Remus was delighted. He was wrapped in a throw blanket, snuggled on the sofa, dipping biscuits into a mug of tea. On the small TV, The Magic Roundabout played quietly, just audible over the stotting rain outside. His mother was curled comfortably on the other end of the sofa, leafing through a muggle newspaper. What more could he want? No full moon 'til almost a week after Christmas, his dad had managed to get time off work and it seemed his mother had gone overboard with the Christmas snack stock-piling. The house was brimming with biscuits, nuts and oranges. Remus didn't think he'd gone an hour without eating since arriving home.
Their little Christmas tree stood on top of a small chest in the bay window, to give it a bit more height, and underneath, an enchanted train set that Remus remembered admiring in a Diagon Alley shop window a few years ago chuffed around the base. They didn't have many magical things in their house. The Lupins had moved several times in the past few years, favouring muggle towns over wizarding settlements simply because muggles were more likely to think they had a badly behaved dog than a werewolf son. It was easy enough to get away with. His mother was a primary school teacher - so there was always work - and Lyall didn't need to worry about his commuting distance. He just needed a dark alleyway to apparate from.
Weirdly, he supposed they were the perfect family for him. Loving and willing enough to reschedule their entire social lives around the affliction of their child. Unbothered by blood politics and appearances enough to not reject and disown him. Content enough with the family they had that he didn't hold them back from any ambitions.
Well, those were the things he told himself when he was in a good mood. He could only pray it was true.
He'd held his biscuit in the cup of tea for too long and it had broken off into the drink and disintegrated into sludge in the bottom. He abandoned the cup on the floor, a little disgusted.
"Hey," Hope whispered, reaching out to poke Remus in the leg with her toe. He turned to see her smiling at him from around her paper.
"Yeah?" He whispered back.
"We missed you."
Remus wanted to try and play it cool - it was hardly the first time she'd said it since he'd returned home a few days ago. But who would he be fooling? He'd missed them so much that he'd cried at the station (much to his embarrassment).
And so, he smiled softly back and flicked the blanket to cover her legs too.
"I missed you guys too."
She put her paper down on the floor and sat up so she could huddle closer and give him a one-armed hug. Remus let her rest her chin on the top of his head. She still smelled like rain from her run to the corner shop earlier.
The TV was interrupted by static as the rain fell heavier than ever.
Hope hadn't even realised she was asleep before she was jolted awake by the most horrifying sound she'd ever heard.
She was halfway down the corridor, heart hammering, before she'd even realised she was awake. Remus had screamed, she was sure. From behind the door ahead of her, she could hear a low rumble and high whimper.
And then another shriek. She only became aware of Lyall behind her when she felt him push roughly past her and slam the door open with his shoulder - ignoring the handle completely.
From behind him, she saw a sickening image. A huge wolf, the size of a grown man, crouched over on the floor of Remus' bedroom. In its wide mouth, an obscenely small leg. And then the blood.
On the floor, on its fur, coating its teeth and dripping from the horrifying jaws, and worst of all, running down that one pale leg. A brutal kind of comprehension fell upon her with the tenderness of a brick as her eyes followed the bloody leg to the stained pyjamas on the tiny body, and landed on the wide-eyed, tear and bloodstained face of her child.
Lyall lunged forward. She could see his wand in his hand, but perhaps his senses had left him - she knew hers had. He charged at the creature, but it had already dropped its prey. The yellow eyes were brighter than the moonlight from the open window. The brightest thing in the room. It bared its teeth at her husband, and she was sure that adrenaline would make him fist-fight it if he had to, but she didn't have time to look.
Crumpled on the bedroom floor, his blood turning the carpet beneath him black in the moonlight, was her five year old son. She tried not to look at his face. She knew he was wide-eyed, square-mouthed and keening pitifully with each wobbly breath. It would only make it harder to keep her head.
It was late summer, and the air was sickly warm and still. How convenient that the little pyjama shorts made it easier to assess the damage. The ankle was mangled, yes, but she could feel gruesomely warm blood flowing over her fingers and she felt further up for the source. Her eyes were almost useless.
Everything was bright red.
Lyall had turned on the light.
"It's gone." He gasped, dropping to his knees beside them. "Jesus Christ."
She didn't answer. She'd found it, her palm clamped over the gnarled bite-wound on his thigh. Her hands were slick. It felt like trying to hold back a river.
"Lyall, do something!" Over everything else, she could hear her heart thudding in her ears. Over the alarm of a disturbed car, over Lyall's ragged breathing, over Remus' whimpering sobbing. "Fix him, please!"
"It can't be fixed."
She heard it, but didn't bother to process it. There was no time for unhelpful statements.
"Of course it can. Apparate us! Or give him a potion, or whatever it is, just do something!" Her teeth were gritted and she could taste salt in her mouth.
She could see, in the corner of her eye, Lyall pointlessly wiping the blood and tears from Remus' face and smoothing his hair out of his eyes. "Magic can't fix this. He's gone."
Hope wanted to hit him, but her hands were busy.
"So help me, then, Jesus Christ! Worry about the wolf when he's not bleeding to death on the fucking floor!"
Perhaps it was the rudeness that awoke him. Snapped from his sad reverie, he seemed to take in the plain reality of the situation. Never mind the werewolf, never mind magic, never mind the politics.
The child was going to bleed to death on the floor.
"Right." He agreed, standing abruptly. She could hear his footsteps thundering down the stairs as he ran for, hopefully, something to help, and stole a brave look at Remus.
He was still staring at her. His eyes were glassy and red.
"I'm so sorry, Mouse." She whispered. "You're so brave."
He just blinked.
Footsteps on the stairs again. The room smelled like blood.
"This might help the bleeding, I'm not sure, but we'll try, then I'll apparate us. But we can't go to Mungo's." Lyall uncorked a small bottle. His hands were shaking as he pushed hers out of the way. The liquid seemed to smoke on contact with the wound and Remus cried out again. He then pulled out what she thought was the cord for his dressing gown and tied it around Remus' thigh before picking up the tshirt Remus had worn the day before from the floor and stuffing it over the wound. Remus retched, and sobbed and stared, hazel eyes wide.
"Let's go." Hope lifted Remus up as she stood to join him. He was heavy and limp, like a dead weight and his head lolled into the crook of her neck. She felt sick. Lyall gripped her bicep wordlessly and the familiar lurch vanished them from the bedroom.
Magic spat them out into the summer air in an alleyway and they hurried out onto the street illuminated by fluorescent light shining from the huge building. The automatic doors slid open at their approach and before they'd opened their mouths, a staff member must have pulled some buzzer and they were swarmed and he was gone.
Hope could only stare, dumbfounded at her empty, bloodied hands as commotion crashed around her. Someone was screaming.
"Ma?"
Wide, hazel eyes stared up at her and she retched.
Remus pulled away from her abruptly and she blinked dumbly at the awkward tangle of long, skinny limbs in front of her. Under the cuff of his trouser leg, she could see that familiar pale, bony ankle marred with shiny pink scars where six years ago Greyback had dragged him from his bed.
Oh.
"Sorry, Mouse," she whispered, wiping her damp face with a shaking hand.
Remus scowled good-naturedly at the babyish nickname and shuffled back up to her to offer a graceless but reassuring hug. She returned it gratefully, pressing her face into his hair again.
That little boy, barely more than a baby, really, had barely left her side for six years. From that day, her life had been forced to bend around him in a way that she couldn't have forseen. The lies and half-truths she'd told, the worried nights on the muggle children's ward, watching the near fruitless attempts to knit the evil wound back together. Months off work, moving house (He wouldn't sleep in the bedroom, of course) away from her family and childhood friends. She'd slept on the floor by his bed, toted him into new jobs with her where he sat in the office down the hall, waiting. She drove him back to Pontypool several times a month to maintain his relationship with her parents. She'd never had another child.
Her whole life, for six years. Awoken by the nightmares in the early morning, hours of dedicated physiotherapy since magic was seemingly useless, evenings and weekends spent tutoring at the kitchen table after Remus cried and clung to her at the school gates in their new hometown.
And now all she'd have were glimpses, a few weeks here and there in the years where he'd grow from a twiggy, knobbly kneed eleven year old into a man.
How lucky she was to suffer this grief.
*The Magic Roundabout really did air on the 22nd Dec 1971 on British TV- I checked.
I had a look at some other tellings of The Bite, just to see how others had imagined it. I was surprised to see a lot of Lyall hate. I'm not sure where that's come from. I think his story's a cool concept for a character.
I spent far too long trying to decide where in Wales they live. I've only been there a couple of times and don't want to pretend to know how to describe it well enough so I just went vague. But I did have a quick look to see where a hospital that would be major enough for Lyall to have heard of it and that also had an A&E running in the 1960s and that ended up being Cardiff Royal, though I'm sure there are plenty of others. It's a very cool looking building.
Remus needed a pet name and I felt like Mouse was the kind of weird family nickname that you eventually get to from Remus.
Like how my cousin's nickname became Pops (his name has no Ps in it) or how June became Bug.