Chapter Text
They prepared in silence.
Not because there was nothing to say — but because everything that mattered had already been said in the days leading up to the full moon.
Maelis folded her clothes with care, stacking them on the chair by the window. Remus checked the wards for the third time, wand moving on instinct rather than necessity. The room was bare now. No sharp corners. No loose objects. Stone reinforced with old magic and newer desperation.
Maelis watched him work.
“You’ll wake up sore,” he said eventually, not looking at her.
“So will you,” she replied.
That earned a quiet huff of a laugh.
They drank the sleeping draught together.
Not Wolfsbane, that miracle was still years away, but something gentler, meant only to dull panic before it could take hold. It wouldn’t stop the change. Nothing could.
Remus hesitated, vial hovering near his lips.
“If you want me to—”
“No,” Maelis said immediately. “We do it the same.”
He nodded. That mattered to her.
They lay down on opposite sides of the room, far enough apart to be safe, close enough to feel less alone.
The moon rose.
Magic shifted first.
It always did.
It crept through the room like a pressure change, subtle and insistent, settling into bone and blood long before flesh responded. Remus’s fingers twitched where he lay. Across the room, Maelis’s breath stuttered once — a sharp, involuntary sound — before evening out again.
Then the change began.
It started in the spine.
Remus arched suddenly, a broken gasp tearing from his throat as vertebrae compressed and expanded in violent contradiction. His shoulders jerked, muscles seizing as though pulled by invisible hands. The magic did not ask permission. It never did.
Maelis convulsed moments later.
Her body reacted faster, younger magic responding with less resistance. Her back bowed sharply, heels scraping against the stone as her limbs drew inward, joints screaming as they reshaped themselves with cruel efficiency.
Bones cracked.
Not loudly — but unmistakably.
Fingers elongated, nails darkening, thickening, splitting the skin as they grew. Teeth followed, jaw unhinging in a way no human mouth should allow, forcing a sound from her throat that was not a scream, not speech — only raw, animal pain.
Remus howled.
The sound ripped through the room, low and fractured, echoing off the reinforced stone. It was answered seconds later by a thinner, higher cry — incomplete, unfamiliar, learning itself as it emerged.
Two bodies, bound by the same curse, but shaped by different years.
Fur spread in violent patches, skin pulling tight before giving way. Limbs lengthened, bent, restructured. Magic forced mass where there was none, tore it away where it lingered too long. The transformation was not smooth. It was never smooth.
It was an argument between what the body was and what the moon demanded.
By the time it ended, neither of them resembled the people they had been.
The wolves stood where a man and a child had lain.
The larger wolf paced first.
It moved in sharp, uneven bursts, claws scraping against stone as it tested the limits of the wards. Its eyes burned with a feral awareness unburdened by memory or restraint. It threw itself once against the far wall — not to escape, but because movement was demanded.
The smaller wolf crouched low at first.
Its ears flattened, body tight with instinctive tension. It did not approach. It did not retreat. It watched.
The larger wolf turned.
Hackles rose.
For a breathless moment, the room held still.
Then the magic intervened.
Old wards flared softly — not restraining, but redirecting, guiding instinct away from blood and toward stone. The larger wolf snarled, frustrated, and turned its aggression outward instead, raking claws against the reinforced wall until sparks flew.
The smaller wolf flinched — then adjusted.
It circled the perimeter, nose low, mapping the space with animal precision. When it moved, it moved carefully, avoiding the larger wolf’s path, learning without knowing it was learning.
Hours passed.
The moon waned.
The magic loosened its grip.
Morning came without drama.
Fur receded. Bones slid back into their human places with sickening resistance. Breath hitched, then steadied. Two bodies lay where wolves had been, unmoving but alive.
The curse retreated.
As it always did.
Leaving nothing behind but pain, exhaustion, and silence.
Maelis remembered none of it.
She woke curled against cold stone, muscles screaming, throat raw as if she’d swallowed gravel. Her hands were scratched, her knees bruised. The air smelled sharp — sweat, magic, something animal she refused to name.
Across the room, Remus was already sitting up, staring at his hands as though surprised to find them human.
They looked at each other.
Alive.
The relief hit them both at once.
Neither asked what had happened.
They didn’t need to.
The marks on the walls told that story well enough.
Remus stood slowly, testing his weight. “Are you hurt?”
“Nothing permanent,” Maelis said, checking herself with the same calm she’d practiced for scraped knees and broken bones. “You?”
He nodded. “Same.”
They let the silence settle — not heavy, just real.
Later, wrapped in blankets and exhaustion, Maelis spoke again.
“We should document it.”
Remus blinked. “Document…?”
“The dates,” she said. “How long recovery takes. What hurts afterward. If it changes.”
He studied her — not for fear, but for cracks he didn’t find.
“That’s very… sensible of you.”
“I don’t like not remembering things that affect me,” she said simply.
Something in his chest loosened.
They would never remember their first transformation.
But they would remember this:
that preparation mattered
that survival was repeatable
that they faced it together, even when they couldn’t know how
And that was enough to begin with.