Chapter 1: Return The Gift
"–and Peter, he's awake!"
Remus always returned to consciousness in stages after a transformation. At first, he would become aware of a uniform ache through his body. Then, as the pain would localise in his extremities, the ringing in his ears would begin. It sounded similar to a Wizarding Wireless between two stations; his ears were adjusting from some wolfish frequency, passing through walls of static before his human hearing returned in earnest.
"–take James' legs and we'll get out of here!"
His hands and feet, subject to the worst of the lycanthropy's distortion, would shake and spasm for a few minutes. A sheen of sweat would break out over his body, reacting to the pain of bone, tissue and sinew attempting to reorder itself.
"I'm trying –"
His eyelids, gummed with sweat and dirt from a night's running in the forest, would struggle to open. A clicking noise would indicate his jaw periodically relaxing and tensing, testing and familiarising the smaller, smoother enamel blocks housed in his mouth. His spine would pop back into place – which was a longer and more painful process than usual, as if he was being bound by something…
"–keep the wound elevated!"
The pain in his limbs would then subside and the leaden feeling of fatigue, and numbness, would set in. Shortly afterwards, the keening noise would quieten. His hearing returned gradually. A headache would crystallise behind his eyes and remain for most of the day, something he had to remind James and Sirius of whenever they complained he didn't suffer through hangovers to the degree they did. Remus chuckled inwardly. He'd once remarked that the morning after the full moon was ten times worse than a night of heavy drinking. Sirius had taken this literally and attempted to drink ten times as much as James and Remus – in what he assured them was a noble attempt to empathise with Remus' plight – one night when the gang had snuck to Hogsmeade to celebrate their first weekend back at Hogwarts. It resulted in a decidedly unresponsive Sirius the next morning, who was slung over James' shoulder and rushed to a none-too-pleased Madam Pomfrey. After being berated for such irresponsible behaviour, and the warning that a repeat performance would warrant a trip to McGonagall's office, she had relented and shown James a spell to counteract the effects of blood poisoning.
"Next time you forget your wand on a full moon, you'll wish you were Snivellus!"
Smell and then taste came back next. He took a deep breath, feeling a painful tightness on his lungs, and found the scent of organic damp that was characteristic of the first hours of a day spent outdoors. Running his tongue across his teeth dislodged flakes of rust, and Remus shuddered. The coppery tang of dried blood covered his gums. This wasn't unusual – the wolf, angry at being denied prey, often snapped at its own arms and legs, desperate to soothe the bloodlust that drove it to near madness. So Remus would wake with fresh scars once a month, signs of self-mutilation.
He could hear a quiet dawn chorus from behind him. Much closer were laboured breaths. This was strange, as there was nothing to suggest he was moving, other than the lightest of breezes playing on his face.
His left eye opened at last. There were a thousand pricks of dew, and the lilt of sunlight ghosting up the hillside, toward a huge, medieval castle, framed by a dark sky that touched the western lip of the world. James, Sirius and Peter were absent from this morning tableau.
Remus rotated his jaw, causing a loud crack. He winced slightly, and tried to speak.
"Ach! My tongue feels like a fish."
There was no change to the cadence of snatched breathing. This was also strange; the other Marauders were usually talkative on the walk between the Shrieking Shack and Hospital Wing; Sirius making ceaseless jokes – none of them good – to distract Remus from the pain and shame of his condition.
Remus looked down, ignoring his protesting neck muscles, in an attempt to orientate himself. His arms and legs were cocooned in rope, which explained the tightness on his chest and persistent numbness. He appeared to be floating ten feet above the ground, near-horizontal. A leaden weight settled at the bottom of his ribcage, and he tried to coax his limbs to move in a feeble attempt to break his bonds.
His lurching only served to disorient him further. Blood began pooling in his head, accompanied by spikes of pain from his legs, knees locked together, as he spotted a mass of black hair in his periphery. Sirius, his eyes oddly hard, sent a red thread of light shooting at Remus, who lost his grasp on consciousness, and knew no more.
AN: Reviews are always appreciated, thanks! Working with short chapters enables me to update several times a week, any suggestions are more than welcome as I have no concrete ideas on how the story will pan out beyond chapter 5