Remus had stumbled on the shed only a few days after he'd returned to the forest.

He didn't know who had built it or for what purpose, only that it had been abandoned long enough for grass and wildflowers to be growing profusely between the floorboards. Ivy had nearly buried it on one side. It was large enough to lie down in, and even to have a sort of table he'd made from one large flat rock and several smaller rocks that he'd carefully stacked to make supports. (His mother had been a great aficionado of traditional stone walls, and he'd thought, during the long and entirely dull evening he'd spent on the project, that she would rather like the silly thing). It wasn't the first time he'd stolen lodgings, and he supposed that if he survived the war, it wouldn't be the last, and as stolen tool sheds went, it was reasonably comfortable. The roof only leaked in one place.

When he'd first found it, he'd fully expected to be challenged for the territory, perhaps have to fight a stronger wolf, but he had only seen one of the other adults since the transformation gathering, and she had sniffed at it in a disinterested way and said that he'd do better finding a cave; the forest was riddled with them. Alderman, who was looking for his own lair now that he was hunting with the adults, ridiculed the shed as dandified, but Remus didn't fail to note that Alderman invariably appeared when it rained and stayed until the skies cleared. A girl called Evelyn had stumbled across him early on, and had brought Sweet by the next day, and Sweet was also a common visitor. Blondin came and went, and a boy who refused to give his name--Remus hadn't known it until this morning--sometimes sat on the hillside just outside the shed for an hour or so. It had taken Remus a bit to figure out what he was doing, until he realized that the boy was always there when he himself was reading from a box of tattered old paperbacks he'd scrounged from somewhere long ago. The boy was apparently fascinated by the idea, but Remus hadn't been able to speak to him long enough to offer to teach him.

As August wore on, he saw most of the children. He assumed that they made the rounds of adults on their daily forays from the large caves where Greyback kept them, but Blondin denied it, claiming that the other adults, for whatever reason, didn't enjoy their company. Remus's shed was just a place to go now.

Which was why he wasn't particularly surprised when he heard a great deal of talking coming from his shed the morning before the full moon, as he made his way back from a pre-transformation check-in at Molly's. There had been several things waiting for him there, and he'd thought long and hard about the possibility of bringing some of them back with him, to be hidden later, but he was glad that he'd ended up opting to leave them in the drawer Molly had cleared for him in the living room. There were matters about which he didn't have any particular desire to answer Sweet's never-ending questions.

"Oi, Lupin!" Alderman called, spotting him. "Old Mag got us some charity!"

Remus came out from under the tree shadows and got a clear view of the shed. The children were gathered around a very large cardboard box, pulling out clothing willy-nilly and looking at other items that had been buried in the winter clothes.

Sweet pulled out a bright red scarf and wrapped it dramatically around her neck. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" she asked.

"Fetching," Remus told her, joining the group.

"You should get things while you can," Blondin advised. "I think there are some boots that are grown-size."

Remus didn't move toward the box. "Where did all this come from?"

"Old Mag," Alderman said again. "She goes up to Huntsford, and there's a priest. She tells him things, I guess. And he sends her back with clothes for us sometimes. Reckon he must know."

"Oh."

"Aren't you going to get some clothes? Winter's cold."

Remus shook his head, and let them continue their game. He'd stolen lodging, but he had--so far at least--managed to avoid actually begging or taking handouts. He thought he could get another winter out of the boots he already had.

The children went back to their charity box (he could now see that the priest had tried to include cheerful plush toys and a handful of dolls, but these were entirely discarded), and Remus sat down on a rock beside the door of the shed.

Dora's letter had been on top of a stack of file folders Bill had brought. Remus had ignored the folders to open the letter, a part of him certain that this would be the moment she would turn her back on him, that the letter would give a proper burial to the relationship he'd destroyed. Instead, it was newsy and cheerful, with only a brief mention that she'd been angry with him, but was over it now. She told him that she loved him, that he was just not going to have any luck getting rid of her and should stop trying, but that she understood his worries and would let him decide when it was safe for them to see one another.

"She's got to give this up," he'd told Molly.

Molly had rolled her eyes.

Beneath the letter was everything Bill had managed to find so far, and it was substantial. Reports from the Daily Prophet, public records, old photographs.

Here was Alderman, Robert Franklin--seven years old, standing proudly with his mother, surrounded by a story about his abduction by a werewolf, and his mother's vow of vengeance. Then there was a certificate of death--Alderman's father, dead by his own hand. And his mother? Transferred, promoted. Her quest for vengeance hadn't survived.

Hamilton, Martin--Remus recognized him as the boy from the hill--reported dead by his parents, who claimed to have seen him torn apart. Blondin, Nathaniel was reported missing in his Muggle neighborhood, and his mother hospitalized for raving about a man who turned into a wolf before her very eyes, and who took her little boy. "I knew him! He'd asked for a handout on the street and I refused it, and he came and took my son!"

The thickest file belonged to Waters, Vivian, a child taken at the age of four, her mother killed at the scene, her grief-maddened father bitten then left behind, never to see his child again, knowing she'd been taken by Greyback, and knowing what sort of man Greyback was... Chet Waters, before his life was torn apart, had been a detective, hired by the parents of a missing child to investigate, and he'd written a hard-hitting article on Fenrir Greyback's history in British Wizarding. Remus's name had not been mentioned in the course of it--Waters had been careful not to name any werewolf other than Greyback--but the details of his attack had been meticulously catalogued along with nearly twenty others Waters had discovered. The attack on the Waters family had occurred on the first full moon after the article appeared. The incongruously happy family portrait in the center of the Daily Prophet article showed Waters with his wife, and their pretty little girl... before half of her face had been destroyed. Waters had looked for his daughter with great diligence, but he had not been a particularly careful werewolf, and had transformed in a populated area and been killed only six months later by another man trying to protect his home.

Sweet--Vivian--remembered none of this, as far as Remus could tell, and he wasn't sure it would do her any favors to be reminded.

He wasn't sure it would do any of them any favors.

The girl Evelyn skipped over, wrapped in an odd assortment of clothes (including, Remus thought, an evening dress), and plopped a woolen hat down on his head. "You should have this," she said, and sat down beside him. "Your ears will get cold here. It's warmer in caves."

Remus took the hat off and set it aside. "Thank you, Evelyn, but really, I'm quite all right."

Evelyn, looking disappointed, squatted on her haunches in front of him. "What's wrong with charity?" she asked.

"I'm just quite all right," Remus said again. "Do you... er... well, when do you suppose the others will start gathering? I haven't seen many of us since last month."

"They got other things to do," Alderman said, examining a pair of shoes and holding them dubiously against his feet. "Reckon they'll be in by the afternoon. We'd best finish with this rubbish first"--he indicated the box of clothes--"as Greyback doesn't like it much more than you do."

"Greyback objects to charity?"

"Greyback doesn't like old Mag talking to some Muggle priest about what we've been doing. Personally, I reckon we'll see him here with us before the year's out. Poor bloke probably doesn't even believe her, either." He shook his head.

"Books!"

Remus looked up. Sweet was halfway in the charity box, rooting around at the bottom. One thin arm waved in the air, two or three paperbacks grasped in the hand. She came up with four flat and colorful children's books in her other hand. "There are more, even," she said, bringing her find over to Remus and sitting beside him. "Will you read some of these to me?"

"Perhaps after the moon. I think we'd best get prepared first."

"I'll read 'em to you, Sweet," Alderman said. "I'm plenty prepared, and I can read."

"You can?"

"Sure I can!" Alderman came over and took one of the paperbacks from Sweet--it had a raven on the cover--opening it and frowning at the first sentence. "'Tuh-hee...' no, 'The skee... sky... was duh-ark and the moan...' Moan?"

Remus took the book and glanced at it. "Moon," he said. "That one, you should know, Alderman. But that's very good if you haven't read for awhile. How long has it been?"

Alderman shrugged, disinterested. "I read signs when I'm nicking things in the village."

"What's the book about?" Sweet asked.

Remus turned it over and read the back cover. "Ironically enough, werewolves. Or, more precisely, werewolf-hunters."

They all looked at the book solemnly, as if it might drag them before the Registry if they came too close to it. Remus tossed it back toward the box, but he thought he saw Alderman catch and pocket it before it landed.

Sweet was frowning, frustrated. "I was learning to write my letters when... you know. I can't remember, though. Not any of them."

"Like we need them!" Blondin called from the tree-line, where he was patiently stalking something in the bushes.

"There's no reason you shouldn't have them," Remus said. "You have every right to be educated..."

"To turn into right little humans?" Hamilton sneered, speaking directly to Remus for the first time. "We don't need their things."

"We are human," Remus said, stopping himself before using Hamilton's name and alerting them that he had information they weren't aware of.

"Right," Hamilton said. "Remind me about that when the moon's full." He lapsed back into sullen silence.

By the time the box had been divvied up--Sweet and Evelyn were careful to make sure that some things were saved especially for girls who hadn't left the cave this morning; the boys seemed to just put everything into a communal pile--it was nearly noon, and several of the children were getting anxious to get to the gathering. Alderman directed them to cover up some of the more obvious hand-outs, offering Remus's place as a hiding spot without asking permission (not that it would have been denied). It took some talking to get Evelyn out of the satin evening dress with sparkling plastic jewels on it, but she finally capitulated when Remus told her that proper ladies only wore such clothes in the evening for dancing. Eager to be a proper lady, Evelyn set it aside, and asked if they might all dance some evening.

"I think that's not allowed," Sweet said after a very long time. "It's like having a mate."

"It is not," Blondin said. "I've seen people dancing, and they aren't mating at all."

"It's still a stupid idea." Alderman folded the dress carefully and then tossed it casually into the shed.

"What do you think, Remus?" Sweet asked.

"I think you and Evelyn are both too young to go out dancing in evening dresses anyway."

"Can we just go to the gathering?" Hamilton interrupted. "I'm not dancing."

"So go yourself!" Evelyn said. "I want to stay with Lupin."

Remus winced, but didn't acknowledge the proprietary tone in her voice. "Well, as it happens, I'm going to the gathering."

"And if you want Lupin's throat to stay in his neck," Alderman offered, "you'd best be where Greyback expects you to be."

On that cheerful note, the conversation stopped, the charity clothes were decently stowed away, and they left, en masse, for the clearing where Greyback's wolves met.

Remus arrived close to last, but he didn't need to see into the clearing to know that Greyback was already there, because the children grew quiet and pensive, quickening their steps to go stand in his presence and be counted. He wasn't surprised to come around the last bend to find Greyback standing across from him, his arms crossed, his eyes narrowed.

"Lupin," he said. "I see you've made friends." Alderman muttered something, and Greyback turned on him. "What did you say, Alderman?"

Alderman shrugged. "Lupin's there, is all. Handy place. He lets us talk there."

"Is that so?" Greyback looked at Remus, his eyes glittering nastily. "Well, Lupin always did like children nearly as well as I do."

Blondin looked over suspiciously and Evelyn frowned, knowing there was something sinister in Greyback's words, but not quite able to work it out. Alderman, to Remus's unending gratitude, rolled his eyes as soon as he was sure Greyback's back was turned.

Sweet, who was standing beside Remus, simply kept her eyes cast down. When the quiet faded back up to the conversational buzz, she said, "Did you always like children? Before you came here, I mean?"

Remus hesitated before answering, not wanting to confirm a single word out of Greyback's mouth, but there was certainly a preponderance of evidence on the subject available if Greyback chose to follow up his obscene insinuations. It was better to have a more accurate picture in place. "I've always enjoyed working with children," he said. "I was a teacher."

Sweet turned to him, her eyes flatly hungry. "In a school?"

"Once or twice. More often in students' homes."

"I've seen children going to school."

"Have you?"

"Yes. I tried to follow them for a few days last year, but they made fun of my clothes." She looked away. "And my face. One of the girls called me 'Mangle.' They wouldn't let me into the school."

"Well, you have to be registered in the school to go."

"How?"

Remus was spared answering the question--an abducted child whose de facto guardian would be arrested on sight had no chance at all of being registered for school--by Fenrir Greyback, who steered Sweet a few steps away, looked down at her, and said, "Go over with the others, Sweets. We'll have a hunt soon."

Sweet left without argument.

"I was half-expecting you to disappear," he said to Remus when she was gone.

"And go where?"

Greyback gave him a mistrustful look. "Your Little Red isn't in London anymore."

"She isn't?"

"Don't insult me."

Remus didn't answer.

Greyback didn't continue his line of thought. "What do you think you're doing with the pups?"

"Alderman was telling the truth. They wander by, talk, and wander out."

"And you're not encouraging it at all?"

"Not in any manner I'm aware of, other than not forbidding it."

This seemed to be a particularly bad answer, as Greyback turned and glared at him, fingers twitching like he meant to strike. "You think you're so clever, don't you? Do you think I don't know what kinds of ideas you'll try to fill their heads with?"

"So far, we've had conversations on the seditious topic of dancing."

"Dancing!"

"The girls were debating whether or not it was forbidden."

"And the boys?"

"Have you ever met a boy who would particularly care?"

Greyback laughed. "No. I reckon I haven't."

"What's the answer? Do you allow dancing? I'm afraid I'm not entirely certain."

For the first time, Greyback looked genuinely thoughtful, and almost flattered that Remus had asked him a question. "Well," he said, "I think they might dance in a circle, or some such thing. That would be all right with me." He nodded to himself, pleased with his own largesse. "I'll tell them when we hunt. They should ask me these things themselves, though. If they do that again, you tell them to ask me."

Remus gave him a non-committal nod.

"You'll stay back this time. I understand you're hunting on your own anyway."

"Foraging more often, but yes."

"Good, good. You'll learn yet. You're late, but you'll learn."

The note of genuine approval in Greyback's voice, an almost fatherly satisfaction in a child's accomplishment, chilled Remus, simply because it was entirely unfeigned and uncalculated. Greyback felt perfectly entitled to approve--or disapprove--of his "children."

Greyback took the little ones off to hunt a few minutes later, and Remus found himself alone among the adults. Alderman, trying to separate himself from the younger ones, avoided him. The woman Mina, who had... been attentive... to him last month had occupied herself conspicuously with meal preparation. Remus raised a hand in greeting to a man whose name he thought was Ralph, and got a solemn nod in return, and a short, pugnacious man called Samuel raised his fists for a sporting fight. Remus smiled, but declined.

"Did you find anything you could use?"

Remus turned. The old woman who'd helped him dress his kill last month was cutting the rotten parts from a basket of withered apples. "Hello... Mag?"

She nodded. "Alderman said you're letting them put a few things aside where you are."

"There's room."

"Did you find anything for yourself?"

"I'm quite all right without assistance."

"Aren't we fancy?" she said, but her smile wasn't unkind. "Father Montgomery says that taking charity is doing good as well as giving it is. It helps people's souls. Somehow."

"This priest knows... to whom he's giving aid?"

"Oh, yes. I've told him everything. As it turns out, his sister was a Muggle-born witch, so he believes me. More than I would have before I was bitten!" She smiled placidly. "It's good to talk to someone outside of it all sometimes. Of course, it's good to have our own kind, as well. I was alone for so long before I stumbled on Fenrir. No one understood. You know what I mean, don't you?"

"I think we all know what you mean."

"Fenrir's been talking about some new order. Do you know anything about it?"

Remus considered the question carefully. He knew nothing about Old Mag except that she defied Greyback to confess to local priest, who gave her charity. She seemed fond of life in the pack. He suspected that Greyback hadn't even been the one who'd bitten her, so he couldn't count on bitterness.

He shook his head. "I believe there are differing opinions on the subject."

"Is your opinion differing?"

"Greyback is aware of my opinions."

Old Mag gave him a secretive smile, and went back to her apples.

The children returned with a great deal of small game, and they again spent the afternoon eating heavily. Remus made a point of sitting with the other adults, though Sweet insisted on joining them as well, as she wanted to tell him about her hunt. There was a great deal of talk of injustices suffered at the hands of the outside world, and a particular excoriation of Dolores Umbridge, who had returned to her Ministry work with gusto, and proposed a regulation on how close to town a werewolf could be when he wasn't transformed. She wasn't getting on with it particularly well--with Dumbledore back in the Ministry's good graces (after a fashion), it was less socially acceptable to be non-inclusive--but Greyback took the existence of such a piece of legislation, however unlikely to pass, and fanned it into a bonfire of outrage within the pack. The abuse session lasted through most of the afternoon and into the evening, as they consumed vast quantities of meat and other foods. This time, Remus felt less ill from overeating than he had last month. He drifted over to the informal groups of men when the fuzzy-headedness came over him around the women, and he barely noticed when the women caught the girls and started pulling them away to wherever they went, and wouldn't have noticed at all if Sweet hadn't run back to make him promise that she could come by the shed the next day.

He looked up and saw Greyback in the shadows beyond the group, sunset making his narrowed eyes flare.

Greyback presented the boys with another box of rabbits, then sent them off to the cave. The evening was darkening.

Remus felt the pull of the moon.

"Well," Greyback said to the men who remained, dragging a wooden box out into the clearing, "what are you all waiting for? Leave your robes in the box and meet me by the waterfall." He glared at them sternly for a moment, then turned and went off in the direction the women had taken. Remus could smell them, now that they were gone, a maddening kind of scent that he'd almost consciously been blocking.

After a glum moment, one of the other men pulled off his tunic and trousers and dropped them into the box. Alderman followed suit a moment later. Remus sheepishly removed his own clothing (noting to his embarrassment that he could smell the girls on it). The others were obviously accustomed to this ritual--most had probably grown up in the pack--but there was still palpable hesitation, and Remus noticed as they gathered for a trek down one of the forest paths that there was very little talk, and almost no looking up or down, or side to side. Finally, they stopped moving alongside a stream, where water cascaded over a shallow fall. Remus crouched, then, more protected, looked up. The others were doing the same.

"This'll be a bit nippy in the winter, won't it?" Alderman said.

One of the other men--Jamison--grinned. "I just take a charity cloak in the winter and let the bloody thing get ripped."

"And here's me hoping you'd say he'd have us transform someplace warmer."

"Where is he, anyway?" Remus asked.

"Where do you think?" a third man spoke up. Remus was reasonably sure his name was Stanfield. "He's off to transform with the females. Reckon there'll be a fight this month?"

There was some desultory debate about whether or not the females had a power struggle going on. Mina was thought to be angling for better position, but the current favorite, Caroline, wasn't known for losing challenges.

"How is he going to meet us here?"

"He'll just come," Alderman said. "When he's... done."

"But transformed... how can he keep it straight in his mind?"

The others looked at him like he was quite mad. Jamison said, very slowly, "He's the one who chooses where to meet."

"But--"

"I think I see your problem, mate," Stanfield said. "You're split right in two, aren't you? You don't have a damned clue what you're doing transformed."

Suspicious looks went around the circle. Alderman shuffled over to him sideways, remaining in a crouch. "You have to want what the wolf wants," he whispered. "That's how you control it. And they didn't know it 'til Greyback taught them, either, so don't pay any mi--" He froze, the muscles in his neck stiffening as he moved to toss the hair out of his eyes.

Remus felt the pull as the stream brightened, the clouds breaking apart overhead. He couldn't resist it.

He turned up his face.

For a moment, it was just the moon, silent and peaceful in the sky.

Then the bright, hot fire

rips through him, tearing him, re-shaping him. The moon is red and the red is blood and the blood is prey.

Alpha runs after it, but can't catch it. He comes back to the pack, all of them panting. After this, there is a time of roaming the woods together, and then gathering by the water again to sleep until the sun

rose, bringing pain with it, the second transformation, the beginning of a new month of waiting.

Remus jumped to his feet, staring at the others, covering himself with a handy branch.

Greyback smiled at him. "Bit of fun there, weren't they?"

"Who were those people?"

"Don't know." Greyback got to his feet, not remotely embarrassed at being unclothed. He scratched himself. "Campers, I reckon."

"Campers... people... here...? Why... " Remus took a deep breath, and crouched down into a more protected position. "Why were we hunting them?"

"They were there." Greyback crossed the clearing and tapped Remus's forehead with one strong finger. "You were there as well, mate."

"We didn't..."

"No, they got away." Greyback looked over his shoulder. "Did anyone get a bite in?"

No one had.

"Go on then. Get dressed. We'll have a better hunt next time."

The others left the clearing. Remus remained crouched at the water's edge.

"You planning to stay there and shiver all day, or do something useful?" Greyback asked him.

"Why were we hunting innocent humans? They didn't even do anything to you."

"Why not ask yourself why you were right there with us?" Greyback said. "Answer that question, and it answers your other one as well."

"I don't know."

"Yes you do. Say it."

"Instinct," Remus muttered reluctantly.

"I didn't catch that."

"Instinct. It was instinct."

"Right. And it's instinct because it's what we are. Even you... Professor Lupin. Get dressed."

Remus obeyed.

He didn't see the pups that morning, but the other adults were straggling back to their lairs, looking weak and ill in some cases. Old Mag grabbed his arm and leaned on him for support for the time their paths crossed, but left without a word when hers forked in a different direction. Remus trudged on alone.

He'd wanted to Apparate to the Burrow, to give Harry good wishes before the school year, to have some of Molly's good cooking for lunch, to clean up and become human, and to read Dora's letter again and again, to imagine her voice whispering in his ear. He was expected there--no matter how recently he'd been there, he knew that Molly would worry if he didn't appear to tell her that he'd lived through another moon. But then he thought of the screaming campers, and the way the scent had filled his mind, and the idea of Apparating was ludicrous. The idea of even making it back to his shed seemed ludicrous until he actually reached it, and fell face down on the floor.

He slept, not bothering to close the door.