His father told him they were battle scars, that these various ribbons of puckered, pale flesh were neither ugly nor shameful, but proofs of his strength. Even before the fateful accident that had infused him with this moonlit curse, he had adored the old fables his father would murmur softly to him at bedtime, sitting beside his son's bed with a dusty tome resting on his lap and that ever-present paternal tenderness in his eyes. Every night he would be lulled into slumber with tales of heroic warriors who returned home from many a great battle bearing their scars like prizes, as symbols of their strength and power. It even made him view his own father's scars (one on his left cheek from a boyhood fall and another on his left foot where he trod on a nail) with more childlike awe than was usual for most his age, even those who admired their fathers as much as he did.
When the transformations had started to wreck their devastation on his small body, he had been both terrified at the acute, piercing agony of those lonely nights and mortified at the visible signs he'd have to carry around with him for the rest of his life. Not even for a moment could he forget his plight, not when the torn, silver skin jumped out at him with every glance at his body. There could be no pretending that he was anything but what he was, a monster.
So, that one night when his father, teary-eyed and trembling, had cradled his bleeding son in his arms as his wife gingerly tended the new wounds, Remus had been grateful to hear that his scars, as numerous and jagged as there were, were apparently just like the heroic scars of those ancient warriors. Voice rough and pained, his father had told those much-cherished tales again and Remus had listened with choked emotions as he was told that his scars were marks of a blessing, not a curse. After all, every month he lived to gain new scars was another month he survived, another few days in which his character grew and his strength flourished. Just like those warriors had borne their scars as products of their survival, so would he.
Still, though he had indeed grown to think of his scars as marks of his monthly 'war', Remus had never thought them anything but ugly, had still been self-conscious and uncomfortable even thinking about showing them.
Until Sirius, that was.
Until Sirius, with his habitual reckless fervour and easy indifference, had offered friendship and woven through Remus Lupin's own lonely, frightened life with his energy and devotion, slowly but surely laughing away the pale ugliness of those scars and making them beautiful.
Sirius made him beautiful.
After discovering his friend's secret, Sirius had seemed to make it a personal mission to erase the painful associations of those scars. He had often plagued Remus back then, whipping back the bed curtains as the werewolf was dressing, stealing his clothes when he was in the shower, shrinking his shirt whilst he was wearing it, anything to force the pale, slight youth to bear a little skin. It took three years before any of them saw their dorm-mate's bare chest and it took Remus that time to realise that he had been worried about nothing. When he finally relented and began joining in the boyish ritual of lounging around their dorm half-naked, when he allowed them to join him on the full-moon nights, Remus saw that his friends didn't see his scars as ugly. To them, though they never told him this, Remus' scars were their motive to join him. Those long, winding marks on their friend's body made them love him even more, made them all the more determined to be strong for him, to change their world for him. His scars were their courage.
But where James began to fiercely voice his plans for changing the Ministry's dark creature laws, and where Peter demurely vowed to never write a bad thing about werewolves in any of his Dark Arts essays again, Sirius appeared to want to do more.
When those years of steadfast friendship slowly turned into something more, in that night when every moment of their lives seemed to come down to that one second their lips touched for the first time, Remus realised that he was beautiful. As Sirius lightly stroked those scars and sighed endearments against his mouth, Remus knew that his scars really were marks of life, of survival and strength. He knew that if he could go back he wouldn't change a thing, wouldn't take back any one of those silvery wounds, not when it felt so good to have them kissed so reverently, not when it really didn't matter, because Sirius saw the soul bearing the scars, not the scars themselves.
From that point, he had tried not to shed any more frustrated tears over each new scar he acquired, and if any spilt down his cheeks Sirius would be there instantly, kissing them away and whispering that he was beautiful even as his hands smoothed over the creased flesh gently until Remus could no longer think beyond the devastating pleasure of that touch.
Because of Sirius, those scars were beautiful and every inch of torn skin was forever coupled with the ruthless bliss of Sirius' trailing fingertips and lingering lips, with his grey eyes gazing down at him with acceptance and love.
But not now.
Now, Remus sat perched on the window ledge of the Astronomy tower, sandy hair tousled by the crisp night breeze and amber eyes glistening with anguish as they stared out over the grounds, straying again and again to the majestic Willow that swayed menacingly below. Now, his cold hands traced the still red and angry wounds that marred his arms, his shoulder, his face, his legs.
Because of Sirius, his beautiful, stupid, thoughtless Sirius, these scars could never be lovingly soothed away or turned into something good and strong. They could never be the battle-scars of his father's tales, worn with pride and tinted with the unadulterated notion of another war won. They could only be the scars of betrayal, whenever his eyes caught sight of them as he dressed or his own hands hastened over them as he bathed, he would have to relive over and over the burning agony of that night, the stirring lust for blood and the clenching panic of a boy drowning in the tempestuous sea of a werewolf's rage. The winding scar that flowed like a liquid trail from his right shoulder to his belly-button would remind him of James' near death by heroism whilst the sharp rip below his right knee would bring to mind the saddened, sighing eyes of Dumbledore as he watched over the youth bleeding the white hospital sheets crimson.
These scars, every single bloody one of them, would always be there to stir the image of Sirius in his mind, but this Sirius wouldn't be the laughing-eyed, loving-lipped Sirius of days now past. This Sirius would be the dishevelled, red-eyed shadow of that boy, his tanned skin made pale through blind fear and wet with endless tears and his eyes, brimming with mirth only hours before, now dark with heartache. Thanks to Sirius, every ounce of beauty that had existed inside Remus seemed to have been ripped away, leaving behind only pain and glaring blemishes of sickly white.
Suddenly, the battle that had brought about his other scars now seemed pointless, life was nothing anymore and it was so much worse because he knew what he could be. Remus had lived for one delightful moment in the shimmering light of love and had been made beautiful by it, and he could never have that again, not like it was. Even if he could forgive Sirius (though a large part of him screams lividly at that suggestion), he knows that he could not regain what's been lost. A kicked animal will trust you again after a while, but never as easily or freely as before. Trust once lost could never be regained, it could only be rebuilt and even then there would always be reminders.
He will always have reminders, reminders that sit starkly on his body and cannot be erased and he wonders how he can ever possibly forgive when he can never possibly forget.
Sirius made him beautiful; under his touch, they became meaningless. Now they had meaning, but these battle scars stood for loss, not life, sorrow, not strength and as he sits cloaked in the shimmering night, Remus thinks he would prefer to have just kept thinking them ugly.