Dear Moony,
I have been trying to write this letter for years. I'm still not sure why. It's a letter to no one, when it comes down to it.
But Mum always said if you've got something you can't say to someone, you should write them a letter. But you're not exactly "someone", are you? You're a piece of me. The monster inside me. The part of me overcome with bloodlust and a damning, evil hunger that haunts even my waking moments. Do you know how often I have doubted myself because of you? How often I have wondered if the part of you that longs to make the innocent bleed out between your jaws, longs only to kill, makes me a bad person? If just the existence of you makes me a bad person?
The desire to be good seems childish when I think about it. I suppose it is. I, of all people, should understand by now that people are not good or bad, not black or white. But is it so silly to just…want to be good? I know I am on the right side, Moony. And I know you are clueless and wild and dangerous.
Dangerous. I know I am dangerous.
I can't even hate you. You're just an animal. You're just me, with more teeth and less heart. You know, sometimes, I even pity you. I know what it's like in the mind of the wolf, when the Wolfsbane lets me stay, safely, inside of you. I can feel you there, sharing that body with me. It took me until then to realise. You're just a wolf, a silly little wolf, and you are a part of me, but you will never be all of me. You will never define me. Because I have seen inside the mind of the wolf and, dear Merlin, it is a pitiful thing indeed.
Why? I'll tell you a little secret: the only thing close to love you have ever felt is for hunks of meat thrown into a dirty, old shack. And even that, that fleeting joy and carnal desire, let me tell you, Moony; not even close.
Love. Love is like a wolf bite. It's raw, and painful, and terrifying, and you can feel it from the inside out. It changes you.
It takes someone else and makes them absolutely everything, in the best and worst ways possible. For me (for us?), love is high towers and kissing in the Restricted Section and detentions in the dungeons. It is cigarette smoke on my robes and the distance between our interlocked fingers still being too much space between us. Love is fear, and overcoming that fear. Love is secrets, and love is telling those secrets. Love is love, no matter who and no matter how, and love is learning to accept that. Love is him, and the laughter in his words and the grey in his eyes and the puppy inside of him that was brought to life just for you. Love is when he comes alive just for you. When he finds the worst of me, and snuggles it until it stops crying and howling and growling and biting its own flesh. When he meets the darkest part of me and curls up next to it.
Love is Sirius, is Padfoot, is everything. He is everything.
I suppose that's the difference between us, isn't it? Love is what rules me. Love for my friends, my family, my world. For him. But you, you're not a creature of love. What rules you? The moon? Instinct? The desire to destroy? Or just to survive? I don't think I will ever really understand you, Moony. The simplicity of you. Only feeling things in short, sharp bursts. Hunger, thirst, fatigue. Approaching danger. Is that all you can feel? Or does it hurt you too? When we are splintered bones and mangled flesh, stretching and folding and snapping in half, do you howl in pain or in triumph? I don't know. I fear you don't either.
When the full moon prepares to leave us, as she bids us goodbye with her silver smile fading in the morning light, does the rebirth of my body set your bones on edge for hours? Do you wait in anticipation and fear, heart thumping for the horrors you know are to come? Or do you just…sit? Just wait. Maybe not even that - just lounge, or pace, or cut and scrape and bite and never know there is an end coming at all. Do you know what's coming? Do you remember the last time, and the time before? Do you know you are a part time thing, that we are sharing one shell of man and you are only to exist for a few hours a month for the rest of my forever?
Do you know that you are just a part of me, or do you think it the other way around?
Do you wish you could be something different too?
Do you hate me?
There are so many questions that will go unanswered, I know. So many things that I will never know, can only guess at, or assume. I wish I could talk to you, just once. Instead, I'll settle for finding your teeth marks on my thigh and your fur all over my robes. You are like a bad dream I am always prepared for. When I wake up, it'll be to the damage you have left behind. But I don't mind, Moony. You're just a wolf. Just an animal. I know it's not your fault.
I know it's not our fault.
See you tonight, old friend.
With love,
Remus