3 ~ When the Moon is Full, I turn into a Monster

There are moments when bravery looks suspiciously like stupidity.

Sirius' POV:

     "And what if he refuses?"          "Then we do it like last you-know-what," explained Prongs to our dear Wormtail the plan for tonight, while we were heading to dinner. The three of us, since Moony had not been able to get out of his bed since yesterday. Today was full moon and Remus was still refusing to go into the Forbidden Forest with us.     "I think we should simply accompany him from the start, so that he is forced to accept our presence," I said and waited for the next moving staircase.     The Hogwarts staircase was unique. The magical stairs, the many paintings of witches and wizards on the walls. I was just watching a scene in an ancient library, in which a witch in a green cloak was conjuring books onto the shelf behind her, when the next stone staircase swung towards us and James said: "Yep, that's a better plan."     "I always have good plans."

Honestly, really.

     At this moment, however, I was hungry. We had had a wonderful seven hours of lessons today, on a Friday! Right after the holidays!     Luckily, the full moon fell on a Friday this time. After the night would be over, Moony lying in the Hospital Wing, we Marauders could slumber comfortably in our beds and sleep in on Saturday.           Not that I could compare my torments of tiredness with those of Remus, but let me. I was dramatic, after all.     "You don't always have good plans," corrected a treacherous Prongs. "Must I remind you of yesterday?"          I looked at him, with an unknowing expression. "What was yesterday?"     The light of the surroundings bathed James' face in a warm glow. His dark eyes behind his round glasses looked at me with a 'are-you-serious look', then he jogged my memory: "Detention, you got yourself detention; after you thought it clever to throw Lestrange next to McGonagall's classroom in the courtyard into the snow."          "That was really funny, you have to admit."     "I admit nothing!"          "You will," I added and thought smiling of yesterday. Sure, my day had been extended by two hours, in which I had written an essay in my Head of House's office about why one was not allowed to throw one's schoolmates into the snow, while attempting to sit on them; but please - Lestrange had deserved it.          She always deserved it.     That she had called me a miserable blood traitor beforehand, when a jinxed snowball had flown at her head, had been the trigger. But again: snow plus hateful people meant a Lestrange pressed into the snow.

Even if one received fifteen house points deducted for it, I thought back to yesterday without regret.

     "Lestrange only didn't get detention because she didn't fight back," I said, "she probably hoped McGonagall would see it."     Normally Elizabeth Lestrange would have thrown a curse at me, even if it were a harmless one like the dancing jinx, but not yesterday. She had let herself be pushed to the ground, resisting only slightly. Only a little more strongly, when I had pressed my knee against her stomach and shoveled snow into her face.     No one else had been in the courtyard. Lestrange had provoked me after Transfiguration, about I-don't-know-what, and only Peter and James had been at my side. I had forgotten about McGonagall.     "McGonagall saw it," James reminded me.          "What are you getting at?"     "That you don't always have the best plans."          I rolled my eyes, made a dismissive hand movement and ignored the laughing Gryffindor next to me. As it was Friday, we were all still wearing our uniforms, although I had already removed my tie. James wore his sweater vest and only Wormtail still looked properly dressed.     After two more staircases and a short walk we finally reached the Great Hall. Dinner had already begun. We found ourselves a place, then it was time to stuff our stomachs, have a small staring duel with Lestrange at the Slytherin table and plan full moon with my friends.

Night came quickly, after all.

     In the common room we sat together for a while longer, the fireplace casting flickering shadows onto the walls, while outside the wind struck against the old window shutters. We did homework together so as not to disturb Moony in the dormitory, then we played a few rounds of wizard chess until we finally set off.     It turned out that Remus had no energy to argue with us. Silently, like a walking corpse, he trudged beside us through the secret passages of Hogwarts, which were illuminated by the glow of our wands. We made it as far as the Whomping Willow, which swayed motionless in the wind.     From there our path led us onward - a short, yet unpleasantly cold walk of barely thirty minutes - first to the Shrieking Shack, where we opened the magically locked and boarded-up door, then out to the edge of Hogsmeade, where the first trees of the Forbidden Forest rose before us like silent guardians.     Although Remus complained that we were taking on such a long path, that it was a stupid idea, it had to be done; Moony would never have gone voluntarily into the Forbidden Forest in immediate proximity to Hogwarts.     Moonrise was late today, and so a clear, pitch-black sky stretched above our heads. But a werewolf only transformed under moonlight, and until that moment came, we had time to push deeper and deeper into the shadows of the forest.

But how does one choose a good spot?

     In the end, Remus chose a place, surrounded by trees standing close together, whose gnarled branches wove themselves into a protective roof of dark foliage. The ground beneath our feet was covered by a thin layer of snow and the air was so icy that every breath hurt.     Another problem remained: Remus did not want to transform in front of us. Telling him that we had already seen him twice as a werewolf and that as a fur-nose he actually looked quite cuddly achieved nothing - he moved away anyway, walked a few metres deeper into the forest.          Just not far enough.     Not far enough to drown out the terrible noises that followed, when the transformation broke over him - the cracking and breaking of his bones, the dull, torn howl that forced its way from his throat and made our hearts tighten. Every movement, every sound, was a blow against our own helplessness, not being able to free him from it.     We could only transform into our animagus forms, be glad that no mistake happened to us in the process, and roam through the forest together with Moony as a werewolf.     At first everything remained calm.

Yes, the first hours...

     The Forbidden Forest breathed in endless silence around us; the snow muffled every step, and between the old, moss-covered trees only shadows occasionally darted away. Remus seemed more peaceful this night than during the last full moon. He sniffed through the undergrowth, ran a few leaps here and there, his shaggy fur stirring up the snow, and sometimes he lifted his snout into the air.     It was almost peaceful, until fate had to remind us that we were idiots who deserved to be punished for secretly learning the animagus spell and wandering through a Forbidden, yes, forbidden Forest with our friend.          A howl cut through the silence.     A single wolf, nothing unusual in this area, yet Moony halted.     As a dog I had just been jumping with him over several tree trunks. For a few seconds I heard only my panting, until another howl sounded.     Remus' ears twitched, his posture tensed, and when the howl was suddenly answered by several wolf voices, we knew that something was wrong.

We had chosen the wrong area in the forest, probably a territory belonging to an unfriendly wolf family.

     I exchanged a glance with James as a stag. Peter squeaked at Moony, hoping to distract the werewolf, but it was useless.     Prongs and I tried to hold Moony back, threw ourselves into his path. I barked, growled, cut off his direction, but the instinct within him was stronger.          The call of the other wolves seemed like a challenge to him. One he had to answer.     Prongs and I tried once more to lure Remus in the other direction, but when another howl echoed through the forest, the werewolf lost control.     In that moment I felt like an idiot for the first time, a dog trying to stand up against an even bigger dog.     Remus lunged at us for the first time; James received a blow to the side. Not a severe injury, but serious enough that Moony would never again go into the forest with us after tonight.     The next deep howl drew one of his own from Remus, then he stormed off.     We followed him, at least we tried.          In the chaos we lost Peter.     James had tried to take him along, but after a particularly hilly stretch, he lost his grip on the antlers as a rat. When I glanced back briefly, I saw only how he vanished between tree roots. James tried to locate him, but we had no choice: We had to follow Moony.

A werewolf who wanted to hunt a pack of wolves alone.

     The night grew older, the forest tighter.          In my shaggy, black dog form I chased after Moony. The forest floor was frozen, covered in snow, yet I barely felt anything - I ran, jumped, slipped between bare trunks, while the wind roared in my ears.     Prongs ran beside me as a stag, breathing heavily. Still we kept running, running after the werewolf, deeper into the Forbidden Forest. To where the forest grew even older, where things lived that no human had ever encountered.

This night will not end well.

     When Remus stopped for the first time, sniffing around the area, I felt as if my lungs were burning. Every breath hurt, every muscle felt torn.     The stag beside me shared my exhaustion. I did not know how long we still had until the end of the full moon, but it could not be hours anymore. That I had already lost my sense of direction and that finding Peter again as well as the path back to the castle would be a torment, I did not want to think about.          What mattered was that Moony did not find the wolves.     I watched him as he looked around before us. When my gaze met his, a shiver ran down my spine and made the fur on my neck stand up. Remus looked directly into my eyes, behind his eyes only animal, nothing human.     The moon wrapped the trees in pale light, making everything seem like a bad dream. The werewolf towered before me like a dark rock - a very pleasant and delightful feeling, with sarcasm speaking through me and I stepped back a few paces.     His snout sniffed searching into the air. I realised that he was searching for the trail of the wolves. A trail that not even I, even with my sensitive nose, could perceive.

Please, Remus, do not find the trail, I pleaded inwardly.My prayer went unheard.

     At exactly that moment the wolf that troubled Remus the most had to decide to let out the longest howl so far. I knew that this deep howl always came from one and the same wolf, since it was the loudest and deepest.     We stood still, the snow-covered forest held its breath. My heart beat too fast, I counted the beats, tried to recognise something in the darkness.     The other wolves joined in the howling. They were closer than before, much closer than before.     Remus' head jerked around, the hairy ears pricked.          Before I could blink once more, he howled as well.     I had never heard Remus howl before, at least not like this. In the Shrieking Shack his howling had been mixed with growling, during the last full moon in the forest he had not howled at all.     This howl sounded like an answer, a call. As if Remus understood exactly what the wolves wanted and was speaking back.     When his howl faded, he shot into the thicket.

Why, Merlin?

     I was certainly no perfect human, but why did fate always have to make things even worse?     Running after a rampaging werewolf as unregistered animagi, somewhere between a school and a village, was already stupid enough, yet it still had to get worse.     I sighed inwardly, exchanged a quick glance with James.          The stag nodded.     And we kept running.

     Deeper and deeper into the forest. Remus stopped occasionally to pick up the trail again. It had to be nearing the end of the full moon, yet it was still too early for relief.     I jumped over a tall root, ran past a giant of a tree and followed Moony through the snow-covered, misty forest, until it finally thinned out, cliché-like, as if someone were pulling a curtain aside.     On a half-open clearing, in the full light of the moon, Remus had come to a halt.          His posture was tense, watchful.     Opposite him dense thicket and a wall of trees towering into the sky.     Prongs and I approached slowly, placing hooves and paws carefully onto the frozen ground. Just behind Moony we stopped. He did not seem to notice us.     His gaze clung to the darkness beyond the clearing - there, where the moon did not reach, where even the shadows seemed afraid.     Without truly knowing what we were waiting for, I somehow knew that the bushes would begin to rustle, the thicket would stir Dark bushes trembled and snow swirled like fine dust, while a chorus of splintering branches made the forest quake.     And then the inevitable happened, only that the image that followed surprised me.     I had expected wolves, truly.          But not what stepped out of the blackness:

A second werewolf.

...*...*...*...*...*...*...*...

Very short note:

I know that my placement of the Shrieking Shack and the proximity to the Forbidden Forest might be wrong, but I did it that way back then and it runs through the entire FF. Also, films, books and games of Harry Potter have never managed to give us a consistent map.So in my version it is like this :)

And now have fun with the next chapter, muhaha!

Here are cookies to nibble on:

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