The Curse of Lycanthropy

Meghan lifted one hand from Ginny's arm and laid it on Hermione's. The little girl was shaking, her skin cooler than it should be and damp with sweat. "She's fighting me," she muttered as if to herself. "She doesn't want to be moved..."

"She?" Hermione asked.

"The curse," Luna said. "Every curse looks like something. This one looks like a woman in robes. She looks sad and angry at the same time, and she wants to stay where she is."

--whydoyouneedtoknow, "Facing Danger"

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Listen, my children, and let me tell you a tale...one of horror, despair, and vengeance served. Strengthen your hearts, my children, for this tale is not meant for the weak...

There once was a village, many hundreds of years and miles away, which housed a small community of farmers and peasants. And in this village lived a young woman, famed for her beauty throughout several regions. Her hair was as golden as the wheat in the fields, her eyes as bright as twin sapphires, and her complexion as pale as the moon in the sky. Her name was Selene, and the number of those who admired her was too many to count.

Selene was not born to rich parents, but instead lived in a small cottage on the outskirts of the village with her aging mother, a pious old woman who had seen better days. Selene's father had been a destitute yet hardworking farmer who had coughed his life away in that same cottage before Selene had reached her fifth birthday. The family scraped by what it could by selling woven goods at the market; and both Selene and her mother worked with such a cheerful and generous disposition that they were known throughout the village as the kindest-hearted people one could ever know.

One of Selene's suitors was a young man from a neighboring village, known for his fighting prowess and his viciousness of character. No one knew his real name; but because he was lean and stalked through the streets like a wolf hunts its prey, all of the villagers called him "Wolf." Nothing could stop Wolf when he had a goal, and his most recent goal was to take the girl Selene as his own.

He did this with a ruthless efficiency that set the gossipmongers of the village afire. Some of his fellow suitors did he challenge to duels, invariably defeating them and condemning them to lives of crippling infirmity and ignominy. A good part of the rest did not wait to be challenged but fled instead. Those who were braver...the villagers still talk of the mysterious murders of several of their finest young men, found dead in the neighboring woods, having apparently been waylaid by an unknown bandit. No fingers were pointed, and yet it was tacitly understood that Wolf was a force to be reckoned with.

Even when Wolf was the only suitor that was left, Selene herself was not moved by his actions. She was a gentle girl, who loved her weaving above all else, and shied away from such violence as Wolf's. And once her most favored suitor, a young farmer as gentle as she, died at the hands of the "mysterious bandit," she avoided Wolf at all costs and hid herself in her little cottage with her ailing mother.

But Wolf would not be turned aside so easily. One night, when the moon was high and full over the village and Selene was by the stream to fetch water, he accosted her and tried to force her to be his. But her heart was stronger than her body, and she fought back bravely. When Wolf attempted to press himself upon her, she drew a silver dagger that she carried with her at all times--one that belonged to her late father, which she treasured above her own life--and used it to wound her attacker in the arm.

This drove Wolf to the point of frenzy. He wrested the dagger from her feeble grasp...and turned it upon its owner. He stabbed Selene, over and over, until the small stream next to them ran red with her blood. When it was finished, he stood over her, panting, and watched the life slowly drain from her small body.

And yet again, Selene's soul proved to be stronger than the flesh that held it. With her dying strength, she raised herself on one arm and pointed at Wolf with a trembling finger. "May you lose all that you love when it most matters to you," she gasped, "and be shown to the world as the true monster that you are!" Then, she spat blood onto Wolf's face before falling back to the ground as a lifeless corpse, her spirit having passed on to the next world.

Upon seeing her dead body, Wolf realized for the first time what he had done, and he was filled with remorse for his heinous crime. Moreover, Selene's last words struck a cold terror in his heart, as there was nothing he prized more than his reputation. He dragged the corpse away from the stream--which, the villagers say, runs red on moonlit nights to this day--and left it in the nearby woods where her suitors had also perished. Then, he fled back to his home several miles away.

A band of woodcutters discovered the poor girl's body the next morning; it was barely recognizable, for small animals had come during the night, attracted to the smell of her blood, and torn her apart even further than Wolf had done. Yet, when they brought it to Selene's mother, the old woman wailed and threw herself upon the body, as if her tears would somehow revive the mutilated corpse of her daughter. Selene's mother did not survive long after her daughter; it was said that she refused to eat or drink after Selene's death, eventually joining her family in spirit after a month of painful decline.

As for Wolf, no one in the village ever saw him again. He stayed away from Selene's village as much as possible, and instead married a pretty girl from his own town. He became a prosperous (if not ruthless) trader; and some years after Selene's death, he also became the proud father of a son. Selene's curse had seemed to have no effect on him, and he grew complacent and satisfied with his successes.

What he did not realize was that the curse was worded as to wait for the best time to strike.

Sixteen years later, and nearly twenty-five years after Selene's murder, Wolf held a large banquet at his mansion on the edge of town in honor of his son's coming-of-age. His son also had a younger sister, a beautiful girl who took after her mother (but also, Wolf noted with pangs of shame, reminded acquaintances of the delicate beauty of the long-dead Selene) and who would be exhibited as an eligible virgin for the first time during the banquet. Courtiers and business associates from near and far rode into the village that day, stirring up great excitement amongst the townspeople, and the banquet began that evening with much merriment.

As Wolf was conversing with one of his daughter's prospective suitors, he chanced to catch a glimpse of the moon rising over the forest surrounding his mansion. It was full and bright, smiling down on the earth much as it had when Selene had bled her life out into the waters and earth near that village so many years ago.

And without realizing it, Wolf threw back his head in mid-sentence and howled.

Suddenly, the guests began to scream and flee in a panic as Wolf convulsed and slowly transformed into a hideous beast--one that resembled a wolf, by all accounts. When he was finished, he immediately leapt upon his wife, who had been rooted to the spot in shock, and ripped out her throat before she could even cry out. Wolf's son, a sturdy lad who had just come into his manhood that day, valiantly tried to defend his mother from the foul creature; but he, too, was defeated, torn apart from limb to limb by the jaws of his father.

Several guests, those who were too slow in flight, were killed by the bloodthirsty Wolf; even more were trampled by other guests in their panicked haste to flee. The mansion itself was wrecked, torn to pieces by the rampaging of the beast. And just before dawn, Wolf's daughter, who had refused to leave her dead family and murdering father, was forced into a corner and savagely bitten by the creature--

Moments before her father transformed back into himself, trembling like an aspen leaf. During the entire night, he was able to see what transpired, but only as an observer; his mind had been completely taken over by the soul of the vicious wolf that resided within him.

Sobbing for his dead wife and son, as well as his injured and now accursed daughter, Wolf grabbed at a knife from the upended banquet table, meaning to end his wretched life--and dropped the weapon with a scream of pain. Where his hand had touched the silver metal, the same metal that Selene had used to defend herself from dishonor, the flesh was charred and black, as if from a burn. Realizing that the last words of the girl he had murdered so long ago was finally coming back to haunt him, Wolf was filled with despair, falling to his knees and weeping for all that he had lost, while still understanding that it was nothing more than was due to him.

A large mob of townspeople, having heard of the commotion from survivors, came to the ruined mansion that afternoon to bring Wolf to justice. But he was no longer there; nor was his daughter. Together, they had fled the village to find refuge in other lands; their only witness was an old peddler, who claimed to have seen Wolf, clothed in rags, carrying a disfigured girl in his arms as they disappeared into the trees. The villagers returned home without achieving their goal and, in telling the tale of events to their wives and children, changed the name of the man who had killed so many that evening from Wolf--to Werewolf.

To this day, on every night of the full moon, Selene's curse lives on, turning men into monsters as they pay for the crime that one man committed so many hundreds of years ago. If you listen closely during one of those nights, you may be able to hear howls in the distance, howls in places where no wolf should be.

And in their echo, you just might be able to hear a woman's laughter.

FINIS