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i. Remus John Lupin
Remus John Lupin didn’t exist. Not precisely. The man who wore that name was a mask, a carefully constructed wall of cleverness and soft manners, learnt by heart from the people around him, recited like the lessons in the books that he clung to, to tell him what a man was supposed to be like.
He had been so young, when he’d been bitten - his disease predating clear memories. Who might he have been, without the wolf that lived inside his skin?
If Greyback hadn’t bitten him, would the small voice that lived in the base of his skull still whisper to him stories of violence? Would he still have these primal desires? These feral feelings that couldn’t be forced into the words of man, except by the most deadly of sins - wrath, lust, envy.
He called the voice Moony, played along with the others when they reduced him to a joke, a game, a prank. But it was his own voice that whispered to him in the dark. The voice didn’t belong to a passenger, a parasite neatly attached to a Remus shaped soul. The wolf was swirled inexorably into every nook and cranny of his psyche. He could no more easily have distinguished Moony’s wants and needs from his own as he could have unbaked a cake.
He’d learnt, which desires he could act on (a ravenous hunger inside of him for raw flesh, that could mostly be satiated with bacon sandwiches and the sugary, cloying jolt of endorphins he could get from smashing an entire bar of chocolate into his mouth in one sitting), and those which he never could (almost everything else).
He’d been in control, for such a long time, and he’d resigned himself to the fact that there were certain things in his life he would never have. He had to abstain, for fear that given an inch, Moony would take a mile.
ii. Know It All
Remus buried himself in his studies, torn between amazement that he was allowed inside the walls of Hogwarts at all, and an absolute certainty that he shouldn’t be. It was too dangerous. He was too much of a risk.
He devoured the books in the library like a boy possessed, shoveling them into his brain, hyper aware that at any moment, he might be asked to leave, might lose the chance to learn all the things he so desperately wanted to know. The things that would make him more of a wizard, and less of a wolf. He hoped to civilize himself through learning, and it almost worked.
His steady consumption of knowledge kept his brain from spiraling off down into dark crevices. He would stay up well past curfew in the library, until he was too tired to think anything much, too exhausted to bite at his own mental restraints, to hear the howling, yipping creature inside him.
He stayed inside, the heart of the castle, in the heart of the library, buried alive under mountains of paper and ink. He avoided Quidditch practise like it was infectious. He disliked being out of doors for prolonged periods of time, too great the fear that Moony might scent the taste of freedom, and run. Run deep into the wilds and never return.
The other boys teased him mercilessly of course, and he got a reputation for being something of a swot. Goody two shoes Lupin, nose in a book. It suited him that they saw him this way. It made him inconspicuous. Part of the furniture. He sometimes wished he could fade away altogether.
He rarely joined in on their pranks. He knew that he would take it too far - the vicious voice inside him had no sense of moral limitations, no queasiness about blood and death and violence. So he read his book, and pretended not to watch with hungry eyes, as they inflicting schoolboy misery on Snape, or Regulus, or little Barty Crouch.
iii. Wolf, Rat and Dog
The years passed, and the world only grew darker, as if the curse inside of Remus was leaking outwards, spilt ink seeping over everything he touched.
Professor R J Lupin was always measured, always calm. His tones level and his eyes clear, even as his worst nightmares were becoming reality. Because if he had raised his voice, unbottled his anger, even for a second, he would have unleashed a furious, burning hatred. A murderous rage.
He stood, in the Shrieking Shack, that terrible night, with Sirius, wand pointing at Peter’s heart. He knew, with an absolute certainty that he was capable of killing Peter. He could have looked into the eyes of the boy who he had once called a friend and killed him as easily as breathing, for what he did to James. To poor Lily.
He could hear himself speaking. Utterly reasonable - charming, even, flirting with Sirius as if they were propping up the bar at the Three Broomsticks. Reassuring the teenagers as they cowered away from him, here in this room where he'd tried to rip himself to shreds, over and over again.
On the surface, he was serene, but Moony was biting at the nerve endings in his skin, vibrating with the need to kill. He thought he could actually feel claws tearing into his vital organs. His blood was calling out for blood.
What stopped him? Had it been Harry’s childlike sense of right and wrong, so sure and certain that even the wild animal inside of Remus paused, for long enough at least for him to pull on the marionette strings of his own mind and compose himself into the shape of the grown-up that Harry wanted him to be. He knew that he was the closest thing Harry had to a father. The thought made him want to be sick.
So he didn't murder Peter, that night, with a hot heart and a cold hand, under the light of the rising moon.
But he didn't drink his wolfsbane, either. It was in his pocket. He still had time. To stuff the wolfish thoughts down, down down into a well inside him, to suppress them as he did month in, month out.
He left the bottle in his pocket, and when his wolf form finally burst free of its human prison, he felt no guilt at all.
Snapping bones, ripping flesh, so exquisite in that moment that there was no Remus or Moony - just howling sharp, just a shapeless thing made of raw screaming agony. There was only racing blood and a pumping heart, and the feeling of the moon soaking into every molecule that was himself.
And this abomination, this lump of boiling flesh, mutating in the moonlight, had no room for guilt and self loathing; for Peter's face, a memory of comfort even as he admitted to his terrible betrayal; for this version of Sirius that he didn't quite know; for James' son, thirteen years old, a hero, but still a child.
iv. A Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing
It had been Dumbledore’s idea, of course. Sending him “undercover” in the wolf packs, as if he wasn’t more at home here in the forest than he’d ever been in his parent’s house.
It was a constant conscious effort not to be absorbed into the pack. To abandon the so-called civilisation Remus clung to, in favour of the simplicity of this world. Wouldn't it be easier, to give in to the bloodthirst that echo'd in his head like a bell, to run and hunt with these wild, careless creatures.
He reminded himself everyday that he had worked hard to be the man that he was. He had things to lose, now. Sirius. Harry. That should matter. It had to matter.
He had been managing, just about, to maintain his humanity, until Greyback showed up. Remus caught the scent before he saw him, and he was running before he could think it through, before he could rationalise his own cowardice to himself. Later, to Dumbledore, he would say that this was a tactical decision. It wasn't. It was animal instinct, moving his limbs, scrambling his brain into white noise that sounded like run. run. run.
When he was sure Greyback had left, he'd snuck back into the camp with his tail between his legs.
There had been a girl. Not much older than Harry. Her name was Freya. Greyback had made an example of her, and left her for dead, her blood staining the mulch of the forest floor, bleeding out far quicker than Remus could staunch the flow with whispered healing charms and hastily foraged herbs. The pack had left her there alone, disinterested or afraid.
He’d put her out of her misery. It hadn’t even been a difficult decision in the end. She had asked to die, but he’d killed her all the same.
v. A Lost Soul
Things changed, after that. The words of violence and depravity were getting louder. More insistent. Moony spoke directly to him, sometimes. No, that wasn’t right. Now Moony spoke through him, sometimes. No. It was like… it was hard to put into human words, this animal thing. This is what it was like:
The wolf was the ocean, and the moon pulled him over the shore like a rising tide. He was also a man, stranded on the sand, watching the waves swallow his feet, lap at his calves, rush up over his knees. He couldn’t move, couldn’t swim. He was waving. He was drowning.
And one day, not so very far from now, he would be swept under, the crushing pressure of the inky depths would erode his bones down into sand.
OR
The wolf lived in a cave, inside his mind. He couldn’t see it, not as it really was, but he could see its shadow - looming and black in the flickering firelight of his human thoughts. With each injustice, each bitter thought and harsh word, the shadow grew, wisps of anger and despair and murderous intent, clinging to the wolf until he had doubled in size, the cave wall now almost entirely subsumed by the darkness - until only the faint outline of Remus' mind remained.
OR
All the bitter little hurts, a lifetime of resentments and pain and unrealised ambitions had hardened and solidified, clinging like burrs in Moony’s fur.
OR
A soul corrupted, split in two by an unforgivable curse.
vi. Tonks
He had never allowed himself to consider a love affair before. It would have made him too vulnerable. But the wolf had bolted, the den door was unlocked, and Moony craved companionship. Yearned for touch and the raw, animal heat that came with it.
vii. Fatherhood
He never wanted to be a father. It wasn’t the risk of passing on lycanthropy, exactly. He knew, rationally that that wasn’t how it worked. He was too afraid of shaping a young life, moulding his child in his own image, and seeing, clearly, from the outside, who he really was.
It was why he’d left Harry to the mercy of Petunia.
He wouldn’t have survived, raising a child with Lily’s eyes, only to discover the child was rotten to the core, the shadow inside Remus spreading into Harry like mould.
viii. The Runaway
The kitchen at Grimmauld Place. He’d always hated it here. It was as if the barrier between light and dark was thinner, the walls so soaked in terrible deeds that they had absorbed a malignant energy. One that couldn’t be cleared away with a jaunty attitude and a bottle of cleaning spray.
He could feel the rage building up inside of him as he argued with Harry, the wolf bubbling through his skin like the surface of a cauldron. The temperature in the kitchen might have dropped ten degrees.
“You don’t understand.”
“Explain, then.” Harry’s voice was harsh, and he had never sounded more like James than he did in this moment. It made Remus’ blood run icy hot.
He swallowed, trying to push down the sound of a growl. “I–I made a grave mistake in marrying Tonks. I did it against my better judgment and I have regretted it very much ever since.”
“I see,” said Harry, “so you’re just going to dump her and the kid and run off with us?”
Remus jumped out of his chair and it skidded over the flagstone, the screech sending sparks down his spine. He glared at Harry, and in a split second, he had two sensations. The first was the intense impression that he could actually feel his eyes turning gold, the wolf pushing completely to the forefront of his mind, just for a moment. The second was that Harry was looking at him as if he’d never seen him clearly before. As if he’d seen the wolf upon his human face.
“Don’t you understand what I’ve done to my wife and my unborn child? I should never have married her, I’ve made her an outcast!”
The urge to break something was overwhelming, and Remus was desperately struggling not to direct this rage at Harry himself. He kicked at the chair. He pulled at handfuls of his own hair, scraping his nails into his scalp, hoping that the pain might ground him in his human body.
“My kind don’t usually breed! It will be like me, I am convinced of it - how can I forgive myself when I knowingly risked passing on my own condition to an innocent child? And if, by some miracle, it is not like me, then it will be better off, a hundred times so, without a father of whom it must always be ashamed!”
When he drew his wand, it was as if he didn’t have control of his own hands. Every frustrated feeling, all the impotent anger over his situation burst out through the wand, and sent Harry flying backwards as if he had been punched, slamming into the wall with an awful thud. It didn’t help. The violence was still flowing through him, the magic crackling out of him like fire, looking for something to burn. He had to get out of there, before he did something worse. He fled, without looking back.
The wolf took over. The world went black.
When he came back to himself, he was miles away, and he was still running, sprinting over a forest floor, cold sweat already drying to a sticky sheen under the collar of his jumper.
ix. A Skirmish
Avada Kedavra. He’d said the words, again, the ones that sounded so much like a muggle magic trick. Said the words and meant them, too, looking straight into fearful eyes as a body fell to the ground in a flash of green. He felt it, the moment his soul cracked open, just as he had before, with Freya.
This time, he didn't even know the Death Eater's name.
And the wolf, "Moony", buried alive under kindness and courtesy and housebroken manners, wrenched his claws into the cracks, ripping and tearing at the damaged fabric of Remus until he was almost completely at the surface. No longer a black shadow, but technicolor, flashing gold behind Remus’ sweet blue eyes.
x. Winning the Battle, Losing the War
Remus and the wolf inside him were in a battle to the death. And these days, he felt like he might be losing. Fatherly, scholarly, sensible, kind. All these things he tried to be. Every morning, Remus woke up and decided to be a good man. Every night, he went to sleep fearing that tomorrow, his choice might be different.