A/N: Hello again, dear readers! Long time no see.

Fair warning, this story is labeled as an angstfic for a reason. By "angstfic", I mean "go as over-the-top-as-possible in torturing the character". This story is not going to have a happy ending. And as a heads-up, there is mention of depression and suicide, so if that's upsetting to you, you might want to turn back now.

Let's hope this attempt at fanfic goes better than the last.

The little girl turned another page, kicking her feet idly to keep the swing moving. Completely enthralled in the story, it wasn't until it started getting dark that she realized how late it was. Reluctantly, knowing dark meant bedtime, she shut the book and hopped off the swing, holding it protectively to her chest as she began heading back to the house.

A sudden rustling in the bushes made her freeze. Slowly, she turned around to see a very large man emerging from the bush. His hair was so matted and filthy its color was indiscernible, and he was wearing a very ratty trench coat. His feet were bare, and his fingernails were yellow and pointed.

"Well, hello there," he said, stepping smoothly between her and the door—between her and safety. He smiled; it was not a nice smile.

"I—I need to go home," the little girl said, swallowing away the dryness in her mouth. She edged sideways, trying to calculate her chances of making a break for it. The man simply repositioned himself so he was blocking her way. Screaming wouldn't help, she knew—her throat had closed up in terror.

The man crouched down so he was little higher than eye level with her. "Your daddy did a very bad thing, Caitlyn," he said. His breath reeked of rotten meat. "Did you know that?"

The little girl shook her head. "I—I'm not—n-not Caitlyn," she choked out. Caitlyn Rosenberger was her friend next door, and the two girls looked rather similar from a distance. Caitlyn's father and her own father were good friends—Mr. Rosenberger was visiting her dad to share brandy and stories that very night, in fact.

The man's lip curled. "If you're not, then where is she?"

The girl just shook her head. She wasn't about to tell this scary man where to find her friend.

It was dark out now, very dark. The man twitched slightly, and the girl took a step back.

"Well, it's too late to find her now," the man said. "Next month, then. You'll do for tonight." He reached out and trailed a single yellowed talon down the side of her face. "I haven't had a Muggle in several weeks. So soft and tender..."

The girl dropped her book and turned tail and fled, racing as fast as her little legs could carry her into the woods behind her house. She didn't get far before the man caught her by the arm, twisting it painfully. She screamed when she felt something snap, and he threw her roughly to the ground, planting one foot on her leg.

"Well, now that I have you, I can't let you go running away again, can I?" he said, pressing down hard. Harder. She screamed again, trying desperately to get away. She clawed at the ground with her good arm in a futile effort to drag herself out from under his foot as he tauntingly bit her on the ear.

Suddenly, a cloud shifted and moonlight filtered through the trees. The pressure on her leg lifted and she began crawling away, sobbing, too terrified to look back at the sounds of the man screaming, bones snapping and rearranging, muscles stretching with a wet ripping noise as the scream turned into a howl—

And then pain shot through her entire body when something seized her by the leg. She was dragged backwards by the enormous silvery wolf, bones crunching in its jaws even while it savaged her with its claws—

There was a sudden flash of light and a loud series of bangs and the wolf let go, snarling. Through the haze of pain, the little girl could barely make out the outlines of her father and Mr. Rosenberger running toward her. The bangs were coming from a long stick in Mr. Rosenberger's hand. The wolf snarled again before turning tail and fleeing into the night.

She blacked out.

When she came to, she could barely move. Her entire body was wrapped in bandages, and even if it hadn't been, she didn't think she could have gone far anyway. She hurt too much. Oh, god, everything hurt. Not even the time she'd fallen out of the tree had left her hurting like this.

She whimpered and opened her eyes, and was seized by a brief moment of panic when she thought she'd been blinded in one eye, but then she realized half of her face had been bandaged, and she relaxed slightly. Only slightly.

"Mummy?" she tried to call, but her voice caught in her throat and she began coughing, sobbing as pain wracked her body with every movement.

The door opened and a voice said, "It's awake." She heard footsteps, and then her arm was grabbed roughly, holding her still. She tried to scream when she felt pain shoot up her arm, but no sound came out. Through the tears in her eyes, she could see the doctor—if he even was that—putting a long, thin stick in his pocket before consulting a piece of parchment. A wand, she realized. So this man was a wizard.

"Well, it's been stabilized," he said curtly, not even glancing at her as he spoke. The woman next to him nodded, biting her lip.

"We'll need to change out its dressings soon unless we want it to get an infection—"

The man shrugged. "Don't go to the trouble. There are other patients to be looked after. Besides, what's one less werewolf in the world? A Muggle isn't likely to survive as it is; I didn't even bother putting this one on the registry."

"Sir, that's illegal," the woman said. "If word got out that we—"

"It's not going to," the man said, and pointed the stick at the little girl. "Obliviate."

"Sweetie?" Mrs. Saibhir touched her daughter's face lightly. "Sweetheart, can you hear me?"

She groaned and opened her eyes to find herself back in her bedroom at home. "Mummy?" she said. Her voice was hoarse. "Mummy, w-what hap-p-pened, there was a man, and—" She began to tremble as the memories came rushing back to her.

Mrs. Saibhir carefully took one of her daughter's bandaged hands. "This… this is going to sound very strange, and I'm still getting used to it myself," she said slowly, "but… magic is real, and so are magical monsters, like… like werewolves."

The little girl just looked at her blankly.

"We thought magic wasn't real, but it is," Mrs. Saibhir tried again.

"Of course it's real," the little girl said, like it should have been obvious. "Caitlyn showed me."

Mrs. Saibhir was silent for a moment, then nodded. "Of course she did," she said, sighing. "So you already know about that… what do you know about werewolves?"

The girl was quiet for a long time. "Is that… is that what…?"

"It was," Mrs. Saibhir said softly. Tears began to drip down her cheeks and she gently placed a hand on her daughter's face, but pulled back when she hissed in pain. "You're going to transform every month… there isn't—there isn't a cure…"

She continued talking, but there was only one thing on the little girl's mind. "Will I be able to walk again?"

Mrs. Saibhir's face went carefully blank. "The… the Healers aren't sure," she said. "But I think if you focus on getting stronger, then yes, you can." She didn't want to crush her daughter's heart, especially considering how much she was already hurting. When she wasn't in so much pain, she'd find a way to gently break the news that there was a very good chance she'd never be able to walk again.

She perked up when her mother stuck her head around the door. "Caitlyn's here to see you," Mrs. Saibhir said.

She felt a small thrill go through her. Finally, something to distract her from lying in bed all day, unable to do anything but wonder if she'd ever be able to walk again. But when Caitlyn came into her room, her heart sank.

"Um," Caitlyn said, fear written all over her face. "Hi."

"Hi," she said hesitantly.

"Um," Caitlyn said again. "So… I… You're a—a—"

"Werewolf," she said, her voice quiet.

"Y-yeah, that," Caitlyn stuttered.

She remembered only too well how the Healers at St. Mungo's had treated her, and tears began dripping down her face. "Cait, please," she begged, "I'm still me, I just gotta be real careful every month, please don't—"

Caitlyn was shaking her head and backing away toward the door. "No, you're not," she said. "I can't be friends with you anymore 'cause mummy and daddy say you're a monster."

It was like being stabbed in the heart. She couldn't stop herself from sobbing when Caitlyn turned round and ran out of the room.

"Alright, how does that feel?" Mrs. Saibhir asked, carefully pulling the last bandage off her daughter's knee.

The little girl stared down at it, licking her lips. Her leg looked deformed; there was no kinder way to put it. The leg had very obviously been broken and reset in such a way that it had visibly healed wrong. Slowly, she sat up in bed and put her feet on the floor. She noticed that her injured leg was a bit shorter than the other now, and swallowed nervously. She glanced up at her parents, who were watching her with a mixture of anticipation and worry.

Slowly, she stood, putting weight on her good leg before hesitantly transferring it to her bad. Pain shot up her leg and she fell, her parents catching her just before she hit the floor.

"Just take it easy, then," Mr. Saibhir said, helping her back onto the bed. "Rest. You can always try again later."

She nodded, looking away. At the rate things were going, she wouldn't be surprised if she died of boredom before any of her wounds scarred over. Most of the bandages had been removed by now, though the ones on her face remained. She was almost glad of that, though; she was scared to see what she looked like.

Her heart was pounding as her father carried her from her bedroom to the basement, and she whimpered when she saw the chains that had been bolted to the wall and floor. She clung to her father's shirt, but she was still weak and couldn't get a strong enough grip to put up a fight when he carefully set her down and began locking her up.

"Daddy, please," she whispered.

He ducked his head, fighting back tears. "I'm sorry, baby, I wish there was some other way…"

"Daddy!" her head was pounding and her skin was beginning to itch horribly underneath her bandages; her wounds burned and she began to kick, screaming in terror and pain as she tore open scabs and jolted broken bones.

"Please, try to relax, you're hurting yourself!" Mr. Saibhir said, his fingers fumbling as he tried to restrain her without hurting her himself.

"DADDY!" she screamed, pulling against the chains as he backed away. "DADDY, NO, DON'T LEAVE ME HERE! PLEASE! DADDY! MUMMY! HELP ME!"

Mr. Saibhir retreated up the stairs and locked the basement door, pulling his wife into a hug. She didn't cry, but she rested her head on his shoulder and stared unseeingly at the door, ears numb when the sounds of her daughter's screams transformed into howls.

"Well," Mrs. Saibhir said shakily when her daughter opened her eyes, "it could have been worse…"

She swallowed. "W-what happened?" she asked. She realized her fingers were numb, and didn't respond when she attempted to move them.

"You… you managed to break your wrist," Mrs. Saibhir said. She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to regain her composure. "The bone sliced through the tendons. We're going to take you to St. Mungo's, just hang in there…"

She looked down at her arm, which was wrapped in a bloody towel. Her stomach twisted and she vomited, convulsing on the floor in a pool of her own blood. Mrs. Saibhir could only hold her daughter tight, stroking her matted hair and whispering words that were supposed to be comforting, but only came off as empty and emotionless.

Her little baby girl wasn't even yet five years old and already had experienced more pain than most adults would over a lifetime. But she didn't cry; she just slumped down, exhausted, and feebly said, "It hurts, mummy."

Mrs. Saibhir hugged her daughter and cried.

"Alright, sweetheart, let's see what you can do," Mrs. Saibhir said, and slowly let go of her daughter's hands, taking a few steps back.

She wobbled for a bit, keeping her weight all on one foot, before shifting painstakingly slowly to the other. Tears sprang to her eyes when pain shot through her knee once more, but she grit her teeth and determinedly took one step, then another, lurching forward until she grabbed hold of her mother's hands, exhausted from the effort.

Mrs. Saibhir picked her up and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "I'm so proud of you, baby," she said, and Mr. Saibhir clapped from the doorway. "You did it, you did it when everyone was saying you can't—don't you ever listen to them again, do you hear me? You walked, I don't care if it was just a few steps, you were so brave, you were…"

She just hugged her mother around the neck and closed her eyes, tuning out the praise. She was tired, but she didn't want to sleep. The nightmares might come back. She took in a deep breath and slowly let it out. The pain in her knee was sharp, but nothing compared to what she'd come to expect from the transformations.

Maybe next full moon she'd get lucky and bleed to death before her parents could do anything about it.

She pulled the last bandage away from her face. She took a deep breath and stared at the mirror, forcing herself to drink in every detail.

Four thick scars slashed across her face. One cut across her nose, leaving it looking off-center and crooked. One went down the side of her face and straight through her ear, which had been carefully, but inexpertly stitched back together by her own mother when the Healers at St. Mungo's refused to use "Muggle methods". One cut just above her eye, and the scar tissue was so large and thick that it forced her eyelid half-shut, no matter how much she strained to open it further. And the last one was a massive slash across her face, starting on her nose and leaving it, too, sloppily stitched back together, going down to the corner of her mouth and distorting it into an ugly frown, and ending on her jawbone.

The entire left side of her face had been sliced to ribbons and put back together by someone with no experience in healing, and she felt tears beginning to well up as she turned to the right, presenting her unblemished cheek to the mirror. If she just looked at that side, she could pretend she was normal, pretend that nothing had happened.

She could pretend. She was good at pretending.

She turned to face her full reflection in the mirror and kept herself composed for only a few seconds before she began to cry.

"Mummy?"

Mrs. Saibhir looked up from the newspaper to see her daughter standing in the doorway, leaning heavily on her crutches. "What is it, sweetie?"

She hobbled over and sat at the kitchen table, biting her lip, before pulling the towel off her head. She hadn't been able to bathe yet after her last transformation, and her bloody, tangled brown hair tumbled down around her shoulders, almost to her hips.

She loved her hair. She loved how keeping it long made her feel like a princess, how her mother used to brush it in the mornings before school while she was eating breakfast. She loved it when her mother did fancy braids, when she decorated it with flowers, when she rubbed it with balloons to make it stand on end despite its absurd length. She loved to hang upside-down from tree limbs and feel its weight tugging her to the ground.

But she hadn't been to school in months, she couldn't walk, let alone climb trees, and she never went outside anymore to see the flowers. She was too scared to go back into the garden, scared that the man might find them in their new house, and make good on his promise to eat her. They could barely afford enough food to eat now, let alone balloons for fun. Her medical bills finally caught up to them and they were barely getting by every day. Shampoo was expensive, and she used a lot of it. She used even more when her wounds finally healed enough for her to clean up.

"I want you to cut it off."

Mrs. Saibhir was quiet for a moment. "Sweetie, are you sure? Your hair is beautiful, it would be a shame to get rid of—"

"Cut it off," she repeated, biting her lip. "It just keeps getting in the way, it's messy, it stays bloody for days at a time and then it needs to have it all washed and brushed out and it takes hours to do that… cut it off. All of it. Please, mum."

Mrs. Saibhir cupped the back of her daughter's head for a moment before running her fingers through her hair. They caught in it several times, and came away red and sticky. "Alright," she said at last.

"Daddy!" the little girl looked up from her book, smiling when her father entered the room with a tray of food. "Daddy, did you know that there was a werewolf who was awarded an Order of Merlin?"

"I didn't," he said, sitting beside her and setting the tray down. "What's an Order of Merlin?"

"It's an award thingy that the wizarding government gives to people who did great things for the wizarding world," she said. "And his name was Remus Lupin! He died in the Battle of Hogwarts, fighting one of You-Know-Who's Death Eaters. He has a son, and Harry Potter, the man who defeated You-Know-Who, is his godfather." She showed her father the moving illustration, then turned the page of the book. "And it says here that the Minister, Kingsley Shacklebolt, is working on putting in new… leg-ish-lation, to make it so werewolves are treated better."

"That's very good of him," Mr. Saibhir said, running a hand over his daughter's head. Her hair was now so short she was nearly bald, and it pained him to see her reduced to a thin shell of her former vibrant self. She hardly ever got out of bed these days. "Maybe you should write to him and ask him to do something about those ars—those mean people at St. Mungo's."

She looked away. "That's stupid, daddy."

"Why's that?"

"Just because he says he wants to help doesn't mean he does," she said, and his heart broke at the cynical bitterness coming from his daughter's mouth. "Especially not for people like me."

Mr. and Mrs. Saibhir sat on the couch together, holding hands as they tried to read their respective books and ignore the howls coming from behind the basement door.

"Do you think she'll be alright?" Mrs. Saibhir asked anxiously, not for the first time.

"She'll be fine," her husband said, trying to reassure her as much as himself. "The night's almost over, she'll—" Both of them froze when they heard a terrible CRACK... like the chains holding their daughter down had been torn from the wall. Barely a moment later, there was a horrific pounding shaking the door. "Run!" Mr. Saibhir said, grabbing his wife's hand and racing upstairs with her. He ran to the closet and threw open the door to find the safe, fingers fumbling as he rushed to undo the lock.

From downstairs they heard the basement door splinter and the howl of the werewolf, then the pounding of paws as it began following their scent. Mr. Saibhir managed to get the safe open and grabbed the gun inside, loading it and aiming it at the door. Mrs. Saibhir picked up the bat beside their bed, swallowing down the lump in her throat and hoping desperately that they wouldn't have to kill their only child.

The instant the werewolf came into view, Mr. Saibhir fired. His aim was true, and the bullet lodged itself in the werewolf's spine. The wolf collapsed with a yelp, still trying to drag itself forward on its front paws.

"I'm so sorry, baby," Mr. Saibhir whispered, backing away. Mrs. Saibhir let out a quiet sob. The werewolf gave up on trying to drag itself forward and lay on the floor, whimpering, its eyes starting to dull as blood drained from the wound in its back.

Mrs. Saibhir took a hesitant step forward, only to jump backwards when the wolf once more snapped at her. Gathering her courage, she grabbed a pillow from the bed and approached the wolf again. When the wolf bit, she shoved the pillow over its face. Feathers flew everywhere, but the damaged pillow gave Mrs. Saibhir the chance to close her hands over the wolf's jaws, holding them shut. The wolf gave a piteous moan, and Mrs. Saibhir looked over at her husband. "Help me stop the bleeding," she ordered. "If she can survive until sunrise, we can take her to St Mungo's, get her healed again."

Mr. Saibhir nodded and grabbed a towel, hesitantly approaching the wolf. Seeing his wife had it safely restrained, he pressed the towel to the wolf's back. The wolf whimpered, front claws scrabbling uselessly against the wood floor.

The remainder of the night night passed in silence, broken only by the almost pitiable whines of the wolf.

Then the wolf screamed, beginning to writhe as the sun crept over the horizon. Mr. and Mrs. Saibhir could only move away and watch their daughter slowly transform back, screaming in pain all the while.

When it was over, their ten year old daughter slowly lifted her head. "M-mum?" she rasped, coughing. Blood dribbled from the corners of her mouth. "What—?" Her eyes went huge when she realized where she was. "I didn't—?!"

"We're fine, sweetheart," Mrs. Saibhir said, kneeling beside her daughter and pressing the towel to the wound on her back. "You... you managed to break out, but we're alright. Are you...?"

She coughed again, more weakly this time. "I, I, I can't feel my legs," she said. "Mum, dad, I can't…"

"We'll get you to St. Mungo's," Mr. Saibhir said, wiping his eyes. "Baby, I'm so sorry, I had to…"

She nodded and closed her eyes. "It's okay, dad," she said weakly. "I'm glad you... stopped... me…"