[ - ]
Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer Chapter or Story Microsoft Word Chapter or Story
- Text Size +
A Particularly Bad Moon


It was a particularly particularly bad moon.

Remus’s bones had gotten tighter and tighter the entire night - from when they’d done the map on, he’d been barely capable of moving.

James had looked nervously first to Peter, and then to Sirius, “I dunno if we should be here, Sirius.”

Sirius shook his head, “Of course we should be here for him. He needs us.”

“It’s dangerous,” whispered James, so quiet that Remus couldn’t hear him.

Sirius looked up at him, his eyes moist at the edges, “It’s dangerous for him, too.”

They waited nervously and sat with Remus, all three of them trying desperately to cheer him up. James and Peter performed a sort of puppet show, where James changed into a stag and Peter ran about on his back doing rat tricks, using the stag as a stage for his rodent gymnastics act. Sirius tried to build up the act by clapping and laughing as he held Remus in his arms, but every time Remus laughed a spasm went through his back and his laughter would turn into cries of pain instead. Sirius held him closer and rubbed his muscles, unknotting them again and again with the heels of his hands… but as quickly as he worked them out, they reknotted so that even as he was smiling at the stag and rat show, Remus had tears pouring over his cheeks.

James and Sirius both had been needed to help him down the stairs, lifting him off his feet on the steps themselves. Remus had laid on the couch shivering, then, so hard that he’d appeared to be convulsing. He cried harder the more the moon rose in the sky outside and the sun began setting, as the light out the windows turned silver…

James and Peter turned into the rat and stag again as the light began ekeing in through the cracks and crevices in the Shrieking Shack’s boarded up windows, as slivers of the silver light crept across the floorboards, making the dust dance like glitter in it’s light. Sirius stayed Sirius, sitting on the couch, holding Remus close as Remus’s pains increased to the point of him grinding his teeth, unable to speak, locked up by his own muscles. James turned away, unable to watch the suffering of his friend, his antlers knocking against the ceiling rafters, the rat’s tail curled around them to stay steady aboard the stag’s head...

Remus looked up at Sirius at one point, just before the moonlight took him, and he whispered, “Maybe… maybe you lot should go… inside,” he breathed around wincing of the spasms in his muscles, gritting his teeth.

“I’m not leaving you,” Sirius answered, “And neither’s Prongs, nor Wormtail. We’re here.”

“Please… don’t let me hurt any of you.”

“You won’t, Moony,” whispered Sirius.

“I can’t fight this one, Sirius…” he said weakly. He was already scratching at his own skin, even as a person, his fingers scraping his arms, leaving harsh white lines in the skin where his nails scratched. Sirius took hold of his wrists, stopping him doing it.

“I’ll fight it for you,” Sirius answered.

Remus closed his eyes.

And then, from a crack in the windows above him, a ray of moonlight fell upon Remus Lupin’s tearstained face and his eyes opened wide - yellowed and stunned, as though he’d been stabbed in the back by the moonlight...




In his holding cell in the Ministry, Fenrir Greyback had turned and he paced in his wolf form, growling through the barred doors at the guard - a junior ministry official with nervous eyes that flickered across the dungeon. Greyback hissed and paced, his claws clicking on the stone. Snarling, baring his teeth ferociously… scaring the young guard on purpose.

The next guard on duty came down the stairs then, his feet echoing off the stone walls as he entered the room. The young wizard whose shift was ending scrambled clumsily up from the bench he’d been sitting upon, so hurriedly desperate to get away from Fenrir Greyback and his horrible, threatening snaps of the jaws, that he nearly fell over.

“Any incidents?” the new guard asked and the boy shook his head nervously, glancing at the ridge-backed wolf that bared his teeth at the boy hungrily.

The guard watched the junior wizard rush off, just thankful to be getting away from the wolf. The man stared up after him for a long moment, being sure the boy was gone, and then he pulled the ring of keys from his belt, turning the lock of the cage door…

“Go on. Go get your snack, then.”

The wolf seemed to grin and he ran for the stairs, snapping his teeth as he caught up to the junior official, whose cries echoed through the dungeon as he fell on the stairs.




Harold Minchum sat in the Minister’s office, high in the peaks of the Ministry of Magic. He’d just returned from a visit with the Prime Minister, whose name also happened to be Harold. They’d talked at length about the arrest of Fenrir Greyback, which had happened only two days prior, and what that would mean for the safety of both the Muggles and the Wizarding World, and Minchum had promised the Prime Minister that having Fenrir Greyback in the custody of the Ministry was wholly ideal. “So many children have gone missing lately,” Minchum said, “Most at the hands of Greyback, recruiting for his werewolf army.”

The Prime Minister had shivered at the thought of werewolves being real.

Now, he was just getting together his things - having called the Daily Prophet to let them know that he had spoken to the Prime Minister and letting them know it had gone well for the update on the current events the next morning in the papers. He put his hat on and stowed his notes pad into a briefcase. He stood still, paused -- feeling as though he were forgetting something.

He looked about the room.

The door opened then, and his daughter, Augusta, and granddaughter, Lucy, came into the room and he smiled as the little girl - only four - ran across the room and crawled onto his swiveling deskchair with excitement. “Grampy,” she said, “I learned all the words to the Babbity Rabbity song.”

“Amazing,” Minchum said happily, he smiled and stroked his hands over the girl’s beautiful curly blonde hair and kissed her forehead as she climbed up onto his back, her arms wrapping ‘round his neck as he finished packing his things into his briefcase. He smiled at his daughter, “What brings you by?”

She smiled, “She refused to sleep until she’d sung Babbity Rabbity to you, Grampy,” Augusta McKinnon told him, smiling, using the nickname her daughter had given him.

“Well I am a very, very lucky man, aren’t I?” Harold Minchum smiled quite proudly.

But it as still nagging him, the feeling that something wasn’t right...

His heart rate was picking up as he tried to figure out what it was, even as he patted his grand-daughter’s arms and listened as she sang the song merrily, her mouth carrying the complicated tune along… Harold Minchum reacted to all the right places of the song, just as a good Grampy should...

Suddenly the door to the office opened wide.

“Sir.” A breathless auror ran in, eyes wide, “It’s Greyback. He’s loose.”

Harold Minchum’s grip on the girl’s arm tightened. Augusta covered her mouth in shock and fear. “He’s what?” Minchum breathed.

“Loose sir. He’s already bitten three officials.”

Harold Minchum unclasped his granddaughter’s hands from his neck, gently scooping her up and putting her into the arms of her mother. “Stay here,” he commanded Augusta. He turned ot the auror, “And you, too. Protect them.”

“Yes, sir,” the auror answered.

Minchum went to the door quickly, loosening the bowtie at his neck so it hung open over his chest, drawing the wand from his specially tailored suit jacket pocket.

“Daddy -- no!” Augusta begged.

He turned to face her, “Fenrir Greyback is naught more than a grand bully and a horrid felon. He’d kill Lucy as look at her.” He turned back to the door, “And I refuse to let him leave.” He stepped through the doors and into the corridor beyond.

Augusta watched him go, clutching Lucy, who started crying because Harold Minchum had left and she hadn’t finished her song yet.

The auror turned to them then… a smile upon his face as he looked at the little girl. “Don’t cry, little one,” he said, “Your grandpa’s a very brave man, fighting a werewolf…” he stepped toward them, reaching in his pocket for his wand. He aimed it at a small pillow on the couch in the office and transfigured the pillow into a small stuffed bear before their very eyes, shaking it gently. Lucy reached out and took it in her hands, quieting. The auror’s words turned lower, “Very brave, Harold Minchum…” his eyes glinted then and Augusta’s grasp ‘round Lucy tightened. “But also very foolish.” And the man took a hold on Lucy, aiming his wand at Augusta.




Remus’s screams echoed through the Shrieking Shack… the transformation seeming to take longer than usual to Sirius, who hated hearing the pain in Remus’s voice - unable to go to him for any moment those regular human teeth would change to horrible werewolf teeth that would sink into his flesh if he tried… The stag shuddered, backing up, afraid, and the rat squealed. Sirius ran for the front door and wrenched it opened, “You’re right, you should go, Prongs.”

Prongs stared at him defiantly.

“I told you, I’m not leaving him here.”

He shooed the deer out the door, pressing it closed behind them...

Behind him, the wolf howled loudly and Sirius turned, his back to the door and saw the yellow-eyed wolf struggling to his feet, his fur patchy and mangy this month, and his claws looking particularly sharp… his teeth gnashing, the moonlight having driven him mad…

Sirius quickly changed into the black shaggy dog as the wolf turned upon himself, ripping at the flesh on his own legs, falling to the floor as he tore flesh from his haunches. He ran at the wolf, barking, shouting his commands in his doggy way, trying to stop the tearing, gnashing teeth from doing anymore damage than they’d already done, the blood matting his fur already…

Outside, the stag ran through the trees, carrying the rat away…




Harold Minchum arrived in the chamber of the Ministry for Magic… the werewolf had already been allowed to escape, already gone with his guard, who surely had disapparated away the moment he could go.

Minchum ran to the nearest fallen official, whose eyes were glassy, neck still bleeding, but already gone… his heart broke… and he ran to the next… and the next… there was none to save… none to save… and he felt his jaw shake.

Little did he know then that it wasn’t only these officials he’d lost, but high above him in the office of the Minister, his daughter, too, lay staring at the ceiling, the little girl, Lucy, taken away…

It was, after all, a particularly bad moon.