Note: This is an on-the-fly post, and my backlog of review replies remains untouched. I'm very sorry. Life has been hard these last few weeks, and I appreciate your support and understanding. Thank you so much for your feedback: it keeps me going in dark times.

For those of you who are interested, in Chapter 5 of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", Ollivander says to Harry: "You have your mother's eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her FIRST wand." (Emphasis mine.)

In Desperate Manner: Part Five

Remus awoke to the twin miseries of throbbing anguish and bone-deep cold. He was shivering uncontrollably, which did his ravaged musculature no favours at all. Fiery, cramping pain rippled up his legs and along his ribs. He was lying splayed on his belly, his spine twisted awkwardly in the wake of the contortions of the brutal transformation. When he tried to straighten himself, one bare foot scraping against the hard-packed earthen floor, he could scarcely find the strength to bend his knee, much less actually roll onto his side. He sank back, stealing shallow breaths to avoid straining his abused ribs. He did not feel the sharp, grating pain that meant they were broken, but the cartilage between and the broad bands of muscle that bound them ached perniciously. He knew they would trouble him for days.

It was impossible to take proper stock of his injuries while he lay still. Remus's head pulsed with the heavy patter of his heart, and his thirst was a torment, but these were standard fare after even the most merciful transformations. To gauge the extent of the damage, he would have to find the strength to move. Yet still he lay motionless, unwilling to brave the hidden pains as he sorted through muddled memories of the afternoon before.

Apparating home against all reason from the little bridge over the River Ure. An illegal Portkey – had he dared to create an illegal Portkey? The penalty for that, as for most crimes great and small, was more severe for a part-human than for a witch or wizard. But no, Alastor Moody had created the Portkey in the middle of Gringotts Bank, without warning. Quiet, boy, don't make a scene… Moody, who had found him huddled on the broad marble steps before the bank because he could walk no farther for fear of fainting.

All the rest of it came back in a rush: choosing the packet of cheap tea in the grocer's, devouring every last morsel of the half-pound of stew meat left to him after he gave half to the ragged young werewolf in the butcher's alley, standing before the display case and asking for the very cheapest cut of red meat available. He remembered coming to on the pavement of Knockturn Alley, weak with loss of blood and soaked with gutter water. He remembered sitting at the counter in the dingy apothecary shop, watching his blood drain into the basin. He remembered everything.

And he wished, for one terrible moment, that he were the wolf again, just so that he would neither have to remember, nor face what came next.

Legs first, he told himself, trying to find some comfort in long routine and failing utterly. He knew is left leg was not broken at least, for he had been able to move the foot. He moved it again now, first rolling the ankle and then forcing the knee to bend, drawing it up towards his hip. It dragged in the dirt, several shallow wounds stinging. There was no undue anguish, no sudden starburst of pain to blind him in the perfect darkness of his prison-sancutary, no telltale pulling of the flesh where it had been ripped too deep. His hip ground miserably with the exertion, but that, too, was only to be expected. His joints bore the strain of the change with a little less grace every month. Some day, quite likely long before his time, he would find himself permanently crippled with arthritis, with rheumatism, with whatever you wanted to call it. Something to look forward to, he supposed: at least if the wolf was similarly afflicted, it would be slowed in its monthly rampage.

Tentatively and not without an enormous effort, Remus pushed off with his left foreleg – no, his shin, he reminded himself. On a man it was a shin. He shifted the weight of his lower body onto his right hip so that his leg could slip up under the left. He pushed with his toes, pressing the lone advantage of the unfinished floor and using its traction to propel the mammoth weight of his thin leg. He did feel the drag of torn flesh this time, nauseating and unmistakable, but the accompanying burst of fresh pain was brilliant and shallow – not the deeper, blunted agony of a wound that gnawed far into the muscle. It was surely bleeding copiously, but not critically. That was a mercy.

Now both legs were curled to one side, drawn not quite high enough to conserve his fading body heat. The mere fact that he had been able to accomplish such motion without courting unconsciousness was as sign that he had done no serious harm to his pelvis or lower abdomen. The arms were next. His left was splayed out over his head, providing a bony tent of shelter that reflected his hot, moist breath back into his face. As soon as he drew it in, tucking his elbow to his side and dragging his hand to the hollow of his collarbone, his cheek was blasted with a wall of cold that made him draw a sharp, painful breath.

He leaned into the shock, rocking his weight onto his flexed wrist and struggling to roll onto his knees. It was an inelegant motion, but in this cavernous blackness there was no one to see. Remus huddled low to the ground as he struggled onto all fours: knees, palm and elbow. Then he moved to get his right hand under him, and collapsed in sudden, all-consuming anguish as, with a grinding of broken bones, his wrist gave out from under him and he crashed to earth, brow and shoulder first.

Fool! his mind cried as explosions of varicoloured light burst behind his eyes and his whole body shuddered with the anguish of the disturbed fracture. Fool, fool, mad and arrogant fool. He had not checked his arm before testing his weight upon it. Something was broken, something in or quite near the wrist, and the pain of it was almost indescribable.

He might have lost consciousness briefly, or else merely trodden the edge of the abyss, for when he came back to himself he was colder than ever and his teeth felt brittle from chattering. His wand. He had to get to his wand, but he had lost all sense of direction in the eyeless blackness and he did not know where the stairs might lie.

It didn't matter. He might languish here forever without gaining any better insight into the problem. It was best to simply make straight for the wall and work his way around the perimeter. The root cellar was not large: perhaps eight feet long and seven wide. A methodical search was exhausting, but Remus knew he had to do it. There was no use in languishing where he was, bleeding away what little strength he had through wounds that, while perhaps not immediately deadly, would still not clot or close properly without help. In the early months, when he had grappled with the fresh horrors of transforming alone after years of companionship, he had let matters rest too long on more than one occasion. Perhaps it had been despair, perhaps he had clung to the irrational hope that someone would show up to collect him, to help him. But no one ever did, and the delay left him far worse off than any exertion would have done. After one particularly brutal change when hesitation had nearly proved fatal, Remus had learned that he had to fight through the fatigue and the agony and the merciless wall of apathy to extricate himself as quickly as possible.

So he struggled back onto hand and knees, tucking his right arm close against the washboard of his ribs. The bones ground again, not shy about making their state known, and he fought the urge to vomit at the sickening feel of it. Unsteadily, desperately, he began to crawl.

The wall was not far away: the crown of his head hit it with a clunk after only three trembling pushes of his legs. He turned, grazing his shoulder against it, and crept along, feeling the fine rain of loose soil trickle down his arm as he went. With the myriad pains both within and without, it was remarkable that his brain could even keep track of the gritty feeling of the wall against his shoulder. He tried to focus on that, sheltering his mind from the post-transformation anguish and the grim knowledge of the struggles to come.

He found the stairs at last, just when he was beginning to fear he might have turned in the wrong direction and condemned himself to circumnavigate the entire room. Remus sank to his elbow, huddled low over his throbbing knees, and groped for the panel that concealed his wand. There was a fresh scratch in the cover, a raking claw-mark where the wolf had tried to dig after the scent of the man where it lingered most enticingly. But the wolf could not penetrate this little stronghold: Remus was as certain of that as he was of anything in his increasingly uncertain life.

He found the grooves that worked the trick latch. His right hand was useless, the fingers unable to obey him despite the dear ransom of agony when he tried to make them move. So he took his right thumb between his left thumb and forefinger, and positioned it where it had to go. His nail, ragged and worn down from the wolf's mad scrabbling, caught on the groove and kept the thumb in place. He positioned his other hand, and his arm trembled clear up into the shoulder with the effort of working the mechanism. For an awful moment he thought that he could not manage it, but then the latch gave and the panel fell away. Frantically he scrabbled in the hollowed-out stone, fingers closing around the familiar, glass-smooth handle of his wand.

It was the same wand he had used all his life, the one that had chosen him at the age of eleven when he stood, frightened and wonderstruck, in Mr Ollivander's shop. Not every wizard was fortunate enough to make it so far into life – and a hard, often violent life, at that – with his original wand. Remus remembered Lily's hurt and indignation when her own had been broken, a casualty of a battle from which the four of them had been lucky to escape otherwise unscathed. It had taken her weeks to adjust to the new one, even meticulously matched as it had been. Neither she nor James had batted an eyelash at the price, but Remus (whose own wand, like that of every first-time buyer enrolled at Hogwarts, had been provided for a nominal fee under the Ministry's subsidy programme) had felt sick at the outpouring of Galleons and wretchedly, selfishly grateful that it had been Lily's wand, not his own, that had needed to be replaced.

His fingers fumbled, his left hand unused to holding the slender cypress stave. He did not know if he was strong enough to cast a spell; he had a vague memory of proving incapable of setting the Silencing Charm on the cellar door. But he had no choice, really. He gathered his wits and the ragged remnants of his strength.

'F-Ferula,' he whispered. Nothing happened. He cleared his throat, which burned with thirst and the rawness of a night's crazed howling. 'Ferula!' he repeated, so forcefully that his voice rang painfully in his sensitive ears.

He felt the crawling grind of bone on bone, and the sudden cinching coil of Conjured bandages as his wrist was affixed in a splint. He did not cry out, far too used to such pains to be overcome by them even now, but the effort left him cold and gasping, icy perspiration trickling into his eyes and stinging there. But the pain in his wrist was blunted to a forgetful throbbing, and the broken bones were strapped in place. He did not know how long the dressing would last: that would depend on the quality of the casting, and in his current state he did not have much faith in that. He did not know when he might dare to mend the bones themselves, but certainly not without a proper sleep behind him.

Next, Remus had to tackle the stairs. As he crept up, his hip scraping the crumbling edges, he knew he ought to be grateful that he was not dragging a broken leg instead of an arm. When the crown of his head grazed the underside of the heavy oaken door he stopped, huddled at the top of the stairs, and gathered his resolve before breaking the enchantments he had managed to cast upon it.

Undoing a spell was easier than performing a fresh one, at least when one was the original caster. The wards that held the door to its frame and locked the iron latches in place let go readily enough. Remus tucked his wand into the crook of his broken arm, squeezing it securely against his flank as he inched up one more step. He bowed his head and eased his shoulder up against the door. It shuddered, giving a little against the pressure, and he adjusted his legs clumsily beneath him. There wasn't much strength in them – he hadn't expected much, malnourished as he was. When he tried to stand, pushing the cover off the cellar entrance, his knees buckled and he crashed down on the stairs, scraping his hip and the side of his left thigh.

Choking on a strangled sound of frustration and fear, Remus forced himself to try again before doubt could overwhelm him. His bare feet scrabbled, toes gripping the stone steps, and the breadth of his shoulder-blades smacked dully against the underside of the door. There was an endless instant of limbo, when he was pushing upward with all his tenuous strength and yet the heavy, reinforced panel was not moving, and then it gave way with a squeak of cold hinges and a groan of wet wood and Remus's skull exploded in brilliant white anguish as the light of the morning poured over him.

Instinct wanted to shrink away, but will and desperation were stronger. He knew he would not find the strength to open the door again, and so he kept pushing, straightening up until the planks reached their tipping-point and fell away from him, landing with a damp thump on the earth. Remus's knees gave way then, and he crumpled, losing two steps and grating his left elbow raw as he crumpled onto the stairway. Unable to stop the whimper of misery, he curled in on himself against the blasting wall of frosty cold that came wafting in with the wind off the moors.

He fumbled at his right elbow, desperate to find his wand. If it had fallen when he did, he wasn't sure he could find the strength to drag himself back down into the cellar to retrieve it, much less out again. But no: it was there, trapped between his arm and his torso. His fingers grazed a fresh wound, a crescent of torn punctures slick with blood. It was painful but blessedly shallow. Perhaps the wolf, exhausted from the day's exertions and satiated at least in part by the hard-won stew meat, had not ravaged itself too violently after all.

The cold was unbearable. Remus could not linger here. His eyes were still screwed tightly against the light, which was far brighter than he had expected. Yesterday the clouds had been thick and heavy, low upon the land. It seemed that was not the case today. It explained the awful, searing chill of the air, too: clear days were always the coldest.

Trembling, all too aware of his nakedness and of the dozen long yards that lay between his transforming-place and the back door of the roofless kitchen, Remus groped for the lip of the cellar hole. His fingers gripped the wood, and he hauled upon it, forcing his feet to obey him as he slid up the steps one at a time. When at last Remus's hip crested the edge, he kicked feebly to gain the last couple of inches. His arm gave out beneath him and he landed on his side, shoulder and flank in the wet snow, legs hanging over the abyss of the cellar behind him. His skin burned with the cold, gooseflesh rising over the old scars and aggravating the edges of new wounds. His breath caught in his throat. Exhaustion like a cresting wave broke over him, threatening to drag him into the undertow of blessed unconsciousness.

He could not give in. Remus clung to his will like a drowning man, somehow rolling onto his hip and dragging himself the rest of the way out of the gaping trap door. He had no strength to spare in doubling back to close it: he would just have to leave his hiding-place open to the air until he was well enough to come out again to tidy up and close it. If the weather proved unforgiving, he would have a considerable mess to put right, but that was simply a risk he would have to take.

He had his legs under him now, shins in the snow and lean thighs providing some meagre warmth to the sensitive flesh of his groin and lower abdomen. The urge to huddle like that, gathered in a ball, until he found a little warmth within himself was terrible – and completely irrational. Remus could feel the fever-heat rising off his body in waves, lost to the winter air. He did not know if the day was half as cold as it felt, but even if it wasn't he knew that hypothermia could easily sneak up on a man, particularly one in such a state. He had to get inside, to the shelter of the solid stone walls and the sturdy half of the roof. He had to get something wrapped around his body. He had to try to light a fire, or cast a Warming Charm. He had to find some way to keep from freezing.

Somehow he dragged himself to his feet, hunched low and curled in upon himself but more or less upright. He swayed there, his left hand now cupped under his right elbow, and blinked blearily against the merciless sunlight. The sun itself was small and distant, pale in the watery sky and not yet three fingers above the horizon. He had not languished long in his pit, then. That was good. The less time he had lost, the less blood he had lost. Remus looked down at his pale, cold-puckered body, taking in the smears of scarlet and the darker, raking wounds. Not so bad this time, he thought dazedly. The meat had done its work, and placated the wolf at least a little.

He managed four trembling steps towards the cottage before he crashed to his knees, his legs too weak to carry him farther.

discidium

The bare flagstones seemed to burn more cruelly than the snow, but somehow they were easier on Remus's pride. Crawling through the mucky drifts like an animal, naked to the open sky, he had found it very difficult to cling to any hope of relief. Here, in the kitchen-courtyard, he had at least the illusion of civility. It was absurd, of course: there was no one for miles to wander by and see him in such a state, and he was no less savage now. Yet he felt intangibly safer, more human, with the stone wall at his back and the door to his living space only a few yards away.

His palm and his shins slid slickly on the floor, lubricated with blood and mud and snowmelt. Remus had to brace himself swiftly and jarringly when his arm very nearly shot out from under him. The impact into his shoulder and ribs, and the sudden tensing of every strained and overtaxed muscle in his quaking body, brought a fresh, horrible burst of pain, but at least he did not crash down against the unyielding floor. He paused there, panting, his head hanging low between curled shoulders. Something hot and wet was trickling down his cheeks. Tears of exhaustion and frustration, he realized slowly: his body yielding to a wretchedness his mind could not entertain. With a shudder that wracked his thin frame, he shifted his weight forward again and resumed his pilgrimage.

Afterwards, he could never remember how he managed to straighten himself enough to reach the doorknob, much less actually turn it. His left palm was raw and stinging, slick with blood and ingrained grit. That sensation always filled him with a crippling terror that he could not understand, and he tried fruitlessly to wipe his hand clean on his thigh. But he was over the threshold now, kicking the door closed behind him. It did not quite latch, but it caught in the frame and shut out all but a sliver of the frosty morning without. Good enough.

Remus could go no further, not now. The relief of being once more in this familiar space, civilised despite its shabbiness, overwhelmed him. He eased himself down onto his side, curling in upon himself and letting the tremors he had fought so desperately overcome him. The room was shadowy, its dimness a boon to throbbing eyes. The curtains were cheap and unlovely: a paisley chintz that had been fashionably ubiquitous in the days when his father had been obliged to furnish a two-room flat as inexpensively as possible. The familiar pattern seemed seared on the back of Remus's eyelids now as he lay, quietly throbbing, midway between the door and the dish dresser.

Something spongy and textured lay under his temple, a ridge rising from the stone floor. The threadbare rug. A sudden, frantic burst of fevered energy seized Remus, and he scrabbled forward, onto the small square of carpet. It provided a meagre buffer from the chill of the stone, but in that moment it seemed soft and welcoming as a bed. Remus drew his legs in near again, hugging his broken wrist and his precious wand close to his body, and he let himself rest a little, at last.

He could not lie there forever, though. This part of the cottage was sheltered but still very cold, and he was naked. His bed was in the next room: the shelter of his blankets, the cover of his dressing gown. Why hadn't he brought the garment out here, to await his return? Dimly he remembered his addled state in the last hour before moonrise, and he supposed he would have to forgive himself that lapse in judgement.

Remus struggled to his knees again, fighting the pain with a last reserve of strength that would not last him long. His armchair was within arm's reach, and he shuffled a little nearer so that he could use the sturdy piece of furniture to lever himself up off the floor. A sharp, tearing pain rippled into his hip as he rose, strained muscles releasing pent-up tension. He adjusted his grip from the arm of the chair to its high, winged back, and forced swimming eyes to focus on the door to the tiny back bedroom. It stood ajar, as he had left it. At least he'd had enough sense to do that.

Like a polio victim taking his first steps after the crisis, Remus launched himself for the doorpost. He was losing his balance almost before he found it, and the two stumbling steps he managed were nothing more than a controlled fall forward. It was enough. He caught hold of the doorpost and dragged it to himself, socking his shoulder against it and clinging to it one-handed while his boneless feet and his quivering knees struggled to brace him against it. He leaned in with his hip as he reached for the door-handle, and hauled himself into the room.

He had to lean against the wall with his right side as his left hand struggled to lift his dressing gown from its peg. Like every other garment he owned, it showed the wear of the years: faded, its nap all but bald, its elbows patched with mismatched scraps. It was spattered with old bloodstains, its hem and collar frayed. But it was soft as lambswool after a decade of washings, and as he slung it over his shoulder Remus thought he had never been so grateful to cover his nakedness. The promise of warmth it brought soothed his terror and drove back just a little farther the terror of freezing to death.

He had to grip the edge of the dressing gown with the fingers of his right hand so that he could get his left arm into the sleeve. He had cast the spell properly, if perhaps not perfectly: the support of the splint allowed him to work his fingers well enough for the task. He did not dare to move his arm away from his body to don the right sleeve, and so he simply draped the garment over that shoulder, tugging it closed with his good hand. He huddled into his dressing gown, already feeling his body heat gathering in the folds of the cloth. He drew the front closed, not able to find the strength to grapple with the dangling sash, and nuzzled the turned-back collar with the side of his aching jaw. The clatter of his teeth, constant almost since waking, slowed and then stopped.

At last, at long last, Remus turned towards his bed. The blankets lay limp over the bare slats, and he was taken by a moment of shocked dismay: the Conjured mattress was gone, melted away when most he had need of it. Then he remembered that he had seen this the night before, had known to expect it. Conjuring another now was out of the question: he would simply have to make do.

He stumbled as he moved to the bed, catching himself against the scratched footboard. With a hand that shook with insidious exhaustion, he drew back the first two blankets, leaving the third against the boards. He could gladly have burrowed under half a dozen, but he needed something beneath him to keep out the draught. He tried to ease himself down onto the bed, but his strained muscles were too far gone for such careful control. He overbalanced and fell, tumbling or rolling, he knew not which. The bed groaned beneath him, but it held. His dressing gown was tangled about his calves, but he did not care: that kept it close, at least, and he managed to wrap his feet in the corner of the uppermost blankets. They were chilled, and he was shivering, but his body would warm them. There was that much to be said for the transformation fever, at least.

Distantly he reflected that he ought to dig out his wand where it lay nestled between arm and ribs. He ought to try to summon up some flames to burn on the floor by the bed, or to Warm his bedclothes. But the struggle simply to reach this haven of motheaten wool and solid walls had sapped Remus of all his strength. He was trembling with cold and utter enervation, and he could not find the will to move even one finger more. Curled on his side on the bare, narrow bedframe, he let himself slip away at last into a deep, pain-drugged slumber.