Chainless Soul

Chainless Soul Chapter One
Riches I hold in light esteem,
And love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream,
That vanished with the morn:

And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, "Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!"

Yes, as my swift days near their goal:
'Tis all that I implore ;
In life and death a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.
-Emily Brontë

I suppose there are a thousand choices I’ve made in my life that I regret, but the thing about regrets is that they cannot change the past. The scars I have caused those around me will never be erased, and crying over things I cannot change will not help a thing.

Still, it’s human nature to wonder what things could have been like, had we just done one or two things differently.

Sometimes I see the way it might have been in my dreams at night, and I wake up in a cold sweat, my heart aching with longing. Those few precious seconds after opening my eyes to see my darkened bedroom ceiling above, those few seconds in which I do not remember the way things are and am still immersed in the way they should be… Those seconds are the seconds I live for.

I’ve done a lot of foolish things in my life. Some more foolish than others. I nearly lost my soul to the perverted and evil memory of a boy who would move on to become the most feared wizard in history. Tom Riddle. The marks he left inside me still shine as clearly as fresh scratches, still coated with droplets of blood. Sometimes I wakeup and I swear there are still shadows of blood underneath my fingernails.

And sometimes I wake up longing for him again.

I am a fool. I never said I wasn’t.

The one thing I regret, above all else and above even Tom, was easily the stupidest and most selfish thing I did.

I was sixteen, and the world was falling apart. It was like a dream, a nightmare. Tom Riddle was back, but not as I had known him. He was back as a demon incarnate, Voldemort, intent upon destroy Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, and every other witch or wizard who got in his way.

And I didn’t care. Who was Voldemort to me, really? Nothing but a distant thing that I was supposed to fear but could not find it in myself to do so. He was so far away from me, I couldn’t even conceive that he might be a threat, not when I was too busy dealing with scars of my own. The world moved on, after Cedric’s death, the rise of Voldemort, into a spinning time of preparation and terror as the wizarding community waited for Voldemort to return, screaming his Unforgivable Curses and killing people left and right. My world hadn’t moved on to that state, however; my world stopped spinning in my first year at Hogwarts.

I thought I was nothing then, when Tom betrayed me. I know better now. Now I know I truly am nothing, because while he betrayed me, I did worse. I betrayed my family. I turned them in to Voldemort, and with them, the famous Harry Potter.

The mark on my arm burns sometimes, after my nightmares. I wake up to find it has turned blood-red in the night. Sometimes in my sleep I scratch at it with my fingernails and wake up to find it bleeding, but the mark never goes away.

Even now I try to justify what I did. I was just a little girl, I scream. I didn’t know better.

But of course I knew better! Anyone knows better than to stand idly by and watch their family twitching and screaming as an Unforgivable Curse burns through their bodies. Or maybe I did it because I thought that a quick death would be better than what Voldemort had planned for the world. Sure, my family would have screamed. But those screams would have died out. If I had done nothing, they would have screamed forever, the way I do now.

But again, I was only a little girl.

Halfway through the summer when I was sixteen, Harry Potter came to stay with my family. Harry had been having such nightmares that year, I guess that somehow Voldemort was the cause. He had given up trying to kill Harry, I knew. Every time he tried, he ended up losing more than he gained. I think he was trying to drive Harry to kill himself, because I had heard rumors of the things Voldemort had done to him in those nightmares. Things such as sending him back in time to watch the murder of his mother and other things Mum forbid the twins from mentioning to me.

The day before he was due to arrive, Mum gave us all a long talk on how we were to behave, what we were allowed to discuss and what we weren’t. She was so worried about Harry; everybody was.

I had planned my escape carefully to coincide with Harry’s arrival. I felt so forsaken and unloved, acted so completely selfishly, but I remember lying in bed for the first month of summer and thinking ‘no one treated me like this after my first year, when I nearly died. They love Harry Potter more than their own daughter? I must be a horrible person, simply dreadful, if they love me so little as this.’ And then, the days before his arrival, my thoughts became, ‘I hate them! I hate them all! My perfect brothers and their perfect friends, my poor father who never has enough money to buy me new books and robes! My mother who ignores me. I hate them. I hate living here. I’d rather be anywhere but here.’

And so, I planned it carefully. I stole some Floo Powder n the middle of the night, before he was due to arrive. I intended to use the chaos of his arrival to slip away. No one would even notice.

The fireplace was roaring with a warm fire the morning he arrived. We all expected Harry to show up beaten and broken, a mere shell of a boy. He didn’t; he looked almost as he had the summer before, except for a queer darkness in his eyes, like they were aging faster than his body. I suppose it is possible, after all, I can only imagine what he must have seen wherever Voldemort had taken him. I can only imagine.

My mother embraced him warmly and kissed his cheek. Ron started talking excitedly. Fred and George were shouting things about the new gags they had created, and I slipped into the other room.

I tossed the Floo Powder into the hearth and jumped in. Fred had just come into the room and he saw me.

“Ginny!” He cried. “Where are you going?”

“Anywhere but here!” I shouted, and everything shifted and spun and I was gone, Fred’s bewildered face still pressed into my memory.

I don’t know where I expected to go, so when I finally stepped out of an old, dusty fireplace thick with cobwebs, I was not, in anyway, surprised. I stepped out of the hearth into a dark, empty room, thick with spider webs and heavy with dust and dirt. The room was large, I could probably have fit my entire house into it. It appeared as if no one had been there in years, and the windows lining the wall across from where I stood let no light in through the dirt encrusted there.

I walked across the room and out of the doorway, my footsteps echoing in the silence.

I remember exactly how I was feeling then, as I stepped out of the room I had been brought to. Triumph, excitement, and a smug sense of achievement. I had done it. I had left them all. They hadn’t loved me as much as they should have and I had punished them for it by leaving them.

I found the door that lead outside, and stepped out of the large, empty stone building. I studied it from the exterior and decided it must, at one time, have been a hospital of some sort, though why anyone would build a hospital in the middle of a forest, I couldn’t begin to guess. It was a three story stone building with thousands of windows staring like vacant eyes. Dark, gloomy, and unused for who knew how long. I shivered and turned to make my way through the forest.

I walked for a thousand miles, though it could have been only a few. It was a warm, sticky summer’s day and my skin burned with sweat and my copper hair stuck to my forehead. I was hungry, I hadn’t brought any food with me, but I didn’t allow myself to think of those things as I climbed through the underbrush in whatever direction my fancy took. My robes had short sleeves and before too long, my arms were bleeding from the thistles and thorns I brushed past.

I walked until I judged it was around noon, and then I stopped, drinking from a brook I came across and eating a few raspberries I found. As soon as I had caught my breath, I continued on my way.

I was tired and hot, hungry and thirsty, and regretting my desire to flee my comfortable home as the sun set and I began searching half-heartedly for somewhere to sleep.

The full moon lent a soft, silvery light to the forest as I walked, stumbling now and again as I tripped over fallen branches I could no longer see.

I was about to climb a pine tree I had come across when the first howl split the air. It was loud and far too close for comfort, sending shivers running up and down my torn and bloody arms. I could not tell what it was, but it terrified me, and I glanced around in panic, almost expecting to see it running towards me. In my terror, I forgot the tree I had been considering sleeping in, and took off running.

It smelled the blood on my arms, and when it howled again, the sound was different. The first howl had been full of pain, the second, hunger.

I ran as fast as I could, tearing through the underbrush with no care for my arms, and they bled even more furiously. The creature howled again and chased me. I could hear it right behind me, panting and growling, anticipating the capture, the kill.

It tackled me on the bank of a creek, it’s front paws hitting my back with enough force to bruise, and I fell forward, my upper body hitting the water. It was cold, and the shock of that was the only thing that kept me conscious. I writhed and screamed beneath the weight of the wolf (I could see now that it was a wolf, though I still did not know how grave a situation it really was.). Its fangs ripped into my flesh and, foam dripping from its lips, it tore my arm open, my blood wetting its muzzle and turning it crimson.

The pain was intense and I shrieked, kicking at the monster. It yelped a little and I used that distraction to pull myself forward with my good arm, slipping into the frigid waters of the creek.

I dove under the water and let it carry me away. It was cold and comforting, cooling the burning fire in the arm that the creature had torn open. I slipped into unconsciousness knowing that I was about to die and not caring either way.

I opened my eyes and it was morning. I was laying on a soft, muddy bank, broken reeds as my pillow, my arm throbbing and aching. I was soaking wet and I remember how blue the sky was. It’s strange how little things like that press themselves into my memory.

There was someone kneeling beside me, speaking in a low, musical voice, and I turned my head a little to look. At first I did not recognize him. I hadn’t really seen much of him to begin with, back in Hogwarts, and he looked different now. Wilder. Dirt streaked his face. His hair was lighter than before, a tawny brown, longer than it used to be. He had brushed it back and tied it with a dark ribbon, and still, the ponytail easily brushed his shoulders. His face was harsher too, but still soft with kindness, though now creased with panic. It was his eyes I remember the most, however. So dark and achingly sad.

“Professor,” I whispered.

He had been wrapping my arm in bandages, still speaking softly to himself, and when I spoke, he shot me a startled look. “Remus,” he said almost absently. “Are you all right?” His voice very gentle.

I moaned a little and closed my eyes, slipping back into unconsciousness.

I think he must have carried me to his home, a small cabin deep in the forest, because I woke there a while later. I was in a small, sparse bedroom, on a bed piled high with quilts and pillows. The walls were bare and there was no other furniture in the room except for a chest of drawers beside the door, which was slightly ajar.

My arm that had been bitten was wrapped in bandages and I poked at it, wondering why it no longer hurt. I was just about to call out to see if there was anyone around when Remus opened the door. He looked much the same as before, except that he had washed the mud away and tidied his hair.

“You’re awake,” he said.

I smiled at him because he looked so sad. “Yes. I feel better.”

He was carrying a tray, and I sniffed the air cautiously, trying to smell what was on it. That in itself should have alerted me to what was happening inside my body, but I thought nothing of it at the time.

He set the tray down at the foot of the bed. There was a bowl on it with some soup, and a large goblet of a liquid I could not identify.

He handed me the goblet. “Drink it all, it will help.”

I drained the goblet obediently, though it burned my throat and made me choke. “What was that?” I gasped.

His chocolaty eyes slid away from mine and he picked up the bowl, handing it to me. I began to eat, and he finally said, “Wolfsbane Potion.”

I choked again, the soup burning my tongue, and my eyes widened. “Wolfsbane?” I whispered. There had been rumors following Remus’s abrupt departure from Hogwarts, but I have never given much credence to rumors. Now, however, they all came back to me, and I asked in a trembling tone, “What was that thing that attacked me last night?”

His eyes finally met mine and I could see swirling depths of guilt there. “It was me.”

I glanced at the bandages around my arm and started to shake. “But surely…”

He sighed, shaking his head and touching my good hand and I flinched. “What is your name, child?”

“You don’t recognize me, Remus?” I asked, my voice breaking as I struggled not to cry.

His eyes ran over my face once more and the ghost of a smile lit his lips. “Virginia?”

“Ginny,” I corrected.

“Ginny. I wasn’t sure if it was you.”

There was an awkward silence and I struggled to find anything that would break it and prove that what I was suspecting had happened had not. Finally, I said reluctantly, “What’s going to happen to me now?”

His lips tightened for a moment, and he picked up my hand, studying it. I could tell he didn’t know where to begin and that he wanted, somehow, to make it better. He couldn’t, not really, and he knew it. “Ginny, I’m sorry,” he said finally, dropping my hand. “Living this far in the forest, I never see another human being, so the necessity of taking the Wolfsbane Potion isn’t there, so I forgot yesterday. It was the last night of the full moon and I didn’t take it. I woke up in the forest and was walking home when I found you.”

I licked my lips, which had suddenly gone dry. “But what does it mean?”

He glanced away, smoothing back a wisp of his hair that had escaped the ribbon. “I don’t know, Ginny,” he admitted. “It means that you will become like me.”

“A werewolf?”

He nodded, looking saddened. “Yes,” he whispered.

My chest was heaving with panic and I cried, “But Remus, what’s going to happen to me now? What am I going to do?”

He grabbed my hand again, his eyes blazing with an intensity I had never seen. “I will take care of you, Ginny. I will. I will make it as easy as I possibly can. I will protect you. It’ll be all right, you’ll see. It’s all my fault, and I—”

“Remus,” I whispered. “It scares me.”

There was silence for a moment, and I couldn’t even look at him. Finally, he asked, “Ginny, what were you doing there? No one’s come into this forest for days, I- I didn’t think anyone would be that near.”

I shot him a quick look and then scowled. “It wasn’t my fault,” I said finally. “You can’t blame me. I was just walking in the forest.”

He winced at my words and I struggled not to pull away when he touched my hair. He tenderly smoothed my hair back out of my face; his hand was trembling. “I know,” he said softly. “I’m so very sorry.”

For a while, I blamed him for it, but it was just as much my fault. I had done a stupid thing, escaping my family, wandering about a strange forest. I shouldn’t be there, I should be at home with my mother and my father and my brothers, not in some tiny cabin, my body slowly changing and adjusting to the curse Remus had passed on to me.

For the first few days, I was too depressed to leave the bed I had woken up in. Remus brought me meals and talked to me, tried to help me as best he could, but I had fallen so deeply into depression that I barely even heard him. He seemed to understand and did not press me, though as the days slipped passed, I noticed that his eyes seemed to get darker and darker with a deep sadness that was caused, in part, by me. After the fourth day, that sadness became tinged with a hint of wild ferocity, and I knew that he was not a man who became a wolf a few days out of each month. He was a man with a wolf in his soul, and that wolf leant him a certain wildness I would not have suspected beneath the calm, serene exterior of the man who had once been my professor.

It was fear of that wildness that finally motivated me out of my self-pitying depression and out of the tiny bedroom. My arm was fully healed; werewolves do heal faster than humans.

The rest of the cabin was as shabby but cozy as the bedroom had been. A huge hearth, a cheery fire burning there, with a large, soft chair facing it, dominated the main room. There was a blanket and a pillow on the chair, and I suddenly realized that Remus had given me his bedroom.

There was another room beside mine, lined with bookshelves stacked with more books than I could imagine. Remus wasn’t in the cabin, so I spent hours browsing through the books. There were books on every topic, from Arithmancy to Muggle airplanes, and I knew I could spend hours in that tiny room with books stacked up to the ceilings. There was another chair in there, worn and well used, and I knew that Remus probably spent more time in the library than the main room.

I was browsing his section of books by various Muggle authors when Remus spoke from the doorway. “Are you feeling better, Ginny?”

I spun around and smiled a little at him. “Yes. I was just looking at all your books, you have thousands.”

He nodded, stepping into the room right behind me, reaching over my shoulder. His long fingers ran along the spines of the books before coming to rest on one. Wuthering Heights, by a woman named Emily Brontë. He pulled it out and pressed it into my hand. “You should read this one,” he said with a small, rather haunting smile. “You’d like the main character, she reminds me greatly of you.”

The book was worn and bound in leather, warm in my hand, and I smiled in response. “Thank you.”

He nodded, his hair, unbound today, falling into his face. He flicked his head in a fluid motion and it flipped back over his shoulder. I didn’t know what to say to him, so I glanced back down at the book. He seemed to read my nervousness because he laughed softly. “Come then, Ginny, you can help me out in the garden.”

We spent that afternoon weeding and degnoming his garden, and it will always remain one of the most vivid memories I possess. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the warm sun on my back as I knelt beside him, I can still feel the cool dirt beneath my hands as I tore the weeds up, smell the soil and honeysuckle, and hear our laughter mingling in the air. We laughed a lot that day. Nothing mattered anymore except the garden and the budding friendship growing between us.

We did not speak of moonlight and curses for that first month. We spent our days either working in the garden, preparing food for winter, walking through the forest, always talking and laughing. I learned more in my stay with Remus than I had learned all my years at Hogwarts. He taught me about herbs as we walked, pointing out thousands of different plants and telling me their names and uses. We discussed a thousand different academic topics from wizarding politics to wizarding education, Muggle relations, and the ministry. Every night I would read more of the books he leant me, and the next day, we would discuss them, sometimes getting into lively debates about characterization and symbolism. None of the books, however, touched me the way Wuthering Heights had. He had given me his copy of it, and I treasured it, rereading my favourite passages over and over again.

He did not ask me about what I had been doing in the forest the day he had attacked me again, and I was grateful. He didn’t mention my family either, and I was doubly grateful for that. He probably thought I still blamed him for the entire situation, but that isn’t why I didn’t want to discuss it. I had started feeling homesick, but I knew I couldn’t go home. Not cursed as I was.

The month flew by, however, and on the night the full moon, Remus and I were sitting before the fire. He had pulled the other chair out of the library for me weeks before, and we spent our evenings sitting together, sometimes in friendly silence, sometimes discussing things into the early hours of the morning, before I would retire to the bedroom and he would curl up to sleep on his chair.

This evening, however, was different. His eyes were dark and solemn. “It is nearly the full moon, Ginny,” he said.

I scowled. The cycle of the moon was the one thing we never discussed and I did not wish to start now. “I don’t care,” I replied.

“Ginny,” he said, very gently. “You’ve got to care.”

I shook my head stubbornly. “I don’t.”

He sighed. “I’ve brewed the Wolfsbane, Ginny, you must remember to take some. It will keep your mind sound, though your body changes. If you do not take it, you will not retain any of your humanity.”

I pretended not to hear him and went back to the book I was reading. My eyes did not register any of the words on the pages, however, and my hands were shaking nearly too badly to even hold the book.

Remus took it from me gently and set it aside. “Ginny.”

I glanced up at him through lashes that were spiky from the tears I was struggling very gallantly not to cry. “What?” I whispered wretchedly.

“It’s going to be all right. I’ll take care of you.”

I nodded and tried to look like I believed him, but tears were slipping down my cheeks and my chest shook as I struggled not to sob.

He didn’t say anything, just grabbed me by my wrists and pulled me out of my chair and on to his. I curled up on his lap and his hands gently stroked my hair. I rested my cheek against his chest and cried for hours.

Finally, when my eyes stung and refused to cry any more, I asked in a shaky voice, “Do you think my family misses me?”

Hs arms tightened around me. “I’m sure they do.”

I nodded, sniffling. He was holding me like I was a little girl, a baby. “Remus?” I whispered.

“What?”

“I’m not a little girl.”

His hands stilled for a moment and then continued stroking my back, though he did not reply.

Through the window, I could see the moon through the clouds, nearly full, sending silent silver shadows flickering down through the trees, and I shivered.

The scent on the air was of rain, and I wondered, idly, if it was going to storm.