Lone Wolf | SIRIUS BLACK

Chapter Twenty Six

| C A N ' T C O N T A I N
A
M O N S T E R |

January, 1977

MY EYES shot open to see a bright blue sky instead of the ceiling in my dormitory. That was the first indication that something was amiss. The second signal was the dull ache at the back of my head when I raised it from the dented snow pile 'bed' I had been laying in.

Touching the sore spot, my fingers drew back to reveal they were painted in blood that had mostly dried. Groaning softly, I wondered how I had gotten out here, what I had done. Had that punch been spiked?

Wait.

I looked at my hands again. It wasn't just the fingertips that were bloody. Those were wet with blood that was most recent, made from the wound at the back of my head, hidden by my ruined half up half down hairdo. But the rest of my hands, from fingers down to palms to where my wrist began, were dried with the dark scarlet liquid.

All that blood hadn't been made from a simple head wound. Especially not when I rolled onto my side so I could stand up, and I saw more. A trail of blood, from little droplets to whole puddles draining into half-frozen mud spots, led me deeper into the forest where I immediately fell to my knees and covered my mouth.

Seeing what I was seeing... I was going to puke. I had never seen anything so... disturbing. This was purposefully done, a sadistic masterpiece of savagery. I wanted to puke my heart out.

A girl's body was torn to shreds in the Forbidden Forest. Her chest was ripped open, completely ripped, with organs spilling out. I could barely make out what she looked like beneath all of the blood. Scarlet liquid, some dry and some blood still running, coated her entire body, even the shredded dress she wore. A dress that looked eerily familiar.

Though she couldn't possibly be alive, I tried to take a pulse on her wrist. Nothing. But I was in shock, and proper thought didn't exist. I moved to check the pulse at her neck. But when I moved her blood-soaked hair aside from hiding her face, I wished I hadn't.

Dark eyes stared up at me. They were glossed over, not really seeing me or anything at all anymore, and I was glad. If she had, if she could see this, I think we both would've died inside. As it was, only one of us really did, though every second I looked at her body I felt like I had.

Each drop of blood spilt from her corpse tore a new hole in my shattered soul.

Constance was dead.

She was dead.

I said that over and over in my shellshocked mind, so I could get a grip on what was happening, but I was too busy falling and tumbling and breaking.

This wasn't real. I had to be back at the ball still, dancing with Peter. We were dancing and twirling and laughing. It was a happy time. That had to be where I was.

This was a nightmare. Just a nightmare in the middle of paradise. Wasn't it?

I slapped myself. I had to wake myself up. "Not real. Not real, not real. She's not dead."

Five slaps in total. Five times I still saw the dead girl in front of me.

And then I knew it was real and I knew who had done it.  But how, how could I have killed someone when I didn't even turn into a werewolf unless there was a full moon, of which there wasn't supposed to be one for a while.  There was no conceivable way I could have torn Constance apart if I wasn't a werewolf, only something supernatural could have done what I did to her body.