The first time Remus remembers experiencing pain - true, searing, agonizing pain - was The Attack.

He'd been just four years old.

One moment, sleeping soundly in his childhood bedroom, without so much as a care in the world. The next, too many sensations to count: teeth breaking into skin, sharp claws slashing at his face and body.

His rescue happened at just the right moment, but it was too late - the damage had already been done.

It was a miracle he didn't die, really. If not from the injuries, then certainly from the fright of it all.

And it was as he laid there, sobbing from pain and pooled in his own blood, that he wished that the werewolf had finished him off. Put him out of his goddamn misery.


His first full moon transformation leaves him aching and feverish for days.

His Muggle mother, Hope, tends to his bedside, looking more tired and drawn with each hour. His father, Lyall, is scarcely able to hide the guilt in his eyes.

Pain is the color red, he thinks. Red.

Like blood, yes, but also like the color of his mother's faded lipstick. Her lips pressed into a thin line of worry and fear, when she thinks he can't see it.


The pain kills his mother, eventually. Unlike his condition, hers is not physical, but of a different variety.

Gone too soon, strangers will say. The inevitable price of having a Dark Creature for offspring. The mental stress was simply too much to bear.

His father doesn't correct them. And that's all that young Remus needs to see.


School brings the first spot of sunshine into his life.

He finds unlikely companions in James, Sirius, and Peter.

Boys who are willing to transform along with him, once a month. Whose company makes his monthly transformations tolerable. Fun, even.

And in the mornings after, even amidst his usual aches and sores, he finds himself immensely grateful for this thing between them.

This friendship , that holds them all together. Delicate, precarious, yet resilient all the same.

He can only hope it will last.


Friendship, it turns out, is a fickle thing.

Which is how he ends up alone, once more.


He spends a few years drifting. Oscillating between numbing the pain and losing himself to it, entirely.

Both feel like necessary retribution. A price to pay for his transgressions, real and imagined.


Eventually, he gets a job at Hogwarts. His first semblance of normalcy in a long, long time.

It's not perfect. Snape snipes at him every chance he gets, only too eager to wreak his vengeance on him. Not to mention, there's something wholly undignified about the way he has to transform himself in his office, keep the creature curled up beneath the desk until the morning comes.

Still, it's something. Something that makes the constant pain a bit more worth it.

But eventually, that's ripped away, too.


He gets one of his best friends back, after all is said and done.

Sirius Black, exonerated - though not free - at long last.

But he's not the same, after it all.

Pain has that transformative effect, on a person. It's something Remus knows all too well.


Physical pain dictates his life, now. In more ways than one.

At thirty five, he doesn't have the vigor to battle it, anymore. The suffering is near-constant, even if his magical abilities help keep it at bay.


She's the first time he doesn't notice the constant ache.

Nymphadora. Nymphadora Tonks.

Who, he learns quickly, prefers to be known by her surname, only.


Tonks is the youngest official member of the Order, and one of its finest. Something she manages to establish on her missions with him, early on.

Sirius, so usually gloomy and miserable, brightens enormously whenever she's around. So, perhaps by happy accident or by design or both, she quickly becomes a mainstay at Grimmauld Place. Willingly hangs out with the two bachelors of the house, playing cards and drinking firewhiskey into the wee hours of the night.


To be clear - the pain associated with his condition doesn't disappear, of course. But he notices it far less when he's around her.

And though he'd be hard-pressed to admit it, he finds himself eagerly looking forward to her visits. Has to ignore the way his heart does a backflip every single time he sees her, all pink hair and eager smiles.


It's between long missions and late nights with her that he realizes he's suddenly become afflicted with a completely different kind of ache.


Tonks stays over one night, after a particularly painful transformation.

Sirius, Remus' usual post-Moon caretaker, is ill. She willingly steps in and takes care of them both.

He feels terrible that she has to see him like this, bleeding and weak and practically half-naked, but she shushes him. Tells him he's being ludicrous at best and delusional at worst.

"Don't get modest on me now, " she murmurs adamantly, and then, a whisper, almost a quiet plea -

"Please, Remus. Let me take care of you."

He's heard those words before. From people he's loved and lost, both.

Remus should stop her, right there. But he doesn't .

Against his own better judgement, against the dangerous familiarity of her words - he lets her.


She applies Essence of Dittany on his wounds.

For all her usual clumsiness, she's surprisingly careful with him. Slow, gentle, yet incredibly precise.


"Get in the bath," she tells him, a few hours later. "The soak should help ease any remaining pain."

She's filled the tub to the brim with warm water and some mysterious, sweet-smelling soap. In the background, an old jazz record hums along.

Hell, she's even charmed the bubbles, so that they rotate through a kaleidoscope of colors. Kind of like how her hair is wont to do, at times.

It is, in all honesty, probably the nicest thing he's ever seen.

Yet another indulgence he doesn't deserve. But he's grateful for it, all the same.

She waits for him to get settled, to obscure himself beneath the thick layer of bubbles before she comes in. Sits on a stool by the side of the tub, so she's just above head height, for him.

She's so proud of herself, grinning at him openly. And it's as he's watching her revel in her success that he's struck by something so hard he'd almost forgotten the sensation -

He thinks about what he wants. Loses himself to it, completely.

The vision dances in his head, vivid, tantalizing: tangling a hand in her hair, pulling her into the water. Kissing her something soft, gentle. Then, decidedly less so.

(For a split second, he swears she sees it, too.)

A flare of pain in his joints slashes through his thoughts. A gasp escapes his mouth before he can stop it.

And just like that, the moment is over.

Maybe he imagines it, but he thinks she knows it, too. Gives him a somber little smile.

They sit in silence and watch the enchanted bubbles pop instead.