NOTE
PLEASE READ THESE WARNINGS!
Warning for torture, rape, death, a suicide attempt, violence against children, forced cannibalism, undertones of pedophilia, starvation, and a mention of Wilma's miscarriage.
We are dealing with depraved characters in this chapter. Please take these warnings seriously.
82. Odysseus
That cold January night, when I had told him I was pregnant. Pale moonlight faded across the stone walls of the bedroom, sometimes softened by the passage of a grey cloud. Remus held my sleeping body against his chest in the dark, quiet bed.
His memories were not simply a book to be read. I had prepared myself before letting the silver-blue waters of the pensieve tickle the skin of my face, knowing they would be visceral. And yet the sudden return to this room, to this night, caught me off guard. My palms were clammy as I stood by the desk, watching. Waiting.
His decision was not made lightly. I'd always sensed it hadn't been, but to see it for myself made me painfully aware of just how difficult it had been for him to check that I was asleep, to move very slowly from the bed, to stand looking down at me in those pinstripe pyjamas, the cold moonlight exaggerating the scars on his face. I was shocked by how full and strong his body appeared, beside his knobbly weakness now.
He changed into his clothes and packed his bag. He did so quietly, but he did not use his magic. As though by folding each shirt, lacing up his shoes, he was daring me–begging me–to stir, and discover him in the act. But my sleep was deep.
His posture was not terribly resigned. Perhaps he had not realised, then, how long he would be gone. Perhaps he'd only intended to go away for a few days. To get his bearings. No less unpardonable–objectively–but certainly more pardonable to my heart, knowing now how he had suffered from his choice.
Unexpectedly, Remus opened one of the drawers in the desk and took out a piece of parchment. I drew closer, heart thudding. But he didn't write anything. He didn't even reach for the quill. He only stared at the parchment for a moment and then put it back into the drawer, blank.
Shadows fell over his face as he returned to the bed. I stared at my sleeping form, a small, curled up figure beneath the blankets. "Wilma," he whispered. I did not stir. Remus laid his hand gently on my forehead, stroking my hair with his fingers. "Wilma…"
I did not wake.
Part of me wished that I had. But I remembered how far we'd flown on our broomsticks that day, and how far into the forest I'd walked with Sybill, to bring back the ghosts. My body was deeply asleep. Protecting the tiny flame inside.
Remus picked up his single bag and went to the door. The clouds shifted outside and the waning moon beamed its cold thin light into the room. The door, siding helplessly with fate, didn't creak at all.
I followed him out of the castle and across the viaduct bridge. My body drifted, pulled by an invisible string that bound me to his memory-self. Else I would have fallen behind from spiritual exhaustion. It struck me as a very long walk. So much time to turn back.
He passed the wards and, under the dark, dripping trees that sheltered the path to Hogsmeade station, disapparated.
I felt so tired, so powerless and hopeless as I watched the following memories. The very air that filled them was so heavy with guilt that my bones ached from the pressure.
Where he was was not clear, but I remembered how Sirius had said he'd once gone to Germany for his transformations as a younger man, and I figured he had gone back there. He carried his single case of possessions through dead January fields, past windmills, into small rainy villages and dark forests. He seemed to be walking forever, expecting to encounter the end of the world, where he would either turn back or jump off.
My first patronus found him in the hills overlooking a small town, a single church spire piercing the fog and snow of the low sky. He stopped short at the sight of the ball of blue light, and I could see the wetness of his eyes when my raven took shape. My voice poured out of it, strong enough but half-snatched by the cutting wind. "I don't know where you are. Please come back to me. I can't do this alone."
The raven disintegrated and Remus stared at the empty air where it had been. I saw him come near to responding, his hand twitching infinitesimally towards the pocket where his wand was hidden. But he didn't follow the impulse. After all, what could he have said?
The church bells began to chime, a haunting sound that carried on the cold wind. Remus walked over the hill and towards the naked black trees at the edge of the old town.
That night he slept in the forest in the freezing cold. Snow fell and it was in the first moment of true darkness after the earth had turned its face from the sun that he finally began to cry. The moon was hidden but its presence was ubiquitous, like a mediaeval tyrant, like a massive black hole to which Remus's body was being inevitably pulled. He ate and drank nothing and suffered through the night with no fire. When morning came he stood up from the frozen ground and walked again, like a wooden puppet.
This was how he wandered, many days. I knew already that he had never answered any of my patronuses, but each time my blue raven hovered in front of him I still longed for him to reply.
My own depression was deep enough that I felt no anger at him. It only grew deeper as I walked beside him through the lonely, stark winter landscape, like purgatory. My empathetic soul twisted itself around his memory-self like ivy around a tree. I cried when he cried, was cold when he was cold. He alternated drastically between numbness and rage, guilt and resolution. The memories seemed to stretch on like nightmares, moments of infinite depth threatening to pull me in and trap me for eternity. Many times, in the freezing nights, I nearly forgot that I was really standing in the headmaster's office at Hogwarts, my face submerged in the calm waters of the pensieve. My heart pounded so hard I could feel it echoing in my bones. I was a shipwreck of a girl. Did he have no friends here? Was he too ashamed to return to them?
Days passed, and Remus was not well. He walked away from every village he came in sight of, isolating himself to the forests and hills.
In the deepest darkness of the coldest night, he lost consciousness beneath a tree. He did not stir when the dawn came, or afterward. Snow fell on his cheeks, each flake pausing before it melted, recognising that this was a man, not a statue. He was still breathing as the sky cleared miraculously into a cold, remote blue, slashed with streaks of cloud. The first clear day in what felt like an eternity. But his will to continue was waning. I floated nearby, unsure of what would happen, of when it would end.
An old woman came along. She might have walked out of an old tale, swaddled in layers of clothes, carrying a basket full of roots. Her face was red from walking through the cold woods, her eyes light brown and flecked with gold. It was clear to me that she was a witch.
Spotting Remus as she walked carefully over the exposed tree roots, she slowed her pace and approached him, bending over him to study his face. She took in his scars, seeming to recognise him for what he was–a fellow mage, and a werewolf. Murmuring something to herself, the woman shifted the handle of her basket into the crook of her elbow and withdrew a short pine wand from the deep pocket of her cloak.
Suspicion soured my insides, and the next moment it was confirmed. With a wave of her wand, I saw a soft purple haze settle over Remus. A sleeping charm.
I'd imagined, months ago, that Remus might have been found and cared for by an old woman after his transformations. A woman who knew and understood his kind. Now I saw I should have been careful what I wished for.
Carrying his case of possessions, the witch hovered Remus's body at her side and brought him through the woods to a small hovel of a house. It was covered in vines, the thin blue smoke of a fire rising from the chimney. The witch opened the door and stepped through, leading Remus behind her.
Like a magical tent, the little cottage was much larger on the inside than it had appeared from without. The main room was wide, with a kitchen and cooking range on one side and a sitting area on the other. A fire burned in the fireplace, the warmth a shock after the frigid fog outside. Potted plants stood on every available surface, and there were hundreds of bundles of dried lavender strung upside-down across the ceiling, between the lamps and doorways. The smell of the lavender, and of the kitchen spices, was nearly suffocating.
The witch laid Remus down on the worn-in couch and set his case down on the table, opening the latches. I stared at her wrinkled, age-spotted hands as she removed his possessions. It was soon clear that she was digging for anything valuable. There wasn't much. His precious copy of The Odyssey she tossed aside with a grunt at the sight of its battered condition. All that was of interest to her was his father's wedding ring, which she pulled from his finger, and his wand, which she found in his coat pocket.
Through the numbness which had filled me from his days of empty wandering, I felt a spark of fire. The sight of the polished cypress wood in the old hag's hand was infuriating.
I wished, as I had done when I'd witnessed Severus's childhood abuse, that I had some power to change things inside the memory. Even if it was only to incite an unpleasant chill in the awful woman's spine. But I had no such power.
My nostrils full of the lavender scent, I watched the woman conjure her patronus. It was non corporeal and I wondered what twisted happiness fuelled its presence.
She sent it off wordlessly, but it was clear its recipient would know what it meant. The old woman put Remus's wand and his ring into her cloak pocket and then replaced his clothes in his suitcase. The Odyssey she threw into the petering fire.
Only a minute passed before there was a knock at the door. At the sound the woman changed, as smoothly as a body slipping into deep water. What had been an old and wrinkled face with a hooked nose became a youthful complexion, with fine cheekbones and full lips. What had been a slightly stooped body became poised and graceful. From the way her features changed I knew she was a Metamorphmagus. Like Teddy, like Tonks. She unclasped her heavy cloak and laid it over the chair before going to the door.
A tall, unkempt man stood outside, grinning from ear to ear. His eyes drifted down to the young woman's chest as he stepped into the doorway. "Another one," he said, his voice revealing him to be English.
The woman smiled, and when she spoke it was a seductive, musical sound, a gentle German accent. "All this lavender in the house. It's the only thing strong enough to hide the musk of your kind. I would never hang it otherwise."
The werewolf moved forward and the woman stepped aside to let him in. I felt nauseous as I watched him stare down at Remus, and cross the room. He bent low over his body, his nose nearly touching Remus's neck, and drew a deep inhale. His eyelids fluttered and his grin deepened.
"A brother, but he's lost his way. I know where to take him."
"A brother?" said the woman.
"The one that made me made him."
"Fenrir Greyback," said the woman. "The one in Azkaban. Is it a point of pride, to have been turned by one so powerful?"
The werewolf turned to her, the expression on his face answering the question. "How did you catch this one?"
"He didn't need deception. Found him asleep at the foot of a tree."
"I smell a woman on him. Not you. Unlike… so many others."
The woman kept still, but her stillness radiated power rather than fear.
The werewolf stepped forward. "I wonder about you. Out in this wilderness." He stood near her, his eyes drifting lazily between hers, his voice soft and dangerous. "Perhaps it's good you don't live in a city. You'd be sniffed out in seconds."
His mouth drew close to her neck, his lips parted as he took in her scent. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Why do you never ask where I take them? Do you wish to know?"
She was silent, a glint of triumph in her eye as the distance between the werewolf's mouth and her neck closed. He kissed her skin, rubbing his lips up and down over her artery, and firmly sucked. A low growling moan rumbled his chest. Then he pulled back, his lips wet in the firelight. "Maybe someday," he murmured.
Turning from her, he drew another deep breath and went to the cloak resting over the chair, his fingertips brushing the entrance of the pocket. He could smell Remus's wand. He looked at her as though to say, bad girl, and his fingers slipped inside, withdrawing the wand, then the ring. He hummed at the sight of the ring, but the wand he brought to his upper lip, inhaling again.
He frowned.
"A woman indeed. In love, poor bastard. Deeply." He pocketed the cypress wand. "You know I have to take this."
The woman pouted. "Would you leave me the ring? I deserve something in return, don't I?"
He smiled and set the ring down on the arm of the sofa where Remus slept. "Your payment, my Lady."
Then he bent over Remus again, wrapping his arm around his shoulders, and with a last lascivious glance at the woman, disapparated.
The scene changed, my consciousness passing through dark gurgling waters until my surroundings became recognisable again. It was another forest, cold and damp. Inky trees stood against the grey-blue sky. Birds chirped quietly in the frozen branches and the ground was pale with frost.
Remus was carried across the forest floor, his shoes dragging in the dirt. I recognised the place instantly as the site of the lair we'd raided days before. My heart clenched up. Had he been there all along? So close, and yet invisible?
A quick wind came through the barren woods, carrying streaks of cloud swiftly across the sky. The werewolf came to a halt and stood between two black trees, as though waiting at an invisible door. Many moments passed. Then a ripple went through the air as the protective charms were weakened, and the werewolf pulled Remus through.
Magnus stood in the mouth of the cave, beneath the low knoll and trees. His tangled black hair and sharp features made me shiver. He signalled to the werewolf to bring Remus closer.
As he did so, Magnus's nostrils flared. He held out his hand and took a slow step forward, breathing in. His eyes glinted, and a soft growl rumbled in his throat. "Do you know who this is?"
"Why? Should I have left him?"
"No." Magnus smiled. An awful sight. "Oh, no."
"Who is he, then?"
The werewolf didn't seem to have twigged Magnus's sincerity. Magnus bared his teeth to get his attention, and the werewolf straightened up.
"This is Remus Lupin."
Now he understood. His eyes widened. "Merlin."
"Bring him," Magnus said, turning back and walking deep into the cave. A fire burned. Magnus pulled a chair out from the table where Favre's skeleton had lain, and pulled Remus from the werewolf's arms, sitting him unceremoniously on the chair and tying his arms.
"Got his wand?" he said.
The werewolf obediently pulled Remus's wand from his pocket and gave it to Magnus, who took it and smelled it. His eyes closed and he gave a deep hum. "Yes."
"Smells like a woman," the werewolf said.
Magnus didn't reply, but lowered himself onto one knee and bent his head over Remus's crotch, inhaling deeply. I stood shuddering by the fire, looking on. Magnus drew away, his eyes wide. "Had her on a moon. Didn't mate."
"Poor bastard. Forgot his nature, hasn't he."
"We'll amend that." Magnus stood again. "Go. Bring a wolf."
The werewolf's eyes shone as he bowed his head and left the cave.
Magnus paced up and down, holding Remus's wand and smelling it. He kept turning and looking at Remus, who was still fast asleep, shaking his head as though marvelling at his fortune.
He pulled a long and crooked wand from his pocket–his own–and with it he cast a masking spell on Remus, rendering him untraceable. That was why the Ministry's owls had been unable to reach him. So simple, and so destructive.
The werewolf returned with a grey wolf at his heels, who looked quite nervous. It looked like any other wolf, and yet it seemed somehow familiar. Magnus stood his ground, fixing his eyes on the animal's amber ones, and growled. The wolf whimpered and rolled over at once, showing its belly.
Magnus growled again, but this time the sound had an almost soothing timbre to it. With a snap of his fingers a squirrel came flying through the mouth of the cave and into his hands, where its neck was snapped. Magnus tossed the squirrel onto the ground and gave a soft whistle. The grey wolf turned over and lowered its gaze reverently, sniffing the squirrel and setting about tearing at its fur. My stomach turned and I looked away.
Magnus turned his attention to Remus now. With his own wand he undid the sleeping spell the old woman had put on him beneath the tree in Germany. He came around, slowly at first, and then quite quickly as his nose picked up on the scents surrounding him. His eyes flew open as he realised he was bound, and his gaze fell on the tall man before him.
"Magnus," he said.
Shock raced through my veins. I would never have thought that Remus would know Magnus. But clearly he did. How? I had no guess, but clearly the history between them was anything but pleasant. Magnus looked at Remus with vengeance in his eyes.
"What a surprise, Remus Lupin. I thought you'd sworn yourself to the other side. Order of Merlin and all. They certainly seem to have… taken you in."
Remus's days without nourishment or shelter had taken a terrible toll, and he was still clearly shocked by the drastic change in his surroundings and circumstances. But even with all this being so, he managed to speak clearly and reasonably. Full of insight and integrity, to the end. "There are no sides, Magnus. There never were."
Magnus grew closer with a furious growl. "You seem to have forgotten that they'll never really accept you, brother. You know where you belong. Otherwise, why would you be here now?"
Remus shook his head. "I–"
"I cannot blame you for being led astray. Her scent…" Magnus trailed off and a dark smile festered on his face as Remus's expression fell.
"Why didn't you do it properly?" Magnus said. "You didn't turn her. You could've done. You were so close to your transformation."
Remus wore a calm mask of reason, but I could sense the fire of terror within. "I would never."
"You would have, once."
"No. I never would have."
"That's what you believe. But you don't remember, do you? You think you were on their side all along. But we were your family. We were your home."
"You're wrong. Living like this. Hurting people. It's not the way."
Magnus's eyes went black. "There are some matters, Lupin, on which we will never agree." He lifted Remus's wand to his nose, drawing Remus's attention to it for the first time. I saw Remus swallow as Magnus inhaled.
"Does she love you?" Magnus asked.
"No."
For some reason, the word stung.
"Is she loyal to you?"
"No."
"That doesn't sound like the truth. Perhaps her presence would encourage you. We have few women. You'd be happier with a mate. A true mate."
The implication was clear, even to me. Remus's eyes finally widened, his horror clear. Magnus chuckled. "There you are."
He snapped his fingers and the grey wolf lifted its head from the eviscerated squirrel on the ground. My mind rushed ahead, beginning to put the pieces together. I realised why I recognised the wolf. The one I'd seen in Hunston. The one I'd chased through the forest before my first miscarriage, before my first wand had broken.
Magnus aimed his crooked wand at the wolf. "Imperio."
Remus's eyes widened as the wolf walked towards him, sniffing up his thigh from his knee to his crotch. He tried to writhe away, but couldn't. He hadn't tried to fight his bindings before now, but it was clear they held some dark magic.
"This is madness," Remus protested as the wolf withdrew, panting. "There's no reason for it. I parted ways with you long ago."
Magnus's face twisted with fury. "Did you think we would slink into the shadows? Tails between our legs? No, brother. We're growing stronger. Greater. And the time will come when our father returns to us."
"You wait for a day that will never come."
"You've grown weak," Magnus growled. "You can't see what is right. But you will."
He touched the wolf between the ears and hovered his wand over its back. "Portus."
Then with a whistle he kicked it gently, and it loped out of the cave and into the forest.
Remus had gone pale. He no longer had the energy to maintain his act of reason. "Call it back," he said, voice shaking.
Magnus grinned. "No."
"Call it back!"
"You'll feel better once she comes. You're afraid now. But you'll see, soon enough, that there's no reason to be."
Weakness and shame overtaking him, Remus burst into tears. I did not know this part of his history, but clearly it had been a long-held, secret fear of his that he could come face to face with Magnus. For Magnus, it seemed to be a long-held wish.
"I am glad fate brought us together again, Remus," he said, coming close to touch Remus's scarred cheek. Remus turned his head away, writhing against his restraints. "You've suffered alone long enough. You're back where you belong."
"I don't belong here!" Remus shouted. "You belong in the shadows, Magnus. You belong in the ground!"
With a sudden surge of motion, Magnus drove his fist against the side of Remus's face. A shuddering gasp came out of Remus and I covered my face with my hands. He was left leaning over his knees, blood dripping from his mouth as he groaned. He spat, and a molar fell onto the ground.
Magnus gripped Remus's wand tightly in his hand. "I was going to hold onto this for you. But there's a certain lightness in it that would only hold you back."
"No–" Remus croaked. And he lifted his head just enough to see Magnus throw his wand into the fire.
It was destroyed, with a wild hiss and crackle, furious sparks of blue and red popping above the flames.
Remus's chin sank down again, and his body went still. Part of him had died.
Magnus jerked his head to the side. The other werewolf, who'd looked on in awe, stepped forward. Together they pulled Remus up from the chair, his hands still bound behind him. At first his body seemed limp. Then, with a surge of desperation, he struggled.
It didn't last long. Magnus had him in a headlock in seconds, kicking him to his knees and grinding his face into the hard frozen ground. He moaned, and was strengthless as the two men dragged him across the forest floor to the deep earthen hole, which he was thrown in. Remus stared up at the meagre pale light coming through the opening, and Magnus's tall silhouette. "In time you'll remember your place in the world. Sooner rather than later, I hope. You thought you were one of them. But you never were."
Magnus left a moment for his words to sink in. Then he shut the trapdoor, leaving Remus in darkness.
After the initial shock had thinned in his veins and he'd become more accustomed to the pain, he channelled every bit of his remaining energy into attempting escape. But his days of hopeless wandering had caught up to him. He'd barely eaten, only taking water from his wand every so often, and his body and mind were weak. Had he had his wand, he might have lasted longer, syphoning off what strength he could from the stores of his magic. But his wand was no more than ashes beneath the logs that fed Magnus's fire.
Days passed. Magnus would open the door once every night–when the sky was black–and throw down small animals with snapped necks. Remus refused to eat them, and the freezing temperature made it so that there was no stink of rotting flesh. He slept for hours, with these small dead things lying near him.
The first light he'd seen in days was that which emanated from the small spun ball of blue threads that untangled into my patronus. My voice was full of tears this time, and I recalled sending it from the table at Grimmauld Place. "I love you. I'm so sorry. You didn't do anything wrong. Please just let me know that you're okay."
I'd taken to crouching at the edge of the hole, and when I saw the tears streaming down his numb face I sat as near to him as I could. It pained me to watch him. Hearing my pain. Regretting his terrible mistake.
The next patronus came two days later, and it was Severus's doe, the sight of which I savoured, knowing it was the last time I would see it. Remus's face was haggard in the thin blue light as he heard the offer of Wolfsbane, and a safe place to transform.
The approach of January's full moon had a catastrophic influence on Remus's psyche. When he slept he had nightmares, my body pinned beneath him as he ploughed his hips forward, sank his teeth into my neck. My own mind was heavy and dark with the self-loathing he felt. It seemed he believed he deserved to be there, in that black cave in the ground. His only relief was that, when Magnus opened the trapdoor each night, it was the bodies of rodents that were thrown down to him, not mine.
In the end he did eat them, the small dead animals. He wished to vomit afterward, but never did. He sat and sobbed while he felt the ease of his digestion, the small blood-red muscles his wolf-intestines were so eager to accept.
The night of the moon arrived. When Magnus opened the trapdoor Remus was shaking, the heat of his body so awful that it filled the dark hole completely. There was a frightening shine in Magnus's eyes, bruised clouds streaking the sky behind him, fading into darkness.
Remus was so weak that, had I not known he would live, I'd have doubted his ability to survive the agony to come. Magnus pulled him from the hole and he groaned. "Hush," Magnus said, almost tenderly. His own body was trembling, letting off a similar heat as the moonrise grew nigh. "It's almost time."
Holding Remus against his side in a twisted kind of embrace, Magnus walked away from the firelight in the cave and into the dark cold forest. Remus was far too limp to protest. It seemed all of nature had gone still under the frost and cold. Snow had fallen, deep snow, and the steam of the two mens' breath showed in the dusky air. I followed behind, shivering cold.
Others were waiting. Perhaps ten others. They stood among the trees; some as still as death, others pacing, scratching at their arms. All of them had wild eyes. Among them was the werewolf who had brought Remus from Germany. He glanced away the moment he saw him, whispering frantically to himself and glancing every other second at the sky, from which the evening glow was fading.
Nausea ballooned in my belly. Remus was so weak that the moment Magnus released him he stumbled to his knees, pressing his hands into the ground. Another of the wolves whipped his head around, face sharpening at the new scent. I was shocked to recognise him from one of my visions, as the man who had complained of hunger to Greyback and wound up as "food" for the remaining captives. Whatever had happened to him to bring him to that end, it had been a long fall. In this memory he was much stronger, full of confidence and fury. He crossed the clearing in lunging strides, his body burning off heat like a furnace. "This is your surprise, then, Magnus?"
Looking into his gleaming eyes, I understood for the first time the true meaning of the word lunatic.
"Welcome back, brother," another man called.
"Brother? He's a sheep." Small white bubbles of saliva stretched in the corners of the werewolf's lips as he growled. "A sheep."
Remus groaned, a shudder rolling up his spine.
"No need for that, Adam," Magnus said. "There'll be no difference between you, shortly."
Shortly seemed to stretch on forever.
Some of the others were lying on the ground as though in the throes of ecstasy, while others were striding back and forth along the forest floor, crowing up at the sky as though the rising moon was their boxing partner. Remus lay curled on the ground, moaning as though about to be sick. Though I knew my presence there meant nothing, I still hovered over him as if I could somehow protect him from the others, who seemed so brutal, so dangerous.
Magnus approached, once the time was almost upon them. "It will be alright, brother. It's what you were made for."
His tone was so soothing that for a moment I was almost grateful for him, before the reality of the words sank in.
Made.
I looked down at Remus's shaking body, for the first time fully understanding the burden of his lycanthropy. I wanted nothing more than to lift him up, take him out of the memory, out of this past that was becoming all too real by the second, and out of the pensieve, into safety.
But it was impossible.
The closest I'd come to witnessing the transformation had been in Severus's memory of spying on the Marauders, in the tunnel from the Whomping Willow.
Then it had only been the beginning. The teeth. The lengthening spine.
Now I saw it all.
My mouth fell open in shock as his body changed, stretching and breaking until it had become a grey wolf, twice the size of Remus's human form. The transformation was so violent that, by the end of it, I couldn't believe he'd survived. A tremor of pain rippled along his back and he made a low moaning sound the likes of which I'd never heard before, sending a chill down my spine. His long grey snout rubbed against the dark ground, sniffing gently as though seeking out some comforting scent. I was so shocked that for a time my eyes were pinned on Remus's wolf form, completely oblivious to the other figures in my peripheral vision.
Then one of them–Magnus, it must have been–approached Remus and tugged on the scruff of his neck with his teeth. Remus turned his head sharply with a growl and snapped his teeth. I stepped back, startled. It seemed so unlike him. But then again, he'd not had the luxury of the Wolfsbane potion.
At first I feared Magnus might do him harm. But the gesture seemed to have been intended only to get Remus's attention. Magnus stood tall, his sleek coat shimmering in the cold white January moonlight, and a low growl emanated through his throat. Remus whimpered, staying low.
I kept my distance as I watched all of the wolves become aware of one another. Those who surrounded Remus had clearly transformed together before, more than once. I could see at once the clear hierarchy of the group–the pack–in the way some cowered from others, some growled and lunged more. There was no playfulness among them. Each was bloodthirsty to a certain degree, and in the light of the moon their eyes appeared more monster than animal.
Remus was the clear outsider, and had Magnus not defended him as the alpha of the pack, he would surely have been ripped to shreds by those who disliked his unfamiliar scent.
As it was, he was accepted into the ranks–though not quite gently, as the wolves circled each other in the frosty clearing. Then Magnus lifted his white-grey throat and let loose a howl, aimed at the full white moon in the sky. Ears stiffening at the signal, the others responded, and the sound of their combined howling was so earth-shattering that my ears rang.
They all began to run, Remus with them, his defences overcome by his changed state.
The night passed in a blur. The werewolves hunted together, tearing at the flesh of every animal they caught–and they caught every animal they could smell.
A dead deer, lifeless eyes shining in the light of the snowy moon, blood sinking through the snowy ground.
Remus killed and ripped and feasted along with the others. Out of both horror and respect, I turned my face away.
Moonfall came, then morning. Remus, a man once more, in tatters and unconscious, was carried back to the cave. They laid him on the table, and I looked on with distrust as he was healed. The broken bones. The minor slashes and cuts. But the herbs and magical remedies they used were genuine, and well-performed. He remained sleeping long afterward, however. They hadn't given him anything for the excruciating pain that was surely burning him up from the inside.
"The hunt should have given him strength," said the lunatic man from the night before–Adam. He stood by the fire in the cave as Magnus chewed a dark purple root and spat it into the deep gash on Adam's shoulder. "But it seems to have weakened him instead."
"He'll readjust," Magnus said. "He's been living with that bloody potion for too long."
Adam's eyes flashed as he glared at Remus's sleeping form, spread atop the table. "Sheep."
When Remus came round, Magnus asked what he'd thought of the hunt. How it felt to have the blood of animals in his belly. It was a clear test. A chance for Remus to live aboveground with the rest of them. I prayed silently for him to lie–to take the opportunity–anything but that dire hole again. But his pride got the better of him. That old Gryffindor pride which was all too familiar to me. And he told the truth of what he thought. And he was thrown down into the hole.
He suffered the bitter month of February in a haze of pain and blackness. His body was so weak, spent and desperate that he finally began to eat the rodents that Magnus threw down to him at night while they were still warm, without any hesitation.
The next light he had was provided by my raven. He lifted his head from between his knees just enough to look. I watched him numbly as he heard my voice deliver the news of the miscarriage, and that I would have to remarry if he didn't find his way back to me by the fifth of March. His eyes shone in the blue glow that filled the dark cave, his face a mask of pale shock.
It dawned on me that he might have tried to speak back to the raven, as I had done when Andromeda's lover had sent his patronus to St. Mungo's. Was it possible that Remus didn't know it could be done? No, he must have known. Perhaps, knowing my nature, he expected that I would try to rescue him single-handed, and thus walk directly into danger, rendering needless the trap Magnus had set for me by sending the wolf.
Perhaps there was a shame-ridden part of him that didn't want to be rescued.
Whatever the reason, he let the raven disappear without a word and sat again in the darkness. I couldn't see him then, but I could hear well enough as he began to cry.
Time rushed on, an unstoppable river, and it came to the first of March.
Another patronus unfurled into the darkness of the cave, just as Remus heard Magnus's footsteps approaching over the frozen ground above. My voice emanated from the small blue raven–"please don't leave me like this. I know you made a mistake, but I forgive you, and I still love you"–just as the hinges of the trapdoor squealed and a stinging blast of winter wind penetrated the cave.
Magnus stood there and listened, Remus staring up at him, a small hint of horror behind his eyes.
Magnus cocked his head. "What a lovely voice."
"...I'm afraid for you. I don't think you would be so silent if you weren't… I can't save you if you don't help me."
In the background, Teddy's questioning babble could be heard.
"Go on… Say something to your dad…"
In the opening of the cave, Magnus smiled.
"Your boy?" he asked.
Remus stayed silent, unable to deny it.
My patronus carried out its duty, then disappeared. There followed a silence sharp and cold as a blade. Magnus made a thoughtful sound in the back of his throat.
He said nothing, only threw down a small rabbit before closing the trapdoor. But I sensed, just as Remus seemed to, that for Magnus to have heard the voice of his little son was deeply unlucky.
The following night, the night of the moon, Magnus took Remus out of the forest for what he called a special treat. Remus had been kept too weak to fight as Magnus pulled him from the hole in the ground and wrapped his arm around his waist, apparating.
A cold wet wind blew through the tiny village as the dusk turned darker. Sunlight had long since drained from the clouds, drowned completely beneath the horizon. Stars were beginning to peep through as the blackness grew.
Magnus led Remus downhill, closer to the small houses at the edge of the village. Remus's body trembled violently, torn between the coldness of the air and the mountain of fiery heat inside him. Magnus pulled him along, his eyes becoming brighter with every passing moment. Weakened by the apparation, a minute passed before Remus seemed to realise what was happening, the scents of the village's muggle inhabitants carried on a strong gust of wind.
"What are you–" he croaked, trying to pull away. Magnus held him fast to his side, with a rib-bruising tug.
My own mind drained of all but terror as I put the pieces together.
Yellow light poured through the kitchen window of the small house at the very edge of the village, illuminating a muggle woman doing the washing up after dinner. Silently Magnus opened the gate to the back garden and pulled Remus through. Remus's nostrils flared and he drew in a ragged breath to shout, but Magnus covered his mouth.
"Be silent, or I will discover where your son is living and it will be his turn next."
It was the worst threat I'd ever heard.
Remus's body stiffened, both from Magnus's words and from the pain that preceded the transformation. Magnus held his hand firmly over Remus's mouth, but his nose was still free and I saw the change in his eyes as the woman's scent became more appealing. She had her sleeves pushed up to her elbows, setting the dishes on a towel on the kitchen worktop, humming along with the running water.
Magnus pulled Remus closer to the house and they crouched in the bushes. The woman didn't glance once towards the window, never suspecting that something was awry.
Soon the moon appeared. White light bled through the clouds and fell upon the roof of the small house, turning it blue. Magnus's arms clamped Remus's weaker body against his chest, his hand covering his mouth firmly. Remus's whole body seized from pain as the transformation began.
The woman heard the strange animal sounds coming from the back garden and went to the window to look out. Her expression was concerned, and she held a dripping plate in her hand. She saw the gate was open. Silly her–she must have forgot to close it. Perhaps a stray dog had wandered in? She looked out into the blackness, eyes searching for the source of the groaning, whimpering sounds.
In the next second, it was inches from her face.
She sprang back, mouth wide in a strangled gasp, the sound a person makes when confronted with something they have no ability to comprehend.
The werewolf that jumped through the window was the farthest thing from Remus Lupin that I'd ever seen. It was ravenous, panting and salivating as it lunged for the woman, the blood racing through her veins certainly more enticing to the wolf than a deer's blood. The woman's strength was as good against the wolf as a fragile leaf against a hard autumn gale. The wolf growled and pushed her to the floor, pinning her with its paws, wasting no time as it sank its teeth into her neck. Blood flowed over the floor and the white plate was splattered with deep carmine red.
The woman let out a moan, her body in too much shock to scream, and blood gurgled in her throat. The wolf growled, lapping at the blood against her neck, and I thought I was going to vomit.
Magnus leaped through the window and growled at the other wolf. But for the first time the smaller of the two had a claim to independence and dominance, and when he snapped his jaws Magnus backed off.
Clearly the woman was alone in the house. Otherwise the two wolves would have left the kitchen to follow other scents. Together they dragged their prize outside and up the hill into the forest, where they left her in search of other prey. It was sheer luck that a moose was passing nearby at that moment, or they'd have surely run back to the village. The other muggle residents were safe that night. But when the moon fell and Magnus brought Remus back to the place where they had left the woman, she was dead. Lying in her blood, clothes torn, limbs twisted, eyes open and cold to the morning air.
Remus, already strengthless, collapsed to the ground and retched while Magnus vanished the body.
When they returned to the lair he again rejected the chance to remain aboveground. His eyes were hollow, his soul thin with horror. In the blackness of the hole he let himself starve again, intending to die.
On the first of April, the next moon, Magnus dragged Remus's helpless body to the edge of another village. This time it was a little girl with blonde hair, and because the wolf bit her on the thigh rather than the neck, she survived the night. Afterward, back in the forest, Magnus showed Remus the child, shivering in her sleep, the bite mark sealed with silver dittany.
"Your first, is she not?" Magnus said.
Remus was silent, staring at the girl in shock. Tears fell down his face.
Magnus nodded. "Now you are a true father."
Time passed, and the only islands in the haze of blackness and hunger were my patronuses.
The full moons were worse each time. The wolf grew vicious, sating itself with all the blood it could to make up for the starvation of its human half. Remus was brought each time to the window of a new child. No matter how he thrashed and struggled, Magnus was stronger. And he was never able to scream to warn them. Magnus might have made it easier for himself by using the Imperius Curse. But where would be the enjoyment in that?
The victims were found in only the most obscure muggle villages surrounded by depths of forest, or in the impoverished quarters of larger towns, where nobody would miss the child. If only Remus could have kept his mind without the Wolfsbane. Then he could have run away. Not unscathed. Certainly not. But away.
Time worked differently among the werewolves. All they seemed to value was the time of the full moon. The rest of the month was inconsequential. They lived for the moon. It was their goddess, and their religion made them oddly patient, given their violent temperaments. Perhaps it was because the sustenance they gained from their full moon hunts was enough to sustain them through the next lunar cycle. Remus ate next to nothing during that time, and yet his organs did not shut down as they should have done, kept alive by the animals he consumed against his will while in wolf form.
I was grateful now that I had kept sending my patronuses. They gave him something to hold onto. His one spark of hope in a half-life of pain and powerlessness.
Warmer weather came and thawed the ground. Odours that had been hidden by winter's gracious coldness were now exposed, and each breath was a reminder of the squalor in which he was now forced to exist. Remus's hair grew long, grey strands outnumbering the red-brown it had once been, and the scars of his face were concealed by a beard like a wise man's.
Magnus's threat of seeking out Teddy kept Remus under his thumb, and each full moon he contributed another child–or more than one–to the growing collection of new werewolves. For all the violence of the full moons, Remus didn't grow evil or harsh. But he did lose himself. He retreated so far into oblivion and weakness that it almost seemed he had disappeared.
After the July moon, Magnus threw down a rodent and Remus pulled it apart with his teeth and fingers. Not to eat it, but to snap one of the little bones and use it to cut his arms. Two long, sharp strokes that took all his shaking strength. I gasped and sobbed, looking away as the blood came forth and his head fell back.
Magnus must have been able to smell the blood from aboveground, for Remus only lay there a minute before being hauled up from the blackness into the night, and taken to the healing table, where his veins were closed up and healed, the scars rendered invisible by magic.
Golden leaves rustled in the September wind. Remus glimpsed them, his eyes narrowing against the brightness when Magnus opened the trapdoor in daylight.
Remus stared up at Magnus's silhouette through the slits of his eyelids. The cool air poured down like cool water into the hole, refreshing and forgiving. Magnus stood there for some time without speaking, then sighed and squatted down.
"We are all impressed by your resilience, brother. But you know that it is not your purpose in this life. To wither away like a saint, in the ground before you are dead."
Remus turned his face away again. Magnus squatted there for a long moment and then took a single step down into the cave, holding out his hand.
"Remus."
Remus looked up again at the unfamiliar sound of his name.
"Come. Come out of there and walk above ground again. Be what you are. With the rest of us."
A raven cawed outside in the windy forest. A sharp hoarse sound to herald change.
But Remus looked away again, and shook his head.
There was a moment of dense danger in the air, before Magnus stepped up again. "Very well," he said, and lowered the trapdoor.
Remus lifted his face before it closed to soak in the cool air, and the sight of the rustling yellow leaves on the tree. Then it was dark again, but his eyes shone slightly in the darkness, and I knew he was still in there somewhere.
October wore away, and Remus tried to reach me with his mind. It was a pleading manifestation, my name barely a whisper on his lips, a tear at the corner of one eye. The deaf cold walls of the cave absorbed my name again and again.
Wilma…
Wilma…
At last, after nine months of stubborn self loathing, he'd given way to wild hope. I marvelled at how slowly it had taken him to come round, but was grateful that he had. Until I puzzled it together and remembered the result.
My patronus entered the room, a tiny blue seed that unravelled into its full size, my sobbing voice already spilling out of it. "Why am I hearing your voice in my head!"
I was shocked now to see that I hadn't been delusional after all, that foggy morning beside the forbidden forest, the wolves playing at my feet. It really had been his voice.
I listened, my body hurting as I was forced to hear my harsh words again. How I'd shouted at him for going, for abandoning me, for abandoning his son. I told him I hated him and loved him in the same breath, and asked why, if he was calling to me, he hadn't come back.
The patronus seemed to disintegrate more quickly than usual, like the blue flames of a fire that have been suddenly turned to smoke by water.
Remus did not say my name again.
On All Hallows' Eve the sky shattered. Lighting and thunder played a livid game of catch, the storm breaking the heavens. It rained throughout the night and soon Remus was forced to his feet, hunched against the wall in ankle-deep muddy water that poured in through the trapdoor and seeped through the ground on all sides.
He was in this state when Greyback arrived.
He had a stolen wand in his large hand, casting a lumos that illuminated his body, covered in the evidence of the bloody deeds he had already done that night. I remembered the small boy he'd carried off from his dark childhood bedroom and realised, from the redness that streamed down his rapidly expanding chest with the rain, that he must have eaten him.
His eyes were deeply wicked, full of fire and the energy of freedom after his long captivity. His polluted magic burned around him in a chaos of adrenaline. Remus stared up at him and the light, sharpening the drops of rain falling through the trapdoor and into the flooding cave.
Greyback growled through gritted teeth. "What is my cub doing in a hole in the ground?"
Remus knew better than to fight. Greyback jumped into the hole and pulled Remus up the rotting stairs by his neck, choking him against his side. Remus's heels knocked against the wood as Greyback hauled him up out of the ground, and with one arm, immensely powerful and muscled, threw him out onto the muddy ground. The naked trees bent overhead, the thunder filling the woods and water filling the air, cold and dripping. Remus's face was in the mud, and he coughed for air as he struggled just to bring himself up to all fours.
Greyback kicked him back into a foetal position, teeth bared in a constant sadist's grin. Remus spluttered, the long thin fingers of his pale hand splayed over the ground, trembling.
"Call me what I am," Greyback snarled.
I didn't know what he meant by this but Remus seemed to, from the slightest tensing in his exhausted shoulders. He held his silence.
Greyback gave a warning kick and pulled Remus up by his tangled hair, jabbing his wand-tip hard against his throat. "Call me father."
In the struggle Remus had accumulated a mouthful of mud and rain, which he now spat into Greyback's face.
Greyback clawed Remus's face with his free hand–the new scar from ear to chin–and I let out a visceral cry as blood flowed from it, over Remus's hollow cheek and into his panting mouth. Greyack's nails were as good as claws, thick and sharp and yellow, and the damage was deep and permanent. Greyback's eyelids fluttered at the release of the blood and the attack slowed for a moment as he inhaled.
He gave a growling hum, considering Remus with gleaming eyes. "You smell better."
He curled one knuckle and with it stroked the length of the wound he'd just inflicted, smearing the blood over Remus's cheek with a perverse tenderness.
A sickened sensation rolled through me. Greyback wrapped his hand around the back of Remus's neck and pulled his weak, bleeding face closer to his own. "I should have had you when you were a boy. But you'll do now."
Lust for another's pain and humiliation filled his eyes, and I knew instinctively what was coming.
Knowing didn't make it any easier when Greyback slung the weight of his thigh over Remus's back, forcing his brittle body to collapse onto the ground. Shifting his pelvis over Remus's thighs and pinning him against the mud with a hand on his narrow back, Greyback ripped through the fabric of Remus's trousers, which was not difficult, given how worn they were from months of wear. Then he pulled down his own trousers, freeing a thick girth already hard and angrily swollen from the stimulus of Remus's blood.
In a numb haze, I turned around before I could see the worst. I stared ahead at the rain falling through the black trees, a flatline of shock filling my ears. But nothing could block out the sound of the broken cry of pain from behind me. My shaking hand flew up to cover my mouth and I gasped in horror, my heart halting.
As the sounds of the brutal rape assaulted my ears, I thought of the moments of doubt I'd had following Greyback's death. My moments of doubt, almost remorse.
I felt no remorse now.
Not a hint.
It was not over quickly, and I was brought to my knees, forcing myself not to withdraw from the Peniseve. Not yet. Not until I had seen all he needed me to see. Finally Greyback let out a loud, disgusting groan, and there was nothing but Remus's whimpering and the rain falling on the mud.
"On your feet," came the impossible request. I turned around warily, and glared at Greyback with the deepest, blackest coldness of my soul as he dragged Remus's limp body over to the trapdoor and let him fall down into the hole. You will die soon, I thought, as I stared at him. You will die and your head will split open and your blood will run down the stairs, and your body will be burned.
Remus landed in the cold water, trousers around his knees, and lay there in a shivering bruised jumble of joints as the trapdoor slammed shut.
He passed the night and the next day undisturbed. I watched him, his pallor and his irregular bouts of shaking. The water seeped back into the earth, leaving small grimy puddles in the mud of the cave floor. The only substantial sound to come out of his mouth was my name, the following night. Only once. As though the sound were a sip of medicine that might ease some of the pain.
Whatever barrier had been keeping the nightmare-state of Remus's reality from fully infiltrating his mind was now broken. His memories looked different now, vignettes from a world of terror where things twisted and crawled and behaved wrongly, with no regard for the rules of sense or the security and comfort of the mind. Hunger, pain and isolation had stretched his mind into thin threads, on the very verge of snapping.
Magnus dragged him from the hole and brought him through the frozen, desolate woods to the cave under the knoll. There was a fire within.
A small figure lay on the table. The little girl with blonde curls, the first child Remus had bitten. Her hair was dirty now and her body was knobbly in places it surely hadn't been on the night she was turned–though then I'd been unable to see her body beneath a white nightgown, and now she was stark naked.
Greyback was cleaning her corpse with a dripping washcloth. With care, as though she were only sleeping. Ill with a fever, perhaps. His child.
Greyback turned his face to the mouth of the cave and gave a grinning growl at the sight of Remus. "Yours, I smell," he said. "She will be delicious."
Remus made no response, having retreated behind a blank stone wall as Magnus led him to a chair and sat him down. He did not bind him to it with ropes, and the gesture seemed significant. Yet another extended hand of brotherhood.
Greyback finished cleaning the girl's skin, squeezing out the cloth and laying it over the edge of the basin of water. He leaned over the table to admire his work, caressing the girl's smooth pale skin with his ugly fingernails.
He looked up at Remus.
"The father should have the first taste."
Deep behind his eyes, Remus baulked.
Greyback grinned. "We'll show you how it's done."
He lowered his head and took the girl's tiny nipple between his teeth, biting it off and leaving a small circle of blood, which trickled down her undeveloped breast into the valley of her sternum.
I understood that this girl was the small pile of bones I'd accidentally set on fire when we'd uncovered the lair. I recalled the name that had floated above the pile of bones, in thin blue dust. Elisabeth Fletcher.
They cut her open with a knife. Vividly I remembered the day Severus had dissected the small fox we'd found dead in the forest. I'd nearly been sick then from the sight. This was infinitely worse.
"Don't shy away from your first proper meal," Greyback said, noting Remus's ashen face as they spread the girl's torso open and commenced to take her body apart.
Greyback removed her heart and held it in his hands, watching Remus as he lowered his teeth and bit into the organ. Magnus let out a desperate moan, and abandoned the knife, embedded deep against the girl's pubic bone, to lean over the table and part her skinny legs. My stomach turned as he lowered his grimacing mouth towards her vulva.
Greyback snapped at him and he stopped, growling in displeasure as he accepted the silent signals of Greyback's eyes. Wrenching the knife from the girl's body, Magnus cut around the base of her genitals until they came free, limp pink folds in his hand. I repressed the urge to withdraw from the pensive and vomit.
Greyback jerked his head towards Remus and Magnus stepped up t0 the seated man, offering him the soft flesh in his palm.
"It's the easiest part of a woman to eat," Greyback said.
Remus sat very still, catatonic, his eyes staring across the table into the flames of the fire. Magnus lingered there with his hand outstretched, but Remus did not look down. His lips parted slightly and his voice came out, a rasping whisper. "I… will… not."
Magnus looked up at Greyback, who stared at Remus with hard yellow eyes a moment longer, then relented. Remus's shoulders visibly relaxed when Magnus moved away and brought his hand to his mouth, turned towards the entrance of the cave in a moment of private rapture.
"Magnus tells me you had a woman," Greyback said to Remus, as Magnus ate. He had set down the girl's heart and was now sawing the knife gently inside her body. "I can still smell her on you, ever so slightly. You nearly mated with her. Do you still want her?" He paused. "How I wish you would claim your place beside the two of us. Take a mate. We will find her for you."
Remus made no response.
"Still too weak." Greyback lowered his gaze to the girl's insides again, and spoke with a cold calm to Magnus. "Take him back."
The trapdoor creaked open, not so smoothly as usual, and a small boy appeared in the window of evening light above. It was one of the brothers that Greyback had abducted on the fifth of November. The younger one, Brian. He held a jug of water in his hand, and his eyes assessed the thin grey man in the earthen pit with wariness.
Remus was silent. It was simply not in his nature to pose a threat, and the small boy seemed to sense this.
Turning around, he gripped the side of the narrow stairs with one hand as he descended, holding the jug against his chest with his other arm.
He stepped over the muddy floor towards Remus's curled body and stood near him with the earthenware jug in both hands. He seemed to deliberate a moment, then went closer, squatting down as he held the jug out and up towards Remus's mouth. He had small eyes, so expressive and gentle. Remus let his trembling lips open against the rim of the jug, and Brian tipped it up slowly and a little shakily with his thin arms, so Remus could drink.
When the thin man seemed done, the boy set the jug on the ground and with his left hand, the small fingernails brown with dirt, he took a small grey mouse from his pocket. He held it out to the man.
The man took it.
"Thank you," he said.
Brian took the jug and climbed up the stairs again, out of the hole. The trapdoor creaked, and the light disappeared as it was shut.
It opened again, suddenly, days later. The light was cold and pale and Magnus's tall lithe body cut through it as he descended into the hole. The trapdoor lay open above, and Remus was distracted from Magnus's advance by a sudden scent from outside.
"Let me look upon the beast."
A cold voice, recognisable to me anywhere now, in any life, in any nightmare. Lucius Malfoy's face entered the frame of the trapdoor opening and stayed there, as cold and pale as one of his ancestral portraits. His winter eyes looked down into the hole, and he smiled. There was a pause, as he tasted the words he had waited to say for a long time.
"I had your wife, half-breed."
Remus's nostrils flared slightly.
"A short one, Magnus," Greyback said, his boots stepping into view beside Lucius's pale yellow hair.
Magnus drew a sharp knife from his belt and gripped Remus's long hair in his hand, twisting it around his wrist and sawing it short. It all fell in a pile of grey nest-kindling between his feet. He stared at Remus with darkening eyes, as though contemplating something.
As the boy had done, he brought something from his pocket. I didn't get the chance to glimpse it before it was shoved forcefully into Remus's mouth. But I had a guess.
Movements full of vengeance, Magnus held closed Remus's mouth and nose. "Chew," he demanded. "I won't let go until you've swallowed it."
Remus didn't chew. He held his breath until his body jolted as he suffered through the deprivation of air. His eyes burned out of his skull as he stared back at Magnus.
Then they flickered up to Malfoy, watching like a statue from the opening in the ground.
He began to chew.
It was difficult. Whatever was in his mouth was stiff and tough. Magnus growled. "Should have taken what I offered."
Finally he swallowed and Magnus released him, a rattling breath returning to his lungs.
Magnus tugged Remus forward in his weakened state and removed all of his clothes, taking them. Then he plucked a grey hair from Remus's head and climbed up the steps again.
"Get the girl," Greyback's voice growled.
Lucius stayed there a long time, staring down at Remus's naked body, drained of so much life.
"She will be with you very soon," he promised.
Then he stood up and the trapdoor closed with a bang.
The screaming pleas of a young girl could be heard, somewhere aboveground. Phoebe, I realised, being taken from the other cave. Remus's hair was for the Polyjuice Potion she'd be forced to take, and his clothes to cover his doubled body. Malfoy must have indeed given Greyback the location of Shell Cottage. Dropping by the lair after the attack on Severus and me in the Cairngorms, before going to wherever it was he was hiding now.
Remus sensed the enormity of what had happened, and made an effort to move, but was unable. He ended up sprawled on the muddy ground, legs useless, arms useless, sobbing weakly with his face against the dirt.
He was dragged from the hole for the last time on a dark snowy night. Fourteen others were gathered in the cold with the two boys, captives from the other cave, those already turned. The trapdoor had been shut and latched again, the non-werewolves abandoned to a rotting fate.
It was clear that many of them were under the Imperius, although a few stood there willingly. Greyback had turned two bones into two portkeys, two long male femurs, and the werewolves were holding onto them obediently. Remus was put under the unforgivable curse as well, so he would not let go early and escape.
They waited in the darkness and the snow. Then the appointed time arrived, and with a howl of magic, they were gone.
They landed in the forest at the edge of Hogsmeade Village. Greyback growled in quiet fury as he left the recovering group to stare through the darkness at the hulking shadow of Hogwarts in the near distance. Clearly he'd wished to land within the grounds. But the wards were as strong as ever. Hogsmeade was sleeping, nary a candle in a window.
Weaving through the kneeling and supine captives, both small boys quite pale, Greyback found Remus and dragged him up by the neck. He removed the Imperius Curse before questioning him; an excuse to inflict harm.
"How do we get inside?"
"Can't," Remus croaked, once he'd realised where he was. It wasn't hard–the Shrieking Shack stood not far off in the snow, creaking quietly in the wind.
Greyback growled. "There's a way. What is it."
Remus refused to tell.
Greyback dragged him away from the group, leaving Magnus in charge, and pushed him against the trunk of a tree in the forest. He crouched in front of Remus and lowered his mouth to his crotch, inhaling. "She's good, isn't she?" he growled, his voice threatening in the stillness of the forest. "She'll come after you."
Remus closed his eyes, shook his head.
"If you won't take her, I gladly will. I hear she's a sweet little morsel."
Remus kept quiet and waited for it to be over.
I turned my back again.
In the silence of the snowy forest, every sound was painfully clear.
"Tell me how," Greyback panted.
There was no response.
It went on forever.
Finally there was a croaking gasp, and the beginnings of words. I couldn't hear, but Greyback must have bent closer.
"Good boy."
Another minute of vicious grunting before it was over.
Then Greyback carried Remus's body out of the trees.
Magnus was sent deep into the forest with the boys and all but two of the werewolves, the most willing, who were taken along as guards. Greyback, carrying Remus, led them into the decrepit house. Through a hole in the floorboards they descended, and travelled through the passageway to the roots of the Whomping Willow. Sensing a threat, the tree awoke and pummelled its frosty barbed branches against its own trunk–only for a few moments, before Greyback cast Immobulus.
The castle itself seemed to shiver as they entered. Ghosts had been populating the Great Hall and fled when they saw the intruders, even brave Sir Nicholas, wailing. Greyback gave orders to the guards and took Remus down deep into the dungeons. Laid him in the deepest blackest cave, hidden by a boulder. Surrounded by the scentlessness of the freezing ancient stone. The monster knelt and stroked along the scar on Remus's cheek.
"Sleep, little cub."
And he did.
He was briefly, briefly dead.
Then a small blue teardrop fell into the darkness, and he was filled with a memory.
It was a cold day but his heart was warm. He was walking up the cobbles of Diagon Alley, his parents' rings in a pouch in his pocket. A bell jingled up ahead of him and I saw myself, stepping out of a shop with Teddy in my arms, pointing up at the snowflakes.
My head turned towards him and my eyes widened a little. Remus smiled and walked nearer, entering the gentle warm light that came through the front window of the shop. He touched his fingertip to Teddy's nose, then looked down at me, bending to kiss my forehead.
I felt the warmth of the moment afresh, and saw now that it had always been as meaningful to Remus as it had remained to me. And there was something in it that gathered the torn threads and began to mend them back together again.
At first I couldn't breathe. My lips were parted, dripping cold water back into the Pensive, as still as death. A thin blue coil of memory was curled around a lock of my white hair, like the little hand of a child clinging on. Then it slowly eased and I was allowed to step away.
I stared blankly at the magical instruments placed around the office. They seemed to pulse in my vision. Finally I drew a shallow breath that left me lightheaded. I went to the nearest wall for stability, sinking down against it. My mind had been unspooled by the dark history of Remus's recent past. I wanted whatever was deeper than sleep.
Dumbledore's portrait sighed, after I'd spent a long minute on the floor. I turned my head to look up at him, his calm eyes staring back out of the canvas to which he was confined.
"It is the only real tragedy in life. When fear makes love too sparse."
His eyes were all too knowing, and I looked away.
Grey daylight filled the hospital wing and the flames of the lamps seemed pale and purposeless. Remus's dark blue eyes followed me from the door to the chair at his bedside, where I sat, pulling a blanket over myself. Pouncer had been drinking from a saucer of milk beside the bed, and when I returned he hopped up onto the mattress, rubbing his whiskers against the woven blanket.
I regarded Remus silently, and after a long moment leaned forward to offer my hand. It seemed so small there, but so important. The physical manifestation of the last part of me that was still upright. The chess-piece not knocked over. The candle not burned out. I saw his body differently now, and was wary of touching him, unsure. I wondered if this was how Severus saw my own body.
Remus's hand weakly moved across the blankets and touched my fingers, his knuckles resting in my palm.
I'd sensed before the tremendous suffering that he was holding back behind a wall. But now that I had climbed up to look over it, deadening my empathy was impossible. The touch of his skin was the antidote to my numbness and I sobbed bitterly, all of the trauma and rage and brokenness flooding through my eyes. His, and my own.
"Remus," I sobbed, the heaving of my stomach dividing his name into more syllables than belonged.
My body was brought low as the terrible images passed in a macabre parade through my body and mind. Drowned by my tears, I pressed my face against his hand, my tears covering it, and the mucus that ran from my nose. I sobbed like a child, with no room for embarrassment.
I wished he hadn't left. I wished I'd been able to protect him. I wished I hadn't stopped sending him my patronuses.
There was so much anger in me. I wanted to scream, wanted to rage like a man. But my hot red emotions translated themselves into tears instead.
"I want to take it away."
Through the throbbing in my head and my nose, I felt his fingertips touch my hair, the thin strands that curled away from my temple. His fingers trembled but as best he could he gently caressed me there, brushing my hair behind my ear over and over.
I tried to reign in my sobs but failed, winding up with an ugly sound of snot in my nose. Disgust and grief. It was thrice now that I'd cried over him, and I was ashamed. It was selfish of me. I should have been dealing with my emotions elsewhere. But this felt like the only place I could feel them at all. Beside him.
Slowly the repetitive touch of his fingertips in my hair calmed me down. I should have been the one comforting him. I rubbed away my tears and sat up again, my head pounding. I was still holding his hand in mine, and it was now wet with my tears and mucus. "Sorry," I whispered, using a handkerchief to clean it off.
Pouncer was sitting there, his tail curling and uncurling as though no outpouring had taken place.
Looking at Remus's exhausted expression, it truly sank in that he hadn't been properly cared for in ten months. He'd been abused, tortured and raped and forced to eat disgusting things. I couldn't amend that–I never would–but I could try to take care of him now. I pressed his hand gently. "Do you think you could drink some tea?"
His eyes closed as though I'd suggested heaven, and he nodded his head.
"I'll be right back."
The door to Poppy's office was open, though she wasn't inside. I went to the kettle over the small fire and poured hot water into a mug with tea leaves, using charms to stir in a bit of milk and sugar, the way I remembered he took it. I carried it out to him and sat on the edge of the bed, helping him to hold his hands around its heat. When he smelled the steam, tears came into his eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
The tea was too hot to drink, so I took the mug again and sent my soft breath over the surface until it was cool enough. Remus was watching me, and I averted my eyes.
I knew he was too weak to lift the mug himself, so once I was finished with it I leaned forward, bringing it to his lips. His eyelids drooped as he took the first small sip.
I could not save him. Could not erase what had happened. But I could try to lead him through the darkness that filled his mind. A small woman with white hair, holding a lamp in one hand and his hand in the other. I only hoped that my own light had not been dimmed and grimed to the point where it would be of no use to either of us.
After a few sips he nodded his head and I set the tea aside.
It was so quiet between us, only the soft purring of Pouncer making the silence bearable. Remus still looked at me, as though begging me to say something meaningful. But I couldn't.
"Do you want me to read?"
The ocean of guilt in his eyes seemed to calm, to reflect a tiny star of hope. "Yes, please," he whispered.
I remembered what Dumbledore's portrait had said. I'd closed off my heart enough in the past. If one of my tears was strong enough to bring him back from the brink of death… if his desperate whispers in a dark cave in the ground could somehow travel to my ears halfway across the country… then I was surely allowed one thing.
I was still allowed to love Remus. No matter how much had changed. No matter what shape that love took.
Pouncer curled up against Remus's hip, filling the bed with his vibrations. I picked up the red clothbound book from the bedside table, opened it, and started from the beginning.
NOTE
I've been unable to see new statistics on this story for some time now, so would deeply appreciate a review, simply letting me know that you are still getting the updates.
As always please let me know if the warnings can be improved or more clearly emphasised.
Sir Michael Gambon, thank you for your spirit. Requiescat in pace.