1: Six
Sometimes change isn't easy. Remus Lupin learned this lesson when he was six years old.
He wasn't one of those explorer types when he was a tyke, he didn't want to know what was beyond his own backyard, because his backyard was, in his mind, where the fairies played and the stories came alive, stories his Muggle mother whispered to him before he went to sleep every night. Remus didn't need much more than that.
Of course, the stories also had monsters and demons and terrible things, much worse than anything in the wizarding world, and that was why, one cold midwinter night, just after sunset, Remus didn't regard the shadow lurking in the bushes as anything but a figment of his imagination. One of the darker shadows, yes, but just a shadow.
But shadows don't rustle the leaves in the bushes, and figments don't break twigs under their paws. Remus realized that he wasn't imagining anything a moment too late and did the only thing he could.
He ran.
But the chubby legs of a six-year-old couldn't outpace those of a wolf under even the best of circumstances, and that night, under a full, full moon that he would grow to hate, Remus learned that pain was more than a scraped knee or a paper cut. And as the teeth pierced his sweater and his shirt and his skin, he screamed. His parents came running, the thing let him go, he saw unforgiving yellow eyes…
And then he thankfully, thankfully lost consciousness.
Sometimes change hurts.
When Remus woke up, his mother was holding him close, whispering things, soft reassuring nothings, trying to distract him from the ache in his side and all of the itchy bandages. He was somewhere blank, white, in a bed that wasn't his. He could see his father arguing with some man, a wizard, by the robes, robes like his father wore to work. The wizard was trying to tell his father something, his father grew angry, his mother clutched him even more tightly, and Remus did not understand.
He would forget about St. Mungo's, later. He would forget about everything but how tightly his mother clung to him. He would never know that the Healer was telling his father that there was nothing to be done, although, the Healer had admitted, they could always put him out of his misery. A child like him wouldn't have much to live for. But no one would hear of that. Remus was their son, their only son, and they weren't going to put him down as if he was some sort of…of animal. And the Healer shrugged and looked the other way.
They took Remus home after a couple of weeks, and after two weeks more the full moon rose again. Remus' parents locked him in the spare room that night, apologizing, telling him to be brave and not to worry. And the poor boy didn't understand, he couldn't understand, not when the moon rose and he changed that first time and his skin was stretching and his bones twisting and the entire world seemed to melt into the searing, blinding pain.
And then the wolf stood in this unfamiliar room, sniffing, curious. He was stronger than the boy, although just a puppy, and he wanted to run, to hunt, to bite. He had those sharpened canines for a reason. The smell of human on the other side of the door was almost overpowering. He leaped at it, scratched, dug his claws in, bit at the door, growling, whining, to no avail. It wouldn't budge. But he needed something to claw, and so, tiring of the door, he turned on himself.
He had no way of knowing that, outside, his father had to carry his mother away from the door. She had fainted at hearing the inhuman noises. Her son, her baby…that wasn't him, it couldn't be him. But his father was a wizard, and knew of werewolves, and was almost prepared to deal with the inevitable. Almost.
When he opened the door the next morning, after the moon had set, he could fix the scratches on the door or the bite marks in the spare armchair with a simple Reparo. He could not fix his son, bleeding, unconscious. It would be like this every month.
After that first night, it was only a matter of time. Three more moonrises, and then Remus' mother had left for good.
A/N: Hey all, my computer was the unfortunate victum of a virus and now I'm stuck using school/library computers. So I may be a little slow at getting new stories up/ updating this or Reminiscent, so be patient, and I'll try to keep up the writing. Thanks, and, as always, please read and review.
D