The Now of Wolf Thought

Goin' For a Swim

The rest of Remus' evening was pretty ordinary as he cut short his interviews with Harry's. He'd been given loads to think on and had borrowed Hermione's Prefect badge in order to utilize the very same large bath where all this mess started for him. It didn't occur to him that he was allowed to walk the staircase to the girls' dorms and none of the other boys were able to.

He swam from edge to edge, as he normally would have, making several laps in the hopes of tiring him out enough where he could sleep. And he went under, and then came back up several times in succession like a dolphin swimming and jumping the oceans currents...and he relaxed finally, in the pale light of the few candles that he had lit. On the last trip, he thought he noticed a tall dark figure standing at the edge of the bath. He turned and held on to the edge as he peered around in the darkness.

Remus stood to his feet and wiped the soapy water from his face with his hands. "Hello...who's there?"

"Just your favorite neighborhood Grimmmm..."

"SIRIUS!"

Once again, Remus dove into the water to nearly swam the length of the pool and came up right at the edge. Sirius crouched down smiling as he reached out his hand to pull him up. However, Remus reached up, took hold of his hand and pulled the man into the water with him. When he resurfaced, he was beaming. "Hey there," Sirius managed to spit out. Remus had wound his entire body around Sirius' very thin one. "Goin' for a swim, there mate?"

"How did you get in here!"

"Don't ask and I won't have to lie to you," Sirius joked.

Remus rolled his eyes and shook his head, then, he realized that he was hanging on to a man who had the body mass of a boy half his age. "Dear god, there's nothing left of you..."

"More of me now than there was," Sirius replied. "Stand up and let me have a look at you?"

Remus released him and put his feet to the floor.

"Yeah, you're still only as tall as me. You've a few more inches to go, mate," he said warmly.

"How tall do I end up being?"

"About 6-6. Or 6-8, depends on the day, really."

Remus frowned. "That's about the length of a full grown wolf." He released Sirius and turned around. Sirius had slipped silently below the water's surface and pulled Remus' legs out from beneath him. He fell back into the water and felt the bottom of the mammoth pool of a tub. He sat there for a moment and saw Sirius' dark hair ebb and flow with the currents in the bath water in the pale light and for a good three minutes, they stared at each other beneath the water.

Finally Sirius stood up and pulled the adolescent version of his best mate up with him. "Look, I never really told you this..."

Remus stared hard into his friend's eyes. "What, that I should stop feeling so bleeding sorry for myself?"