Thirteen Moons

THIRTEEN MOONS
chapter 02: alone under the full moon

"It is not good that the man should be alone."

Genesis ii. 18.

Alone.

Before I was bitten, my family lived in the country, far away from our nearest neighbors and further still from the nearest wizarding family. Before I was bitten, my father, my mother and I were isolated from the rest of the world, but I was never truly alone.

I'll be the first to admit that I had few friends, fewer playmates. I never felt the lack. My parents were always there, always willing to put down whatever they were doing for a few minutes' play. Teaching me to read, teaching me simple spells, teaching me about the worlds we lived in, wizarding and Muggle.

My mother would tell me about her life growing up in Muggle London while she baked or cleaned or worked in the garden. She had the ability to make me see buildings that had been ground into dust by the fury of the Blitz, to make me feel the rush of exhilaration that came from being able to use an extra sugar coupon, to make me understand, even at such a young age, that our lack of money was unimportant compared to what we had. We had enough food to eat. We had a roof over our heads. We had a nice house, we had health, we had safety, we had laughter.

We had each other.

My father, sitting near the hearth, pipe tucked in the corner of his mouth after a long day at work, would launch into stories of his school days at Hogwarts, of pranks he and his friends had played, of school shopping in Diagon Alley and visits to the Ministry of Magic and trips to see Quidditch matches. He would watch me trying to work the simple spells he taught me, and laugh at my mother's concern.

'They're not going to put us in prison for a few minor spells, Annie,' he'd say, grinning up at her until her forehead smoothed out and she smiled back at him. 'Besides, as long as I'm here to make sure things don't get out of hand, there's no harm in it.' He'd wait until I'd managed whatever spell he'd been trying to teach me, and beam proudly no matter how mangled the results. Then he'd tell another story, while Mum and I settled onto the sofa to listen.

We had each other.

Before the attack, we had each other completely.

I never understood what loneliness was before the attack. How could I have?

How does a child born without sight understand what it is to be blind?

The attack changed everything, so absolutely that it was only years later that I remembered what we had once had together, the three of us. After the attack, it was them, together, and myself, alone.

The attack divided us as cleanly as a sharp knife separates butter. All it took was five minutes on a forest path to destroy the first four years of togetherness. We were divided cleanly, so cleanly that only years later did I realise the pain of it. It happened the moment I was bitten.

I woke up one of three people in my little room under the eaves.

I woke up alone.

**

He felt all hot and sore and grumbly, and he wanted something to eat. He opened his eyes, blinking against too-bright light, and saw them sitting near the window. He couldn't see their faces. They didn't look like his Mum and Dad but like shadows against the sunlight. Shadows. Just the thought was enough to make him shivery and sick-feeling.

He must have trembled or made some small noise. His mother was at his side in an instant, and the sight of her, familiar and well-loved, made the shivery feeling disappear.

Then he saw her eyes, and it came back. Doubled. Redoubled.

It never left him.

She was afraid.

Afraid for him?

He stirred, turned his hot, achy head toward the white soft, coolness of her hand as he yawned.

He felt her hand hesitate.

Felt her hand pull back for a brief moment, until his yawn had ended and his mouth was closed.
And he understood that she was not afraid for him.

She was afraid of him.

That quickly, the fever left him. That quickly, his headache redoubled.

That quickly, he was alone.

Throughout the next two weeks, his parents were with him constantly. Bringing him the same little treats. Telling him the same little stories, occasionally even making him laugh.

He didn't find it easy to laugh anymore. He wasn't sure if it was his mother's fear or the werewolf's attack that had stolen his laughter. He just knew it was gone, like the blood he'd lost when he'd been bitten.

He knew from his parents' faces that they sensed the change in him. That they were worried about his silence. Worried about the effort it took to make him laugh. He knew that they were afraid that he was 'sinking.' That he was 'withdrawing.' That he was 'depressed.'

He knew what sinking was. Sinking was when you had swum too far past your depth, and you couldn't swim anymore, and you went under.

He didn't know how to tell them that they didn't have to worry. He wasn't sinking. He wasn't going to go under.

He was already there. Alone, and more than a little afraid.

He'd heard them talking, when he was supposed to be in bed asleep. He knew that the full moon was coming, and that his mother was afraid. He'd heard them discussing it yesterday, from his vantage point on the staircase. They wouldn't talk about it in front of him; his mother was afraid of scaring him.

He wasn't afraid, not really. He'd had time to think about it, since his Dad had told him what had happened on the forest path. He thought it would be pretty neat to be a wolf, especially if it was just for a night and he could be a boy again afterward. It sounded like one of the adventure stories his Mum had told him while baking bread in the kitchen.

At least, he hadn't been afraid. Not until he'd heard them talking.

That was when he knew that becoming a wolf for a night was a dangerous thing. A terrible thing.

A bad thing.

That was when he began to be afraid.

"John, this simply won't do. We can't lock him up like an animal just because the moon will be full. It's inhumane."

"Believe me, Annie, I wish there were some other way. He's my son. I don't want to see him locked up. But he won't be able to control himself--if he were four times his age, or ten times his age, he wouldn't be able to control the transformation. He's a werewolf, Annie. You saw the claws and the fangs and the fur when he was delirious. That's what he'll be like. All it would take is the tiniest nip, Annie, and you'd become one, too."

"Maybe that would be better. He wouldn't be alone." His mother's voice was thick, as though she were fighting back tears. "You've seen him, John. He's pulling away from us. He doesn't know what's happening, not really. He's just a little boy!"

"I know, Annie. I know." His father's voice, sadder than Remus had ever heard it before. "If I thought it would help him, I'd find a way for us to join him. But it won't help, Annie. All it would do is make it impossible for us to stay together at all." Remus heard his mother begin to say something then pause, and knew that his father was holding up a gentle hand. "Annie. If all three of us are werewolves, all three of us are targets."

"I don't care! I'll become a target gladly, if it means the three of us are together."

"Annie." Remus heard his father take a deep, shuddering breath, and was horror-struck to realise that his father was near tears. "If we live together on the run, who will teach Remus to live as normal a life as possible? How will he go to school? How will he grow up without bitterness, without hate?"

Remus crept back up the stairs slowly, his stomach hurting dreadfully. He'd made his father cry. As he reached his room, he could hear his mother's soft sobs floating up through the heat register. He'd made his mother cry as well. He crawled into bed, tears in his eyes, and thought hard.

There had to be something he could do to make things right again. He had ruined it all. He'd wanted to play a joke on them, so he'd broken the rules, and now his parents were all sad and angry and confused.

He would find a way to fix it. He had to find a way to fix it.

He was determined, and he was clever--he had always been a clever child. He might have found a way to fix it, or at least have tried to make it better.

No four-year old had ever been as determined as Remus Lupin when he wanted something.

In the end, though, determination made no difference.

He was only four, after all, and he was still suffering the effects of the first attack. He had no concept of time passing, not in the way that adults do.

He didn't really understand that he had been unconscious for a week, in bed for nearly three more.

He had no idea that he had overheard his parents talking on the eve of the full moon.

**

After a long evening spent in bed, considering the problem, Remus knew how to fix things. He'd spent most of the time he was supposed to be asleep remembering how things had gone wrong. Remembering sneaking out of the house, walking through the garden, walking into the forest. Remembered the attack, remembered running, falling, hurting. Screaming.

It had given him nightmares. That had embarrassed him, badly enough that he hadn't called out for his Mum as he might have done a month earlier. He'd been afraid of causing more trouble. And part of him had been afraid that she would pull away again, as afraid of him as he was of the dreams.

After thinking hard about things, Remus had decided that there was only one way to change things. Only one way to make his parents happy again. One way they could stop being afraid.

He would leave.

He was the problem. He was the werewolf. And he understood, or thought he did, from what he'd overheard the day before, that he was dangerous. His parents could be hurt. He might hurt them, without meaning to, because he was a werewolf.

Werewolf.

Yesterday morning, the idea had given him a little thrill. Turning into a wolf. Running around outside, under the moon. It had sounded pretty neat.

This morning, the idea turned his stomach into a quivering mass of fear. Because werewolves hurt people. They turned people into werewolves just like them. Or they killed them. And when that happened, werewolves were hunted down and destroyed.

No one would do that if werewolves weren't bad.

If he wasn't bad.

Still, he was clever enough to realise that he couldn't let his parents know about his plan. He was a smart little boy who already had years of experience playing tricks on his parents under his belt. He knew that he could pretend that things were the same as they had been yesterday. And that he could keep on pretending, at least until he

got up enough courage to

could leave. So he got dressed and walked slowly downstairs, and sat down at the table.

"'Morning, Mum," he said, cheerfully.

His mother looked a bit startled, and with good reason. It had been a month to the day since her son had sat down at the breakfast table and beamed at her.

She beamed back and served him his breakfast.

**

Tired and strangely restless, strangely achy, he didn't protest as much as usual when his parents put him to bed earlier than usual. He was still sick, they told him, and he shouldn't yet be out of bed as much as he had been today. When his father shut the door behind him and locked it, Remus kept his eyes closed, pretending to be asleep.

The click of the lock warned him. He remembered his mother's words of the night before. Locked up like an animal. He was a smart boy, and he managed to make the connection fairly quickly.

Once he did, he jumped out of bed and looked out the window. The sun was beginning to slide beneath the trees.

If he was going to make things right, now was the time.

Now, before the werewolf came.

He could hear his parents downstairs in the kitchen, and knew his usual route of escape was out. But he had others, and after looking around his room for a long moment, he quietly unlocked the door and slipped out into the hallway. Closed it and locked it behind him, so that they wouldn't realise that he was gone.

He hurried silently down the hallway and into his parents' bedroom, then out the open window on the far side of the house. Because the house was built into a hill, this side of the second story was only a few feet from the ground. Remus, already a veteran at sneaking out of the house, was well aware of the reason his bedroom was on the other side of the house, where the drop-off was far greater.

He slid onto soft grass and made for the forest, running as fast as exhaustion and the strange achiness would allow. A look back told him that the kitchen curtains had been closed against the night, and relief flooded him. They wouldn't even notice he was gone until after the moon had risen.

They were safe.

He was deep in the forest, far past the point in the path where he had first seen the other werewolf, when the first pains hit. The odd achy feeling he'd had all day had been growing as he ran. The switch from low ache to sharp, rending pain caught him completely unawares, sending him sprawling facefirst on the moss-covered ground.

He curled up against the pain, which was no longer just one pain but a thousand separate stabbing pains forcing tears from his eyes like penance. The dim greensilver light in the forest intensified until he had to squeeze his eyelids shut against the horrible glare. Even as the light began to hurt his eyes, a dozen new, sharper pains wrung helpless whimpers from him. Lying on his side on the forest floor, he felt as though every bone in his body was splintering into a hundred useless pieces.

The pains came faster, until his world was a dancing, shimmering curtain of agony, his entire body convulsing with the shattering force of it. He felt as though his skin were rippling, as though he were swelling, as though he might explode with it. One last gut-wrenching pain had his eyes opening helplessly.

He saw the fur, the claws, the tail, and understood the cause of the pain.

Startled into a sob that sounded very much like a howl, he stared at himself. Fascination battled with horror and won a tenuous victory. The light, he noticed, had dimmed to a level that was bearable, and he looked around.

The forest was bright in a way he'd never seen it before. Everything stood out in sharp relief, every crinkle of bark, every clump of moss, every blade of shade-stunted grass distinct from the rest.

At the same time, the pain was gone, its absence loud like a thunderclap in his mind.

He pushed himself to his feet--to all four feet--and swayed there a bit drunkenly.

Felt the wolf take hold.

Felt himself steadying.

Caught the scent of something moving in the undergrowth far ahead. Moved off into the forest, gaining confidence in his new limbs with every step.

**

Instinct or exhaustion brought him back to the edge of the forest at moonset. He looked through night-sharp eyes across the distance and saw the house, lit up like a beacon against the ink-black night. Saw curtains moving in the kitchen window, saw tall shadows moving back and forth beyond the curtains.

Too weary to approach, too weary to retreat, too much of the wolf to remember his plan, too much of the child to let go of the sight of home, he lay down beneath the trees, rested his head on his crossed front paws, and drifted off to sleep.

That was where they found him as dawn broke across the sky, bruised and scratched and far too thin, the still-healing scar on his shoulder a livid, angry red.

They carried him home without a word, washed him, dressed him, and put him to bed.

And sat with him, so that he would not be alone when he woke.

**

After that first transformation, I woke to find my parents on either side of me. One of them or the other was always there, from the moment I woke. They asked me why I'd left. I explained how I'd wanted them to be safe, and problem-free. They scolded me, but gently, for thinking that leaving them would make their lives better. They explained that they could never have been happy without me.

I started to understand that we were all new to this thing I was dealing with, that we all had to learn how to handle the difficulties. That they hadn't truly known what to expect any more than I had, and that they hadn't fully thought things out before the full moon forced us all to learn as we went.

We were together again, as we had been.

My mother's hand never again faltered, no matter the circumstances.

My father never again spoke of danger, at least not that I heard.

They were with me, the way they always had been.

But I was alone.

Alone but not alone--that idea was to become the moon revolving around me, controlling the tides of my life as the moon above controlled my disease. It did not matter whether I was surrounded by people; I was always alone.

Alone but not alone; no matter how much attention my parents gave me, no matter how long our talks, no matter how careful their preparations, there was the full moon to consider. The full moon and all it brought stood between us like some invisible wall, impossible to scale, taller with each passing month.

Alone but not alone; no matter how many friends I made at school, there was always the secret to be kept, always something I had to hide. There was always one more lie to be told, one more disappearance or illness I had to explain away. There was no connection, no bond that survived the obvious lies.

Alone but not alone even when my friends learned my secret, even when they ran beside me under the full moon. No matter how much they had sacrificed and struggled to find a way to keep me company, to keep me from being alone--and I was not oblivious to their battles, not in the slightest--the fact remained that they ran by choice. I ran because there was no other choice. My world was a desolate, faraway island they chose to visit. When they left, I could not follow.

Alone but not alone; on leaving school, we remained together, the best of friends. But my island grew smaller, seemed to move even further out to sea. They had jobs, friends I could not share, lives I could only see from a distance. Their horizons broadened. Mine shrank, and though I understood what was happening, though my parents had done their best to prepare me for it, I began to drift further away.

I might have drifted forever, alone and rudderless, if it hadn't been for Sirius. He was the only one who ever managed to scale the walls. The only one with whom I never felt alone. He made the darkness recede, if not completely then at least enough that I could see the sun. Feel its warmth in his touch, in the feel of his skin against mine, in what we shared.

Now he is gone, and the walls have grown high enough to block out the sun. Now my world is darkening with every passing hour.

I cannot see the sun, only the quicksilver moon, cruel and indifferent. The moon, slipping across dark sky like a scream that grows to an unbearable wail then fades to a whisper, disappearing only to grow again.

I don't know how to find the sun again.

I don't know how to make the darkness disappear.

I have to try.

There is still so much left to do.

And there is Harry, teetering on the edge of darkness. I've spent too much of my life in darkness to wish it on my worst enemy, much less on the son of my best friend, the godson of my other half. The son of my heart, the boy who from the day of his birth was the child I secretly wished for and knew I would never have.

I am not his father, nor his godfather. I suppose that the best I can be is a friend to him, and that's as it should be.

It's enough.

It's enough to make me try to find the light, in honour of those who are gone, in hope for those who have yet to truly fight.

It's enough to make me fear the darkness, because I don't want it to do to Harry what it did to me.

I have to try to help him.

But am I strong enough to succeed, or will I only drag him down with me, down into the darkness?

Can I win this fight?

Will the darkness end?