The cellar is dark, and you look up at your parents in horror. Their eyes are wide, their expressions pained. Your mum hugs herself nervously; it looks as if she’s trying to hold herself in one piece. Your dad is trying to appear impassive, but his act doesn’t fool anyone.

‘Remus, we’re sorry,’ Mum chokes out, a solitary tear slipping from her eye. It rolls down her cheek slowly; she doesn’t notice, doesn’t brush it away.

‘Trust us, son,’ Dad calls.

Stepping off the rope ladder you are clinging to, you watch in dismay as the two adults above pull it hastily up. It is soon out of your reach.

‘What...?’ You gape up at them, your thought trailing off. You don’t understand. Why are they doing this?

The wooden trapdoor swings close before they can answer; the last glimpse you get of Mum is her glistening eyes, where the tears have begun to fall relentlessly.

It is black. It is pitch black in the cellar. You have been robbed of your sight. Flailing your arms helplessly, you trip over your feet and onto your belly. Putting out your hands to break your fall, you slide on the damp, cold stone floor. Your palms sting from the impact, and you touch them one-at-a-time – weary with your fingers. It hurts, and you can sense the rough texture of the broken skin.

Scrambling onto your bottom, you slide your legs up to your chest and hug your knees to keep the heat in. The cellar is cold, no fire like in the rooms above to keep warm.

Rocking backwards and forwards, you try to fathom why your parents are doing this.

For weeks they have looked drawn – anybody would be able to see that. You miss your cheery mum and dad, how they used to smile all the time, how they used to bustle around. Now your mum gives you tonnes of suffocating hugs, and each one feels almost like a goodbye...

Your eyes are adjusting to the darkness. You can see the chink of yellow light falling on the room from a barred window high above, and you can see that there’s nothing in the cellar. It seems to be completely empty. You didn’t notice that detail when you were teetering onto the rope ladder and coming down.

You close your eyes and try not to think about it. Try to think happy thoughts.

The silence is suffocating. No owls hooting, no people singing, no children chattering. The only sound you can hear is your own rattled breaths.

Shaking your head, you wish for those happy thoughts to come.

But the first memory to pop into your mind is not happy. Far from. Maybe it was triggered by the silence and darkness of the cellar.

All you did was try to sleep...

Screwing your eyes tightly shut, you try to force your mind into unconsciousness. You’re tired, and the yawns are quaking through your body, indicating your weariness, but preventing you from conquering it.

‘One sheep... two sheep... three sheep...’ you whisper between yawns.

You give up with a sigh, getting up and going over to the window. Tonight is a full moon, and it glimmers high above you. It looks quite beautiful, really. Impossibly tempted, you decide you want to be out in the garden with the moon.

Tiptoeing through the silent house, you slip out of the back door. It clicks shut quietly, and you sink onto your knees on the grass. The yawns are all gone as you wonder what it would be like to visit the moon.

In the bushes at the rim of the garden, is a snarling sound. You shiver involuntarily; it reminds you of creatures from your nightmares, but it’s probably just the neighbours’ dog.

And then you see red.

The snarl rips through the night, and suddenly you can feel water or something soaking through one side of your shirt. And then you feel the most intense stinging – ten times worse than a grazed knee.

‘Mummy! Mummy!’

All around the snarls echo, and it feels as if something is slashing into your body. No creature seems to be with you, though; you can see nothing but red.

‘Mummy! Mummy!’

In the distance, you hear a scream - Mum?

And then it stops.

You push the memory away. Stupid, stupid moon. Dad had taken you to St. Mungo’s, where most of your wounds were cured by magic, but you’d been hurting for weeks all the same.

In fact, since that incident, nothing had been the same. Mum and Dad had been telling you why for weeks, but you didn’t really understand. A werewolf? That’s what they’d been telling you about. Apparently, he had been the one to make you hurt, but you’d never seen any old werewolf.

Just red.

Shifting your gaze to the barred window, you watch as the full moon is unveiled by a cloud. A spasm suddenly courses through your body, and pains shoot up and down your back. The clothes you wear tear and fall to the ground, and a scream slides between your teeth.

Somewhere above, a woman cries in agony.

But your muscles are stretching, and suddenly you can see every detail of the room, as if somebody has switched a light on.

Pain tears into you, until suddenly it stops.

Just like that.

Before, you weren’t even a little bit hungry, but now the pain has stopped, all you want is food.

You want human flesh.

---

‘Baby!’ Mum cries, chucking the rope ladder down to you. Sunlight streams through the trapdoor, and you smile weakly up at it.

Trying to stand up, you realise how much you ache. It’s as if your whole body is bruised, but, looking down, your skin carries no purple blemish. Just a million bright red scratches...

You try to remember last night, but it’s as if somebody has stolen your memory.

Dad appears beside Mum, who has clapped her hand over her mouth in horror, and says thickly, his face gaunt, failing to suppress a flicker of pain, ‘Come up here, son.’

So you do as you’re told, and when you get into the hallway, Dad pulls you into a hug with him and Mum, and says softly, ‘I’m sorry, son.’