Phase II: A Full Moon

~A time for shadows to be exposed and truth to be illuminated, when there is promise, clarity...and perhaps even acceptance~

It had only been a matter of time.

Remus had known this since the beginning, yet here he was, cowering in a corner of the library as though he could hide from it forever.

He wondered, not for the first time, if the Sorting Hat hadn't made a huge mistake. Gryffindors didn't hide. They faced their fears, their problems, and just about everything else that life threw at them without cringing. And most of them were brave (or crazy) enough to do it with a smile too. Sirius and James had proven that time and time again, and Peter had, too, if in quiet and unassuming, but nonetheless powerful, ways.

Remus, on the other hand...Only a coward would wait for the inevitable, instead of rising to meet it on his own terms.

But he couldn't. He couldn't face them. He couldn't face his own mates.

The mere thought of stepping outside of his little alcove filled him with a fear so petrifying he was going to risk Madam Lowry's wrath and stow away in the library overnight. If she didn't catch him before closing hours, that is. Though she downright spoiled O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. students, she did have a strangely masterful ability to locate and evict younger students from her domain, so Remus highly doubted his plan would succeed, and that—that meant…He could sleep in the corridor? Surely there was a quiet nook somewhere.

Either way. He wouldn't return to the Tower tonight, or any other night, regardless of whether his mates found him or not. He probably wouldn't be at Hogwarts for much longer, anyway.

Because there was no way they didn't know. They were too clever by half—far, far too clever—and that's not to mention they were also far too observant, obstinate, and protective. And they were, perhaps (though James and Sirius would positively cringe to hear him say it), the teensiest bit overbearing.

Some would add nosy to the list. Remus didn't belong to that collective "some," of course.

(That was sarcasm. At its finest.)

The first full moon of their second year, Remus had been somewhat lucky. It had fallen on the third of September, just days after everyone arrived back at Hogwarts. The ride to Hogwarts had been nowhere near as pleasant as the previous year's. It had been so bad, in fact, he'd almost wished he'd taken up his parents' offer to arrange a different mode of transportation for him. McGonagall had even gone so far as to appeal to Dumbledore to formally excuse him from the first week of school, but he had been insistent he join everyone else on the train.

His friends had been concerned by his listlessness, but aside from asking if he was alright and pestering him with offers to get him food from the trolley, they hadn't pushed him for information. When it had become far too obvious he was unable to stomach the loud celebrations and the rich aromas of the Feast, they had actually helped him to the Hospital Wing the very same night. No excuses necessary.

Madam Pomfrey had made a fuss over it all, and that month's transformation hadn't been the prettiest.

He had been thoroughly convinced they'd figure it out then, but when he had returned to class on September 6th, trembling and incapable of speaking beyond a stutter, they hadn't asked him a thing—not about the days he missed, not about the limp he had, not about any of it. They'd offered him notes and joked around as though nothing had happened.

Remus hadn't liked it one bit. For all that he was relieved they didn't seem to know, their behavior ended up making him more nervous and paranoid. Suspicious, even.

Sirius hadn't been able to keep up a façade of "normalcy" for longer than the day. The moment they were back in the privacy of their dormitory, he had confronted Remus about the complex knot of lies he'd told over the course of their first year.

It was then—when the knot was untangled and all three of them were so obviously disappointed in him—that Remus had decided he couldn't, wouldn't do it anymore.

"No more lies," Remus had told them in a quavering, nearly nonexistent voice. "No more."

"Promise?" Sirius had asked.

"Promise."

At which point, Sirius had demanded to know what was going on, only for Remus to swallow his tongue and fidget in terrified silence as the three of them had stared him down, waiting for a response he wouldn't give easily.

No one had been willing to break the silence. Peter had been nearly as fidgety as Remus, but Sirius and James had obviously been testing Remus' resolve. Remus, for his part, had just wanted it to end.

Surprisingly, it had been James who'd broken the extended silence. With a nod, he had turned to the other two and said, "At least he's not lying."

Remus had gone to bed that night with a stinging heart.

Somehow, that had been the end of it. Well, almost the end of it. He had been able to feel their curious, pitying, and concerned gazes on him for the rest of the month, during which his motivation for schoolwork took a turn for the worse and his smiles were few and far between.

If the others had noticed his distance and diminished attention span, they hadn't given a sign, but Remus hadn't been fooled. He knew how they operated. He knew that they had been doing their utmost to keep him in the dark. It was simple diversion. They knew he didn't want them to know what was going on, so they pretended they didn't want to know. The idea had been to lead him into a sense of false security.

When he wasn't looking, though, they had been trying to fit the puzzle pieces together. Researching. Cataloguing. Observing. Like he was some sort of endangered zoo animal.

His anxious behavior and dropping grades, paired with the symptoms he'd displayed over the last year, had given them plenty to speculate about, he was sure. It should have angered him, that they were treating him like this, that they were so close to ruining something he treasured above all else, but…

Even now, when everything was about to fall apart, he couldn't. He couldn't be angry with them. They didn't deserve that. He was the one who had lied and abused their trust, and he was the one who deserved whatever was coming.

So he prepared. During the rest of September, Remus had begun internalizing every last cruel and derogatory thing he'd heard thrown his way since he'd been four years old. He had tried to build a wall around his heart, a defense of apathy and acceptance…so maybe it wouldn't hurt so much when his mates took the battering ram to their friendship and cut him from their lives like a malignant tumor.

…Merlin's beard.

His forehead hit the book lying in front of him. He was going to be sick. He really was going to be sick all over, and he'd lose any chance to escape Madam Lowry when she closed the library for the night.

He inhaled deeply, hoping the scent of worn parchment and old ink would calm him. It did, if only marginally, and after a few more deep breaths, he rolled his face out of the nameless book to check the magical grandfather clock nearby.

He had been released from Madam Pomfrey's care just under three hours ago. Three hours had passed. The library closed in an hour. He hadn't done a single iota of work while recovering from October's moon, which had been just as, if not worse, than September's, and tomorrow was Wednesday. Or Thursday? He couldn't quite remember, but he knew he had class tomorrow. Bloody hell, second-year Gryffindors had Potions on Wednesdays. When was that Sleeping Draught practical again? Did he miss it?

Had three hours really passed?

They should have found him by now. Where were they?

The moment the thought crossed his mind, Remus knew he was fooling himself. It wasn't as though his entrance into the library hadn't been noticed. Several fellow second-years had greeted him—remarked they missed seeing him in class, even—and word traveled fast at Hogwarts, if one merely asked the right questions. James, Peter, and Sirius were probably searching for him right now.

The awful thing of it was: he realized a part of him wanted them to find him, just so he could finally be relieved of this awful anticipation. He wasn't sure what to make of that. It probably made him seem more like the cowardly lion of Gryffindor than he thought.

The seconds ticked by, and Remus was profoundly aware of that hand tick-ticking away on the floating grandfather clock. He counted each and every tick, and as everything else fell away,the words of his book blurred and shifted before his eyes.

He hadn't meant to fall asleep on top of the book he was meant to be reading…or rather, pretending to be reading. The transformation took its toll at the best of times, so it was unsurprising, really, especially when his body was also recovering from the extensive healing magic it had been subjected to.

What was surprising was that he wasn't rudely jolted awake by a crazy old witch who wanted to lock the library up for the night. No, he awoke to soft whispering, a gentle call of his name, and an even gentler shake on the shoulder.

Groaning, he lifted his head from the crook of his elbow. The glow from the lantern above his table was low and dim, so he didn't quite register several someones hovering just beyond the circle of light until a second book was placed on the table…and slid toward him.

Confused and half-asleep, Remus didn't think to question it. He pushed his own book away and drew the offered one forward, only to see…

His fingers froze on the illustration. He didn't move them, not even when the wolf pictured there ferociously leapt within the confines of the page to attack the places where his fingertips touched. Its long fangs flashed and snapped, dripping with long strands of saliva.

"It—it makes sense," someone whispered.

Stomach rolling and heart constricting, Remus took a deep, shuddering breath and tore his gaze away from the book.

His mates were there, pulling James' Invisibility Cloak from their shoulders and watching his reaction with cautious faces. They…they were…

They knew.

There was no air in his lungs, and his mind was blank. For all the worrying and "preparing" he'd done, nothing—absolutely nothing—could have helped him recover from reality's blow. He couldn't move, though he desperately wanted to flinch away from them. Close the book, at the very least. Surely he could save what remained of his dignity by closing the—

"What…Remus, what happened to your face?" Sirius asked suddenly.

Remus stared at Sirius, whose carefully composed expression crumbled, his eyebrows furrowing and lips pursing in concern as his gaze raked Remus' hairline.

…Concern?

James and Peter followed Sirius' gaze, and they, too, traced the nasty cut and yellowing bruises on his forehead with empathetic eyes.

What…?

Not understanding what was going on, Remus laughed, a dark bark of sound that had no business escaping his mouth. "That's...that's…"

That's what he asks? That's the first thing he asks?

He couldn't quite finish his thought aloud, and he felt almost giddy with disbelief and fear. "Stairs," he answered.

James' eyes narrowed. "I thought you said—"

"No more lies," Peter finished, his voice no louder than a whisper.

He'd obviously used a stairs excuse before. A weird smile flitted at the corners of his lips, and the sarcastic response rolled off his tongue before he could stop himself. "Not lying this time. My face met some stairs. The stairs won."

They blinked at him, looking lost and a bit perturbed, and Remus suddenly couldn't look at them. The illustration writhed beneath his fingers, and his dark humor fled. These three boys held his reputation, his life, and what little future he had in their hands. He was completely within their power. In the eyes of the law, he wasn't truly a wizard. He had no rights, and he was beneath them. He was technically the Ministry's problem to deal with, and last he heard, the Ministry had unofficially reclassified werewolves as "Beasts." Again.

Beast or Being aside, there was always the stigma, the hatred, and the disgust. There was prejudice and fear and every foul and dirty thing in between.

And growing up in magical families, these three had never known anything different.

Forget getting thrown out of Hogwarts. He could easily be thrown into Azkaban. His father and Dumbledore, too, for harboring an unregistered werewolf.

Perhaps it wasn't the best idea to be bitter or cheeky now.

"I—I mean…" Remus stuttered, swallowing hard. Panic threatened to seize his throat in its clawed hand. "I am not lying," he ended up whispering. "Not this time."

"Didn't…Couldn't Pomfrey…?" Peter tried to ask.

Remus shook his head, his throat dry. He was going to try to respond, but James did instead. "Healing magic can only do so much, right?" he asked rhetorically. His tone was methodical, emotionless, and his hazel eyes scanned Remus' face carefully. "And…most of it probably went toward healing…toward the…"

"Cursed wounds," Sirius murmured. He struggled to say it, nearly choking the two words out.

Remus' mind locked down, shame coloring his cheeks, and he stared with unseeing eyes at his mates. Mates, no longer.

"So it's true?" James breathed.

Something in their expressions changed as they waited for his response. There was a fire, a purpose. They didn't so look lost, confused, or uncertain anymore, but Remus couldn't mistake stirrings of what must have been rage and disgust.

He couldn't answer them. And that was answer enough for them.

Heartbroken and horrified, Peter had obviously been hoping he'd deny it. His expression fell at the same time James' cleared of all emotion, though it was obvious a storm was raging within. Sirius always did wear his heart on his sleeve, and Remus found it incredibly hard to look him in the eye when there was no mistaking the flurry of disgust, fury, despair, and pity flashing across his face.

"R—Remus…" Peter began.

"Why—what are you doing here?" Remus interrupted, his voice tiny and trembling.

It was suddenly imperative he knew. He knew they would confront him, but with the truth was at his very fingertips, in plain sight, Remus didn't understand. They hadn't flown into a frenzy of accusations. They weren't screaming filthy names at him or cringing when he so much as moved. They weren't threatening to break his wand or turn him in to Dumbledore or the Ministry, whose Werewolf Registry would be quite interested to find a werewolf illegally attending Hogwarts, fraternizing with "normal" students and endangering them with his mere presence.

But they were here.

And his fate was in their hands.

Sirius looked around, brows rising. Some humor returned to his eyes. "Well, it's the library, mate, and as students who have access to this fine establishment—"

"No, no," Remus pressed. "Why…why are you here? Why…?"

"Remus," Peter hushed gently. His voice was shaking, too, no matter how he tried to hide it. "It's—it's alri—"

"Nothing," Remus said, watching the wolf pace its page, "about this is alright. Nothing."

"Remus…"

He closed his eyes. "I'm a werewolf."

For some unfathomable reason, he was the one to say it aloud first. It went against every instinct, every learned fear, and everything his father and society had taught him. Even though he felt as though he were going to throw up again, it was…

Liberating. Terrifyingly liberating. No matter what happened next, at least he could have this for himself.

In a voice no louder than a whisper, he added, "And I lied to you."

It felt far less liberating and far more terrifying as the silence stretched on, no one willing, or able, to respond to Remus's damning confession.

A hand dropped onto his shoulder. Remus cringed under the touch, half-expecting a wand to come up to his jugular. When no wand appeared and he realized the hand wasn't there to grab him by the scruff of the neck, he looked up to find Sirius, who offered him a faint smile.

"It makes sense," he repeated. Slipping his hand from Remus' shoulder, he scanned the area around them. "We shouldn't do this here."

James, following his friend's train of thought, nodded. "Bad move on our part, mates. C'mon." Shaking out the Invisibility Cloak and holding it above his head in an open invitation, he said to Remus, "Let's go."

Remus didn't move. "Where—where are you…?" Remus stumbled over the words before realization struck him. Whatever courage the cowardly lion in him had mustered disappeared, and he bowed his head. Pleas began spewing from him like pus from a squeezed bubotuber. "Please. Please, I…I'll pack. I'll leave the dormitory. But no one can know. Please. I know that's a lot to ask. It's more than I deserve, but I just…I need to stay at Hogwarts. If—if not Hogwarts, then…Please, it's—It's my only—"

"Remus!" Sirius interrupted. He looked shocked by Remus' outburst. Scared, even. "Remus, calm down. What are you on about?"

"Breathe, mate," James said. Without looking to the others for advice or help, James pulled out a chair at the table and sat across from Remus. He met and held Remus' gaze steadily. "It's alright," he reassured. "Maybe we can do this here. Lowry's…occupied. You chose the most secluded part of the library, no one else is here, and we have time. We're not going anywhere. No one's packing. And no one's going to walk out of here until we've talked."

"Talked?" Remus repeated numbly.

Sirius sat next to James, and Peter followed. "Talked," the smaller boy reaffirmed.

The word echoed in his ears, hollow and unreal. "You want to talk," Remus said distantly, "to a werewolf."

James and Sirius exchanged a glance. "There're two things wrong with this right now," Sirius said. "One: you need to stop calling yourself that."

A lump formed in Remus' throat, tears pressing at the backs of his eyes, and for some reason, he recalled the first day they met on the train. James and Peter had tried to convince Sirius he was something—and someone—else, too. Someone he didn't believe he was or could be. And they had been right.

Remus almost wished they could be right about him too.

"Not saying it isn't going to change anything," Remus muttered. "I'm…I am what I am. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I lied. I'm a foul excuse for a—"

"Y—you need to stop talking about yourself like that!" Peter interrupted. When the other three turned to stare at him, he dropped his gaze meekly. "That's what Sirius meant. That—that's what we mean."

"Black's just doing a shoddy job of saying it," James agreed.

Remus didn't comprehend what they were saying either way. Surely…Surely…Remus felt as though he head-butted the Shrieking Shack staircase all over again.

They might know what he was, but they didn't understand. They saw the picture, still resting under Remus's palm, and they didn't truly process it. They didn't realize that he and that slavering beast were one and the same. "But—" he began to protest.

"Oi, no 'but's," Sirius said. "I couldn't care less about your 'but's right now."

That elicited a snort from James, and Sirius rolled his eyes. "Oh, grow up," he told James before turning to Remus again. "I haven't gotten to point number two yet."

"And what's that?" Remus whispered.

"We don't want to talk to just any werewolf. We want to talk to this one."

"Why?"

Scandalized, James scoffed, "Why?" When Remus flinched at his harsh tone, his hazel eyes softened. "Remus. Remus, mate, look at me. We've been living with you for a year. We spent a good bit of the summer together."

"And we—we've been mates since the proverbial Day One," Peter chimed in quietly.

"Didn't realize you knew a word as complicated as 'proverbial,' Pete," James said. "Much less how to use it correctly. Nice job."

Sirius ignored James and Peter's dialogue. "Did you seriously think," he said, a lopsided grin working its way onto his face, "that just because you…go a little moony once a month—"

"Moony?" Remus asked, almost startled into laughing despite himself.

"I was going to call it his 'furry little problem,'" James mused.

Sirius looked like he was going to begin teasing James for coming up with so ludicrous a euphemism, but Remus knew the conversation would be horribly derailed if they did. Peter seemed to know that as well, for he completed Sirius' thought for him.

"D—did you think we weren't going to care about you anymore, Remus?" he asked, blue eyes shining.

"It's…it's more than me going moony every month," Remus started slowly, trying to remember that they didn't understand…they didn't mean it. He couldn't afford to hold hope that everything would be okay. Because it wouldn't. "It's more than a little problem."

Sirius and James had the grace to look sheepish, and spurred on by their attentive gazes, Remus was finally able to make his fingers respond to his will. He shoved the book back at the three of them, pointedly forcing them to look at the werewolf there. "This is what I am," he murmured. "Once a month, I lose my mind, and there's nothing I can do about it. There's no controlling it. Nothing helps. Nothing worked. Nothing…And we've tried everything…we've tried and tried…"

Remus trailed off, unable to put to words just how many sacrifices his family had made for him in their search for a 'cure.' Words were too simple. Everything he couldn't say was perfectly explained by the complexity of the silence that followed.

James was the first to speak, eyes trained on the picture. "How long?"

"I…wasn't even five years old," Remus murmured, unconsciously slipping his fingers to his left shoulder, where the scar wrapped around to his upper back.

"I'm sorry," Sirius said, hardly sounding sorry at all. His words bit and stung, and when Remus sensed those furious grey eyes on his shoulder, he withdrew his hand as though it had been pricked by a Shrake spine. "Did you just say five years old?"

Remus knew the statistics. The mortality rate for such a bite at that age was high, to say the least. He knew he was lucky to have survived, lucky to have so powerful a wizard for a father and so selfless a Muggle for a mother. Otherwise…

"Bloody hell," Sirius cursed, cold fury leaking from every pore. His entire form quaked, and Peter stopped gaping at Remus when Sirius leapt from his chair, knocking it over in the process. "Bloody hell. Who did it?" he demanded. "Do you know? I hope the bastard's locked up for what he did to you!"

It took a moment to process that Sirius wasn't upset at him for being the freak to defy all statistics and survive the bite. He was upset because he was bitten. He was upset at the…

"No," Remus said urgently. "No, Sirius, stop. You can't—you can't blame…"

"You're defending it?" James snapped, and for the first time, he was looking at Remus as though he were a stranger, the curl in his upper lip suggesting a hint of a snarl. "After what it did to you?"

"He isn't an it."

Peter released a soft squeak of a gasp at the forcefulness of Remus' declaration, and even James and Sirius, who normally fed off each other's energy in such a way it made them deaf to everyone else, stared.

"You don't understand," Remus said, strangely uncowed. Ignoring the niggling sensation at the back of his mind, he said the very same thing he'd told himself time and time again to fill the blanks in his memory. "It was an accident. Just an accident. He couldn't control himself. He didn't know, and I was…in the wrong place at the wrong time. It…could have happened to anyone. At anytime."

"You were five years old," Peter whispered, his voice strained.

"He wasn't restrained well enough that night," Remus emphasized, almost desperately. "Maybe he was in hiding and didn't have anyone to aid him. I can't blame him. I know how it feels, how it is. Not...not everyone is as lucky as I am."

Remus didn't expect to see their gobsmacked expressions, and he certainly didn't expect to see the dawning respect and awe shining from their eyes.

"You…forgave him?" Peter asked. "Even...even though…?" He gestured vaguely at Remus, unsure how to continue on, and Remus had the feeling he was referring to his self-inflicted injuries.

"I…I've tried to," Remus admitted softly. "Not condemning someone is far different than forgiving them."

"But you don't know," Sirius realized out loud. "You don't know who i—he was."

"I don't want to know who he was," Remus said. "I can't…No. I'd rather not know."

"What…what if he's still out there?" James asked. "Biting others?"

Remus' lips twisted into a disdainful frown. "He'd be put down, wouldn't he? Too easily tracked. The Ministry isn't stupid."

"They're certainly stupid enough to miss you," Sirius pointed out, his glee at the fact dulling any lingering anger.

And with the spotlight back on him, Remus bit his bottom lip, wincing violently. He realized he never understood what it was they were doing here, why they were talking to someone whose disease made him no more than filth, and it terrified him all over again. "That's because no one knows. That's why you mustn't tell," he begged.

The three boys, pensive and somber, glanced at each other.

Remus' heart leapt to his throat. "It's not only about me," he entreated. "My parents, Dumbledore…"

"Oh, so he does know," James said casually. "We thought so."

"The other professors, too?" Sirius guessed.

"Some of them," Remus said. "But that's not the point—"

"Well, I think it's a pretty important point," Sirius disagreed. "We need to know who exactly we should keep the secret from, don't we?"

"I—I think—" Remus stopped and took a second to fully process what it was Sirius had said. Sitting back in his chair, face slack with surprise, he asked, "You…you will keep it a secret?"

James and Sirius looked at him as though he'd grown another head. "Remus," James said slowly, perplexedly. "Why do you think we tracked you down? Didn't we...didn't we make it obvious?" He swung around in his chair to address Sirius and Peter. "We made it obvious, didn't we?"

Remus couldn't answer. Their hesitance and wariness earlier had suggested they hadn't quite known the answer to James' first question themselves. Instead, he choked out, "I…don't understand." He had to rub his hand across his face to dry the tears starting to fall. "I don't…You're not…I lied. I kept this from you, and you had every right to know what I am."

Peter was shaking his head before Remus had finished speaking. "I—I don't think we did. Have the right, I mean. We were upset with you last month, and perhaps a little…confused when we discovered the truth, but...this is so much bigger than us. We were being petty. I—it was your secret, your life…"

"And besides, Remus," Sirius teased, grey eyes dancing. "We know you. We know the only thing you could possibly do some serious damage on is a bar of Honeydukes' finest. You do throw a good hex, too, but you'd never hurt us. Not like that."

"But I could. That's what you don't understand," Remus said. "That's what I've been trying to tell you. I could hurt you. I could bite anyone."

"You don't have any plans take a chomp out of someone, do you?" Sirius asked, almost managing to keep a straight face.

"It isn't about what I plan!" Remus exclaimed, growing frustrated. They didn't understand. "I wouldn't know I hurt anyone until after the fact. I couldn't stop it. I—"

James suddenly smacked his palm on the table. "Do you want us to be angry about this, Remus?"

"…Aren't you?" Remus dared to ask.

"No!" James automatically denied. Remus' expression must have shown how little he believed him because he shrugged, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and corrected, "Well, I'm mad for other reasons. I'm angry it had to happen to you, of all people. I'm angry it happened when you were five years old, and I'm angry about the cut on your head and all the limping I've seen and everything else you've had to hide. I could probably burn down the Ministry of Magic right now, I'm so angry at them, and you know what? I'm angry you're trying to push us away, and I'm angry you can't believe us when we say we care about you, despite of all that, you wanker!"

Sirius nodded solemnly, adding, "Down with societal prejudice. We're not about to believe everything everyone says about…mooniness."

"It's lycanthropy," Peter said helpfully.

Funnily enough, amongst the barrage of emotion bearing down on him, the only thing that was perfectly clear to Remus was how amazed he was they could say these things without ugly or hurtful inflections in their tones. In fact, Peter looked downright proud he was informed enough to know the proper term, and James and Sirius were beginning to smile. Sincerity shone from every aspect of the three.

Maybe...maybe it was okay to hope...

"I prefer mooniness. Rolls off the tongue better," Sirius decided.

"I think I prefer it, too," Remus offered, almost inaudibly, detachedly. "It's...much better than…"

Sirius, who had looked thrilled with Remus' recognition of his genius, suddenly sobered, cocked his head, and said, "I really hope you didn't think so poorly of us, mate. We'd never turn on you like that. Not because of a little moony business. We have our proof everyone else is wrong sitting right in front of us."

"Friends stick together," James added. "We stick together."

Friends. Overwhelmed and struggling to wrap his mind around what they were saying, Remus lowered his gaze again to the book. For the first time, he noticed the picture on the opposite page. Undoubtedly, the book used the shaggy man pictured there to warn its readers that werewolves "disguised" themselves to look like regular humans, but to Remus, the man was simply a man. He was not an it, not a monstrosity or an abnormality, not an animal that needed to be eradicated, but someone with a purpose, with ambitions and the potential to fulfill them, with dreams to find love and laughter in his life.

Remus wondered if this man had had family and friends to encourage his dreams...or if he'd lost them all—family, friends, and aspirations alike—when he'd been bitten.

"But friends are meant to trust each other with…everything," Remus whispered carefully, self-loathing tainting his words. "Aren't they?"

It was the first time he admitted aloud he never trusted them implicitly, not with this, and there was no denying the hurt that crossed their faces.

It washed away in the wake of their shared smiles. "Well, we'll work on that, won't we?" Sirius suggested.

James had said much the same to Sirius on their first train ride. Back at the very beginning. It had been a glib and arrogant sort of joke, but it was something none of them had forgotten. They would laugh and tease each other using the very same words whenever one of them made a mistake. Or whenever one performed below (or above) the others' standards. Every once and awhile, however, the question became loaded. Meaningful. Remus had said it when he first offered to help Peter pass his exams, James had said it when he first caught Sirius in a bad place after his mother sent another Howler, Peter had said it to James whenever Lily Evans offered a particularly bruising (if deserved) insult...

And now. They were saying it now.

He hadn't realized he was shaking until he drew in a ragged breath...and broke down. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and suddenly, he was laughing. Crying, too, but laughing all the same.

And when Peter's arms wrapped around him, drawing him into a fierce embrace, and the other two, not quite the type to go about hugging other blokes, actually left their chairs to join in "the puppy pile" (as Sirius loudly proclaimed it as he tackled them all), it finally registered in Remus' mind.

His father had been wrong. About it all. These were the best mates he could ask for, and though there was so much they still had to talk about, they accepted him, mooniness and all.