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Remus cracked one bleary golden eye open, followed soon by the other. He exhaled slowly, calm in spite of the pain coursing through his limbs from the previous night's transformation due to years of practice. Pre-dawn blue light crept through the small window of his 'room' in the Shrieking Shack. Once the pain had subsided a little from sharp knives to a dull throb, the werewolf took stock of his surroundings and grimaced when he saw the blizzard raging outside.
Well, there's nothing for it.
He resigned himself to trudging through the snow and freezing gusts of wind back to the castle where he would hopefully find the common room empty so he could warm up in front of the fire. Most of the Gryffindors (including James and Sirius) had gone home for the holidays. Madam Pomfrey was absent as well. The matron had left him some potions and special bandages from St. Mungo's though, he was of age now, old enough to patch himself up after rough nights like this. The potions gleamed on a creaking shelf high enough that his werewolf form wouldn't be able to bump into them and break them while it raged around in its prison.
Not that it had spent the last three years inside the shack. But the kindly matron didn't need to know the reason why or where the wolf roamed free or the poor woman would probably have a heart attack.
The werewolf stretched out his arms which surprisingly didn't hurt as much as they normally did when he transformed alone and was forced to confine himself to the four walls of the shack to get up. He tried to get up and found he was unable to. There was some kind of dark weight on the lower half of his body. Brows furrowed in confusion, he stared at the black mass blankly, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. His mind was still a little scrambled as his human intelligence fought for control over the rambling one-dimensional thoughts of his wolf. Amber eyes with fading gold as the sun rose higher widened when his brain finally caught up with the image in front of him.
'S-Siri?!'
Remus' voice was still hoarse from howling but the massive grim dog currently draped over his legs like the world's furriest blanket heard his quiet rasp as one ear pricked up in interest. He yelped as Padfoot shifted from his legs, placed both front paws on his scarred chest and promptly started licking his face and throat, panting happily.
‘Pads, stop!’, he choked out between laughs. His protests only egged the dog on, his licks relentless and increasing in frequency and intensity, only stopping when Remus reached up to grab handfuls of thick black fur and pulled him down on top of him. Fur receded and paws elongated into long fingers as dog transformed back into man. Remus bemoaned the loss of the fur’s warmth for a moment, before glaring in fake anger at the twinkling grey eyes above him. Bloody hell. If Remus Lupin had one weakness (though he would never admit it) – he never could stay angry at those eyes.
‘You -’ he poked Sirius in the ribs ‘- aren’t supposed to be here. Didn’t you go home with Prongs this morning?’
Sirius dropped down to Remus’ side and gathered him close, kissing his nose before nuzzling at his throat. ‘And leave our furry little friend all alone on Christmas?’ he whispered in the werewolf’s ear, eliciting a shiver. He grinned wider. Remus rolled his eyes at the nickname they had coined for Remus’ condition in their third year. He carded fingers slowly through Sirius’ long hair and smiled softly as he melted at his touch, tension bleeding out of muscles that had been on guard all night. Woe to any creature or man who tried to pick a fight with Remus, they would find themselves on the receiving end of sharp Grim teeth before Remus even had a chance to react.
‘Our? Do you mean -’
Sirius, whose eyes had fluttered closed at Remus’ ministrations, pointed one sleepy finger in the vague direction of the door. Remus spotted the tall figure slumped in the doorway. He disentangled himself from Sirius’ octopus grip and got up hastily. The animagus made a disgruntled noise when Remus’ hands left his hair. Remus regretted getting up so fast and grimaced as a gash in his side made itself known. He couldn’t repress a pained exhale and stumbled. Quick as lightning, Sirius was by his side and curled a pale arm around his waist before he could fall face first on the rough planks. He narrowed his eyes at the wound as if glaring at it would make it disappear. Remus shot a wry smile at him; he knew it vexed Sirius that despite all his efforts to the contrary, he couldn’t protect Remus from himself.
‘Don’t worry about it, Pads. It looks worse than it is.’ When Sirius looked unconvinced, Remus added, ‘Besides, I’m used to these by now.’
Sirius blinked and looked away from the offending wound. He looked like he wanted to argue, but seemed to decide against it. Although Remus did hear a low mutter along the lines of ‘Shouldn’t have to be used to it.’
The pair made their way over to the slumbering figure, the taller werewolf leaning heavily on the shorter man. They looked down at James for a long moment.
‘Think we should wake him?’ whispered Remus, nudging James in the side lightly with one foot. James mumbled something unintelligible that sounded suspiciously like Quidditch commentary and kept sleeping.
By answer, Sirius took his wand out of the holster strapped to his bicep and pointed it at James’ head.
‘Aguamenti.’
A clear stream of freezing water reflected Remus’ facepalm for a millisecond before crashing unceremoniously into James’ face, whose eyes flew wide open.
‘Fucking he– ’
‘Morning, sleeping beauty!’, Sirius chirped at the sputtering tangle of long limbs giving him the middle finger. Prongs was definitely not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination. James glared half-heartedly at Sirius before his hazel eyes slid to Remus, taking in the gash on his side and the general tiredness that was obvious from the way he was supporting himself on Sirius. Even after four years of witnessing Remus’ transformations, it never got any easier to see how the wolf ravaged his body. James looked down to hide his face and shook his head, hard. No. Moony and Padfoot had enough on their plates without him dumping his negative emotions into the mix. His expression flickered for a second with a pained expression that was replaced with a blinding smile before the other two could notice.
James got up clumsily, shaking a leg that had fallen asleep while he dozed. He leaned forward and kissed Remus squarely on the mouth. He let the kiss linger, slow and languid before pressing his forehead to the werewolf’s temple. ‘Merry Christmas, Moony.’, he whispered.
‘Hey, where’s my kiss!’
James broke apart from Remus. ‘Sorry, I’m not in the habit of kissing people who think it’s funny to dump water on me at –’, he cast a tempus charm, ‘- fucking 3 a.m. in the middle of winter.’
Sirius grinned unrepentantly. James rolled his eyes but his gaze softened and he leaned in to kiss his other third.
A gasp of pain broke their attention and both their heads turned in unison to Remus, who was clearly struggling to stay upright at this point, eyes glazed over. They nodded at each other; argument forgotten. Sirius summoned a yellow vial from the shelf while James gathered Remus’ clothes folded neatly in a corner, wand resting right in the centre of the pile. James’ lips curled up in a small smile, it was just like Moony to organise every part of his life that he could before the wolf ripped away all semblance of control. Remus’ things in his arms, he turned around to see Sirius gently keeping Remus awake long enough to drink the sickly yellow potion that tasted as bad as it looked. James came forward and wrapped the thick winter robes around Remus’ shoulders, casting a spell on it to ward off the cold. Remus shot a strained smile at them.
‘Cheers.’, he muttered, taking the vial from Sirius and raising it in a mockery of a toast before knocking it back in one shot. It was a fast-acting concoction that the matron had developed herself with Professor Slughorn’s help to knit together wounds caused by magical creatures twice as fast as a regular healing potion. He wrinkled his nose at the vile taste but managed to keep it down. He pried Sirius’ arm from his waist, ignoring his protests and swayed on the spot.
‘I think I can walk on my own – ’, his eyes rolled back in his head as the potent potion kicked in.
Two pairs of arms moved in unison and caught him before he could fall.
Remus teetered between waking and dreaming. In one burst of wakefulness he realized he was being carried back to the castle on Prongs, face pressed into his soft mane. He turned his head to the side to see a black streak keeping pace with them. Remus looked up and massive antlers entered his vision.
If Lily was right about their so-called ‘soul bond’, James’ antlers represented pride. Pride was what had held Remus back from the edge of suicide in their third year when he thought he couldn’t bear another transformation. Pride kept Sirius together when he apparated to the Potter estate during the summer of fifth year, violent tremors still coursing through his body from multiple Cruciatus curses. Like the antlers that grew strong and unashamed from Prong’s head, James was the glue that held together the pieces of Remus and Sirius. He didn’t allow them to get lost in a spiral of dark emotions, stubbornly knocking them out of their heads at every turn.
His head was heavy with the potion, so he let it fall back down. The blizzard raged around them, cold and unforgiving. But it was warm, so very warm with Padfoot and Prongs at his side. Remus felt his eyes fall shut and was lost to the world.