Transformations

Remus sat in a very small, very dirty house - really more of a hut - facing two men almost as dirty as the walls. Remus himself was wearing robes looked as though they hadn't been washed for two weeks.

One of the men growled, "Wizards! Think they're so much better than us! As if we'd be like this if we could help it." He raised ice-blue eyes to Remus, glaring his scorn at Remus for being one of "them."

The other man snorted. "I'd almost rather be like this than be one of them. They call us inhuman - but they won't let us have jobs, won't let us act like humans. They're the ones who have us living off rabbits!"

Remus shook his head. "It's true we're not treated as we should be. But that's not the point. Last time You-Know-Who was powerful, he used us, but not as equals. We were an army of animals for him to use and control."

"That's how they look at us, as animals!" spat the one with the icy eyes. "The Dark Lord sees us as useful. We have a purpose. We have revenge!"

"Yes, but once he has what he wants, he won't keep us around! He's developing a curse to force us into wolf shape, did you know that?"

The second, a scrawny man, answered scornfully, "He can't. If we choose to, we can overwhelm him. We're too strong for him. He fears us."

Remus paused and said slowly, "I don't know, Lyall. He should, of course, and probably does. But it's human nature to not trust those you fear."

The first laughed mirthlessly. "Human? The Dark Lord is hardly human. Sure he fears us. But he can use us and there is no way I'm going to help that Ministry filth who have us living like this!" He threw back his head with a howl of rage, crashing his fist down so hard that the arm of his chair broke. "They're the ones who have done this to us! We deserve whatever the Dark Lord gives us! They pass laws against us, but they fear us rightly, because someday we'll have the upper hand!"

Snarls escaped his bared teeth, his eyes blazing with hate. Lyall grabbed his arm, yanked his hand away a moment before the other snapped down on it with bared teeth. "Calm down, Conan. Conan!"

Conan's eyes were fixed before him, unseeing. His companion seized his shoulders and shook him. "Conan!"

Slowly, Conan subsided into his broken chair. Lyall turned to Remus.

"The full moon affects him worse than most others. You'd best go." Despite his matter-of-fact words, his eyes searched Remus shrewdly.

Remus nodded. "Perhaps I'll see you later." He rose and stood a moment, looking at Conan, whose lips were still curled back in a quiet snarl, the image of his hopeless, angry people. Remus said abruptly, "I think you and Conan are right about revenge. No one can say we don't deserve it." The unfeigned bitterness in his tone seemed to soften Lyall slightly.

Lyall nodded. "Think on it. The Dark Lord will not forget us; he cannot afford to." His eyes narrowed for a brief second, coming to a decision. "If you really want revenge, you can come to Knockturn Alley tonight. We patrol by turns to prevent Wizarding filth from sneaking in." A smirk lifted one corner of his mouth.

Remus shook his head. "I wish I could, but there are ...some people... who know where I'll be tonight. They're watching to make sure I don't hurt anyone." A cynical smirk rather like Lyall's flashed over his face.

"Next time, then."

Remus nodded again and stepped outside. Conan stopped growling and watched him silently. Aware that two pairs of eyes were following him, Remus looked up. The sky was brilliant orange-red, fading fast into night. He could feel the full moon already tugging at him, its power growing with each passing second. Mind buzzing, Remus Disapparated.

Remus had finally started his mission by coming into contact with as many werewolves as possible. It wasn't always easy, since werewolves tended to conceal what they were, but these two were different. They were, as Dumbledore had suspected, openly recruiting. Between Conan's fervor and Lyall's slightly calmer brand of reasoning, they had recruited half a dozen already - that Remus knew of. There were probably more. But this time, Remus had found out something that the Order hadn't known before - the fact that werewolves patrolled Knockturn Alley on a regular basis. Tonight, that could be fatal: Kingsley Shacklebolt was trying to break into Borgin and Burkes, looking for signs that the shop was being used by supporters of Voldemort.

Remus reappeared on Grimmauld Place, staggering as he did so. It was risky to do magic so close to Headquarters, but time was running short. Only a thin strip of dark orange remained on the horizon. As number twelve appeared, Remus flung himself at the door and crashed into the hallway as it opened. "Sirius! Sirius!"

Sirius raced down the stairs, followed closely by Emmeline Vance and making frantic hushing motions. Remus glanced around at the sleeping portraits and dodged into a dusty, unused parlor nearby. Sirius and Emmeline followed him. "Moony, what's going on?"

"There are werewolves at Borgin and Burkes! Kingsley needs to be warned!"

"Emmeline can go, I'll stay here, I'm not supposed to leave," Sirius said quickly. That he would volunteer the last was a mark of the bond between himself and Remus, as he usually tried to forget that such a restriction existed.

Emmeline spoke crisply. "We'll both need to go. We can Disillusion you, you can leave as soon as the danger's gone, and no one will know you were ever there. Moonrise is any second now and Kingsley will need whatever help he can get." She was gone almost before she finished speaking.

Sirius turned to his old friend. "Moony -"

Remus was leaning on the wall. "Kingsley's got to come out of this safely." He tossed his wand into the hall, a habit he had picked up to prevent himself breaking it on one of these terrible nights. "Lock me in, I'll be fine."

"I can't leave you here!"

"You have to!" The pupils of Remus' eyes were beginning to dilate. "Go!"

Sirius hesitated, then flung himself out of the room. He shut the door and pulled out his wand. "Colloportus!" Adding an Imperturbable Charm for good measure, he started to spin down the hallway and tripped over Remus' wand, lying just outside the doorway. Cursing, Sirius spun on his heel, Knockturn Alley fixed in his mind. He couldn't spin fast enough to block out a cry of agony that crescendoed into a howl of rage.

***

Nymphadora Tonks yawned hugely, turned on her heel and Disapparated from right outside the Ministry of Magic to a dirty street in London. The manor-sized house looked rather forbidding in the uneven light of the rising sun. She rapped on the door and was surprised when no one answered. Under pretense of knocking again, she slipped out her wand and sent a silvery platypus running around the side of the house.

It returned a moment later, jerking its head in the way that conveyed something unusual was happening, probably something dangerous. Not everyone could get their Patronuses to be so attuned to them, but Tonks's platypus had been friendly from the start.

Tonks petted it absently and bit her lip in thought as it dissolved. It didn't say something was downright wrong, but then, no one answered the door and Sirius always greets me when I come off night duty...though it is only five-thirty in the morning.

With that in mind, she tapped her wand on the door, which slid silently open. Tonks stepped carefully inside, well to the side of the umbrella stand, and stopped, appalled. A sound had issued from somewhere in the house, a muffled, animal-like howl that brought cold sweat to her forehead.

She crept round to the door where the noise seemed to be coming from. To her surprise, that she couldn't touch it. There seemed to be an invisible wall about six inches in front of the door. She guessed the door itself, behind the Imperturbable Charm, was magically sealed. .

She crept round to the door where the noise seemed to be coming from. As she approached, there was an animal-like howl that brought cold sweat out on her forehead. She approached the door, but found to her surprise that she couldn't touch it. There seemed to be an invisible wall about six inches in front of the door. She guessed the door itself was magically sealed.

Where is everyone else? They can't all be gone! Tonks conjured another platypus and sent it around the house to look for any more Order members. It returned a moment later, shaking its head. But there's always someone here, even if it's just Sirius. It could be a trap. But I can't leave either. A little voice echoed in her head. That's what traps are made for. Tonks ignored it and turned back to the door, lifting the Imperturbable Charm.

Yes, the door was locked. She pressed her ear cautiously to the door; no more sounds issued from it. Maybe someone was injured - maybe one of the Order. She stepped as far to the right as she could and still see the door reasonably well, and then cast a Disillusionment Charm on it.

What appeared to be acid trickled down it, allowing her to see through as it dripped. In less than ten seconds, the door was nearly translucent. It wasn't perfect; the Disillusionment Charm was meant for camouflage, not invisibility; but it worked well enough. Unable to inside, she stepped closer and shrieked as a great grey thing hurled itself at her face and hit the door with enough force to make it shudder.

It was a wolf, a giant, grey - no - She stumbled backwards and slid to the floor, stomach heaving.

While the wolf-thing was picking itself up after its charge at the door, Tonks had seen the tuft at the end of the tail. She had seen enough pictures and heard enough stories to know that one of her best friends had just attempted to kill her.

Tonks pulled herself up. There was a window nearby, close to the ceiling and more ornamental than anything, but a window. The sky was now much lighter than it had been just minutes before when she entered. A strip of pale gold now lit the horizon. She went back to the door and, taking a deep breath, peered at her charmed door. The room appeared to be empty. Her breath caught in her throat. It - he? - couldn't have gotten out -

This time she didn't scream, but she did fall over backwards. The werewolf had been sitting just to the left of the door and against the wall where she couldn't see it, and whirled out to snarl at her. As she picked herself back up, the werewolf stopped in front of the door, lips pulled back to reveal razor-sharp teeth. Tonks watched...not long now...

The creature growled at her, all the more frightening for the fact that she couldn't hear it through the door. It made her hair want to stand on end. Tonks braced herself for the thump as it gathered itself for another spring.

But it didn't come. The werewolf launched its front half into the air and fell. Its muzzle opened in a soundless howl of pain and it writhed on the floor, its limbs straightening, the hair disappearing, the head changing - in less than thirty seconds, Remus Lupin lay unconscious on the floor. Tonks was kneeling next to him almost immediately, leaving the bright sunlight now shafting into the hall for the darkness of the ruined room.

She checked his pulse and was relieved to find it beating steadily, though rapidly. "Ennervate!"

Remus felt himself drifting back to consciousness. It had happened hundreds of times, but he was always surprised to find himself on the floor, feeling as if he'd been bounced repeatedly off the walls. The surprise was invariably followed by a sickening feeling as he remembered why he was on the floor with a pounding headache. There was no help for it but to spend at least the next full day asleep.

Something thumped lightly into his chest, forcing his eyes open. Remus looked to the right and saw a blurred shape kneeling next to him. One of the aftereffects of the transformations was bad vision.

The someone spoke. "Remus?"

"Tonks?"

"Yes." Tonks breathed a silent sigh of relief. "Your arm - are you all right?"

Am I? Along with the question came the slow realization that Tonks had caught him at what was, not counting actual werewolf form, his absolute worst. He couldn't even stand. His left arm was dripping blood, though it wasn't nearly as bad as some other injuries he'd had. "I'll live."

Tonks slid her left arm under Remus' right and pulled. How she got him off the floor, she wasn't sure, but they were both sitting upright a moment later. She tried to lighten the mood slightly by saying, "Let's get off this wood floor, it's killing my knees." She realized how tactless that was the moment it emerged from her mouth and cringed, but Remus made a sound that might almost have been a laugh. "By all means."

Tonks braced herself and the two of them rose unsteadily off the floor. Remus thought for a moment that he was going to collapse again, but forced himself to stay standing. Somehow, they got out the door and down the hallway.

With awareness came a growing sense of horror. Remus knew that he looked as bad as he felt, not to mention the effort it took to form coherent sentences. A part of his mind wondered vaguely why this bothered him so. It's humiliating, it would bother anyone!

But this is worse than the time Arthur found me, Remus argued silently. Why should that be? His mental voice had no answer for that.

Tonks guided him into the drawing room - which, she was thankful to see, Molly had cleaned thoroughly - and into an armchair. "I'll go get some mugs for tea."

Remus shut his eyes and tried not to think for the two minutes she was gone. He was largely successful, enough so to doze off.

"Here you are." Tonks' voice jerked Remus awake. He jumped slightly, watching as Tonks began to fill the cups with water.

"Tonks?"

"Yeah?"

"When did you come in? I had to warn the Order about something and got trapped here. I thought Sirius or Emmeline would warn people away."

Tonks frowned. "There isn't anyone else here. They must still be out. I got here about fifteen minutes ago, came off night duty."

She was looking down to put teabags in the mugs, so she did not see his face as her words hit him. He asked in a voice that tried very hard to break away from him, "So you - you were here when I -"

Too late, Tonks realized she was trapped. Her own voice was very quiet. "Yes."

Remus was staring straight into the empty fireplace, stunned. No one, save Sirius, James, and Peter, had ever seen him like that for more than a few brief moments. It was more than vulnerability. It was a monster trying to take large bites out of anything that got near. It was pure evil. It was not something he wanted people to see. Worse, it was dangerous. What if he had gotten out? What if the door had broken? What if Sirius and Emmeline hadn't gotten out in time? What if Tonks had opened the door and found a raging beast behind it?

Tonks tried to hand Remus his tea, but he didn't move. She set the cups down and sat next to him. "Let me see your arm."

"I'm fine." Remus felt terrible. He had put Tonks in danger. He wished he was in the Shrieking Shack, or a deserted wood - anywhere but here, with Tonks being so gentle and himself barely able to stand.

"Nonsense. You're bleeding through your robes." Tonks caught his hand and pushed his red-soaked sleeve up over his wrist to reveal a long gash running along his wrist to the palm of his hand, just missing the crucial arteries.

She drew her wand along the wound, murmuring the incantation as she did so. The skin knit together, leaving only a fading pink mark that cut across the lifeline on his palm.

Remus tried to shake back his sleeve, but Tonks caught sight of something and pushed his sleeve up above the elbow. His arm was covered with scars, old and faint. Some looked like they had gone deep.

She looked up at him, voice quiet. "What happened? Some of these look older, but these -" She traced her fingers along one that had obviously been inflicted recently.

Remus couldn't hold her troubled gaze. His eyes dropped to the scars; Tonks thought he was paler than usual and for the first time that she had known him, he stammered. "I - most of those are old. It - when a - if I didn't - a werewolf attacks other people. If there isn't anything else to savage, it - well, the scars fade eventually."

Tonks stared at him, shocked. "You...you did this?" Her voice had fallen to a whisper.

Remus looked away. "Every single month, for many years." He pulled down his sleeve, half hoping that making the scars disappear would make Tonks forget she had seen them, but when he looked back, her eyes still were fixed on him, bursting with questions she dared not ask. The sorrow in her eyes was almost tangible. Remus realized suddenly that the pain in her eyes was a great deal like the pain he himself felt when he transformed. It made his heart ache to see that someone grieved for him that powerfully.

"It's not as bad as it looks," Remus tried to explain. "One gets used to it, after a while. We - when we were at school, we called them my battle scars..." His voice petered out. His "battle scars" had been a running joke twenty years ago, but this was different. This was a good friend who hadn't really known before. Her first introduction to his transformations had been a howling wolf hurling itself at a locked door. He looked over. Tonks was staring into space, her expression unreadable.

Since meeting Remus, Tonks had done some extra studying on werewolves. Only one text had mentioned werewolves as self-mutilating. She supposed it wasn't something most people liked to think about. Besides, they're only werewolves. Those words had never actually been printed, but they were breathed from every page of every report she had read. Only werewolves.

Tonks had worried about meeting Remus for about two seconds. As soon as he spoke, her fears left her. As she had told him once, werewolves were indeed normal people, most of the time.

Over the past months, the two had become good friends. The difference in their ages only seemed to solidify their friendship. Tonks relied on his cautious nature and from him, had learned to reserve judgment. In turn, she had taught him to take risks - something she thought he might have had once, when he had the Marauders, but that he had lost since he lost them - and to seize life as it came, rather than passively watching the world go by. The realization that Remus had a sense of humor and was more balanced than most people she knew - including herself - had ended her fear of werewolves forever, or so she thought. The sight of that rampaging beast had reminded her why she was supposed to be afraid of werewolves. She was used to Remus' habit of vanishing every four weeks and coming back looking as if he'd had a bad bout of the flu, but that had become a part of him. This was - something not at all like Remus' quiet, strong nature.

There was silence for a few minutes until her brain began to chide her, Say something, you idiot! Tonks fumed helplessly, feeling the tears coming to her eyes. Unable to find the right words, she nevertheless forced herself to speak. "I...I'm sorry, Remus."

Remus had long given up crying for himself, but her sorrow made the tears start to prickle his own eyes. She's too young for this. Why do I have to be like this, to make her cry for me? He thought of the talk they had had over Christmas. He had not mentioned the scars that evening.

Time stretched. Long moments they sat, she holding his hand in hers, both staring at a crisscross of old wounds, wounds that went deeper than the scars showed.

Some time later - hours? Seconds? - Tonks asked quietly, "What was it you warned Sirius and Emmeline about?"

With an effort, Remus thought back to his arrival the night before. "I received information that there are werewolf patrols in Knockturn Alley. Kingsley was there last night trying to search Borgin and Burkes."

"Last night? Where -" Tonks cut off abruptly, realizing that they had probably gone somewhere else while Remus was transformed. She bit her lip and tried to cover up. "Do you mind if I stay here till they come back? I haven't been able to really talk to Sirius for a while."

"If you like. I probably won't be able to stay awake, but I'd appreciate the company."

His unexpected kindness, asking her to stay, overlooking her careless slip, almost brought tears to her eyes again. "I will, then. Thank you."

Tonks let his hand go and they sat back into their chairs. Remus drifted off to sleep much more peacefully than he usually did after a full moon, though once he caught Tonks watching him over the rim of her mug. He shut his eyes quickly, pretending that he hadn't noticed. Calm settled over the room.

*****

A/N: Thanks heaps to my friend Scribbly, who helped me write the most emotional part of this chapter and continues to catch errors and oddities in my writing.

Speaking of errors, the latest edition of this was greatly aided by FaunaCaritas, who pointed out some discrepancies in the sounds that Tonks could hear. This time, I meant to suggest that Tonks can hear the initial "muffled" howl because it was actually very loud behind the door, but cannot hear the werewolf's growl because it is not nearly as loud. A fair number of people have also left very helpful reviews, so thank you all!

If you liked this, please review; if you hated it, please review and tell me (politely) what I could improve. If you got this far and actually finished the chapter, a review isn't that much of a stretch!