"It was a lovely autumn evening - at least that's how my mother always told the story when she told me how I came to be a werewolf. She liked to put a good spin on things that were sad. She'd had plenty of sadness in her life and the fact that I was turned was just another tragedy in a long and horrible string of them that she'd had. My father was the best thing that ever happened to her - he had his fall backs but overall my father was a good man, despite what some people might say..." Remus glanced at Sirius at this. 

Sirius snorted. 

"He was. He saved her from a boggart. As a muggle, she didn't know what was attacking her... She was beautiful. I'm sure you've seen her, the muggles knew her as --"

"REMUS, ferfuckssakes this has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING."

Remus cleared his throat, "Yes, sorry." His hand dropped away from his pocket, where he'd been about to reach for his wallet. Returning to the story, he said, "I was turned by Fenrir Greyback... a horrible person. The one person who utterly deserves the disdain that werewolves get. He's unfortunately precisely the reason that werewolves have such a terrible name, him and others like him. He turned me as revenge and changed everything about my life. I was only a child. I barely remember it. It caused... a lot of trouble for my father, who worked at the Ministry... wrote the Restriction Act. How is that for irony?"

"And don't even get me started on the Latin roots of his name..." Sirius murmured. "As if this story needed more irony."

"Do you want to tell the story?"

"I'd do it a good deal faster than you are...." Sirius answered.

Remus put his hands on his hips, a sassy expression on his face that made Sirius laugh.

Sirius pointed at Remus. "Werewolf." He pointed at Scabbers. "Animagus. Peter Pettigrew." He pointed at Harry. "Dead Daddy." Pointed at himself, "Innocent." Pointed back at Peter. "Better be saying his prayers."

Harry looked at Situs with shock and offense.

"Sirius, really?" Remus asked, exasperated.

Sirius really did look abashed. "Sorry," he murmured, looking over at Harry. "I'm an arsehole, you might as well learn that now. Save us all time."

Remus shook his head, then turned back to Harry. "Now that you've heard the crass version... Let me continue. You see, I was raised in seclusion because of what I am, hidden away to protect my father's name at the Ministry and because my parents didn't know what else to do with me. It was... a rather impossible situation."

"Impossible. Right. That's why a bunch of school kids figured it out and took care of you better than your own bleeding --"

Remus interrupted. "It was never dreamed of that I might get to come to Hogwarts one day, never believed that I could be anything except... a werewolf... a secret kept and locked way. We had a bomb shelter in our backyard, left over from the time of the blitzes during the second muggle world war, and that was where my parents kept me."

"All of the time?" Hermione gasped, eyes wide.

"For the full week surrounding the full moon.," Remus answered, nodding. 

"They kept you locked up?" Harry asked, his voice shook slightly.

"Yes, Harry. The bomb shelter was little bigger than a pantry, really."

"So it was just... a glorified cupboard."

Ron's eyes flashed as he looked at Harry with concern, his eyebrows coming together. "Harry --"

Harry shook his head, then looked at Remus. "Go on, Professor," he said hurriedly.

"They admittedly kept me there longer on both sides of the full luminance than they needed to. A werewolf need only be worried for the transformation at a luminance of 97% or greater, but they kept me there form 80% to the beginning of the waning..." Remus shook his head, "they knew no better, no studies had been done then... I -- They didn't know."

"It's not an excuse to treat their son like that," Sirius intoned. "There's no excuse Remus."

"I was a monster --"

"No," Sirius said firmly. "You were a boy."

Remus paused and looked at the floor a long moment.

Hermione's eyes stay trained on Remus. Something changed about her demeanor already.

When he'd regained his composure, Remus took a deep breath, then continued with his story, letting Sirius's remarks flow in him without comment, "Dumbledore came to my house and he invited me to come to Hogwarts. He was... sympathetic, he said, to my... condition..."

"Furry little problem," muttered Sirius.

"Dumbledore said that he'd worked out a way for me to be able to attend safely and that I could come and be... normal." Remus sighed. Tension he didn't realize he'd been holding in his chest since beginning the story released itself in that sigh. 

"Normal," Sirius's barking laugh echoed. "Because we were all so normal."

"You weren't," Remus jibed back.

Sirius grinned, eyes flashing.

"As normal as a teenage werewolf attending a school of magic could be, at least." Remus continued, "I met Sirius, Peter and... and James at Hogwarts. We were all sorted to Gryffindor house, the only ones in our year, we shared a dormitory." Remus paused. "Harry - I told you once that the Whomping Willow was planted the year that I came to the school, but the truth is that the Whomping Willow was planted because I came to Hogwarts. This house --" Remus looked around the room, "-- the tunnel that leads to it -- they were built for my use. Once a month, I came out from the castle, into this place, to transform. The tree was placed at the tunnel mouth to stop anyone from coming across me while I was dangerous."

Harry stared at Remus, intrigued, but still confused how this all connected.

"I was so afraid that first night at school, changing into my pyjamas in front of the lads," Remus murmured, a vacant expression as he recalled the past vividly as a movie playing in his mind. "I remember turning and changing as quickly as I could so they wouldn't see the scars that cover my body... scars I - I inflicted on myself. Well.." he touched the spot on his shoulder where the bite was. "Mostly myself."

Hermione gasped. "What?"

"My transformations in those days were -- were terrible. It is... very painful to turn into a werewolf..."

Sirius nodded knowingly. "Excruciating."

Remus glanced at him.

"Almost as excruciating as the pace you're telling this story at," Sirius added.

Remus rolled his eyes, then turned back. "I was separated from humans to bite, so I bit and scratched myself instead."

Hermione's hands were covering her mouth in shock and even Ron looked disturbed and saddened.

"The villagers heard the noise and the screaming and thought they were hearing particularly violent spirits. Dumbledore encouraged the rumor of the haunted house and even now, when the house has been silent for years, the villagers don't really dare to approach it..."

Sirius murmured, "Just as well, they come at the wrong time and they would not have liked what they saw." He snickered.

Remus drew a deep breath, "But apart from my transformations -- I... I'd never been happier in my entire life. For the first time ever, I had friends... three great friends." He looked at Sirius. "More than friends." He paused, then turned back around. "Of course, my three friends were terribly nosey and couldn't keep themselves out of other people's business..." he chuckled. "They could hardly fail to notice that I disappeared once a month. I made up all sorts of stories. I told them my mother was ill, and I had to go home to see her. Oh I was terrified they would desert me the moment they found out what I was. But of course they, like you, Hermione, worked out the truth...  They figured out pretty quickly that it aligned with the full moon and -- Sirius was first to come to me... and then... then the others, too, and -" he paused. Remus smiled, remembering. "They didn't desert me at all."

"Of course we didn't bloody desert you," Sirius murmured.

Remus said, "Instead, they did something for me that would make my transformations not only bearable, but the best times of my life." He paused. "They became animagi." 

Ron, Hermione, and Harry's jaws all dropped and they stared at Remus with incredulous expressions. Ron looked at the rat, and Hermione looked at Sirius, who grinned back at her with an arrogant expression. Harry stammered, looking only at Remus, "M-my Dad, too?"

"Yes, indeed," Remus answered. He laughed, "I had no idea what they were doing at first. I felt like they were excluding me. That's how your mother found out."

Harry looked shocked. "My mum? She didn't become a --"

"No, she didn't. Lily did something much more important. She loved me."

Sirius cleared his throat.

"That idiot over there loved me, too, but Lily was first."

"Bloody hell you'll never let that go."

Remus shook his head and said, "She was there for me at a time when no one else in my life was. I thought that my friends were... excluding me... but they weren't... and when they revealed what they'd been doing... I couldn't believe it."

Sirius said, "Spent months with these bloody little leaves stuck in our mouths. Bitter, nasty little things that had us all practically choking, could barely speak around them. Terrible."  He paused. "But whatever it took for that one." He nodded at Remus. "He was getting blood all over our carpet dragging himself back upstairs every month with all those cuts. We had to do something before he destroyed the linen."

Remus laughed, "Yeah. That's the reason for sure."

Sirius shrugged.

"But wait, how did that help you?" Hermione asked, "Becoming animagi, I mean?"

"They couldn't keep me company as humans," Remus explained, "So they kept me company as animals. A werewolf is only a danger to people. They sneaked out of the castle every month under James's invisibility cloak and transformed with me. Peter, the smallest as a rat, he could slip beneath the Whomping Willow's branches and hit the knot at the base of the trunk - that's how it opens, you see. Press it and the tree freezes right up. Then the three of them would come out with me to the Shack and join me." He looked around. "Under their influene, I became less dangerous. My body was still wolfish, but my mind... my mind seemed to become less so while I was with them." He looked at Sirius. "It took a lot of work, and a lot of patience... But they did it. They did it for me. And nobody had ever done anything like that for me before. I felt... so thankful."

Sirius shifted uncomfortably on the bed, emotion welling up in him. He didn't want to be emotional. He looked at the rat hanging from Ron's fingers, swinging about like a manic little beast... If it wasn't for the rat, they might still be together on full moon nights, or at the very least, James would be alive to have the option to be...

"All this year, I've been battling with myself about whether to tell Dumbledore the truth about Sirius, that he was an animagus... I - I wondered sometimes whether Dumbledore already knew, but I suppose he must not, since he took barely any precautions that might stay Sirius from coming in his animal form... and I didn't tell him. Why?" He shook his head. "I guess I just --" he paused. "I'd like to say it was something deep inside of me telling me that Sirius was innocent, but that's simply not true. I think I was too much of a coward to tell Dumbledore at first and then - when Sirius was sneaking into the castle I -- I sort of.... I looked forward to seeing him. To seeing signs of him being... alive and... near." He glanced at Sirius.

Sirius cleared his throat. "Hurry up Remus!" he snarled, watching the rat with a hungry sort of expression on his face - a horrible expression.

"I'm getting there Sirius!" Remus said impatiently, "I'm getting there, for crying out loud. Be patient."

Sirius said, "I am patient! You're just taking ENTIRELY TOO LONG."

Remus replied, "It's important that they KNOW."

"Just... the ABRIDGED VERSION, please, for Godric's sake..."

"This IS the abridged version - can you imagine how bloody long of a book it would be if we were to have a record of every adventure we ever had? For Merlin's sakes, it would be several volumes long and take quite a long time to read, I should imagine."

Sirius sighed. "I feel as though you've been dictating it or something." He laid back on the bed, his hair puffing up around his face.

Remus looked at the three students, who looked back at him. "Well, highly exciting possibilities were open to us now that we could all transform. Soon we were leaving the Shrieking Shack and roaming about the school grounds and the forest by night. Sirius and James transformed into such large animals that they were able to keep a werewolf in check..." 

"Did you see the ceiling downstairs?" interjected Sirius. "Your dad, Harry." He held his fingers up to his temples like horns. 

Harry blinked in shock, "What --"

"I doubt whether any Hogwarts students ever found out more about the Hogwarts grounds than we did... And that's how we came to write the Marauder's Map, and sign it with our nicknames. Sirius is Padfoot."

Sirius waved his hand in the air over his head.

"Peter is Wormtail."

Ron looked at Scabbers with a bit more doubt than he'd had in his expression before.

"James was Prongs."

"What sort of animal ---?" Harry began, but Hermione cut him off.

"THAT IS REALLY DANGEROUS!" she exclaimed, "What if you'd given the others the slip and bitten somebody?"

Remus paled. "A thought that haunts me to this very day. I made them all promise me that if there was ever a time that it came close... that they would..." he shook his head. "They promised they would stop me. Whatever it took."

Sirius said, "He wanted us to kill him."

Hermione gasped. "I mean, that's rather dramatic - a stunner would do!"

"That's what I always said!" 

"We had... a couple of close calls... I still feel guilty about those times that came closer than it ought to have done..." He drew a deep breath, thinking of the time he'd bitten his boyfriend, thinking of Bilius Weasley and the grim, thinking of the werewolf fight between himself and Mr. Veigler, thinking of the time Lily Evans had to be rescued away... He shook his head. "There was one... particularly nasty time..." he bridged this carefully, "That... Severus Snape, er, found his way into the tunnel."

"Snape?" said Harry, incredulous.

"Severus was very interested in where I went every month," Remus cut in, giving Sirius a look as Sirius's temper flared. "We were in the same year, you know -- and we, er - didn't like each other very much."

"DIDN'T LIKE EACH OTHER VERY MUCH?" Sirius barked. He guffawed, "If that isn't an understatement --"

"He especially disliked James."

"DISLIKED?" Sirius snorted. "Remus. I thought we were telling the truth around here?"

"I think he was... was jealous of James..."

"Yes," said Sirius sarcastically, "Jealous. Of course. Precisely the words I would use."

"Severus, he... thought he had figured out what we were doing, he thought -- well, he got into the tunnel, anyway, and - he nearly got all the way to the Shack before James found out and he - he went after Snape and pulled him back, at great personal risk to his life... Snape glimpsed me, though, at the end of the tunnel. He was forbidden by Dumbledore to tell anybody, but from that time on, he knew what I was."

"So that's why Snape doesn't like you," Harry said slowly, "Because he thought you were in on some joke?"

"Yes..." Remus admitted.

"It would have served him right," Sirius sneered, "Sneaking around, trying to find out what we were up to... hoping he could get us expelled... Sticking his abnormally large, greasy, pimply nose into everyone else's business like a great big slimy--- "

"Sirius, I mean, I - I could've killed --"

"THAT'S RIGHT!" sneered a cold voice from the wall behind Remus. "YOU COULD HAVE KILLED! And tell them the truth, indeed! It was no ACCIDENT that got me into the tunnel... Was it, BLACK?"

Severus Snape was pulling off the invisibility cloak, his wand pointing directly into Remus's spine. Remus's eyes widened and Sirius sat up quickly, his face suddenly contorted into the most wicked expression he'd yet worn, his lips pulled back in a horrible sneer, his teeth bared...  just like a dog.