A/N: Howdy! Anyway this is my first fic posted so... Yeah... stuff. I've redone this thing so many times I'm just sick of having it on my hard drive lol! But it's good so here it is! This fic is dedicated to Rachel "Moony" Schwarz who is at the moment in the hospital (Love you Rach!), Josh Bruckner (The greatest Hufflepuff there is who let me cry on his shoulder when we saw GOF and didn't complain even though I soaked his hoody), and it is not dedicated to Max Hahlbeck (who told me to STFU when we saw GOF resulting in me giving Max the finger and calling him an insensitive boob) am I rambling? Why yes I may be! D! Enjoy!

Remus Lupin

3 Apollo Avenue

Gibbous, Scotland

6:00 AM

The old, bronze-colored alarm clock ticked deafeningly forward another second and Remus Lupin jumped, just as he had done every second for the past ten hours. His eyes focused hard on the numbers circling the clock, trying to make sense out of them and force away the nightmares that consumed him in the long moments between the stokes of the clock. These were night terrors with yellow fangs hot as fire, hungry and perversely delighted howls (that reverberated painfully in his ears as if someone had pounded them out on a drum where his thin featherless pillow was), and the image of a wolf, saliva whipping around its face, eyes burning alien green in the cool light of the full moon….

The clock ticked again.

The numbers of the tarnished clock were blackening with age. The slender minute hand, which was twisted inward slightly at the end so that it scratched the off-white surface of the clock's face to form a deep circular trench just below the numbers, was pointed at the twelve. The fat hour hand completed a line spanning the diameter of the clock by pointing at the six.

Six o'clock AM.

It was difficult to tell whether the clock was accurate or not as no light passed through Remus's window. The sunlight was usually diluted by the surrounding forest of pine and fir trees so that it entered the room green and blotchy, but now it was now totally obscured by angry gray clouds that stared malevolently down on the meager and quickly aging cabin that the Lupins owned.

Remus, John and Diana's only child, was very much like the house (and never more so then on September 1,1971, when both lay quaking softly, waiting to ride out their respective storms.) Both the house and the eleven-year-old bore the earmarks of premature wear and tear – Remus in deep shadows below his eyes, the wrinkles in his young face, and in the eyes themselves, which were like tiny, impenetrable doors, hiding an eighth sea of secrets and thought behind them. This caused the eyes themselves to chip and thin under strain so they looked transparent and exhausted most of the time. But not all of it...

Sometimes when they caught the light just right...

That was the other thing they had in common, both house and boy had something slightly peculiar about them. As aforementioned for Remus it was his eyes, for two more respects. First they didn't match his shabby almost monochromatic appearance. His face, his skin, even his hair was gray and old. So he resembled something like a walking talking black-and-white photograph, which had been lost for years in a forgotten cardboard box thrown into a flood of paper memories in a hot attic. But his amber eyes caught your attention almost instantly, and, if you looked at them long enough, you might see it...

It was a flicker, something alive and sudden like a candle lit in the wind: fast, furious, unexpected, but as quickly killed as born.

The house on the other hand, which was located just over the English-Scotish boarder almost in view of Hadrian's Wall, had something purely magical about it. The forest that surrounded it seemed to be alive with more than just squirrels and hedgehogs. The air itself was a living thing that whispered and laughed through the trees, resting in the curved branches with sprites and fairies. There was no road leading up to the house and practically no way of finding it, but it seemed content in its ivy covered solitude. It liked its privacy, as did Remus Lupin.

The second hand ticked again and Remus's heart was back in his throat, he gulped it down with effort. Five hours from that moment, five long, lazy ticks of the hour hand, three-hundred queer, slightly scraping ticks from the minute hand, three thousand-six hundred quick, knifelike ticks of the second hand and then, then his world would fall apart.

His life up until eleven o'clock that morning had been controlled by a single, uncaring force: the moon. He couldn't remember ever knowing anyone apart from his parents, because after IT happened and the moon took over his existence what few neighbors they had, had immediately moved away. There were pictures hanging in the hallways of the house of people whom Remus knew he was related to, but who had cut all ties to his family when IT happened as well. Because of IT Remus had never gone to school before and had never had a friend. It wasn't as if Remus didn't want these things – it was that IT made them impossible, so he had decided long ago not to even think about them.

So why was everything suddenly different? His eyes fell on the calendar pinned to his wall – the Monday after next was outlined in blood red, making Remus shiver. As long as the moon could still become full he could never have any of those things.

IT made it too dangerous, no, he made it too dangerous. He, Remus John Lupin, was a monster, the reason his parents were stuck in this horrible dive, unemployed and friendless. IT had given Remus his "Condition" but it was that "Condition" that was causing all of these problems.

A thick, binding wave of self-hatred pulled him under, into his mind behind the locked eyes, where all quotation marks were taken away and replaced by the blaring truth:

WEREWOLF

The clock ticked, the door creaked, and Remus sat upright breathing heavily over his heart, which had once again clogged his airway.

"Remus?" his mother's tired voice asked, "good morning, sweetheart." She was standing in the half-opened door, pale blue eyes fixed intently on her panting son.

Diana Lupin was a forty-year-old woman who'd married into magic. Her black curly hair, which had grayed considerably over the past six years, hung loosely at her waist. She, like her son, resembled something forgotten, but beauty still clung, half-seen, in her features as if she was coated in a thick layer of dust. "Are you okay, Remus?" She asked pushing the door open a bit more.

"Yes," he lied.

"Good," she smiled at him making the sad circles under her eyes even more obvious, "come on, hop out of bed, you've got to be in London by eleven and your father says in order to get to the Portkey, or whatever it is, you have to be in town by nine and it's an hour to get there." She flipped a switch next to Remus's door and the overhead electric light sprang to life. (If Remus's father had been the one to wake him he would have lit the candles set in the lamp next on Remus's bedside table.) She smiled again, sipped the tea in her hand, and then turned to leave as soon as she saw Remus's feet successfully touch the floor.

"Mum," Remus called after her.

"Yes, dear?" she asked, "I didn't mean to be short with you, it's just we're in a bit of a rush this morning."

Remus inhaled and said very quickly, "Do you really think this is such a good idea? Sending me to school?"

Her smile faded, "if you lie low and do whatever Professor Dumbledore says you'll be fine."

Remus swallowed hard, openly unconvinced, "what if--what if--something happens? What if---I---I---hurt someone...?" he trailed off and shuttered. His mother did too, putting her free hand over her worn face as if trying to shut him out, an action that made Remus realize just how scared she was.

"I'm sure they've got something worked out for you like--like we do..." this time she trailed off, uncomfortable discussing her son's "Condition" or the terrible measures his parents had to take to keep themselves safe.

But the room in the basement was clear in both of their minds' eyes: the old wood door with the enormous iron padlock fastened to the front as well as enough locking and silencing charms to keep a bull elephant at bay, the single barred window facing the tiny backyard and wilderness beyond where Remus had met the wolf in the first place, and the chains that hung from the ceiling, still barring traces of the dried, crusted blood that had time and again been shed and then halfheartedly scoured away, the cold stone floor which turned from gray to red with new blood from Remus's self-inflicted wounds after every full moon...

"Your father says Albus Dumbledore is a brilliant man and an incredibly gifted magician. He'll know what to do--"

"Wizard," came a voice from behind her and John Lupin peeked into the door. "Not magician," he smiled wearily, dressed in a pair of old kakis and a worn sweater with patches on both elbows, "about ready to go in here?"

"Sorry, not quite," answered Remus.

"Come on, hurry up," said his father, his nervousness apparent as he bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, trying to hide the slight quake in his tired voice. He looked away from Remus embarrassedly as he often did, traces of guilt in his aging face.

"Breakfast is on the table for when you boys are ready," said Diana, shooting another worried glance back at Remus who smiled wearily at her, trying to lie with his eyes as he pulled out an outfit from his nearly empty chest of drawers.

John smiled quickly and just as unconvincingly at his boy before following his wife out of the room closing the door behind him.

Remus's gaze fell on the calendar pinned to his wall, slipped downward onto the trunk that had once belonged to his father, and then on the enormous purple scar spanning from his left shoulder to just above the elbow. He felt a knot form in his throat. This was going to be it, there was no way he was going to make it through this one.

He pictured the horrified tear-streaked face of his victim, the sickening joy he'd feel in the attack, and he felt like he was going to vomit. He saw the ministry hearing, the hollow faces of his accusers, the family who had lost their child in his fury, his own parents sick with grief, he pictured his death sentence, and the execution. He pictured the silver weapon used to kill those with his "Condition." He squeezed his eyes shut trying to make it all go away, but he knew that this was only the beginning.

The year hadn't even begun yet.