Remus groaned as he regained consciousness, opening his eyes and attempting to raise his hand to rub his face. He couldn't. It took a few more tries for his clouded mind to realize that his wrists were tied roughly behind his back, and his legs were likewise bound.

He got on his knees and squinted at the dark, damp room he found himself in. The only source of light was a dim gas lamp above his head that cast a small circle of light in the darkness. It revealed rough brick walls and a grimy, damp floor. The rest of the place was hidden in shadows, but he could sense a presence lurking there, just beyond sight.

"Well, well. Looks like our guest has finally awoken," a high, arrogant voice spoke in the darkness. Remus heard footsteps, and a tall, lanky man stepped into the circle of light. Despite looking barely out of his teens, he wore the signature black robes of a Death Eater.

Remus froze with dread as memories of the past few hours came flooding back to him. He had been on a mission for the Order, he and Tonks – and if he was captured, that meant...

"Don't ignore me, you filthy creature!" the scrawny wizard yelled. The accompanying kick to his stomach made him double over and dry heave. Judging from the blood stains he saw on the floor, this wasn't the first time the cellar was used in this manner. The stench of piss indicated the same.

Remus raised his head slowly and met the eyes of the junior Death Eater. The kid sneered at him, but he could see the uncertainty in his eyes. Perhaps it was his first time torturing someone. Why would a young wizard like him enter the service of the Dark Lord?

Seeing that he had Remus' undivided attention, the man spoke again. "Now that you understand your position, why not just tell me what I need to know? I have to warn you, my friends aren't as nice as I am. If you speak the truth, I'll make your death quick and painless." He chuckled nervously.

"What do you want to know?" Remus asked hoarsely. Keep him talking. Find out as much as possible.

"Tell me who's in Dumbledore's Order and where they meet. And tell me Harry Potter's current location." The wizard spoke eagerly, as if expecting Remus to actually tell him everything.

"Order? I don't know what you're talking about," Remus answered blankly.

"Don't play stupid with me!" the man shrieked. Two more kicks followed. The first one glanced off his ribs and didn't do any damage to speak of, but the second one bloodied his lip. Remus checked his teeth for damage with his tongue and spat the blood out, regretfully not quite reaching the Death Eater's polished leather shoes.

"You need lots more practice, kid," he stated calmly. "That didn't even hurt."

"Oh yeah? Oh yeah? How about I practice on you, filthy mutt!" The wizard proceeded to kick and stomp Remus, while the latter tried his best to avoid getting hit in the head. By the end of it, the amateur interrogator was breathing hard from the exertion, and his victim had acquired a few more painful bruises.

"Seriously," the werewolf grumbled. "This profession's not for you. What made you join Voldemort, anyway?"

"Do not speak his name!" the Death Eater screeched, and looked around as if expecting the Dark Lord to pop up out of nowhere. "You have no idea..."

"No idea of what?" prompted Remus.

"The Dark Lord is... No. You shut up. Just shut up!" The man turned around and disappeared into the darkness. Few seconds later, Remus heard him shout, "Mister Yaxley! Oi, Mister Yaxley! Get down here!"

All was quiet for a minute or so, then a door opened some distance away, illuminating a staircase leading out of the basement. A dark figure was outlined in the doorway briefly; then the door was shut and he heard slow, unhurried steps drawing closer. Remus found himself dreading the upcoming meeting. Unlike the jumpy brat he dealt with up till now, Yaxley had a reputation.

Stopping a few feet away from Remus, the older man took stock of his battered form and sighed.

"I told you to invite me when he woke up, Hughes."

"I thought I'd start with the interrogation," whined the Tall & Skinny. "This... This trash, it's not worth your time, Mr. Yaxley."

"Well? Did you learn anything?"

"Not yet," the one called Hughes said defensively.

Yaxley sighed and reached into his pocket. "Here, young man. Let me show you how it's done."

Remus tensed up and swallowed fearfully, watching Yaxley's hand. His skin started to itch even from this distance and he knew what was coming. His fears were confirmed when the senior Death Eater pulled out a table knife and a fork. Noticing Remus' gaze, the man gave him a cruel smirk.

Others might find the idea of cutlery being used as torture implements laughable, but not Remus. Merely touching silver would give him painful burns that wouldn't heal for weeks, even in his human form. A stab wound would put him in excruciating pain as it burned his flesh from within.

"Watch him tremble in fear at the mere sight of the metal," Yaxley spoke to his younger comrade. "Werewolves tend to respond to silver best. It works even better than the Cruciatus... A lot more entertaining, too, if you don't mind the smell."

The complete indifference in his voice chilled Remus to the bones. Here was a man who could torture his victim to death in the most depraved way imaginable, and then go on to have dinner with his family as if nothing had happened. He had to do something...

He had to use that.

"You are making a mistake," he said quietly, his voice not betraying the fear and excitement at what he was about to unleash. "Let me go, and I will spare your lives."

His confident tone actually made Yaxley pause in his approach and inspect the beaten, seemingly powerless figure kneeling on the floor.

"Empty bluster," he declared, raising the silver knife.

Well. He gave them a chance.

Remus ducked his head, opened his mouth slightly, and bit down with all his strength. There was a loud crack when the fake tooth shattered in his mouth, releasing ice-cold liquid which took his breath away as it went down his throat.

Liquid Moonlight. An illegal potion which induces transformation in werewolves.

Remus growled, sounding more like a beast than a man. The forced transformation was quick and messy, with bits of clothes and fur and blood flying around. The ropes snapped, no match for his expanding muscles.

"Bloody hell!" Yaxley yelped, going for the wand he had pocketed in favor of the knife. All he managed to do was get it out of his robes before said wand ended up on the floor, Yaxley's arm broken by the werewolf's powerful jaws and hanging limply at his side. Yaxley stared at his useless limb dumbly for a few moments, frozen in shock. The last sensation he felt was the massive teeth sinking into his neck.

Thomas Hughes was one of the newest servants of the Dark Lord, having joined mere months before this mission. In those short moments that his senior was getting ripped apart by a snarling beast from hell, he pondered in an oddly detached manner that becoming a Death Eater was not the smartest decision he'd made in his life.

All the while, he had his wand trained on the werewolf, trying to curse him again and again, but it did him no good. Too panicked to properly vocalize a spell, and having never learned the fine art of silent casting, he fell to the claws and fangs of his former prisoner.

Moony raised his bloody maw from the throat of his second victim and resisted the urge to howl. He was on a hunt, and there was no need to alert the prey to his presence yet. Sniffing the air, he circled the cellar, then trotted towards the stairs. Even in his werewolf form, he retained some inherent knowledge of the human world. It allowed him to navigate human dwellings almost as easily as he would a forest, and made him truly the most dangerous predator to unsuspecting wizards.

The basement door opened again as Moony was halfway up the stairs. Another man stuck his head through the crack and blinked at the near darkness. "Oi, what is-" was all he was allowed to say before the werewolf bounded up the stairs, chomped, and dragged him down. His screams didn't last very long, but they caused quite a commotion upstairs.

Moony crouched down behind the door, his ears twitching. He knew instinctively that he had to hunt down the men in black robes if he wanted to survive. The two-legged creatures had sticks which could cause pain or kill. He had to take them down fast, one after another.

Not giving his enemies any more time to grasp the situation, he exploded into the brightly-lit room, a blur of claws and teeth. It took him a mere second to locate his prey – there were three of them – and close the distance between him and the nearest one in a single leap. He crashed into the half-undressed man with the next jump, and bit down on his throat even as he was still falling to the floor.

The second wizard was able to cast a Killing Curse which missed Moony's back by inches. He never got the chance to cast another. The werewolf crashed into the man, causing him to fall over, and then tore into his wand arm, pulling and mauling, until nothing was left of it but a bloody mess. The mangled Death Eater's screams stopped abruptly when the beast crushed his windpipe.

Had he a man's mind right now, Moony would probably have wondered why the third enemy hadn't used this chance to attack him. Such thoughts were not something that would occur to a bloodthirsty werewolf, however. As soon as he was satisfied that his latest prey was well and truly dead, he turned to the last person in the room, and growled menacingly.

To say that Nymphadora Tonks was having a bad day would have been an understatement. She always knew that doing work for the Order came with certain dangers, but nothing drove that point home like getting captured, beaten, and humiliated. She wasn't about to let "raped" be added to the list, not while she was still breathing.

"Yer quite a looker," a chubby, middle-aged wizard leered at her rope-bound, half-naked form lying on the couch. "Lucky me. I won the coin toss, so I get to go first."

"Come here, then, big boy," Tonks purred, batting her eyelashes. Her hands were tied securely behind her back, but it wasn't a big obstacle to a Metamorphmagus willing to engage in some risky self-transformation. She had been gradually making her wrists thinner, and waiting for a chance to strike. Now it was just a matter of getting the bastard sufficiently distracted.

The wizard discarded his robes and threw them on a chair. The wand also joined the pile. Fool. Without it, he was no match to her. In addition to loosening the ropes, she had also been growing out her nails and strengthening her hands for the past few minutes. It wasn't quite a beast's claw, but Tonks knew how to make her fingernails tougher and sharper than what was available to normal humans. One good stab and the Death Eater would lose his eyes.

The man sauntered over and started fondling her with his sweaty palms, breathing heavily as he did so. Tonks turned away, battling revulsion, and observed the other two men in the room out of the corner of her eye. They were a problem. Even if she snapped the raping bastard's neck, the other two Death Eaters would have her captured – or killed – before she reached that wand lying on the chair. If only they would leave, just for a minute...

As if Merlin himself had heard her prayers, there was a muffled shout somewhere down below, and a thump of something falling. Even the podgy wizard paused his advances and looked at his companions with concern.

"Ye better go check it out, Smitty," he addressed a mousy-haired youth who had been surreptitiously eyeing Tonks' body the whole time, while pretending not to. "Can't be too careful when dealing with them werewolves."

"Fine," Smitty replied in a dissatisfied tone, and ambled towards a door which presumably lead downstairs.

"Bah. He's nothing more than a man right now, and the full moon's two weeks away." The other wizard spoke dismissively, but his tense posture betrayed his agitation.

"Even so, even so..." the first man's voice trailed off uneasily, until he looked down at Tonks and his face broke into a leer again. "Now, my dear, where were we?"

Tonks opened her mouth for a witty retort, but never got her chance to answer. There was a blood-curdling scream from the direction of the cellar door, then an audible crunch which made her shiver.

"What the bloody hell was that?!" Tonks' tormentor bellowed into the sudden silence.

"This is my chance," Tonks thought, freeing her hands and preparing to attack. She needn't have bothered. The cellar door was slammed open, and then something leaped over the couch and crashed into the robeless wizard, savaging his neck and ending his life instantly.

She could only watch, mouth agape, as the werewolf – for that's what it was – moved on to the second Death Eater and mauled him to death in the matter of seconds. The creature then turned its bloody muzzle towards her and growled.

It was the most terrifying sight she had ever seen.

"Um... Good doggy," she squeaked, edging away while trying not to make any quick moves. The beast's cruel eyes tracked her every motion, and it was stepping ever closer, still growling. Tonks was thinking furiously, her heart pounding in her chest with primal fear. It hadn't attacked her right away like it did the other two. Why?

She gasped, hit by a sudden thought. She could see no other explanation, as impossible as it seemed. "Remus?" she asked tentatively. "Is that you?"

The werewolf whined and actually stepped back, as if hit by a physical blow. That was all the confirmation Tonks needed.

"Remus, it's me, Tonks. Your girlfriend," she said as firmly as her unsteady voice would allow.

The wolf's nose twitched, and he sat down on his haunches, never letting the young witch out of sight. She breathed out a sigh of relief. Could it be that easy?

Tonks experimentally extended one arm in the direction of the chair with the wand on it. Moony perked up, but remained sitting. She slowly put one of her legs down on the floor, grimacing as she encountered a puddle of blood. The werewolf growled and raised his rump off the floor. As soon as she climbed back on the sofa, he calmed down again.

"Okay," Tonks murmured under her breath. "I can take a hint."

The following two hours were some of the most nerve-wracking in her life. She didn't know if more Death Eaters would come, or if Moony would decide that he didn't like her that much after all. She had no idea how long his transformation would last, or even if it would revert on its own. To top it off, she really had to go to the loo. The werewolf watched her the entire time, never tiring, never moving his gaze away – until finally it yowled in pain and began shapeshifting in front of her eyes.

She went for the wand at once, and sent out a Patronus message for help. When five Order members, including Albus Dumbledore himself, entered the house half an hour later, they found Tonks lounging on the couch, Remus sleeping peacefully on her lap.

"You look good, Remus."

A dark, smoky bar. An old, sturdy table with roughly-made stools. Two men nursing tankards of ale.

"I feel good," Remus Lupin answered with a note of satisfaction in his voice.

Sirius gazed at his best friend in wonder. Remus was glowing with health, and the lines on his face seemed less pronounced. To someone who had known the man for years, this was decidedly unusual.

"Does my cousin make you feel young again?" he teased good-naturedly.

"There is that," admitted Remus with a smile. "But it's not the main reason. Ever since that transformation, I've felt more... at peace with myself, with who I am. I have fought the beast my whole life, but now that I have accepted it as a part of me, it's like it has calmed down somewhat."

"Do you mean you can control it now?" Sirius asked skeptically.

Remus chuckled. "Not exactly. The bloodlust is still there, but I can direct or suppress it, to a point. I'll still be locking myself up during full moon, but maybe I'll be able to forgo Wolfsbane now."

"We need to get you out in the wild sometime, stretch your legs. Our runs in the Forbidden Forest always seemed to help you deal with your furry little problem," proposed Sirius eagerly.

Remus grew pensive for a moment. "A month ago, I'd have told you that it was crazy and irresponsible to suggest something like that. Now, though... As long as we scout out the area in advance and Padfoot keeps an eye on me, I think it should be reasonably safe. We'll see."

Sirius let out a whoop of joy. He rather enjoyed romping around in his animal form. It wouldn't be the same without James, of course, but he'd take what he could get.

Remus smiled at the antics of his best mate. Life was pretty good sometimes, even if one was a werewolf.