Author's Note: First, yes it's supposed to be all mashed together. That was just how it was written...don't ask me. Second, I know it's been a while and I really apologize. School, writer's block, blah. But now I'm back for winter break (yay!), so here you go. It's really angsty.

Disclaimer: All characters mentioned by name belong to J.K. Rowling. The others (or the random people) are mine, much good it'll do me.

Please don't let them hurt me, Remus cried into the silent darkness, voice unheard and unnoticed. Please protect me, he whimpered, huddled on his side, unwilling to go further into his private nightmare but unable to awaken and save himself. Don't let them hurt me, don't let me hurt them, please protect me, Remus couldn't think clearly anymore, he was running and whirling and screaming and beating his fists against invisible walls that climbed ever higher around him, closing him in and fencing him off like an animal in a zoo, something to be feared and hidden and maybe killed because he had fangs and fur and a killer instinct every full moon. But that's not all there is to me! That isn't it! he wanted to cry to the scared crying faces that whirled through his dream, Peter horrified, James disgusted, and then Sirius, beautiful, arrogant Sirius with midnight hair and midnight eyes, turning away. I am more than the beast, he told them, all of them, his parents, his friends, the strangers who gathered to stare at the peculiar new acquisition and whisper and hide their children, but they didn't, couldn't, wouldn't, listen and they hated him for things he couldn't change. Please, don't let them stare at me, I don't want them to hate me, he cried to unknown deities, to anyone who would listen, but his prayers fell on deaf ears and shuttered eyes that refused to look past his wolf's eyes and clawed handpaws. And the walls grew ever higher, brick, then granite, then marble, black obsidian, glittering diamond, glistening sapphire and ruby and emerald and then limestone, and finally glass. Please, don't let them see me, he screamed, head thrown back and wild eyes searching, for salvation, for forgiveness, for comfort, and he found none, none in his small black shrinking cloudy world and now it was getting smaller, the walls closing in around him, changing into iron bars that pushed him into a little corner and wouldn't let him move. It's for your own good, the bars told him, smiling peacefully and jangling, and the people smiled, relieved that the monster, that horrid beast of nighttime preying was finally safely caged in suffocating metal. What have I done? I am innocent, I haven't hurt anyone, he tried, but they shook their heads and made tsking noises, as if it was amusing that such an uneducated beast would try to reason with omniscient humans. They told him it was the thought that counted, that any day he could kill an innocent person, but he shrieked I am an innocent! And they laughed at such a preposterous idea and turned their backs on him, leaving him to his damned silence in hell, locked behind bars, safely put away so he could hurt no one but himself. And that was alright; after all, who cared about a werewolf?