InsaneJournal

Remus stalked across the stone floor of his bedchamber. The room was silent, and, despite his attempts to liven it with objects dear to him, to make it his home, it felt incredibly bare.

Empty.

His slippers scuffed the stone as he continued his pacing, shards of opalescent moonlight casting impermanent shadows across his moving form; his futile attempts to expel the nervous energy from his weary bones leaving him increasingly frustrated.

It had, he realised, become a nightly event since he had been at Hogwarts. Or, rather, since he had learned of Sirius' escape from Azkaban.

He shuffled repeatedly through the room. It was almost as though he were determined to polish the stone with the soles of his slippers alone. Remus began to wring his hands.

He stopped.

Suddenly.

Still.

"Enough," he growled under his breath.

With a sharp, sudden movement, Remus kicked his slippers off of his feet. He seated himself on the bed and, slowly, slipped in beneath the covers. The cotton felt clean and crisp against his scarred skin.

Remus closed his eyes in what he knew would be a pointless act – despite the glowing warmth of his room's fireplace, and the adequate bedding in which he lay, ensconced, he could not shake his uneasiness: the guilt of his past jabbing incessantly at his insides, sharp-edged and bitterly cold; an icicle lying in the pit of his stomach.

He rolled onto his side, hitching the covers up to his chin. He shivered. Staring blankly ahead, his eyes scouring the darkening shadows of the night for – for what, he was not entirely sure, he was only sure he would not find it.

He supposed it was relief he was hoping for; for some sort of respite – from his past, from himself - in the dark of this late October evening.

It was not what came to him.

As Remus' eyelids drooped, and his consciousness began to falter, images flooded over him.

The shimmering grey light of the early dawn, pieces of the new day scattered across the grimy timber floor of the Shrieking Shack.

The twitch of his fingertips; his body shuddering with cold, and with the ache of his transformation as he woke. The dull throb of his muscles, pulsating beneath skin.

Split lips and the grit of blood on his tongue, slack and lolling against the corner of his open mouth.

The tender touch of warm skin against the biting cold of his own.

The palm of a hand - soft - and fingers, curving gently against his hip.

A thumb against his cheek, brushing strands of loose hair from his face; contact so light, and fluttering against his skin – like snow, falling – that it would have been nearly imperceptible but for Remus' heightened sensitivity to it following the full moon.

Words, whispered, in a rolling, growl, a voice that undulated in the air as it reached Remus: "Sleep, my love, just sleep."

"Sleep, my love, just sleep."

The words echoed in Remus' room and he woke, with a start. His eyes scanned the deepening shadows of the night as his pulse raced. His fingers curled against the edge of the bed, clinging to the mattress.

He could have sworn he felt the ghost of that same touch, light fingertips, fluttering like snow, on his cheek; his lips.

But it couldn't have been.