Remus Lupin and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Chapter 12: Changes

"Remus."

Cold.

"Remus, it's time."

Hurt. Cold. Smells like...know this place.

A gentle hand touched his shoulder, pressed warm cloth to his hands. His mind stirred muzzily and he lurched to a sitting position obediently, clutching them to his chest. Change. Right. Smells like...

He peeled his eyes open and squinted for several seconds before his eyes focused. Wide swipes through the thick dust. The smell of old wood exposed. He sneezed. Cold wind hissing through a crack somewhere. Watery dawn light softly streaking in. The Shrieking Shack. "Remus, dress, now." His head swung around to her. Madame Pomfrey. Right. No clothes.

Mechanically, he began to do as he was told as memories of the night seeped back like some sort of dark tide slowly rising. The pain and then rage of the Change. Smashing at doors, ripping the leg clean off a chair, the beast screaming at the top of it's lungs. Searching in a fury. His head spun briefly as he tried to put to rights the disparity between what his body was telling him and what his mind was perceiving. Did they not come this month? Did they get caught sneaking out of the castle? They hadn't been there. The collar pulled down the back of his head and the sharp flash of pain made him wince, gingerly put a hand to it. It came away red. It usually wasn't this bad, why hadn't they come?

A hand came into his vision, startling him before he took it and he was helped to his feet. He frowned vaguely down at her, into a face far more weathered, far shorter than he--

Professor.

Dead.

Fugitive.

Oh. There is no one TO come.

He must have suddenly looked stricken because she squeezed his hand and put his arm around her shoulder. "Come on, dear. Let's get you cleaned up."

Hagrid passed on their way up the lawn in the weak light and gave a sympathetic nod and a soft, "A'right, Lupin."

The Hospital Wing did not help with his strange time disorientation. He kept staring at the door numbly while Madame Pomfrey applied various poultices to the worst of the gashes and bruises. Kept waiting for it to open though he knew it wouldn't. It is not the same, he kept repeating hollowly. How? How? Something else would whisper, confused. The same place, the same pain...

She handed him a tankard and he automatically drank. Something spicy and warm danced across his tongue, seared down his throat and tumbled around sunnily in his stomach, making him blink and sit up. He rubbed his face, cleared his throat and looked around to see Mada--Poppy looking satisfied. "And there he is. Drink up, Remus. Would you like to nap here or your rooms?" She bustled away to clean up her work area, corking a vial.

"Ah..." his voice was a croak and he cleared his throat again. "Mine, please."

She nodded briskly, folding up her little side table. "I'll walk you there when you're done with that."

Soberly, he gazed at his hands around the tankard as she rustled about the room in preparation. He took a drink and studied the dried blood around his cuticles that they had missed. Despair seemed to be warring with the peppery-potion, resulting in a curious blankness in his thoughts, a refusal of the dip into the dark depths that lay beneath. Touching the surface did not hurt. In his minds eye, he saw them.

The rat clung to the stag's pale horns as they galloped deep in the forest. The earthy musk rose from the loam, the sharp green of broken leaves in the air as they were trampled by paws and hooves. A silvery flash ahead as a unicorn darted away at their approach, sensing the predators. Somewhere near, there was a badger and her cubs. The wolf's jaw ached with the want to bite but there was no hunger in his belly. The black dog beside him purposefully curved his course, thumping him solidly in the ribs with his shoulder, tongue lolling in a dog smile. The wolf snapped at him playfully and gave chase around the base of a vast beech tree, ducking and weaving until they broke the treeline and bolted for the lake. The wolf slowed, sniffed, eyed the castle and it's glowing lights, it's heady human smell...

A stag trumpet, a reminder, a warning, and the wolf relented, attention pulled back to the group. They splashed in the shallows, cool at night and silver gilded in the heavy moon. Most stars were blotted out by its radiance but the bright ones, strewn in constellations some other creature would know. The rat leaped from each of them, from snout to shoulder to back to antler, making a game of it as they moved farther and closer from each other. The wolf lay down in the sandy much of the lake shore, snout on its front paws, eyes half lidded. Content. Until the dog came and tackled him, but that was all the same to him. Content all the same.

The memory left a feeling in the base of his throat he couldn't quite explain. It was not only him who missed them. Ah.

"Ready?"

He nodded hollowly and they left.