The Beginning

It's the day after the full moon when he comes. He is Professor Dumbledore, and he brings with him a Broken Thing. The Broken Thing looks at Mary and Mary looks back. She knows what the Broken Thing is, she knows his name. He's the reason she had been told that she could stay in school after she was turned. After all Remus Lupin had studied at Hogwarts for seven years as a werewolf. She had spent three months in the shack and decided that an education was not worth the confinement. She left at the end of her fifth year. Education didn't matter anyway; she would be a broom maker with or without N.E.W.T.S.

The Headmaster had left the Broken Thing with her. He had told her of the death of his friends, he had told her of his tendency toward self mutilation and had left. The Broken Thing makes no sound. Not one sound for days. Mary has heard of this of course. When a Packmate dies sometimes the ones left behind just, well, will themselves to death. When the full moon comes, when the change comes, he still just lays there. She curls next to him and he whines gently. The first noises he's made. She rests her head on his gray shoulder, and she thinks he knows he isn't alone.

He eats on his own the next day. She doesn't have to force him. It doesn't stay down, but it's a start. She moves him to her bedroom after the full moon passes; she's tired of sleeping on the floor below the couch. She's afraid of leaving him alone. She starts to remind herself that he has a name, he isn't Broken Thing.

His first night in her bed Remus wakes her with his sobs. She holds him tight and he cries until dawn. It's good, it's a start. The next day he asks:

"What is your name?" his voice hoarse from disuse, tears and, of course, his condition.

"Mary Ramsey," she says quietly.

"Ramsey... as in 'the Werewolf of London' Ramsey?" he seems interested, even if it is only vaguely.

"My uncle. And you? With a name like 'Remus Lupin' you can't be the only one in your family," she asks her voice gentle.

"Grandfather, it was an accident."

"It always is, isn't it?" she asks, running her fingers through his hair. That seems to be enough for him. He turns away and goes back to sleep.

She tries to never leave him alone for long. Her father comes to retrieve the brooms she was working on. He wants to see the Broken Thing (Remus, she reminds herself) but Remus is sleeping and she is reluctant to wake him. He has become Pack to her, she wants to protect him. But she can't protect him from what's inside his head. A few days later, he walks with her out side the house. She shows him the high walls.

"So we can't get out," he says grimly. She shows him the flocks of sheep and herds of deer.

"So we can kill," he says. He sounds void, vacant.

"So we can be safe. So we don't have to chain ourselves in basements or stay in horrible little shacks..." His eyes meet hers for a split second as she speaks.

"So you've been to my shack?" he asks.

"I've been there a time or two," she says, trying to sound light and airy. "What I've never understood is why they kept replacing the furniture. I must have broken the same chair fifteen or twenty times... It was ugly."

"The green one?" Remus asks, laughing. "I could never get anyone to understand the thing was just horrible. And anyway what does a wolf do with a straight backed chair?" She bumps her head against his shoulder and the two rest against each other for a second.

"It was better when the others were there," he says quietly. It's the first time he mentions the others. He brushes a tear from his eye, and sits in the tall grass of the field. She sits next to him and puts her arms around him.

"I'm sorry. You don't have to be alone," she whispers. He just nods, burrowing his head against her neck.

The next day he finds his way to the library. Mary is concerned when she wakes and finds Remus missing but finds him with in a few minutes. In the library curled up with a book. He seems well enough; he seems happy enough, so she summons some parchment and a quill and begins sketching some new designs that had come to mind during his convalescence. After some time sitting silently near each other Remus stretches out, resting his head against her. The first time he initiates contact.

That night is another bad night; Remus cries out and clings to her like a frightened child. She whispers that nothing is his fault, that he couldn't have changed anything.

The next morning in the library, terrors of the night before forgotten, he says: "This is interesting."

"What?" Mary asks looking up from her drawing.

"It says here 'The most important sense to the werewolf is that of touch. It is through touch that we know that we are not alone. Isolation kills the werewolf as surely as silver, if not as swiftly.'"

"You are reading Uncle's journal?"

"That's all right isn't it?" Remus asks reluctantly.

"Yes," Mary says smiling, "but I think you are the first outside the family to read them."

"Oh," he says turning back to the book.

Over the days, a pattern is worked out between the two. At night, he cries out, soothing him becomes such second nature; she doesn't even wake while comforting him. By the time the full moon comes around again Mary wants Remus to see her. Really see her, not as a nurse maid but as something else. He chooses to transform alone, it involves nudity, she can understand. As the wolf, she wonders the house looking for him. She finds him where the Human left him. He is laying still, just like last time. She snorts a short burst of disgust. The problems of the Human should not bother the Wolf. She nips him, this rouses the large gray male. She runs, he is slow, no danger to her. She runs out of the house into the night, racing across the lawn, behind her the Gray stops. Mary stops and turns back. The Gray sits on the lawn and then he tips back his head.

He howls.

It's not sorrow, he is just marking his place in the world. She tips back her head and howls, her voice joining his in perfect harmony.

"This is our home," the two wolves say. "Beware all who think to tread here."

After the howl the two play, chasing in the way well fed safe wolves will: chasing each other and small things, blowing leaves, small mice, fish in the stream. When the moon sets it sets over a tangle of black and gray legs, too busy playing to feel the setting of the moon. When the transformation is done a tangle of human arms and legs lay in the same space the playing wolves had occupied. Remus reaches for Mary's face and new, human play starts.

"You can bite me," she whispers to him. "It's safe between the two of us."

"You're my first. My first like me," he whispers back. The play continues in the dark of night, no moon to betray them. The play continues until a new howl issues from between Remus' lips, almost wholly human. This howl says:

"This is my home. Beware all who think to tread here."