Blood trickled down his face as a thorny vine smacked him on his cheek. He was running as fast as his childish legs could carry him. He knew something was chasing him - but not exactly what. The whole situation came as a blur of ignorance and confusion. Panting and perspiring, however, the boy ran faster. His heart was pounding a heavy tattoo against his temples as he fled, trying to escape his assailant.
"Hey! Hey you!" called a child, pointing at the boy. "D'you want to play a game with me?"
The boy blinked, surprised at being addressed by the child that was talking to him. Though he usually sat outside on his stoop, no one had ever spoken to him. His family had only lived in the spot for a few days. As a child, his parents usually kept him out of 'adult' conversations. Having a suspicion, the boy always thought that his family moved around because they were avoiding someone. He had overheard that a distant relative had wagered all his father's money on the downfall of the new Dark Wizard, Voldemort. Unluckily, this new Lord was not wavering to die anytime soon. When an agency came out to collect their funds, the boy's whole family got kicked out of their original houses because they had no idea of the bet and their funds that had been wagered. It was crazy, really, running from people over someone else's selfish decisions.
Somehow, the boy's family had ended up in Romania. It was a nice country, quiet and very remote. Seeing as there were scarcely any neighbors, the boy looked glanced up in the beaming sunshine, squinting. His shyness made him wary of his visitor, and he was very hesitant to give the child that was addressing him an answer.
"Are you awake?" asked the same boy who had called him before. "Do you wish to play with me… or not?"
"Of course I want to play," answered the boy, standing up and brushing off his knickers. "What game is it?"
"Football, of course!" said the other boy, with a small smile. "My name is Rodlock Affez… but everyone else just calls me Rod. I'm six years old."
"I'm… Remus Lupin," the shy boy replied slowly, following Rod to the middle of the dirt road. A few chickens and a goat ran by, shocking Remus to the point of actually forgetting he was having a conversation. "Oh!" he snapped out of his surprise. "I'm six too!"
"We are both the same age!" Rod agreed excitedly, "But… what a weird name. Were you not born here… in Romania?" he then asked, his dull black eyes shining in the setting sun. Remus goggled at him for a while. The people here were so pale with such dark features.
"No. I was born in England." Remus told him, trying his hardest to make his British accent go away. His mother had taught him Romanian only for two weeks, and now he was on his own to try and make what he had learned feasible. His mother had kissed him hurriedly on the forehead that final day of Romanian lessons, telling him that he was a bright boy and would figure the language out eventually. To his advantage, Remus was glad that he did. He wasn't having that bad of a time translating what Rod was saying, after all.
"Oh!" Rod smiled. Remus noticed that his teeth were yellow and uneven. "That explains why you talk so funny!"
Remus blushed. He didn't think he talked funny…
"Anyway, we better hurry to play. I am not allowed to say out after dark." Rod added, bouncing a round black and white ball off of his elbows, knees, and head.
Remus had always wondered why no one liked to stay outside very long after dark. It was strange. He scarcely saw any people as it was, and after nightfall, finding a person outside was like fetching a needle in a haystack.
"Why don't you lot stay out too late?" he asked quietly, after watching Rod bounce the ball on the top of his head for the fifth time in a row.
"Cripes, you don't know?" asked Rod, grinning as the ball finally fell to the ground. "There are nastier lots than we Wizards out there… all sorts of weirdoes and strange folk. Things like Vampires and Werewolves… and shite like that!"
At the swearword, Remus' cheeks purpled. His parents never allowed him to swear. He was taught that swearing wasn't something that a proper young man should do. For a while, Remus was debating on whether he should tell Rod that he shouldn't have said that word. His thoughts were interrupted when a large man, dragging the goat that just ran past a few minutes ago, stormed angrily over to Rod. Remus observed his new friend's reaction as he tried to translate what the man was yelling. When the fuming man walked away, Rod turned back towards his friend, sullen.
"We better hurry to play, then. That's my papa… he says I only have twenty minutes of outside time left."
Remus paused, "Did you say you were a Wizard before?"
Rod blinked. "Yes. It's only a few houses around here, and you have to be wizarding to be able to see the village. So everyone just guessed your family was magic, or you wouldn't be here."
As he nodded his approval, Remus secretly thought that Rod had a very odd way of speaking, also. He never voiced his thought as the ball bounced off his own elbow. In glee, Remus played football with the dark-haired acquaintance anyway, glad that someone in his neighborhood had finally spoken to him.
Nearly a half hour later, the sun was almost fully set. By now, the two boys were too caught up in their fun to realize how late it had actually gotten. They were a time away from their houses in the village, and Remus was pretty sure that his parents had no idea where he was. They were just about to debate on going back home when Rod kicked the ball into a nearby wood. It was then, officially, that Remus decided to quit and just go back to town. The boys retired to their homes, and settled in, glad to have finally found a fellow friend at last.
"I could not leave the house yesterday." Rod approached Remus' stoop, as Remus sat, glowering at him. "My uncle came to visit and my family gives him our whole attention. He will be with us for a while. He always comes to visit… almost nearly every month."
Remus snorted. "Why is he so special?" he asked, irritated. He was mad at Rod for standing him up the day before.
"He travels all the way from London." Rod added proudly. "He owns a private business company there."
This seemed to annoy Remus even more. "I'm from London and you didn't spend time with me," he added hotly.
"Keep your shorts on!" the Romanian boy growled back. "It was just one day!"
"Yes, but when you have no other friends it seems like an eternity. But you're here now. What do you want to do?"
"Want to finish that game of football?" asked the pale boy, looking disdainfully into the woods in the distance.
"I thought you said we shouldn't go in the forest." Remus questioned, off-edge.
"Couldn't we just get the ball?" Rod begged, "C'mon, please? And then we could come back and just play on the street."
"I don't think so, Rod." Remus answered uncertainly, glancing at the dark brush of bushes, shrubs and trees. The winds rushing through the plant life made the woods seem eerie. "I don't think it's safe enough."
"Why? It's just a bloody ball," swore Rod. Once again, Remus turned pink. He really hated swearwords.
"It's not safe enough!" the concerned Remus repeated. "Are you really think... or did you not notice that it's gonna be a full moon tonight? And you said it yourself that there are werewolves around here! What if one is in the wood?"
"Stop worrying so much. The sun's still out." Rod replied calmly, glancing into the dark wood. "The ball should just be a little beyond the first couple of trees. C'mon."
Rod had already started to walk in the direction of the foreboding trees. Not wanting to lose his friend, Remus followed rather hesitantly. He hovered awkwardly in front of a large oak tree, refusing to enter the wood any further than his safe spot.
"Why are you so afraid?" the dark-haired boy questioned, searching under a large shrub, looking for his football. "Help me, Remus. It'll take ages if I'm looking for the ball myself. Perhaps with two people, we can find it faster."
Minutes ticked by, and the boys searched high and low for the ball. Unsurprisingly, it was nowhere to be found in the setting sun. Remus felt utterly frightened as he looked around. He hadn't noticed that it was so late in the day. It was now pitch black, and he hadn't meant to trail off into the actual forest. For a while, he was just following Rod, who he hoped could get them out of there, but now it seemed as if Rod was lost. Remus was frightened.
"I'm sure we came from this way." Rod pointed, leading Remus to the left. "I am sure of it."
Remus nodded in silence, following Rod for what felt like eons. It seemed as if Rod was completely lost, and only leading them further into the center of the wood. Just before he was about to speak, Remus heard some crackling behind him. Frightened, he let out a squeak and jumped on Rod's back. Surprised, Rod toppled over, and both of the boys received mouthfuls of leaves.
"We have to go back!" gasped Remus, trembling now. "Let's just double back from the way we came!"
"Good idea!" Rod agreed, as they set back on the trail they thought they had come from. "Maybe if we get close enough to the edge, we could yell and perhaps my uncle could hear us!"
Remus paused for a minute, quizzical. "Why… would your uncle be able to hear us?"
"He is always in the forest late at night." Rod replied back, gripping around in the darkness.
There was absolute silence as they started to walk. Remus heard a slight crackling behind him, again, and it gave him the uneasy feeling that he was being watched or followed. Now leading his friend in a way he hoped was the way back to civilization, Remus' childish legs pumped harder as he sped up. Rod was on his heels, as they jogged. However, as soon as they had walked about fifty paces, a huge creature with gigantic fangs had leapt out at them.
For a second, the only thing Remus heard was Rod's high-pitched scream. The boy screamed bloody murder and impulsively ran away in the opposite direction. Remus was frozen with fear, as the creature advanced slowly on him. Not knowing what to do, he took a way perpendicular to the route Rod had chosen, and ran blindly from the creature.
And the last thing that Remus heard was a howl of delight as the creature prepared to chase after him.
Remus took a brief second to wipe the blood splattering down his cheek onto his sleeve as he dodged a thorn bush. He was running, not knowing exactly where his legs were leading him, but trusting all of his instincts to get him away from the monster chasing him.
There was another howl from behind him. Remus panicked; he knew the creature was catching up with him. Looking around for a sign of escape, Remus deducted that his best chance of safety was to climb a tree and to just wait the night out. He spotted a rather large pine tree, with a branch just low enough for him to grab and climb up on. Seeing as the tree was up ahead of him, Remus decided that a quick jump would raise him high enough to help him get onto the branch. He was nearly five feet away when he aimed a misjudged jump... and landed facedown in a pile of mud.
Quickly, Remus wiped the muck away from his face, and turned around to see how far of a distance the creature was behind him. Once he turned, he gasped audibly, and faced a snarling beast, looking down at him. Remus grabbed at a thick branch nearby, and broke it off the tree. He held it in front of his face as a weapon for defense. The creature ignored this threat, and just opened its mouth. Remus paled to see that it had a set of very sharp canines...
He scarcely knew it had happened when without warning, the creature howled again, and pounced itself down on Remus' left leg, biting and snarling.
Remus screamed bloody murder. He took his branch and whacked the werewolf on his leg as strong as he could, but the creature paid the stick no mind. Remus took a firm grasp on the branch and then jammed it in the creature's left eye - it was then that he felt the teeth about his leg let up as the creature writhed in pain.
Remus' eyes were filled with tears as he gingerly felt down to calculate the damage that had been done to his leg. When he pulled his hand up and felt nothing but a sticky substance, he screamed again, and thought he was going to just die there in the forest... under the terrifying jaws of whatever the creature was. The creature itself was getting over the pain of having his eye gorged out, and was about to advance on Remus again. Remus bit his lip, expecting another impact, when a flash of red light shot out of a nearby bush. The creature took his focus away from Remus, glanced about it, and decided he best not stay around for another blast. Growling, the creature hauled off into the darkness of the forest, its tail between its legs.
Remus glanced down at his legs again, and through a faint light, saw that his pants were a bloody mess. Suddenly, something else very large came out of the same bush that Remus saw the red light shot from. The large shadowy figure hurried over to Remus right away.
"Boy!" called the person, with a very deep Romanian accent. Remus glanced up and saw a rather old-looking wizard with graying hair. The light seemed to be coming from his wand. "Boy!" the wizard called again, "Are you alright? Did it get you?"
Remus could hardly speak; the pain of his leg was brutally beating at him like a mallet ramming the face of a snare drum. A single tear ran down his face as he gritted his teeth in pain.
"Oi!" yelled the wizard that had found him to some unknown person still in the forest. "Hey! Over here! I found a bitten victim!"
A dozen or more wizards immediately surrounded Remus, still lying injured in the mud. They attended to his wound with extreme caution. A pretty witch addressed Remus as she was bandaging his leg.
"Hello," she said cheerfully, speaking perfect Romanian. "My name is Gwendolyn. I am here to help you... but I need a favor. May I ask, young man, what is your name?"
Remus was in so much pain, he scarcely noticed how perfectly pretty the blonde nurse hovering over him was in the dull light. "My name -" Remus tried to grit out through his teeth, "Remus Lupin."
"What a pleasant name. Well, Remus, I need you to tell me... could you tell me... where do you live?" asked the pretty witch, Gwendolyn. Remus wondered why she was speaking to him in such a calm tone when he was bleeding profoundly out of his leg.
"I live... on the outside of the forest." Remus forced out, eyes closed now in pain. "My friend and I came in the wood to find our football... and got lost finding our way out."
"Friend?" asked the witched, now alarmed. "There is another boy out there? Could you tell me what his name is... and what he looks like?"
"He is my age." Remus squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to remember what Rod had looked like. He saw stars for a brief second, before he started his description. "His name is Rodlock... Affez. He had short black hair and black eyes... and is very pale."
Hurriedly, the nurse turned away from Remus and addressed the other wizards about the boy. She was shouting in rough Romanian, but the remaining wizards listened to her and set off immediately to go look for Rod.
"Come with me," the nurse said, gingerly holding her arms out to Remus. "Grab hold."
"But ma'am..." Remus protested. It was the first time he'd realized how pretty she was, and he blushed. "Oh ma'am, no. I can't..."
"You are injured. I shall apparate you to your house." Gwendolyn explained. "Come with me," she repeated, holding out her long, pale, and slender arms to him, as if she was going to pick him up.
Being such a slim boy, and only six years old, Remus threw his arms about the witch's neck, and she gently lifted him off the ground, carrying him as if he was her own child. Within seconds, the witch addressed her coworkers, glanced at Remus and then apparated him out of the wood.
"Where do you live?" the witch asked again.
"It's a... small house... with a stoop... its black... with a rooster wind chime in the front garden..." Remus described as best as he could. Gwendolyn nodded, looking about the small village for the house he was guiding her to.
"Is your mother a tall woman, brown hair and eyes... wearing a smock?" the woman asked, walking faster now.
"Yes." Remus gasped, fighting his pain, "Why do you ask?"
"She's outside on your stoop." Gwendolyn replied quietly, as she walked over to his mother.
"Oh! My baby!"
Remus' mother scarcely glanced at Gwendolyn, as she snatched her only son into her arms. "What happened to him?" she asked the woman at once. Tears ran down her face.
"May I come in?" Gwendolyn replied calmly. Remus' mother ushered her inside at once, into the so-called 'living room'. The room consisted of a single couch, a wooden coffee table, and a large and shabby-looking black-and-white television set.
"Ma'am..." started Gwendolyn, folding her hands in her lap. "May I call you Mrs. Lupin?"
"Yes, Mrs. Lupin is fine," answered Remus' mother, who looked no older than the nurse herself. "I didn't quite catch your name... and sorry to be rude, but how old... exactly, are you?"
"I'm only twenty, Mrs. Lupin," Gwendolyn answered with a small blush. "I'm sorry for forgetting the formalities. My name is Gwendolyn Jaccsirk. I am a Healer. I was born in this country... but I currently work as a Healer for both England and for Romania."
"Oh, I understand." Mrs. Lupin answered with a slight smile, "In that case, please... let's just revert to English. My Romanian is not very good."
Both women laughed, and Remus sniffled in his mother's lap. He clung onto her like he would have if he were younger, when she used to carry him around as an infant.
"Your son... Remus?" Gwendolyn questioned uncertainly, now speaking perfect English as Mrs. Lupin nodded, "Was bitten in the forest by a werewolf."
There was a moment of silence as Mrs. Lupin gazed open-mouthed at Gwendolyn for nearly five minutes. As soon as the shock settled over her, she clutched at her only son, shedding thick tears.
"Mrs. Lupin, I am very sorry about your son." Gwendolyn tried to apologize, speaking in perfect, even English. "But... he will live. If his wound is treated before it gets too serious... perhaps we can prevent Remus from... transforming at such a young age. We would also like to track the Werewolf that bit him down so you can seek justice against him or her for biting your son at such a young age."
Mrs. Lupin nodded furiously through her tears, hugging and kissing Remus, who just stared blankly under his mother's arms. The pain was getting to his head, and making him dizzy and all he wanted to do now is sleep. All this news was too much for him to handle. Blankly, he glanced at Gwendolyn, who looked very wealthy in her white satin robes. He suddenly felt guilty for making them filthy, as she had carried him home. She also wore a neat looking white hat, with an emblem of a wand and a bone intertwined, perched on top of a neat-looking bun of her long blonde hair. Both Remus and his mother looked very shabby next to the Healer, but Gwendolyn didn't seem to care.
"At St. Mungo's - it's the hospital back in London, England - we have a special care ward for bites. I am sure we can get Remus treated right away if you and your husband agree." Gwendolyn seemed rather hesitant to tell them this. "But the treatment will be very expensive. We have new, state-of-the-art equipment, spells, and potions to try on werewolf bite victims. It's not going to be cheap if you want to help your son."
There was another uneasy silence. "I don't care," Mrs. Lupin spoke up, at last. "Please... help us. Help him. I'll give you all that I have."
Slowly, Remus' mother glanced down at her son. He was getting pretty delusional, and was mumbling to himself, nearly unconscious now. "Please." His mother begged, "Just do all that is needed."
"Do you wish for me to take him to St. Mungo's while you pack? I'm sure you and your husband will want to stay with him, back in London." Gwendolyn questioned, holding her arms out to Remus once more. Remus scarcely saw her, his eyes opening and closing feebly.
"Yes," answered Remus' mother, handing her son to the nurse rather gingerly. "I'll notify my husband... he is working... and we'll be at this hospital... St. Mungo's, is it?... in a few minutes."
Sullenly, Remus glanced at his mother, who looked absolutely crestfallen to see her only son in such a condition. He coughed quietly, and then reached out a hand to her.
"You're not... mad at me, Mum... are you?" he questioned, not even realizing he was speaking English now, too.
Mrs. Lupin blanched at the sound of her son even asking such a question. "Of course not… it isn't your fault Remus." She replied, kissing Remus' cheek. "I love you, no matter what. Gwendolyn is going to take you to the hospital now... to get treated. Your father and I will be there with you shortly, alright?"
Remus vaguely felt himself nodding as Gwendolyn headed towards the door with him.
"I love you too," he answered his mother, still reaching out for her. That was all he was able to say, before Gwendolyn apparated him to St. Mungo's and started a new chapter of his life.