A/N: Turning into a werewolf is hard and painful. Turning back can be just as bad. OC Werewolf. I do not own Harry Potter.
Submission for:
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments): Transfiguration Assignment #6 - Write about what happens after a werewolf turns back into a wizard/witch. Prompts: blood, sawdust
Greek Mythology Mega Prompt Challenge: Lycanthrope – Write about Lycanthropy.
The "As Many As You Want" Competition: dead bird, grotesque
While other people look to the night sky for hope and answers, you look up at in dread. You're constantly counting down the days until the moon hangs full with all its glory. You can feel it in your bones as it draws nearer and you know you need to find somewhere to go. You need to find somewhere to turn into the monster you truly are.
Although the pain before the transformation is skin-tearing and maddening, it makes the pain afterwards no easier to bear. It is just as painful to turn back. Your teeth have to reduce in size. Your skin as to regrow, forcing each hair out of every follicle. Your muscles and bones scream as they reform and readjust to fit a smaller frame.
But there is a human element associated with the pain after. There is a brief moment where your mind switches from animal to human, but your body remains the same: a grotesque, hulking figure of sinewy flesh and fur capable of ripping grown men to pieces.
You are thrown into a reality you wish you didn't have to live through. All the evil you've wrought is forgotten but you know it's bad. You can see it in the destruction around you. You can taste the blood that's still on your tongue and between your teeth. You can see in the myriad of scars that now litter your body and the blood still oozing out of open wounds, no matter how many times you say you won't scratch yourself the next. There's nothing you can do really. Anything said and done now is instantly forgotten when you turn from animal to beast, only to be remembered and regretted on the return trip.
Once the transformation is over, your body is left naked and bare, your chest heaving from the exertion and the exhaustion. There are dead birds about, their blood and feathers littering the floor. There is also a fine layer of sawdust where you chewed the walls of the abandoned wooden home you sought refuge in. Furniture is broken all around you and you just hope that the dirty rags you call clothes aren't ripped or chewed up. This scene is not new to you. It has happened often enough, that you've become numb and no longer react to it.
Sometimes you wish you could remember what happens during the transformations. Sometimes you want to find out just how much of a monster you really are instead of just catching glimpses and living in the aftermath. But you're also scared to know the truth. The truth will confirm everything you try in vain to deny. Besides, Wolfsbane is hard to come by for someone like you. It's an instant out if the constant tired eyes and the scars, some faded, some red, and aren't obvious indications.
You will remain as you are, a monster and an outcast. You keep out of the way so no one can get a good look at you. You don't need their watchful yet wary eyes following you about. But you listen to the whispers and the voices that travel through the towns and villages you past, always praying for no disappearances, no injuries, no deaths.
'A body was found in the woods today,' is carried on the air among the worried mothers and children of the village. You feel the monster respond within and you know it was you. In your heart, you know killed that person, whoever it was. You don't need to hear anymore because you just know. It's time to move on once more.