***Again, don't look too hard at a calendar if you don't want to get pissed off. For the entirety of PoA, the full moon dates are all off. I'm sticking in the vicinity and staying vague but GOSH it makes me mad

From the playlist:

September - Earth, Wind & Fire (lol)

September - alixe

Moonage Daydream - David Bowie

Rusalka, O Silver Moon - Dvorak, Fleming, London Symphony Orchestra

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Ch. 19 - The Equinox

Remus watched the days of September sweep by like slides on a viewfinder. As the collective settled comfortably into the first term, life in the castle took on a gentle sort of uniformity. Everything eased into a steadiness that, under different circumstances, Remus might've found a bit tedious; but here, the homogeneity of the days offered him something that felt oddly compassionate. His afternoons spent in the back corner of the library reading up on his curriculum had become a sacred part of his routine, and while he was occasionally interrupted by students who'd spotted him sitting back there and asked for his help, that felt sacred in a way, too. One of the benefits of the practical lessons was that he didn't need to assign copious amounts of busywork, but when he did have something to grade, he'd brew himself a cup of tea, sit at that beautiful desk in his office, and give himself over to the tranquil monotony of it as if it were his evening meditation.

It hadn't taken him long to decide that he truly enjoyed teaching, and everything that came along with it. The meticulousness of planning, preparing, and executing his lessons felt less like drudgery and more like diversion to him. He still had a lot to learn, and he was having to adapt a great deal quicker than he ever thought he could, but for the very first time in Remus's life, something seemed to be coming naturally to him.

Most of all, he was enjoying getting to work with the students. Each of them were like little puzzles, and no two puzzles were alike. They absorbed information differently, they processed it differently, and some of them even recapitulated that information back to him in ways Remus never would've imagined. By their fourth class together, Dean Thomas had asked if he might receive extra credit for turning in anatomical drawings of the creatures they were studying, and last week, Eddie Carmichael had come by his office to show him a song he'd composed to remember the list of jinxes they were learning about. Catering the lessons to the various idiosyncrasies of the students had been an invigorating challenge.

It fascinated him that many of his pupils were related to people he'd gone to school with, or worked alongside back in the old days - and more fascinating than that was noticing when the idiosyncrasies lined up, or didn't. There was Harry, of course. From the little Remus had observed, he seemed to be an amalgamation of all the best things about both James and Lily, even without them raising him. Harry didn't know it, (and shamefully, Remus still hadn't told him so,) but he could not have been a more perfect legacy for his parents. Conversely, Neville struck him as being very different from both Alice and Frank, but he suspected the boy was still growing into his own, and that might change someday. And dear Gideon and Fabian Prewett had so many niblings walking around, he didn't know what to make of it. It seemed he could cast a spell in any direction and hit a Weasley, and by God, what a treat.

His classes were progressing precisely on schedule. The first years were now well into their Spirits unit, and Sir Nicholas had kindly consented to come in for Q&A sessions about ghosts. Remus had plans to ask Hagrid to do the same when his second years covered giants, but after Buckbeak, he'd decided against it. He wished he could humanize werewolves in that way for his third years when they got there. For now, they'd concluded their unit of red caps, and were happily observing the kappas Hagrid had procured for him. And speaking of the kappas, as promised, Remus had kicked off review sessions for the fourth year Ravenclaws, but it wasn't long before the other houses joined in, too. He'd devised a very amusing exercise for the fifth years covering the Human-presence-revealing spell - Dumbledore had agreed to let them play a large scale game of hide-and-seek on the second floor. The sixth years were practicing non-verbal magic with a game he'd come up with in which the class had to guess an incantation based on a spell's result, giving them each a chance to practice. As for the select few seventh years in his N.E.W.T. level class, they were receiving dueling training akin to the kind Mad-Eye had put him through for the Order, with a heavy focus on spells that had come up on the last three exams.

Of course, the job had its downsides. For instance, Snape had caught wind of the boggart incident, and was more venomous than ever. Each time they passed each other in the corridor, Remus's smile was met with a cold glare, and oftentimes a muttered insult. He hadn't anticipated the buzz the incident might create, and did feel a bit bad after the fact. Considering the calendar, it hadn't been a very wise choice, in hindsight. Snape might serve him his Wolfsbane with a side of belladonna.

And his stamina on the stairs was not improving a whit. Even though his body was feeling better than it had in years, building muscle was not something it had ever been good at. The cane helped. It helped a lot, actually. But he could not fathom how he managed to trek up to Gryffindor tower every bloody day as a student. That youthful endurance was unthinkable now.

Unrelated to the job, but he hadn't heard from Emmeline. She did say she would keep him informed, and logically, he knew that if something important had happened, she would've told him…so he didn't know why the lack of correspondence was making him itchy. It wasn't as if their meeting earlier that month had been enjoyable, per say. With the exception of the truce at the outset, he wouldn't even go so far as to say it had been nice. Civil, yes. Productive, yes. But not at all comfortable, particularly by the end there. He kept thinking of things he could've done differently that might have gotten her to lower her defenses a little, and was having to remind himself that he'd deserved those defenses.

And it was a shame, because sometimes after his work day ended, despite himself, he would've liked to tell her about it. The students were clever, and funny, and he came out of classes with stories to share, but no one to share them with. He'd dared to pen a few letters, just casual things; but they'd all ended up vanished off the parchment. It probably had nothing to do with Emmeline, and was nothing more than a prolonged lack of friends making him want to latch onto the closest thing he had to one. After that meeting, the fact that she was the closest thing was depressing, honestly; but she was also his last link back to better days.

Right as September slipped away, he woke up to another downside: having to teach a full day of classes before a full moon; with a fever, a migraine, and joints that may as well have been blades to boot.

As usual, the symptoms had ruined his night's sleep, meaning he would be running on very little of it today. He had a long, hard look at himself in the mirror that morning to decide whether he was fit to see his classes or not. Dumbledore had told him he was allowed sick days, and he knew he looked even worse than he felt; but he was reluctant to be the reason his students fell behind, particularly the fifth and seventh years with exams on the horizon. He was determined to give it a go, knowing he could excuse himself at lunch if necessary. Anyway, it was a Friday. He'd get to spend the next two days recovering in bed.

But about halfway through his first class with the seventh years, he realized he might've made a mistake. The fog in his mind was so thick, he felt like he was having to wade back and forth through a river of boiled oats just to arrive at the banks of coherent responses to the students' questions. He had to resort to assigning them reading from their textbooks for the rest of the class.

He hoped the following period with the first years might go a bit better, since the material was less advanced. For a while, it did. Until:

"You won't find a banshee outside of Ireland," he lectured, trying to massage the pins and needles out of his hands. "However, for centuries, wizarding parents all over the globe have taken advantage of their frightfulness to encourage their children to behave. For example."

He looked right at Lucy.

Why had he looked right at Lucy?

"Perhaps your father used to frighten you with stories of the banshee in the closet, who would come out in the middle of the night unless you ate all your vegetables at dinner."

"My dad's a muggle," Lucy replied matter-of-factly.

He seemed to get stuck in the boiled oats.

Oh.

But some of the students must've thought his hesitation gave them permission to snicker. Lucy looked around at them, unsure why that was something she should be ashamed of.

"How very fortunate," Remus quickly resumed, scrambling out of the mush in his mind.

The other students put a stop to their hushed remarks.

"My mother was a muggle," he told her humbly, but proudly. "She introduced me to many wonderful things I never would have known about if I'd grown up in a household with two magical parents. You'll have to inform your classmates about the wonders of the telephone."

Nipping that in the bud seemed to be the only good thing that came out of his teaching that day.

He pushed through the rest of his classes, then tackled the stairs gradually, one by one - which took a considerable amount of time and earned him some perplexed looks. Snape was already waiting outside his office door with the steaming goblet.

"Thank you, Severus," he panted. Shockingly, their interactions that week with the potion had been short and relatively tame. So far, no belladonna in the brew. But he opted for poison elsewhere.

"It's getting late, and I do have to run, Lupin. If you wouldn't mind-" Snape shoved the goblet into his grasp rather hard. "-drinking that now."

"Of course…" Remus said breathlessly, swiping the dribble that had sloshed out onto his robes. "If I could just sit down first-"

"I am doing you a favor . It seems fair to ask that, in return, you respect my time." His eyes were vindictive. "Drink," Snape sneered, with a hard emphasis on the "k."

Remus reigned in a scowl. He felt like he might keel over, and Wolfsbane was not a liquid that lended itself well to chugging. Not only that; there was a group of students on their way down the corridor. In order to keep the peace hanging in its delicate balance, Remus leaned up against the wall, tipped his chin back, and poured the potion down his throat. He did manage to finish it, but not without a coughing fit for a finale.

Snape snatched the goblet out of his hands and stalked down the corridor, leaving Remus doubled over and wheezing. "Enjoy your evening. Try not to break anything," he said loudly right as the students were passing.

Remus thrust himself into his office and locked the door, then stumbled to lean up against his desk where the forceful coughs devolved to gags. The consistency of the potion was too thick, and the taste too foul to take the dose that way. If this went on for much longer and the Wolfsbane came back up, he'd be fucked.

"Aguame-heh-enti," he sputtered, pointing his wand at the mug on his desk and sipping from it in desperation. The convulsions in his throat began to subside. One hand at a time, he worked his way around the desk and collapsed into his chair, trying to remember how to take full breaths. The coughing had increased the migraine about a hundred fold.

When his oxygen intake seemed to resemble normal, he checked his watch. Just the small motion of lifting his wrist felt so much more effortful than it had an hour ago, so the full moon couldn't have been too far off. September, north Scotland…Yes, not much longer now.

With his hands pushing into the surface of the desk, he feebly dragged himself up and extended his legs all the way, earning him some angry, painful pops from his knees. He threw himself at the wooden door into his living quarters, swishing his wand lazily to clear the furniture and leave the rug in the center bare for the butchery. Casting off his robes and clothes, he curled up in a ball on the floor.

For about another hour and a half, he laid there shivering, too weak and too delirious with fever to do much about it. He kept his eyes on the dying light outside the window and his wand in his clutches. He would have to time the Silencing charm just right: cast it late enough to cover the sounds of the transformation, but not so late that the transformation took him first.

In the shaking and the silence, a ruinous anxiety arose. What if, after so many years, the potion wouldn't work? What if his body had been without it for so long, that his cells were resistant to the effects somehow? And that was if Severus had brewed it correctly in the first place. Snape's expertise was undeniable, but there was a reason that the Wolfsbane had taken Belby so long to develop, and a reason it was so costly. It was meticulously complicated. One stir in the wrong direction would've rendered it ineffective. Remus had no idea if this was Snape's first crack at it. Even if it wasn't, he could've been wilfully careless. Snape would've loved nothing more than to give Dumbledore a reason to sack Remus - he just didn't know what lengths he might go to to accomplish it. Really, this whole thing was a test run, and if it failed, the consequences could be disastrous. His father was right. He should never have agreed to this. He should've asked to be chained up in the shack.

And then he began to hallucinate. He had enough of a grip on his mental faculties to know it was just the fever, but it didn't assuage the distress of having to see Emmeline laying next to him, looking exactly as she had in 1979 when he'd nearly shredded her to death with his claws. There'd been so much blood soaking the fibers of that coat. He never wanted her to bleed for him. He reached towards her, but she was so still.

The moment his muscles all began to cramp at once signaled the imminent onset of the transformation, and his final act was to turn his wand on himself and strain out the incantation of the Silencing charm. He managed to roll the wand away with a violently shaking hand just before the mutation seized him. His jaw unclenched to scream, but no sound came out. One at a time, his vertebrae began to enlarge and spasmodically rearrange themselves, the sheer torment of which never failed to shock him, even after twelve of these per year going on nearly thirty years now. The problem with the Silencing charm was that his inability to vocalize forced him to listen to every bony snap. Tears were streaming noiselessly down his cheeks as his ribs grew to match his spine, caging him inside himself. Each of his arms and legs cracked as they lengthened, along with what was attached to the end of them. Where he once had ankles, he now had hocks, and each finger and toe extended twice or three times their normal size. He was aware of every single follicle of wiry fur stabbing through his stretching skin as they pushed out. The tissue of his nail beds was thrust out from underneath into those loathsome claws, and his mouth jutted out into a snout to accommodate the fangs.

He lay heaving, but it never ended there. The wolf always saved the best for last, leaving Remus cognizant as Remus up until the moment the physical transformation concluded, so that he felt the pain of everything before getting ripped from his own mind. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited.

Except…

The transformation had not touched his mind. His one mercy in the mutilation, thanks to the potion.

Wobbling as he pushed up off the floor, he crept on all fours to peer into the small mirror on his writing desk. He detested the sight of himself, but at least he had the ability to.

He felt like he'd just smelled the chamber for the first time, too. The must was amplified now, and he detected a faint damp odor on the stone. There was another smell though; something lovely, and fresh, and familiar . He followed the scent to the window and poked it with the tip of his nose, nudging open the pane.

Oh, the forest smelled heavenly. The cool blend of rich earth, crisp pine, and fragrant flora made for a soothing, almost restorative inhalant. Remus indulged in deep breaths, reminiscing again. There had been a time when he was sick of forests; when he would've given anything to rid himself of tall shadows and mangled undergrowth. But he hadn't been around Hogwarts with these heightened senses since his seventh year, and realized now just how much he'd missed it. Even the moon, usually the thing he detested the most in the universe, was casting iridescent light onto the trees in the distance, giving everything a silvery glow. When he shut his eyes, he could fashion images of the rat, the stag, and even the dog galavanting through the trees. It had been the most irresponsible thing in the world, but good God, had it been fun.

He didn't know how long he sat with his nose out the window, but he felt himself starting to nod off in the sill. Deeming it safe to do so, he slowly eased himself up onto the bed and shut his eyes, drifting off to the sounds of the wind rustling through the leaves. Even now, it was good to be back.

…

He awoke to someone prodding his back and shoulders.

"Good morning, Madam Pomfrey," he grunted into his pillow.

He felt her slide her arm underneath him to turn him on his side. "Upsy-daisy-"

"Oh- Jesus," he muttered inadvertently, covering himself with the sheet.

"Nothing I haven't seen before."

Yeah, that had been one thing at thirteen. Full-grown at thirty-three was a bit of a different story.

"Only a few scratches, and not so deep," she assessed, vanishing the dried blood off the sheets. She then sat on the side of the bed and began rifling through a black leather bag on the nightstand. "I daresay you're improving."

Remus tried unsuccessfully to scoot himself up to sit, but surrendered onto his back with a groan. Comparatively, the night hadn't been all that bad with the Wolfsbane. Even after his cruel treatment in the hallway, Remus had half a mind to write Severus a thank-you card.

"This may sting a little…well, you know the drill," warned Madam Pomfrey as she unscrewed the cap off a jar.

He didn't so much as flinch as she packed the scratches with powdered silver. "I thought my door was only supposed to open for me."

"It wouldn't be very practical for there to be places on the school grounds that a nurse could not access, now would it?" She worked deftly with the silver, then reached for the dropper bottle of dittany. "I did knock."

"I didn't hear."

"Clearly."

"...I can get this, you know," he reminded her.

"Mhm," she hummed, still administering the dittany.

"...If you had other things to attend to."

"I do not."

"...I've been doing it myself for a long time."

"And look how well that's worked out for you," she tutted.

"...Touché."

She sealed the bottle, then enchanted the gauze and tape to cut and secure themselves to his skin. "Are you feverish?" she asked, reaching out to feel his forehead. "Let me go down and mix a few things. It'll take me a minute, though. I haven't done this since you were a student."

"Don't trouble yourself. The fever usually dies down in a few hours."

Madam Pomfrey fixed him with an exasperated glare and huffed. "Mister Lupin, why is it so very difficult for you to accept care when it is offered?"

He was far too tired and far too reluctant to come up with a real answer for that one, so instead he just said: "I'm not used to having anyone there to offer it anymore."

Well that sounded pitiful.

He thought he might've noticed Madam Pomfrey's eyes soften a touch. "...You have it now, so hush."

"Yes ma'am."

She stood up and snapped her leather bag shut. "I'll be back in a half an hour or so. But since you seem so determined to suffer, I feel the need to say that if I come back and you've moved from that spot, you'll be sorry."

"Understood."

"I mean it, Mister Lupin."

"I'll be still as a stump."

"Good. Do," she ordered as she left the room.

Remus shut his eyes again.

It was so good to be back.