Chapter Three
Pain and Suffering
- He gave one last, long, heartfelt cry and all went black. -

Rachael sat in her small room at the top of the Lupin household, lying back on her soft bed, looking at the ceiling, trying to forget, though it was near impossible to. How could it be that a person's life could be so normal, so uneventful, so calm, and then in a split second, in the blink of an eye, it changes right before you and there's nothing you can do about it. It didn't make sense to her, nothing did anymore. The whole world was just too confusing for her and she never wanted to face any of these problems again, but she had to. She was forced to. They were making her, well, technically, only one was. The other was thrown into it.

Rachael sat up and wiped her eyes clean, wincing from the pain of her swollen eyes. The Healer, Griemer, had fixed her broken nose and cleaned up the blood for her, but he never got the chance to cure her black eyes. Her mother had dragged him away and made him pay attention to Remus. She looked around at her small, dimly lit room. When she and Remus were six they had broken the light fixture on the ceiling, making the light shine only faintly. Her room was cramped with her bed, a dresser, a full-length mirror on the wall, a large bookshelf and a toy box in the corner under the single window, which let in the barest amount of light. She stood up and walked over to her toy box, kneeling down beside it.

She flipped the rusted, golden latches and lifted the box slowly. She pushed aside old dolls, little toy cars, a few odds and ends of toys she and her brother had broken in the past few years (she and her brother had a terrible habit of breaking things). She found at the bottom a small stuffed wolf. It was black with yellow piercing eyes, but with a friendly smile. There no fangs baring any spit in the corners of its mouth. This was a friendly wolf. Why couldn't the wolf they encountered in the forest be like this one? Then, she wouldn't be in the situation she was in and Remus wouldn't be locked in his room at this very moment, waiting, nervous, fearing the worst.

"Rachael, get down here!" Mrs. Lupin's voice shrieked, bouncing off the walls of the room.

Rachael placed the wolf back in the box, and went downstairs to face her mother, dreading every step she took that brought her closer to the downstairs. She got down and saw her mum and dad sitting at the kitchen table. Her father was holding a copy of The Daily Prophet and her mother held a mug of coffee.

"Sit," Mrs. Lupin instructed, her lips barely moving and yet her voice projecting throughout the entire room.

Rachael did as she was told, afraid to do otherwise. "What'd I do?" she asked immediately, not even bothering to ask what they wanted or if she had done anything. She knew she had, she just didn't know what.

"It's not what you did," her mother said. Rachael's eyes brightened in surprise. "It's what I want you to do. In a few minutes Remus will be facing his transformation, and I want you to sit there and listen! I want you to tell me how horrible it was. I want you to tell me that it was terrible to listen to, that it made Remus miserable! Then you'll understand why you're getting the punishment you're getting!" Rachael sat there and didn't move. "Go!"

Rachael stood up very slowly, but ran up the steps and stopped in the middle of the hallway, in front of Remus's door. She shrunk down against the door and leaned her head back to let it rest against the doorknob. She didn't want to hear it. She knew it would be the worst thing she ever heard in her life and the worst pain Remus ever felt in his life. Oh how she wished this had never happened. She hoped with every ounce in her body that she would wake up in her bed and find out that this had all been some crazy dream. She and Remus had never been in that forest and had never woken up in St. Mungo's Wizard Hospital.

She sat there for ten minutes before she heard it - a low, painful gurgling sound coming from her brother's room. Remus moaned in pain.

Remus had been standing by the window of his room, leaning against the sill, looking out at the sky, waiting for the full moon to come, waiting for the worst. He was nervous. He had never been so nervous in his life, not even when the village bully had threatened his humanity by dangling him off the docks down at the seaport. That was the time he thought he had the worst scare in his life. But he was wrong, this was.

He walked over to the door, thinking about getting something quick to eat, but quickly dismissed the thought; he knew it wouldn't stay in his stomach anyway. He crossed back to the window and saw it, the full moon, golden, shining, and casting a beautiful glow in the night sky. How could something so beautiful cause him so much pain? He hadn't had time to broad on that because then it hit. A pain like a knife pierced through his stomach. He moaned in agony, a low gurgling sound emitting from him. He lurched forward on all fours. Sweat beading on his forehead, breathing fast and heavily, crying out, he tried to stay focused. His room was dissolving around him. Pain surged through his arms and legs and fingers and toes. His head felt as though it might split in two. His mind was reeling, the pain was too much. He cried out, hoping someone might come and help him, but he knew that would never happen.

He gave one last, long, heartfelt cry and all went black.

Rachael sat frozen at the doorway, listening to the sounds and cries of pain coming from behind her. Words couldn't describe how scared she felt. She just knew she never wanted to hear anything like that again, for the rest of her life and beyond that. All was quiet in Remus's room, not a sound, nothing. But wait, she heard something. It was a low growling, exactly like the one she heard in the forest. It happened… he was a werewolf.

She could hear the claws of his paws tapping on the wooden floor as the growling persisted. She heard the wolf coming closer to the door and then there was scratching on the door, whining. She turned around and tried to peek through the keyhole, but she couldn't see anything.

She heard footsteps coming up the stairs and leaned forward to see who it was.

"Come on." It was her dad. He stopped in front of her and knelt down. "T-there's no point listening. You should just go to bed. Remember… tomorrow." He broke off, tears filling his eyes. He turned away for a moment then looked back at his daughter, trying to control himself. "Just - just go to bed."