A/N: WARNING: This story is the first of three in a series following Remus from Hogwarts to the end of the Second Wizarding War. This story can be taken as a standalone, but please note that the tone and plot shift drastically throughout the series.

This is my first story - something I've been mulling over in my head for a long time. I think Remus Lupin is such a compelling character. I've rated this M for later chapters, but please do let me know what you think. I'm good with constructive criticism! Thanks for reading!

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling is a genius, and all of the characters in my story are rightfully hers.

Revised and edited as of 9/28/14.

Chapter 1: Of First Impressions, Wolves, and Men

Our story did not begin with an inexplicable heat or an immediate connection like they so often show in Muggle films, and it rarely evolved into anything involving grand gestures or frenzied passion. It was built slowly upon warm words, quiet touches and stolen glances, like trickling mounds of sand, reaching out and up slowly as the years came and went.

I first saw Remus Lupin on Platform 9¾ while waiting for the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of our First Year. He was standing with his parents, who both seemed to dote on him incessantly. He had light hair and eyes, and his smile was much gentler than I'd seen or expected in the other boys of our age. He was as small and thin as I was, and he wore an expression that seemed much too old for someone so young. I suppose the fact that I noticed him at all was notable, but I quickly forgot him amidst the flurries of goodbyes from my parents and eventually found myself in a car with two other boys who would one day call themselves "Marauders."

I knew James Potter before I even knew myself. He was my best friend, the brother my father had always wanted for me. Our fathers spent their Hogwarts years together and considered each other brothers, and thus, so we came to consider each other. From crawling around on our bellies to falling out of every tree we could climb, James Potter and I spent our nursery years seeking mischief at any chance available in one or the other's yard, much to our fathers' amusement and our mothers' chagrin. What we lacked in siblings, we found in each other, and as I think back to my childhood even now, his presence is a constant light.

We met Sirius Black on the Hogwarts Express, and although he and James immediately connected, I approached him with caution. Even at 11 years old, I had heard enough of the dark pureblood fanaticism rampant amongst the older families to be wary of names like Black and Malfoy. He had elegant features, for which the Black lineage was notorious, and his arrogant demeanor was enough to set me on edge. His placement into Gryffindor had been a surprise to all of us - even him - but as the years came and went, it became obvious that he was the bravest of us all.

Unlike Sirius, Remus did not have the same fine features that came with aristocratic upbringings, but there was an air of dignity and kindness in his face that drew me to him. James and Sirius quickly adopted Remus into their clan [and then Peter, too, eventually], and I felt envious of their quick attachment to each other, for we were at that age when boys and girls were so easily segregated. In the silence of my sleepless nights in the girls' dormitories, I would secretly wish that I had been born a boy so that I could be part of their band of brothers. Years after, I asked James why he and Sirius felt so drawn to Remus when he was so starkly different from the two of them. He simply shrugged and said, "There was just something good about him."

I didn't pay much attention to his person our First Year, though I would eye him jealously, wishing I could be in his place, especially as my fellow female peers began to discover the appeal of boys and all that came with them. But because of my scrutiny, I quickly discovered the patterns in Remus' "illness," and by the beginning of our Third Year, I had deduced what he truly was.

When I realized that Remus Lupin was a werewolf in those quiet moments in the library, I felt an electricity – a thrill – like I'd never anticipated. It was something that only he and I shared – even if he didn't know it - and the knowledge that I alone knew his deepest secret shot a flare of triumphant heat through me that I'd never felt before. I had to fight the urge to confront him, to make him know that I knew what he was. For weeks, I wrestled with the impulse to tell him, but when I saw him sitting in the Great Hall with James and Sirius, he looked so much older, so different from how I'd seen him before. Every month, he seemed to have a new scar. Every cycle, there was a new shadow, and suddenly, they seemed so much more appealing to me, pulling at the deepest strings of my heart. He always looked so grateful - surprised - to be included in this pair's world that I slowly began to feel that perhaps he and I were not so different. I suddenly wanted to know him, to understand how he'd come to be this way, and I was shocked to find that I wanted to feel that kind gaze upon me as well.

So even though his condition certainly never defined him in my mind, it was the factor that truly made me see him for the first time. And even though I can never say that I'm glad for his affliction - for it hurt me countless times and in more ways than I could have ever imagined then - I can't ever truthfully say that I completely hated it; for if he'd never suffered from the wolf inside of him, I might never have seen him for the man that he was, and that would truly be a shame.