They threw me in a cell and slammed the door shut behind me, and that was the beginning of it.
Those first couple of weeks are blurry, but I remember that well enough. It was like watching my own death- except without the flashbacks and merciful release.
In the quiet that followed that solid echoing slam, I knew nothing but a white-hot fury that flooded my body like adrenaline.
I began to scream- at first I protested my innocence, they were wrong- they had the wrong man! It wasn't me, it was Peter- fucking Peter, that stupid weak fool. I screamed for Remus- pleaded for forgiveness from the silence.
Eventually though, it stopped making sense, and just became a noise. It flooded from me, from somewhere deep in my soul in a torrent so violent, I had no power to stop it. An aural embodiment of the pain of betrayal and loss.
I screamed for what felt like hours. I screamed until my voice was gone, my throat raw.
No-one was listening. No-one would come.
Despair washed over me slowly, like dark honey, taking my breath from me and dragging me to the cold stone floor. I don't know how long I lay there, overwhelmed with grief, but at some point I fell into a dreamless sleep.
When I woke up, it was dark. Through the bars of my tiny window, I could see the moon. It has never in my life seemed further away than it did that night. It was a few nights short of full.
Moony would spend this month's transformation alone. The first of many.
At the thought of Moony, my guts twisted themselves into painful knots. I'd been wrong- I'd been so fucking wrong - all those long months wasted in frosty suspicion. It wasn't Moony- poor, clever, beautiful Moony… It had never been Moony.
At that moment, under the uncaring face of a far away moon, I made a vow.
That fucking rat was going to pay.