My HP One-Shots (Boyxboy)

Moon Madness (And Other Types, As Well)

Written for Cuddlepuss on deviantArt.

Remus Lupin was accustomed to the dizzying sensations that heralded the full moon's arrival each month. He had been for a long time, actually. He was accustomed to the wants and desires that rose up in his blood, under his skin, gnawing at him relentlessly even as he refused to give in to them, and knew that they would pass -- eventually. Of course, that didn't make them any easier to ignore for the duration of his moon madness, but it gave him just enough hope to hold out. He had lived with his animalistic urges and thoughts since he was a very young boy, had lived with the impression that he was slowly losing his mind for the three days leading up to the full moon each month of the long, intervening years since then. He had thought, in his youth, that with time he would gain a resistance, or tolerance.

Time had proven herself to be a complete and utter bitch, though, and him to be wrong. Being accustomed to something occurring was not the same as resisting it, or having its effects dulled. Every month the moon seemed to snatch a little more of himself from him, and every month it took just that little bit longer for the moon to release him back to humanity, to sanity. His greatest fear, underneath all of the less pressing ones, was that he would eventually become like the werewolf who had savaged him, Fenrir Greyback: more beast than man, even when the moon waned and waxed gibbous.

The invention of the Wolfsbane Potion had helped greatly with the madness, at least at first, and Remus was inexpressibly grateful that his association with Albus Dumbledore had provided him with access to it, even if that access came accompanied by a reminder of the guilt he felt every time he looked at or thought of Severus Snape.

As always, when Remus thought of Snape he winced guiltily. He had never defended Snape when James had set in on him, when James and Sirius would gang up on the younger boy, had never even attempted to discourage them from their wrongful persecution. And then Sirius had told him how to get past the Whomping Willow ... Remus still thought that if he had only tried to reign Sirius and James in long before then, it would never have gone that far.

He loved Sirius and James, of course he did, but ... He couldn't condone their actions, or even his own. Sure, he would defend James to Harry, but that was because no boy should hear that his father hadn't been the dashing hero death had made him seem. In his own thoughts he was free to note that people who had known James during their school years had glossed over his less seemly actions because of the heroism of his demise; those who were his true friends remembered him as he had been, flaws and all, and loved him despite them.

And Sirius ... Sirius was not coping with confinement to his loathed childhood house well, even if Remus was usually there to dispel the worst of the memories. Taking him to task for the way he treated Snape when the Potions Master delivered the Wolfsbane would seem like he was siding with Snape and abandoning Sirius, which would only serve to send Sirius further into his destructively gloomy musings. Sirius was a wild card at the worst of times, but when he had something to focus on he was as dependable as anyone could wish; he needed a project, something more important than feeding a hippogriff dead rats every few days.

Azkaban had drained most of the life from Sirius, had stunted his emotional growth so that he still seemed like a tempestuous teenager at times, but he behaved the most mature when he was with Remus, for some reason. Sometimes the werewolf could even see flashes or the mature adult Sirius could have been, had Pettigrew not been a snivelling, loathsome, traitorous little toady.

Remus was fond of that adult Sirius. If he was being honest with himself, he was more than fond of Sirius, and had been for some time now. Sirius's apparent betrayal had torn at Remus's confidence and heart for years, even though he never quite fully believed it -- but it had been easier to accept everyone else's assumptions that Sirius had simply regressed to his family's well-known beliefs.