Three Nights

III

"The full moon is in two days," he says needlessly.

You nod, passing him the smoking goblet of Wolfsbane Potion, which he drinks without protest despite the foul taste. It is his second cup tonight, and you anticipate that he will need at least three tomorrow. As he passes the cup back to you, you can already feel the calmative racing through his body, taming the wolf once more. So much tension, finally leaving him. Perhaps he will be able to sleep a little, tonight.

"Perhaps you should go to your mother's," he begins, but you silence him with a kiss, and hold him a little tighter to remind him that you want to be with him. It's a constant, silent battle you wage with the paradox of his love, for anything he cares about he tries to put at a distance. His condition is why he cannot help but think of himself as a destroyer; yours is why he cannot make you leave. He is terrified that in three more months, you will never forgive him.

He also thinks that you don't know this.

But you don't say anything about that, you only take his hand and place it between your breasts as he curls around you protectively. Quietly, you whisper, "I love you."

His breath is warm against your neck as he echoes your words, but you know that he is afraid.

II

The next night is worse; he buries his face in your lap, weeping as the moon rises, nearly full. Again he drinks the potion you give him, gagging through his tears but forcing it down before letting his head sag once more to your knees. Your hands weave through his hair, now silver as moonlight, as you try to soothe his pain. There is less room in your lap for him to weep this month, and there will be even less the next. He thinks that by the time your lap is empty again, you will be gone.

He had nightmares again last night, when he was finally able to sleep. Horrible memories, twisted by his slumbering mind, of friends lost, of enemies and allies from his past. They sent him fleeing from his dreams into the keen reality of his life, racked by his imminent transformation. You are tired from staying up with him, but you also know that if you are tired, he is exhausted. Despite your own dreams of the horrific things that happen in wars- events that both of you shared- you cannot imagine the battles that he wages with himself even though you glimpse it in his eyes when he raises a weary face to you. Then you can see the wreckage of his life that he can allow only you to witness.

"We'll go away," he promises, his face wet against your palms. "We should go away, move to the Continent..." Away from the memories, away from the constant reminders, away from the crushing remorse and grief that is eroding him away before your eyes. Away from the multitude of graves in which his friends lie...it's a promise he makes to you almost every month, and you know it will be nothing but words by morning.

Once would have railed at his intransigence, but lately you are too tired to try to move him from the past. Perhaps you, too, are tied to this place, and all the little reminders that blockade you within London, Hogsmeade...you live in the shadow of violence, keeping company with the ghosts of both your youths. By now even yours has fled, if it wasn't spent in the violence of war, and you can hardly recall the taste of innocence. He is drifting away, becoming a ghost as well, and were it not for the hope that you carry, you might be following.

"Nymphadora," he says anxiously, and you give him a weary smile.

"Hush," you say. "It will be all right."

I

He is staring out the window, almost seeming to count the minutes before the full moon will rise above the horizon and rip him from everything he loves once more. Every month, a little more of the acceptance that he has developed toward his condition melts away, leaving a man anxious and fearful of himself. You know that some of this is your fault, because it is for you that he worries. But you cannot bear to leave him alone, not after witnessing his horrible transformation, nor after seeing the broken look in his eyes once he is returned to his true form.

He is truly old now, far older than his actual years. You bring him his potion and he drinks it down, just as he always has, but as moonrise draws closer you can see his mind losing its human edge, his eyes wilder and his movements jerky and erratic. He startles when you touch him lightly on the arm.

"It's time," you whisper; he moves docilely into the cell, and you hate yourself for breathing easier once he is caged. The familiar restlessness has him now as the transformation draws close. He cannot stay still, pacing and chafing his arms, and it's the most helpless feeling that you have ever known as you watch this contained, reserved man enslaved by a parasitic force. The Wolfsbane Potion, while a blessing, is not a panacea; it does indeed lessen the effects of lycanthropy, but the body adjusts to it over long periods of use. Dosages must be constantly adjusted, strengthened, and the potion becomes a thread to hold in the raging current of the Werewolf. It will snap one day... but you prefer not to think about it.

Instead, you lean into the bars of the cell, reaching one hand out to stroke the side of his face, to pull him close for one last kiss prior to the moonrise, before stepping back from the cage. And you think that no matter what befalls the two of you in three months' time, you will always want to cradle his head upon your knees, and to soothe him from his nightmares at night. You will always want the burden of his love, regardless of the cost.

And so you sit, silent, and watch as the man bursts into the wolf, and promise yourself that you will never be afraid if the child does, too.