January/February 1995.
"My transformations in those days were – were terrible. It is very painful to turn into a werewolf."
* * * * *
Moony,
Did I remember to thank you for your gifts? If not; thank you! If I did; thank you again! It is amazing how much better you life seems with something as ridiculously simple as warm clothes or decent food.
As you can see I'm not writing on the back of your letter but obediently using the writing paper you gave me. Those Muggle pens are weird though. It took me a while to figure out how they work – you have to press this kind of button before you can write. Quills are much more simple to use.
Everything's going okay here. Harry's busy preparing for the Second Task, and I have nothing to do but sit and wait until there's something to do.
Padfoot.
* * * * *
It is strange: when you normally listen to water running out of a tap, it makes hardly any noise. Just a soft rushing. But when you rest your head on the edge of the bathtub, it suddenly seems as if you're standing in the middle of a storm.
Remus was pondering this very thing while he was waiting until the bath was filled. The noise was quite deafening, actually, and it made his already aching head hurt even more. But he felt too tired and too tortured to lift his head – he didn't want to think about getting up and stepping in the bath in a few minutes, in fact, he doubted if he would be able to. His arm lay limply over the edge, his fingertips just touching the water. They were getting warmer and warmer, strange compared to the rest of his body, which was cold as ice. The Change was always a pain, but even more so when it was winter and one was inclined to aching muscles.
Let's face the facts and admit it: he was getting old. Maybe not in normal years (after all, thirty-five was not that old) but, considering that he had been a werewolf for thirty years now, it was hardly surprising that Changing got harder. Having every bone in your body broken twice a month does affect your physical condition after all.
He decided the tub was full enough, so he turned off the tap and, with some difficulty, climbed in. He got goosebumps all over when the warmth of the water enveloped him.
He didn't usually take baths, normally he took a shower – the fact that he didn't quite fit into the tub being the main reason. He had to chose between either cold shoulders or cold knees. Remus was lucky that he was quite thin; he twisted and wriggled a bit and finally came to rest in a sort of s-position with his knees just a bit above the water. His mind slipped into a sort of meditative state, only half-conscious.
His breathing eased when he got warmer and his muscles relaxed. He lay there dozing in the tub until the water was cold again, then he climbed out. He only half-heartedly dried himself, staggered towards the bed, fell down on it, covered himself up and almost immediately fell asleep.
He hated these times of the month.
~*~
January had always been Remus' least favourite month. The holidays were over, the new year had started, but it was cold and dark outside and you had to endure three months before the weather improved and you could start enjoying the new year. Until then it was a matter of hiding indoors, wearing thick jumpers and comfortable slippers. It was a way of hibernating until the spring started again.
It was exactly the method Remus chose to survive the winter. He was sitting at his kitchen table, wearing a comfortable, worn but warm jumper. He was holding a cup of steaming tea in his cold hands, which served the double purpose of warming his hands and his insides. It was a week after the full moon. He was bowed over the Daily Prophet, but he wasn't really interested in it. Even the wizarding paper suffered January Disease; it was filled with random and uninteresting articles. The only page worth reading was the page with letters to the editor – there was a lively debate going on whether Dumbledore had been right in hiring Hagrid as the Care of Magical Creatures teacher. Many who had known Hagrid themselves dismissed Rita Skeeter´s article as complete rubbish, but they were being heavily opposed by people who thought that 'half-creatures' had no business teaching young children. It made Remus smile wryly.
He raised his head in surprise when he heard the doorbell ring. He wasn't expecting someone, and he really couldn't think of anybody who could visit him now. Only one way to find out, he thought. He got up, walked toward the door and opened it.
To his surprise, Romulus was standing outside. He looked as cheerful as ever.
"Hello!" he said.
"What the huh?" Remus answered intelligently. "What are you doing here?"
"Well thank you!" Romulus pretended to be offended. "See if I ever pay you a visit again…"
"You surprised me, that's all." Remus beckoned his brother to get inside. "What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be working hard and dutifully for the Ministry?"
"But I am!" Romulus took of his coat and followed Remus into the kitchen. "There was this guy, not so far from here, who thought it fun to break the ban on experimental breeding, and they send me to sort it out – well, I volunteered actually. I heard something interesting that I'm sure will… well, interest you."
"Tell me, tell me." Remus offered Romulus something to drink but the younger Lupin politely declined.
"I must be heading off soon, I only got a couple of minutes. How are you?"
"Could be better. I'm getting old, really. Now, what did you had to tell?"
"Curious, are we?" Romulus grinned.
"Well, if you drop a tantalising hint and then avoid the matter you can expect people get curious!"
"Okay, I´ll tell." Romulus took a comfortable position, leaning against the table. "I was going to get some coffee the other day – "
"This is part of what you wanted to tell me, right?" Remus asked sceptically. He knew his younger brother longer than today.
"If you'll just let me finish! Well, as I was saying, I was going for coffee the other day, and there's a central coffee machine for the entire floor, which is absolutely horrible because in the morning there are always a lot of people waiting, and of course you're always the one who has to refill the thing because it has just run out of coffee when it's your turn –"
"I fail to see the interesting point of this story."
"I'm coming to it. Well, I met this guy, with the unoriginal name of Jones, he's working at the Werewolf Registry and he's the youngest so he always has coffee duty, which means that he has to get coffee for everybody. Anyway, he knows my name is Lupin, but he doesn't know about you. So you can understand my surprise when he asked if we were related. Of course, there is no point in lying, so I told him we were, and then he told me you had more or less single-handedly turned the Registry upside-down."
"What?" Remus was taken aback. "What did I do?"
"Yeah, that was what I asked: 'what did he do this time?'" Romulus cocked his head. "You never told me where you got that nice cloak of yours."
Remus raised his eyebrows. "Is it about that?"
"Yep. They apparently got this note from Gringotts that you'd got 200 galleons from an anonymous giver, and you weren't allowed to get it of course, but they can't make you anything, because you don't have it anymore – you made it mysteriously disappear, and they need proof that you did something against the law. How did you do it anyway?"
Remus stopped his little victory dance and said: "easy. Changed it into Muggle money. Nobody checks who's changing how many Galleons into Pounds, so I took one hundred Galleons, changed it into Pounds, and there I was."
"Genius," Romulus laughed. "Well, you've distressed the entire Registry, and even angered the great Umbridge herself, who was reportedly smashing tables, screaming bloody murder and that she wanted you alive and all."
"Really?"
"Nah, just made that up. She was angry though." He glanced at the clock. "Hey, I gotta go."
"I´ll show you the door."
"Don't bother, I've seen it before." It was a bit of a corny joke, but Remus laughed nonetheless. He opened the door for his brother, who got out.
"You come and visit us again soon?" Romulus asked.
"Sure I will. Not sure when though."
"Okay." Romulus waved goodbye and Apparated back to London. Remus shook his head, grinning, and got back in. Even Umbridge…
~*~
His lifted spirits lasted for almost two weeks. His Wolfsbane Potion arrived in time again. Remus had send Snape a rather long letter of thanks, but the Potion Master had never replied to it. Remus figured acknowledging gratitude was not something Snape did. Unless it was in an immensely disdainful way, in front of a lot of people, with a few sneers and sarcastic comments. Not something you could do in a letter.
The nearer the full moon came, the moodier Remus got. His last Change hadn't been a pleasant experience – compared to the other Changes, at least – and he actually dreaded this one, something he hadn't done in quite some time. He thought he'd got used to it, it was something inevitable, much like going to the dentist or having an injection – it took a few painful moments and then it was over again. You shouldn't think about it too much. But for the first time in years, he found himself worrying about what could go wrong.
He was nervous on the night in question. He found himself pacing through his house, but he didn't really do anything. His restless mood rubbed off on Monster, and the two of them spend most of their day wandering from room to room and annoying one another.
Remus made a small meal for himself when it started to get dark – he was too nervous to each much. Another thing he hated about January, and winter in general, was that the nights were longer than the days, so the Change came earlier.
Darkness fell, and he undressed himself reluctantly, almost too late. He was already covered in a thin, lightbrown fur when he pulled the last piece of clothing off. He watched apprehensively as the fur thickened, and when the bones started to snap, he bit his lower lip until it bled.
~*~
Sometimes, it is literally a pain being right. Whether it was just a coincidence or his negative thoughts influencing things, Remus would never know. He did know something was completely wrong when he changed back the next morning.
At least, he couldn't remember having such a hump on top of one of his feet, or that same feet seemed to be folded double.
He paled when he realised what had happened. His bones had grown back in a wrong position. He immediately grabbed his right feet, feeling the damage, but the bones were unmoveable. The muscles, the veins, the nerves, all were back and doing their work perfectly – except in the wrong position.
A foot is one of the more complex parts in the human body. It consist of twenty-six bones, varying in size, and it looks oddly much like a hand. It all fits together like a complex jigsaw, unless you break it all, stupidly don't let someone set the bones right, and let it all grow back wrongly. And that was exactly what Remus had done: in ten minutes time his bones were broken, they had set themselves in the wrong place, the muscles were stretched over the bones, and it was done. The whole thing was working again. Remus could even move his toes a little bit. His foot seemed to think everything was back to normal.
Or not.
Remus scrambled to his feet, and immediately pulled up his right leg when he felt the pain. It was okay when he was sitting on the floor, but the moment he put weight on the foot, it protested. Come to think of it, when he looked at the poor limp, it looked sickeningly disfigured. Apart from the hump on top (it looked as though somebody had tried to press the toes and the heel towards each other), it seemed as if he was walking on the side of his foot instead of the sole. Usually there is a layer of flesh and, if you regularly walk barefoot, callosity between the bones and the floor. Now Remus was walking directly on one of the bones in his disfigured foot.
He could think of only one thing to do. He put some clothes on (only one shoe, the other didn't fit), and Apparated to London, to St Mungo´s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.
~*~
When he arrived, he made sure to land on one foot, but he nearly lost his balance and staggered against a street lantern. There were only a few other people in the street, who looked oddly at Remus. He ignored them and limped towards the window display. He didn't take the time for long conversations; he told the dummy that he needed a Healer and she let him through with merely a tiny nod.
The hall of the wizarding hospital was fairly quiet. It was rather early in the morning – just past nine o'clock – and there were only a few early patients and Healers walking about. Remus limped towards the floor guide. He figured he fell under the 'creature-induced injuries'-category. Ignoring the welcome-witch, he limped on, but he stopped when he reached the stairs. Oh Merlin. How am I supposed to get up there?
"Can I help you?" He turned around. There was a Healer standing behind him, wearing the familiar green robe embroided with the St Mungo's emblem. The Healer looked younger and healthier than Remus, and he suddenly felt twice as old.
"Uhm, yeah, I need to get up there," he said, gesturing weakly towards the staircase.
"Ah. Just a second." The Healer took out his wand and waved it; a wheelchair came zooming towards them. At least, it looked like a wheelchair, except that it didn't have wheels: it hovered above the ground. Remus sat himself down with relief, and carefully placed his injured foot on the foot rest.
"Hold on, please," said the Healer. He pushed the wheelchair (or, rather, hoover-chair) towards the staircase, but he didn't stop when he reached it. Instead, he kept walking on. The chair floated upwards, just enough above the steps to avoid hitting them with the foot rest.
When they reached the first floor, the Healer asked Remus: "did you have an appointment with a Healer, sir?"
"No, I need help with my foot." Remus pointed at his poor foot to emphasise his point.
"Let's see what's the problem then." The Healer steered Remus into something that seemed to be an examination room; there were a desk, a hospital bed, and some strange devises Remus had no idea of what they were for. The Healer helped him on the bed, then bowed over Remus' foot, carefully prodding and feeling.
"This is very strange," he muttered. "It seems as if it was broken years ago, and then grown back the wrong way. But that can't be, can it?" He looked at Remus. "Whatever happened?"
Remus sighed. He had waited for this question to be asked, but he didn't like to answer it. Better keep it short then. "I am a werewolf. And this morning, something went wrong. I don't know why."
The face of the Healer lit up. It was actually quite freaky, Remus thought. As if I am some weird case he's only read about. Wait, I probably am. Drat.
"Could you wait here, please," the Healer said excitedly (though he tried to conceal it), "I´ll go and get someone with more – experience in this kind of things."
"Yeah, sure, I won't go anywhere," Remus muttered darkly as the Healer hurried away. "It's not like I can anyway." He didn't like the sound of 'someone with more experience in this kind of things'. He was already imagining some kind of weird professor with a chainsaw who liked to cut werewolves open while they were still alive, when the Healer in question walked in. He didn't look at all like a murdering madman. In fact, he reminded Remus oddly of his own father. He gave Remus a firm handshake and introduced himself as "Fortune." Remus hoped that the man was true to his name.
"Well, let's see what is the matter here," the man said jovially. "Harvey, if you could…" The first Healer was already rolling one of the strange medical devises towards the bed. It seemed like a kind of projection machine, with the lens turned upwards, as if they wanted to project a movie against the ceiling. On one side of the box, there was a copper-coloured hoop. Harvey rolled the machine next to the bed, the hoop just above the bed.
"Now, if you could stick your foot through the hoop, please," Fortune instructed. Remus obediently did so, curious as to what was going to happen.
The moment he had stuck his foot through the hoop, the machine had switched on. It did turn out to be some kind of projection machine; a light switched on, and there appeared a life-size projection of a foot, or at least what should have been a foot, in 3D. It was just like a hologram, and it made Remus think of the science fiction books Sirius used to read.
Fortune bowed over the projection, carefully studying it. Harvey was waiting in the background, excitedly wriggling his fingers. It almost made Remus wonder whether Healers got a financial bonus if they brought interesting patients in – it would almost seem so.
"Interesting," Fortune muttered. He started prodding the projection, but instead of going right through it, his fingers could touch it. He moved the bones around, almost as if he was making a complicated jigsaw. Finally, the projection-foot was back to normal. Now only the real-life version…
"Very interesting," Fortune commented. "I've hardly seen this before. You may remove your foot." Remus immediately pulled his leg back, and the projection disappeared as soon as he had pulled his foot out of the hoop. Harvey rolled the machine back on its original place.
"But you have done this before, right?" Remus asked. "I mean, you do know what to do, don't you?"
"Yes, of course I do!" He helped Remus sit up. "It's not a common problem, but it happens sometimes. Once, I've encountered a lycantrope whose spine was out of joint. Complete disaster, we didn't dare mess with the nerves, so he had to wait an entire month before he Changed again and we could push everything back into position. And it was a race against time too, before he'd start eating us."
Remus wondered if this story was supposed to be uplifting.
"Now, what I'm going to do will only hurt a little bit." Fortune turned towards Harvey. "Could you get… Port and Wikinson please?" Harvey nodded and left the room. Fortune then went on to take Remus' leg and stretch it out on the bed. He felt it carefully, just like Harvey had done. It tickled a bit.
"What are you going to do then?" Remus asked finally, after a few moments of silence.
"I´ll have to break the foot again and set it right," Fortune said, ridiculously cheerful.
Remus paled.
"I´ll think I´ll just wait another month, okay," he peeped.
"Now, that's impossible, you can't walk around with a foot like this for the rest of the month. You'll be anaesthetised, it won't hurt a bit."
"Yes, that's what the dentist always says before pulling a tooth," he muttered darkly. Fortune laughed. "You're amusing, Mr Lupin."
Remus started wishing the mad professor with the chainsaw was here. Even more so when Harvey came back with Port and Wilkinson, who turned out to be two squarely build Healers. Fortune instructed one, Wilkinson, to stand by the head of the bed, to keep Remus down in case he decided to run in panic (jump out of the window more like, he thought miserably) while Port took position by the foot end, to keep Remus leg in check. Harvey had taken a more passive role; he was standing in the background, keeping an interested eye on everything that happened.
Fortune pulled out his wand, and Remus already flinched, but the Healer just waved it over Remus' foot. A prickling feeling went through his leg, and it felt oddly much as if his leg was sleeping. After a few moments, his foot felt thick and limp, and heavy. Fortune prodded it, but Remus couldn't feel it.
"Ready?"
Wilkinson and Port nodded, but Remus felt like shaking his head like a madman. Fortune paid no attention to him, however. As he took Remus' foot, Wilkinson put an arm over Remus' chest, keeping him down. Without realising, Remus grabbed Wilkinson´s wrist, squeezing tightly.
The first stage of the operation was over before he knew it. Fortune tapped Remus' foot with his wand, and Remus could see something was happening, although he could not feel it. The bones in his foot suddenly seemed to be much looser, not so tight against one another. Remus was about to comment that it indeed wasn't so bad, when Fortune put his wand down and pressed with all his might and all his weight on Remus' foot.
Remus gasped for breath. He certainly did feel that! Port was holding his right leg down, but not his other leg, and he reflexively pulled it towards his chest. His other leg jerked as if it wanted to follow, but Port held it down so tightly he couldn't move. Remus felt like screaming his lungs out, but all that came out was an strange "eep!"
Fortune's efforts seemed to have given the results he wanted. He had taken Remus' foot in both hands, and seemed to be massaging it with his thumbs. He pressed on the top of the foot, until something seemed to click. He then went on to carefully kneading the rest of the foot, pushing little bones into their place.
The owner of the foot looked at his limp as if he'd never seen it before. He held on to Wilkinson as if for dear life, staring wide-eyed at the Healer who was pushing his foot back into shape as if it was made of modelling clay.
Finally, Fortune rubbed over Remus' toes, clicking the phalanxes back into position. He kept massaging it, making sure everything was alright, and Remus' lycantropy did the rest.
"Amazing," the Healer said. "That regenerating never ceases to amaze me." He then turned to Remus. "Now, Mr Lupin, that wasn't so bad, was it?"
Remus opened his mouth, but the only sound that came out was "eep."
~*~
Sirius had the idea he was going mad. At least, he didn't think counting all the matches in three boxes and making a schedule to see how long you could do with them, normal and sane.
But at least it helped him through another day.
It was already February, and it had been over a month since he'd had some company. Human company anyway. By now he'd do anything to get rid of the utter boredom that attacked him everyday.
Of course, he went down to Hogsmeade everyday to raid the trashcans for food or papers, and he usually had letters to write to either Dumbledore or Remus – the most frequent writers. And sleeping usually took up a lot of his time. But then there were still about eight hours to pass.
He was currently doing one of his other ways to pass a lot of time – lying on his bed staring at the ceiling. Buckbeak was off hunting or whatever he usually did, Sirius couldn't care less actually. He was fed up with the hippogriff. And he was fed up with the boring ceiling. In fact, he was fed up with everything. Nothing ever happened.
He sat upright again, staring moodily into space. The rest of the world had fun, while he was stuck here with only a stupid animal to talk to, and all because some dirty, lying, traitorous – here he used a word for which he would've scolded Harry if he ever used it – thought it okay to betray his best friends.
He sighed. Something needed to happen soon, else he'd make something happen.
And knowing him, it would probably be something stupid.
* * * * *
Padfoot,
I don't think you'd thanked me on Christmas, but now you have. Thanks for your thanks.
I'm sorry you have nothing better to do than sit around and wait, it must be very boring. Perhaps my news will cheer you up. I'm sure you'll laugh: I've been appointed exercises to get more lithe. Yes, it is as stupid as it sounds. Every morning I have to stretch and bend and what-not, it's insane. Where was the time I could Change and go back to class the same afternoon?
Moony, who feels old, very old…