5 ~ When Everything Changed

Pain was kinder than memory, because pain eventually faded.

Remus' POV:

     After full moon, being able to think again was like waking from a coma. Only that one was not lying in a hospital bed, but on the cold forest floor, with unimaginable pain and half-numb limbs.     Above my head there seemed to lie a heavy blanket, yet I felt like a human, albeit one who was suffering pain.          Something was wrong.     Fear spread through my body, which did not yet understand. Everything was dark, pitch-black.     Was I floating in this darkness?          No, I was lying on my stomach.     Even before my eyes perceived the world around me, the pain became unbearable. Then the metallic taste in my mouth became present.     Panting, coughing, I tried to sit up, but dizziness overcame me, so that I could only roll onto my side. Something also pressed me against the ground. A cloth settled over me, probably a cloak, and the blackness before my eyes became flickering black spots.     A gag reflex shook my body and I spat into the snow.

Blood...

     Panic, unrestrained panic took hold of me.          "Calm," a voice instructed, which sounded like Sirius, as I tried to sit up further.     The pressure against my shoulder grew weaker. I, however, did not grow calmer, absolutely not. My breathing became faster as I turned around and finally sat up.     I wiped over my mouth, stared at my red hand. Even in the dark forest, even with all the dirt on my skin I saw the thick, glistening liquid.          I felt sick again.          I felt ice-cold.     I trembled, while it felt as if my heart would stop beating.          "Calm, Remus," Sirius said and tried to wrap his cloak more tightly around me.     However, I was not trembling because the winter made me cold; it was fear alone.     Pain shot through me as I felt along my body. On my left side I discovered a long claw mark. Fresh, deep, from which blood welled. On my thigh a bite wound gaped open.

Did I attack myself?It made no sense; I had not even injured myself that badly when I had locked myself inside the Shrieking Shack.This realisation filled me with dreadful fear

     My breathing became even faster.          My heart raced and I trembled.     I felt sick, ice-cold, at the same time I was numb with fear.     I stared rigidly at my hand, did not notice the cold of the snow, was on the verge of having a panic attack.     The hours, in which I had been a monster, were over. But why did I feel as if I still was one? Why was there blood everywhere and why could I not calm down?     "Moony! Calm down, breathe in and out, do you hear?," a shaking at my shoulders, "look at me! Remus, look at me!"          Sirius' grey eyes met my rigid gaze.     Hesitantly I calmed down, so I managed to drive away the forming panic attack. With Sirius I breathed in and out together. Again and again, until I had almost normal breathing.     "Good, it is not what you think," he reassured me and knew what I was thinking. Had I injured an innocent human? Had I killed someone?

Have I become the monster that I already am anyway?

     "Then what is it?!" my voice sounded shrill. I had to seriously try to remain calm, to swallow the lump in my throat. I blinked far too often, clenched my jaw tightly, to at least stop my teeth from chattering.     As I was once again on the verge of hyperventilating, James came to us and knelt down on my other side. His glasses were crooked, he was no longer wearing his cloak either.     "Hey, calm down, understood?" his brown eyes looked at me sternly. He held me by my other shoulder. Slowly I was able to nod slightly.     "She really got you badly...," he murmured, "let me cast a few healing spells."

What...?

     "S-she...?" I asked confused and raised my left arm, while the Gryffindor closed my wound provisionally. Not as well as Madame Pomfrey could, but good enough for our age.     "Yes, her, rather she. That was quite a fight."          I was confused.     The two noticed my confusion quickly and Sirius explained: "A second werewolf appeared and you attacked each other. She was there with a pack of wolves, but instead of attacking us, she drove the wolves back, then you fought."     "A second werewolf...?" I could not believe his words.          A werewolf with a pack?     But still a human. Behind the werewolf there was still a human.          I had attacked a human.     "What are you doing?!" Sirius sounded agitated, wanted to push me back into the snow, but I brushed his hands away and got unsteadily onto my feet, pulled on his cloak.     A human.          I had attacked a human.               Injured.     My breathing accelerated. My heart seemed to vanish.     One of those moments where reality ran away from you, you stood frozen in place. As if time came to a standstill.          I perceived nothing.     Not Padfoot, who spoke at me that I myself was injured. I did not hear that the girl was a werewolf, that I had not turned anyone. Nor that it was not my fault.

But it is my fault, I would have answered those words, if they had only reached me.

     James stepped in front of me.          He tried to remain calm towards me, but I saw it - the panic. It lived behind his eyes.     I also noticed that he held his side. He seemed to be injured. Whether by me or by the other werewolf I did not know.     But it did not matter.          That too was my fault.     I should never have let my friends persuade me to go with them into the Forbidden Forest. They would have broken into the Shrieking Shack anyway and would have brought me into the forest as a werewolf, but I would not have known it.     I wished that everything were only a bad dream.          Of course it was not.     "I'm fine, really, it's not bad," James reassured me quickly, but I could not even nod. My gaze moved rigidly past him.     There she lay.          The girl.     The second werewolf.

Sirius' POV:

     I ran my hands through my hair. Everything in my body - every single part - told me to panic. Standing in the Forbidden Forest, in the middle of the night, surrounded by destruction.     Although my own person was often conceited, thought too highly of himself, now I was overwhelmed. All of this felt too... real. As if reality were collapsing around you.

But I have to stay strong.For Moony.

     Remus had just discovered the girl. James had put his cloak on her and tried to cast the first healing spells. Still she had not woken up like Remus and was still lying unconscious in the snow.     You could see on Remus that he was imagining the strangest stories about what he had done to her as a "monster". Only Remus had no control during full moon. The girl did not either.     A second werewolf.          She was like Moony.     "What do we do now?" I asked James beside me, who stared rigidly at Remus, who crouched down beside the girl.     With every breath pale little clouds danced before Prongs' face, then he spoke the obvious: "She has to go to the Hospital Wing."          "We will have to explain to Dumbledore why we are in the forest with Remus during full moon," I replied.     There was no other possibility for me. We were to blame that Remus had been in the forest today. Of course the Headmaster did not know that we were unregistered animagi.           No one knew that.     But how was Remus supposed to explain to Dumbledore that he had not gone into the Shrieking Shack today? That he had decided to go into the Forbidden Forest. That would have too many consequences for him.

Even if we do not explicitly tell Dumbledore that we are animagi, he will soon piece his theories together himself.

     "It is no use, now it is too late. We have to live with the consequences."          "Yes..." replied Prongs.     We knew that we had to act logically, which was why my gaze went to Moony. Then we stepped towards Remus, who knelt down beside the girl.     Remus had turned into a statue. He examined the girl, how she simply lay there. A relaxed expression on her face, which James had tried to clean of blood, but had not managed to do. The most striking thing about her were her red hair as well as her poor physical condition. Yes, healthy people could be thin, but she looked unhealthily gaunt.     I felt my heart hammer in my chest. The images of the fight between the two werewolves replayed once more like a dream before my eyes. This girl was supposed to have been the werewolf who had hunted us with a pack of wolves?     It was strange.          We knew nothing.          Not even who she was, whether she attended Hogwarts.     Remus seemed to be asking himself the same, yet he wasted no time and turned to us. Determination was written across his face. "She has to go to the Hospital Wing. Everything else is unimportant."          "We will accompany you."     Remus looked at me as if I were speaking another language. "No."          "No?" James asked.     "Yes, no. It is my fault, so I will live with the consequences."          I took a breath in, then out. "And what are you going to tell Dumbledore?!"     "That I injured her!"          "And you will also tell him that you left the Shrieking Shack today? A place that is escape-proof?"     "Then I will do that, yes," Remus said immediately, "it is better than dragging you into it."          "You still do not have an explanation for how you got out of the Shrieking Shack," James said simply.     You could see Remus thinking, then he said shortly: "Then I simply did not go inside. I missed moonrise and collapsed in front of the Whomping Willow. I simply cannot remember anymore."          "B- "     "No buts, I want to do it this way."          "Even if Dumbledore will think that you turned the girl into a werewolf?"     "He will only think it for a while," I said, "firstly she has no clothing on, also there is blood stuck under her fingernails and on her face. When she wakes up she will most likely tell Dumbledore that she also has a furry problem. Next month she will transform after all."          James nodded, then he walked to the unconscious girl. He lifted her up, said addressing Moony: "We will do it the way you want, even though we do not want to. We carry her to Hogwarts, then you carry her the rest to Pomfrey. Now let us find Peter..."

Remus' POV:

     If I had pinched my arm, I would not have woken from this nightmare. I did not even need to try, because I knew that everything was pure reality. From the very beginning I had known that it had been a stupid idea from my friends to accompany me into the forest as animagi. The first times I had not known anything about it.     Today I had agreed to go into the forest with them. So I was to blame for everything. That was what I thought, even though I knew that my friends would have lured me out of the Shrieking Shack anyway.

But... would those moments have been enough to prevent me from injuring the girl?

     Inside me the answer was yes.          I felt sick, my body trembled not only because of the cold and I would have preferred to hide in some corner. My decision to face Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey alone felt more foolish with every passing second. But it had to be done; I would not expose my friends.          Although they would have deserved it.          And how they would have deserved it.     So much that they themselves were aware of it. You could see it best in Peter's face, how white it became. He waited for us in the Shrieking Shack. and when he saw the lifeless-looking girl in James' arms, he nearly fainted. Yet he also insisted briefly, albeit with a trembling voice, that we should face Dumbledore as a group.     "I do not want to talk about this anymore!" I raised my voice, when another discussion had broken out. I rarely shouted, but when I did, then loudly and without regret.     "I had no say!" I raised my voice further, "not when you decided to become animagi behind my back! Not when you lured me out of the Shrieking Shack without asking! And after the last full moon you pushed me to go into the forest with you, even threatened to simply continue - to fetch me as a werewolf from the Shack! This I decide! Not. You."     When I turned around and wanted to take the secret passage back to the castle, I had to support myself on a doorframe. I still felt the transformation in my bones.     I would have preferred to give myself fully to this despair, but not even that could I do. The girl in James' arms seemed to wake because of my outburst. And had I believed that my panic had reached its maximum at that moment, it was nothing compared to hers.     The girl thrashed about. James tried to hold her, but when she caught his face, he let go of her. She crashed to the ground - now clothed in my repaired cloak - and for several seconds did not know what had happened.

Logical.

     She simply sat there, her dirty palms pressed against the ground. In that moment she seemed smaller than she was. She was thin, looked gaunt in my cloak. Pure panic was written across her face.     She looked around, wanted to flee, but could not stand up. Her injuries did not allow it, and she fainted as soon as her gaze met mine.     James held his nose, which had begun to bleed. Padfoot handed Peter his wand - lit with Lumos - and lifted the girl up. Once again she appeared dead, yet we did not speak about that moment.     We continued our way to the Hospital Wing. The corridor was deserted, when I took the girl into my arms and sent the boys away. Thankfully they did not protest and I turned towards the large double door.

Eyes closed and through.

     My arms were weak, yet I managed to open the door to the Hospital Wing. The girl was light as well, so that without the effects of full moon I would have had no problems carrying her.     Now, however, my entire body protested. I was still trembling and it worsened when Madam Pomfrey stepped out of her chamber. Luckily the Hospital Wing was free of other patients today, since they would undoubtedly have woken because of Pomfrey's exclamation.     The healer of Hogwarts was a young woman, yet her clothing made her appear older. Her white apron and the cloth on her head reminded me of the women in the monasteries of the Muggle world.     The face beneath the cloth looked at me in shock, when she spotted the unconscious girl in my arms.          "By Merlin!" she managed, yet quickly she held her hand over her mouth.     But I had already understood; she saw me as a monster. So Pomfrey saw what I could become, what every werewolf was capable of.

To kill.

     "Oh, please," the healer regained her composure, "lay her on a bed, Mister Lupin. Then take a seat. Oh dear..."     I could only nod, then Pomfrey disappeared into her chamber. She was probably gathering all the necessary potions and salves.     The next moments felt like in a film. Like one of those strange, old black-and-white films that my mother always watched when Dad had duty at the Ministry. Or like in a dream, where one wanted to flee, yet could only move slowly.     I walked across the stone floor, past the white beds. The only candle burned at the entrance, otherwise the large arched windows let cold night light into the Hospital Wing.

Has it always been this large?

     The curved ceiling seemed to arch ever further upwards, the individual stone tiles appeared larger, every one of my steps smaller.      Suddenly I became more aware of my breathing, my pulse that pounded through my entire body. How could it be that the back of my neck felt strangely warm, yet my fingers ice-cold?     Everything smelled metallic, of blood. Every single wound on my body became known to me, every scratch beneath my clothing, which we had repaired with a spell after full moon, since I could not go into the Hospital Wing wearing Sirius' cloak.     Instead I was here with a girl.          And Pomfrey believed I had injured her, turned her, perhaps even killed her.     Yet I knew that the night was not the worst; the next days would become pure torture. From now on I would always think about what I had done.

Something that could have been prevented.

     With trembling arms I laid the girl onto the rearmost cot on the left side. Not because I had specifically chosen that one, but because I only came back to myself when I had reached the end of the Hospital Wing.     When the red-haired girl lay on the bed my arms still felt her weight. I ran my hand through my hair, began to tremble more strongly again. The desire to flee rose inside me, simply to run away.     But my legs were heavy, and they rattled.          I also did not want to leave her alone.     I staggered a few steps back and remembered Pomfrey's words that I should take a seat. So I finally sat down on a bed on the other side. There I continued to stare at the girl.     From behind me I heard Pomfrey's heeled shoes marching across the stone floor. Along the wall followed the cone of light from her candle. The stone turned orange.     I could not think of anything, only watch how Pomfrey treated the girl, although I could not see much.     Also in the next moment the double door to the Hospital Wing was opened. I immediately knew that it could only be Dumbledore. I did not look over my shoulder, I only saw the wizard when he came towards us at the back.     The Headmaster had an aura that demanded respect - respect that was granted to him. He wore a silver robe, his white beard freshly combed. Pomfrey seemed to have called him.     Immediately Dumbledore went to the healer, who was still shaken, and questioned her. He also calmed her, because Pomfrey was shaken, since I had brought her an injured girl. Perhaps she thought that it was a student.

She certainly sees me as a monster...

     When Pomfrey stepped once more towards the back into her chamber, Dumbledore accompanied her halfway, then their paths separated and the Headmaster came to me. From bright eyes he looked at me, yet I could not read any emotion from them.     I could not withstand his gaze for long. My hands landed in my face, ran through it, and when I looked at Dumbledore again, he had sat down opposite me.          "Mister Lupin..." he began slowly, "this is not the end of the world. I want you to know that."     Dumbledore followed every one of my movements. From my bouncing foot, to my bleeding neck and my hands, which were also full of blood and dirt. Under my shirt at my side the wound bled the most. So strongly that my grey shirt was already wet.          I felt sick.     When Dumbledore realised that the blood was not the girl's, but my own, he stood up quickly. He came towards me and said: "You are severely injured."          "Wh-why does it not hu-hurt then?" I managed to say and it was true; I did not feel the pain.     In fact I did not feel anything anymore.     Why was my tongue so heavy? Did it feel numb? Were my lips tingling?     Were they finally becoming warm again?          I did not know.          I knew nothing anymore.     At the edge of my vision dark spots formed, which moved like an anthill. Every blink felt slowed down, and any feeling left my hands.     In my life I had often lost consciousness - always during full moon -, but never otherwise. And above all not while sitting.     I only felt how I slumped forward. My head landed on something soft, probably Dumbledore's chest. His arm supported me, I heard his muffled call for a Poppy, then everything turned black.

So for a brief moment.For me.

     In reality at least an hour had passed, when I came to again. This time I was not sitting at the bed; I was lying in the bed. My head felt slowed down, my thoughts dulled. Pomfrey had probably administered a calming draught to me.          But why?     Today must have been full moon.          Yes... full moon.     At once I remembered what had happened. I had injured a girl, she me as well. I went into the Hospital Wing and-     Despite the draught I managed to sit up. Immediately my side stabbed.     I blinked around the room. Through the windows the first light of dawn was already falling and I saw that my upper body was wrapped in a bandage. The linen smelled of the familiar salve, which improved wound healing and was supposed to prevent scar tissue.      The latter rarely succeeded.          Nevertheless the familiar smell calmed me.     "Mister Lupin, please, lie down again." Pomfrey was immediately beside me. In the dawn light one could see that her robe was white and red. Dumbledore's robe also appeared more blue than grey, when he stepped towards my bed behind the healer.     "I have given you a calming draught as well as one against the pain. You must rest," Pomfrey's hands pressed me back into the pillows, yet when she noticed that I did not want to lie down, she let me remain sitting upright.     I examined my hands. The blood was gone, the bedsheets were snow-white.     "Madam Pomfrey has taken care of your injuries, after you lost consciousness," Dumbledore informed me and sat down on the neighbouring bed. "Mister Lupin, I can tell you that the girl is doing well so far."     Pomfrey nodded in the faint light, then she said: "It must be noted that you yourself are more severely injured. The poor thing is simply weak. Oh, how thin she is..." After these words the woman checked on her patient.     I followed her with my gaze, yet looked back to Dumbledore, when he said: "She is not a student of mine, if you were wondering that."          I nodded slowly.     "However I cannot say more either. What do you know? What happened?"          "I-"

I went into the forest with my animagus friends. There we met another werewolf, supposedly with a pack, and a fight broke out.

     Instead I said, not truly a lie: "I think that I did not make it into the Shrieking Shack today, Professor..."          "What makes you believe that?" No accusation, an honest question.     So I continued to lie: "I-I woke up in the forest. It was cold, everything hurt. She was there as well."          "The girl?"     I nodded.          "Did you notice anything else? What did the surroundings look like?"     "The snow was churned up, there was blood everywhere," it was not difficult for me to relive the moments once more, albeit without the involvement of my friends. "I did not know where I was. I only saw her, then I remember little. I think that we were far from the castle, but I found my clothes and my wand near the Whomping Willow."     I said nothing more, but I did not have to, because Dumbledore stood up. He placed his hand on my forearm, then he said: "I want you to know that mistakes happen. You probably missed moonrise, but I believe that it was a mistake that had to happen."          I understood nothing.     "Mister Lupin, I think that you encountered a werewolf," Dumbledore said, and how quickly he had uncovered the secret did not surprise me. "You clothed the girl in your cloak and cast the first healing spells. You yourself have injuries that you cannot inflict upon yourself - bite wounds at the neck, on the back, the injury at your side. The girl that you brought wore only your cloak, blood clung to her hands, even around her mouth. Just like with you."          I nodded once more. When Dumbledore said it, it sounded even more unreal.     Yet I managed to ask: "Why do you think that it had to happen?"          "Well," he began, "fate is a peculiar concept, you must know. Madam Pomfrey is not concerned about the girl's injury, much more about her general condition. She is not a student of Hogwarts, probably lives under the care of her parents, although she is very likely a witch, since Muggles do not become werewolves, and if they do, then only in rare cases. But I do not wish to confuse you with that. You only need to know that the girl will fare better at Hogwarts than wherever she currently lives - therefore this mistake had to happen. This is nobody's fault, Mister Lupin. I want you to know that, and now rest."     After these words the Headmaster disappeared. He spoke once more with Pomfrey, who finally spoke with me and administered further draughts to me. One of them was a strong sleeping potion, which was why I sank once more into a world of blackness.     But I preferred this world to the real one.