CW: Mental and physical torture, brief mention of suicide, and overall just a dark chapter
The silence was loud. All I could hear was a ringing in my ears, not even any background noises. There was a light above me, but I was so dizzy that I could see three versions of it. I tried to roll over so I wasn't looking directly up, but I couldn't move. My body was bound together by an invisible rope. It must have been the full-body binding curse.
"Oh, good, you're finally awake," came a voice. It was the voice of Morgause Selwyn, the woman I'd met in the containment of magical creatures area of the ministry, who had then hit Lily and I across the head with some metal thing. "You've been out all day. I am sorry about your head though, Remus... you have a bit of a bruise. A sacrifice that had to be made, though. Otherwise, you never would have come here."
I tried to scream out, but I couldn't because my jaw was bound shut by the curse, so I just made a muffled sort of noise. Questions were running through my head and piling on top of each other: Where am I? Where's my dad? Where's Lily? Why am I here? Who are you? Why did you bring me here? Are you a death eater?
"Alright, alright, shhhhh..." said Morgause, but I continued to make the muffled squealing noise. "Alright, alright... I'm going to explain to you why you are here, OK? OK? Just... be quiet and listen for one second... Remus, listen... listen... silencio!"
Her silencing charm hit me and no further noise came from me. I felt my heart rate increase and I tried to move but I couldn't. I was completely trapped.
"Alright we are underground, underneath the ministry and the department of the containment of magical creatures," she said. "You're here to go through a little course... it's not for long, just until the end of the Easter break, you can go back to school afterwards, but we're just going to make sure you're not dangerous."
What? A course? What sort of course? Would I get to see my friends or family before the end of it? Where were Dad and Lily? They'd both been in the ministry as well, so what had happened to them?
"It is the evening, so I'll grab you some food, OK?" said Morgause. She walked off and came back five minutes later, then finally undid the binding curse. As soon as she did, I got up and did a runner. Morgause didn't even try to stop me, and I found out why as soon as I reached the door. It was locked. Breathing heavily, I felt my pockets for my wand, but it was gone.
"There's no way of getting out, so there's no point in you trying," she said dryly. "Come on. Have some dinner."
"Let me go," I said, sounding a lot braver than I felt. "I'm not doing your little course."
"Oh, Remus, I don't think you realise... this isn't a choice," she said, her voice cold. "You don't have to have dinner if you don't want to. You can starve. "But you will be here until April seventeen when you go back to Hogwarts, and by then you will be a controlled, safe, kind, polite werewolf. I'll leave your dinner here and see you in the morning. Good night."
She walked away, turned off the light, and when she opened the door I tried to slip through, but she closed it in my face and locked it straight away. I swallowed, then inhaled deeply. I banged on the door. No response. I banged again, and again there was no response from outside. I let out a cry, then a scream, but no one came in even to tell me to shut up.
After several minutes of yelling and banging, when my knuckles were red, and my throat felt raw. I felt tears pooling in my eyes. This couldn't be happening to me. Hadn't enough bad things been thrown at me for the past twelve years? Would I even be able to contact anyone?
My heartbeat was even faster now than it had been when I was bound up on the floor, and I was struggling to breathe. I tried to clench my fists, but my hands had become so sweaty that my fingers just slid right off my palms. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to get the hell out of this place because I couldn't go through whatever torture that Morgause wanted to put me through. And I couldn't spend another second not knowing what had happened to my dad and Lily.
Trembling from head to toe, I slumped down against the door, sobbing because who wouldn't cry in that situation? As the tears dried on my cheeks, I somehow drifted into an unsteady sleep, sitting against the door.
When I woke up, I'd been pushed away from the door and was sleeping on the cold ground. If I hadn't been woken up by my body clock, I wouldn't have known it was morning. There were no windows in this room. It was so dark I could barely see two inches in front of my face.
I looked at my wrist. Thankfully Morgause hadn't taken my watch, so at least I could have a sense of how long I'd been here and how much longer I would be here since the watch I'd received on my birthday told the date and time.
Right now, it told me that it was six forty-five in the morning on Wednesday the sixth of April. I dropped my wrist beside me on the floor and didn't move. Last night I'd been angry, desperate, and somewhat hysterical, and this morning I just felt... numb. The cold ground didn't even feel cold, and my mind seemed to have gone from moving a thousand miles an hour to just sludge.
At seven o'clock Morgause came in and turned on the light. "I got you breakfast... I see you didn't touch your dinner last night."
I wasn't hungry.
"Alright, well, I'll leave your breakfast here," she said. "I expect you changed and at knocking on the door from inside in fifteen minutes."
"What am I supposed to change into?" I said, my voice sounding like a drone. "The only clothes I have with me are the ones I'm wearing."
"Well, if you had a look around, you'd see there's a wardrobe right behind your untouched meals," said Morgause. "There's a grey jumpsuit in there I want you to change into. If you don't obey you may have to stay here for longer than expected... maybe until the summer? And if that's not a good enough reason for you to obey me, I hope you know that I know your father. We may just have to say bye-bye to him if you don't do what I tell you during this course."
She left, and I laid still on the floor for a minute, before I peeled myself off of the ground and walked over to the wardrobe, opened it then grabbed one of the grey jumpsuits out from it. I got changed quickly, then walked to the door without touching the breakfast Morgause had left for me. Even if I did have an appetite, I didn't trust any food she gave me.
Taking in a deep breath, I knocked on the door, my heart pounding from anxiety about what this course thing was all about.
She opened the door within seconds of me knocking on it, then gripped my arm and dragged me away, and into another room, where there were pictures stuck on all of the walls.
It took me a good minute to realise that those pictures were pictures of me. Me, unconscious and wearing just my underpants. Photos from every angle showing every inch of my body. The photos weren't even moving.
"What the hell is this?"
"I just want you to look at the boy in these photos," said Morgause. "Look at those scars... look at his bony body, how innocent he looks in his sleep. Well, this boy is a monster. He's one of the foulest, most dangerous creatures in the wizarding world. And, like every other monster of his kind, he is a murderer. Not so innocent now? So why have they let him continue on with his life without bringing him to me to put him through a course to make him a respectable young werewolf, or simply just put the beast down?"
I felt my stomach clench. Everyone had been so nice to me my whole life, so now I was feeling upset about someone being honest. She was telling the truth.
"Will this course... make me less dangerous?" I asked.
"Why, of course they will," Morgause said with a smile. She then handed me an ink and quill. "Now, I want you to write all the words that you think describe yourself at the moment on these photos."
"Um, OK," I said, dipping the quill into the ink bottle and then taking it over to a close-up photo of my sleeping face. I looked at it for a second, not knowing what to write, before writing the most basic words, 'Nice, smart, calm', because I didn't want to overthink this.
When Morgause read what I'd written, she laughed so loudly that it sounded more like a cackle. I felt my heart sink as she snatched the quill off me and said, "Don't be ridiculous, let me show you."
She wrote on a different picture this time, an aerial shot of my full body, and she wrote: 'Disgusting, dangerous, rude, incompetent, stupid, ghastly, revolting, monster, savage, vicious, horrible, stupid little werewolf boy who should off himself'.
The pulse in my temple was pounding. I wanted to be sick. I tried to swallow, but nothing came down after seeing what she'd written about me. I didn't doubt what she'd written for a second, but it still stung to see that written by someone else about me.
"This is just describing you at the moment, Remus, don't worry," said Morgause, a fake sweetness to her voice. "When you finish this course it won't be nearly as bad. But, since you are this bad at the moment... you need to feel what every little beast like you deserves to feel. Crucio!"
I'd felt this curse before. It wasn't even that different from the pain of transforming into a werewolf. But I still screamed, because I always screamed when I transformed. Now I fell to the floor as the torture curse hit me, writhing around, trying to find some way of escaping it.
"You are the scum of the earth," she was saying in my ear. "You are more worthless than a fly's vomit. You have killed people and you are a danger to all those around you. You're disgusting."
Her words floated around in circles in my head for however long she tortured me, and when she finally released the curse, I was still muttering them and crying and twitching on the floor.
"Get up," Morgause spat. I didn't move. I couldn't move. "GET UP!"
When she screamed in my face, I struggled to my feet, tears stained on my face.
"It's time for lunch. You and I will be eating it together in the hall," she said, then, trembling, I followed her out of the room and towards the hall, where an old woman slapped two disgusting looking meals onto plates for us.
"Thanks," I muttered, taking the plate.
"Use better manners than that, you savage beast!" Morgause said to me. She hadn't used any manners at all.
"Thank you so much for this meal," I said quickly, trembling from head to toe, then took a bite. It tasted as awful as it looked, but I stuffed it all in because I didn't want her to scream at me again.