Chainless Soul

Chainless Soul
Chapter Two
By Cinnamon

I can’t even describe how changing was for the first time. I remember that at first, it felt like every bone in my body were breaking, shifting, and rearranging, and I thought that I was dying.

Something’s gone wrong. I wanted to scream, but the muscles in my throat had rearranged as well and I could no longer form words. A low whimper emerged from my lips instead, and it terrified me.

I don’t remember how long it took. I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on breathing deeply, because at least that remained the same.

And then it was over. I knew it was over because something was nudging my face, and I opened my eyes. It was Remus.

Everything looked different, more vivid. There weren’t colours, of course. Wolves are colour blind. But even without colours, everything seemed somehow more vibrant, as if it sparkled with some inner light. I could see every tiny crack and knot on the wooden ceiling above, could almost see the heat from the fire shimmering in the air.

Remus’s wolf eyes were studying my face carefully. He was standing above me, and I realized that I was lying on my side on the floor of the bedroom. I got up, feeling a thousand times more graceful as a wolf than I ever had as tall, awkward Ginny Weasley. The power in my body was more than I had ever felt before. I felt like I could run around the world three times before even being the tiniest bit tired.

The smells on the air had intensified and I sniffed cautiously. I could smell a rabbit outside in the garden, getting into the carrots. I could smell Remus as well, a distinct scent that I knew belonged only to him that I do not know how to describe. Something wild. It excited the wolf blood running through my veins and I suddenly felt the playful urge to howl at the moon I could see through the window.

I was wagging my tail.

I was wagging my tail.

Even now, the concept is too strange to accept.

I remember that I wanted to run. The cabin was too small. I wanted out in the forest, running. I let out a small whine and scratched at the floor, and I guess Remus understood. He had explained to me that even after the potion we had taken, we would still feel the wolf impulses, we would just be able to think rationally. He explained it in terms of some Muggle psychology theory by a man named Freud. Something about an id, an ego, and a superego, and retaining the balance between them. I hadn’t understood and I still don’t.

Remus turned and left the room and I followed, looking around with great curiosity. I wasn’t frightened any longer, there was just too much to look at, to smell, to feel. I wondered what colour my fur was, and I wondered what colour Remus’s was. I wondered if I got a fast enough head start, would I be able to jump over the moon? I wondered if raw rabbit would taste as good sliding down my throat as it smelled.

The door was open, and I knew that Remus had been outside in the garden when he started to change, and he had come running inside to be with me the first time I changed. He had known how terrified I was, and he had left the door wide open in his haste to get to me.

The smell of freshly fallen rain and the fading scent of thunder were still heavy in the air as I stepped out of the cabin, my four paws making no sound across the wooden floor. The grass was wet, it had stormed that day, though the clouds had broken up as the sun set. I lifted my head into the gentle breeze that ruffled my fur, and I sniffed delicately. The wealth of scents that greeted me nearly made me dizzy.

My blood was singing and I could not hold back any longer. I took off running into the trees, moving so fast that everything was a blur around me, the subtle grays and blacks that made up the colourless world somehow a million times more colourful than before. I leapt over logs and dug up the soft ground with my paws as I ran, no destination in mind, just running because there was power in the corded muscles in my legs and I wanted to use it. I wanted to jump over the moon, still silver up in the black sky.

I could sense rather than see Remus pacing me, keeping a short distance behind though I knew he could easily overtake me. He was following me, watching over me still.

I stopped suddenly at the bank of the same creek I had nearly drowned in before. My paws dug into the mud, and I spun around quickly, watching Remus as he easily bounded over the fallen tree I had leapt over a moment before. He hit the ground and saw me waiting for him, and he backed up a step warily, watching me. I guess he wasn’t sure what I was doing. Maybe he thought I had gone mad.

I wagged my tail slowly, a mischievousness coiling in my belly. His ears perked up a little as he watched me, his face, if possible, looking bewildered. I would have giggled, had I still been human. Instead, the sound came out as a whimper, and I jumped forward a little, digging my paws further into the mud. He stepped back, growing even more cautious, and before he had time to guess my intent, I attacked him, growling and nearly knocking him onto his back. I scampered away before he could retaliate, and when I finally glanced at him, he was watching me in shock. I realized then that he had never seen being a wolf as anything except a curse, something to be dealt with at each full moon as a punishment, not something to play with. He had spent nearly his whole life turning into a wolf at each full moon, and all that meant to him was that he was isolated from nearly everybody, that he was dangerous, that he had to be careful.

That’s not what it was to me. It was power, something to play with. I was seeing the entire world through new eyes and I loved it.

I attacked him again, playfully, growling and snapping at his ear. I jumped away and attacked again, rising onto my back legs and lunging at him. This time, he responded, though hesitantly, still afraid of hurting me. He rose up and knocked me out of the air, and I yelped, rolling onto my back, now coated with mud. I got to my feet, shaking my fur. He was watching warily from a short distance away, and I wagged my tail again, trying to screw my face up as goofily as I could manage to let him know it was okay. My tongue lolled out and I panted loudly, crossing my eyes.

Remus made an odd growling noise that sounded almost like laughter, and I attacked him again.

We wrestled like that all night, the strange adrenaline pumping through my veins needing some sort of outlet and finding it in playful fighting in the mud. For hours, we lunged at each other, snapping and growling, and by the time the sun started lightening the sky, our fur was sticky with mud, though we hadn’t drawn any blood.

Finally, exhausted, I drank from the creek and collapsed beside it, my head resting on my paws. Remus drank as well, and then curled up in the grass a short distance away.

We slept that way, in the rain-washed forest beside the creek, the mud all around us torn up from our fighting. When I awoke, the sun was up, and I was human again.

I wasn’t wearing any clothing, and my body was slick with mud. I glanced once at Remus, but he was still asleep, and I slipped into the creek, walking a short distance away to where it was deeper. I sunk in over my head and allowed the water to wash away most of the mud, and then I began swimming, my muscles aching from the night before.

I was sitting in water up to my chin, trying to untangle the knots from my hair, when Remus awoke. I could feel him watching me, but I didn’t turn around until he spoke.

“Ginny.” His voice was raw with some emotion I couldn’t identify, and I turned around, studying his face. I could barely see him for the mud on his body and the tall grass all around him, and I knew he couldn’t see me through the water, so our nudity didn’t bother me.

“Are you all right?” I asked him

“Shit,” he swore angrily, running a hand through his long, muddy hair. I was shocked. I’d never heard him angry before, much less use a curse word. “Ginny, I’m supposed to ask you that,” he said savagely.

I cocked my head to the side, giving up, for the moment, on my hair. “Are you angry at me?”

“No, I’m not. I’m angry at me.”

I started swimming closer, still carefully staying below the water, watching his face. “Why, Remus?”

“I acted like an animal.” Shame made his voice huskier than normal.

That was it then, I realized. He was ashamed at having acted like a wolf the night before with me. “Oh, Remus,” I breathed, swimming closer. “You were an animal, and so was I. There is no shame in acting like your true nature.” I realized how sexual our conversation would seem to anyone who didn’t know the context, and I blushed.

Remus didn’t see it, he wasn’t looking at me. “The wolf is a curse, Ginny, it’s not a game.”

“Of course it isn’t,” I replied, exasperated. “But you did not ask for this and neither did I. I refuse to punish myself for something I had no control over, and if I find any pleasure in being an animal, I don’t take shame in that. I am part wolf now, and it’s not nearly as bad as I feared. Should I live the rest of my life afraid of what I am? Or should I play with it, have fun with it?” I shrugged, my shoulders rising out of the water, and Remus was watching me.

“But it’s wrong,” he said quietly. “It is a curse, a punishment.”

I rolled my eyes. “A curse, maybe, but what have you done to be punished for? Even I have done nothing do merit such a punishment, but I can’t change it and I don’t have to hate myself for it; neither do you. After all, you’re the only other werewolf I’ve ever met, Remus, which means you’re practically teaching me how to be a werewolf. Do you want me to be ashamed of what I am?”

“No.”

“Then stop trying to teach me to be and let me teach you how not to be instead.” I grinned at him to soften the words, and he smiled wearily back.

“Close your eyes,” he said. “I’ll go back to the cabin and get dressed. I’ll bring you some clothes.”

“And soap,” I said, wrinkling my nose.

“And soap,” he agreed.

I turned my back and heard him walk away. Then I started humming and working on the tangles in my hair again.

I guess Remus did a lot of thinking about what I had said as he walked back through the forest to the cabin. When he returned, I was swimming idly in the deep part of the creek, my hair nearly untangled, and he set the clothing he had brought me on a rock near the bank, a towel neatly folded on top. He was still terribly muddy.

“You’re right,” he said, before I had a chance to speak. “It’s taken you one month to come to terms with the curse I haven’t been able to deal with nearly all of my life.”

I smiled gently at him. “I had an excellent teacher, Remus,” I told him. “Even if you couldn’t accept the animal part of you, you accepted it in me, and taught me that I wasn’t to be ashamed of myself, so why should I be ashamed of you? It’s not such a bad thing, turning into a wolf a few nights a month. Not really, especially out here where there is no one else to know about it. We can deal with this.” Together, I was beginning to think, we could deal with just about anything. I was wrong.

He left, telling me he was going down stream to find another place to swim, and I stepped out of the cold water a short time after, drying myself with the towel, dressing in the robes he had brought. They were his, old and patched in places, and smelled wonderful. I wrapped my arms around myself and made my way back to the cabin.

It was cold and empty and I started a fire, sitting on the rug before it to dry my hair, combing it through with one of Remus’s combs. That’s where I was when he returned.

He made us lunch and we talked of books while we ate it. I think there was a sort of unspoken agreement not to speak of the animal-playing we had shared before. It was like Remus wanted to keep the animal part of our life separate from the human part, and I didn’t mind. He had done too much for me to disregard his wishes on that.

But that night, when the moon rose, we became animals again, running together through the forest, howling and playing together, tracking small animals by scent and racing each other around the trees.

The full moon disappeared into softer slivers of moonlight and life returned to normal. We stayed up too late talking about books and anything else that struck our fancy, we spent our days exploring the forest. I think the friendship I developed then with Remus has been surpassed by none in my life, except maybe that strange relationship I had had with Tom Riddle. There had been an obsessive quality about my friendship with Tom that was lacking with Remus, although I did not miss it much. My friendship with Remus was soft and gentle, the kind of friendship that develops between kindred souls who share the same pains, heartaches, and triumphs.

I did not count the passing days in terms of months but rather in terms of moons. Each full moon was a time of passion and discovery like none other I have ever experienced before, and I loved them with the same intensity that Remus used to loathe them. Even he had come to look at the full moon with something approaching the childlike enthusiasm that I had for it. He began to see it as I did, not as a curse, but as a new way to see the world. We never forgot to take the Wolfsbane and we weren’t a danger, and I slowly taught him to embrace his wolf, rather than fear it.

Homesickness gradually faded into a dull ache that would burn gently whenever anything reminded me of the life I could not go back to. I could not return to my family, I had decided it was better they think I was dead than go back to them as a wolf. Maybe I’m a hypocrite. For all that I preached to Remus about not being ashamed, I knew that if my family found out about what I had become, I would die of shame.

It was autumn when things subtly shifted again, I had been with Remus for a few moons now.

The night it all changed was cool, though the bite in the air did not bother me with my thick coat of fur. Remus and I were down by the creek, we’d been tracking a chipmunk through the rockier area of the bank, and he was a short distance away, pawing at the tiny fish he could see swimming in the creek.

The rocks beneath my paws were loose and sharp, I remember they were pressing into the tender pads on my feet as I carefully walked across them. I was sniffing at some strange scent in the air when a strange howl cut through the forest, some distance away. My head snapped up suddenly and the movement disturbed the stones at my feet. They began to slide and I fell with them, down a short embankment and onto the rocks below. One of my front legs was hit by a falling rock and I yelped, whimpering. I could smell my own blood, heavy on the air, and the wound burned.

There is something about pain that blocks the effect of the Wolfsbane, that brings the animal out and into control. I limped away, snarling, into the frosted weeds a short distance away, lying down heavily. I saw Remus appear suddenly at the top of the embankment, saw him scan the area with his eyes, searching for me, and when he saw me, he leapt easily through the air, landing lightly beside me.

I snarled and snapped at him, my head lowered over my bloody leg, warning him away. The animal part of me was in control, and he could probably see it in my eyes. He didn’t care, he gently knocked my head out of the way with his, lying in front of me so his head was beside mine.

I growled warningly, my lips pulling back so he could see my fangs. He calmly ignored that, and gently began licking the wound on my leg.

It was far from a serious wound, and besides, werewolves heal a thousand times faster than regular people, but still, he tenderly licked, and I watched him, a strange feeling I couldn’t identify singing through my blood. The human part of it, anyway. It was whispering strange emotions that I couldn’t explain as I watched him carefully tend to my hurt leg.

When the leg had healed itself a short while later, he playfully nudged my ear with his nose and whined.

I turned away, too confused by everything to play, and he sighed, coming to lie beside me. We fell asleep that way, and it was the cold autumn breeze against my naked skin that woke me the next morning.

We were tangled together in the reeds, one of his hands resting possessively on my hip, and neither of us was wearing any clothing.

I didn’t move or even breathe too deeply for fear of waking him. There is some sort of secret thrill in watching someone sleep for the first time, seeing their face without guards up, to see their natural vulnerabilities, and Remus’s face was beautiful. I couldn’t help it and I lifted one hand, the one that my face had been pillowed on, and brought it up to his face, brushing his long hair back.

His eyes flew open and for forever it seemed, they stared into mine, and we were frozen like that. And then he jerked his hand off my hip and pulled away, as if burned.

I was remembering the way my blood had sang the night before as he licked the blood from my leg, and my hand started to tremble with something I didn’t understand. “Remus,” I called, my voice sounding breathless even to me. My fingers were still tangled in his hair.

He took my hand and pulled it gently away, holding it and studying it carefully. It was the same one I had hurt the night before, and he was looking for scars. There were none. Finally, he dropped my hand, and it lay in the crushed reeds between us. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said, his voice lower than normal.

“Then show me.”

His eyes flew to mine and he touched my face briefly before pulling his hand away. “No.”

“Why?”

“I’m old enough to be your father.”

I smiled; I couldn’t help it. “But you’re not my father.”

“That doesn’t matter. You’re still a child.”

I could feel my face heating with anger. “You’ve never treated me like a child before, why start now?” I snapped.

“Ginny,” he began gently, smoothing my hair back and hooking it behind my ear.

“Don’t bother,” I said coldly, pulling away. I have always been self-conscious of my body, and I blushed furious as I sat up, crossing my arms across my chest and pulling my knees up to hide myself. “Turn around,” I snapped finally, his eyes on me making my skin heat in a fiery blush.

“Ginny,” he tried again.

“Don’t look at me,” I shrieked, my humiliation at having been rejected translating itself into rage. I’ve always had a bad temper. “Don’t look at me,” I repeated, trying to calm down. “I’m ugly.”

His eyes widened and he still didn’t look away. He reached out to touch my hair, which was falling all around me in wild red tangles. I jerked away. “You’re not,” he said quietly. “You’re not ugly at all.”

“Then why won’t you touch me?” I snarled.

Something like anger came to life in his eyes and the next thing I knew, he was kissing me. I would have thought a kiss from Remus would have been infinitely gentle, the way he was, but there was the animal part of him I had never considered, and that was how he kissed me. Wild and feral, with his teeth and tongue, growling low in his throat. He pushed me back until the reeds crushed beneath me dug into my back, and I didn’t kiss him back. I didn’t move, frozen beneath him. Finally, he tore his mouth from mine, but I could still taste him. His eyes were nearly black and glittering with a rage hotter than anything I’d ever seen before.

“This is what you want?” he said roughly, angrily.

I shook my head, biting back tears, shaking with terror. “No,” I whimpered.

“I didn’t think so,” he growled, getting off me so suddenly that the sudden switch from hot to cold around my body made me cry out. He was gone by the time I sat up, and hot tears fell from my eyes.

I ground my fist against my eyes to dry them, my chest heaving with the effort it took not to sob. Angry, I stood up and took a few running steps, into the icy river. When it was deep enough to touch my knees, I threw myself forward, landing heavily on my stomach, and letting myself sink into the icy water. I floated there until my lungs burned for oxygen, and then I rolled onto my back. It was October; the water was like frozen fire, chilling my body. I didn’t care.

I swam for a long time, unaware of anything except for the oddly comforting icy water bleeding the heat out of my veins.

When I came out of the creek, there was a neat pile of robes and a towel waiting for me on the bank. Even furious at me, Remus was taking care of me.

***

I made my way slowly back to the cabin, lost in thought. I was worried, of course, that Remus would be angry with me for what I had tried to do.

The cabin was dark when I approached, and I stepped into it nervously. He wasn’t there.

Unsure if I should be relieved or disappointed, I made my way to the small kitchen, finding something to eat, and then fetching my much loved copy of Wuthering Heights. When Remus returned, I was laying on my stomach on the grass outside, so involved in the book, that I did not notice he was there until his shadow fell over me.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

I glanced up, pushing a heavy curtain of copper hair out of my face. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…” I trailed off when he moved suddenly.

He crouched before me, sucking on his lip in thought for a moment, that awful rage gone from his gentle face. He was studying me, and I tried hard not to be the first to look away. Finally, he spoke. “You understand, don’t you?”

“Understand what?”

“Understand that it could never work.”

I shrugged and tried to say something light and flippant, but nothing would come to mind. Instead, I replied lamely, “It doesn’t matter.” Of course it did.

“Ginny, listen, all right? Don’t talk until I’m done, because it’s taken me forever to figure out how to say this.”

“Stop treating me like a child,” I said, acting the part. Petulant and sullen. I sat up and tossed my book aside.

“Listen to me,” he said gently. “Are you listening? This can’t work because you’re only seventeen and I’m too old for you.”

“I’ve seen the way you look at me.”

He didn’t bother to argue, but just continued on patiently. “You’re still mostly a child, Ginny, and anything you think you’re feeling for me, it’s not real.”

A thousand painful thoughts burned through my mind at that. All the millions of people who had told me I couldn’t be upset over Tom because what we had had hadn’t been real.

Remus continued talking, oblivious to the way I flinched. “I’ve taken too much from you to take this as well.”

“Taken too much?” I cried, furious. “You’ve given me more than anyone else ever has! You’re the best friend I’ve had since my first year at school when I was enchanted by a diary.”

“Then you’re confusing gratitude with something else, and either way, it’s wrong. What I feel for you and what you feel for me doesn’t matter, all right? Promise me you’ll stop thinking that way.”

I was scowling furiously at him but he didn’t back down, only continued to watch me calmly, and finally I shrugged. He took it as a promise, and smiled at me. “Ginny, I think it’s time for you to go home.” I wish now I’d listened to him. I wish I had gone. Run crying home to my mother. I didn’t; I’m not a child.

I leapt to my feet, hands on my hips and eyes blazing. “You’re sending me home?” I shouted.

He stood as well, shaking his head. “I’m not saying you have to go home, Gin, I’m just saying, I know your family. You’ve been here for months, whatever you’re running from, you’ve got to go home and face it. Your family is probably mad with worry by now.”

“I can’t ever go home,” I said stubbornly, crossing my arms over my chest. “I don’t want to talk about it.” I was pouting, and Remus sighed.

“All right, Gin,” he agreed finally, his voice full of regrets. He turned and walked away and I picked up my book and stomped into the cabin, slamming the door behind me.

I still wonder how different things would have been if I had gone home then. But that’s the thing about regrets. They don’t change a thing.