Title: Tears in the Dark
Summary: A little piece reflecting on Remus Lupin in his first year. One- shot.
Note: No character development, interaction, romance, or even a conversation. Complete and entire focus on Lupin in his first year. Just something I've always wanted to do. It's bloody sad, 'though.
Fear. A chill shot up between his shoulder blades, tracing a thin line along his spine. He breathed heavily, his exhale turning to silver before his very eyes. As Madam Pomfrey led him out across the grounds, a deep, restless cold seized him. Despite the fact that he had gone through this transformation so many times before... Remus shivered, his nose stinging with a melancholy inexplicable.
He disliked having to lie to his friends. Remus shot a look back towards the castle, the lake ablaze with shards of the unseen moon's light. Before now, he really never had had any friends to really lie to, but now... It hurt. The clouds, a dark sullen grey, shielded his one true fear from sight. Two wholly different pains to suffer tonight.
Lupin cast a glance towards his right, where a rather steep hill was cluttered with rock and debris. He shuddered. One fall, one imperfect step, and he would be cast down, probably breaking every bone in his diminutive body. He was small for his age, Remus knew, 'though his mother convinced him every time that he just needed a little more time to grow into his age. He sighed, the cold biting at the tips of his ears.
The Whomping Willow stirred in the distance. A dark, foreboding feeling was roused in his heart of hearts, a fear so whole... He brushed aside a wisp of light brown hair that hung in his eyes with his hand, and by doing so, sweeping his fingers against a long, wretched scar. The crunch of leaves and brush beneath his sneakers was the only sound as he and the school nurse continued on towards the passage to the Shrieking Shack, and Lupin could not help but trace the line of scratches along his face. A particularly prominent one about his left cheek...
The stomp of Madam Pomfrey's heels against the dead leaves ceased. Remus glanced up again. She was looking at him grimly, and he bowed his head. He scarcely even heard as the nurse cried out the incantation, and the Willow froze into place with a great shudder. Remus peered towards the tree, a fear of the unknown that lay ahead suddenly strengthening. A dark, deep hole in the midst of the gnarled roots stood out stark in the night's shadow. Madam Pomfrey shook her head ruefully and nodded towards it. Remus's eyes began to water, but he did his best to hide it. He was only a little boy, and this darkness, this horror in solitude, would have to be endured. Remus looked towards the nurse helplessly. She, however, had turned away, almost too wretched to look back at him.
The first of many, many nights to come, Remus realised. He allowed a tear to slide down his cheek. He let out a deep, shuddering breath. There would be many more nights in which to cry into the unconscious forgetting of friends, of humanity. Something like resolve attempted to stir into existence. Remus shook his head, and a weak, very heart-rending smile crossed his scarred features. With that, the child staggered into the darkness, to leave both memory and human compassion behind him, and to be utterly, utterly alone.