Remus didn't realize that the moans of pain were coming from him until his throat was aching, and James and Sirius were about to yank his hands away from his pounding head. Before they got to him, however, the pain stopped. He opened his eyes and Lily gasped and involuntarily took a step back. Sirius and James stopped in their tracks and stared at him, disbelief written on their faces.
"What is it?" he whispered.
"Your eyes," Lily practically whimpered. "They're gold."
Remus blinked at her. Then, he wandered over to a tree where a puddle had formed in its roots. His eyes were usually a light brown that was close to gold, but now it was as if his eyes were made of the precious metal. He moved one hand up to touch the corner of his eye curiously. The movement seemed to trigger everything inside of him to start reacting to the change; suddenly he could hear everything within miles: There was a rabbit digging about two miles to the west. He could once again hear his father talking all the way back at the house. Someone in the kitchen placed a glass of water on the table. He took in a small breath with his nose and smelled rain coming in about two days. He could smell Lily's soap of, ironically, lilies, and if he concentrated he even caught a whiff of Dora's sweet green apple shampoo from her hair brushing against twigs.
He straightened up and looked at the others with wide-eyed surprise. They still looked apprehensive. "You guys, it's okay!" he said with some degree of shock. "I have all the powers of the Wolf, but I'm still myself!" He meant only to jog back to them, but he was there in less than a fraction of a second. Lily barely muffled a scream at his speed. "Sorry Lily," he amended quickly. "Now come closer you three."
They moved closer together until they were in some bizarre huddle. Carefully, Remus reached out and touched Lily's face, focusing on what he wanted to happen. They stared at one another for several moments until a tear slipped out from Lily's eye. Remus took his hand away after he brushed the tear from her cheek, then grasped Sirius and James's hands, his best friends' hands, in his own thin ones.
"I wasn't lying earlier yesterday when I said that certain traits of lycanthropy can be spread through touch;" he whispered. "This will only be temporary and can only be done on the day of the Moon. You all now share my strength and speed."
He removed his hands from James and Sirius's, but none of them moved away. A long silence stretched out that wasn't uncomfortable. James, Sirius, and Lily's eyes all held touches of gold here and there, but the color wasn't as impenetrable as Remus's. He stared at them for a very long time. His friends.
"Listen," he quietly said, staring directly into their eyes in turn even though in any other situation he would suddenly be enthralled by his shoes. His eyes itched most curiously. "Today and tonight, you're going to see a side of me I had hoped you never would. Please…please try not to think any less of me, okay?"
Instead of answering him, Lily launched herself at him for a hug. Forgetting the strength Remus had transferred into her body, she sent them both flying at least ten feet backwards into the thick trunk of an oak tree. Suddenly curious, Sirius and James began testing out their powers as well.
"Jesus man, did you save any of these fancy powers for yourself?" asked Sirius as he disconnected a tree limb as thick as his waist from its trunk with such ease that he might have been picking a flower.
Remus sent him a wan smile and nodded solemnly before turning back to James and Lily. "We don't have much time; dad and the Tonkses will probably be looking for us in about an hour. We need to find Dora as quickly as possible if we want them to stay safe." There was a nod around the small circle.
"Stay safe."
Another nod, and then they were separated in the blink of an eye.
It was unusual, to say the least, to be this strong or fast. Despite the sudden ability to run at a hundred miles an hour without impaling oneself on a protruding tree branch or even getting a single scratch, they were quite clumsy. If they wanted to stop, they usually overran their target, and they picked up all sounds around them instead of figuring out how to single out one sound and trace it to its source. It took them all hours to adjust, and by the time their search became even slightly productive it was late afternoon.
Remus had paused to catch his breath in a small clearing, and took a few moments to try and find the sound of a human heartbeat nearby. He pushed aside guilt when he heard the dim sound of his father calling his name, disregarded the quick rodent-like thumps of a rabbit, cringed at the beating of Greyback's Feral heart, which went a few beats faster per minute than a human, and finally found one that was noteworthy. It was faint, but almost determined to keep beating. Then it slowed dangerously, and then stopped altogether.
And it was close.
Remus ran in the direction of the bushes that the heartbeat had been in, tore the entire bush out of the ground by its roots, and saw…
Dora.
Or, more specifically, Dora's body.
He dropped to his knees beside Dora –
(His Dora, his Dora, his sweet, beautiful, kind Dora)
- and gently cupped her cheek in his hand.
(Why, oh why, oh why, why, why?)
His breath started coming in rough gasps of pain until he was unable to breathe –
(Dear Godric, why Dora and not Remus? Why?)
- and his grief was so sudden and so strong that he couldn't even bring himself to cry.
(Why why why why why why WHY?!)
He lifted Dora's head up and pressed his face into her black hair, fighting both to breathe and to cease breathing at the same time. His entire body shook until he was certain he would be ripped apart on the inside.
(Why couldn't he have found her sooner?)
He heard another sound that was similar to the gasping and wheezing he was making, and realized the Dora was moving in his arms. He carefully lowered her to the ground to see her milky white eyes coming back to life as she heaved and choked and fought for breath. Her pallid white skin flushed to its normal pale shade of peach. She opened her eyes, tears leaked out of the corners, and she stared at him breathlessly.
"I…I…" she panted, clinging to his jacket. "I…wasn't…d-d-dead…"
"Your heart stopped beating!" Remus gasped, feeling tears of his own sliding down his face. "You were dead!"
Dora continued to shake her head feebly against his chest. "Morphed…dead…" For a moment Remus thought she was talking nonsense, but then seemed to piece it together now that his frantically rushing mind was at ease. She had morphed herself to look dead.
"Why on earth would you do something so stupid?! You nearly gave me heart failure!" he demanded, though he was as far from angry as he could be. He continued his hugging of Dora to his chest with relief.
"H-he…l-l-left…didn't he?" asked Dora weakly. Remus closed his eyes briefly and affirmed her question. So she had faked her own death just so Greyback would step away from her. Clever girl.
"Yes," he breathed, "yes he did. You're safe now, Dora. You're safe."
Slowly but surely, Dora regained her strength and was able to stand with some help. She and Remus stared at one another for several minutes, saturated in golden-pink sunlight. Finally she took a step back and managed a weak smile.
"Thank you for finding me Remus," she quietly said. "Really."
Now that she was fully in his view, Remus was able to see the extent of the damage that Greyback had inflicted upon her. She was coated with dirt from head to toe, the scratches on her neck had bled onto her shirt, and the look in her eyes told much more than physical turmoil. In those dark vessels was held such a plaintive fear of a threat already passed, and a need to feel something relatively human was evident. He strode forward and reached out to brush away the tears that lingered on her cheeks. She flinched away from the idea of his touch, and more tears made streaks in the soil on her face. Remus stepped back, and felt his face drain of all color with a frightening thought that he hadn't yet considered.
What if, because Greyback had seen anyone in his life as a target, Dora now feared him?
Before he could further ponder this thought, a new heartbeat joined those of him and Dora. It was noticeably faster than the latter. Greyback was returning for Dora's "body."
"He's coming this way," he said with some difficulty. He stepped forward and, using all of his effort to ignore her second flinch, tried to focus on giving her his strength and agility instead of how horrible and empty his life would be if Dora ended up choosing the same path that his mother had chosen.
He pointed toward the south, straight toward Meadow House, as a gold tint began to form in Dora's dark eyes. "Just keep running straight in that direction, and you'll be back at the house in no time. I have to distract Greyback. Now go!" In an effort to give her an extra boost, he practically threw her toward home, and she took off like a bullet.
Shocked and breathless, Dora realized that true, ancient magic that couldn't be channeled by a wand was at work here. She had never been so fast, or felt so graceful, in all her life. She daren't even glance at her feet for fear that it would trip her up and she would lose all momentum. Not even a single budding leaf managed to brush against her face as she ran.
After not even five minutes, Meadow House was within her sights. It looked so real and so close and so very human she could have taken it up in her hands, put the cottage into a snow globe and kept it on her windowsill to remind her of this time that she had loved so ardently.
She was close, so very nearly close, and then the ground was suddenly cracking open and she was screaming and falling. She thought she would fall longer than she did, but then she landed on a hard, jagged, stone surface. There was a loud pop, a slightly less loud crack, and a scream of agony that she didn't even recognize as her own voice, and Dora opened her eyes to find herself in a hole of sorts.
She was seeing red with the horrendous pain in her left side; her shoulder had obviously been dislocated with the awkwardness of her landing, and her collarbone may have also been broken by the way it throbbed. Carefully favoring her right side and still groaning with the effort, she pushed herself to her feet. She swayed, but managed to keep her balance, and tried to get some bearing on where, exactly, she was.
It was unlike any place Dora had ever been before. The stranger chamber was spacious and circular, similar to the Gryffindor Common Room, but made of stone and with many different levels. She appeared to be standing in a round pit in the center of the chamber that was about ten feet wide. There was a roughly two-foot high rise to a ring surrounding the pit, a three-foot rise to another ring, and then another two-foot rise until she was at the highest point of the room.
Once at the top level, Dora looked around and saw that on that lever there were six large standing mirrors. Her gaze caught something out of the corner of her eye, and she turned to it quickly, thinking there was someone beside her, but it was her own reflection. The circular wall was made of one large curved mirror. The curve was just gradual enough that there appeared to be several dozen Doras staring at her from all angles. Looking over the edge, she saw that there were two more steep steps going down that led to another circular pit along the outer edge of the room.
She cradled her injured arm to her stomach as she began to ponder how, exactly, she would get out of here. The chamber was eerily silent in comparison to the very-much-alive forest around them. It seemed to press down on her from all sides, having both a calming and unnerving affect on her.
There was a strange rustling sound above her, and she quickly looked up to the opening of the room, but there was no one there. She bit her lip worriedly. When she lowered her eyes back to the mirror, there were suddenly a thousand Greybacks coming at her from all sides.
"Think you could get away from you, did you pretty?" he growled as Dora screamed with shock and backed away as quickly as she was able. She tripped over her feet and ended up falling directly into one of the standing mirrors.
The mirror shattered, and she screamed with the pain of her shoulder being forced back into place. When she opened the eyes she hadn't even been aware of squeezing shut, Greyback's bloodshot golden eyes were only inches from her. She whimpered as he took one of his enormous hands and pinned her bad shoulder to the remains of the mirror. Flattening her good hand against the mirror, she felt one large, jagged piece of glass that was shaped perfectly like a weapon, which must have slid into her hand when the mirror shattered.
It was as if a glorious window of opportunity had opened up and spilled the light of a new dawn upon her lashes.
Greyback leaned in closer to her, his putrid breath invading her senses. "You should have stayed under that bush, pretty," he whispered. "Then I probably wouldn't have killed you. But first…" She carefully grasped the glass shard in her hand as Greyback had been speaking, and just as he was leaning down to nip at her neck, she raised her weapon. Just as the tip of his hot tongue made contact with the tender skin between her neck and shoulder, she plunged the piece of glass into his back.
Blood poured from the monster's back and Dora's hand, and she was very nearly surprised that Greyback's blood wasn't black. The vile creature let out a massive howl that quickly turned into a sickening gurgle, and spots of blood came out his mouth and spattered Dora's front. She had pierced his lung.
"You little bi-i-i-i-i-itch!" he screamed as if he had just inhaled a bucket of water. His hands, which had been, flung away from her with the pain of surprise, suddenly moved toward her throat again, and this time his claws were bared.
Dora quickly ducked under Greyback's arms, took a large step back, and was suddenly falling down into the chamber's outer pit. Her head made hard contact with the wall and left a spider-web crack in its place. Greyback staggered down the steps toward her, unsteady with loss of blood, and flattened her between the floor and wall. As Greyback's inch-long claws tore into her flesh, her screams of horror and pain reverberated throughout the chamber until they rang out through the forest too, coming first to the heightened senses of the honorary Weres and secondly to the ears of the adults. She raised up her hands in a faint effort to shield her face and eyes from the fatal claws, but couldn't save her arms or legs from the damage.
Just as she was beginning to lose all hope of ever surviving, despite the fact that her screams were still strong, there was a great shout of "LET HER GO, YOU BASTARD!"
Sirius led the way dropping into the chamber, closely followed by Lily and James. They all landed much less awkwardly than Dora had. Greyback, like a wounded, caged, and infuriated animal, shot at them, and Remus dropped down through the ceiling, landing both feet firmly in Greyback's midsection. The feral flew backwards into the side of the chamber opposite Dora, and Remus dropped down into the middle pit. The adults could be heard surrounding the opening to the chamber, shouting all sorts of curses that would distract Greyback further. Remus, declaring that he had been scarred enough for all of them, took on the feral while Sirius and James flanked his back protectively.
Lily, noticing the small pool of blood that had now formed around Dora's prone body, rushed to the younger girl's side and tried tending to her as best as she could. Her injuries, however, seemed not to respond to basic healing spells, which were all Lily knew.
"Oh, oh Dora, please hold on!" said Lily tremulously. "I'll get Remus, Greyback's pretty much incapacitated, just hold on!"
"N-n-no!" Dora choked out through the blood that was slowly filling her mouth. She could feel tears welling up in her eyes from the pain. "Please Lily…anyone but him…don't…want…to…see…"
The now fuzzy outline of Lily's fine, porcelain face nodded, and instead she called for James. Within minutes Dora was being cautiously lifted, but it still hurt like hell and she cried, and rushed her to the center of the chambers inner pit.
"John, she's here!" James shouted as he secured Dora in his arms. "She's hurt though, we're going to need some help!"
Within moments, Dora felt herself floating upward, out of the Mirror Chamber, and into another pair of arms. She inhaled deeply and smelled the mixed scents of apples and tobacco. Her dad. She burrowed her face into his jacket and sobbed weakly with pain and fear and just plain want to forget about all of this mess.
"Dora? Dora!" Remus's voice echoed from inside the chamber. Dora forced her face further into her father's chest, trembling, and she allowed Lily to take charge for her.
"Remus, get away!" she shouted. There was the distinct sound of a brief scuffle, and then it abruptly ended with a slap. "Remus, she doesn't want…"
With a horrible lurch of the entire earth, and a terrifying roaring in her ears, Dora blacked out.
"She's out," Ted informed John with a ghostly white face. John nodded solemnly and lowered his wand as he turned his gaze to his son. Remus was staring at Lily with white-faced shock as he slowly stepped away from Dora.
"She doesn't want…?" he whispered weakly, and Lily nodded somberly. It felt as if an enormous wooden stake had been driven into his chest, breaking his heart into two. For a split second, he was deaf but for a distant roaring in his ears, and the entire world rushed around him in a blur.
"Remus, watch the skies; we'll get Dora home!" cried John, aiming his son toward the heart of the forest. His hands shook at the sudden thought of what effect the Moon would have on his child with such stress taking its toll on his mind. Before he fully vanished into the trees, John grabbed him back and embraced him tightly. For all he knew, this would be his child's last Moon.
"He'll be alright John," James assured him as Remus started moving in the right direction.
"We'll look after him!" added Sirius. He and James flanked Remus into the trees before transforming into their animal counterparts. John didn't entirely look surprised by his offspring's friends' bout of law-breaking.
Remus made sure to run as far into the heart of the forest as he was capable of before ripping his jacket and shirt viciously from his body. The image of Dora, huddled and bloody, in her father's arms swam before his eyes, and Lily's words rang in his ears like a siren.
She doesn't want to see you.
His very worst fear had been confirmed. He was sobbing, screaming with the unbelievable pain that came with losing one of the most important people in his life. James and Sirius grasped his arms and helped him to sit on the forest floor. They didn't speak; words could not describe their fear and pain.
Fifteen minutes later, James, with his eyes wet, reached up and roughly pressed his mouth to his brother's sandy hair before stepping away to transform. Sirius did the same, turned into Padfoot, and waited.
Dora came back to herself just before her father ascended the stairs up to Remus's room. She heard a scream of sorrow from the forest rapidly turn into a howl of agony. She closed her eyes tightly against the sound before the emerald flames swept her away.