• this is a brief example of my fanfiction, written especially for my dear friend ashleigh. the following fanfiction is copyright under creative commons licensing; you may not redistribute without express permission and must credit me when you redistribute. furthermore, you may not create derivatives of this. Remus Lupin is copyrighted to JK Rowling, author of the popular Harry Potter series; I stake no claim to Remus Lupin or any other characters mentioned herein.

It must’ve been close to the full moon again, for Remus could feel writhing inside his mind, as though fingers of smoke were trailing through his memories, shuffling things around, ensuring stoically that he would be unable to access important details as immediately as required. The amalgamation of Remus’ human self and his Beast self always caused this confusion; the clouds fogged his vision, his thoughts, his hearing, and for the three days on either side of the full moon, he could be said to be an entirely different person.

He was growing better at hiding it, though. When he had first come to Hogwarts, it had been a hellish journey to learn how to hide his moonlit incapacitation; there was enough worry to the task of getting to the shrieking shack without having to worry about how people would talk at his clear change of perception around the time of the full moon, but worry he did, for he needed to. It was an act, as was everything else about his life, designed for self-preservation and the preservation of those around him.

Those around him. How curious, he observed, that he rarely referred to his companions as ‘friends’. Though they would, for all intents and purposes, fit the description of friends (and good friends they were, too!), Remus was one who would never allow himself to associate too closely; he always hung back slightly, watching from a distance, focusing at least some small part of his attention to something else always, lest his Beast rise and focus on them. He must never allow that to happen, else three quarters of the marauders may wake up dead . . . or worse.