Marauder crack

Canine Hunger

The moon is waning. Remus doesn't need to look out the window to know it. He knows the lunar cycles by heart and even if he forgot them, it wouldn't matter too much because the moon transforms him every day and not only one night a month. When it's full, it rips him apart. But when decreases or grows, creates subtle changes in him. Remus carries it inside and that's why he can notice it, even sitting in one of the armchairs in the Common Room, staring at the empty fireplace.

He is thinking. He wonders if he has a choice from whom people fall in love. If it happens in a moment or constantly. If we cannot decide or if we can do something to avoid it.

He tries to rewind in time. Remember the moment when his heart murmured "Sirius" and everything was sealed.

It might have been that day, after the Christmas holidays. The third year, almost fourteen years old. Sirius approached him in the library and told him for the first time about Animagi. An idea from Peter, to be able to accompany him on full moon nights.

- Have you lost your mind? That's illegal!- Remus screeched in a whisper. - You have to ask for a permit!

- Did the wolf ask your permission to bite you?

Remus gasped for a moment. He said "No" and noticed that Sirius was starting to have a beard shadow on the line of the mandible. Quite early compared to the others.

- Well, end of discussion.

He tried to protest.

- But if they catch you ...

It was useless.

- Hey, hear me well, you stupid bitch. I have not obeyed the rules of my family, or school, nor the ones from Dumbledore in all my life and I find Dumbledore sympathetic. So if you think I'm going to listen to you now, just because once a month you get hair everywhere,  you'll have to think better, smart ass.

He was speechless.

- And what are you thinking of becoming?

- I don't know, but if you - Sirius pointed at him, as if he doesn't give credit yet -you managed to turn into a fucking wolf, I have to be something bigger.

Remus's heart began to beat so fast that his chest ached as if the wolf returned. Remembers that he wanted to hug Sirius at that moment and never let go of him and stick his fingers in his hair and try how did his tongue taste. He didn't do any of that. But he couldn't help a smile sudden that made Sirius's gaze crack with complicity.

- You can be a hippo.

- Are you calling me thick?

They were interrupted at that moment. Remus still hears the footsteps in that library and he sees the face of a first-year student asking for Carnivorous Plants, Vegetarian Birds, and Winged Magical Mammals Section.

He remembers Sirius's face when he told that anonymous student that he wouldn't like to interrupt them with dry words that sounded like a bark.

Then he knew.

- I think you should try to transform into a dog.

- A dog? - He thought about it slowly. -It might be worth it- Sirius ventured. -A dog's pretty neat.In the Gryffindor Common Room, when he remembers, Remus still smiles and feels same vertigo in the pit of his stomach again, the same feeling that the sky expands and everything disappears except Sirius. For a second. Then the stars collapse and collide and that vertigo turns into an atomic explosion that sends his love to the most remote points of the universe.

- But if I were a dog - Sirius wanted to clarify - It would have to be big.

- There are big dogs.

- Bigger than wolves?

- Dogs are the only ones who defend the cattle when the wolves attack. They are bigger and more dangerous, no doubt. Much better a dog than a wolf.

They walked the long corridors of the library. Next to each other, whispering so that no one would steal their secrets.

- Make no mistake, Lupin, I don't want to be better.

- Oh no?

- No mate. You do not understand. I want to be worse.

At that moment Remus could have sworn that that in Sirius' mind, it wasn't just friendship but he disappeared so suddenly that he had no time to find out. He was nearly fourteen and maybe then he was already in love but it wasn't then when he figured it out.