Transformation
- He cried in pain but knew it was useless, no one would help him. -
The first month of school was like a blur after that day, which had gone so incredibly slow you would think you had lived ten lifetimes before nighttime fell. In History of Magic, Rachael was slumped so low in her seat from almost falling asleep that Professor Binns (who was their only ghost professor) didn’t even notice she was in the room and almost marked her absent before she jerked up and said she was there.
On the first of October all of the Gryffindor first years were sitting in the common room before class started. They would have been in the Great Hall, but Peeves had caused some destruction and scared the poor house elves. The staff had to calm them all down and clean up the Great Hall before lunchtime. James, Sirius and Peter were sitting around the small wooden table. Lily and Rachael were sitting on the scarlet couch, while Frank and Alice were occupying the two armchairs.
“Where’s Remus?” James asked Rachael suddenly.
She shrugged and said she’d go look for him. She got up and headed for the boys’ dormitory. She stood at the doorway and looked around, Remus wasn’t there, strange. Rachael glanced over towards the left and saw a calendar on Remus’s bed. Curious, she walked over and picked it up. Remus had marked off all the days on his calendar and on October 1st it said, in very tiny, almost unreadable writing, full moon. Rachael hid the calendar under Remus’s pillow to make sure James and Sirius didn’t see it.
Rachael ran back down to the common room and said she was going to class a bit early. Lily offered to go with her, but Rachael managed to break off from her, saying she had forgotten something back at the common room. She turned around a corner and found herself in front of the Hospital Wing. She peered through the glass window on the door and saw her brother sitting on a chair in the corner of the room. His face was pale and his eyes unfocused.
She knocked on the door and Madam Pomfrey came bustling over.
“Can I help you?” she said stiffly.
“Yes, can I just talk to my brother, Remus?” Rachael asked politely.
Madam Pomfrey nodded and moved aside so Rachael could get in. Remus looked up when he heard her voice. Madam Pomfrey disappeared into her office.
“Everyone was looking for you,” Rachael said to Remus. “You didn’t give them an excuse?”
“Excuse for what?” Remus asked listlessly.
“For why you’re not going to be in class.”
“Oh yeah… Can you tell them I went home to visit Mum?”
“That wouldn’t work!”
“Why?”
“They’d ask why I wasn’t going.”
“Just please tell them!”
Rachael nodded; she would never refuse her brother when it came to this. She asked if he was going to be okay or needed anything. He shook his head and said she should just get to class. Rachael left the wing and caught up with Lily out on the grounds as she was heading to the greenhouses. Lily was now walking with Alice Gordon, who said a merry hullo to Rachael, and they continued down the grassy slope to the greenhouses.
When they got to the first greenhouse they expected to see Professor Sprout standing there but, to their complete surprise, they saw Hagrid there instead. Rachael, Lily and Alice joined up with Sirius, James, Peter and Frank while they waited for the Ravenclaws to get to class.
Hagrid saw what they were waiting for and laughed. “I’m afraid we’ll be waitin’ a while ‘fore they come,” he said, a hint of seriousness in his voice.
Frank turned to him. “Why?”
“Well…err… the Ravenclaw firs’ years didn’t hear about the…err… little problem with Peeves and Peeves found ‘em. They all got shoved into the Vanishing Cabinet. The staff’s tryin’ to find ‘em. But let’s just begin without ‘em.”
“Where’s Professor Sprout?” James asked.
“With the staff.”
James nodded and they all followed Hagrid into the greenhouses. They were still working with the Imp Bells, the same pair with the same Bell so the Bell wouldn’t get confused. Today, Rachael’s group was two people short. She went to find her Imp Bell, only to find that it had found a bowl of worms and was feeding itself.
“Hey, it’s doing my work for me!” Rachael laughed.
They had still been feeding them, really boring work. Today they were supposed to advance on the proper way to plant them into a garden because, incredible as it may seem, people actually tried to grow them or to plant a garden full of grown ones. Hagrid walked over to Professor Sprout’s desk and pulled out a sheet of parchment with the class roster. He read off all the Gryffindor names: Sirius, Lily, Alice, Frank, Rachael.
“Where’s Remus?” Hagrid asked, looking around at all the Gryffindors. They all had blank looks except for Rachael who raised her hand. “Excuse me?”
“Miss Lupin?”
“My and Remus’s Mum is sick. Remus went to go visit her,” she lied, feeling rather stupid doing so because she knew what was coming next.
“Why didn’t yeh go with him?”
This required some very quick thinking.
“Well… you see… the sickness my mum has is “ err - contagious through the girls in our family and… I’m not allowed to go near her!”
The class sniggered. She knew it was a pathetic excuse but she had to make up something. Luckily, Hagrid bought the whole story.
As it turned out, the staff spent the entire period of Herbology looking for the Ravenclaws, who all turned up the next class stuffed inside a single toilet. The Gryffindors had Herbology without them. Since they weren’t allowed to do any real lessons without the proper professor, they spent one more excruciating class feeding them, while they spit up worm guts on all the students. Hagrid put the Gryffindors into two groups. The first was the boys: James, Sirius, Peter and Frank and the other was the girls: Lily, Rachael and Alice. Hagrid made the whole class into a contest, as a mean of trying to lighten up the atmosphere because all of them were miserable from having to feed them. The contest was whoever fed the most worms to the Imp Bells won a giant slab of chocolate from Hogsmeade.
To put it lightly, neither team won. The Imp Bells were the most uncooperative that day and they wouldn’t swallow a single worm, except for the one Rachael, Alex and Remus had been working on. That was only because he was hungry when he was eating them. The Gryffindors were covered in worm guts from head to foot. To get them off, they all had to jump in the lake and then rush up to Gryffindor Tower to get some new robes.
“Come on, Mr. Lupin,” Madam Pomfrey said nervously, running about hospital wing, making sure everything was in check. It was nearly nightfall and Remus was feeling the worst. His head was spinning, his bones felt stiff and he didn’t want to move. He was slumped in his seat, not taking in a word Madam Pomfrey was saying. “Come on, Remus!” she said again. He still didn’t move. “REMUS!”
Remus jerked up and nearly fell out of his chair. Madam Pomfrey grabbed his hand and threw an Invisibility Cloak over his head and led him out down to the grounds.
Up in the common room, all the Gryffindors were relaxing after classes. Being that it was a Friday, they didn’t have to worry about school the next day. Some second years were sitting in the corner, looking at a particularly large pile of wizard cards. There were several third years who were talking eagerly about the upcoming trip to the wizard village, Hogsmeade, which would take place on Halloween. The rest of the Gryffindor fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh years were either doing homework or down in the Great Hall.
Frank and Alice were still in the Great Hall and the rest were in the common room. Rachael was playing Lily in a match of Wizard Chess and James was referring with Sirius, while Peter was just serving as the audience.
“Oh, and what a beautiful move by Miss Evans,” James said as one of Lily’s pawns crushed one of Rachael’s.
Rachael scooped up the pieces and dumped them into the box and watched as they reformed themselves.
“How come when one of my pieces takes another all you say is ‘and Rachael takes a piece’?” Rachael asked grinning.
James turned red and shrugged. Sirius laughed and muttered something about James liking Lily, which, luckily, Lily didn’t hear over the smashing of one of her bishops.
Sirius got up and walked over to the window after hearing a crack of thunder. “Storm coming,” he said, leaning over the windowsill to look down on the grounds. “Hey, come here for a second.”
Curious about what Sirius was looking at, Rachael stood up and walked over to him at the window, while everyone else just ignored him. He pointed down towards the grounds, where she could see the faint outline of Madam Pomfrey dashing across the grounds over towards the newly planted Whomping Willow, which was thrashing its boxing glove like arms at Madam Pomfrey. The nurse dodged one of the branches and grabbed a long stick off the ground. She crawled over to the willow and prodded something in its trunk. The willow stopped moving and Madam Pomfrey appeared to be talking to herself and pointed to something under the willow.
“What’s she doing?” Sirius wondered aloud.
Rachael shrugged and said it was probably nothing to worry about, though she knew what it was. Remus had told her the precautions Professor Dumbledore was taking for Remus. They had planted the Whomping Willow there for him, under the willow was a passageway that led to some building in Hogsmeade. Madam Pomfrey would have to smuggle him out of the school under an Invisibility Cloak and bring him there so he could transform.
“In you go, Remus,” Madam Pomfrey said quietly. She turned around to make sure no one was out on the grounds that could see, and took the Invisibility Cloak from Remus. He crouched down and he let himself fall through the small opening, where he found himself in a long tunnel. He looked back through the opening to see Madam Pomfrey pointing for him to go forward. Feeling incredibly sick, Remus sprinted with all his remaining energy down the tunnel until he felt himself bang into something.
Rubbing his sore head, Remus saw that it was a wooden door. He grasped the doorknob with his sweaty palms and pushed the door open to find a long stairwell in front of him. He looked back down the dark tunnel. He felt his stomach lurch, and ran up the steps to find himself in a small bedroom. He looked around and saw a small four-poster bed in the corner. He went down to sit on it, as he waited for his transformation to take place. He looked blankly at the wall ahead of him, his mind reeling, his stomach doing flips.
Then it hit him, a long, hard pain in the region of his stomach. He leaned forward a let out a long moan of pain. Sweat beading on his forehead, Remus felt his bones start to grow, feeling as though every inch of his body was being pierced with knives. He felt fur growing on his sweaty skin, his eyes changed from green to yellow; his ears slowly dissolved into wolf ears, his nose became a snout. His feet and hands became paws. He cried in pain, but knew it was useless, no one would help him.
Finally it stopped; he was a werewolf.