February 15, 1979
Remus had expected a small crowd at best, perhaps a good twenty people, but the basement concealed beneath a dumpster the end of an alley deep in Muggle London harbored nearly sixty people, all speaking over each other so that the stone walls echoed with raucous laughter, shouting, and exclamations that deafened Remus as he descended into the din. Dazed, he followed Liam through the crowd.
"Let me introduce you to- oy! Sibella!" he yelled over the noise, joining them to a small circle of people and making quick introductions between Remus and a black witch with bantu knots atop her head. Remus could not hear a word she said, but grinned widely and shook her hand. He made similar gestures to the other witch and wizard in the circle but did not hear their names at all. Liam left very suddenly, and the others waited expectantly for Remus to speak.
"Um...sorry, I can't hear a thing!" shouted Remus.
"Is this your first meeting?" enunciated Sibella, whose voice stood out at a tinny pitch that kept it separate from the general clamor. Remus nodded, and got a thumbs up as a response. Liam appeared a moment later with a beer, shoving it in his hand.
Another ten minutes of indecipherable conversation went by, growing less indecipherable as Remus's ears became used to the noise. He worked out that Sibella was relatively new to meetings as well, after being outed by her manager at her job as a Ministry clerk. She had been bitten just two years ago, and the swiftness with which her usual world had cast her out had shocked her. Remus listened in silence, pretending to be shy. In reality, he was terrified, waiting every second for Fenrir Greyback to make his entrance.
Remus had not met Fenrir Greyback since Greyback had broken into his home as a small child and bitten him out of revenge for comments his father had made regarding werewolves when he had worked in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Remus was very aware of the irony every time he was declined for a job that the very registration keeping him unemployed was his own father's doing. And he had blamed him, in his darker moments, both for the laws and for his own lycanthropy. But more than that, he blamed Greyback.
When Remus was old enough, he had begun to research his condition, as well as the man who had caused it. When he had grown even older, and met other werewolves, he had learned even more. All of it had amounted to the conclusion that Fenrir Greyback was a monster. From what he had heard, Greyback considered his transformation as his truest state, his purest return to animal instinct, and regarded his time as a human as the unfortunate side effect of his condition. And he had made it his personal mission to infect as many people as possible.
Which made Remus very, very concerned about the sixty werewolves eagerly waiting for Greyback to speak.
A tittering hush descended over the crowd and Remus turned with them as the werewolves cast their attention on a small stage at the end of the room. Liam stood there, looking excited.
"Welcome, werewolves, to our weekly meeting! A special welcome to those of you who are here for the first time, I know there are quite a few of you!" He winked in Remus's direction, and Remus felt his stomach turn over, but forced a grin. "It is eleven days until the full moon, and so I'd like to invite a member who has a lot of exciting plans for us to come to the stage and let us know what to expect in the next week. If all goes well, this next full moon will be unlike anything any of us have experienced before. Please come up, Fenrir!"
The other werewolves broke out into applause as Liam receded into the background, and a very big man leapt up onto the stage. He turned to face the audience, raising his arms as they applauded, and Remus laid eyes on the man who had turned him into a werewolf for the first time in nearly twelve years.
"Brothers and sisters," said Greyback, his voice coarse, like his long dark hair. He paced as he spoke, gesturing with large, gnarled hands spiked with long, yellow nails that looked almost like claws. Remus felt a shiver with every word, but in his mind he was replaying over and over the memory of waking to a sound outside his window, of the shatter of glass, the piercing pain in his arm as a dark wolf bigger than his bed, bigger than anything, had snapped his jaws around his bone and sank his teeth into his skin, marking him forever as cursed.
He wanted to run. A ringing filled his ears and he closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. He had a job to do. He took another breath and tried to focus on what Greyback was saying.
"My associates and I have secured a place for us to run free. This could become an ongoing arrangement, but I will need each and every one of you to help support our cause if we want to make our freedom a reality. A new world is coming, and I, for one, plan to make sure we have a place in it!" barked Greyback. The audience applauded again, some cheering. Remus looked for any conflicted faces, but most of the audience were listening with rapt attention, their eyes wide.
"This brings us to the second part of our preparation," said Greyback. "But first, a story. I was sixteen years old when I was bitten. Like many of you, I was shunned by society. My family disowned me. My friends turned their backs on me. I was an outcast, left to scrape out a living whatever way I could, and once a month I lived a tortured hell locked in a dungeon or basement for the sake of those who had cast me out. Until one day, I decided that I would no longer suffer under the rule of wizards who, when it came down to it, feared me. They feared what I could do. Why did that mean that they had the power to lock me away? That they had the power to make my life hell, because that's what it is, brothers and sisters. Who really has made your life hell? The wizard or the wolf?"
A smattering of applause and cheering broke out, and Fenrir let it fuel his speech as he continued.
"From then on I embraced the wolf within myself. I transformed under the moon, ran free in the forests of Eastern Europe, felt the air in my lungs and the soil in my claws, and I suffered no more! Now I know it takes time, and there are a lot of you who choose not to embrace the wolf because you are afraid. But that is why this next full moon must be our time to run together, to give you that experience so that for once in your life you will know what it means to not be afraid. We will be free!"
Remus spotted Liam through the crowd, pushing a cart towards the drink table. On the cart was a cauldron, and a few rows of cups. On stage, Greyback spoke over the applause.
"How many of you have heard of the Wolfsbane potion?" he asked. Uncertain whether or not the question was meant to be rhetorical, half of the audience raised their hand. Remus watched Liam as he began to dole out a blue potion into each of the cups. Greyback continued, "Invented only a few years ago by Damocles Belby, the Wolfsbane potion grants a werewolf the retention of his human mind during a transformation."
The audience whispered excitedly. More of them had noticed Liam and his cart.
"Groundbreaking stuff," said Greyback, although his tone suggested that he had other ideas. "You'd think the Ministry would have rejoiced, would have made it publicly accessible, for every werewolf to take his share and remain safe for the full moon. But wizards fear wolves like chickens in a coop. Only the most advanced potioneers can brew the potion correctly, its use is banned at St. Mungo's, who still resort to caging werewolves in their basement during a full moon, and the ingredients are kept at sky high prices to prevent us from supplying our own. Well we have managed to find ourselves a potioneer, and we have managed to get our hands on the ingredients for the next full moon, and we have the potion here, today, to grant you that peace of mind."
More applause, impassioned this time. But Remus sensed something else was coming. Greyback had taken a seat on the edge of the stage, down to the audience's level to relate to them.
"But what about next month?" he asked. "And the month after that? And the month after that? And years down the road? This dose is but a quick fix of a systemic problem. Now, our community is bigger than it has ever been, largely due to the efforts of Liam Wilder, our recruiter." Greyback cast a clawed hand in Liam's direction, and everyone cheered. Liam beamed. "But with the Ministry registry tightening control over our numbers, we will never have enough members to make them listen. Which is why we need to broaden our recruitment efforts."
Remus felt his insides disappear. Greyback was getting to his feet again, his great height towering over the audience below him.
"If we take this potion to dull our wolf senses and retain our wizard minds next full moon, we need to use them! According to St. Mungo's, 75% of werewolf bite victims die of their injuries. This is 75% of our community who do not survive the bite! If we remove that risk, our numbers would triple, quadruple. Our society would grow, and the Ministry would be forced to recognize our community!"
Fewer people applauded at this, but those who did were enthusiastic enough to cover for the gaps. Remus spotted a man near the front who was jumping up and down with passion, jabbing a fist in the air. He was wearing no shirt under his robes, and his scars were fully on display. Greyback was smiling.
"If they refuse to understand, let's make them understand!" he bellowed. "We need to get them young, so they grow to learn what it means to be bitten by the wolf, the pleasure and the pain, untainted by ingrown prejudice and self-hatred. We need to get them active, so that as a community we can change our circumstances. But most of all, we need to get them alive."
Remus felt sick. Liam was handing out the potion, now, and the crowd around Remus was herding in that direction. He wanted to leave, but he knew that would just make him look suspicious. So he let the crowd steer him towards the potion, and accepted a cup from Liam with a forced smile. He cheersed with Sibella, who looked bright with hope and inspiration. He drank the potion in tandem with her, but the first mouthful made him choke, and he coughed heavily.
Liam slapped him on the back, and draped an arm around his shoulders as he rejoined their group enthusiastically, but Remus felt as though his legs might give way beneath him, because in the potion he had tasted an ingredient that he knew for a fact was not a part of the original recipe, but Mariah's signature flourish. Honeysuckle.
