22 ~ To be Human

The worst truth was not that I was a monster, but that I had begun to believe I deserved to be one.

Remus' POV:

     Often I had walked this path towards the castle. Only never had it been the case that it was not I who had suffered torment today. I carried Phil and it felt familiar. Just like in the night when we had found her, I had carried her, only that at this moment she was not unconscious. One could not describe her as present either, because she stared into emptiness. She did not want to, could not look any of us in the eyes.

Understandable...

     I knew this feeling; often enough I was ashamed to be the monster that I was. I knew the torment she suffered, even if not completely. It was always the same, because one lived one's life in madness and delusion, where one was only a shadow of oneself anymore - one had become a monster that slumbered deep inside.           At the beginning one did not want to accept it.      One jumped, screamed and cried, but one did not feel anything. One had become numb, dead inside and to save a dead soul had always been impossible for me, like making a pile of shards whole again. Making it into the beauty that one had once been. Beauty, understood as happiness and peace. Beauty understood as the feeling of security and belonging.     That was how I had felt when I had been bitten and punished as a child with this curse. Only in Hogwarts through the Marauders had I found myself again, even if I still often sank into self-hatred.      Now, however, there was a Phil, who had sunk even deeper than I into the curse, and just as my friends had helped me, so I also wanted to help her. I knew how it felt to have people around one who cared for one. Surely Phil had also found these people in Lily and her friends, nevertheless I wanted to be there for her, even if I myself was often overwhelmed with myself.     I did not know what it was, yet I felt the need to be there for the girl in my arms. She was still trapped in the phase in which her soul no longer wanted to continue. I saw it in her eyes; Phil could not go on.     Her world would not quickly turn back into the right direction, because she would have to master these steps alone, even if she should have support. If she did not want one to help her, then it would not happen either, quite simply.     And so I walked my path. Phil in my arms. A person with the same fate as mine and I helped her. Would help her to live with this curse, even though I myself had not yet found out how it worked. The other Marauders had always been there for me, and I knew that they wanted to help Phil as well.     What it was that made us always stick our noses everywhere, I did not know. I only knew that this behaviour of my friends had brought me to tell them at all that I was a werewolf.      Already back then they had not left me alone, yet it had helped me. I hoped that I could help Phil in the future, if she herself would want it.

     Our path ended in the hospital wing, since Phil was far too exhausted and had suffered a few injuries. Madame Pomfrey was definitely surprised to see her. One could only read confusion from her face.     She treated Phil quickly and while James kept an eye out for Sirius, who wandered about in the snowstorm with Lestrange, Peter and I waited by Phil. Although, one could not call it waiting, because we remained standing near the door, and Pomfrey forgot our presence in her haste.     In the rear of the hospital wing she treated Phil, who did not make a single sound. We did not see her, yet I could imagine all too well how she continued to stare at a wall, lost in the world of her thoughts.     A little later Madam Pomfrey came back and disappeared around the corner. Peter and I, actually only I, approached Phil, the blond boy followed me.           I stopped at the bed beside her.     Phil lay curled up on the mattress and had wrapped herself in my cloak, which was far too large for her. As predicted, she stared out of the window. I noticed that the snowstorm had stopped. The wind, however, still lashed against the windowpanes.     "You gentlemen I will probably only get out of my hospital wing again when you graduate", I heard the voice of the nurse of Hogwarts, who approached us with a tray.      On it I discovered ointments, bandages and potions, which she would probably only give Phil after everything had been clarified. At least I doubted that in this state one could get a potion into Phil. It was already a miracle that Pomfrey had been allowed to look at her wounds.     These thoughts I also found in the face of the nurse as she placed the tray on the table beside the bed. Pomfrey studied the girl with the red hair and pressed her lips together.

Phil, you occupy my thoughts, I thought and looked at the girl.

     It became quiet, and when Dumbledore in the next moment stepped into the hospital wing, I felt transported back.           Transported back into the night when I had seen Phil for the first time. Back then as well Dumbledore had come to us. Just like the last time, ignorance, but also curiosity, adorned his face.

Phil's POV:

     I stared at the windows familiar to me.           I felt nothing.     Once again I was at the beginning, but why did I feel worse than the last time? Why was I dead inside, and why was it so quiet?          The voice had left me, or was I only suppressing it? Was I suppressing it or had it achieved what it had always wanted?     I had transformed into the monster that I was, and truly was. In the past years I had been it far too often and I had lied to myself. I had told myself that I would only have to transform into one at full moon, but if that had been the case, I would have died in the forest a long time ago.      No normal girl could live for years in the forest with a pack of wolves, if she were human.

A human...

     I had convinced myself that they were pitiful creatures, just as the voice, my father, had taught me. Inside, however, I had always known that I only wanted to be normal.

But I am not...

     I was not a normal girl. This reality hurt, but that was how it always was with the truth. It hurt. It destroyed me.          I could not go on, did not want to go on either. I was not human, yet also not a wolf. On neither side was my home. Why should I then try to fit into one of the two worlds? Why did I keep fighting?     I did not know, and I received no answer either, because the voice was gone. It had left me; I was no longer worthy of it. Never had I been able to live up to the expectations of my father. Now I had betrayed him. I was back in the castle of the humans and wanted so much to be one of them.

Yet I never will.

     I did not know how long I stared out of the windows. But when I next consciously blinked again, a tear ran down my cheek. It fell onto the mattress. I paid it no attention, because in the next moment I heard the door to the hospital wing open and close. Immediately I felt a certain tension in the room, which could only be Dumbledore.          "I am not surprised to see you", said the wizard and he was probably speaking to the boys. After his words the door to the hospital wing opened once more and closed again.     "Always you four are involved in something, yet in this case I consider it appropriate. What has happened?", asked the headmaster those strange Marauders who had found me. How they had managed that was a mystery to me.

The solution is irrelevant to me.

     "Your head of house told me less than an hour ago about Phil's disappearance, and immediately afterwards I wanted to investigate this disappearance, when already the first portrait told me that you were to be found here. And as much as it surprises me, even less does it truly surprise me."     "Professor Dumbledore", began the boy who was like me, "we also only found out that the girls, that is Lily Evans and her friends, were missing Phil, so we searched for her and found her."          "Found at the right moment", replied Madame Pomfrey. I felt her gaze on my back, but still I looked out of the window.     "Yes, found at the right moment", repeated another of those Marauders, "but we had information from Lestrange."          "Helpful it was not for us", replied another voice and I recognised the one of Sirius Black.     "Do we have to bring that up again now?", asked Lupin, yet the answer was spoken by Dumbledore: "No, we do not, and I also do not need to know all the details. Much I can already imagine. The less you four say, the less I have to think about a punishment, which after this rescue would be inappropriate anyway", he made a short pause. "The truly important story Miss Aquila will have to tell me. And you young gentlemen still have lessons."     I heard one of the boys sigh briefly. They wanted to set themselves in motion, which I, however, could not allow. I could not let them go, not after they had saved me and had seen me as my true self.      They probably despised me right now, nevertheless I felt the need to explain to them how I had at least ended up in this situation.

How I became this monster.

     "I did not want to go back...", I murmured and my voice was far too quiet. The others understood me by a miracle.           The footsteps halted.     "I did not want anyone to have to rescue me. I did not want to see the wolves, yet he told me that I must. He has been telling me that the whole time, it does not stop. I hear his voice and my head keeps repeating his words the whole time. I only wanted to escape, but I did not manage it. I cannot run away; he has poisoned me. My father made me into this monster, yet he is the true monster, is he not...?", I asked in confusion and sat up from an impulse foreign to me. I looked into Dumbledore's bright eyes, which looked at me compassionately and thoughtfully.      He seemed at that moment to sense that I had not told him the whole truth about myself. A truth that the boys already knew.          Behind the headmaster they stood, yet I only looked at Dumbledore as I continued quietly: "In the past weeks I have learned that the wizarding world cannot stand my father, hates him. His fascination with being a werewolf, controlling it. Determining every transformation himself, steering himself as a monster, keeping his consciousness. An absurd idea, yet he managed it, Professor, he managed it with me as well..."     I could no longer look Dumbledore in the eyes. I looked at the mattress, yet still heard the loud intake of breath from Madame Pomfrey.          "He managed it...", I mumbled further, curled up again, stared out of the window. "But I do not want that. He is in my head, has destroyed it. It should simply stop, please..."     After my words it had become quiet. Dumbledore had sent the four Gryffindors to their lessons, but he had remained and had sat the whole time beside my bed on an empty one. I felt his presence, yet he remained calm. He gave me time. I was grateful for that.

     "I should clarify some things", I said later and my voice sounded hoarse. I took my gaze from the window, sat up. Ashamed I looked at my hands, then I continued: "When you asked me about my story, I lied, Professor", my eyes looked briefly at the wise wizard, "I did not tell that I knew exactly why I was in the hospital wing after the full moon. I did not tell that I could remember what had happened that night. I also did not say how I survived in the forest the whole time, but now it is obvious. As a child my father told me that I can be a werewolf whenever I want. He practically pushed me towards it, then he left. My mother separated from him, but she was overwhelmed with me. She was overwhelmed with the monster that my father created. When Mother was dead, I was on my own in the forest, then I remembered his words. It took some time until I managed it, yet I feel it, I feel that I can always transform into a werewolf. I managed it as well, yet it always hurts so much, so I rarely transformed back. I found the pack and survived, but nothing more. I thought I could be an animal, because as a human one does not accept me. But I am not an animal..."          "Keeping the truth to oneself is no disgrace, Phil, at least with your story."     "I still hear his voice in my head, the voice of my father, how he tells me that what I am is something beautiful. Today I know that my father was sick in the head. He was a full werewolf and enjoyed it. For him it was the best thing that his daughter was also a full werewolf, had the potential for it at that time. To have this power was everything for him. As I grew up, it was always drilled into me that I was 'something special, but that is a lie. Only now do I see it."     I finished, looked at Dumbledore. Concern could be read from his face, as a result I continued speaking, in a quiet, tormented voice: "But I want to be human, so much..."