Chapter 8- The Howler

As soon as Remus returned home from work that day, he switched on his Wizard Wireless. The reports had been dismal of late, but he needed to keep up with what was happening. These days, he had not heard from Sirius at all. Ever since the day Sirius was reported to have disappeared from a job, he had been silent to Remus.

The radio announcer was speaking in a sad but rapid tone. "Yesterday, Sirius Black was found guilty of the crimes of passing information to You-Know-Who, resulting in the deaths of Lily and James Potter, and multiple murders. Said murders include that of Peter Pettigrew, and a number of muggles. He is sentenced to life in Azkaban."

At the mention of Sirius's name was mentioned, Remus froze. He listened with horror as the WWN told him that three of his closest friends had been killed by his other closest friend. He felt numb shock, and as his initial paralysis wore off, he collapsed into an old chair. He knew how he must look; his mouth hung open and his eyes were unfocused. The room blurred in front of him. But he could not bring himself back, with one thought flooding his mind... Sirius Black was found guilty...

At once, strength surged into him, his muscles tautened. The first thing that he was aware of was anger, a boiling rage that pained his mind. He had been betrayed, and now he had no one left. Before, Sirius had always been there for him. After Lily and James went into hiding, they spent even more time together. But what a lie that had all been, he laughed hollowly to himself. Sirius had been working for Voldemort all along.

"RrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The cry ripped through him, burning his throat. It was a mixture of grief, fury and an all too familiar pain. It was the full moon again, and night was approaching all too swiftly. His senses were deceiving at this point, but he still had his mind. He had to let his anger be known before he turned and forgot it all.

In a few minutes, the message had been sent, and Remus was feeling wolf-like indeed. While there was still time, he stumbled to the small cabin where he could lock himself up, and then it began.

Mortal agony.

During the change, he could never stand. Instead he writhed on the floor, waiting for it to be over. When that happened, his wolf mind had taken over. There was no reason or explanation, only feeling and aggression. And so, when he became the wolf, he could not think out the problem logically, but he remembered the anger. Single words continued to flash through his mind.

Sirius--guilty--death--Lily--James--murder--Peter--Azkaban--

A howl the like of which even Remus had never heard escaped him. It could have lasted for seconds or hours. He did not know, and it would not matter even if he had. All he knew about the howl was that it said everything his wizard form could not. The primal aspect of his grief could not be held back in this form, because the wolf in him grasped it too well.

Remus tended to fall asleep just after turning back. When he awoke as himself, the first thing he did was check his body for scratches. There had never been many before, but now he was almost covered with them. They crossed his chest, arms, back, legs- any place he could reach. He gingerly touched his face, wincing when his fingers came in contact with claw-marks on his forehead. His shoulder was throbbing, as was the inside of his elbow, from the bites he had given himself.

With a sigh, he found the remains of the patchy robe he had worn upon entrance to the wolf-containment cabin. He put it on, holding it closed in places where it had been ripped. Before leaving, he took a quick glance at the surroundings. He had never kept any furniture there, which he decided was a good thing. The walls displayed a notable difference in the number of scratches, new scars overlapping old.

He left quickly, eager to heal his wounds before they formed scars. If he allowed the effects of the time he spent as a werewolf to become permanent, it would cause too many questions. He managed to hide it from a good number of people, but that would not last if he had the marks of animal scratches and bites all over him.

After performing the medical charms (which he had taken a special course to learn), Remus sat down at his table with a hot mug of coffee. The beverage was slowly drained of its temperature as he stared at the wall, thinking.

When he considered the radio report, the circumstances made no sense. He knew Sirius too well to believe that he had betrayed James. Even knowing how surprising the revelations of Death Eaters could be, this was Sirius. He could not have commited those crimes any more than Remus could stop his transformations every month. He had tried before. "Maybe if I concentrate hard enough," he had said to Sirius and James one night, just before the change, "I can stop it. I won't be the wolf, all it takes is willpower. Maybe." He knew how unsure he had sounded, but his friends had let him test the new idea. When he turned into the wolf that night, they took their Animagi forms and kept him under control.

After all they had been through together, how could he think for one second that Sirius had turned on their best friends? Shame engulfed him for believing, even for a few moments, that Sirius was guilty. His eyes widened as he remembered what he had done before the moon rose on that night. He wished with his entire being that he could take it back, but it was too late.

The damage had been done. "Oh, no. Sirius, I'm sorry."

Rain and fog had obscured the time of day for at least a week, but Sirius figured that it had been three or four days since Dumbledore had visited him. Since then, he had been privileged with his first sight of a dementor.

Growing up in a wizard family, he had always known about dementors. Horror stories his mother used to tell him to convince him to be a good mini-Death Eater. "Pay attention to your Dark Arts, or the dementors will get you!"

"But mum," he would reply, "the Ministry controls the dementors."

"What nonsense! They will always obey a Dark Lord over some Mudblood-loving lunatic!" his mother reprimanded.

Who's a lunatic, really? He had thought back at her.

Seeing a dementor, feeling its presence, he was inclined to believe his mother's words. After all, evil attracts evil. He had seen enough to know that. Voldemort would let the dementors feed on all Muggles, Muggle-borns, and halfbloods. The Ministry fooled itself if it thought that the dementors would pass that up because it was wrong.

"They're dark creatures!" he wanted to scream at them, but what would his reasoning do?

Since he had been there, he had known nothing but cold, boredom, and fear. Every time the dementors passed, a wave of cold would sweep over him. Memories of scenes of death he had walked in on while working as an Auror flooded his mind, the memory of how he had found Lily and James. He would try to bring up thoughts of Hogwarts, of James and Lily's wedding, the birth of Harry, anything to take away the constant drudgery of unhappy memories. Every time he did, he could feel them leave him, fade and slip out of his grasp, and darkness pushed its way into his mind. If he switched to dog form he probably would have been able to avoid some of it, but he did not want to reveal his Animagus form to anyone who might be watching.

A flutter of wings at the tiny, iron-barred window caught his attention. Surprised, he stood. "Strange," he muttered. Azkaban residents were not allowed to receive mail, but there was a large owl hovering just outside the window. It dropped the letter into his cell through the bars and flew away.

Sirius watched it go, then turned to the letter. The envelope was bright red- in the wizarding world, that could only mean one thing. But who would send him a howler?

He picked it up, looking for the return address in the corner. There wasn't one. He might have recognized the handwriting that spelled his name if he had looked close enough, but he did not. Instead, he turned it over with a sigh and ripped the envelope open.

"Why, Sirius?!" The voice shouted at him. He recognized it, and froze. "Why, how could you do this?! It's Lily and James! They were supposed to be your friends! James never would have betrayed any of us like that, especially you! You broke his trust! And then you killed Peter?! I never would have expected this from you! You've done a lot of stupid things, but never evil, Sirius! Maybe you expected me to be sympathetic because you're in Azkaban, but don't think it for a minute! You are no longer my friend, do you hear me?! If you could do such a thing to my friends, then you never were!"

The tirade continued, but Sirius did not hear it. He sank to the floor, holding back tears that badly wanted to escape. "No, Remus. Don't believe it. Moony, I would never..." he whispered. The rumbling voice in his ears was one he had never heard raised. The only time Remus had ever been remotely as the howler displayed him was during the full moon.

His one friend that he had left, the one person he had hoped would realize the truth of his innocence (other than Dumbledore), believed the reports that he was an evil, mindless servant of Voldemort.

"I have nothing now," he murmured to himself. "So when I get out, and I kill Pettigrew, I won't have anything to lose."

End Chapter 8

So there's the next chapter. The good news is, there's only one chapter left. Is there bad news? Well, not really. Not in the sense that there's actually something bad… So, I'll see you next chapter.