That Friday evening, the pack held a memorial service for Lilith. They had been her only family and probably would be the only ones to mourn her. It was a simple thing, held in the pack's clubhouse. The Alpha had decided to borrow from a wake tradition and had provided plenty of booze.
Teddy was one of the first there and was drunk by the time the rest of the pack arrived. He didn't remember most of it, which he didn't mind at all. His days were already a haze of anger and pain. He didn't need anyone to jab a knife into his wounds by telling him how wonderful Lilith was or any other tired platitudes. And as far as he could remember, being drunk had been a pretty effective deterrent against most of the pack approaching him with any of that type of commentary.
However, the alcohol hadn't stopped the dreams. They had come to him every night since Lilith's murder. Like all the times before, the night of the wake he woke drenched in a cold sweat and his heart beating too rapidly. He finally did get back to sleep, but the next morning, those same nightmares woke him hours earlier than he had planned. As he sat slumped on his bed, sleep deprived, head pounding, and bile in his throat, he finally decided to do something about these nightmares.
He thought that if he could confront whatever was causing these nightmares, maybe they would fade out on their own. It was a method that Harry had used in the past with a younger Teddy and a much simpler type of nightmare. The problem was, Teddy wasn't sure what his subconscious was trying to tell him with these memories or how he could address it. The rite rituals sort of made sense; during Lilith's ritual, he had felt helpless in the face of her pain from the rite-inflicted wound. It was similar to how he felt now.
However, the memory of his first change seemed out of place. Why would he remember the horrible hospital and his first few torturous full moons spent as a wolf? He decided to focus on that memory because it was the most obvious puzzle to unlock. It was also the easiest memory to recreate. All he had to do was visit the room he had been locked in.
He spent the rest of the afternoon using charms and potions to help the worst of his hangover pass. Once he felt as human as he could get, Teddy decided to visit the hospital that day. No time like the present and all that. Besides, leaving for the hospital also gave him a good excuse to avoid the more somber part of the memorial service that would drag through the afternoon and early evening. If anyone asked why he missed the service, all he had to say was he was visiting a patient at the hospital. It was true, as far as it went.
Before entering St. Mungo's, Teddy used his metamorphmagus powers, inherited from his mother, to disguise his face. It was something that Harry had insisted upon when Teddy used to visit regularly. As Teddy walked down the bustling hallways, the healers gave him as little attention as they had back when he visited every month. The old patterns gave Teddy a not-completely-unpleasant nostalgia for when he had first become a werewolf.
When he started to show signs of potential werewolfism at Hogwarts, Harry had pulled Teddy out of school every full moon. Given the prejudice Teddy's father had suffered, Harry had been vigilant when Teddy became more irritable and restless around the full moon the summer before his third year. Then Harry had become almost paranoid about concealing Teddy's werewolfism when it finally did appear. In order to hide the secret from everyone, Harry had stowed Teddy somewhere where no one would think to look: in an already occupied hospital room.
That room was conveniently placed at the very end of a hallway, away from the other patients. It was also in a part of the hospital that rarely had visitors. Today was no exception. As he walked, the bustle around Teddy thinned until the only distinctive sound was the scuff of his own shoes.
The silence had the unfortunate side effect of reminding him of the patient's room he was about to enter. It was always silent there.
The patient was in a perpetual magical coma and had no need for the healers to come and go with any frequency. On the days around the full moon, Harry had forbidden anyone to enter her room. Since he paid for her care out of his own pocket, no one had bothered to argue. Between that and the wards against sound, it had always been almost deathly silent when Teddy had visited.
With little more than a glance around, he pushed into the room. Because he was on the pre-approved visitor list, the magical wards allowed him entrance without needing to alert a healer. Those same wards would warn him if any of the healers were to come to the room. He would have enough warning to pull on his disguise again; so, with some relief, Teddy allowed his features to return to normal.
Still, the little relief that gave him was eclipsed by the uneasiness of entering a room straight out of his nightmares. The room looked just as it had back when he had regularly visited to spend his full moon nights here. The only difference was that it was full of sunlight rather than the cool moonlight.