The Snape Incident

Chapter 4

Sirius and Remus were seated on the round rug in the dorm room, facing each other across the Map. Peter and James were sleeping already, but the other two boys were kept awake by insistent anticipation. Sirius’s fingers were worrying the lush burgundy rug with barely restrained excitement, but Remus was staring at the map with apprehension. He reviewed the plan in his mind, determined not to let the wolf stray too far and ruin the adventure they had planned.

Into the forest. Skirt the woods behind Hagrid’s cabin (he wondered in the back of his mind why they had not yet been to visit the groundskeeper), go to the forest lake and have a swim. Romp in the nearby meadow. Have a quick run through the village, perhaps, if there’s time, just to shake things up a little, and back to the Shack via the Willow just before dawn, he thought, purposely ignoring the nagging feeling of guilt. There was nothing to worry about; his friends would not let him do anything bad. Of course not. It was unthinkable. (A small voice he might have recognized as his conscience kept insisting that he was being irresponsible, and betraying Dumbledore’s trust, and was a bit of a lark once a month really worth risking expulsion or someone’s life? But he pushed that away irritably and drowned it in the warm glow of his friends.)

“You should sleep, Remus,” Sirius said, suddenly and without preamble. “You’ll be irritable tomorrow, and dead tired the day after.”

“I’m always dead tired the day after. It takes a lot out of one.”

“It’ll be even worse if you don’t sleep tonight.” The beta certainly had nerve.

“I can’t sleep right now.” Remus stood and crossed to the window.

“Excited?”

“Some,” he lied. The moon was full — or, rather, it looked full. It wasn’t yet, not quite. Tomorrow night, that would be the night.

“How’re you feeling?” Sirius came to stand beside him.

“Out of sorts. Strangely aggressive. Moody. The usual.”

But it had not been the usual, not entirely. The wolf had been rather subdued the last several months, but now, during the last two weeks, it had been a more dramatic waxing fortnight than any he could recall. The wolf hovered near the fore of his mind, ready to seize power the moment Remus dropped his guard, nearly overwhelming him with its primal instincts. The presence of the wolf piqued his already heightened senses, as well, and he was fighting lingering arousal from sitting by Arabella at dinner. She moved with a careless delicacy when she ate, and had grazed him with her hand and arm several times throughout the meal. When she brushed her hair off her shoulder, he was blissfully surrounded by her scent. It had been torturous and Remus was growing tired of fighting the wolf. If it was this bad already, how would he be tomorrow? It was always hardest for him to keep the wolf in check the day of the full, and after dark any semblance of control was lost to the pull of the moon.

“Remus.” Sirius’s touch was tentative and feather-light on his wrist. He started, and shook his head in an attempt to clear it. “Remus, are you sure you’re all right?” Nervy beta.

Shaking his head had, if anything, fogged it more. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I’ve asked you five times right now if it was really the usual, and you’ve only just heard.” Sirius took him by the shoulders and turned him away from the window and the looming moon. “Look at me, Re.”

“I’m fine.”

Sirius forced his chin upwards. “Look me in the face and say that, Remus.”

He tried to harden his gaze and tell Sirius to bugger off, but couldn’t. Instead, he pulled away from the taller boy and wrapped his arms around himself, shutting his eyes and dropping his chin to his chest. The wolf seemed to be gnawing steadily on his humanity.

He could sense Sirius standing awkwardly in his grey Muggle tee-shirt and Hogwarts standard-issue blue and white striped flannel pants. He would have a bewildered look on his face, not even a hint of his usual smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth — he never knew quite what to do with himself when his friends were upset. His hands would be hovering half-outstretched in hesitation. Remus had observed this posture numerous times on his worse days, and on James’s, and even Peter’s (though he preferred to spill his troubles to the girls).

“Remus,” he said softly, and Remus looked up. Sirius had taken an unprecedented step closer, and now let his hands come to rest on Remus’s shoulders.

“You’re right,” he said shortly, standing and pulling away once again. Sirius tried to restrain him, but the strength of a werewolf is not easily matched. “I should sleep.”

“No, Re, tell me what’s the matter —” But Remus had vanished behind the hangings of his bed.

After a little while, Sirius sat down on his own bed and stared out at the moon, huge and white and shining. It was so beautiful; even as it tormented his good, kind, caring friend, it was beautiful. Did Remus think it was beautiful? No, of course he wouldn’t — to Remus, it was a hateful, inevitable, inexorable curse, one that turned him into a monster monthly and made him less than human, even less than honorable beasts. The moon turned Remus into a Dark Creature and he hated it with every fibre of his being.

Sirius stared at the moon.

***

Remus awoke with a shout. The sun shone through the scarlet hangings, giving his bed a warm, ruby glow. It was six o’clock — this he knew from his alarm clock (“Good morning, Master Sluggard”); the wolf was telling him that he ought to be out hunting, it wanted blood. He whined softly into his pillow. He couldn’t recall what he had dreamed, but he knew exactly what it had been about.

He had been bitten on an August moon. What he had been doing out-of-doors at night when he was three, he had no idea whatsoever. He was told that he had been found just inside the forest, sobbing and bleeding, at dawn; he had been missing since dusk. They never caught the wolf that had bitten him, though not for lack of trying. For a year, his father went out hunting at the full moon while his mother fearfully watched her son become a wolf pup. They locked him in the cellar, with cushioning charms on the walls and floor.

Remus remembered none of this. He knew only what had been told him, until he was five. By then, they had left the village (he still didn’t know what village) to travel in search of a cure. Peter, who seemed to him perversely interested in such things, told him authoritatively that he had repressed those memories, and that he would be unsurprised if the memories manifested themselves in dreams. He had never told them about the nightmares. Why should he bother anyone with them if he couldn’t even remember them himself?

He dragged himself laboriously from out his bed and stood over a sink in the adjoining restroom, staring into his reflection’s haunted amber eyes for some time. The morning sounds of his roommates brought him back to himself, and he stepped into a shower. He stepped out again, and into a towel, not long after, and realised he had forgotten his clothes, so he ventured out into the dormitory. The other three chorused a “Hi, Moony!” as he rummaged for clean clothes, then discovered that they were laid out on his chair. He didn’t realise how long Sirius’s eyes lingered on the tooth and claw marks that scarred the skin of his back. And arms. And legs. And chest.

Sirius knew it was morbid, but the scars fascinated him. (James and Peter made a point of ignoring them.) He wondered why they were virtually nonexistent on Remus’s hands and face. He vowed to look closer at the next discreet opportunity. He wondered why there were scars at all — weren’t werewolves supposed to heal quickly? He wondered whether the scars were a part of the curse, and whether there were scars anywhere else, then mentally slapped himself and turned his attention to his own shoelaces.

***

Remus had disappeared halfway through breakfast, and now he peered shyly into the Transfiguration classroom. Professor Minerva McGonagall fixed him with a cool, even stare as he ducked toward his desk.

“Lupin. You are aware that this class began seven minutes ago, are you not?”

As Remus sat down next to Peter, Sirius could see his jaw clench. “Yes, Professor.”

McGonagall seemed about to pursue this line of questioning, but her eyes flicked to the window, and she reconsidered. Sirius supposed that it had been a reflex of considering the phase of the moon; James did the same thing.

“I’d like to speak with you after class, Lupin.”

“Of course, Professor.” It took a great deal of concentration for Remus to keep from grinding his teeth. This was the first time he had been late to a class, ever, and it bothered him immensely. The wolf had decided, midway through breakfast, that rabbit was more appetizing than Remus’ customary toast, and Remus had found himself entering the Forbidden Forest before he regained control entirely. He had then sequestered himself in Gryffindor tower until he felt he had control of the wolf again. And now here he was in Transfiguration, fighting the wolf. It was worse than usual; definitely not his imagination.

Remus tried to pay attention to how to transfigure higher mammals safely, he really did — but the wolf in his mind was running through the forest, chasing mid-sized rodents and being generally distracting. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the blackboards, or his uncharacteristically blank parchment. His eyes were more yellow than they had been at breakfast, Sirius noticed with some alarm, and halfway through the lesson Remus rummaged in his bag and emerged with his reading glasses. A wolf’s eyes weren’t well-adapted for reading, as they tended to favor depth and motion over flat shapes, but he liked to suppose that Remus probably would have had to read with glasses anyway. The glasses were a great deal more stylish than James’s, though the Prefect was loath to admit it: the gold wire frames, roughly elliptical in shape, had class that his own squarish black plastic frames lacked. Sirius, though he teased Remus horribly, privately thought that Remus looked scholarly in them, even when he was pencil-smudged and disheveled from late nights working on the Map last year. He knew for a fact that some of the girls who frequented the library found them very attractive (Sirius, who far outstripped Remus in female followings any day, was not threatened by this knowledge), though none of that mattered to Remus because none of those girls was Arabella Figg.

Transfiguration passed without incident, save for when Peter knocked over a jar of jewel-like scarabs meant for the second-years with his elbow and all the girls yelped in surprise as the beetles buzzed around the room. McGonagall looked at him very coldly as she Summoned the scarabs back to the repaired jar, and took five points from Gryffindor for his carelessness. Afterwards, the Gryffindors parted ways to attend their various elective classes, and Remus hung back to speak to Professor McGonagall.

“Lupin,” she began, then hesitated. How should she put this? The boy always tried to be self-sufficient, and refused all offers of assistance from the staff. He even seemed to put off their concern, as though he had something to prove, and couldn’t with them looking after him. At the moment, he was staring down at his shoelaces, not in a manner bashful or ashamed, but exhausted, impatient, and apathetic.

“Lupin,” she repeated after a moment, “I do hope that you will notify Professor Dumbledore, Madam Pomfrey, or myself if something is amiss. It is quite unlike you to be tardy, and if there is anything of concern, we must be aware of it.” She chastised herself silently. That wasn’t at all what she really meant to convey; this sort of speech rolled off of him like water off a duck’s back.

He nodded without looking up. “If there’s anything I can’t handle, I’ll be sure to come to you,” he said sullenly. It sounded rehearsed. She tried vainly to see his eyes, but his light brown hair fell across her line of vision.

“That is good to hear, Lupin. Do you have enough time to get to your next class, or shall I write you a note?” Professor McGonagall pressed her lips together. There had to be some way to impress upon him the importance of keeping them informed. The young werewolf worried and frustrated her.

“I’ll be all right. It isn’t far,” he muttered.

“Well, then. You may go.” McGonagall watched him hoist his bag effortlessly and take long strides out of her classroom. He would, of course, never come to her; not if he could help it, and she knew it.

***

Remus fumbled through Ancient Runes (the Ravenclaw girl looked rather concerned; he was usually quite her match in the subject) and sat with his head down in Charms while tiny Professor Flitwick explained the theory and dangers of memory-altering charms in a high, squeaky voice that grated on his hearing and enticed the wolf. His friends held hushed discussions of his welfare, but Sirius somehow made convincing excuses for him.

“He’s not been sleeping well,” he hissed to Lily, who looked skeptical. “Er — at all, actually, for a week now.”

“Why?” Lily whispered back, shooting another concerned glance toward Remus.

Sirius shrugged. “He hasn’t said.” Lily pursed her lips and sat back in her chair to inform Margaret of this new development. The girls both knew how reticent Remus could be if he was so inclined. When Flitwick excused the class after the bell, Remus shot up out of his seat and fairly fled the classroom.

“He doesn’t seem sleep-deprived,” Margaret muttered. Arabella shrugged.

“Tuba Mirum,” Remus growled at the Fat Lady, and dashed up the stairs to the sixth-year dormitory. He slid down the wall and hugged his knees to his chin. The mind of the wolf was growing ever stronger, and he was so tired of fighting back... he was well aware that the wolf would not subside until the moon began to wane, and that he was ultimately fighting a losing battle; wouldn't it be so much easier just to give in now?

Sirius knocked on the door — he had a distinctive, lazy knock that employed only the knuckles of his index and middle finger. James rapped purposefully on a door with the front of a fisted hand, and Peter tended to tap almost fearfully, or let other people knock, more often than not.

“Remus? Can I come in?” called Sirius. He was miraculously alone, although the others were probably waiting somewhere, just as concerned as Sirius was. Receiving no no answer from Remus, he pushed the door open. “Remus. Are you all right?” he asked, though it was quite obvious he wasn’t. Remus’s muscles tensed visibly, and a growl was rising in his throat. Sirius knelt before his friend and extended his hand tentatively, then let it fall upon Remus’s shoulder. A heartbeat passed. Then the wolf lashed out.

In the blink of an eye, Sirius found himself sprawled on his back. Remus’s knees were pressing on his ribcage, his left arm and throat were pinned under Remus’s hands, and his right wrist was clamped firmly between Remus’s teeth. He stared up at his friend with wide eyes. Remus was watching him out of the corner of a wild topaz eye, his mind more wolf than human.

Sirius was motionless as Remus slowly increased the pressure of his teeth on Sirius’s wrist. They remained in this awkward position for what seemed like several eternities, and Sirius had time to wonder nervously if he could be Turned by a werewolf’s bite if aforementioned werewolf was still a human. (The pain of teeth being slowly embedded in his wrist was excruciating.) He gazed desperately into the werewolf’s eyes, searching for the wizard he knew. (He felt he would suffocate if this went on much longer.) There was only the beast.

Then Remus seemed to come back to himself. He looked at Sirius with horror for a moment, then quickly shoved himself off of his friend, who sat up slowly and painfully, gasping and rubbing his wrist. He was relieved to see that the skin was unbroken, but gods, it hurt. He looked up to find Remus crouching on the other side of the room, staring at him with concern and what might have been fear. Sirius tried to smile reassuringly. He held up his hand. “Look, I’m fine, Re.”

“I didn’t...?”

“Break the skin? No.” And it was only a little painful to breathe.

Remus still looked anxious, and his breaths came in panicky gasps. When Sirius stood and strode toward him, he scuttled backwards and curled up against the wall. “Don’t!” he shouted. Sirius stopped. “Don’t,” he repeated, softer, “come any closer.”

“Remus, I just want to help you, make sure you’re all right.”

“Obviously, I’m not,” Remus answered bitterly.

“It’s worse, isn't it? It’s never been this bad before.” He didn’t answer. “Do you know why?”

“Just — go away, Sirius, before I lose control again.”

“I could take you to the Infirmary —”

“Please, Sirius, it’s already so hard for me. Just go.” The defeat in Remus’s voice hardened Sirius’s resolve.

“What do you plan to do, then? Stay up here all afternoon and hide? The Moony I know doesn’t hide.” He sat down where he was and stared at his friend.

“Maybe he does, and you’ve just never seen,” muttered Remus, dropping his chin to his chest.

“Maybe he’s obstinate and won’t let his friends help him when he needs them.”

“Maybe they couldn’t help anything, anyway! Did you ever think of that? Maybe this isn’t something you can be a part of, Sirius. Maybe I’m better off alone. Maybe you’re better off without me.”

The words stung Sirius like a slap to the face, and he resolutely held his ground, settling his weight into the floor. Remus refused to look at him or acknowledge him in any way, so he settled for looking at Remus. He’d always seemed a bit too thin, as though he didn’t get enough to eat, and five years of generous Hogwarts portions had not changed that. He was tall, though not as tall as Sirius, and long-limbed, though now those limbs were coiled clumsily about him — but Remus moved with a preternatural lupine grace. His dusty brown hair hung over his eyes like a curtain, keeping Sirius out and the wolf in. It pained Sirius to watch his friend suffer, and to be able to do nothing at all.

Remus raised his head and regarded Sirius with a gaze devoid of emotion, but full of blood lust. It was all the wolf knew — but it recognized Sirius as, somehow, part of its pack, and for the moment it would allow Remus to be in control. In a calm, steady voice he said, “Sirius, please go. There’s nothing you can do. I appreciate the thought, but it would be much easier for me if you left.”

Sirius stared at his friend for a few seconds more, then stood abruptly and left. Remus watched the door for many minutes after is swung shut, but no one came, and in his head he struggled with the ever-stronger wolf for dominance.

***

Remus skipped his afternoon classes. Guilt plagued him briefly, but he felt better with the knowledge that he couldn’t hurt anyone if he was alone. Mostly, he sat in the dormitory, unmoving — this for almost an hour at a time, then a slight shift and stretch, and more stillness. The imposed tranquility aggravated the already restless wolf, but it gave Remus time to gather all his reserves of strength and willpower to himself in preparation. Sometime before the last class of the day ended, Remus fished the Map out of his trunk and went over their planned romp several more times. The prospect of it bothered him a little, and the waiting made him nervous.

Sirius must have warned the others off, for no one approached the dormitory. Remus stayed there, alone, until dinner, when he stood abruptly and strode out of the castle with purpose. He shot a furtive glance at the sun, which hung, enormous and red, over the western skyline, as he crossed the grounds to the Whomping Willow. It began to flail threateningly at his approach, but he stood calmly, just out of its reach, until he located a long stick. With it, he prodded the knot that froze the tree, then ducked into the tunnel at its base just before the tree started to move again. Inside the tunnel, Remus stood for a moment and listened. The Willow’s rustlings and creakings sounded a bit confused, exactly as he remembered. It was good to know that some things didn’t change. The first time he had ever been in this tunnel, in his first year, Dumbledore had been with him, and had chuckled softly at the tree’s confusion.

He set off down the tunnel. It was one of the longer ones, and by the time he reached the shack, he supposed that the sun was nearly finished setting. The others would be along a little after curfew, but he would be alone during the transformation. Remus stripped and settled himself cross-legged on the floor to await the Change, studiously ignoring the gnawed and splintered remains of furniture.

He felt it overtake him a moment before it started; there was a peculiar sense of awareness, and he was omniscient and omnipresent, and one with the wolf, but it lasted only a moment, and then it had begun. The pain was excruciating as his bones reformed and rearranged themselves, contorting his muscles and limbs. The rest of his body altered to conform to this new shape, changing subtly from a human form to a wolf form. His screams became howls as his jaw elongated and the features that allowed human speech vanished. His senses sharpened further and snapped into detailed focus. Brown and grey fur rippled over his skin. It was a slow change this month, the last human vestige of his mind reflected.

A moment later, the wolf stood up and began to pace the shack. It grabbed a table leg in its bone-crushing jaws and, snarling, flung it against the wall. There was a loud CRACK! as the impact split the wood. The wolf was large, sleek, majestic, and impatient. The blood lust grew stronger with each passing minute, and the wolf snapped at phantoms as it paced. Its path led it into a patch of moonlight, which filled it with a fell energy. It loosed a chilling howl into the night. In the village, children crept fearfully into their parents’ arms and cried.

The wolf soon tired of pacing and destroying furniture parts. It wanted blood — any blood would do. The sensation of jaws sinking into flesh, of warm, sticky blood flowing down its throat: this only would please the wolf, but never sate it. Enraged by the blood lust, the wolf twisted and bit its own side sharply. The blood flowed freely, and the wolf lapped it up. It gnawed on its foreleg and nipped at its flanks, to savor the taste of more blood. This only drove the blood lust to ever-mounting levels, but the wolf could not stop.

By the time the others arrived, the wolf was covered in a plethora of bites and scratches, and they were taken aback; blood shone at them in the moonlight from fur and wood. The wolf, however, was crouched and snarling, perceiving them as interlopers, or, more likely, prey. It seemed to need reminding that they were its pack.

Padfoot whined submissively, creeping toward the hostile wolf on his belly. Now, it seemed to recognize him, or at least the subordinate posture, and calmed slightly. Padfoot was entirely horrified by the injuries the wolf had inflicted upon itself, and when it finally sat, accepting him regally, he began to lick some of the more gruesome wounds. Prongs, with Wormtail perched between his antlers, was still nervous, as the wolf was eying him, but the worst seemed to have passed, and the Moony they adventured with was returning. After patiently enduring Padfoot’s mothering for several minutes, the wolf rose calmly and sniffed at Prongs’s legs. (Wormtail was quivering with fear, and Prongs found it most distracting.) After circling him once, Padfoot tensed to tackle the wolf all the while should it suddenly spring, the wolf lifted its nose to the stag’s and licked his face. Had they been human, there would have been a collective sigh of relief: the menacing wolf had receded into their Moony, who was as friendly as Padfoot, and very clever. Moony retained much of Remus’s intelligence and resourcefulness, and was a very lenient alpha wolf (as alphas went), a canine complement to Remus’s laid-back personality.

Moony threw back his head and loosed another howl, but it was entirely different from the disturbing howl the wolf had sent into the night earlier. Padfoot yodeled back, as the only one with a suitable voice, and they set off for the night’s adventure.