All was quiet at number twelve, Grimmauld Place. Mrs Black's portrait hung silent, the curtains around her frame drawn. Kreecher wandered the house, muttering darkly about the inhabitants of his mistress' house. Nearly all the members of the Order were absent for the day, except for one. Remus Lupin, who now sat in the parlour, a forgotten book in his lap, staring at his hands with a look resembling despair mingled with horror.
He often found himself doing this, and the feeling might strike him at any moment during the day, during any kind of activity. He could be helping Molly by chopping vegetables when the house was particularly busy, or helping her fold the children's laundry, or he could be bringing the razor blade to his face while shaving. He could be sorting the mail that had arrived by owl, or he might be chasing Kreecher across the upstairs landing when the vile house elf had stolen his registration tags. He could be reading a book, as he was now.
No matter the situation, it was always the same. He would catch sight of his hands and suddenly a terrible feeling would descend over him like a shroud, and he would find himself just staring, and thinking. Right now, he was thinking about how his nails would thicken and lengthen, how his hands would lengthen into parodies of a human's, sprouting fur as they went. And how if his hands were changing, the rest of him was - his shoulders hunching, his spine growing, his face lenghtening into a snout, nose twitching. Ripping his clothes, fur growing everywhere, and the ability to think humanely slipping away as the wolf pushed himself to the front.
It horrified him to think that he could lose his calm and controlled human nature and become a monster that would kill anyone - or worse - without a second's thought. All his life since the bite he had fought so hard to stay human. Yet every month as the moon became full he would feel his humanity fade. No matter how hard he tried, he became a monster. Remus snorted in contempt as he thought about the people who would call themselves his friends. They would always insist to him that he was still human. If he were human, why was it law for him to wear the tags the Registry of Magical Creatures had issued him? 'Dog tags for a werewolf,' he thought to himself. 'How ironic.'
The dog tags weren't all, but possibly worse than all the Ministry laws was the prejudice he received. He was treated as a beast, cast out and ignored by so, so many. Even those he had called friend, for all their promises and insistence that 'it didn't matter', had thrown him from their lives after finding out his secret, leaving him to wander, alone. Who would want to be close to a werewolf? 'How long has it been?', he began to wonder to himself, then stopped, his hands balling into fists as he fought back the sudden lump rising in his throat. A moment later though and the thought pushed itself to the front of his mind again with a sneering voice: 'How long has it been since you've been close to a woman, Lupin?' He sighed, the shroud around his body tightening.
It had been forever: no woman had ever wanted to be involved with him any more than as a friend - and friends were rare enough - for a long, long time. It had been so long that he had nearly forgotten the pain of it all. But that pain hadn't faded before he had built a wall around his heart, before he had shut himself off to any hopes of women taking an interest in him. Now, however, he did not feel the pang of the loneliness, except for times like this. Times where he sat and couldn't help wallow in his problems, feeling himself slipping into depression. 'You're pathetic, Moony,' he thought to himself bitterly. 'Nobody will miss you when you're gone.'
He put his head into his hands - a monster's hands - feeling hopelessly alone.