Disclaimer: sigh they're still not mine.
Chapter Six: The Darker Voice
The three long nights of hell finally passed, the three days of infinite torture for the moment no more than a bad memory. For twenty-seven days, he didn't have to hate and fear his old friend and enemy. He watched the sun set from his window, able to appreciate it now that he didn't have to dread what came after. Callum had finally managed to keep some food down today, a bit of broth and bread, after his stomach had rejected everything since his first night of transformation. He'd gotten the boy settled down into bed, and seemed to be sleeping peacefully, snoring slightly through the healing spell Poppy had placed on his nose that morning.
Yawning, he decided he might as well go to bed himself. He was exhausted, despite Ginny forcing him to rest during the day, and he couldn't think of a single part of him that didn't ache terribly. He changed into his beloved, ridiculous pajamas and fell asleep before he got under the covers. For once, he didn't dream, just slept, even his brain turned off, or at least not sharing its thoughts with his awareness.
It was the bumping that first woke him. He laid there in his bed, head fuzzy with sleep, trying to figure it out. It was a vague sound, muffled by walls, like someone was banging a piece of furniture against a wall. No, the bumping woke him up; it was the screaming that brought him out of bed.
He flew to Callum's room and found him in the throes a night terror. He swore fluently; how could he have not given him Dreamless Sleep Potion! It was only one night removed from the full moon, the wolf was still strong, and it was fighting the eight year old boy for control of his own body. Callum thrashed about, his nails clawing bloody weals through his skin wherever they touched, his human howls only slightly less frightening than his animal ones. Still swearing, Remus jumped up onto the bed and wrestled the cub (BOY, damn you!) flat on his back, straddling his waist and pinning his arms above his head. He bucked and kicked, trying to dislodge the man, but Remus didn't shift.
Adjusting his grip on the boy's wrists to one hand, he pulled his wand out of his sleeve and started a fire in the hearth. "Accio floo powder," he snarled, and as soon as it got into the room he sent it into the flames, which roared a merry green. "Ginny!" He yelled. "Ginny! I'm sorry to wake you, but I need you and a calming potion in Callum's room NOW!"
A few breaths later, the young woman stumbled through the flames, a vial clutched in her hand and her dressing gown haphazardly tied about her. Shaking her head to clear it, she glanced at the struggling figures at the bed and immediately understood. She slid onto the bed near Callum's head and stroked his forehead lightly. "Callum, you must make the beast be quiet," she told him, using the calm, gentle tone that she had used with Remus before. "Callum, I know it's hard, but you must make him listen to you." As he started to quiet, she brought the vial to his lips. "I want you to drink this, Callum, all right? It will make you feel more yourself."
Callum took a mouthful, but couldn't swallow. With a determination that frightened Remus more than a little, Ginny held the boy's nose closed and massaged his throat, forcing him to swallow. She did that four more times until the vial was empty, and it took only a moment longer for Callum to sag weakly into the mattress. Ginny caressed his face, her cool hands smoothing back his sweat-soaked curls, her voice washing over him in gentle waves. The beast within Remus, who had been trying to take advantage of his fear for Callum, subsided at that voice, and he wondered if she had ever considered taming werewolves for a career.
Opening terrified eyes, Callum stared at the girl, his entire body starting to quake. "He's so strong," he whispered hoarsely. "Why does he have to be so strong?"
"You're stronger," she told him simply, starting to heal the cuts he'd inflicted on himself.
"I'm not strong," he snorted.
"No?" she asked mildly. "Then how is it we're talking to the boy, and not the beast?"
Remus frowned thoughtfully. He knew that it was due to Ginny and the calming potion, but Callum didn't seem to know that. Sighing, he shifted to sit next to the boy, rather than on top of him, and helped Callum into a sitting position, placing pillows behind his back.
The redhead took the small hand in hers, rubbing slow circles into his palm. "This isn't something you can learn in a day, sweetie," she told him, smiling sadly. "It'll take time. The one thing you mustn't do, though, is give up." She gathered the trembling boy into a hug, which he at first resisted, but he sank into her embrace and started crying again. He was only eight years old, this was all just too hard. Ginny held him tight, a little tighter than was really comfortable, but he found that it helped keep the wolf at bay, that tiny edge of pain that the wolf couldn't understand. He sobbed into her shoulder until he once again cried himself to sleep.
Near to tears herself, Ginny rearranged the pillows and tucked him back in, taking the time to calm herself down. Her dressing gown slipped off one shoulder as she reached up to push her hair out of her eyes, and Remus gaped, realizing for the first time what she was wearing.
The Ginny Weasley he'd seen in the midnight madness of Grimmauld Place during the war usually wore a flannel nightgown, occasionally pajamas like the boys, plain and practical and unassuming, sometimes even cute. This Ginny was wearing a deep plum silk nightgown, v-necked in back and front, falling in graceful folds to the floor, and clinging to her in all the right places. Wait a minute, he caught himself. Since when did Ginny have 'all the right places'? She pulled the matching dressing gown back up and tied it neatly in place, hiding the nightgown from view, but still…it was suddenly a softer, more elegant, and much older Ginny that was sitting on the other side of the bed.
"I'll be right back," Ginny whispered, and she tiptoed back into the flames. She re-emerged a moment later carrying another vial. "Dreamless Sleep," she explained, carefully getting the sleeping boy to drink it down. "He should probably take it until he recovers his strength, so he'll be better able to deal with the nightmares." She glanced at the still silent Remus out of the corner of her eye. "Or is it the wolf?"
He flinched violently, then swore at himself; he really should remember by now that Ginny always knew more than she let on. Hadn't her speech the other morning given him enough proof of that? "When will he wake up?" he asked instead of replying.
"Not for another six hours, at least, and probably not for around ten," she answered.
"Let's go out to the living room, then." She nodded and followed him out, sitting next to him on the couch with her feet curled gracefully underneath her. He stared moodily into the flames until her heard a noise that sounded suspiciously like a muffled giggle. He glanced at his companion, who gazed serenely into the flames. Wait for it, the wolf warned him, and a moment later, a brief spasm crossed her face and the sound repeated. "What could possibly be funny?" he asked sourly.
"I'm sorry," she laughed, giving up. "It's just…well…Hermione told me about them, but I hadn't even actually seen them, and she was right, they're just so deliciously inappropriate!"
It took him a moment to realize she was talking about his pajamas. "I like them," he protested defensively.
"So do I, but that doesn't change the humor," she retorted, sticking her tongue out at him. "Look at Gred and Feorge; they sell pranks for a living, and a very good living, at that. People need to be able to laugh nowadays." She fell silent, watching the shadows dancing over his brooding face, throwing the lines and planes into sharp relief. He was so thin, and the darkness only served to make him appear even more spectral. Well, at least until you saw the pajamas. She took a deep breath, weighing out all of the consequences of what she was about to do, but decided that she had to know. Something had been bothering her for eight years now, longer than she'd known Remus, and she had to see if someone else had the answer. "Remus," she began quietly. "When the wolf speaks, does it speak with your voice or its own?"
He jumped to his feet like he'd been bitten (oh, good analogy, Ginny, bloody brilliant) and stared at her incredulously. "What!" he demanded.
"Calm down, Remus. I just wanted to know." Still glaring, he sat down slowly in an armchair, glowering at her darkly. "And you can stop looking at me like that," she added. "I survived seven years of Potions with Snape, no way in hell are you going to frighten me out of my hits."
That seemed to take some of the wind out of his sails, and he returned his gaze to the fire. The silence stretched out uncomfortably between them, and Ginny returned to her contemplation of her hands. She couldn't understand her hands; she'd never thought about it before coming to Hogwarts, but if anyone had asked her what part of her she disliked the most, she would have answered her hands. She would have given the same response to the reverse question, as well. She knew, as she had seen with Callum and several others, that she had a soothing touch. It was that, among other things, that had made her decide to go into healing. Her fingers were slender and nimble, but still strong, able to tie a bandage in place or undo a tough knot, yet gentle enough to take a pulse manually or play the piano. Her hands had bandaged many a victim during and after the war, had written countless essays during seven years of school, and had strangled roosters. They had put ice on bruises, caused bruises, and held off bruises. She just couldn't figure them out. She held them a little closer to the fire. Ever since she'd been almost killed by Tom, her hands never seemed to be warm. They were always just a little bit colder than everyone else's, even in summer. She's spoken to Poppy about it once, and been told that she had been so close to death that it wasn't a surprise that she had some trouble with her extremities. It wasn't in her feet, though, only in her hands, the hands that had unwittingly released him from his diary and done his bidding.
She was so absorbed in her reflection that she didn't notice when Remus' gaze turned from the fire to her. He studied her thoughtfully, allowing the wolf the use of his senses to get that extra impression. He couldn't read her face. There were things passing across it that he couldn't decipher, couldn't name, so very many things that were there one heartbeat and gone the next. The wolf sniffed the air, labeling the current than ran underneath it all. Pain. He wondered if perhaps he had overreacted a little to her question, but no one, not even Dumbledore, had ever asked him something like that before, nor so simply. He wondered what it was about her hands that held so much of her attention.
"I'm sorry, Ginny," he relented, and she jumped at the sound of his voice. "I shouldn't have snarled at you."
"It was a personal question," she shrugged, not meeting his eyes.
"Why did you want to know?" he asked, genuinely curious.
"Because I would hate to think that it spoke with your voice," she replied, not entirely truthfully. He could smell the small lie, but he let it go for the moment. "You and Callum are both so sweet…it doesn't seem right that such a seductive madness should have such a sweet voice."
"Seductive madness?" he echoed, rolling the words on his tongue as if he could taste them. He'd never heard it described that way before, but in the edges of his awareness, it made a kind of sense, and what she said next confirmed it.
"Isn't it? Isn't it terribly tempting to just give in, let the beast have control? Not to worry, not to fear…not to care. To go out into the wild and do whatever you want, hurt things for no reason…doesn't it ever seem like it would be better? Easier?"
"What's easier isn't always what's better," he reminded her automatically.
"Of course not," she agreed. "But doesn't it still seem that way? When you feel pain, isn't the idea of spreading it around terribly appealing? How much easier would it be to believe its false promises if it spoke to you in your own voice?"
His hazel eyes distant, he mulled over what she'd said, listening to the clamor of the demon inside him. "No," he answered suddenly. "It's not my voice."
She regarded him strangely for a moment, with an expression he couldn't even begin to read. "I'm glad," she said finally, simply, and the stillness fell once more.
He shifted in his chair, the old wooden supports creaking quietly. "Ginny, why did you ask? The whole truth, this time," he added, seeing her about to protest.
She didn't answer immediately, her eyes falling back to her hands. "Sometimes," she whispered, and he had to lean forward to make sure he caught everything, "sometimes I can still hear him, in my head. Sometimes I can still hear Tom. He started out so nice, so understanding…everything a diary should be. But towards the end, I was too much in his power, and he didn't need the pretenses anymore. I can still hear what he said to me, only sometimes…sometimes it's in my own voice, and I can't figure out who's saying it, me or him. It frightens me, to hear my voice saying those things. I just wondered if anyone else ever heard their own voice mocking them, destroying them. I asked Harry once, and he said it was his voice but higher, more sibilant, but that's just what Voldemort sounded like all the time. The only other person I knew I could ask was you…" she trailed off, ducking her head against her shoulder. A curtain of deep red hair fell forward to hide her flaming cheeks from view.
He didn't know what to say. No one ever really talked about Ginny's first year if they could help it. They'd all assumed that it would be too traumatic for her to be reminded of it time and time again. He had learned more about Ginny, the real Ginny, in the past three days than he'd known in seven years of friendship, and that both frightened and astonished him. The silence became unbearable, and he opened his mouth to break it, promptly sticking his foot in it. "Since when did the Littlest Weasley have a nightgrown like that?"
She looked up at him and cocked an eyebrow. "Probably since the Littlest Weasley stopped being so little anymore," she answered dryly. "Hermione gave it to me for a graduation present. She said every girl should have something soft and silky to sleep in." She had said a great deal else, besides, but she didn't really think Remus needed to know any of that. It was a conversation induced by the giddiness of coming of age, the warmth of butterbeer, and the high induced by far too much sugar, and two teenage girls in a flat on their own. No, she decided, Remus definitely didn't need to know the rest of what had been said that long, happy night. "Do you have a blanket?" she asked suddenly.
"Are you cold?"
"A little, yes."
He stood up and headed into his bedroom. "Why don't you just cast a Warming Charm on yourself?" he queried, coming back into the room.
"Why bother with a Warming Charm when you can just get a blanket?" she answered. "It's a waste of magic, and it's sloppy." He smiled and draped it around her shoulders, but when he went to move back to his chair, she took his hand and tugged him back into his original seat on the couch. "I worry so for Callum," she said suddenly. "He's only eight years old."
"Older than I was," he realized suddenly.
"Yes, but you still had your family, as I recall," she pointed out. "Mum has gotten pretty mad at me sometimes, but I can't ever see her kicking me out of the house. She still sets Percy's place at every meal, hoping he'll come home. It's like they're blaming him for getting bitten."
"He's the son of a pureblood family who now considers his blood to be tainted. They would probably have preferred him to marry a muggle than this shame; the muggle they could kill off or bribe away, and cover the whole thing up with little said. They can't make this go away. The more I think about it, though, the more I think that he's better off than if they hadn't abandoned him."
"Remus, how can you say that?"
"Think about it, Ginny," he told her calmly, holding his hand up to forestall further comment. "We live in a society that hates and fears werewolves, a society that actually makes laws to take away our rights. It's bad enough living out here on the fringes with all the prejudice that goes on; could you imagine growing up in pureblood society that way? Most of them are not nice people, Ginny, you know that better than most, I should think. Just imagine what they would have done to him, what he could have become."
She nodded pensively, seeing his point. She sighed and rested her head against the back of the couch. "What's wrong with humans, that they make each other live this way?" she murmured.
"I wish I knew…"
She uncurled her legs and wove gracefully to her feet, hissing as they touched the cold stone floor. "I should go," she remarked. "Poppy starts her lessons very early."
"Floo?" he offered.
"No, thank you. The fresh air will clear my head, help me sleep."
"I'll walk you out, then." They went to the door and he opened it. "Good night, Ginny."
"Good night, Remus." She smiled, albeit it a bit sadly.
He put his arms around her and held her close, wanting to banish the sadness. He was just beginning to understand that Ginevra Weasley was a very complicated young woman, but he wanted to know more, wanted to know why the wolf inside him howled joyfully each time he caught her sweet, spicy scent of vanilla and cinnamon. Her body molded against him, his hands sliding across the silk as she clung to him, gratefully receiving the comfort of simple human contact. "When the nightmares come," he whispered in her ear, "what do you do?"
"I let them come," she answered simply. She met his hazel eyes, and he found that he couldn't look away. "And then I wake up, pray for someone to rescue me, and eventually fall back asleep, reminding myself that nightmares aren't always true, even when they're memories. They're not true, so there's nothing to fear. Some nights I even believe it."
"Ginny…"
She shook her head against whatever he had been about to say; she didn't want pity. Instead, she shifted her weight onto her toes and kissed him gently, her lips soft and warm against his. Her fingers slid through his grey-streaked hair, teasing against the back of his neck. For a moment, he was too stunned to respond, but then, and he wasn't sure why, he kissed her back, deepening it as he pulled her closer against him. Yes, the demon agreed, want her. Horrified, he released her and stumbled back.
She saw right through him, in a way that he never wanted her to, saw both the wolf's desire, and the man's fear. Sighing, she smiled again, a tiny, painful quirk of her lips and a fleetingly arched eyebrow. "Good night, Remus," she said again, her bare feet padding swiftly down the hall towards the hospital wing.
He stared after her, stunned. What had just happened? When had she started becoming anything more than his former student, the Littlest Weasley? When had she become able to see the wolf so clearly, understand so much? He sighed and shook his head. When didn't matter; the question was what was going to come next. And he didn't know the answer.
One thing was certain, though, as he reluctantly closed his door: he needed to take a very cold shower before returning to bed, or the rest of his night would be spent in unpleasantly pleasant dreams. Sighing again, he headed off towards his bathroom.