Chapter 1
“I’m not drinking that.”
“Come on Remus!”
“Yeah come on Remus! It could help with Moony!”
“Or it could kill me!”
“No way!” James crows.
“Like we’d make something that could kill you,” Sirius adds, holding out the misty purple potion before him like a prize.
Remus scoffs, giving a quick glance at how long he has until the change, seeing ten minutes left he relaxes a little.
“You say that like you haven’t poisoned me before.”
“That was ages ago-”
“A few weeks is not ages.”
“-we’re way better with potions now,” James finishes, ignoring him.
Remus turns to Peter with a raised brow hoping for someone to be on his side.
“It could help?” he offers meekly.
Remus groans, dropping his head in his hands and Sirius and James cheer knowing they won.
“Fine! But if this goes wrong I’m blaming you.”
“Drink it!” Sirius shouts, pushing the bottle into his hands.
Remus opens it with a roll of his eyes and chugs the weirdly sweet mixture.
“What now?” he asks, once the bottle is empty.
“It should take effect when you change.”
“And do what?”
“Um… help?”
“You don’t know?!”
“Well…”
“Why did you make me drink it if you don’t know what it does?!”
“Honestly Remus, you should know better than to take anything from us,” James says.
“Yeah Remus! How dare you trust us,” Sirius adds.
They both quickly shut up at the growl he lets loose.
“Change,” he snarls just as he starts to do so himself, bones shifting painfully into his other form and everything goes black.
&&&
They wake in an old wooden room with a few pieces of furniture, a dog and a rat on a deers back. They ache a little and their body feels weird, but they also want to pat the dog. They reach out slowly, ignoring how hairy their hand is and gently pat the dogs head, letting out little happy noises as they do.
They startle back when the dog suddenly turns into a boy, the deer and the rat let out distressed noises at that, but the boy looks determined as he says, “Remus?”
They tilt their head to the side confused, what or they guess who is a Remus? The boys brows furrow and he takes a cautious step forward.
“Not Remus. But friendly?” he tries, reaching out a hand towards them.
They sniff at it and get only ‘pack’ ‘safe’ ‘friend’ back, so they easily push their head into the boys hand. The boy lets out a surprised laugh moving his hand to scratch behind their ears. They lean into it, only turning away when the deer changes into another boy.
“So it worked then?” he asks, slowly moving towards them and they relax when they smell the same as the first boy.
“Kind of? He’s not Remus, but he’s also not attacking. He’s like friendly Moony!”
They take the name happily.
“Do you recognise us Moony?” the deer boy asks.
Moony huffs and tilts his head. They smell familiar, like pack, but that’s it.
“What does head tilt mean?” dog boy asks.
Deer boy shrugs, joining in with the ear scratches and making Moony melt.
“Peter? You gonna join us?”
There’s a squeak, but no third person joins them, so Moony guesses that was a no.
“Come on, let’s go to the bed, it’s more comfortable,” dog boy says, moving away, deer boy right behind him and Moony follows happily as they lead him to lie on the bed.
He huffs happily as they change back to their other forms to lie next to him and he easily drifts to sleep in the warmth and safety of pack.
&&&
He wakes with a whine at the horrible pain that spreads through him as his bones seem to shift. It stays that way for what seems like forever, the only comfort being the soothing noises from what smells like pack. Finally the shifting stops leaving him with a deep ache. He clenches his eyes closed and pushes his face into the bed below him with a whine.
“Remus?” pack/dog asks, worried.
He ignores him.
“Remus? What’s wrong?” pack/rat asks next.
Moony just pushes further into the bed, until finally, slowly like he can’t quite believe it, pack/deer asks, “Moony?”
Moony perks up a little at the name, peeking up at them.
“You’re not Remus are you?”
“Remus?” he mutters. “What’s a Remus?”
“Oh shit.”