****

"Where is James?"

Across the room, Sirius turned from the window and let the
curtain fall.  A thin gleam of sunset sneaked through the
cracks at the borders of the curtains, casting orange and
red stripes on what was otherwise a rather dingy floor.
Dingy with a healthy layer of dust, Remus thought.  It
surprised him how much dirt the house could accumulate in a
month.

"Downstairs, with Peter," Sirius said.  "He wouldn't be
able to navigate the stairs."

Remus nodded, even as Sirius' words tightened his throat.
"You should go back to the castle.  All of you."

Sirius crossed the room, looking around the bare wooden
walls as if wishing for a place to sit.  "Don't be an ass,
Remus.  We've been working on this for three years."

"I could kill you, you know."

Sirius gave him a look, frowned, and then laughed.  "I
don't think there's a time and place that James and I
couldn't handle you."  He crouched down to the floor and
leaned against the wall adjacent to the window.  "You're
not going to kill us."  He craned his neck, peering up to
the ceiling and resting the back of his head on the dark
wooden planks of the wall.

Remus shook his head, worry and a measure of fear pushing
the words out.  "You don't know as much as you think you
do."

Sirius looked at him, surprised.  "Of course I do."  He
grinned and tapped his fingers against the side of his
robe.  "You really are being an ass, Lupin.  Don't you
trust us?"

That was unfair, Remus thought.  Instead of answering, he
crossed to where Sirius had been standing at the window
moments ago and parted the curtain.  The sun was
disappearing behind the rim of trees that flanked the
house; the trees were black, made blind by the fading light
beyond them.

It wasn't that he didn't appreciate the gesture.  When
James first suggested it three years ago, he'd been
flattered, and a bit overwhelmed.  Overwhelmed that his
friends would do that, that he *had* friends who would do
that.  Until Hogwarts, the secret had been too deep, too
much a part of himself to share with others; deep and dark
and dangerous.

And he did trust them: with his secret, their ability
to change and hold the change at crucial moments.  He'd
seen them practice the transformations, over and over
again, until he'd been awed by the thought that something
that took so much work, so much power and control, he did
so naturally.  And that, he thought, was what made it
unnatural.

"How much longer?" Sirius asked him from the floor.

Remus peered through the glass, into the darkest of night
before the moon rose.  "A few minutes, maybe."

Sirius stood up and pulled his robe over his head,
beginning to unbutton his shirt.  "I can't manage the
clothes yet," he said, almost apologetic as Remus gave him
a questioning look.  "James can, and even Peter, but I
haven't gotten the knack of it.  How do you do it?"

Remus shrugged and turned away, listening to the whisper of
cloth falling discarded to the floor behind him.  "I don't
know."

"No, of course not," and now Sirius sounded embarrassed.
Remus imagined him there: awkward with the blunder,
momentarily displaced from the self-confident and always
composed Sirius that he knew.  He was about to turn from
the window, to tell him not to worry about it, when he felt
a familiar tug through his veins, as if his bones were
melting into blood and skin, formed and deformed outside of
all natural processes.

"Sirius," he said in sudden panic, and then the change
was on him.

****

The stag was ahead, its hooves skimming lightly over moon-
washed grass.  There was something clutched to its back, a
small, dark form, but his wolf eyes couldn't make it out.
It seemed natural to follow them through the clearing to
the press of trees in the distance.  The freedom was
exhilarating.  It was as if everything was new: the
running, the absence of walls, the rush of cold air that
blurred his eyes.  The ground was damp and cold on the pads
of his feet as he ran.

A different scent than the deer's drifted into awareness;
different and familiar, and desirable; he swerved suddenly
to catch it as it snaked, elusive, in and out of his
senses.  To his right there was a cluster of lights.
Noises, heat, and the scent was stronger.  Blood rushed and
flamed; he swerved again, away from the trees and the stag,
now in the distance.  What he wanted was in the other
direction.

He checked as the way was suddenly blocked.  The lights
were close, and the humans--the word inserted itself into
his thoughts as if by some other consciousness, but it was
enough to tighten his jaw, to dig claws into the earth.  He
changed course, looking for a way around the thing that
paced him and tried to force him back to the line of trees.
A feint to the left earned him a growl; he shook his head
in frustration and sought to outrun what was beside him, to
circle back.

He hardly felt the ground he stretched out, running full-
out now; even then, it kept pace with him.  The trees were
rushing close and then they were among them.  He slowed to
navigate, jumping lightly over a pile of brush, feeling the
burn of tree bark as he passed too closely.  It was still
there, running alongside him.  Not a wolf, but something
familiar.

The scent was fading as earth and aged trees took its
place.  He stopped, rearing back on his hind legs.  The
other one stopped as well, circling back to face him.  He
growled lightly, a warning with teeth.

He leaned back, ready to whirl and sprint back the way
they'd come.  It was quicker.  Before he sensed the
movement, he felt the sear of teeth digging into his neck
through fur and skin.  The pain was fierce, and he stumbled
with the force of it.  Blood trickled and fell lightly to
the leaves around him as he shook his head to clear the
pain.  In front of him, it shone on bared, white teeth.

Then he was up and running again, not back but deeper into
the woods as the dog loped behind him, driving him.

****

He smelled water.

The dog beside him growled once as he veered slightly to
intercept the scent, but then subsided.  For hours it had
shadowed him, sometimes close enough to feel the heat
filtering from its body, and sometimes further off on the
edges of his perception.  It was close to him now as they
slowed to a trot, the forest thick and dark.  He reached
out and bit it lightly on its jaw; it yelped and shied
away, then returned a moment later.

The stag had rejoined them, and the small shape still
clinging to its back.  A strange pack, the wolf thought,
but somehow familiar.

The water was close.  They cleared a small cluster of stone
and followed the scent down through a maze of roots and
eroded earth.  The stream glowed silver with the force of
the moon as they drank, the dog standing shoulder to
shoulder with him.  It was larger by a hand's breadth, and
shone black.

There was a rustle across the way and he looked up, alert,
water dripping from his jaw.  On the other side of the
stream a unicorn had stopped to drink.  He stood still in
the water and watched it, frozen.

The dog looked up as well, to the unicorn, then to him, but
he paid it no attention.

Something swelled inside his wolf's body that broke and
regained force like a pulse.  The unicorn was silver, like
the water slipping over his paws, and the moon.  He had no
scent for beauty, and he howled with it.

The dog laid down at his feet and waited, its head resting
on its paws.  The trees echoed, but moon was silent as he
howled.  After a while, the unicorn faded back into the
trees, its thirst quenched.

****

Remus woke with his head pillowed in black fur.  For a
moment he could not recall where he was.  The dull wooden
boards of the house.  Footprints in the dust of the floor,
and pawprints as well.  His chest tightened and he felt a
familiar wash of misery, a tinge of self-loathing.  He knew
it was ridiculous, but he couldn't help but hope, each
time, that the change hadn't come.  That he had paid
whatever dues thought to be owed, that the moon's light had
passed him by.

"Remus," he heard, and, startled, he sat up.  Sirius had
changed back without him noticing the shift from fur to
skin.  His arms were pale against the floorboards.  He sat
up as well, wincing a little.  "That was...."

Remus could see that, for once, Sirius had lost his knack
for words.  He nodded, but the misery closed his throat to
speech.  He leaned over to where Sirius' robe lay in a
rumpled heap, and handed it back to him.

Sirius held the robe but didn't put it on.  He caught
Remus' eyes.  "That was amazing," he said.

Remus thought back.  The night was a blur.  But his muscles
ached like they never had before during his monthly visits
here.  He reached up to finger his throat.  There was a
small tear there, and he could feel crusted blood.  It was
tender to the touch.

"It was...different," he said.

Sirius caught his arm as he would have stood up.  "But it
was better?"

Remus let his hand drop.  The misery was still there, but
alongside it a strange, unfamiliar feeling pushed through.
He tried to discover its source, and as he heard the
clatter of footsteps on the stairs, he realized.  He had
always before woken up here alone.

James burst through the doorway, followed quickly by Peter.
"Remus!" he said, his face slightly flushed and his hair
its usual dishevelment, though now, at least, he had an
excuse for it.  "That was...."

A grin slowly tugging at the corner of his mouth, Remus
stood up.  He could hear Sirius getting dressed behind him.

It wasn't until later, until James, still flushed and reeling
with what they'd accomplished, had led them through the
tunnel to the Whomping Willow, that he was able to pull
Sirius away from the others.

Sirius looked at him, his eyebrow curved in question.

"Yes," Remus told him.  "It was better."

END

****
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means
what you think it means."
    - The Princess Bride