Remus

He had managed to forget how much he hated Knockturn Alley in the years he had successfully avoided it. As he strode through its grimy passageways a step behind his guide, a tall, dark faced man who seemed to be wearing a perpetual scowl of distaste, Remus concentrated on his character. The person following Waldemar DeGraaf was ready to serve Voldemort and somehow Remus couldn't quite suppress the feeling that that person might be overwhelmed by his real feelings once they were before the Dark Lord himself. He had always been a good liar, but this had mainly hinged around nobody believing that Remus Lupin would ever lie to them; he was such a nice boy, even if he did insist on befriending Potter and Black who were not. In this case however, he would have to convince Voldemort that he was not nice, that he was willing to betray his friends for the sake of freedom from his curse. To see the full moon through his own eyes, Remus thought, would indeed be wonderful; to sit beneath the purple and blue sky and just…think-

But what was the use of being fully human if Voldemort were in power?

Besides, he decided, if I joined them it wouldn't matter whether I was no longer a werewolf; I'd still be a monster.

"Wolf?" DeGraaf snapped and Remus realised it was probably not the first time the question had been asked.

"Death Eater?" he replied calmly. Let this underling see he was not afraid, though he was. Whoever this man was he was not more useful to Voldemort than Remus was. "Can you follow my apparition trail?" the man said curtly, somewhat taken aback.

"Is Severus Snape the world's biggest git?" Remus asked quietly.

"What?"

He stifled a laugh; how inappropriate. "Yes, I can follow your apparition trail."

The man scowled once more and, with a crack, was gone. Remus closed his eyes and located DeGraaf's aura in the air. He caught onto it and apparated.

The house in front of him was old and sprawling; clearly the ancestral home of one of the more recently recruited Death Eaters, possibly it had been DeGraaf's but there was no time to inquire because after checking that Remus had arrived more or less in one piece the Death Eater moved off quickly through the ramshackle garden. The large ornate doorway opened with a whispered word and a creaking of hinges and the two moved inside, Remus trying not to seem overly repulsed by the decorations the house's previous occupants had apparently thought were acceptable. DeGraaf stopped before a door that was almost as large as the front entrance. "Wait here," he instructed, briskly and knocked.

"Enter," a voice ordered and the Death Eater opened the door and disappeared behind it in a substantial courtyard, leaving Remus standing in the corridor, which flickered with the pale light from a single candelabra. Remus peered at a fading painting on the wall nearest to him; the elderly man inside smiled unpleasantly at him, laughed but did not speak.

The door reopened as suddenly as before. "The Dark Lord awaits your presence," DeGraff intoned formally. Remus turned away from the painting, which was now watching with interest and stalked through the door; he was a Gryffindor: he would behave like one.

"Remus Lupin." It was not a question. "To what do we owe the great pleasure of your company tonight?"

A large fire crackled in the middle of the courtyard, surrounded by a dozen or so men, shrouded in dark robes; one of them had a hand that glinted silvery in the firelight; Remus tried not to look at him but instead focused on the grand chair facing away from him, towards the fire; the chair from which the voice had emanated.

"I think you already know, my Lord."

"True," the voice hissed. "But I wish to hear it from you."

Remus swallowed. "I am here to serve you, my Lord."

Voldemort rose from his chair and turned to face the werewolf. He smiled. "Yes, I know you are."