Thirteen Moons

THIRTEEN MOONS

chapter 01: the first full moon that mattered

What beckoning ghost along the moonlight shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
To the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. Line 1.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

The darkness inside me is a complex thing, alive and aware. There are times when it chooses to stay deep beneath the surface, times when I nearly forget that it is there. And there are times, thankfully rare, when it erupts, dark and hot and lethal, so powerful that I forget that I am here.

Whether the darkness is at bay or whether it is raging, it is always there, drawing from parts of me I would rather ignore. It is a Gordian knot of pain and anger, frustration and jealousy, fear and insecurity, of loss.

Sirius' death has set the darkness to raging. It is closer to the surface now than at any time outside the full moon. Its siren song is intense and constant, a horrible-beautiful wail too dangerous to heed. Too tempting to ignore.

How best to master the darkness, to get past loss and grief and pain, to gain a toehold and start climbing out of the pit? To discover a way to achieve some sort of control?

Control. For almost as long as I can remember, control has been the goal I've sought. Control over my feelings. Control over my environment.

Control over my disease.

My mother blamed it on what she called 'the accident.' She might have been right. She was a Muggle, and hadn't lost touch with her world when she made the choice to live in my father's and mine. And in the years immediately following 'the accident,' she spent a great deal of time poring over Muggle books trying to learn something--anything--to help me cope.

Well, I'm here, and reasonably well-adjusted most of the time. I suppose that whatever she did worked fairly well.

She might have been right about why control is so important to me as well. It might be compensation for my lack of control over my illness.

It doesn't matter in the end. As she always told me, half-teasing, I can't control everything.

Sirius' death proves that beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Sometimes I really miss her.

Sometimes it's damnably difficult, not being able to talk to her. But after what they did to her, I'm glad she's at rest.

No one should have to live like that.

Still, losing Sirius has me wishing for my mother again, like a child lost in the dark.

Lost in the dark.

Apt comparison, that.

The darkness came to me when I was four.

It has never left.

It's strange, but when I try to remember the night the darkness came to me, it all seems dream-like, a story someone told me that I can only remember vaguely. A story that happened to someone else.

It's in dreams that I truly remember it. Vivid dreams, painted darkly in terror and blood. In madness.

I dreamt of it last night, for the first time in years.

I'm not fool enough to deny that Sirius' death has me tied in knots. That I felt the darkness rise up immediately on seeing it happen, tearing at what little control I could grasp.

I'm not fool enough to deny that the darkness powers the nightmare.

But I am fool enough to relive it, and to grieve for the boy I was. That naïve, innocent boy who thought the world was his playground and he would live happily ever after.

Sometimes, when I can feel the darkness taking hold, I wish that little boy dead of his long-ago wounds.

Dead before he learned that life was anything but a parade of sweetness and light.

Dead before he ever thought to sneak outside to play in the light of the full moon.

*

He waited until they were both asleep. He knew they were asleep, because he could hear his father's deep snore, and his mother's quiet breathing. This was going to be the best joke ever, he thought, and barely managed to stifle the giggles that threatened.

He went down the stairs slowly and quietly, because if he hurried he might forget which stairs creaked or which ones were a little crooked. He didn't want to fall, because that would wake them both up. That would be bad, because he wouldn't get to play his joke.

At the bottom of the stairs, he nearly tripped over his mother's slippers--the ones with the funny rabbit ears on them, that he loved to play with while she made breakfast. He had to be more careful. He crept, with a four-year old's stealth, down the corridor, across the kitchen, and over to the door.

He paused at the doorway, uncertain. Had his parents remembered to charm the door? The last time he had tried to sneak out, only a few weeks ago, he had been caught almost immediately by the loud whooping bray of the door.

He giggled a little, remembering that his mother had called it her Remus alarm, then remembered what he was after, and frowned thoughtfully.

Deciding that the joke was too good to risk the door, he headed over to the windows in the parlour. It was his Mum's room, pretty and full of things that seemed to break if he even looked at them. He never went in there if he could help it, so he thought it would be the best one to try. He dragged a chair, ever so carefully, over to the window, clambered up onto it, and tried the window.

It opened smoothly and silently, just far enough so that he could slip out into the night. Grinning, he gave a triumphant little skip before running toward the back of the house.

The grass was wet with dew, and it felt slippery and cool under his bare feet. He walked through the garden, staring up at the full moon. A gentle breeze rustled the grass around him, tickling his legs.

Slugs forgotten, he wandered through the silver-lit garden, a slim boy, tall for his age, whose sandy hair gleamed in the moonlight. Shadows of rosebushes and lilacs, of the hawthorn tree, of climbing vines and down-arching branches danced on the moon-white grass, and he laughed softly, skipping along the paths.

The trees on the edges of the forest beyond the garden swayed lightly in the breeze, their leaves silver-tipped. He watched them for a few moments, and remembered the slugs. His trick on his Mum and Dad at breakfast. The best trick so far, the one he'd spent days and days planning.

Branches dipped, leaves dancing on the wind, and he forgot everything but the odd silvery light and the hypnotic sway of the trees as he headed out the garden gate and into the wild.

There was nothing here he was not familiar with, and the trees were sparse enough to let moonlight through. It was only when he passed the fork in the path that the moonlight disappeared entirely, and he was left standing in near-total darkness beneath the trees.

Still, he was brave and he knew to stay to the path. He turned to trace his way back to the garden, to home, unfazed by the growing wind, unafraid of the darkness.

The wolf was on him like lightning.

One moment he was standing on the path, facing toward home, telling himself to remember about the slugs. The next, he was down. Face pressing into dirt. Small stones cutting his legs. Lying crushed under warm heavy fur. Hearing deep growls. Feeling claws cutting into his back.

It turned him over onto his back.

He screamed.

Yellow eyes gleamed harshly in the bare light. Gray-silver pelt matted with dirt brushed against his arms and legs. The wolf, massive, held him pinned. Bent to sniff. Moved off and away.

He scrambled up. Started to run. Started to scream. Saw moonlight on path ahead. Heard the wolf chasing.

Growling.

Snarls like an approaching freight train.

Thud of paws like thunder in his ears.

Growling.

Teeth snapping.

Hot breath on his neck.

Falling.

Pinned again, breathing harshly, he stared up at the wolf. It stared back, unmoved. As if it knew that this was a game. As if it knew that it would win.

He kicked as hard as he could.

Wolf-howl behind him. Running for his life. Running toward home. Breath coming in gasps. Arms and legs pumping.

Reaching for moonlight.

Reaching the moonlight.

Sweaty. Aching. Terrified. Relieved to see the garden. The house. The door.

Grass, dew-wet under his feet.

Slipping.

Tackled by silently running wolf.

Worse to see its eyes. Its glowing wild yellow eyes.

Scream.

Hot breath on his neck.

Crunch of bone.

Spurt of blood.

Teeth in his shoulder.

Tongue lapping at the wound.

Scream.

Scream again.

Call from the house.

Wolf moving back. Away.

Scream again.

Fading.

World sliding into grey.

His father's voice.

Flash of light.

Thump of something solid falling.

His mother's cry.

Floating.

Grey sliding into black.

Nothing.

*

The werewolf that attacked me was destoyed. It wasn't the Ministry that did it, but my father. My father, who knew instantly that no ordinary wolf would have bitten, then stepped away. My father, who knew instantly that our lives had changed. Who knew the value of secrecy.

I almost died--so they told me.

I don't remember any of it. That first journey into darkness ended days later, after countless healing spells, after multiple Blood-Replenishing Potions and Pain-Reducing Potions had been administered. I woke to the frightened, exhausted faces of my parents.

I woke to a changed world.

A world where darkness was to become a constant companion.

I did not have as much ability, then, to contain the darkness. I was too young, too frightened, too confused. I watched my parents suffer alongside me, knowing that I had caused it.

Jokes lost their value. Pranks were something that belonged to other people.

Normal people.

Laughter was a foreign language to me, in those early years.

Those dark years.

The darkness began to grow inside me early.

Perhaps, had I been older, I might have prevented it taking root.

It grew until it nearly overwhelmed me.

It nearly overwhelmed my parents as well, through me.

How many people has it threatened to consume, and how many more will it endanger before the end?

How can I fight a force that has grown inside me since I was a child?

How can I win this battle, upon which so much depends?

I am Persephone, searching for a way back to the light.

I am Hades, who dwells in darkness.

Remus J. Lupin.

June, 1996.