Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the lovely characters or anything involving the magical wizarding world, etc. etc.!
The next week went by much too quickly. Remus nearly forgot all about his predicament with how preoccupied he was with his mates. It was too easy to fall back into their easy friendships, act like nothing had ever happened, like this was simply his life.
James didn't mention what he'd been told, but he seemed to make it his mission to remind Remus what it was to be young again. Every time they pulled a prank, James pushed Remus to finish it off. At night, they stayed up late, snuck out of the castle and drank Firewhisky by the lake. In class, they stifled laughter until their faces hurt from smiling. It was as though someone had assembled a perfect portrait of the past and dropped Remus right into the middle of it.
His worries were all but gone until the day of the full moon. He'd let it sneak up on him.
"In the future, is it easier?" Lily asked that morning. She had caught him throwing some essentials into a bag, giving away the time of the month and his intentions for the night.
"It is." The thought of suffering a full moon without the Wolfsbane Potion was nearly too much to bear. "There's a potion that helps. It lets me keep my mind through the process." The transformation still wasn't pleasant and the pain lingered, but it was worlds better than what would happen tonight.
He remembered the old schedule like clockwork. He headed to the Shrieking Shack while the sun was still high in the sky and then he sat quietly in the empty room, all alone for hours, feeing small and worthless. Eventually, the wolf would take over and his mind would be long gone by the time his friends joined him.
He thought he was prepared, but sitting in that room was making him fidgety, bringing back memories he didn't want to remember. He looked over at the damage he'd done to the walls and furniture over the years and shrank back into himself. How was he capable of so much anger and rage and destruction?
Time seemed to tick by slowly. He was laying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, when he felt the painful changes beginning. The next thing he knew, he was cracking his eyes open in the Hospital Wing.
"How are you feeling, dear?" Poppy lingered over him, testing his temperature with the palm of her hand. "You must have had a rough night."
Judging by the pain he felt coursing through his body, it must have been a bad night. He tried to move and groaned softly when he realized it hurt too badly. His young body had not grown used to this yet. In the future, it was almost as if he had developed calluses from the inside out- the pain was still there, but he knew what to expect, had grown used to it.
"Moony." A voice startled him. He glanced beside his bed, every slight movement shooting pain through his weak body, to see Peter sitting there with a stack of books piled in his lap. "All right, mate? I brought you some books you might like."
Remus stared at him incredulously. He had no idea what to say. Over the last week, he had been keeping his distance from Peter in a way that must have been obvious to him. It had simply been easier that way because every time their eyes met, Remus was tempted to hold his wand up and punish him for all that he'd done- all that he was going to do.
"Er...thanks," Remus said in a hoarse voice.
Madame Pomfrey left them alone after handing Remus a healing potion, which he sipped at hesitantly, every sip burning his throat.
"Last night was...especially bad. You were really, really not yourself," Peter explained in a whisper. "So much angrier than normal- you scratched James, but don't worry, he's all right. Sirius is still sleeping- he was up all night keeping you from running off."
The color drained from Remus's face. The wolf inside of him hadn't been out in years. He wondered if that made a difference, if it had made him more violent.
"Moony, c'mon, don't blame yourself, mate. You know it's not you," Peter reminded him. The kind words stung all over, his head spinning with a mix of guilt for blaming this young boy for mistakes he hadn't made yet and regret for what was going to happen. It was as though he had been betrayed all over again, watching Peter now, his brain going in circles wondering how this soft spoken boy could be responsible of so many future deaths.
The silence on Remus's part seemed to make him anxious. He set the books down on the table beside the bed. "We'll visit later. Get some rest, eh?"
Remus stayed quiet even after Peter disappeared and left him all alone in the hospital wing, wondering all the while how he was going to manage to fix this.