.:: 9 Years Ago ::.

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Hot, foul breath. Deep, gutteral snarls.

A piercing pressure on his shoulder. Deeper the hot teeth sank. Deeper.

Claws sank into his arms. Deeper.

The beast was enclosing in on in him, sinking his poison.

Past the broken skin. Past the mangled flesh. Past the lungs and guts. Past the beating human heart.

Deep down, the beast was piercing the boy's core.

"NOOOO!"

Remus woke up with a scream. He breathed hard and fast in the darkness. All at once, he doubled over in pain.

"Mumma! Papa! Where are you?"

His voice rang out in silence. The starchy bedsheets were not his own. He was enclosed behind four walls of plastic curtain.

Where were his parents? Where?

In his terrified state, he lunged toward the curtains to escape. A wave of hot pain pushed him back on the bed. His hands felt layers of wet, warm bandages on his chest and shoulders, sending a shock of cold terror down his small frame. A soul-splitting scream exploded in his lungs. Over and over he yelled until his vision tore and the world grew dizzy.

I want to go home…I want to go home…

Hurried footsteps. A distant light.

"Try not to move, love," An unfamiliar voice came from beside him.

He saw multiple shadows approach him in the dark. Their hands moved fast and touched him all over. He tried to fight.

I want my mother…I want my mother…

The last thing he felt was the glowing tip of a wand pressed to his forehead. Darkness consumed him at once.

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It was four days later when Remus woke up again. It was daylight, and the curtains were drawn back. He found himself in the same room. This time he recognized it as a hospital room. With concentrated effort, he called out to his mother who was sleeping in a chair nearby.

Through her tears and cries of joy, he tried to ask what had happened. His father came running into the room to join his mother. They hugged in greatful, prayer-filled silence.

The next few hours of his life were ones that he would often look back on. This was the death of a former Remus who braved childhood with an intact naivety about the world. This was the shattering of ignorance, and the beginning of struggle.

Even in adulthood, he could close his eyes and see his parents' heartbroken faces - watching the Healer walk into the room with his salmon-colored St. Mungo scrubs. An air of formality and no sign of a smile.

The three of them sat down and told Remus a story. Familiar scenes tugged at his memory...

His mother calling him in for dinner.

A twig snapping in the woods.

A blood-red sunset.

Fading light.

The end of something.

"You will be here until the next full moon," The Healer said decisively. "Further actions will be decided once we see if... Once we see what happens."

At 8 years old, he wondered if he should have died instead.

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"Martha, what's this?"

Remus held up a small red box to the nurse who was changing his sheets.

Three weeks of hospital life later and by now, the polite, little Remus knew all the nurses and healers by name in the Critical Care wing. Martha was one of the few nurses who didn't stare at his over-grown arm hair or wince when his sneezes turn into monstrous roars. Instead, the gruff old witch entered the room every day by barking at him to stop scratching his wounds. She liked to carry about her business as usual - as if nothing was out of the ordinary. As if this wasn't the only surviving case in a decade of a werewolf bite on a child this young. As if this child's fate wasn't hung in the air, up for debate until the next full moon.

She was very no-nonsense, which was why Remus was surprised to find her recognizing and smiling at the small red box.

"Looks like a present, don't it?" She went back to changing a pillowcase.

"I found it by my bedside this morning," Remus carefully inspected it. "But mum said it wasn't from her. Is it from you, Martha?"

The old woman snorted in derision, "I have 50 patients a day – all in critical care. When would I have time to make presents for one sickly boy? Even if he is the only –"

The nurse cut short and glanced nervously at Remus. A shadow passed the little boy's face.

"…the only one who won't finish his vegetables," Nurse Martha recovered. She glared down at his lunch tray, "Don't play around with me, boy. Finish it up!"

"I will," Remus grumbled. Under his breath he muttered, "Although I'd really rather have a burger…"

In reality, what he was really craving was a bloody slab of steak. But this thought arose an intense feeling of self-hatred in his stomach. Even his appetite had now changed to serve as a constant reminder of the one thing he tried to forget.

"Well then, I'll notify the CHEFS downstairs," the nurse announced sarcastically.

"Will you tell me who the present is from?" He asked again.

The Nurse packed the dirty sheets onto her cart, and began to wheel it out.

"Why don't you start by checking the card?" She asked mysteriously, and then left the room.

Silence surrounded him. This was the worst part of life at the hospital: The long stretches of day that crawled by when his parents were at work, when the 9-year-old boy was left to himself.

There was an envelope on the table next to his bed. Inside was a crudely-made card with a crayon drawing of moon and stars. It read:

Don't be afraid! The moon is really quite harmless.

He stared at the child-like hand-writing. Shame washed over him. Was someone playing a joke? Did a kid from back home know his secret? Each time he re-read the card, the words painfully mocked him.

Remus reluctantly unwrapped the red box, expecting something cursed inside. Maybe a voodoo doll of a werewolf.

Instead, he found a small, meteoric-looking stone inside. It was rough all over, except on one side where it was flat and smooth. On the polished surface, small words were engrained:

My name is Moonstone.

He flipped the rock over and over in his hands, examining the small bubbles of air and granite-colored sheen.

Someone knew that the full-moon was approaching. Someone knew that he lied awake at night, watching the growing, white globe in fear. How could they have known that it was on his mind all day, all night?

"I'm not afraid of the moon," The 9-year-old boy said defensively, twirling the stone in his hands. "I know the moon is just a piece of rock. It's not the piece of rock I'm afraid of…"

He stopped flipping the rock and caught a rare glimmer of blue on the smooth side.

Afraid of yourself?

The words had changed.

Remus flung the rock away from him in shock. It skidded along the floor and under the couch.

The rock was alive…or maybe cursed?

He felt a strange irritation at the words. "Afraid of yourself"…

To distract himself, he picked up a book and tried not think about the terrifying truth behind that phrase.

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When the full moon came, Remus had lost his memory for a few nights.

There was no recollection of the flesh-splitting transformation. No memory of frantic howling in the iron-clad room. Yet even still, he knew what happened when he woken up a few days later - lungs raw and body sore. Self-inflicted bite-marks covered his body from the lack of animals and humans to bite in that prison cell. His nails were chipped from scratching metal.

His mother and father stared somberly at the floor. One look at Remus and they would give away what they were just realizing: their son would never lead a normal life.

In bed, he listened to the Head Healer explain that life in society as a werewolf was possible. He would need to prepare Wolfsbane before every full moon to gain his human memory during transformation. He had to register his condition of lycanthropy with the ministry. He would undergo treatment to stabilize his cravings for meat. His hair. His need to run wild.

He would never be able to attend a normal wizarding school.

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That night, the moon gleaned innocently from the window. In the shadows, Remus gingerly climbed out of bed and reached under the couch.

He felt the moonstone with his fingers and brought it out under the window. Using the pale light, he read the small engrained words:

Don't be afraid. You have a friend.