Hermione woke up with a gasp, pupils rapidly shrinking to accommodate the afternoon light that streamed in through the dingy windows of Number 12 Grimmauld Place. Wincing, she placed a hand gingerly against her ribs to assess the tenderness.

Forcing her body to relax, she mentally ran through every new ache and pain the same way she did every month after the full moon. She knew later, when she forced herself to look in the mirror, she would find herself covered with a variety of bruises and cuts that would need a bit of healing, but she'd learned quickly enough that the broken bones were the only injuries bad enough to complain about.

Wiggling her toes, she winced feeling the beginnings of a stress fracture in the top of her foot. Her legs were fine enough, except for the stiffness of her muscles having been put through the agony of two transformations in less than twelve hours. A trio of scratches marred the skin on her quadricep, but she knew that with a bit of salve, they wouldn't scar. They weren't deep enough, she thought bitterly. Her fingers and arms were okay, and she pressed herself up into a sitting position, only to feel partially healed skin splitting open on her back. Hissing, she knew that that would scar.

Bringing herself to standing, she hobbled her way into the bathroom where she would step into the shower, hoping to wash away any dried blood. Feeling the hot water — always scalding, her mind wouldn't accept anything less — run into the shoulder gash, she grit her teeth at the pain, hating the way that she enjoyed it...hated the way that it seemed to snap her back into her humanity.

When she could stand the heat no longer, she stumbled out of the tub, grasping onto the towel bar as she swayed with dizziness from the steam or the weakness that always seemed to follow one of her transformations. Wrapping the towel around her frail body, which had never seemed to regain the weight after her year on the run, she stared at her face in the mirror.

The face that looked back was unfamiliar and hollow. Her hair, which used to seem as if it had a life of its own, now hung limp and dull. Brown eyes were ringed by dark circles that never seemed to fully go away, but would fade the further they got away from the Full Moon. Her cheeks looked hollow and sunken. She wasn't sure if she should count herself lucky that she didn't have scars on her face, unlike Remus. No, all of the scars that she inflicted on herself were hidden under her clothes, including the horrific looking bite that had turned her all those months ago...

Quickly reaching up a hand to wipe away an errant tear, Hermione felt shame and self loathing well up inside of her. She'd always preached that werewolves were just like any other witch or wizard, and they should be treated with dignity and respect. She'd thought that the condition could be managed with compassion and a bit of wolfsbane potion. Instead, reality had ripped away any of the naive notions she might have had about lycanthropy.

Her wolf and her witch were constantly in battle with one another, and even though the wolfsbane potion allowed her to keep her mind during the full moon, it didn't quell the rage inside the wolf. She wasn't sure why, but it seemed as if it wanted to destroy everything, starting with her own body.

You will get used to it, Remus had said, a sad, guilty look in his eyes, perhaps knowing the years of suffering that she was going to have to go through. He knew first hand the way that wizarding society would shun her, turning her away from job opportunities even though she was a war hero. The only reason she wasn't homeless was because of Harry's generosity in letting her and Remus live in Grimmauld Place after he and Ginny moved to Godric's Hollow. Her meager stipend from the Ministry of Magic for her contributions in the war barely allowed her to scrape by. Gone were all of her dreams.

We'll all support you. Your friends will be there for you. Unfortunately, Remus had overestimated her friends, perhaps expecting Harry and Ron to be like the Marauders. It had barely taken a month — after her first transformation — for Harry and Ron to grow distant and awkward around her. It had taken Ron two months to tell her that he didn't really see them working out together, and had moved on to Susan Bones instead.

Sometimes she wondered why the Marauders had been more accepting of Remus. Was it because he'd been a werewolf his whole life, the whole time they'd known him? Had Harry and Ron, the Weasleys, and the Order, had such high expectations for her for so long, only to have her reduced to such a pathetic state in an instant? Whatever the reasoning was, she wasn't blind to the fact that her presence put them off, and she'd slowly withdrawn from group functions. Only Remus was her constant companion.

Once she was dry, she could see that the nasty gash on her shoulder was still bleeding, but based on the location of her body, she knew she wouldn't be able to heal it herself. She hated having to rely on Remus for assistance, but really, she knew she should just be glad that she had anyone to help her. She didn't want him to see it, though, as it was further proof of her internal battle, having inflicted it upon herself sometime between moonrise and the complete transformation, when her claws had come out but her bones hadn't snapped back into place yet.

Thinking of the way she contorted and howled was enough to send her shivering now that she was in the light of day.

Her eyes fluttered as she was overcome with a wave of dizziness and nausea, knowing that she wouldn't have the strength to keep standing on her own for much longer. Wrapping the towel loosely around her body, she shuffled to the door before calling for the only other occupant of Grimmauld Place. "Remus," she croaked, her voice always a bit rough after the transformation.

Immediately, her sensitive ears cold pick up the lumbering steps of her former professor making their way up the stairs to her room. It wasn't long before he was opening the door and waltzing into her room without permission. There had been a time when Hermione would have been mortified at being so underdressed in front of him, but modesty was an impossibility with her condition. He'd already seen her in worse states.

She didn't speak, merely spun around in place to show him her back, letting the towel — now stained with the bright red of her blood — drop to her waist. Immediately, she could hear the intake of his breath, shocked at the level of damage that she'd been able to do to herself, his own experience unable to prepare him for what he would see. She could feel his fingers, tender and soft against the flesh of her back, gently prodding her to see how deep the gash went.

"Lie down on the bed," he instructed. "I'll just go get some supplies."

Hermione, feeling dead on her feet, was only too happy to comply with the order. With her front down on the bed, she turned her head to stare at the door waiting for Remus to come back to her. It didn't take long before he was padding back into the room, barefoot.

Sitting in space on the bed next to her, he quickly worked to close the gash and heal it as best as magic could. She'd quickly learned that werewolf bites and cuts were cursed and didn't heal like normal wounds. Letting her eyes slip closed once again, she let herself enjoy the feeling of someone else taking care of her, even if it was only for a moment. Remus was always so gentle, but firm, with her. If she closed her eyes, she could forget, if only for a little bit, that she was a werewolf, while his fingers moved slowly over her bare skin.

She must have dozed off a bit, because the next time he spoke, she was startled awake. "I'm sorry, Hermione. This is going to leave a rather large scar," Remus told her, with pity and guilt dripping from his voice.

A great, shuddering sigh left her body while she tried to keep a stranglehold on her emotions, but she was unable to, a lone tear slipping from her eye, over the bridge of her nose and onto her face.

Remus knew about it — of course — even though she didn't want him to. How could he not smell the acrid, saline smell with that sensitive nose of his. "I promise, Hermione, it will get easier," he said, his voice a low rumble. "In a year, this will all be nothing more than a memory."

A painful memory, said a mean little voice in the back of her mind. In the beginning, she'd wanted to believe Remus so badly, but after half a year of living as a werewolf, she knew that his promises were hollow. It might get easier, but things would never be the same, and she would have to give up on that hopeful longing that things might go back to the way that they were. That Ron might return and say he did love her after all — condition or no. That Harry would be able to hug her once again without holding back.

Hermione wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the fleeting hours of the day in bed, sleeping away the aches and the pain, but Remus wouldn't allow it. "Come on, get dressed," he said, digging through her dresser to find her a shirt and pants and appropriate undergarments. "We'll get some food in you and then you can sit by the fire for a while," he said, trying to sound cheerful.

He already knew that she would be too weak to dress on her own, so he was already holding out her pants for her once she'd wiggled her way into her knickers. She lifted her hands over her head, waiting for him to pull to jumper over her head, hating the way that it made her feel like such a child, but also knowing it wouldn't get done otherwise.

In an act of stubbornness, she pushed herself up from the bed, only to sway on her feet. Remus, as ever, was there to catch her. Hermione wished that she didn't resent him, but she had no other choice when she was forced to rely on him so heavily. He helped her out of her room and down the two flights of stairs to the kitchen.

The meal that he'd been working on himself was under stasis on the stove — a hearty beef stew that was just about one of the only things that he could make successfully. He sat her down in one of the chairs, before producing her half a bar of chocolate. After months of living together, he no longer gave her the little song and dance about how it would make her feel better. Once she'd finished that, a bowl of steaming stew was placed in front of her.

Hermione took the first bite and was barely able to swallow because of the lump in her throat, knowing that she was on the verge of full on sobbing. How pathetic were they, her and Remus? Living like hermits in the townhouse that didn't hold one happy memory, even when it was inhabited the first time around. Lying to themselves and pretending like there was some other kind of life for them where they could have families and live like a normal witch or wizard. No, instead they were left to cling to one another, because all of their loved ones had left them — Hermione's by choice and Remus's by death. She knew that Remus felt just as hollow as she did after losing his mate and child during birth, blaming it on his lycanthropy. He was just better at hiding it after so many years with the condition.

She was sick and tired of feeling this helpless, and alone, and just hoping that next month it would be better when she knew, deep down that it wouldn't. She couldn't live like this any more.