Phases

Phases Chapter Two: Redefining Normal (Third Quarter Moon)

For years afterward, Remus would sit occasionally and try to remember exactly how it happened. He could never piece everything together, despite his best efforts. He remembered the bite itself, but not which direction the werewolf came from. He remembered going into the forest, but nothing about why. His parents told him the explanation he'd babbled at his father as Julius ran with him back to the house. He couldn't think why on earth he'd expected to catch a hinkypunk at the age of four. He remembered some of the curses the St. Mungo's Healers used to keep him alive, thinking it ironic that they had to curse him to let his body cure itself. He could not remember the entire month between the day he was pronounced sound by the Healers and the night of his first actual transformation. He remembered hearing his parents rush to the scene, but could not remember exactly how his mother killed the werewolf. He remembered begging his mother to let him die, but could not remember where he was in the woods when the werewolf attacked him. It ran together, transmuted, permeated by what adults told him later, changed and revised and fleshed out as each piece returned, or did not.

But, oh yes, he did remember the bite. The look of the wolf as it fixed its eyes on him, then the power of its limbs as it leapt into the air and came crashing down on him, bearing him to the ground. He remembered twisting away from its claws, remembered the growling, snapping jaws that fought to find purchase in the soft flesh of a four-year-old boy. He remembered pulling away once, only to trip over a root and collapse to the earth again. He remembered the jaws clamping onto his right shoulder, the flesh tearing apart as he wrenched it, trying to elude the creature's grip. He could feel, from the first moment the wolf's teeth broke his skin, the burning rush in his blood as the disease flooded into him. He remembered the whispers of demons filling his head. He remembered feeling the bloodlust of his own attacker, feeling it consume him and wanting to share the feast.

The next thing he recalled was waking in his sickroom at the Park. He was hoarse from screaming, and he was restrained by spells that kept him from being able to move. His shoulder was held fast in a tightly bound sling. He itched. He burned. He was on fire. He tried to scream again, but he was too spent. His legs twitched. It was like being bitten by a mosquito a thousand times--a bite on every single pore of skin. Remus thought he would die if he didn't scratch.

'Mummy!' he croaked, moistening his throat with a swallow. 'Mummy!' Louder. The door opened and Athena Lupin rushed in, followed by wizards in curious white robes.

'Lie still, darling,' his mother told him as she sat down on the edge of his little bed. 'Let Healer Oxgall look at you.'

'Hurts,' Remus protested. 'Itches.'

'I know,' his mother said in a soothing voice. The wizard in the white robe got out his wand.

'Where does it hurt, Remus?' he asked.

'All over,' Remus said, twitching his legs against the sheets. It just made it itch more. The movement sent a jolt of pain to his shoulder. He cried out from the wrenching agony. 'Make it stop!'

'They're trying, dearest. Shh....'

The Healer waved his wand across Remus's face, down his body, and in particular over the wound on his right shoulder, hovering at the edges of the sling. He then peered at the tip of his wand, as if it provided some intelligence. He looked up at Lady Aethenum and frowned.

'Er... May we step outside?' he asked politely.

Athena paled, and Remus's eyes grew wide. 'Don't leave me alone!' he cried pitifully. Athena took his hand reassuringly and nodded at the Healer. 'No!' Remus moaned.

'Shh. It's all right, Remus. I'll just be on the other side of the door,' she promised, standing up reluctantly. One of the other white-robed wizards stayed behind.

Remus could hear them talking, but couldn't make out what they said. He heard his mother begin to cry. He fought against the magical bonds, pushing against them, but the wizard spoke to him in soothing tones.

'Remus, don't struggle. You'll make it worse.' He came to the side of the bed, but did not sit.

Remus did the only sensible thing. He screamed bloody murder, lashing out at the Healer with a constant stream of invective and denial. Finally the door opened again and his mother returned.

'What did you do to him?' she reproached the Journeyman Healer, pushing him out of the way so she could peer closely at her son.

'Lady Aethenum, I hardly think--' the older wizard began.

'What you think, sir, is of rapidly decreasing importance,' she bit back at him. 'I don't care, do you hear? He's my son! Now you either help or leave!' She smoothed Remus's matted and sweaty hair against his scalp, murmuring reassurances to him. The wizards stood forgotten in her focused comfort.

'Athena?' Remus heard the voice of his father and cringed. He was sure to be punished; clearly this was somehow his fault, though the details were still hazy. Julius entered the sickroom, trailed by another stranger.

'I'm sorry to have to do this now, sir,' the stranger was saying as they came in, 'but the Registry is very strict about these things.'

'We don't even know for sure if he'll be one,' Julius said.

'With all due respect, Lord Aethenum,' the Healer broke in, seeming to regain some of his dignity, 'I was just telling Lady Aethenum that the signs are fairly clear. Barton, would you be kind enough to help....' He gestured meaningfully at Remus.

Remus began to breathe more quickly. He didn't like the way the young wizard in white was pointing his wand.

'Remus, I'm just going to help you sleep a little while. Wouldn't you like to sleep?'

'Mummy?' Remus squeaked out through his fear.

'I'll do it, for now,' Athena said, wiping her eyes. 'It's all right, sweetheart, you should get some sleep.'

'But it hurts....' Remus wailed.

'Yes, and it won't hurt if you're asleep, dear.' She bit back more tears as she held up her wand. 'Stupefy,' she said very gently.

~*~*~*~

Remus drifted in and out of this haze for an endless progression of days and nights. He lost track of how many times the wizards cast the Body Bind on him to keep him from ripping open his own flesh to stop the burning, itching pain of the lycanthropic blood coursing through him. He stopped counting the number of spells they used to test him, to check his reactions to every imaginable substance. Years later, he recalled with painful clarity the way his mother begged the Healers to administer the approved 'cures,' though they were often as painful as the disease itself. He remembered his first sniff of wolfsbane following the bite, and how it made him crazy with fear and loathing, until he actually howled for them to get it away. He winced with shame each time he closed his eyes and saw himself, huddled into the tiniest ball possible, curling himself into knots as if to constrict the pain, pleading with his mother to let him die rather than face one more moment of suffering.

But eventually, after nearly a week of unimaginable torture, his body adjusted to its new status. His blood underwent the conversion necessary for survival and he woke free from pain, not even feeling weak anymore. His appetite returned with a vengeance, and they could not keep him satisfied. Thom was allowed to visit once, briefly, to say good-bye. He and his mother were leaving, no doubt going someplace where the master's son would not recklessly endanger Thom every month. Madam Glendower began tutoring him again, and things returned nearly to normal. Or rather, normal was redefined in the Lupin household. They filed paperwork with the Registry and planned their lives around the full moon.

He learned later that his case was a rarity. Werewolves actively sought human prey without discriminating between adult and child, but children who were bitten hardly ever survived. As soon as he could, Remus began reading everything he could find about werewolves and other dark creatures. The majority of texts, he discovered, were sadly inaccurate. But the literature the Registry left with his parents, and the brochures he procured from the Werewolf Services office at least did not contain any grossly misleading statements, though they were pathetically sketchy. The few details contained in the literature corroborated the medical text he found in his first year at Hogwarts. His own Healer was a leading werewolf researcher and had contributed to the chapter on child transformation. Upon reading it, Remus realised with a grimace that the Healer had based his findings largely on Remus's own case.

'The child bitten by a werewolf is an unenviable wretch,' Healer Oxgall and his colleagues wrote. 'As discussed in Chapter Three, the werewolf transmits his disease by means of a bite while in wolf form. The bite itself, while painful and potentially a serious injury, is secondary in importance to the transference of fluid - venom, if you will - which enters the bloodstream upon breaking the skin. A werewolf, like a scorpion or manticore, always injects the same amount of venom into any bite. Whereas an adult human is frequently able to absorb and adapt to the venom, albeit painfully, the child must suffer an equal amount of toxin distributed across a much smaller amount of blood. The results are usually catastrophic.'

In addition to the study of his remarkable battle against the poison that changed him from a regular little boy into a monster, Remus found a section that explained much of his first year as a werewolf. The first few months were the worst. Being so young when he began to change, he couldn't understand what was happening to him; even between the full moons, he experienced urges and desires that never before felt natural to him, but that now seemed not only appropriate, but necessary to his sense of well-being.

Take, for example, the need to identify his own things by their scent. His parents couldn't quite understand why he objected to washing his favourite blanket, or pair of pyjamas, or even his best set of robes. Books were much better, because nobody washed books, and dusting now and then didn't matter. Soon he had rubbed enough of his musk into the leather covers and pasteboard dust jackets that the libraries smelled like his own room.

That was another problem. How could he mark the manor house as his? He tried rubbing his hair along the walls, but that didn't work. There were too many, and it didn't last long enough. He took to night-time wandering, picking a corner here and there by the baseboard, the leg of a chair, or sometimes a section of floor or rug, and applied the only substance that would last in smell. The house-elves noticed, reported, and tried to stop their young master, but it wasn't until Athena discovered Remus one night, favouring an antique chest of drawers in his room with a full stream of territorial demarcation, that his parents realised the extent of his change.

'Son,' Julius said when he sat him down the next day, in the crisp air of fall, 'I think you know that your mother...isn't very pleased with you right now.'

'Yes,' Remus said glumly. It wasn't his fault! Well, not entirely.

'I can't say I'm too happy, either. The elves will have quite a time revarnishing that cabinet.'

Remus bit his lip. He should apologise, he supposed, but how? 'I just...I wanted....' He trailed off, unsure how to explain.

'Remus, I know that you're going through an adjustment,' his father said reasonably. 'We all are. But...you are still a young gentleman, and you must realise that such behaviour is simply not acceptable in polite society.'

Remus nodded. He bowed his head, exposing the back of his neck. It felt like the right thing to do.

'I talked to Healer Oxgall this morning by fire, but he's only seen two other cases of children in your...situation, and they were both twice your age, so he wasn't able to help much. I suppose it's that you're so young....' He was talking more to himself now than Remus, but soon shook himself out of the theoretical and back to the practical. 'The point is, Remus, we can't have you...behaving like a puppy who isn't housebroken.'

Remus reddened. 'I know how to use the toilet!' he protested angrily, with a hint of whine. 'But...I can't explain, Papa,' he went on, chancing a look up at his father's stern face. 'It just feels...I need the inside to be mine, so it's safe.' His brow furrowed with his attempt to describe his dilemma.

Julius sighed. 'I know it's difficult, Remus, but you simply can't. It's just not done,' he finished lamely, infusing the simple phrase with all the stiffness of centuries-old noble heritage.

'Yes, Papa,' Remus acknowledged.

'So, we agree?' Julius continued, taking his son's small hands in his. 'You shan't indulge this particular aspect of your nature inside?'

Remus wasn't sure exactly what all those words meant, but he caught the important one: 'inside.' Inside he had to be a human. But outdoors....

'Yes, Papa,' he promised readily.

~*~*~*~

Moons came and went. Remus lived a solitary life, no longer free to wander about the Crossing and mix with the town boys. There were still Muggles about the Park, but none lived in anymore except Turner, and all were gone by sunset on the night of a full moon. The three house-elves took care of almost everything, now. Madam Glendower was replaced by Professor Turpin when Remus turned six, and then by Professor Brockelhurst about two years later, and finally by his own parents, when Julius and Athena had the time. His parents communicated with the Registry and the Support Services offices at the Ministry for Remus's annual reviews, and finally came to grips with the reality: because of his condition, Remus would not qualify for Hogwarts.

In the meantime, that condition itself became more and more dangerous. His mother took him to St. Mungo's every so often, when Healer Oxgall believed they might have a solution, but nothing worked. By the time Remus turned nine, his werewolf form was grown enough to have a venomous bite.

'He'll be breaking out of the cellar soon,' Athena said to her husband one evening after Remus had gone to bed. 'Even with the house-elves.'

'Yes,' Julius said gravely. 'I assume you've thought of something.' His wife, bless her, never went long without a plan.

'I've been studying the forest on the south end,' she admitted without shame. 'From the gate, past the dower house, and back up level with the house. It's a large enough area for a full-grown wolf not to feel too confined.'

Julius raised his eyebrows. 'Are you saying that we should let him loose?' he asked with concern.

'No, of course not.... But do you recall Sir Watership's memoir?'

'A Wizard's Life Abroad?' Julius confirmed. 'Yes, of course. I remember how we found it, too,' he went on mischievously.

But Athena was not to be put off where her son was concerned. 'Do you remember the passage where he described the way the Kibanga shaman protected his village from the Congalese?'

Julius gaped at her. 'Area wards combined with anti-Muggle charms?' he asked, amazed. 'Darling, generations of wizards created those protections. Are you suggesting--'

'--That we protect a section of the forest. Keep Remus in; keep anyone else out.'

Julius blew out a long burst of air from puckered lips as he considered. 'We'd have to add a wizarding protection--not just anti-Muggle,' he mused, caught up in the academic challenge.

'Yes,' Athena agreed. 'And we should configure the wards so they're strongest at the full, to be reinforced at the wane,' she reminded him.

'I see,' Julius continued. He sat up in his chair and leaned forward, becoming excited by the exercise. Though his enthusiasm was heightened by his desire to help his son, the Ravenclaw in him thrilled as the problem took on a life of its own.

~*~*~*~

For over a year, Athena and Julius researched their project and conducted tests on the sections of forest they wished to use. They kept it secret from Remus, even arranging preliminary inspections from the Support Services Office without his knowledge. More than once, Julius assigned Remus a research task without telling him why. As his wolf-form grew stronger, though, Remus wondered what his parents intended to do with him. One night, when he was almost ten, he voiced his fears.

'I've been thinking,' he said over supper. 'It's hard to tell, but I'm fairly certain the...the wolf is getting stronger.'

Athena and Julius glanced up nervously at one another, then at Remus. 'That sounds about right,' Julius said guardedly.

'I just wondered,' Remus continued, trying to choose his words carefully, 'if you and Mum have any...plan for what to do if it breaks out of the cellar.'

'Are you...do you think that it will?' Athena asked him cautiously.

'I'm pretty sure it will, soon,' Remus admitted, blushing, 'especially if it smells any, er, people nearby.' He let that hang in the air as long as he could, but then had to rush on. 'Mum, Dad--I don't want to go to St. Mungo's,' he told them a touch frantically.

'St. Mungo's?' Athena repeated. 'Remus, dear, do you think we could--do you think we would send you away?'

'It's the only safe thing, isn't it?' Remus countered. 'They have...those rooms, where you took me before, where they could lock me inside and I couldn't even smell anything on the other side. Where they could seal me in entirely while they tested things.' He pushed his plate away, feeling sick from the memories of all the tests. 'I.... They'd like having someone there they could test all the time, wouldn't they?' he asked, finally hinting at the thing he feared, biting his lip while he awaited the answer.

'Remus,' Julius said calmly. 'No one is going to send you anywhere.'

'You're our son,' Athena told him with a concerned look at her husband. 'Those trips to St. Mungo's...that was when they thought they'd discovered something that might help you.'

'I know,' Remus told her earnestly, sorry that he'd upset his mother, 'but as I can't go to Hogwarts, I thought...maybe it's too much trouble, and...having a subject there all the time....'

'Remus, we're not giving you up to medical wizardry,' Julius said, with something that sounded like an aborted chuckle. He sobered immediately to reassure Remus that the idea was absurd. 'We're aware that it's getting more difficult for you, being down there--'

'I've always hated putting you down there,' Athena interjected. 'We're working on something else, dear,' she told him. 'I didn't want to get your hopes up, though, until we were sure it would work.'

'Really?' Remus said, his gaze bouncing back and forth from mother to father. 'Please tell me,' he requested, sounding like any other ten-year-old on the planet.

'Your mother is a devilishly smart witch,' Julius said with a gleam in his eye. 'She's trying to prepare a section of the woods for you to use.'

'Near the old dower house, right?' Remus asked excitedly. 'And from there to the gate?'

'How did you--'

'I thought something felt different the last time I went--looking for plants for my herbology lesson,' Remus amended quickly. 'Can I help? Can I learn the spells and things?'

'May I,' Athena said calmly, 'and I think you're a little too young for this level of magic,' she explained.

'But I bet I can learn,' Remus said brightly. 'I'm sure I could do something to help--please, Dad? Please?'

Remus was looking at his father with such an open expression of earnestness that Julius began to laugh. 'You're already helping, Remus,' he told him, and pointed out the research into protective spells and wards, along with the lunar charts Remus had drafted from the time he was old enough to pronounce 'syzygy' and define it.

But Remus had so many questions about the wards--Were they lunar wards only, or reinforced by the pull of another planet as well?--Did the wards act like a barrier, or simply give one the feeling one shouldn't approach the line?--Could things like bullets (Mr Church had an old Remington he sometimes let Remus help clean) and arrows pass through, or was it truly solid?--that before dessert, his parents decided to let him help.

~*~*~*~

Julius turned it into a new project. Every day, Remus did some little spell or task that would aid their attempt to make the forest secure. As summer faded and his birthday approached, the plan seemed to be going very well indeed.

Then, Athena came to see him during lessons one morning.

'I've had an owl from Healer Oxgall,' she began tentatively.

Remus looked up from his book of cyphers. One look at his mother told him everything he needed to know. His pulse raced; his mouth felt dry. Lips slightly parted, he shook his head slowly.

'No,' he told her quietly.

Athena seemed not to have heard him. She pulled a chair out from the classroom table and sat next to him. 'He's had some very promising results with certain strains of nightshade--'

'No,' Remus said again, more urgently.

'Dearest, I know it's terrible--I know how it has been before, but--'

'Mum, no,' Remus answered her firmly, looking her in the eye. 'I'm not going to be his test subject anymore.'

'But, if it works, there's still time. You could go to school--'

'If it works on someone else, I'll think about it. Until then, I'm not going up there. And if it doesn't work,' he continued quickly, staving off her protest, 'then we're no worse off than before.' He set down his quill, turning to face her and placing a reassuring young hand on hers, which still clutched the letter. 'Mum, I know you're only trying to help. I know you'd do anything to cure me. And I know you and Dad want me to go to Hogwarts more than anything. But it's just not going to happen, Mum. Any more than Healer Oxgall's latest theory will work. It's just so much stuff, isn't it? It's time we faced it, Mum. I'm not going to be cured.'

Athena's eyes widened and she shook her head. 'Sweetheart,' she whispered, holding out her arms as if to hug him tight.

Remus ducked away. 'I'm not giving up, Mum--really, I'm not. There's always a chance something will work. And when it does...well, maybe things can be different. But in the meantime, Mum, listen to me. I'm all right. Really. You and Dad will teach me, and I'll stay on here and learn how to run things at the Park and do for the Crossing. That's all right with me.'

Athena drew a ragged breath, and Remus could tell she was holding back tears to save him the embarrassment. 'You...don't mind not going to Hogwarts? You shan't miss it?'

Remus shrugged. With a wisdom beyond his years, he observed, 'How can I miss what I've never seen?' He smiled at her. 'Five years, Mum,' he said solemnly. 'Sixty-six moons. I'm used to it. It's not that bad.'

She seemed to truly appreciate the lie. This time, she did catch him in her embrace, squeezing hard.

'Mum!' Remus protested. 'Please! I'm almost ten--I'm too old for that!'