𝐃𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐒 ━━ 𝘴𝘪𝘳𝘪𝘶𝘴 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬

chapter one.

01. | CHAPTER ONE

❛And then it hit him - like a freight train on a track. He knew exactly why she was out here, in the state that she was in, and his heart plummeted.❜

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               The fog obscuring the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry had crept in through the night. It slowly formed around everything, engulfing the landscape as it morphed into a continuous sheet of pure white. Students were safe from the eerie phenomenon inside the castle, where the only place the fog infiltrated was the Great Hall. The infiltration simply took place due to an enchanted ceiling that replicated the conditions found outside. Most students that resided in the castle were still sleeping. It was the early morning hours of an ordinary Sunday. There were no Hogsmeade trips to look forward to, no Quidditch match to prepare for, no reason at all for the children within the castle walls to be stirring at such hours. But there were exceptions. Five students - four from Gryffindor and one from Slytherin - could have been considered lost within the enormous low-lying cloud.

They would have all been safe from the blinding gloominess, if it would not have been the morning after a full moon.

They were all located respectively in the Forbidden Forest. The four Gryffindors could be identified by the names of James Potter, Peter Pettigrew, Remus Lupin, and Sirius Black - all males. With the peculiarity of Remus, they just completed a grueling night of being animagi. The peculiarity had finished another dreadful transformation caused by the completion of the moon's cycle. The boys who had chosen to become animagi, a formal name for their own unique animal forms, had done so to make the transformation easier on Remus. It was a way they could aid their friend. If they could be spotted within the forest, one would notice that they were all together - with Sirius being the outlier. He made the decision to head in the opposite direction of the other three.

Out of the three boys still together, James was still in his animagus form. He referred to it as a stag, but any muggle (or non-magical person) would recognize it as a moose. A bloody and bruised Remus was sprawled out across his back. The gruesome ventures that accompanied the full light of the moon had taken a toll on the boy - and Peter was perched upon James' back in order to keep the boy from falling from the other. If James had been a stag, it would have been easy for Peter to walk alongside the two - but the mousey boy was not tall enough to stride next to a moose. It could have been considered a humorous sight, but without Sirius there to help them - James had been forced to improvise. There was no way Peter could have aided him with carrying Remus in his human form: the boy also lacked upper-body strength.

Sirius remained in his animagus form, due to his curiosity and concern. He had turned away from his friends to seek out the source of the copper-scent his nose had been picking up on - letting his large dog-form follow the scent. While he retained an unusual amount of qualities from his animagus form while he was human, they were often enhanced while he remained transfigured. It was easier to seek out the metallic smell with his muzzle precariously low to the ground. Perhaps, there was something in the fog that was driving him away from his friends and toward the unknown - something that looked a lot like fate.

The undeniable fact of the matter was that Sirius knew the woods like he was cognizant of the curvature of his wand - he knew what the area was like after every full moon. Something was off. He could not chalk it up to being the morning after a full moon, to the exhaustion that came with keeping Remus from hurting himself or others. As he trotted deeper into the Forbidden Forest, it became more clear to him that there was something else in the woods that was injured. Something that was more human than animal, and it beckoned to him without setting off any precariously instituted alarms.