Okay. You voted for it, and here it is. The answer to the question "What would have happened if Remus had actually bitten the skin on Mattie`s arm (as opposed to the sleeve)?". It`s similar to the real chapter three in the beginning, but it changes at the climax. Enjoy.
(The Alternate)
Chapter Three:
Moony, Mistakes, and Misery
My muggle alarm clock beeped once before I gutted out its batteries and grabbed my wand. Scanning the room, I made sure Lily, Alice, Mel, and Mary were sleeping before I crept downstairs to the common room. The fire burned dimly, only a couple embers glowing. But it was enough for me to sneak behind a couch, place a disillusion charm on myself, roll up my sleeves, and wait.
After only hiding for about five minutes, I heard the shuffling of the Marauders coming down from the boy`s dorm. "Got the cloak, Prongsie?"
"Yeah. Let's wait until the common room for that, though."
The poorly lit figures of the four boys entered the room. Before I could attempt to identify who was who, three of them disappeared under what she knew was James` cloak of invisibility. Why was Remus not under the cloak, but instead walking ahead and lighting the way with his wand? He could light the way from under the cloak! All the same, this made it much easier to follow them through the portrait hole and down the changing stairs.
A corridor down from the Great Hall, Remus (and the others, invisibly) stopped in front of a large frieze. I recognized it immediately. It was a picture from a muggle fairy tale, one I had seen in a book Mel had to read once for Muggle Studies. The story was about a muggle girl who always wore a red cape-thing. The girl was bringing cookies or something to her grandmother and for some reason she travels through dark and scary woods. A wolf tries to eat her, her grandmother, and the cookies, but a lumberjack kills the wolf in the nick of time. Mel had said it was supposed to teach stranger danger, but to me the moral seemed to be, 'Don`t go into notoriously dangerous woods without protection.' I held my wand tighter.
Remus taped the figure of the wolf with his wand. A narrow portion of the old wall raised and the boys stepped through. I managed to scurry under just in time, making sure to keep a reasonable distance between myself and the Marauders, just in case they unexpectedly turned back and bumped into me or something. The passage came out to a hidden cave by the forbidden forest. Remus and the others, instead of turning into the forest as I suspected they would have, walked toward the Womping Willow.
Remus turned around. "Okay guys, the coast is clear. Wormy, can you use your special talents?"
I saw the shimmer of the invisibility cloak coming off, but seeing Sirius, James, and Pete, I stumbled back in amazement as I saw a stag, a giant black dog, and a rat. I remembered what Lily had said. The nicknames. Padfoot, Wormtail, Moony, and Prongs. A dog, a rat, a stag, and Remus. That was it! Pete, James, and Sirius were illegal amimungi. But what was Remus? Did Moony mean he was just crazy, or too spaced out to form an amimungi?
The rat (alas, Peter) ran under the wild branches of the Womping Willow. When it/he reached the trunk, he hit a knothole with his nose, and the tree froze. The Marauders then walked into a small hidden tunnel in the tree. I, of course, followed.
"It`s almost time." Remus groaned weekly. As we came to the end of the tunnel and into some house, I felt my disillusion charm wearing off. The windows of the house were boarded up from the inside, and scratch marks coated the walls. Peeking through the cracks in the boards covering the windows, I saw a darkened Hogsmeade below. This must be the shrieking shack.
Across the room, Remus shuddered. The great black dog and stag instantly came over to him, flanking either side. And then, Remus began to change.
He hunched over, glasses falling to the floor. I turned away as Remus let out an inhuman cry. The wails of agony continued for several minutes, and I could not bear to do anything but stand against the wall, squeezing my eyes shut tighter, and wondering if I should have just left this secret alone. When the howls finally ended, I managed to turn back, and knew instantly why he was Moony, and why they were here. Remus was a werewolf.
His teeth glittered menacingly, enhanced thusly thousand times from the gentile smile of my studious friend. Then, after taking a shuttering breath, the wolf who was no longer Remus` eyes focused right on me. The disillusion charm had broken, now that he had got my scent, no spell would really mask me now anyway. I could see his hunger, and he could see me. Remus would never hurt me, but this creature could eat me with no regret, until my friend was returned to his original form, and back to consciousness. So I did something I had never done before, unable to hold in the terror. I screamed bloody murder.
The animals that were Sirius, James, and Pete jumped; evidently, they were finally noticing me crouched against the back wall. Remus growled and leaped like a cat going in for the kill.
The great dog jumped in front of me without hesitation. The stag put its head down, its antlers were facing the werewolf like a shield, and even the rat was in a protective stance, ready to protect my stupid life with all its rodential might. I raised my wand, but had no intention of using it. Remus was still in there, and I didn`t want to hurt him, especially if he had to put up with wolfing out on a monthly basis.
Despite their efforts, the wolf was already one step ahead, having not been shocked by my scream. It grabbed my left arm in its giant maw, teeth clamping into my arm, and dragged me away from the amimungi protectors. In that jolting motion, my wand was flung free from my hand, tumbling uselessly to the floor. But this all paled in comparison to the horrible pain of Remus` teeth in my arm. I didn`t want to hurt him, but my arm was in his mouth and he was basically eating me at this point. The stag was trying to push the wolf away, but the teeth only dug in deeper. I fought against the claws, but they were much too strong for me.
Finally, James and Sirius managed to distract the wolf enough for him to open his mouth, leaving me free to pull out the bloody mangled thing that was -or used to be- my arm.
The Marauders (the ones who did not have bits of me in their teeth, anyway) pushed the wolf away, and I wanted to yell out, tell them it was too late, but I was choking and gasping for air, and now I couldn`t see strait. My eye lids fluttered as I felt myself violently thrash, and I tried to control the spasms, but it was all in vain. I squeezed my eyes shut, clutching tightly to the pulverized appendage. I must have found the air to scream, because there was noise in the air, and the boys all still had four legs.
After an eternity of acid-like pain shooting through every inch of my skin, I finally opened my eyes to see a human Peter and Sirius coming over and sitting next to where I was laying.
"Prongs brought Moony to a different part of the shack. What happened? Why is there so much blood?" Pete`s eyes were full of fear.
"She`s… she`s bit." Sirius was staring wide eyed at my arm, mangled and bloody moments ago, but now the skin was growing back quickly. In another minute, it would just be a scared arm covered in blood.
"W-w-why is it healing like that?"
Peter, always one to hang onto conversations and remember them forever, looked at Sirius with the hint of tears in his eyes. "Moony told me once that when a werewolf bites somebody, the spit mixes with the blood and turns them in to a… a one of them. Then the bite heals over into a faint scar. Otherwise, every new werewolf would be in St. Mundos. They might have said it in DADA too, but I wasn`t paying attention if they did."
Sirius paled. My spasms stopped abruptly. "Guys, am I..?"
"No. NO. NO! You are NOT! Don't! Moony wouldn't turn you in to a ..."
I knew Remus would never purposely bite me, but this wasn't Remus. This was a big, bad, wolf that saw me as a late night snack, and it might not have gotten a big one, but it had gotten the bite that mattered.
My gazed wandered out the window, to where the full, yellow, moon shone, and I knew what was going to happen a moment before it did.
"It`s all right, Mattie." Sirius saw me looking at the moon with wide eyes.
"No, and it won`t get better if you don't change back into your amimungi forms soon, because I think you guys know what happens to werewolves in the full moon light. It can't be cloudy forever." I shuddered again and Peter squealed and changed into a rat, but Sirius stayed next to me.
"Go! I don't want to hurt you! You saw what happened last time a werewolf saw a human while in wolf form!"
"Mattie…"
The last thing I remembered was a blinding light suddenly poured into the room as the moon came out from behind a cloud.
The world was a hazy, wooden shack in the morning light. Fresh claw marks furnished the walls, and I wondered what monster could have been here. And then I realized: it had been me.
"Remus? Sirius? Pete, James? Hello?"
I heard voices coming from down the stairs, and then thumping footsteps. A familiar blond head peaked around the corner. "Pete! What happened?"
Peter cautiously walked over to me. He was half smiling, half freaked out. "You turned into a werewolf, Mattie. When Moony came to, we told him what happened. He got really upset, couldn`t believe he`s given someone that curse, and ran off. Padfoot went to look with him, but James and I stayed back to make sure you were okay when you woke up."
James shuffled in, looking ragged and miserable.
"We should probably get you to the hospital wing."
"I`m sorry."
Peter looked at me with a sad look in his blue eyes. I knew from then on, nothing would ever be the same. The Marauder's secrets were jeopardized, suspension was imminent for at least one of us, Remus depressed, maybe even suicidal, and I was a werewolf. I knew guilt would forever haunt us from what had happened last night.
A/N Okay, remember, this is an alternate chapter and does not connect to any of the other chapters.