IV. Remus, Part 2: Naked
Tu crois être le doute et tu n'es que raison
Tu es le grand soleil qui me monte à la tête
Quand je suis sûr de moi.
--Paul Eluard "Je t'aime"
The key question was this: Did Molly know a werewolf was in love with her daughter? When Harry confronted us, I knew with complete certainly that I loved Ginny. It was not part of anything I had planned, especially as I had promised to protect her, not to fall in love with her. It had happened slowly and quite by surprise like the slipping of darkness into sunrise.
Like any man finding love in awkward circumstances, I was unsure of what to do. My mind was riddled with questions of self-doubt and propriety, so I tried to be noble and self-sacrificing. In other words, I ran like a scared puppy with his tail between his legs. It was the end of the War so it was easy to find an excuse not to see her. In complete contradiction to the truth in my heart, I left Ginny.
I might have been a man running from the face of love, but as I was the architect of my own prison, I never got too far. All thoughts eventually returned to Ginny in the way thoughts tend to do when they are repressed. It was only a matter of time before my world would crumble, which it did with exacting precision.
I had gone into my monthly transformation without the benefit of Wolfsbane Potion, and was holding on to the slimmest thread of my humanity. The wolf had been hunting voraciously, and it was in the dark hours before the dawn that I caught the delicious scent of a human. I tracked it to where it was walking through the forest and snarled a menacing challenge as blood still dripped from my wolf's jowls. In my haze of madness, I was going to rip the flesh and taste the blood.
The human female, cowled like the proverbial Red Riding Hood, turned slowly with a hand in the air as a prisoner under fire. The long, slim fingers of the victim's hand removed her cloak to reveal hair with hues the color of sunrise foreshadowing the soon-coming dawn. She reached for me without faltering as I in werewolf form actually retreated.
True dawn came quickly after this in its own brilliance as I began my painful transformation back into something that was called human. When it finished, I was laid bare and broken as I stared from my grey eyes up into Ginny's warm brown eyes. I was naked to her in both my body and my mind because I wasn't going to run any more. The truth was as evident as my naked flesh. I did love Ginny, but if she were to love me in return, she would have to accept all of me.
With her outstretched hands, she lightly touched my cheek and traced fingers down my arm and torso to the rest of my body. Then Ginny came to me, pulling me under and devouring me until I was wholly hers and not my own. She loved me in the dawn of the morning in the same place where as a werewolf I had threatened to break her completely apart.
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Translation:
"You think that you are doubt, but you're just reason
You are the powerful sun that rushes to my head
When I am sure of myself."
--Paul Eluard: "I Love You"
