Teddy took the Wolfsbane potion variant that allowed him to keep his mind during the change. He was enough in control that he did not need to be hindered by chains or cages. Hermione, however, now had her wrists bound by ropes so that she wouldn't claw at her skin during the change. With the full moon almost here, she had come closer to consciousness. Her eyes hadn't opened but she thrashed from side to side, whimpering in pain.
Teddy backed into one of the corners of the room about as far from her as he could get. It wasn't the sound that was irritating his ears this close to the change, but the suffering radiating off of her. He was fiercely glad that she had been unconscious most of the time since they lifted the coma.
The change was near, he could feel his wolf as it awakened and there was a buzzing of anticipation that hung in the air. He wasn't sure if that buzzing was some kind of magic or if it was just in his mind. Was it a magic that, once concentrated enough, allowed for this impossible change of man to wolf? He didn't know.
In any case, it came as it always did. He felt the buzzing build and build until it filled his every atom and the change overtook him. Once it hit him, he was deaf and blind to all else. He was only aware of pain that slid into him like a heated knife and made everything blank out in white misery. It was one of the negative effects of the potion- it did not deaden his mind and so Teddy was aware of everything that was happening to his body. Some of the werewolves had tried to numb it with alcohol. That just dampened the effects of the potion and made them even more vulnerable to the desires of their wolves.
Teddy had learned to meditate on the sensations in order to survive the pain. Right now, that fire that felt like it was eating away his skin was actually hair thickening into fur. The sensation of his skull exploding under his eyes was actually his mouth reforming into a snout. The subsequent pops weren't Weasley firecrackers but his teeth sharpening into those of a carnivore. After each pop he inhaled and let it out again with the next explosion. And so it went with agonizing slowness while still rushing at him too fast to fully cope. His only saving grace that was it only took a few minutes for this all to occur. If it had lasted much longer, Teddy might have done something quite drastic to make sure he never had to experience it again. He could understand why some chose the complete abyss of not even trying to control the wolf or the change.
Then, when the pain finally stopped enough for him to think clearly, the wolf would carefully try to take dominion of their mind. This time, as he finally drew in a full breath, Hermione's pained screams attacked his ears. The wolf, excited by a human so close, jumped into his thoughts with less finesse than usual. Attack, it snarled, sink his teeth into flesh and silence it. Didn't he want that incessant noise to stop?
It scared Teddy to realize how reasonable even thoughts like these could seem to him. Was he becoming a beast? Maybe that was why it seemed so easy for him to fall into the same trap as the other Aurors. Maybe the beast was slowly taking over him even when the moon wasn't full. He had been under the moon's pull when he had ruined his relationship with Lilith. In a certain way, it had also affected his relationship with his girlfriend before that, Victoire.
Teddy took a deep breath and pushed out the thoughts of the wolf. He needed to check on Hermione. If she was screaming that meant she hadn't changed and the potion hadn't worked. He would have to get Harry and Draco soon so they could put her back under the stasis spell. If he had been human, Teddy would have punched something out of frustration. In this form, teeth would do just as nicely, the wolf reminded him. Teddy angrily shoved the wolf aside again and prowled over to Hermione's hospital bed. The bed was too high when he was on all fours so he propped his fore-paws on the bed to observe Hermione.
