Wolves Without Teeth ── theodore nott ¹ ( UNDER EDITING )

chapter thirty four

         Everyone you meet has their own personal demon speaking and sparing themselves against their brain.

For Remus John Lupin, the main demon that haunts his every move, his every breath, his very being, is that night that his childhood ended.

He was four years old, barely turning five. His mum would tell him that he was always a quiet child, he never fussed, never made a mess, and that he was gentle. She would say it to him with a twisted gaze upon the wrinkled softness of her face, and his heart would ache with sorrow when she looked at him that way.

As if he wasn't that same gentle boy, as if he was something harder, something more wicked. Tainted, and he supposed that perhaps he is.

He remembers that night well, perhaps more than he should, but he sometimes wonders how he could forget it.

Remus had been playing, carelessly really, the air was just starting to warm with heat near Lupin's little cottage in Welsh. Causing the grass to prickle a vibrant green and ring flowers to blossom near patches of bushes and tree trunks.

His skin was caked with dried mud, so much so he had known that his mum would neatly go off her head at him later that night when he would be forced to bathe. ( Remus remembered how much he hated baths. ) But she didn't seem to care too much, for she sat on their porch with his father, lemon in between them with books sat on their laps. Remus had spotted a patch of bright yellow flowers — the kind that turned your chin yellow if you enjoyed butter enough.

He had decided to pick them, make a tiny bouquet and offer them to his mum as a present; he had figured he'd get an extra piece of chocolate cake that night for it.

But the flower patch didn't stay a brilliant glow of yellow much longer.

The night changed, as most nights do, with brilliant stars sparkling against the vast darkness. All surrounded the moon, which was full, of course. He remembers questioning his father when he was a teenager, on why he didn't protect him further, for he knew Lyall Lupin worked in the department to ban all werewolves.

That was also a fact that pierced his heart a little more than it should.

In his left hand, he was holding five flowers, the grooves of their stems digging into his grim filled palms as he blew strands of his sandy hair out of his still chubby face. His right hand was reaching out to grab another when he heard his mum's scream.

Remus had turned towards her, watching as she made a run towards him. Lemonade glass falling into tiny shards against the wood, his father's arm had wrapped around her waist, stopping her movements. He could remember the way she wailed for him, begging him to move as she scraped and tugged on her husband's arms.

But it did not prevail, because the young boy didn't quite understand why his mum was crying out to him so frantically.

He understood rather quickly though.

For suddenly a scorching pain ripped its way through his left arm, making him drop the flowers that were soon splattered with his blood. It had felt like molten lava was being poured down over him, his tiny body withering in pain.

He had been bitten by Fenrir Greyback that night, purely because the werewolf had wished to make his father hurt in unimaginable ways, and Remus was the solution for that.

It was a curse that he would wish on no one, it was like living but never being in control of yourself. Terrified to hurt another, paralyzed by the monster in your head. Remus told himself he got used to the looks, the way people judged him for something he could not control.