Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
The Beast Within
Chapter 6
There was sand in his mouth, liquid that dried to grains as soon as it touched his tongue. The wolf didn't like it; it tasted like grass and age, making him cough, and for the beast, that alone meant trouble. And they howled. Remus couldn't hear her cry his name, not with all the racket the animal within was making.
He felt her piercing fingers on his arm as he lifted the glass further, attempting to consume the rest of the potion. Remus pushed her away, dropping what was left of the poison to the floor. What remained looked almost like a once solid object, melting over the sharp shards. The werewolf glanced back up at Ginny in horror.
"Ginny!"
She sat on her cot, nursing a skinned elbow that had slammed into the wall and staring up at the man with brimming blue eyes. The girl shook her head furiously, her smooth brow wrinkled as she held in some unspeakable emotion.
"How could you?" she whispered.
Remus's expression softened and he held back the pain, even as he felt organs twisting, beginning the shift upward to hug his spine. He hadn't known that she was awake. "How much did you hear?" he asked.
"You're killing yourself! You're leaving me!"
That was enough.
"How could you?" she said again, looking up at the wizard. "Don't you understand? They'll kill me anyway—they'll get rid of me when they're done, after they've gotten Harry!"
"Ginny, even one more day alive is another chance for you to escape, for someone else to find you," he answered. "You don't have another day left if I stay."
"So you're doing this for me?" The tears found edge but didn't fall. She was holding it in, and Remus knew as much. "Did you ever think," she continued, "about what I want? I've been here. . . It seems so long . . . And you want to leave me here, alone?"
Remus was aware of the coming change. It was tearing at his flesh from the inside out, preparing to take hold, and instinct told him to back away, pass on in a quiet corner by himself. But he couldn't refuse the witch's unshed tears. They asked him to stay close.
He slipped down onto his knees, bowed in front of her, his hands on either side of her body and his eyes cast up at the dark sky and at the object of his wolf's desire.
"I'm sorry. I don't want to leave you," he said, "but you'll make it out fine, Ginny. You need to make it out. I had to do this."
"I won't be able to make it out." Ginny held out a hand, softly putting it onto Remus's sandpaper cheek before she leaned into him, crying into his ear. "I'm not strong like the others."
The man curled his own arms around her, eyes shut as he blocked the transformation. "That's not true."
"No. It is. That's why Harry didn't want me along. Ron and Hermione can take something like this but not me. I'm still that little girl who was stupid enough tell my secrets to a diary to the others, to my parents, too. They all knew that I would fail," Ginny said, and Remus felt wetness dripping down his neck where her chin rested. "I don't want to be here. I don't want to stay. I'd rather you have killed me tonight than let those Death Eater bastards get the chance to dispose of me some other time! You should have asked me . . . You should have asked, and I would have told you what I wanted. But you did this for yourself. This was easy for you, all you had to do was let go."
Was it? Remus felt shame wash over him. It was for him, at least partially. He didn't want to kill her. Voldemort was right—he would break if he tasted her, if he ripped her to shreds, and he would be as worthless as a soulless man. The Order's secrets would be lost, he would be lost . . . Ginny would be lost. No. This was still for her. That sleeping angel had made him drink.
"Ginny, you're all I was. . ."
A gasp for air cut off his words, and it took him a moment to realize that it was he who had made the noise and he who had jerked out of the embrace. Ginny let go of him, and he fell over onto hands and knees, letting out a cry of anguish as he felt his bones finally begin to break and mold anew, his skin ripping itself to shreds as it began to grow a coat, his vision blurring an sharpening as his skull took on new form. A man's clothes dropped to the floor; his disguise was gone.
This wasn't supposed to happen. The poison—it was supposed to kill him faster than this. Perhaps he had not drunken enough, or perhaps the concoction itself had just been some sort of mocking hope that Snape had decided to dangle before him.
The call of the moon was too strong for him to form those thoughts. His senses were too busy catching up with his transformation. The eyes of a predator glared forward, view lowered to the level of his haunches, surveying the corridor past the bars. The man would barely have noticed the figures standing in the shadow outside the cage, but the wolf saw them and snapped in their direction. The two Death Eaters didn't move away, nor did they take action, quietly watching from their position with wands out and pointed cautiously in his direction.
And yet they took no action as the werewolf released a furious growl. It should have been the wolf who wanted to taste the blood of those onlookers, but the man inside was the one raging out at the small audience.
Remus was aware of his own state, staring out eyes that were not his own. This wasn't supposed to happen either. As a werewolf, Remus usually blacked out before the wolf's senses awakened fully, but he was scarily aware of all that he was seeing. This sensation was far different, even from the effects of the wolf's bane potion which left him in control of his new body. He was in no way in control of this form.
He could only watch from his demon's prison, screaming out for the wolf to stop, to listen to its daylight master. What had gone wrong? Was this some sort of further punishment for not thinking of some way to protect Ginny and himself?
He smelled it with the wolf, the blood poured over the cell's floor. And it was then that Remus finally felt it, that sense of fading into a sleep at the moon's call, out of existence so the wolf could have its say. But it was later than he would have wished, for the werewolf had already turned toward that alluring scent, its sights on the girl with her back against the wall.
The werewolf didn't see her, only red, as it lunged forward, and Remus plunged, screaming, into the darkness of his windowless prison.
End Notes: Only one chapter left, so I hope you all tune in next time.