Ursa Minor

Ursa Minor

Remus felt his body tremble as he stood in the shack; it was in actuality too big to be a shack but the decrepit state of the building belittled the building's size. But Remus didn't notice such irrelevant information; why would he notice his surroundings when what he was worried about was truly a matter within him? The matter, the problem of his worries was what made him tremble, was what made him pace inside the shack throwing glances from bloodshot eyes. Not that it mattered to anyone except himself.

It mattered to Remus, but sometimes he wondered: why should it matter to him? In a wizarding world filled with prejudices against half-blood, werewolves were the dirt under wizarding kind unlike. They weren't pitied at; they were hated, pushed about for an accident that would never have happened if these same wizards and witches had put in place the protection needed.

Or, as a particularly nosy woman had said about werewolves, 'why should we put protection up against werewolves when we're busy trying to protect ourselves? If anyone gets bitten it's their fault that they were so... stupid as to not have the right protection. Meanwhile my family has got the best protection, we got it from...' She had proceeded to advertise all the best shops on the defense.

None of them affordable except for the rich and wealthy but then the wizarding papers never added that into their 'heartfelt' articles.

He bit his slip until it bled, feeling the tremors going through him again. Licking away the blood, he told himself that it would be better, that the transformation wouldn't hurt as much as the one before it. And that he was lucky to be able to go to school which was a concept new to a werewolf. A tremor stronger than the one before it swept through his thin form and he gasped out in pain, sliding down onto the floor clutching at his sides.

It always started so slowly with small tremors... racking his form in searing pain. The feeling of being ripped apart never ceased to sting him till tears crept out of his eyes, swallowing back a scream he wrenched himself at the floor. The shock of a new pain seared through his dizzy mind, pulling at the tendrils of his human mind.

Remus lifted his hand and avoided looking at himself as he touched the blood streaming from his ripped shoulder. Through his unfocused mind he noted that he had thrown himself a little harder than usual and that the healing process would take longer than before.

He clawed, at his wound feeling a ravenous craze at smelling the copper smell of blood. A malice swept into him to hunt, to kill, to feel the excitement of the tracking but there was nothing to hunt... but himself. Remus beat his head at the floor, feeling his senses becoming sharper and before and a dull haze coming over his human mind. He knew what came after... the werewolf mind being separate from his own was more vicious than a wolf's mind.

He wept to be let out from this monster of himself. As his human skin began to tear, he knew he was losing, losing himself as his small tendrils of sanity slipped past his fingers into the terrifying darkness of insanity. The pain suddenly swept through him in a terrifying height of torture, searing through him, he felt as he was being ripped with hot iron.

Savagely he bit into his arm, relishing in the taste of blood that filled his mouth and the comfort that came with it. The dull haze in his mind became alive, tearing at his human mind as his werewolf mind began to take over filling him with a bloodlust that increased through his already first taste of his own blood.

It hurt and relieved him as pain seared through his arm and for one brief moment... he welcomed anything... anything that drew his thoughts away from the monster within him. The monster that forever fought to be let out, even as he fought against it. Licking gingerly at his wound, gently tugging off the remnants of skin and mangy fur he hoped desperately to be free from the deformity of being part wolf.

It was a horrible transformation, as his cells were remodeled into the cells of a wolf... even as they still retained their human traits. There was no ending the pain that it had for Remus, in his frenzies against the pain of changing he would hurt himself, battering himself against the walls of the shack.

The inkling of humanity that felt the pain cried, screamed while the wolf howled, voice cracking at the strain of screaming a scream that would've belonged to a human voice if the voice had still been human.

I'm a part of you Remus forever and I'll be here with you till you die.

Him, his werewolf mind whom had a delight in inflicting cruelty to it/his vassal, Remus. It slipped past his crumbling defenses hungrily circling him, its hunger to devour him began slipping past him. The control he once had in a human mind was being destroyed, crumbling into oblivion and the pain that resounded in his head nearly broke him.

Pangs went through him, through his new form as he felt the places where his skin ripped and bleeding smarted under the cold wind that filtered through the shutters.

And even as he felt needles of brutalizing pain, he felt his werewolf mind rippling in delight at the feel of it. How its destructiveness withered him to the point that he wanted to sleep forever in death... where nothing, nothing could hurt him and leave his other side in control.

He could withdraw into his own mind and leave his other side to take control of his physical form. Nothing would happen if he left, after all no one would care and he would be in peace.

No one cared for a werewolf, especially since werewolves diluted the pure human blood. Ironic, he had always thought it was that the wizarding world was so particular on blood. In contrast the muggle world hardly cared of what blood you were... usually.

Yes, leave and I'll roam. You'll never be able to win Remus. I'll keep on hurting you until you'll kill yourself... mark my words, youngling.

It was the wrong thing to say to Remus and he hardened as the predator inside of him struck. His weak mind vibrated almost at the point of collapse but no he had to live... or he could live and withdraw... NO! He had to win! ...He couldn't leave. Remus pounded his arms--or, by this time--legs, at the floor feeling it flare up inside of him... burning... hurting... how it hurt... so much more than any physical pain he could ever do to himself. Flames licked around him and he saw what it saw, what it thought, what it had felt.

Even as he knew this, his whole form shook with barely concealed fright. Whenever the wolf inside him exposed its memories, he knew the true pain of wounds that would never heal.

Remus's feet and hands were tied together whilst his tail jutted at an odd angle as he was carried and bound onto a stake. Stabbing pricks gnawed at his tail with every jerking movement that the movers made unto him. The rope bit into his skin, drawing welts upon his dark pelt. Those that held him didn't bother to be gentle, they delighted in jerking their burden about... in hearing him whimper as he scrabbled his head against the rope that bound him so tightly. He wanted to be let go!

The human crowd roared about him as he stared with frightened eyes, his fear increasing with every cry that they made. Harsh, jeering cries of joy in the abusive handling the movers made. They began to pile sticks and wood around him neither caring when it struck him all around. Blood welled from the cuts that tight rope made onto his fur and skin, crusting just as metal rusted. The wood increased around him and it seemed like he was in a hole surrounded with wood that was increasing as every minute passed. The crowd never abated in fact, their screeches hardened with fanatic thrill that a werewolf had been caught.

"Burn him slowly, let the smoke seep into his evil lungs!" A man roared to the crowd.

"Burn him!" "Kill him!" "Murderer!" "Thief!" "Demon!" Cried the crowd, cries that rose in volume jarring his sensitive ears.

And they cheered. What care did they have to a wolf?

Slowly with fervor they threw in wood intent in striking with the desire of torturing him, until he was deprived of his own thoughts. He whimpered fearfully as the weight of the wood weighed upon his mangled body heavily. Deliberately he felt his lungs being crushed slowly oh so slowly as a twig pierced into his side and the others joined.

And then there was a moment of silence... he couldn't tell if it was welcomed or feared. His nose twitched sensing the danger that was coming, even more menacing that the wood that was labored upon him. Smoke. Fire. Acrid smells reached his nose as the smoke drew into his small coven of his shriveled body. His lungs tightened as he breathed, in tight gasps. He wriggled and felt the fire lashing at him greedily. It wanted him. Branding itself into him the fire raged on and the wood with every passing second pierced into his body more and more.

The feeling of being slowly smashed into a million broken pieces of pain, that grew every second as he lived.

Out of him arose a cry of pain, a cry too human to be inhuman, too distant from human cries to move the hard hearts of those that desired to exterminate him. They would never sympathize for him, the years went by and the systems of torture increased to a startling point.

It was only fitting that the humans in their cruelty performed torture onto their own brethren.

James, Sirius... their name slipped within the chaos-filled mind of his. Submerging in the worse of times when the wolf in him had almost taken control. Suddenly the eleven-year-old boy's resolve strengthened if only to protect others from him... he would gladly go through all the torture of It. And he remembered as he licked the jagged teeth in his mouth of the day when he was cursed with this... this mutation! And the anniversary of that year... he had finally been let into Hogwarts. There he had met... them.

And they had accepted him!

He still remembered right before he went wandering into the woods he had met the brown eyes of his mother... whom had loved to nurture animals, plants, and she had even tried insects at one point. Albeit her determination at healing insects got to a point that Remus had had to threaten to burn her herbs so that she would quit her revelry.

Even now his mother... still as optimistic as ever even as she knew of her savage son neither caring when she had found out that her son could be a monster in more ways than one. She had stuck by him and defended him when others persecuted him with the rashness of a loving mother and... even when she had been struck she had still defended her son.

His mother had trusted that he was worth the persecution she endured so that he... he could live.

He... he had to fight! And never be defeated if just to keep the lantern that shone in all his moments of insanity... safe. She trusted him, he thought, and for that at least he could fight against this wildness stranded within him. He bit the bedposts of the tattered remains of a canopied bed... for royalty, he thought vaguely. Splinters dug themselves deeply into his mouth as he scrabbled on the cloth, seeking anything he could touch to vent his cynicism... and It. Any outlet would do just to relieve his growing insanity onto... the times of physical pain was what kept It away.

But still it surged about him sweeping out the pain... and that wouldn't do, the Gryffindor thought, as he threw himself at the walls.

You could just accept me Remus, I'll comply and you can sink yourself into peace. It won't be too bad. I promise.

Persuasively the voice wrapped around Remus stilling him with the paradise of sinking... sinking into blessed peace and he gasped in the middle of it. Almost being destroyed from within as his determination wavered. And then It struck.

It was exactly like the fire lashing and licking at him with the maddening frenzy... just like the crowd. He fought on as he felt his breath growing ragged, at this second chance of life... it was only one more chance. He would survive. He would live. Furniture splintered as the raving werewolf attacked itself, heaving itself at anything that would cause pain.

Pain to drive pain out. Through dim eyes that cried all through the transformation, Remus spat out blood as his form racked with pain through the times he struck himself.

The next morning the nurse of Hogwarts arrived to see a sight that she swore was the most horrible picture she had ever as of yet to see. A young boy lay there lying in his own dark blood, his eyes closed... smiling grimly. Scores of lash and bite marks snaked themselves all around him and the objects inside identified towards such a maniacal rage that had met the pitiful youth. Blood splattered everywhere mixed with gray tangled, matted fur. Hurriedly she transfigured a chair into a stretcher and levitated the young boy onto the stretcher.

All the way to the hospital, the nurse thought grimly in retaliation to this frenzy of cushioning charms.

Five days after Remus opened his eyes to meet a cheerful sight. His mother, the person that had unconsciously saved him in his darkest moments lay curled on an armchair snoring away carelessly with a volume that could have woken the dead. Then again it had been able to wake up an almost dead person, he thought ruefully... no wonder he had been dreaming about being on a belching hippopotamus.

"I never did tell her she snored," he murmured to himself. "She must've been traveling quickly if she didn't even remember to change her clothes," he realized. An eternity before, which had been only a few days, his mother had sent him a letter telling about all the... humorous things that had happened to her.

Which included staining [in one of her escapades at brewing a potion to cure... violets?] her favorite violet sweater, the same sweater she was wearing as she snored away.

The sun streamed from a window to alight the two figures inside the room. One, a young boy with dark black bags under his eyes as he stared tiredly but elatedly at the other person... whom was sleeping with all the recklessness of a tired mother. Smoky gray, matted hair clung to Remus's face, hardening from his perspiration and his mother's windblown hair rustled gently with each breath she took, it had always seemed to move with the vivacity of its mistress.

A love for life was the key to living, Remus thought, for people.

They could always live when there was hope, an object of desperation and joyful emotion alongside with its loyal companion, Faith was all a person needed to live beyond the odds that had been set by others.

And then there were those, he thought cynically, who could never live at all or die if they wanted to even as they sought for the hope that wasn't there. It was why it was not dead yet.

There was a thin line between the dead and the living. The ghosts that roamed Hogwarts were proof of that.