A/N: I'm really excited to be starting this project, for the Controversial Challenge on HPFC. The topic that I was given is "hate crimes." This is something that I already care about, and I had a lot of ideas for the whole thing, so I decided to go for a full story rather than a one-shot. Happy reading!

Prologue

Hogsmeade lay sleeping that April night. It was rounding on midnight, and the doors and shutters of each cottage were shut tight against a lingering winter chill. A light breeze occasionally stirred the leaves, but the sound was soothing to any who had trouble sleeping. A stray cat meandered across the road, searching for mice and scraps of food to make a dinner for her kittens. The windows of the Three Broomsticks were alight, and the muffled sounds of music leaked from under the door, but this was a regular phenomenon. Everything was seemingly at peace, or so the villagers thought as they put down their books and turned off their bedside lamps. Surely this would be a night like any other, and hopefully one of the last cold nights of the season.

In only one alley of the village was anything amiss, but it was terrible enough to eclipse the serenity of that night when people would look back on it in times to come.

Remus Lupin left the house briefly, for the first time in nearly three days. Sirius had come down with a late season case of the flu, and Remus hardly left his bedside for even a moment. Between the vomiting, the fever, and the delirium, he didn't think it safe to leave his lover alone. Finally, an hour ago, Sirius' fever came down, and he convinced Remus that he would be alright for a little while on his own. After a small fuss, Remus had given in, and gone to the pub for some dinner. He picked up some chicken soup for Sirius, and was on his way home.

He left the Three Broomsticks, wanting to get home as soon as possible so the soup would still be hot when he got there. A couple of drunken men followed him out, but he didn't think much of it. He was too worried about Sirius to realize that they were following him, or that they had both drawn their wands. If he had been paying attention when he left the house, he would have remembered to bring his own wand, rather than leave it lying on the bedside table.

Remus turned a corner, taking a shortcut through a narrow, dim alley. The two men followed him, close behind.

"Oi, you!" The larger man called out. Remus took a nervous glance over his shoulder, and stopped.

"Er, yes?" He answered, not knowing what the two could possibly want from him. Perhaps they were lost, he reasoned. Or too drunk to Apparate. Or maybe he had dropped something.

"'Sit true yer a werewolf?" The large man slurred menacingly. "M'friend here pointed you out in th' bar. Tells me yer a werewolf, he did!"

Remus' eyes widened, and he began to back away. "I don't know what you're talking about, sir. Your friend must have had a few too many drinks…" He laughed nervously and began to walk away. "Now if you'll excuse me, I really must—"

BANG. Remus tripped as the Leg-locking curse hit him, and he fell to the ground. He felt a bruises forming on his hip and shoulder where they had hit the cobblestones.

"Tell the truth, yeh filthy beast!" The second man spat. He was shorter and squatter than the first, and had shot the Leg-locking curse. He continued to point his wand at Remus as he advanced. "I heard you was the one who goes up in the Shack every month and makes that horrible racket. It's 'cause yer changin' into a monster, isn't it?"

Remus didn't know how to respond to this. He didn't think that anyone in Hogsmeade knew about the real purpose of the Shrieking Shack; Dumbledore had made sure that the rumor had been spread around that the place was haunted, which accounted for all of the strange noises.

At Remus' silence, the squat man kicked him. Hard. "Answer the question!"

"Y-yes," Remus gasped, gritting his teeth.

The large man sneered at him. "Yer despicable. Trying to pass yerself off as one of us, yet prob'ly just waiting for the right moment to strike!"

"No!" Remus yelled back, earning him another kick to the ribs.

"Why would a monster like you wanna be close to th' rest of us?" the squat man taunted. "Yeh just wanna infect us or kill us, dontcha? That's what yeh like, innit?" He shot another spell at Remus, and a long gash appeared across his cheek. It began bleeding freely, with much more blood than the wound should have been producing. "Yeh like th' idea of makin' all the rest of us suffer, too?"

"No, really, I—" he protested, but the large man picked him up and slammed him against the alley's brick wall, knocking the wind out of him

"We don' wantcha here, filthy half-breed!" he snarled, spit flying into Remus' face. "We're honest people, we don' deserve to be tormented by the likes o' yeh!" He dropped Remus into a crumbled heap, and began kicking him against the wall.

Remus grit his teeth, trying his hardest not to give them the satisfaction of making him cry out in pain, although he desperately wanted to. It was all he could to try and cover his head with his arms as they continued to hurl insults at him. He had stopped paying attention to their words as his physical pain grew. The larger man was obviously too drunk to use his wand, but that didn't stop him from beating Remus with every ounce of brute strength that he had. The squat man was throwing a variety of curses and hexes, each more painful than the last. He didn't know how long he was curled in that alley, feeling bones finally crack and blood pour out of his wounds. After what seemed like an eternity, he felt the Leg-locking curse break, and he scrambled up as quickly as he could and attempted to run, ignoring the protest that his injuries were putting up. He had just made it to back to the High Street when the worst spell yet hit him: the Cuciatus Curse.

Everything exploded. Surely he was dying, being ripped cell from cell…He screamed at the top of his lungs, only willing it to end soon, one way or another…

The pain stopped abruptly, and he was lying in the middle of the street, panting. He opened his eyes just enough to see lights coming on in the windows, and a single, blurry figure running down the street towards him.

Before they reached him, he let his head drop back to the pavement, and everything went dark.