onewizardwolfpack | everything looks different in the morning

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?

Threaded | Flat

Now that everything was back to normal, Harry visited the Compound more often. When there was a whole city to explore, he would zoom around on his broom, looking at all the alleys and shops and people. Now it was back to jungle, which was fun to fly around too, but he had all the time in the world to explore it.

Head full of thoughts of Kate and Quidditch (as it usually was), Harry headed down the hall to check on the state of his laundry. He heard the doors to the stairs open, the sound of someone falling, and his head jerked up in alarm.

...There was a naked man sprawled on the floor.

That stopped Harry in his tracks for a long moment. He wasn't sure what to do with that.

Then a helping instinct kicked in and he sprinted to the man's side. Harry did not know what to do, but that didn't matter. The man was obviously hurt and exhausted, and where he wasn't bleeding, he was covered in scars.

"It's alright," he said, dropping to his knees beside the man. "You're okay. I'm-- Remus?"

Harry's eyes went wide behind thin wire frames and he rocked back on his heels. His entire body froze as he nearly forgot how to breathe.

Remus was back.

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