I Will Always Be With You

Pain

A/N: First of all, this one is a long one, tell me in the comments if you prefer longer or shorter chapters, I may start to write more than 1500~ words per chapter.

Second thing that I wanted to point out, in this fic, as you may have noticed in the last chapter, I made sure to include the fact that Remus had never taken Wolfbane before, in Pottermore, in the section about Remus it never mention whether or not he took the potion during his childhood or his school years so I am assuming that he did not.

Lastly, I want to address another minor detail, in the same article in Pottermore, it is said that Wolfbane "restricted his transformation to that of an ordinary and sleepy wolf." I am going to put that aside and conserve the werewolf appearance instead, for reasons that will be explained further into the plot, I also purposely left Peter out of everyone's thoughts, again plot development reasons, so don't go after me, I did it on purpose, and no, it is not because I don't like Peter, even though that may be true. The information is rather lacking so bear with me.

The pain started soon after the sun had finished setting, it built up from the inside, even when Remus expected it, after years of the torturous routine, it still surprised him how the beast crawled its way out of his thin body. He bent down, hugging his stomach, trying his best to not fight it, it hurt more if he did, he had tried before and left him sore for days, still feeling a phantom pain, almost as if the beast was mocking him for even trying to fight the inevitable.

He sat in the floor, the door locked by Madam Pomphrey like she has done when he was a mere teenager. The pain extended to his arms and legs, just as he witnessed his body start to change, he felt the impulse to scratch his body, the beast trying to be released fully, but surprisingly, the urge was anything that he had experienced before, usually he could not control the scratching, at this point he, himself, his mind, would have been gone, that is why he always woke up in the hospital taking count of his new marks and the ones that had been reopened.

But that night, Remus was in control, he could force himself to leave his arms by his sides, to not react. For the first time he was able to see himself as the beast that, after a long moment that felt like hours, had already inched its way into reality, his arms were longer, noticeably so, they were hairy and ended in deformed hands, palms as big as a human hand, but short fingers that sported claws, strong enough to be able to tear his human skin apart.

His legs, he noticed, were longer too, not as disproportionally as his arms, but still longer than usual. His feet, or whatever you could call those abominations, were shaped in a wolfish way. His heel seemed to have backtracked so that he had to walk with his toes. Hair, there was so much hair, he was by no means a young boy, so body hair was normal... but this was an insane amount, he reminded himself that this beast came from the wolfs.

He was about to feel his face when he felt it. A pull in the back of his mind, as if the beast was trying to regain control, his heart started racing, his breath was caught in the suspense, before his body... no, the beast's body, alerted for the lack of oxygen, made him inhale sharply before getting caught again in the panic. The beast was scratching in the wall of his mind, the wall that Severus had put there with whatever he did to the potion.

The beast didn't fully come out, it made him howl involuntarily, sounding almost like a cry, maybe it was him after all, crying for help to whoever may be able to hear, even knowing that no one would be able to. His mind was all over the place, not being able to fully come out of that state of suspense.

He needed to know though, he needed to feel his face, check on the beast's appearance. He had seen other werewolves before, but this was his demon, his ultimate nightmare, he needed to put a face to it. He slowly lifted the languid arm, the newly found length making it difficult to coordinate, and took it to the side of his face, faintly touching the pointy ears before he backed away in fear.