It was September twenty-fourth, and Remus was in the Hospital Wing, writing another letter to Professor Questus. The full moon was that night, so his joints were aching significantly (which made holding a quill very difficult and a little painful), but he managed to form the letters without his handwriting being too terribly shaky (a skill he'd picked up after years of trying to write on full moon days with trembly hands and awful joints).
Dear Professor Questus,
It's been a while since your last letter, but I've been getting a lot of homework recently. It's easy to forget that this is a school when one is surrounded by James and Sirius, who never do homework, but it turns out I still have to do tons of work to get good marks (unlike them! I can't say I'm not jealous). Also, this letter is most likely going to be very, very long. A lot has happened that I probably shouldn't tell my parents about. I'm sorry for dumping it all on you, but I've really got no one else to talk to without receiving mountains of useless pity/reprimanding in return. Also, Madam Pomfrey told me that I had to go to sleep after I finished writing this letter, so I'm trying to drag it out as much as possible because I'm NOT sleepy. Seriously. I could run a marathon (if I weren't totally broken at the moment, that is).
Anyway—I'll be sure to keep what you said in your last letter in mind. I've been trying to be careful around Pensley, I really have, but it was hard when she told me that she'd try to remove a few of her candles—and then she didn't! (Well, she did remove a few, but not ALL of them.) I haven't STRONGLY DISLIKED many people like this before. Honestly, I prefer Mr. Ragfarn from the Werewolf Registry to Pensley, and he's a piece of work for sure.
You asked me about handling chronic pain, to which I respond: nothing really compares to a full moon, so I don't mind it so much. It's only bad when it's cold outdoors, when it's right after or right before a full moon, or when James and Sirius try to horseplay with me and I knock into something. At this point, it's just my life. A person can get used to just about anything. And I must say, I find it hilarious that you're asking advice from a twelve-year-old (although a very mature and clever twelve-year-old at that!).
I cannot believe that you actually named your cat Werewolf. Honestly, I think it's punishing you more than me. That's the dumbest name I've ever heard (does it constitute as animal abuse, I wonder?). Hope you haven't told my parents.
Anyway, the full moon is tonight, which means that I had to see Pensley to "meditate" on Thursday. James and Sirius and Peter were laughing at my misery. I had to go see her at six (it felt like a detention, and was FAR worse than one), and I got back to the dormitory at EIGHT. That's far too late, especially since I'm exhausted this time of month.
It was torture, and I don't use that word lightly. TORTURE. If someone wanted to get information out of me, all they'd have to do is stick me in a room with loud classical music, too many scented candles, and an extremely annoying lady telling me to relax. The entire time was just her telling me to "imagine a forest! Imagine the trees! Feel the cool air... feel the leaves beneath your feet..."
I wanted to make sooooo many werewolf jokes, but I figured that she wouldn't appreciate them nearly as much as you do. Here are the highlights (my inner monologue included):
Pensley: Take a deep breath in. Innnnnn. Outtttttt. Why aren't you breathing? It works better when you participate, you know. Innnn...
I took a breath in and immediately inhaled too many scented candles. I coughed so much that my eyes started watering.
Pensley: I see the emotion has brought tears to your eyes. No, don't be ashamed. Emotion is good. Emotion is what makes us human.
Me: Makes us human?
Pensley: Why, yes. Innnnnn. Outttttttt.
Pensley: Feeeeeel the darkness leaving you. Imagine the light coming in.
Oh, wow. The cure for lycanthropy is... imagining it doesn't exist. What a scientific breakthrough!
Pensley: Let every bad thought leave your system. All that remains is light and happiness.
Not to be a downer, but I imagined every bad thought leaving my system, and then quickly realized that there was nothing left!
Pensley: How are you feeling? Let yourself feel it all: the good, the bad, the in-between...
I'm feeling bored, mostly. And I'm afraid there's nothing "good" to feel in the current climate.
Pensley: What's your happy place? Close your eyes more tightly... conjure a crystal-clear image... imagine every aspect of it.
How about literally anywhere but here? Shrieking Shack included!
Pensley: You have no problems. You are free and happy and special.
That's not meditation. That's denial.
Pensley: Imagine your childhood... you're a happy, carefree child... nothing but happiness...
Are we talking about the same childhood?
Pensley: Now open your eyes. Are you cured?
...Nope.
I sort of wanted to smother myself.
Anyway, TWO HOURS LATER (granted, I did take a nice nap while she was talking for about half the time), I finally escaped back to the dormitory. I plan to tell Dumbledore that I am never, ever returning.
In case you were wondering: I'm definitely not cured. But I guess we'll find out tonight for sure! After all, "cured" is only one letter away from "cursed"! And who knows! Perhaps meditation really does cure lycanthropy! I've been going about this wrong all my life!
No, I'm not cured. I can tell. If I were cured, then I wouldn't be so horribly achy right now. But I digress, and I should probably stop talking about Pensley. Madam Pomfrey is giving me odd looks—chances are, I'm making some awful faces.
James is practicing Quidditch twenty-four-seven since tryouts are on the first Saturday of November. I think he's practicing right NOW, actually, but I wouldn't know since I'm imprisoned in the Hospital Wing. Madam Pomfrey is trying to get me to go to sleep, but I've actually been feeling better on the day of. I'm not sure why. I do hope she's not secretly drugging me, because taking potions on the day of the full moon could be awfully disastrous.
But maybe it's because of the meditation!
(Sorry, I'll stop now.)
Madam Pomfrey's actually been gone for some of the day—she said that she was going to go off and help someone outside of Hogwarts (probably another student who managed to get themselves hurt in Hogsmeade. Apparently the current third-years are menaces—at least that's what she tells me). She's been looking kind of frazzled all day; I'm not sure what that's about, but it means I have more time without a matron looking over my shoulder trying to persuade me to take Pain-Relieving Potions, so I can't complain.
She's back now, and she says I have to take a nap. I don't know why. The meditation has made me feel soooo relaxed!
(Okay, now I'm stopping for real, I promise.)
Hope you, Mum, Dad, and Werewolf the Cat are doing well.
—R. J. Lupin
"All right. You've finished your letter. Now sleep," said Madam Pomfrey, poking Remus' chest hard enough to push him back into his pillow. Remus scowled. He was very weak in this state—fully incapable of fighting back—and it was absolutely humiliating that Madam Pomfrey could overpower him with a single finger.
"Can't I stay up and finish that homework for Pensley...?"
"Absolutely not," said Madam Pomfrey. "I'm going to be speaking with her about the amount of homework that she gives out. It's completely illogical to give second-years that much homework. Especially when one second-year is out for a few days every month, and weak and tired on the others..."
"I'm not weak and tired all the time," said Remus, "and I wouldn't want anyone to change their lesson plans on my account. She's already toned it down, believe it or not, and I honestly don't think she realizes how much homework it is. That said..." He scowled again. "I very strongly dislike both her and her homework."
"Better than our last Defense professor."
"Madam Pomfrey! At least Professor Questus taught us things. Did you really hate him that much?"
She sighed. "After spending so much time with him last summer after he was cursed... yes. He's even worse when you get to know him. Stubborn, rude, a right git, incredibly pessimistic... Does he insult you as much as he insults everybody else? Seems no one's safe."
"He just has a strange sense of humor," said Remus. "I think he's funny."
"What if I told you that Pensley just has a strange sense of humor?" said Madam Pomfrey.
"Then I would remind you that you weren't the one who listened to her patter on about my 'inner darkness' for two hours straight."
"Yes, you're right," said Madam Pomfrey with a frown, and Remus sensed a very stupid comment coming on. "But... what if it helps?"
Yep, there it was. Remus rolled his eyes. "Are you honestly insinuating that you think meditation is a cure for lycanthropy? Because no. The answer is no."
"If you've never tried it..."
"I've tried everything. Trust me. There's no cure; least of all meditation."
"So you have tried meditation?"
"Yeah. Two days ago. And guess what? I'm still a werewolf!"
"What if you have the symptoms, but you don't transform tonight...?"
Remus sighed so intensely that his ribs started to hurt even more than they already had. "I'm still a werewolf!" he said again. "It's not just a full moon thing. I can feel it..." He waved his arms, trying to point to every body part at once. "Here! I can feel it here! I will transform tonight; I can feel it already. It's not happening all at once; it's an ongoing process that never really ends... you know, like the moon cycle. Besides, meditation isn't going to replace all the cursed blood in my body. At this point, it's salt in water. Dissolved. You can't separate it, medically or spiritually. So if everybody would just stop trying to heal me and let me live my horrible life in blissful misery, that would be wonderful." Oops, that had been a bit much. But who could blame him? The mere thought of Pensley was setting him on edge. In through his nose. Out through his mouth. "I'm sorry, Madam Pomfrey."
"Quite all right," said Madam Pomfrey, although she looked quite shaken by his outburst. "Nothing is wrong with telling me how you feel. We all just want to help you. I wish there was a cure."
"So do I," Remus mumbled as he worried the hem of the bedsheets. "But there's not. I told you, we tried everything. It took ages to get my parents to give up. They only did so right after I turned ten."
"What have you tried, exactly?"
Remus glanced at her. "There's a book in the library. Brown cover. Incurable Diseases of the Wizarding World, eighth edition."
"I've read it."
"Lycanthropy is in there. On page four-hundred-fifty-six, there's a list of all known attempted treatments. We tried them all, alphabetically, along with a few more local ones that weren't listed. None of them work. If you're really curious, then you can look... but not all of them are pleasant." Remus remembered the myriad potions that he had taken, the awful side-effects, the weeks upon weeks of hardly being able to move, the one that had made him vomit uncontrollably for twenty-four hours, the one that had nearly poisoned him... yeah, he definitely didn't like it when people tried to cure him. It never led to anything good whatsoever.
Madam Pomfrey nodded, her eyes sad. "I want to be able to do something, that's all."
"You are doing something," said Remus. "I've gained six pounds."
"You lost weight over the summer," said Madam Pomfrey, frowning. "Was the August full moon that bad?"
"No," said Remus, "but your superior medical care is... well, superior." He grinned. "It's so good that I might be able to attend classes day after tomorrow, in fact. Right?"
"Flattery will get you nowhere, Mr. Lupin. Remember that you forgot to report to me for a check-up at the beginning of term like you were supposed to."
Remus groaned. "I've apologized six times."
"Yes, six. That's the number of days you should be staying in the Hospital Wing so that I can get you back to normal health."
Remus' mouth dropped open.
"You've bags under your eyes, you're stressed all the time, you've lost weight, you won't eat, your fine motor skills are slightly lacking, your joints are inflamed, you're wheezing slightly... and did I mention that you're stressed?"
"I'm stressed because Pensley is making me meditate, Professor Dumbledore's taking her side, the full moon is tonight, and my friends are close to finding out the truth. But I'm not ill, and the Hospital Wing won't help with any of that!"
"What's this about your friends?"
Remus, despite his fatigue and pounding headache, told her nearly everything—all the wrong conclusions, the midnight visit, Professor Questus' advice, his parents' desire to keep him home, and even about the execution of the werewolf in Peebleton and what could happen if anyone found out—especially Orion Black. By the time he was finished speaking, he was sweating a bit and his head felt light.
"I'm not surprised you're stressed at all," said Madam Pomfrey, pressing her hand to the back of Remus' forehead. She frowned, and Remus didn't need to ask to know that he was very feverish. "This has quite possibly been the most eventful year of your life, hm?"
"No," said Remus, thinking of 1965.
"All the same. You have reason to be stressed, but stressing isn't going to help. Understood?"
"Yes," said Remus. "It would help me de-stress if I stopped meditating with Pensley, I think."
"No. What's going to help you de-stress is a nap. Right now."
Remus closed his eyes obediently and was asleep in two minutes flat.
So much for not being sleepy.
"No. No, no, no. Nononononono. NO!" Remus woke up, sweat pouring down his face. He lifted his hand to wipe it away and realized that it was tears.
Madam Pomfrey was there in an instant. "Lupin? What on earth is going on?"
"I'm fine," said Remus, not even caring that Madam Pomfrey was sure to drop a cap in the penalty jar for the offending word. But she didn't; instead, she grabbed a cloth and leaned over to pat the sweat and tears off of Remus' face, but he yelped and pushed her away. "Don't come closer," he said. "Don't touch me."
"Well, that's just silly," she said. "I don't care what kind of nightmare you've had; I'm going to help..."
"No!" he said. "Please. Please, Madam Pomfrey. I need a few minutes. I need to..." He stood up shakily and managed to reach the other side of the room, where he sank to the floor and put his head between his knees. He couldn't really bear to be in the bed anymore, not after what had happened there. It was a bit weird, he knew, but he needed to be away from it all.
Madam Pomfrey produced a small glass from her pocket and filled it with water. "I'm just going to leave it right here," she said softly, setting it on the bedside table. "I'm sorry, Remus; someone needs my help in the main ward. It's four-thirty. I'll come get you in an hour to take you down to the Shack, all right?"
"Forty-five minutes?" Remus mumbled. He recognized the scent of the student in the main ward. A boy, he thought. Older. Probably sixth- or seventh-year. The boy was in there frequently, and picking out scents helped Remus calm down a bit.
"An hour." She left, and Remus waited a few minutes before standing up, stumbling to the bedside table, downing the water in three gulps, and then wiping his face off on the bedsheets. Then he paced drunkenly around the room for a few minutes until the terrible, horrible remnants of the nightmare left his brain—at least enough to sleep—and then crawled back into bed.
Getting worked up about Pensley on the day of the full moon probably wasn't a good idea—it was possible that the constant irritation had caused the nightmare in question—but honestly, he didn't know how to stop.
"Lupin? Time to go."
"Mmm'okay."
"Are you feeling better now?"
"Truthfully?"
"Yes, please."
"Truthfully, my brain feels like gelatin, my bones hurt something awful, and I think my head is screwed on the wrong way. But I'll be better tomorrow."
"Anything I can do?"
"You're already doing it."
Remus waited, sitting criss-crossed on the floor and trembling. It was a new location again, and he never liked to transform in a new location—whether he was a person or a wolf. Both parts of him hated it, and he was probably going to transform back tomorrow with a plethora of unfortunate injuries. He sighed, and his breath came out all shuddery because of the tremors.
He'd been waiting for a while. Couple hours, probably. He glanced out the window. Any minute now.
He almost wished that it would just happen; that he could just get it over with... but then he remembered exactly what was going to happen and no longer wished it. He tried to savor every moment as a person.
His heartbeat seemed to echo around the Shack. He heard people talking and laughing in the village. He'd thought he would prefer the Shrieking Shack to meditation, but he didn't. He hated this. He didn't want to admit it, but meditation was far better than this. He wished he was doing that, instead—wishing to replace these moments with something good seemed like too much, so it felt a little more plausible to replace them with something awful (though he knew that neither option, in reality, was plausible at all. No, he had to do this. There wasn't an option, and no amount of wishing would change that).
He also wished he was wearing a watch or something, so that he would at least know. Had it been hours? Had it only been thirty minutes? Had it been an hour and a half?
Suddenly, pain ripped through his body and he jammed a fist into his mouth and whimpered, falling to the ground... Thisisitthisisitthisisit...
But it wasn't. He sat up and sighed. One of those stupid pre-moon episodes—this was his third tonight. He looked at his fist, which was bleeding, and grimaced. That had been stupid. What if it really had been the real thing? He'd've taken his hand clean off, probably.
He waited some more. And more. And more.
Afterwards, Madam Pomfrey did not make Remus stay in the Hospital Wing for six days (thank goodness!), but his right leg was badly injured again. It always seemed to be the right leg. Remus was going to have some nasty pain in that leg when he got older.
The Hospital Wing was a lot more boring without Professor Questus, Remus reflected. He kept half-expecting the man to walk through the door, spit a few snarky epithets, ask Remus how he was doing without really caring about the answer, and then lecture him in a quiet voice (Remus always appreciated Professor Questus' quiet voice). Remus missed Professor Questus' DAD notes, written in the familiar cramped, thick handwriting (Questus tended to push on the paper a little too hard when he wrote). He missed poring over every letter of the notes for hours and hours as he waited for Madam Pomfrey to let him out of the Hospital Wing.
It wasn't as if Remus had nothing to do, though. Thanks to Pensley, Remus had to read the textbook, write her essays, and essentially learn the whole curriculum by himself.
He wrote another letter to Professor Questus. He came up with a good excuse for his friends about why he was missing class (and then a Plan B if the first excuse didn't work). He complained to Madam Pomfrey (after complaining so much to Professor Questus last year, Remus was discovering that complaining was addicting). He drank every single disgusting potion and forced down four meals a day.
Madam Pomfrey let him out after only two days, but she wasn't happy about it. "You nearly lost a finger," she said.
"I'll wear bandages until it heals."
"Your leg is still bound to hurt."
"Barely."
"Lupin..."
"I'll come back if I need to."
"I sincerely doubt that," said Madam Pomfrey. "But I appreciate the gesture. You have four caps in the jar, so you can leave in twenty minutes. Don't you dare overexert yourself."
Remus and his friends went to the Forbidden Forest again that night, and he most certainly overexerted himself... but it was worth it.
AN: Yesterday was 2/2/22!