on the fact that it was, in fact, extremely loud.

"Well, there's always something I like to do when I'm afraid of things," said Remus' father cheerfully. "I like to count. I just take it one second at a time—one, two, three. Like that. If you count for long enough, then the scary thing will be over."

"Count?" Remus didn't know how to feel about that. "How will that help?"

"Think of it this way," said Remus' father. "Every moment is slipping by faster than you can imagine. Your brain isn't quick enough to keep up with it all, even. When something is scary, you need only remind yourself how finite moments are. They come, and they go. By counting, you're giving yourself something else to focus on, and you're reminding yourself that the moment will pass. Because it's not the moment that's painful—it's the fear. But when you take an item apart, all that's left is atoms, and then you can't even see the full picture anymore."

Remus and his father sat and counted, and then Remus opened his eyes.

That was funny. He hadn't been aware that they'd been closed.

The Shack began to twist before Remus' very eyes, and the thunder began to sound like growling. There were colours floating through the air—some purples, some greens, and some Gryffindor reds. Remus' thoughts seemed to echo throughout the Shack, almost like he was speaking them. He saw shapes out of the corners of his eyes, but whenever he looked, they were gone.

He was hallucinating.

It hardly ever happened, but it was always incredibly scary when it did, and it was rarely as bad as this. Remus had no idea what was real and what was not—he could only trust that he was safe in the Shack, that Madam Pomfrey would come to collect him in the morning, and that he was going to be fine (as fine as a teenage werewolf could be). The Shack was safe. He was safe. He was fine; safe from wandering, safe from harming anyone but himself. He couldn't escape if he tried, no matter how much the hallucinations fooled him.

He was dizzy, and fear stole into his heart. He wasn't sure which memories were his. For a split second, he forgot where he was, and he very nearly cried out for someone to rescue him.

This was the issue of being a werewolf. His brain was changing before he was, and in all the wrong ways. When it had fully transformed, he would see things clearly, but right now, he was in an in-between spot. Nothing was working right. He heard music, he saw people in the Shack—all sorts, just walking around—he heard his friends' voices, he heard Manard's cane, and he smelled candlewax and chrysanthemums. His head was reeling. His skin was burning. He didn't even know where he was sitting anymore.

There was a loud snap from behind him, and Remus turned around. Nothing was there. Then another, and then another, and then…

And then his brain caught up with his body, and the hallucinations were gone. The snaps had been his imagination, and so had the colors, and so had the fluctuating memory. Remus was on the floor, in the Shrieking Shack, and he was about to transform in about ten seconds.

He took a deep, shuddery breath as the last of the colors faded away—and then he counted.