It took her several tries, but she eventually found a vacant room on the second floor. With a small groan, she enterd the room, kicking the door shut behind her before dropping her bag on the floor with a muted thunk that caused a small amount of dust to stir from the floor where it had fallen. She looked around the room a bit, knowing full well that beggars can't be choosers.
Rae decided the cleaning could wait until morning. She hadn't slept in about forty-two hours and the bed, moth-eaten though the hangings around it were, looked awfully inviting. She didn't even care if there was some sort of creature living under it, or in it, for that matter. She was sleep-deprived and that put her in a much fouler mood than anything that might be living in the shadows around that bed.
Wincing, Remus made his way up the stairs. He hoped that in a few days, after he got some well needed rest, that the pain would ease up in his muscles. It made his job that much harder, having to deal with not only injuries from missions, but newer, mostly self-inflicted wounds of his own.
Because of the mysterious absense of Molly, the house was begining to look a tad bit dustier than usual, not that he was interested in cleaning it...it was just an observation.
He knew that Rae was in the guest room that she had been assigned to, and he wanted to make sure she was comfortable with the arrangement. That, and to talk to her about the comment she had made earlier.
He arrived at her door, then, not wanting to just barge in on her, knocked on it.
Inside the room, Rae coughed heavily,flopping back down onto the bed, more dust rising in a cloud around her from the covers as she fell on them. She coughed a bit, waving away the dust in front of her face, and heard a knocking at the door. With another groan, she raised up on her bent arms so she could see the doorway from her position on the bed.
"Come in!" she called, wondering who had come after her so soon after her arrival.
He heard her yell from behind the thin wood of the door. Grinning to himself, he took hold of the door handle and pushed it open.
The door opened and Rae beamed at the sight of the person standing on the other side. She sort of figured he would be the one to come after her. She hadn't gotten a chance to answer his questions earlier, and he looked like the sort of man who let things nag at him until he had the answers - like a scholar, or one of those research lab geeks.
She sat up on the bed, bringing one leg up and resting her head on her knee with her arms wrapped around her bent leg as the other leg remained straight out.
"Well, well... if it isn't Remus Lupin," she said in a pleasant voice, cocking her head slightly to the side as she looked up into his hazel eyes. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
The room that she was in was unfortunately one of the more neglected ones of the house, mostly because no one had stayed in it for many years. Its last occupant had been Sirius, and the thought of his best friend sitting in the small chair in the corner brought back all the familiar feelings of loss and guilt that always forced their way into his tired mind.
As he turned his attention to Rae however, he pushed all other thoughts out of his head, walking further into the room.
She noticed he was looking about the room in an odd way, and his eyes kept darting to a certain corner of the room where an old chair sat. She looked in the same direction and, seeing nothing there, shrugged a bit before turning back to him again.
He gave her a slight smile, then, looking for a place to sit, moved toward the only chair in the room. He came within inches of sitting himself in it, before changing his mind, and choosing the edge of the bed she was sitting on instead. After better than a year, the death of Sirius still haunted him, and that simple wooden chair was more than he could handle at the time.
" Just wanted to see if you were settling in alright...amongst other things. " He said, not mentioning the earlier comment she had issued.
Rae chuckled a bit, lying back on the bed with her arms bent and her hands tucked behind her head. He was tap-dancing around the issue. She could tell by the way he was suddenly refusing to look at her.
"I'm just peachy," she replied. "This room could use the touch of an entire hotel housekeeping staff, but beggars can't be choosers so I have no room to complain."
He chuckled quietly, nodding at her remark.
" Yes well, this was never the cleanest room of the house... " He said, remembering the absolute pig sty that it had been when Sirius had been residing in it. Molly had straightened it on occasion, but since she wasn't there, it was quite the mess.
A silence fell, and he couldn't help the discomfort that creeped its way into the room. He felt the question coming, it wouldn't be long now...
She thought she saw the slightest twitch of a smile on his face as he sat there on the end of her bed, but she couldn't be sure from her position because all she could see was his profile. He was even better looking from the side, a bit of his hair falling into his eyes as he sat there quietly in thought. A moment or two of silence stretched between them and Rae finally decided to break the tension.
She sighed softly, closing her eyes as she asked, "You want to know how I knew you're a werewolf, don't you?"
There it was, out in the open. He waited a moment, then nodded slowly.
" Yes actually, I would like to know... "
Rae opened her eyes and sat up, then crawled to the end of the bed to sit next to him with her legs tucked under her.
"First of all," she began, reaching up with a single hand to brush his hair back out of his face, "there's these." Her hand moved over his face, her fingertips lightly tracing the two scars that ran parallel to once another at a slight angle across his features. Her hand lingered a bit at his chin, and a smile crept over her face as she ran her thumb gently over the corner of his bottom lip before pulling away and letting her hand fall to rest on the bed between them.
Remus faught the impulse to pull away at Rae's fingers running across his scars. He'd never thought of himself as a self concious man, but then again, how many women had he really come in contact with that made him have to be? One of the scars ran over his eye, and he closed it as her finger ran across it. Opening it, he watched as she dropped her hand back beside her.
"It's rather unusual to find scars like those. Two of them, parallel to one another, and at an angle... almost as if from a wild animal slashing its claws across something. I've only seen scars like them a handful of times, all of them on individuals who had survived werewolf attacks."
He was finding it hard to speak, and wasn't exactly sure why. If he were to to guess, it would probably be that there was really nothing to say. Nothing she was saying needed to be corrected, it was all true.
"Then there was that nickname you told me in the hallway... Moony." She shook her head slightly, chuckling a bit. "If I've ever heard a more perfect nickname for a werewolf, I don't know what it is."
" Ah, the nickname, that was a gift from some friends of mine actually, but yes, due to my condition... " He stated, feeling as if he needed to give his old friends some credit.
She stopped laughing after a moment and her tone turned more serious, even though she was still smiling at him. "But I think I knew even before that what you are. It was like the wolf inside me could sense the wolf inside you. And so I had to ask you that question to see your reaction... So I would know if my instincts were right or not."
Her last few words echoed in Remus' mind. The wolf inside me? Did that mean...? And then it hit him. That was the feeling he had felt the first time he had met her. That was why he felt so oddly compelled to this woman. She was a werewolf...
" Well I'll be damned... " He muttered, not being able to control the profanity that had slipped out.
" I knew there was something...I just couldn't quite grasp it..."
Raeanne didn't say anything more to him. She simply moved so her back was to him and reached up with her left hand to pull aside her dark hair. Her right hand pulled down the straps of her tank top and bra to fully expose the two parallel scars across her shoulder.
"Look familiar?" she asked him, allowing him to look at them for a moment longer before replacing the straps and dropping her hair back into place.
He felt an intense impulse to reach out and touch the shiney scars than ran in the same familiar pattern as his own. He controlled it though, knowing that it may have made her uncomfortable, and that was the last thing he wanted to do.
Rae spun back around so they were face-to-face again and tucked her hair back behind her ears as she smiled at him.
"I thought I'd be running alone when the next full moon came," she said with a gleam in her eye. "I guess I lucked out in finding myself a companion as handsome as you."
There was that bloody word again. Handsome. She said it in a way that almost made him believe it. The truth was, he knew how he appeared, tired, broken, and that was only the way he carried himself. He didn't even like to think of his physical appearance...The scars had ruined any chance of him being what a woman as beautiful as Rae would think of as attractive...
" I think I'm the lucky one... " He said quitely.
She remembered he had been walking with a bit of a limp, and also thought about how tired he looked.
"Remus... Do you mind me asking how long it's been? What it's been like for you? I mean... if it's too personal you don't have to tell me. I just wanted to know because I'm still fairly new to all this and I only know what I've experienced so far and what others have told me."
The question made her look innocent for a moment, as if she'd let up a barier...only for a second though.
He thought about her question, and decided that it wasn't too personal. For any other person, maybe, but not for her. He felt that she deserved to be informed, to know everything she needed to.
" Well, it's been about...twenty-eight years, since I was bitten... " He started, realizing how old that made him sound. Although he didn't really find thirty-seven to be terribly old, it was certainly older that what Rae appeared to be.
Raeanne looked at him, her eyes squinting a bit as she examined him more closely. She had gagued his age somewhere around late thirties to early forties. But if it had been twenty-eight years since he was bitten...
"My god," she whispered out loud even as she thought it. "You were just a kid."
He nodded in agreement, the fact that he was only a child when it happened, was something that he often thought about. If it hadn't happened at such a young age, there would have been so many horrible things that he could have spared himself the pain of. It would have been a hell of a lot easier...
" Nine, to be exact... " He said, staring at the wall across from them, and noticing that there was a spider crawling up it. He watched as it made its way up the pale wall, disappearing into the speckled ceiling.
It had been bad enough going through the first few transformations as an adult, and she could only imagine what hell it must have been for him to have to endure it as a child. And, from the sounds of things, he hadn't had the same sort of support system she did back in New York.
"It's only been about seven years for me," she offered in an attempt to make him feel more comfortable about their discussion. "I was nineteen. I got into a fight with the wrong people at the wrong time of the month. One of the guys turned wolf and I got myself torn up and bit."
She paused for a moment, shaking her head at the memory of her own stupidity. If she really thought about it, though... she wasn't all that troubled about what had happened. She had been given a gift that night - an entirely new way of living and looking at the world around her.
"And now here I am," she concluded, shrugging her shoulders a bit.
He turned back to her, remembering the other part of her question.
" I had been playing in the woods in the back of my house, with a few friends, " He started, surprised at how fresh the memory was. He was remembering facts from decades ago, as if they had been the day before.
" Long story short...it got dark, and we got terribly lost. The werewolf came out of nowhere...and the only thing the three of us could do was run... " He stopped, to pay attention to the memory that was rolling through his head. He saw the trees flashing past him as he ran as fast as his legs could carry him. His friends had been close ahead, and they were yelling for him to hurry up...
" I tripped...over a root, and fell. " He said the last part quietly, averting his eyes from the wall and finally facing her again.
" The only thing I remember after that is pain, and that god foresaken howl... " He said, smirking at the irony that the same howl that had came with becoming a werewolf, was the same one that he found himself issuing on the nights of his transformations. In reality, it wasn't funny at all, so he quieted himself, settling for glancing down at his hands. He sighed heavily, as emotionaly draining as reliving that night was, it felt good to tell someone about it...
Nine... He had been a full ten years younger than her when he received the bite. His account of how it happened was enough to give her chills down her spine and she found herself moving a bit closer to him instinctively, as though just being closer to him might offer him some sort of comfort.
He had felt her move closer, and hadn't said a word. It was actually nice to have someone to talk to about these sorts of things.
"I used to go around with a pretty rough crowd when I was younger," she continued, figuring a more detailed account of her own rebirth was in order. "We stole cars, street raced, got into huge fights at clubs and bars... It was one fight in particular that did me in, though."
She sighed a bit, closing her eyes as it all washed over her. She could still see the alley behind the bar in her mind, the way the moonlight had washed over everything, and then...
"I actually saw the guy transform right in front of my eyes. At the time, it was the most horrifying thing I had ever witnessed. Pretty much everyone else bolted, but I was frozen to the spot. I... I don't remember much of what happened after that. I heard the howl and I closed my eyes, thinking it would leave me alone if I just stood still enough. Man, was I ever wrong..."
As she told her own story, he listened closely, trying to imagine what it must have been like.
Her eyes opened again and she turned to head to look into his hazel eyes, which somehow seemed a bit less tired since he had told her his story. As though some sort of a heavy burden had been lifted off his shoulders.
"I got thrown into the wall and blacked out. Next thing I remember I'm waking up in the hospital and some guy I've never seen in my life is telling me about how I was attacked by a werewolf and that Kevin - that was the werewolf who had attacked me - had been put down because he disobeyed the rules of the pack. Once the docs gave me the green light to go, I went with him to a safehouse for people like us."
" A safehouse, for werewolves? " The thought almost made him laugh. Not that it was particularly funny, but the thought of a large house, filled with people like him, all of them transforming at once...it was a bit amusing. But the more he thought about it, the more he began to like the idea. Thinking about how hard it was to grow up in a house, with his parents fully aware of what happened every month, and knowing that they were terrified of thier son, and what he was capable of...
There hadn't even been a Wolfsbane potion the first decade that he had had it. The only real solution to a transformation, was to lock yourself in a room, one in which there weren't any valuable or breakable things. And thats exactly what his parents had done...they built a shed in their backyard...
She smiled a bit, remembering her first days there. She had been in complete denial that she was a werewolf, or that she was even attacked by one. She kept trying to tell herself that someone had slipped something into her drink and she had hallucinated the whole thing.
"His name was Daniel. And he taught me everything I know about what we are."
Remus scoffed.
" I wish I had had someone to guide me through those first transformations... "
Rae reached out for his hand, hesitating only a moment before she took it in hers and gave it a small squeeze. Her other hand reached up again to run through his hair gently as she moved closer still to him.
"Those first few times were still hard," she whispered, the pain she recalled reflected in the tone of her voice. "Especially the very first time - I felt like I was going to die... I can't even begin to imagine what it must have been like for you. A child, alone, with no one to guide you."
As she spoke, he felt her grab one of his hands, squeezing it gently. He looked down at them, noticing how unfamiliar it appeared. It had been awhile since anyone had done anything like that, out of nowhere, just for him.
She thought about how surprised he had seemed to been when he found out she was a werewolf... almost as though he'd never come into contact with another one in his life.
"Remus," she started, deciding to ask the question as carefully as possible so as not to upset him. "Have you always been alone for the full moon?"
And then, with that question, all thoughts of his transformations were gone, and replaced by the three faces of his bestfriends. The Hogwarts castle was looming in the short distance, and the Womping Willow was swaying ahead of him. He watched as he entered below the tree, Peter, James, and Sirius close behind.
" No, not always, " He said, still remembering. It had been Sirius' idea...for the other three to become animagi...All of them had thought that he was crazy, all of them but James, of course. In the end, Remus had given in, knowing good and well that once Padfoot got a thought in his thick head, it was damn near impossible to get it out.
" I had friends, three of them actually. " Feeling grateful even now for what they had done for him.
" They, um, they became illegal Animagi...to be with me when...it happened. " He whispered, recalling the look on their young faces as they watched him transform for the first time. Peter had almost ran...but the other two didn't say a word. He had loved them, they truely had been the brothers he had never had...
" That was when I attended Hogwarts... " He added as an after thought. He then realized that he was thinking a lot of the story, but not telling enough of it out loud.
" I apologize for being so vague...it's just sort of...difficult... "
There it was. He hadn't been always been alone when he transformed, but he had never had a pack to run with, either. She had no doubt in her mind that his friends cared for him and looked after him on those nights, but he had never had anyone to guide him... to show him how magnificent and wonderful a creature he could be - both in his transformed state and human form.
"That explains a lot," she thought out loud, her eyebrows raising slightly. A confused look passed over his face at her outburst and she smiled at him, laughing a bit as she shook her head.
"Sorry, I tend to think out loud a lot," she told him, retracing one of his scars with her fingertips. "What I mean to say is that even though you had companions during your transformations, you were still more or less alone. None of them were werewolves, so really you've never had anyone to... identify with on those nights. No one who could show you the ways of the beast."
Her smile grew even brighter as she finally closed what little space was left on the bed between them, taking his face in both her hands as her eyes searched his.
"I could teach you so much, Remus," she said. "You don't have to be afraid or ashamed of what you are. It's not a disease or a curse. It's a gift. All you have to do is be willing to embrace it and you can be stronger, happier, and better than you ever imagined possible. If you'll let me... I can show you the way."
Stronger, happier, and better were not words that Remus usually used to describe being a werewolf. Words such as agony, distrust, and violent seemed to fit better. But Rae made him feel the slightest bit different. The way she carried herself, it looked as if she didn't have something like being a werewolf to worry about, when in reality, the full moon had been only a few days ago...she showed no sign of it as he often did. Although, he had been enduring it far much longer than she had, he still admired her.
" I'm sure you could, " He said, relishing the feeling of her hands on the sides of his face. He felt truely happy, which was an odd occurance giving the current situation, and everything that had led up to it. " Truth be told, I want you to... " He said, making the first real move he had the whole time he'd been there. He brought his hand up to where her's rested on his face, covering one of them gently.
The action caused her to stiffen automatically. It was such a simple gesture, and yet so much more intimate than she was used to. Rae never let herself get too close to anyone... Getting close led to becoming emotionally involved, and becoming emotionally involved inevitably led to being hurt. She'd had more than enough hurt to last her a lifetime.
She wanted to pull away from him, but she knew that if she did he would probably just shut down himself. Right now he was being open with her - probably moreso than he was normally with others - and she didn't want to erase all the progress she felt she had made with him in such a short spanse of time.
He had felt her tense slightly at his touch, but waited a moment, before taking his hand down, placing it on his lap. Normally he would be feeling akward right about now, his head would be swarming with thoughts, making him want to get out. But those weren't his feelings at all, and he was curious as to why.
"Remus," she said, her voice coming out a bit breathier than she had intended. "It would be an honor to teach you what you were never given the chance to learn. But I feel like I should warn you..."
Oh, lord... here we go, she though. I'm giving the same damn speech Daniel gave me.
And here it was, the heavily thought out speach on why they couldn't get involved. That their relationship, as much as she "wanted" it to exist, could not. And that it was nothing that he had done. He knew he shouldn't have put himself out there, it had been too long...
"If you're willing to learn, that's great. But things might be a bit... intense. At least at first. You might feel a slight bit different from your normal self, at least until you have a handle on things."
Well, he thought, letting out a sigh of relief, that he hoped wasn't noticable, Thats certainly not what I had expected...
" I think I'll be able to handle it... " He said quite confidently. He had indured more horrible situations and battles than he dared to count, and his transformations had never been easy. He moved his eyes so that he was staring straight into Rae's, hoping that she understood.
His eyes met hers and Rae felt her breath catch in her throat. Which wasn't good. Or was it? She had met plenty of other male werewolves in the past few years, and none of them seemed to have the same effect on her as he did. Maybe, just maybe... he was the one she had been searching for.
She saw something more than the confidence in his eyes, though. She also saw pain, anguish, and enough loss to last the man several lifetimes. It touched something deep inside her and she reached out to take the hand that had been on hers into her own, her opposite hand still framing the side of his face.
"Remus," she whispered his name and her eyes fell closed for a moment. She could sense everything about him - the beating of his heart reverberated in her mind even as the soft sounds of his breathing filled her ears. She could feel the heat emanating from his body, and the scent of him tickled her senses and when she opened her eyes to look into his once more she could see every single different fleck of color in their irises.
He heard his name being called probably a good fifty times a day, but it had never sounded quite like that before. It was then that she closed her eyes, and at some point, he had done the same. It was the oddest, yet one of the most extremely surreal feelings he had ever felt...
It was as if all of his senses were on particularly high alert. Every smell, every touch...every sound.
And then he realized something painfully obvious...he had felt like this before, a night out of every month he felt like this. It was the same hightened senses that he had in his wolf form...yet he wasn't transforming...
Seconds later she opened her eyes, shortly after he had opened his own. She was staring at him, and it was hard to read what was going on inside her, so he didn't try.
"What do you know about werewolves?" she asked him simply. "Besides what you have learned from your own experiences."
" Only what I've read in the books...but, aside from what I've experienced, how much more can there be...? " He asked breathlessly. It was hard to believe that all these years of pain and fear, of thinking that he finally had it under control...that there was more to this than that...
Raeanne smiled at him as his reply came out in the same sort of breathless whisper as her question. He had felt it, too. He could probably feel it right now. It made her giddy knowing that he was experiencing it, too.
"You can feel it, can't you?" she asked him, her hand moving from the side of his face, down his neck to finally rest on his chest. "Your senses are suddenly sharper... the beast inside you is calling to come out. It has urges... needs that need to be met."
He nodded quietly, feeling the warmth of her palm through the thin material of his white botton up shirt. He listened as she spoke about the beast inside of him having needs that had to be met. The thought frightened him, as it always did. Frightened him, but didn't faze him.
Rae could feel her own heart racing as she mentioned the needs of the beast. She knew very well what those needs were, and one of them in particular was starting to take over her being in a way she was only ale to control for so long. Remus didn't have a clue how much his presence was affecting her. She needed to end this conversation as quickly as possible and get him out of her room before the instincts of the wolf inside her took over.
He noticed that her breathing had quickened, and could tell that something was happening, and it was terribly familiar...
" Rae...? " He asked, louder than the rest of their conversation had been.
Raeanne stood up from the bed and started pacing the room in front of him like an animal in a cage, her feet kicking up little clouds of dust from the floor as she walked.
"Remus, I think you should go for now," she told him. "I promise I'll explain everything to you in the morning. But right now if you don't leave things could get totally out of hand and something might happen that we'll both regret."
He looked at her, worry clouding his common sense.
" Regret...? Rae, what are you talking about? " He questioned her, wanting to grab her, so she'd stop her pacing. She stopped on her own though, wringing her hands in a nervous fashion, that, or an eager one...he was too distraught to tell the difference at this point.
She turned to look at him, her breathing more shallow still than before.
"Please, Remus," she pleaded with him, wringing her hands in front of her to keep from reaching out for him. "Go. Come back in the morning, and I promise I'll explain. I'll tell you everything you need to know."
" Alright... " He uttered, knowing that this was obviously something having to do with her being a werewolf, and he understood the privacy part. Although this seemed a bit more complicated than that.
He made his way to the door, pulling it open, and stepping into the cool hallway of the second floor. He looked at her again, holding it for a few seconds, before closing the door softly.
Feeling a bit dazed, and more than a little confused, Remus walked over to the staircase, passing the mounted heads of the Blacks' past house elves...completely ignoring the dulling pain in his leg. Raeanne Cummings certainly was an interesting and very intriging woman, not to mention beautiful...couldn't forget that part.
Scratching his head involuntarily, he arrived in the foyer of Grimmauld Place, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now.