Stars, hide your fires!
Let not light see my black and deep desires. -Macbeth, 1.4
It was night. Late at night and Remus Lupin was not himself. Literally. He ran through the forest, howling his discontent to the world. After Snape, that slimy git, had murdered Dumbledore, Remus had no one to supply him with the Wolfsbane potion. He had to do without, and he suffered for it.
Tonks tried to help, offering to go out with him when he transformed, but he adamantly refused. He wouldn't, he couldn't put her in the obvious (to him) danger of running around with a werewolf.
Merlin, he and the Marauders had been so bloody stupid! Didn't they understand the risks at all? Why had he let them do that? Was it because he was just happy to have friends?
He would never let Tonks come out with him. Never.
She didn't understand. She could help, she had said. With her around, maybe the change wouldn't be so bad.
But he couldn't risk it. To even picture her lying on the forest floor, her blood staining the carpet of moss, made him sick at heart. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and he was the worst thing that had ever happened to her.
She lit up his dark world, his lonely world. His best friends in the world were all dead at the hands of the Death Eaters, and she was all he had left.
He started a little at the sound of snapping twigs. He turned his head. He could smell her, her already noticeable scent magnified by his canine nose.
She smelled so good…so delicious.
He could feel his mouth watering, the delectable scent of Nymphadora inducing pools of saliva, as he relished the thought of attacking.
He pulled himself out of that mind frame, disgusted with himself. He could not, under any circumstances let her stay here. He was minutes, perhaps seconds away from attacking her, his worst nightmare and deepest desire right now come true.
"Remus?" she whispered.
She had no idea, his love, how he dreamed of killing her when he was a wolf.
It chilled him to think of this, and warmed his wolfish heart.
He couldn't. He wouldn't.
As she gazed at him, gazed calmingly, he could feel his muscles start to tense. He was ready to pounce. Ready to murder.
But the tiny part of human, of sanity in him rebelled, and he looked at her, howled mournfully, and ran.
When he changed back, he would tell her, tell her how she tempted him, no, tormented him that night by showing up.
So he ran, throwing his head back to look at the moon. His master, his jailer. Remus was a puppet to the diabolical workings of the moon.
And that knowledge had frightened him all of his life.