Transformation
Disclaimer: No, it's not mine. I'm not that brilliant.
A/N: This is basically just me being bored and challenging myself to stay in the mind of a transforming werewolf from start to finish. It's written in two perspectives: that of Remus's mum and that of Remus. I rather like Remus's part better, but if you feel differently, tell me that when you review *hint hint*. Umm, oh yes- asterisks (*) mean italics, like when the word is being stressed.
Remus Lupin lay curled up on the couch in front of the fire in the living room of the cottage. He was in the middle of reading "The Hobbit" for what must have been the fifth time. Eurydice Lupin was sitting on the couch beside him, her own book lying open in her lap. Yet right now, she was not at all in the mood for reading. She watched her eldest child intently as he devoured the book once again, page after page, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world. She wondered briefly how it was so easy for him to become so completely engrossed in the text, especially when he had read this one countless times before. Yet she was easily able to answer her own question: Remus could become immersed in *any* book he read because it would be an alternate world, full of things he liked and all kinds of terrifying dangers that he knew he would not have to fight himself. He could watch the unlikely heroes of the stories do the deeds for him. She realized, with some cold sorrow, that he *had* to surround himself in books like this: they took his mind off of his all too unhappy and painful reality, the battles *he* had to fight alone. She sighed softly to herself: why couldn't he just stay like this, an innocent human boy, reading until he realized he could get up and reenter the real world again, with nothing to fear? Why couldn't he just be *human*?
As if in cruel mockery to this silent plea, the ancient grandfather clock in the corner started to pang at that moment. Remus lifted his head from the couch at the sound of the first innocent-sounding pang. His amber eyes started to cloud in dread, hidden but still noticeable in a cloak of calm resignation. Six pangs. Seven pangs. Eight pangs. Eurydice knew that it sounded like a death sentence in Remus's ears. Eurydice could feel her heart breaking for her son as he closed the book without being told, sighing under his breath as he did so, but she forced herself to keep a strong face. She knew the boy needed support far more than he needed pity now. She stood up, trying to give him a reassuring smile.
"Well, I guess it's time then," she said, trying and failing miserably to sound light.
They exited the room and made their way down to the cellar together, into the dark chamber off to the side, which had been dug out and enforced with stone just a few months after Remus's fateful encounter with the werewolf that had sealed his fate. Remus held his head high; he pushed the light brown hair out of his eyes determinedly, but Eurydice could still see his hand quivering slightly. She unlocked the iron lock that held the door shut and held it open for Remus. He strode in, though she did not miss his first reluctant step into the location where his monthly torture always took place. She wished with all her heart as she followed him in that she could just pull him away and slam the dreaded door shut forever, that in doing that all of their troubles would slam shut with it. That Remus would never have to go back to his personal torture chamber again, because the door was locked and within the chamber lay the wolf, forever separated from the human who it had haunted for so long. She wished that it could all be cured by simply locking it away.
"Are you ready, then?" she asked quietly.
"Do I have much of a choice anyway?" he replied bitterly, dropping the composed air he had held in place earlier, plopping moodily down on the floor opposite the door and beginning to fiddle with the iron clasps on the chains that were fused to the floor far from the room's exit.
"I suppose not," was all Eurydice could say as she knelt down next to him to help. Her stomach clenched painfully with each snap as she closed each clasp around his wrists and ankles. She could not help feeling the overwhelming urge to cry out as she condemned her only son to his monthly anguish. She dug a hand into the pocket of her robes and it soon reemerged with a wand. She pointed the mahogany rod at each shackle and muttered "Colloportus!" sealing each one shut.
Remus curled up in a corner of the room and drew his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and resting his head on them. "Will Dad be home in the morning?" he asked.
"I'm sure he will be," Eurydice replied. "Do you want him to come down and get you once the Moon sets?"
Remus nodded and then closed his eyes, inviting her to leave him. She knelt down again and kissed his forehead as a sign of reassurance. Then she swept out of the room. She performed her usual list of silencing charms and sealing spells on the locked door, trying to keep the bitter trembling out of her voice as she did so. It just wasn't fair: no parent should have to leave her child in a dark cellar once a month so that he could hurt himself and not someone else. And no child should have to endure what Remus was enduring at this moment. Children his age should never even have seen a werewolf, much less know what it was like to be one. She ascended the stairs and went back to the living room, keeping her eyes averted from the window as much as she could, wondering when her husband would be home from the Ministry of Magic where he worked. She dearly hoped he would be there to comfort Remus when he awoke.
~-~-~-~-~-~-
In the shadowy depths of the cellar, Remus waited for the sound of his mother locking the last door at the top of the cellar stairs behind her. Then he raised his head and let the tears in his eyes flow down his cheeks freely. He knew he should not be doing this, that he should stay strong and stop pitying himself for things he could not control. But it was impossible to keep it all bottled inside of him, he found. After a while, there was simply no way to ignore the waves of despair he always seemed to feel on the Full Moon. He could not help feeling slightly silly acting like such a helpless baby at ten years old, but this was the way it was. What could he do about it? What could he do about the utter hopelessness that always seemed to envelope him at this time, the knowledge that he would have to keep enduring these monthly ordeals for the rest of his life, always hurting, always healing, unable to escape until he died? Nothing, he concluded. So, trying to block out the growing dread boiling up in his stomach, he lay in his cramped corner, absently fiddling with the sleeve of his robes which had been pinched between a chain, awaiting the rising Moon. The first weak rays of moonlight emerged on the horizon outside. Immediately, like a transparent angel of death, it slid in through the high window of the cellar in the Lupin's small cottage, as if it had been waiting impatiently to flood the room all month. Remus's breath caught in his throat as the wan light bounced into his eyes. They started to burn as if they had been grazed by fire. Then the seizure hit fully, and he felt himself freeze. He felt the moonlight dancing right through him, as if mocking his helplessness against it. It burned, burned his skin, burned everything it touched. He felt his heavy despair turn to panic and attack his mind. Oh God, it hurt; it hurt, and he couldn't stop it! He was being overcome by the wolf, an insane, starving wolf that would hurt itself and not care, would leave him to deal with the wounds in the morning! It was taking him, a disease spreading through him at deadly speed. he didn't want it, he wished he could make it stop, that he could make the wolf leave him alone. But he couldn't, it would never stop, he couldn't make it stop! He was drowning, drowning in despair, drowning in pain as the moonlight caused his bones and organs to break and twist, grow and shrink, his skin to prickle and sprout fur, encasing him in the prison that was the wolf. His throat seized, he couldn't breathe. A painful ringing in his lengthening ears from the echoes of the agonized screams he had not even noticed emitting from his mouth. He grasped desperately at the floor with his fur covered hands, only to find a moment later that they had reshaped into flat, short-toed paws, four long, merciless claws curving like short scythes from each of them. He wanted to recoil from them in fear, to wrench away from the terrible thing he was becoming. But he could do no such thing. They were part of him now. Part of the wolf that he was becoming. They would always be with him, he realized, whether he could see them or not. He was the wolf, much as he hated to know it. The blood that ran through his veins was cursed, forever carrying the wolf in its hateful current through him, contaminating him, poisoning him forever. Oh how he hated the wolf, hated what he had to go through each month because of it, hated himself. He was his own enemy; the enemy that flowed freely through him, refusing to leave, like some painful type of cancer. He was trapped with it forever, trapped in his own brain with the monster. A boiling-hot anger rose within his heart: he *hated* it!
In a fit of crazed self-loathing he turned and bit into his now completely wolfish leg, his strong jaws and long, sharp, canine teeth ripping through the skin and driving into the muscle under it. He let out a scream as the last shreds of human awareness escaped him. He did not realize that his scream was now no more than an angry howl. The blood that was now cascading out of his wound reminded him of his hunger. He felt a surge of bloodlust- the world had to pay for what it had done to him! Making him become this angry creature, trapping him. trapping him in this chamber, away from everyone else. He needed to get out. He was hungry, starving. He wanted blood. With a savage growl from his canine throat, he sprang forward. He was immediately thrown backwards by the strong chains that bound his legs. the chains that kept him away from the door, from food. A human had put them there, while he had been asleep. He wanted to get that human, rip it up and eat it. He *had* to get out! He leapt at the door again, only to be ricocheted back once more, this time feeling the ankle on his right front leg break with a resounding crack. He howled in frustration and took out his impulsive anger by reaching down and ripping his injured leg down to the bone. Blood, flesh. It was deeply satisfying to grip between his teeth, even if it was not human blood or flesh. It hurt him, but his need for meat far outweighed any pain he might have felt. He bit himself again and again, writhing in pain but simply unable to stop himself. He did not know what was happening anymore, why he was doing this, who he was, what he was. Only that he was hungry and that he wanted more of the blood that he tasted in his mouth. He was no longer Remus Lupin. He was the Wolf.
Disclaimer: No, it's not mine. I'm not that brilliant.
A/N: This is basically just me being bored and challenging myself to stay in the mind of a transforming werewolf from start to finish. It's written in two perspectives: that of Remus's mum and that of Remus. I rather like Remus's part better, but if you feel differently, tell me that when you review *hint hint*. Umm, oh yes- asterisks (*) mean italics, like when the word is being stressed.
Remus Lupin lay curled up on the couch in front of the fire in the living room of the cottage. He was in the middle of reading "The Hobbit" for what must have been the fifth time. Eurydice Lupin was sitting on the couch beside him, her own book lying open in her lap. Yet right now, she was not at all in the mood for reading. She watched her eldest child intently as he devoured the book once again, page after page, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world. She wondered briefly how it was so easy for him to become so completely engrossed in the text, especially when he had read this one countless times before. Yet she was easily able to answer her own question: Remus could become immersed in *any* book he read because it would be an alternate world, full of things he liked and all kinds of terrifying dangers that he knew he would not have to fight himself. He could watch the unlikely heroes of the stories do the deeds for him. She realized, with some cold sorrow, that he *had* to surround himself in books like this: they took his mind off of his all too unhappy and painful reality, the battles *he* had to fight alone. She sighed softly to herself: why couldn't he just stay like this, an innocent human boy, reading until he realized he could get up and reenter the real world again, with nothing to fear? Why couldn't he just be *human*?
As if in cruel mockery to this silent plea, the ancient grandfather clock in the corner started to pang at that moment. Remus lifted his head from the couch at the sound of the first innocent-sounding pang. His amber eyes started to cloud in dread, hidden but still noticeable in a cloak of calm resignation. Six pangs. Seven pangs. Eight pangs. Eurydice knew that it sounded like a death sentence in Remus's ears. Eurydice could feel her heart breaking for her son as he closed the book without being told, sighing under his breath as he did so, but she forced herself to keep a strong face. She knew the boy needed support far more than he needed pity now. She stood up, trying to give him a reassuring smile.
"Well, I guess it's time then," she said, trying and failing miserably to sound light.
They exited the room and made their way down to the cellar together, into the dark chamber off to the side, which had been dug out and enforced with stone just a few months after Remus's fateful encounter with the werewolf that had sealed his fate. Remus held his head high; he pushed the light brown hair out of his eyes determinedly, but Eurydice could still see his hand quivering slightly. She unlocked the iron lock that held the door shut and held it open for Remus. He strode in, though she did not miss his first reluctant step into the location where his monthly torture always took place. She wished with all her heart as she followed him in that she could just pull him away and slam the dreaded door shut forever, that in doing that all of their troubles would slam shut with it. That Remus would never have to go back to his personal torture chamber again, because the door was locked and within the chamber lay the wolf, forever separated from the human who it had haunted for so long. She wished that it could all be cured by simply locking it away.
"Are you ready, then?" she asked quietly.
"Do I have much of a choice anyway?" he replied bitterly, dropping the composed air he had held in place earlier, plopping moodily down on the floor opposite the door and beginning to fiddle with the iron clasps on the chains that were fused to the floor far from the room's exit.
"I suppose not," was all Eurydice could say as she knelt down next to him to help. Her stomach clenched painfully with each snap as she closed each clasp around his wrists and ankles. She could not help feeling the overwhelming urge to cry out as she condemned her only son to his monthly anguish. She dug a hand into the pocket of her robes and it soon reemerged with a wand. She pointed the mahogany rod at each shackle and muttered "Colloportus!" sealing each one shut.
Remus curled up in a corner of the room and drew his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and resting his head on them. "Will Dad be home in the morning?" he asked.
"I'm sure he will be," Eurydice replied. "Do you want him to come down and get you once the Moon sets?"
Remus nodded and then closed his eyes, inviting her to leave him. She knelt down again and kissed his forehead as a sign of reassurance. Then she swept out of the room. She performed her usual list of silencing charms and sealing spells on the locked door, trying to keep the bitter trembling out of her voice as she did so. It just wasn't fair: no parent should have to leave her child in a dark cellar once a month so that he could hurt himself and not someone else. And no child should have to endure what Remus was enduring at this moment. Children his age should never even have seen a werewolf, much less know what it was like to be one. She ascended the stairs and went back to the living room, keeping her eyes averted from the window as much as she could, wondering when her husband would be home from the Ministry of Magic where he worked. She dearly hoped he would be there to comfort Remus when he awoke.
~-~-~-~-~-~-
In the shadowy depths of the cellar, Remus waited for the sound of his mother locking the last door at the top of the cellar stairs behind her. Then he raised his head and let the tears in his eyes flow down his cheeks freely. He knew he should not be doing this, that he should stay strong and stop pitying himself for things he could not control. But it was impossible to keep it all bottled inside of him, he found. After a while, there was simply no way to ignore the waves of despair he always seemed to feel on the Full Moon. He could not help feeling slightly silly acting like such a helpless baby at ten years old, but this was the way it was. What could he do about it? What could he do about the utter hopelessness that always seemed to envelope him at this time, the knowledge that he would have to keep enduring these monthly ordeals for the rest of his life, always hurting, always healing, unable to escape until he died? Nothing, he concluded. So, trying to block out the growing dread boiling up in his stomach, he lay in his cramped corner, absently fiddling with the sleeve of his robes which had been pinched between a chain, awaiting the rising Moon. The first weak rays of moonlight emerged on the horizon outside. Immediately, like a transparent angel of death, it slid in through the high window of the cellar in the Lupin's small cottage, as if it had been waiting impatiently to flood the room all month. Remus's breath caught in his throat as the wan light bounced into his eyes. They started to burn as if they had been grazed by fire. Then the seizure hit fully, and he felt himself freeze. He felt the moonlight dancing right through him, as if mocking his helplessness against it. It burned, burned his skin, burned everything it touched. He felt his heavy despair turn to panic and attack his mind. Oh God, it hurt; it hurt, and he couldn't stop it! He was being overcome by the wolf, an insane, starving wolf that would hurt itself and not care, would leave him to deal with the wounds in the morning! It was taking him, a disease spreading through him at deadly speed. he didn't want it, he wished he could make it stop, that he could make the wolf leave him alone. But he couldn't, it would never stop, he couldn't make it stop! He was drowning, drowning in despair, drowning in pain as the moonlight caused his bones and organs to break and twist, grow and shrink, his skin to prickle and sprout fur, encasing him in the prison that was the wolf. His throat seized, he couldn't breathe. A painful ringing in his lengthening ears from the echoes of the agonized screams he had not even noticed emitting from his mouth. He grasped desperately at the floor with his fur covered hands, only to find a moment later that they had reshaped into flat, short-toed paws, four long, merciless claws curving like short scythes from each of them. He wanted to recoil from them in fear, to wrench away from the terrible thing he was becoming. But he could do no such thing. They were part of him now. Part of the wolf that he was becoming. They would always be with him, he realized, whether he could see them or not. He was the wolf, much as he hated to know it. The blood that ran through his veins was cursed, forever carrying the wolf in its hateful current through him, contaminating him, poisoning him forever. Oh how he hated the wolf, hated what he had to go through each month because of it, hated himself. He was his own enemy; the enemy that flowed freely through him, refusing to leave, like some painful type of cancer. He was trapped with it forever, trapped in his own brain with the monster. A boiling-hot anger rose within his heart: he *hated* it!
In a fit of crazed self-loathing he turned and bit into his now completely wolfish leg, his strong jaws and long, sharp, canine teeth ripping through the skin and driving into the muscle under it. He let out a scream as the last shreds of human awareness escaped him. He did not realize that his scream was now no more than an angry howl. The blood that was now cascading out of his wound reminded him of his hunger. He felt a surge of bloodlust- the world had to pay for what it had done to him! Making him become this angry creature, trapping him. trapping him in this chamber, away from everyone else. He needed to get out. He was hungry, starving. He wanted blood. With a savage growl from his canine throat, he sprang forward. He was immediately thrown backwards by the strong chains that bound his legs. the chains that kept him away from the door, from food. A human had put them there, while he had been asleep. He wanted to get that human, rip it up and eat it. He *had* to get out! He leapt at the door again, only to be ricocheted back once more, this time feeling the ankle on his right front leg break with a resounding crack. He howled in frustration and took out his impulsive anger by reaching down and ripping his injured leg down to the bone. Blood, flesh. It was deeply satisfying to grip between his teeth, even if it was not human blood or flesh. It hurt him, but his need for meat far outweighed any pain he might have felt. He bit himself again and again, writhing in pain but simply unable to stop himself. He did not know what was happening anymore, why he was doing this, who he was, what he was. Only that he was hungry and that he wanted more of the blood that he tasted in his mouth. He was no longer Remus Lupin. He was the Wolf.