Author's Notes: This chapter is set three days after Chapter 3.
The Silver Knife
The following Wednesday, the Gryffindor and Slytherin third-years were down in the dungeons together for their potions lesson just before lunch. There was no potential for death by spherical snow down here, only by Slytherins, exploding potions, and the sharp knives they were all using to chop ingredients. Remus personally favored his odds against the snow. In theory, James and Remus were supposed to be working on their potion together. In reality, very little work was actually getting done.
“Where’d you get that?” Remus asked, pointing at the ornate ring James was wearing on the middle finger of his right hand.
“My dad gave it to me for Christmas.” James moved his hand so that the ring caught the light. “Potter family heirloom. Do you like it? Sirius hates it.”
“It’s cool,” said Remus. The ring was old but beautiful: large ruby was set in yellow gold with what Remus supposed was the Potter family crest. “I like your other family heirloom better though.”
James grinned. “Yeah, this ring’s not very useful for sneaking round the castle, but I like it.”
“Why doesn’t Sirius?”
James turned to look at the back of the dungeon where Sirius and Peter were working on their potion and lowered his voice. “You know Sirius; he’s not to big on family stuff. Says he’d rather die than wear a ring with the Black family crest. But just because he wouldn’t, doesn’t mean I can’t.”
Remus nodded, then squinted at the blackboard at the front of the dungeon. “Add two whats and a pinch elder tree dust?” he asked.
“Eels’ eyes,” said James. “Honestly, you’re the one who needs glasses, mate.”
“That Slytherin girl’s head’s in my way.”
“You need X-ray vision!”
“We need to get working on this potion,” said Remus, rummaging through his potion ingredients kit for eels’ eyes.
“Fine, okay,” James said. They worked diligently on the potion for a while until they reached a line in the instructions that told them to let their cauldron stew for ten minutes.
“Ten minutes? What will we do with all of our free time?” asked James.
“We could prepare our ingredients for the rest of the potion,” Remus suggested.
“Or we could not.”
“Fine, what do you want to do?”
“I want to try out this new hex I found on Snivelly.”
Remus sighed. “Can’t you do that later? We’re in the middle of a lesson.”
“Since when has a lesson ever gotten in my way?”
“James…”
“Fine. Whatever. I’ll do it later.”
“Thank you.”
“Killjoy.”
“That’s what they call me.” Remus took James’s silver knife carefully by the hilt and began to shred knot grass to add to the potion when it was done stewing. James looked like he was considering helping for a brief moment, but then seemed to think better of it. He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, and surveyed the classroom lazily.
“I never told you about what Sirius did to Delangela last week, did I?” James asked after a few minutes silence. Remus set down the knife and looked up from the knotgrass. James’s gaze was fixed across the dungeon, where Sirius and Peter were flicking eels’ eyes off the edge of their desk in the direction of Delangela, who was a few desks behind James and Remus. They seemed to be having a competition to see who could hit her first.
“No, you didn’t,” Remus said.
“Want to hear about it?”
What’s the harm? Remus thought. “Sure.”
So James launched into the story, but after the phrases “feral squirrel” and “day-of-the-week underwear” found their way into the first five sentences, Remus changed his mind.
“Never mind, I don’t want to hear about it.”
James shrugged. “Suit yourself. Hey look, Peter hit Del!”
Remus and James watched as Delangela turned wildly around in her seat, trying to see who had hit her. Her eyes fell on Sirius and Peter, who were both determinately absorbed in Sirius’s potions book. She looked about ready to charm a few dozen eels’ eyes to pelt themselves at the two boys, but before she could, her partner recalled her attention to their potion.
“Damn,” James whispered. “Would have been a good show.”
“That’s ten minutes,” Remus said, checking his watch.
He and James added the grass Remus had shredded to their potion and continued with the rest of the instructions. A few minutes later, James grew bored, and Remus resigned himself to that fact that he would be finishing this potion alone. Remus worked steadily to the second-to-last line of the instructions, and then…
“OI!” James shouted suddenly.
Looking up, Remus saw what James was yelling about. A few desks behind them, two Slytherins had managed melt their cauldron. Their poorly concocted potion was seeping across the floor, and for some reason the potion seemed to expand as it flowed. Those nearest backed away as the potion spread towards them. Girls squealed as they lifted their feet and the hems of their robes from the ground. Some people stood on chairs or sat on their desktops. Those who were not so quick as to avoid the potion developed slimy green scales on the bits of skin that the potion had touched.
“Ewww,” Delangela whined. She had been working at the desk next to the Slytherins and was now perched on Lily Evans’s desk across the dungeon examining her scaly elbow and forearm.
“That’s a nice look for you, Narcosis!” Sirius called to her.
Delangela climbed to an empty chair and reached down to the floor scooped up a large handful of the thick, glutinous potion. Her hand was instantly covered in scales and webs grew between her fingers, but she didn’t seem to mind; next moment, she had hurled the handful of potion straight at Sirius’s face. Sirius ducked and just missed the flying potion, but a small bit splattered onto Peter’s neck.
“HEY!” Peter yelled, rubbing his new patch of scales.
“Calm down! Calm down, everyone, please!” Slughorn called over the babble and the squeals, trying to restore order. “We can have this sorted out in a jiffy if everyone can try to remain calm!”
“We’re all going to die!” a girl with scales on both ankles cried hysterically.
“I said calm, Miss Park,” said Slughorn.
“Watch out!” James told Remus. Remus looked down to see that the potion was moving rapidly for them. James jumped backward onto their desk, and Remus followed suit.
Slughorn took out his wand and started to vanish the potion from the floor, all the while assuring his students he would be able to rid them of their scales. Remus watched as at least a third of the class queued at his desk to receive an antidote. As he adjusted himself to get a better view, still perched on the desk, his fumbling left hand found the edge of something sharp.
Pain. Unimaginable and unendurable pain flowed from Remus’s hand though his body. He managed not to pass out right there, but in his agony, the dungeon swam before his eyes. He was not aware of anything around him. He was sure he was going to die from the pain. Somehow, his feet found the floor and he slid off the desk. Slowly, he brought his searing left hand out in front of him. Though his swimming vision, he could see the short hilt of a knife and one edge of a silver blade in his hand. The other edge was settled deep into his flesh. He could feel himself getting weaker. His swimming vision was starting to fog. He couldn’t hear or recognize anything around him. He felt like his whole left arm might fall off. In his pain and confusion, only one thought penetrated his mind. He felt his back hit a wall, and as his knees gave way and he slid to the floor, he summoned any remaining strength to raise his right hand and yank the blade from his left. The feel of the cool hilt of James’s silver knife in his right hand was the last thing he knew before he fainted.
“Watch out!” James told Remus. James jumped backward onto his desk, and next to him, Remus did the same. James chuckled as he watched Slughorn attempt to calm the various members of their class who had become recently scaly. Across the room, Sirius was laughing himself stupid at Delangela, who was looking between his scale-free face and her own webbed fingers with a murderous look in her eyes. To add to James’s delight, James saw Snape, with one shoe off, examining his scale-covered foot and webbed toes with much the same expression on his face as Delangela.
Peter, Delangela, Snape, and about a third of the other students in the room, rushed to Slughorn’s desk to wait for a cure to their “fishy little problem”. Slughorn went to his store cupboard to find ingredients for and antidote, muttering something about foolish students being unable to follow simple directions. James was finding the whole situation hilarious.
“Ah, here we are,” Slughorn said, extracting a bottle of smoky gray potion from his stores. James watched as students shoved one another in their eagerness to have their scales removed first and Peter almost got flattened.
“Good thing we didn’t get any, eh Remus?” James said, turning to him. “Remus?”
Something was very wrong with Remus. He had gotten off of the desk, and James watched as he backed himself into the wall and slid to the floor.
“Remus?”
Remus appeared not to hear him. His eyes were glazed and James doubted he was fully conscious. Slowly, Remus raised his right hand and pulled something from his left. Then his eyes closed, and he slumped, completely unconscious.
“Remus!”
James jumped from the desk and onto the floor beside Remus. In the hubbub of descalification, no one else seemed to realize something was wrong.
“Remus,” James said, shaking his friend by the shoulder. Remus did not wake. James looked down at Remus’s left hand and felt he might be sick. There was a large cut running vertically down Remus’s palm, and it was the most revolting, infected looking wound James had ever seen. His whole hand had turned a nasty, purplish, dead-looking color, and the color was steadily creeping its way up the veins in Remus’s arm as James watched.
“What the…” James muttered, confused. Remus had been fine a minute ago when they had leaped back onto the desk. How had he sustained such a gruesome injury so quickly and without anyone noticing? James’s eyes moved from Remus’s diseased looking left hand to his right. Remus was holding a knife, and James knew he had pulled it out of his left hand moments before he had fallen unconscious. James took the knife and examined it. He recognized it; it was his own silver knife that he used for chopping potion ingredients. But why…
Then it hit him.
“Professor!” he yelled, turning away from Remus, the bloody knife still in his hand. “Professor Slughorn! We need help over here!”
But Slughorn was to busy distributing the last few doses of antidote to hear James. James was torn; he didn’t want to leave Remus, but he would have to to attract Slughorn’s attention.
“James, what’s going on?” Sirius had heard James’s shouts and come over to investigate. He took one look at Remus’s hand and his face promptly drained of color. “Oh my G-“
“Go get Slughorn!” James instructed him. Sirius didn’t need telling twice. He sprinted across the room and was gone.
James turned back to Remus. He was hardly aware of the fact that he was kneeling in a puddle of Remus’s blood. He took two fingers from the hand in which he was not still holding the knife he had taken from Remus’s hand and placed them on Remus’s neck. He thanked Merlin for the steady pulse he felt that meant Remus was still alive. But for how much longer? James had no idea about that. He knew that silver was extremely toxic to werewolves, but he had no idea how long it took to kill them or if there was even a cure for silver poisoning. “Hang on, Remus,” he whispered.
“He’s over here, Professor. I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but-” Sirius had returned with Slughorn and a knot of curious students at his heels. Many of them gasped when they saw Remus’s terrible wound and broke into a chorus of mutters.
“What happened?” Slughorn asked, kneeling down beside Remus and James.
Silently, James showed Slughorn the bloody silver knife. He didn’t want to say anything specific with a crowd of onlookers, but he didn’t need to; Slughorn got the gist at once.
“Mr. Black, go to my cupboard and fetch me the bottle of bright blue potion, second shelf on the left. Miss Evans, please go to the hospital wing and bring down Madame Pomfrey.”
Lily and Sirius did as they were told. The rest of the class stayed grouped around Remus, James, and Slughorn. Slughorn yanked up the sleeve of Remus’s robe to see that the nasty purple color had spread to halfway between his elbow and shoulder. Slughorn took a large handkerchief from his pocket and tied it tight around Remus’s upper arm to constrict the blood flow and stop the poison from spreading any further. Behind him, the class continued to mutter.
“Ew, that’s gross.”
“What’s wrong with him, Professor?”
“Was it my potion, Professor?”
“Is he going to die?”
“That Lupin kid; I tell you, if it’s not one thing it’s another.”
“Out!” Slughorn told them. “Everyone else out! Class dismissed!”
Everyone went to go pack up their bags and leave except for Peter, James, and Sirius, who reappeared a moment later holding a large bottle of glowing, neon-blue potion. He handed it to Slughorn. “Will he be okay?” Sirius asked.
“I felt a pulse,” James told Sirius and Peter.
Slughorn uncorked the bottle poured the potion onto Remus’s injury. The five of them, the four boys and the professor, were instantly consumed in blue steam. When it had cleared, they saw that not only was Remus’s wound healing right before their eyes, but also the purple color was slowly receding down his arm.
“Wow,” James whispered.
“So he’ll be okay?” Peter asked in a squeaky voice.
Slughorn examined Remus’s healing hand with professional interest, then untied the handkerchief constricting Remus’s blood flow. “He should be fine. I made that potion a while ago just in case something like this were to happen. And it’s lucky I did…”
“But, how did he get hurt in the first place?” asked Sirius.
James showed him the knife. “This,” he said. “He must have accidentally cut himself with it when we jumped on the desk to avoid that potion.”
Sirius looked confused. “But how does getting cut with a knife…”
“Silver,” James explained. “A silver knife.”
Sirius’s eyes widened in comprehension. Peter still didn’t get it.
“Silver is toxic to werewolves,” James explained further. The classroom was empty now, so it was safe to discuss it.
“I take it Mr. Lupin told you three about his condition?” Slughorn asked, still examining Remus’s hand.
“Told us, ha!” said James. “No way. We had to figure it out on our own.”
“And I can see that it doesn’t bother you,” said Slughorn.
“Why should it?” James asked with a shrug.
Just then, Madame Pomfrey came speeding into the dungeon, followed by Lily Evans.
“What happened?” Madame Pomfrey asked as she neared them.
Slughorn turned to Lily. “Thank you, Miss Evans. You may go.”
“Will Remus be alright?” Lily asked.
“He will be fine,” Slughorn assured her. Lily collected the bag and left the dungeon.
“Silver poisoning,” Slughorn told Madame Pomfrey once Lily had gone. “I gave him an antidote and he seems to be recovering, but I figured you should take a look at him all the same.”
“Excuse me, Potter,” Madame Pomfrey said. James stood and moved aside so that she could examine Remus. As he did so, he noticed for the first time that he was covered in blood. Slughorn noticed too. He took out his wand and quickly cleaned the dried blood from himself, James, Remus, and the floor.
Madame Pomfrey did a quick examination of Remus’s wound and his vitals, and when she seemed satisfied that he would live for at least the next ten minutes, she conjured a stretcher from nothing and loaded Remus onto it.
The trip to the hospital wing was pretty uneventful. Fortunately for Remus, none of the other classes had been dismissed yet, as there was still about eight minutes before the bell was due, so nobody saw him unconscious on a stretcher being levitated by Madame Pomfrey up to the hospital wing. James, Sirius, and Peter followed just behind Madame Pomfrey. As they walked, James explained in whispered installments the bits of the incident Sirius and Peter had missed.
They reached the hospital wing, which was empty. Remus was transferred from the stretcher to a bed, and as Madame Pomfrey fussed around with getting more potions to heal Remus’s wound, James, Peter, and Sirius sat themselves down on the unoccupied bed beside Remus’s.
“How long before he wakes up?” James asked Madame Pomfrey as she applied a thick orange paste to a piece of cloth and dabbed it on Remus’s injured hand.
“Not long, hopefully,” she said.
“I don’t really get it,” Sirius admitted. “I mean, we’ve seen Remus with silver sickles and stuff. It’s never hurt him before.”
“Silver poisoning only occurs when silver enters a werewolves blood stream,” Madame Pomfrey explained. “If it gets as far as the heart, the werewolf will die.” Busy with the paste, she missed the horrified looks the boys exchanged.
Muttering something to herself, Madame Pomfrey went to her office, presumably to get more potions for Remus. The three boys were left to sit and stare at their unconscious friend.
“That was a really scary thing to happen,” said Peter.
“Yeah,” James agreed. “Hope he comes round soon.”
“I never even thought about it,” said Sirius. “I didn’t think about something like this happening. I mean, we’ve been using silver knives around him in potions for years now. He never mentioned anything.”
“Maybe he didn’t think about it,” suggested James.
Remus groaned.
“Remus? You awake, mate?” James asked. All three boys leapt off the bed at once to huddle around Remus.
Remus opened his eyes. A spasm of pain instantly crossed his face. “Merlin, my hand feels like it’s on fire,” he moaned.
“That’s to be expected,” said Madame Pomfrey, reappearing with an armful of bandages. “I’m afraid it takes a while for the pain to wear off.”
“What happened?” Remus asked.
James held up the bloodstained knife, which he hadn’t even realized he had still been holding all the way up to the hospital wing. “Remus, mate, you should know better than to go sticking silver knives into your hands. Your going to hurt yourself one of these days, you know.”
“What?” Remus asked. He still sounded a little out of it.
“Silver poisoning,” Madame Pomfrey explained. “You know, Remus, it’s not that I don’t enjoy your company, but I think I see quite enough of you in here after the full moon without you making extra visits mid-lunar cycle.”
Madame Pomfrey knew she could speak freely in front of James, Sirius, and Peter because ever since they had found out about Remus’s condition, they had come to visit him in the infirmary after every transformation. She knew that they knew what their friend was.
“Brace yourself now,” Madame Pomfrey told Remus, “I need to bandage your hand.”
Remus put his right hand in his mouth and bit down on it to stop himself crying out in pain as Madame Pomfrey took out her wand and used it to make the bandages wind themselves around his left. “It looks like it’s pretty much healed,” Madame Pomfrey said as she worked. “You’ll have a bad scar, I’m afraid, probably for the rest of your life. However, it seems there will be no other lasting damage. How are you feeling?”
“Lousy,” said Remus, removing his hand from his mouth.
“You will most likely feel weak for the rest of the day. Silver does strange things to werewolves. I’ll see if I can’t get you something to help with the pain.” She retired to her office once more.
“So… I still don’t really understand what happened,” Remus said, rubbing his head with his right hand. James explained as best he could what he had seen and surmised about the incident. “I kind of remember it, I think,” Remus said.
“Why didn’t you tell us about this, Remus?” Sirius asked. “If we’d have known, we would have been a lot more careful with our knives around you.”
“I didn’t think it was a big deal,” said Remus. “I figured I’d just try to avoid being stabbed with knives in the middle of class and that would be that. I didn’t think something like this could happen.” He raised his hand, wincing, and examined it. “I’ve never had silver poisoning before,” he told them.
“Well, Madame Pomfrey said you’d get better,” James said in a rallying tone.
“Yeah,” said Remus, lowing his hand. “Can you guys just explain one thing to me?”
“Sure,” said Peter.
“How is it fair that when Sirius gets hit with a snowball, twelve girls surround him, but when I pass out in Potions, I get you three and Madame Pomfrey?”
Remus lay on his bed later that night feeling totally and completely exhausted. He had stayed in the hospital wing for the rest of the morning and the afternoon, and it had taken a good deal of persuasion and begging on his part to stop Madame Pomfrey from holding him for the night. She had released him just in time for him to make it to dinner, but not without much fussing and many warnings about the fragile state he was currently in. He was starting to wonder if he should have listened to her; all he had done was go to dinner and back to the dormitory, and he was wiped.
He didn’t know how long he had been laying there, staring vacantly at the canopy of his four-poster, when his roommates came up for bed.
“Hey Remus, how’s your hand?” Peter asked.
It was throbbing. “Better,” he replied.
“How are you feeling?” asked James.
Remus was feeling rather ill. “I’m okay. I should be all better by tomorrow.”
“That’s good,” said Sirius.
Remus summoned his small amount of remaining energy and sat up. He changed into his pajamas like his roommates and crawled back into bed.
He studied his bandaged hand. It still hurt quite a lot, though it was not nearly as painful as when the incident had occurred. When the silver knife had pierced his hand, it had been agony beyond imaginable. Remus was used to pain, but this pain had been exceptional. He had not felt pain like that since…
No, he told himself, don’t think about that. If I think about it now, right before bed, I’ll just end up dreaming about it again.
Remus climbed under the covers and pulled his hangings. He exchanged “G’nights” with James, Peter, and Sirius, then sank into his pillow, willing himself to think of something “ anything “ that wasn’t that night. It was useless. Try as he might to banish the memory, as he drifted off to sleep, it overcame him once more.
It always started in the same place…
Remus was four, and he was playing with his toy broomstick in the backyard around sunset on a late-August evening.
“Remus!” called a woman’s voice. He turned to see his mother’s large silhouette framed in the back doorway. “Come inside for dinner,” she said.
Reluctantly, Remus threw aside his broomstick and ran in through the back door. It took him straight into the kitchen.
“Wash first,” his mother instructed him. She was busy setting the kitchen table.
Remus stood on the stepstool by the sink and washed his hands while his mother moved a large casserole dish to the table. It smelled like broccoli. Remus hated broccoli.
As he dried his hands, his mother pulled a serving fork from a drawer, but she lost her grip and it landed on the floor. She tried to pick it up, but her large belly would not permit her to bend that far.
“Remus, dear, could you pick up the fork Mummy dropped and put it in the sink, please?”
Remus did as she asked while she pulled out a clean fork and went back to the table. They sat down to eat at the same time the front door opened, announcing the arrival of Remus’s father.
“Oh good, John, you’re home,” Remus’s mum called to her husband. “I was going to start dinner without you you’re so late, but you’ve come just in time.”
Remus father entered the kitchen. Remus shrank away slightly. John Lupin was normally a very kind man, but not even his four-year-old son had failed to notice the foul mood he had been in the last few days.
“Hello, Fay,” Remus dad said, bending to kiss his wife on the cheek and giving her a half-smile that did not reach his eyes. “Hi, Remus,” he said as he sat down. “What’s for dinner?”
“Chicken, sweet potatoes, and broccoli,” replied Remus’s mum.
“I hate broccoli,” Remus reminded her.
“But it’s good for you, Remus,” his mum told him as she scooped some broccoli on to his plate. “I’m only giving you a little, sweetie, but I want you to eat all of it, okay?”
“I want chicken too,” he said.
“And you can have chicken,” she said, passing the broccoli dish to her husband so he could serve himself and picking up the chicken dish. “Here you are.” She served her son chicken. “You can have all the chicken you fancy, but you also have to eat the broccoli, you understand?”
“Yes Mum,” he mumbled grudgingly. He decided to start with the chicken.
“So, how was your day, John?” Fay asked her husband.
“Busy,” John replied.
“Do you think you’ll have time to build the crib tonight?” she asked him while serving Remus sweet potatoes.
John sighed. “Fay, I will build the crib. I promise.”
“The baby’s due in a month, John, and I’ve been asking you to build the crib for the last five at least.”
“I’ll do it, Fay,” he said wearily. “I’ve just been a little distracted lately.”
“I know,” she said. “I just want to be ready, that’s all.”
He put down his fork and took her hand. He attempted to smile reassuringly, but it still didn’t reach his eyes. “We will be ready,” he promised her.
They ate in silence for a while. When Remus was full he asked, “Can I leave?”
“Have you finished your broccoli?” his mother asked.
“Yes,” he said. He had managed to choke it down.
“Then you may leave.”
Remus went up to his room where he pulled out a coloring book and crayons. These entertained him for a while, but eventually he grew bored. What he really wanted was to play with toy broomstick more. The trouble was, he had left it in the backyard and it was dark out. His parents didn’t let him go outside when it was dark. But maybe if he snuck out…
He crept downstairs and back in to the kitchen. His parents had since moved to the living room. He could hear their voices floating down the hall.
“…don’t know anything about this, Fay. You didn’t see him. You didn’t hear what he said.”
“Lex warned you not to go messing with them, John. He told you to leave them be. But you didn’t listen and now it’s got you all upset-“
“Of course I’m upset! After everything that…thing has done! He’s a monster, he hurts innocent people, and you’re damn right I’m upset about that!”
“But picking another fight with him is going to do you no good at all.”
“The things he said…”
“But there’s nothing you can do about it tonight, dear.”
Quietly as he could, Remus opened the back door and crept into the yard. His parents heard nothing.
Remus strode away from the house, trying to find the spot where he had left the broomstick. This wasn’t easy, as it was very dark and the yard was very big.
Unable to locate it by where he thought he had left it, he ventured further from the house.
Something behind him moved.
He froze, suddenly wishing he hadn’t left the house. He listened. There was definitely something moving behind him.
It was coming closer.
Remus turned to see what it was, and when he did, he felt terror like he had never felt before. It was a gigantic wolf with yellow eyes that seemed to glow in the dark and fangs longer than Remus’s fingers. It was coming at him fast and Remus knew he would never escape.
He yelled and threw his arms protectively up in front of his face. The wolf lunged at him and sank its fang deep into his right arm just above the elbow. Remus screamed in agony, but it did no good. He fell backward and the wolf was on top of him.
As Remus cried for his mummy and the wolf bore down on him, he saw a glint in the wolf’s eyes that seemed to say, “You can cry all you want, but I’ve got you, and your mummy can’t save you now.”
The wolf attacked again, and Remus was consumed with the idea that this was all too much. It couldn’t be real; it had to be a nightmare.
And it was…this time around.
Remus woke with a yell and sat bolt upright in bed, breathing as heavily as if he had just sprinted to Hogsmeade and back. He looked around at the dark velvet hangings of his four-poster bed. It was a nightmare, he told himself. I’m at Hogwarts. I’m safe. There are no werewolves here.
Well, there was one werewolf there, but that wasn’t the point.
“What’s going on?” asked Peter’s voice across the room.
“Remus, are you okay?” asked James’s voice much nearer at hand. The hangings on the right side of his bed were pulled back to reveal a sleepy but concerned-looking James.
“I’m fine,” Remus breathed.
“Then why were you yelling?” asked a disgruntled Sirius, who hadn’t bothered to get out of bed.
“I’m just “ I just “ I had a nightmare,” said Remus, trying to clam himself and slow his breathing.
“But you’re okay now?” asked James.
“I’m fine,” Remus repeated. “Go back to bed. I’m sorry I woke you guys.”
James climbed back into his own bed and drew his hangings. Remus closed his again, making an effort to take slow, deep breaths. It was just a dream. It was just a dream.
But it always seemed so real. Every time he had the nightmare, it felt as real as the night it had happened. He remembered praying on the night it had happened that it was all a nightmare and that he would wake up. But when he had woken, it was in St. Mungo’s. He had been in terrible pain, and his parents were crying. He remembered it like it was yesterday.
Remus curled up under the covers, feeling miserable. As if it wasn’t enough that he had a terrible curse to remember that night by. It wasn’t enough that he had had to turn into a werewolf every full moon since that night. No, he also had to have the nightmare that plagued him when he was feeling his lowest and made him relive the terror of that night all over again. Remus winced as he accidentally rolled onto his left hand.
That Lupin kid; I tell you, if it’s not one thing it’s another.
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