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It said something that Remus noticed the lack of another person beside him when he awoke. What had been the status quo for going on six years had, as of late, changed drastically and, surprisingly, for the better. He stretched a little without moving much, ribs pulling apart with a deep breath in before he sank down again with a sigh. He was still a moment, listening for the sounds of Sirius shuffling about on bare feet, in search of or coming back from smoking a fag. He heard nothing.

Which just meant the bastard had skipped off home. That was all. Remus drew himself out of bed, shrugged into a threadbare collared shirt and lightweight, formless denim trousers, scrubbed a hand through his hair, which was getting rather shaggy, all told, and stood. He'd only three of five buttons done up when he noticed Sirius' clothes, still strewn haphazardly on the floor.

There was no chance he'd left without his pants.

The walk to Sirius' house passed in a brightly sunlit blur, and he didn't bother knocking before going in. Nothing looked particularly out of the ordinary, save that it was empty of his friend. On a strangely desperate hunch he took the stairs three at a time to get to the bedroom, which was also empty. He took a few steps in, feeling a slowly rising tide of panic, which hummed in his ears and brain like white noise. Static.

It wasn't that simple. This was paranoia. This was unfounded panic. Remus left the house at a brusque pace and didn't slow until he'd canvased all of the parts of the island he thought of as counting, including the Winchester. Possibly he had asked, in a halting, distant tone, if Neil had seen Sirius. The answer must have been no, because the next moment he was fully aware of was being back in Sirius's bedroom, looking at the mid-afternoon sky through the open window and knowing, knowing with a sharp, all encompassing, shuddering certainty that Sirius was gone.

Gone.

It was such a hollow sounding word.

He sank down the wall into a crouch, and pressed the knuckles of one hand over his mouth, eyes never leaving the unmade bed. It seemed impossibly empty. It would doubtless smell of stale cigarette smoke, but not only that, and Remus wanted very badly to go crawl into it, breathe it in, but felt as though doing so would, somehow, be a final, decisive act. So he stayed where he was.

Remus wasn't drunk, but he would have liked to have been. His house wasn't the spacious luxury abode that Sirius' was, but whoever had built it had done so very carefully. The breeze moved through it wonderfully, and the floors were always cool and smooth, despite grooves left from what he knew were the claws of a large canine. Possibly more than one. It was like a charming tropical version of the shack, in that way, which he probably should have found more off putting.

What little furniture he'd bothered acquiring subsisted of a bed and some chairs and a low bench with thick woven palm fronds in place of hard seats. He hadn't bothered for a coffee table. Single lamp on, casting a warm orange glow over the hut's primary room, Remus sat with one knee drawn up and his back against the sofa's front, turning the pages of a book he wasn't really reading and drinking a beer he'd pilfered from the Winchester. It wasn't cold any longer, but beggars couldn't, he had frequently been told, be choosers.

It ought to have sunk in by now, he figured, but some lessons were harder to take to heart than others.

It hadn't yet dawned on Remus what was causing the event to start again. All he could think was if he turned around, Greyback would turn him and if he ran fast enough, Greyback would kill Harry and Sirius. He didn't know what to do.

He turned. That was one decision made. It meant he couldn't run, that choice was off the table. He could feel himself shaking, though it was still warm out, and he stared at the grass and trees until his eyes adjusted.

"Come on, then," he said, and was startled by how small his voice was.

"Come on."

"You don't sound afraid," Fenrir said, breaking off from the shadow of the forest and moving forward, staying a big grey shape that smelled like bad, primal things.

"But I smell it on you." Remus swallowed. He wasn't really prepared for the exchange. Violence, yes, blind panic, he could have managed. Looking Greyback in the eye and standing his ground wasn't something he had ever, ever wanted to do, not ever again.

"You're an animal," he said quietly. "I know I can't stop you. But it doesn't matter. I'll never be like you. Even after you turn me, I'll still never be like you. So, come on."

He balled his hands into admittedly tiny fists and his eyes glittered with suppressed emotion as a strange, rushing feeling built up inside of him. He didn't run. He could see Fenrir's eyes turning strangely reflective, knew the change would be on him soon. How fully had Greyback embraced it, that he didn't even look uncomfortable?

"Let's have it done."

The pain was gone, though his body still felt in shock, and for a moment the dying light of of the day and the distant rooftops and the waving grass didn't even register.

What was happening. What was happening.

Fucking hell, he knew what was happening. Again. Again.

He knew what happened next, what he'd see if he turned, what would happen if he froze.

No, no no, not again. He could feel his frame trembling, the tawny little limbs of a six year old on the small side of his peers. He wasn't, though. He wasn't a six year old being faced with evil for the first time. He'd walked with that evil for the next twenty years, he wouldn't let it paralyze him now, though it would be incredibly easy to.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and instead of turning, he ran, arms and legs pumping, eyes narrowed against the grass whipping at his face. Not toward the woods- he veered. He didn't know if he was heading for the house but he did know he was heading away from Greyback, and the man had yet to transform. He was still going to be faster than Remus, but he would damned if he would just stand there and wait for it.

Not again.

The house had clearly been lived in, and lived in well. Remus wondered by whom.

It had a porch, a proper one, that wrapped around its face to one side. It was elevated on posts that lattice work, some kind of woven plant fiber, that must have taken ages to make but hadn't been much maintained, going between them. It didn't look like the other huts on the island, or the houses he'd seen that people referred to as the estates. He supposed someone had built it themselves, over some time. It looked as though it had once been the one room, and the others had been added after. He didn't really need more than the one, but he wouldn't complain.

There were scratches in the wood floor, from the claws of some kind of canine. Multiple canines, it looked like. One or more extremely large ones, at that, and he wondered if that boded well or not. He would lean toward not.

Still, it was a place, away from all the people that filled up the compound, no neighbors particularly close by. It was nice than the flat he'd left behind, that was for damn sure.

Even if it didn't have any furniture.

He'd taken a few hours to sweep it out, even taking the broom to the corners and ceiling, which was all open space and thick beams. It was a bit miserable without any magic to take care of short cuts, but there was something nice about doing something so simple that nonetheless took up all of his thoughts. He used a wet towel to go over the floors and the windows and in the end, it was clean. He dropped the filthy towel into the emptied bucket the'd been using for the water, and leaned against the rail of the porch, to look out on what was, now, his view. It basically looked like the rest of the island, a lot of dark earth and heavy green jungle foliage. It was quiet, though, and he could appreciate that. He didn't straighten when he noticed the wolf mostly hidden in the thick ferns, though he was surprised it was there. Maybe it had been the one that had left the scars in the wood. Perhaps it was about to express its displeasure at Remus moving in, and he considered that this would be problematic, as all he had was a broom and a bucket to dissuade it from doing so, but after a moment it turn and ran, and only then did Remus realize the sheer size of it.

Bloody hell.

He turned back into the hut- the house, he supposed, really- and took mental stock. He needed a bed, some kind of dresser. Some clothing to put in said dresser. It was a strange feeling, moving in. He wasn't sure how he felt about it.

He wasn't sure how he felt about the island in general. All he really knew was, he had a week until he saw with his own eyes whether or not the curse had followed him there.

Remus had been keeping an eye on the moon. He had arrived to a sharp sliver of a crescent, barely there, no more than two days out from a new moon, and he had watched that crescent wax into its first quarter with a removed sort of unease.

He'd been told, over and over, now, that magic didn't work on the island, that old curses were rendered null. He'd been told, but he was having difficulty believing it. It seemed too good to be true. Living day to day without magic was a special kind of misery, one he'd never anticipated having to experience, but if it meant the transformations were over, for good... He wasn't sure it was a fair trade. It was difficult to say. Intellectually, he didn't think it was. When he awoke in the morning to no wand, no magic, getting out of bed seemed more daunting than usual, and it was rarely something he did with much enthusiasm, anyhow. Maybe once the cycle was done he'd be able to judge. Maybe once it sunk in that he was no longer what he had been.

Only he'd been one for so long. He'd been a werewolf before he'd been a proper wizard. It was as much a part of him as his magic, he'd come to accept that. So while he believed what he was told, because no one had any reason to lie to him, he certainly didn't feel it in his bones.

Until the moon neared full, and he didn't feel it, literally, in his bones and his blood and muscles, and then a desperate, wild hope had begun to flutter around in his chest. He kept an eye on the moon when it was pale and visible in the day time, and stood outside- always under the canopy of trees- to watch it glowing, luminous and white, at night.

And he felt nothing. There was no pull, no slow build up of energy. Being too near the sea for too long back home had made him feel disturbingly connected to the passage of the tide, and connection was not something he'd been looking for, but here, next to so much ocean, he felt nothing.

And then the moon was full. He knew, when he stood from the simple wooden chair he'd gotten his hands on and set his book down, it would be there, already hanging in the sky. He let out a long, slow breath, standing in the warm light of the front room, then stepped out into the thick night air and the pale moonlight.

A field of tall grass, so tall it was over his head, surrounded him. Not far off rose the shadows of old trees, and above them was a navy blue sky, so dark it was nearly black, as the very last vestiges of the sun faded behind him, leaving a wash of red by the horizon. The stars were already out in force and a full moon was rising up from behind the gnarled black shapelessness of the forest.

He hadn't had this dream in years, and it hadn't been so vivid since he'd been in school. It was quiet, not even the sounds of a village shifting from its work day to its weekend evening audible in the far reaches of the field behind his house. He turned, small fingers brushing along the grass, absently tonguing the place his first baby tooth had fallen out, to look back toward his home. He could see the roof, but he was too small to see much else. His mum was there, getting dinner ready, unaware that he'd wandered so far. His father was home, or was about to be, and would probably set to reading or doing work at his desk. Remus wasn't exactly sure what his parents had been doing, when he'd been bitten. He just knew they'd been so close, but not nearly close enough.

In fact, turning was a mistake, because he knew what would happen when he turned back. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he heard them, the softest of footfalls.

Still human.

Remus Lupin, age 6, turned away from the sun as it set on August 31st, 1966, to face his future.

When he would confront Fenrir Greyback as an adult, the man, if he could truly be called such, would still be imposing. Possibly some of that was left over from this first impression. He was huge, so tall and broad that he blocked the fading silhouette of the forest. The sweet, end-of-summer air smelled suddenly of carrion, and everything in Remus told him to flee, to fly. He didn't though, fear and perhaps fascination holding him in place, coltish little legs locked rigid, eyes round and apprehensive in the dark. He knew this part, he didn't want to see this again, didn't want to feel it. It was so damned real.

"You're the Lupin boy," Fenrir said in a voice like gravel, his own eyes winking in the dark like headlamps. Remus felt himself shaking and couldn't reply.

"I have a message for your father," Fenrir continued, grinning in the dark as the moon came up from behind the trees. Remus could see his teeth. They were changing. Or they were always like that. It was impossible to say what had been real and what fear had made him see. A 6 year old's eyes were ruled significantly in part by a 6 year old's imagination. A twenty six year old man's eyes, though, should have been able to see more clearly.

He couldn't though. He took a half step back, chewed up canvas loafer snapping a few spades of dead grass.

"Don't run," Fenrir said, and either his shoulders hunched or he curled over, but either way he looked like he got bigger.

"Yet."

Remus turned and bolted. A burst of adrenaline flooded his bird like frame and he sprang forward to run, uselessly. From another perspective it would have been embarrassing- he hadn't even outrun Fenris's reach in his human form. The hand caught the back of his shirt and pulled him back, throwing him roughly to the ground, and all the air was gone from his lungs and his head suddenly ached something terrible. A nail scratched his cheek and Fenris caught his head to push his chin up. There was an unyielding pull and his shirt ripped, and that hurt Remus's neck. He didn't remember being so dizzy for all of it. There was the scratch, so sharp that in the moment after it didn't hurt, and then it stung fiercely, of a nail dragging along the skin of his shoulder. It made everything clearer and Remus whined, a soft, panicked sound. Greyback didn't chuckle so much as growl, but it somehow implied amusement.

"Now," he said, crouching back, nails long and getting longer, eyes burning awfully in the dark, "you can run."

Remus rolled onto his stomach, his hands level with his shoulders, and pushed up with all of his strength. He ran, grass scratching his face, breath hitching in his throat and burning in his lungs. There was a terrible ripping sound behind him and the groan of something animal. The sun was gone and he had no idea which direction he was running in. It didn't matter, though. It couldn't have mattered less.

He didn't know which direction Greyback appeared out of, how the wolf knocked him to the ground, how it managed to pin him with one huge paw pressing down on his back like a stone slab, but then its jaws were closed over his shoulder, ripping, tearing in, and it wasn't just the excruciating pain of the sheer physical trauma but something worse, something in the wolf's saliva, and it felt like lava, like poison, racing through his veins. His scream- because he had screamed, had forgotten, actually, that he had- cut off as his throat tightened. The pain was blinding and seemed to last forever, and then he was seeing stars, the actual stars, and the big, bright moon he'd gone out to look at in the first place, and he heard Fenrir tip his head up to it and howl.

Everything seemed familiar as Remus woke. His world was small and concentrated around the pain in his body, the stale metal taste in his mouth. His thoughts were sluggish and his senses felt incredibly dull. He was lying on his side, his shoulder wedged uncomfortably beneath his body, and as he clumsily pushed himself upright his blood started to move more freely, which made him grimace.

He'd made a mess of the floor.

With a rough sound he let his fingers hover over the deepest cut in his arm, and closed his eyes, willing the skin to knit, just enough where the bleeding would stop. Nothing happened. It had been a while since a transformation, even one as violent as this one had apparently been, had stopped him from doing nonverbal magic. If the burning pain in his legs and side were any indication, getting a hold of his wand was going to be a bitch. Gritting his teeth together, he started to his feet, tucking his arm tight against his stomach, and stumbled in the direction he'd left his clothing and wand, folded up and wedged tight between the crap old tool bench and cold masonry wall.

Only none of those things were there.

The room he was in was larger than the one he used for his transformations. There was a cluster of washers and dryers- was he in a laundry? Oh fuckssake, was this a laundry?- were set in the middle of the room. No, no windows, it couldn't have been a proper laundromat. It was some basement, someone's basement. He'd never seen it before. His brain struggled toward alertness, but sheer disbelief was making that difficult.

For the first time in a long time, Remus felt something like real, cold fear. He was injured, significantly, bleeding quite a lot. Wandless magic wasn't working and his wand was nowhere to be seen. He had no idea where he was.

Which meant he'd gotten out. How had he gotten out? How could the charms have failed? What if some of the blood on the floor- on him- wasn't his own?

“Ngh- no,” he said to himself, though it came out a rough, broken whisper. He turned, looking for an exit, and saw stairs leading up to a door. Unfamiliar stairs, and an unfamiliar door.

“Oh, please, no,” he whispered fervently, and lurched toward them, blood running to ice in his veins. He stumbled once, cracking his knee against the corner of a step, but pushed himself onward, and when he clumsily shouldered the door open, he fell onto a cold, plain floor. Not wood. Not his flat. Not even his building.

What had he done?