In the Melancholy Moonlight

Chapter LXXI: A Place I Cannot Find

I've seen dark before, but not like this
This is cold, this is empty, this is numb
The life I knew is over, the lights are out
Hello darkness, I'm ready to succumb
I follow you around, I always have
But you've gone to a place I cannot find

"The Next Right Thing"
Kristen Bell

LUCY:

I was no stranger to pain.

I was bitten by Fenrir Greyback when I was five years old. Ever since that fateful day that stole me away from my family and thrust me into an unfamiliar and frightening world, once a month, sometimes twice a month, my bone structure became that of a wolf, breaking and pulling my skin along with it. I became a monster, an unstoppable monster, one that could only be stopped by a potion that poisoned me. And in the morning, once I was no longer a monster, I found myself praying I did nothing throughout the night to hurt anyone else --- if the only blood spilled in the night was mine, I considered it a victory, no matter how many slashes had been inflicted or how many bones had been shattered.

As a child, I was taken to St. Mungo's for a good deal of my transformations. They told me that I helped my father with his research. Experimental spells, new variations of the wolfsbane potion, conflict training for new recruits who had been lucky enough to avoid a confrontation with a werewolf in their lifetime. Even in my physical pain, once I was old enough to understand what had been done to me, the emotional pain of humiliation seemed worse.

Even outside of the lycanthropy, life had never shied away from asking me to shoulder more pain. My infamous encounter in the Forbidden Forest was Hogwarts legend. I'd been bloodied and bruised by the sport I loved. I'd been subject to stares from everyone I met, some judgmental, some disgusted, all of them curious. Even the people who knew the truth, people I'd loved and trusted, had the power to hurt me, and I knew all too well that in a single moment, one could let slip my secret --- accidentally or otherwise --- and ruin my life forever.

I was no stranger to pain.

But nothing could have prepared me for the pain of writing in the past tense about him.