Changes

Prologue

Remus Lupin

The young boy lay in his own blood breathing heavily naked and shuddering Remus winced pushing his hands underneath himself so he could sit up, the sweat and blood covered his body as he shook with exhaustion and pain just managing to force himself into a sitting position pulling his knees to his chest, remember the first time this had happened, his blood and sweat had mixed with his tears, but Remus did not cry now, not because it didn't hurt, not because he didn't want to, but because at any moment his parents would enter and they couldn't stand to see him cry, the guilt he already saw every time his father saw him already cut deeper than any wound he could make on himself and his mother's sorrow when she bandaged his wounds was already so great. As predicted the door opened and Remus looked upon the horrified faces of Hope and Lyall Lupin as they tentatively walked over to him.

"My baby, why do you do this to yourself." Hope whept, Remus had no answer and she knew that, the wolf was the one who did it, who shredded through his own skin in the search for blood for escape from the magically sealed rooms, this room was an attic in their new home soundproofed using the silencing charm to keep muggle neighbours from thinking his parents were torturing a wild animal or him up here, which is what the last neighbours had started to believe and the one before that and the ones before that.

"Let's get you cleaned up, boy." Lyall ushered, grabbing Remus under the arm careful not to touch any of the fresh wounds when he pulled him up and helped walk him down the stairs where a warm bath was drawn waiting for the small eleven-year-old boy. Hope rinsed the blood from his skin turning the water red as Lyall fetched the supplies from the cupboard, they were never brought out before Remus came out of the room in hopes they would one day not be needed, they were always needed.

"Can I treat your wounds, my baby?" Hope inquired and Remus nodded slowly after a moment, Hope pulled out the mixture of powdered silver and crushed Dittany leave, Remus climbed out of the bath with his father's help and his mother dried him off before handing Remus the towel to bite down on, which he did before Hope covered his wounds in the mix and Remus cried into the towel it was like putting salt in his wounds though silver was not normally harmful to werewolves like muggles would have you believe it was the only way to seal a wound from one, which was less than pleasant and since he gave himself these wounds every time he transformed he get a monthly treatment of the stuff to sealing his wound and stop the bleeding, if only it didn't scar, no magic to rid him of the jigsaw puzzle of silvery line covering his pale skin including his face, they were the one that could not be hidden.

"We got you something." Hope informed after slowly taking the towel out of Remus's mouth aching jaw as he finally relaxed it from its clench position.

"Happy birthday." Hope held out a wrapped rectangle.

"It's already past." Remus croaked out his first words since yesterday.

"Yes, well, you weren't... do you want me to open it?" Hope suggested smiling, Remus took the rectangle only because that smile could not hide the sorrow in Hope Lupin's eyes at how her son had spent his 11th birthday writhing in pain as his bones tried to rearrange themselves and hair tried to crawl out of his paws, claws from his nail beds and fangs from his gums. Remus ripped the paper from his gift agonisingly slowly to reveal a Curses and Countercurses by Professor Vindictus Viridian, Remus was wary for a moment, his father had spent many years trying to rid him of this curse, and thought that Lyall had finally accepted Remus's fate and would stop trying to give him false hope, but the book was about spells, jinxes and the like.

"We thought even if you don't get to go to Hogwart, you can still learn a little from us and from books." Lyall offered smiling, that was right Hogwarts letters arrived on one's eleventh birthday and his hadn't come. Remus hadn't expected to get one considering his condition, but it still felt like a blow, he had shown magical ability in the past even after the bite, he almost fell down the stairs after one particular bad full moon and found himself hovering over the step preventing his already sore body from sustaining further injury, another time he was reading and could hear his parents arguing "screaming" about him, he had wished on everything in him not to hear them and suddenly the room was quiet which was good until his parents had to take him to St Mungo's Hospital, that had made his parent stop arguing and they never left his side so worried the Madams their would ask question about his scars and figure out what he was, then Remus would be registered by the Ministry as a werewolf, his father would lose his job and Remus would likely be ostracized or even killed, Remus had to look up the word ostracized in the dictionary after he asked his father why they were so afraid, because hospitals were good, weren't they?