Luna(tic) (Marauders Era)

Prologue

"Tell me a story, Mama!" a little girl calls as she skips her way around the room, filled with the boundless energy she always seems to discover right before bedtime.

The woman behind her smiles even as she herds her daughter towards the bed, the task by no means a simple one, but made easier for the practice the woman has at it. "Which one would you like, my little wrackspurt?" she asks, the nickname a teasingly affectionate one she often uses when her daughter is being particularly rambunctious or distractable.

"The one about the other me!" the girl announces, practically jumping onto the bed and beaming expectantly at her mother, her large eyes gleaming with excitement

"The other you?" the woman asks, playing at confusion. "Why, silly, there's no other you."

The little girl wrinkles her nose in evident annoyance. "The one with my name," she insists, now bouncing up and down on her knees, her energy seeming to find an outlet even as she makes an attempt to sit still.

"But you already know that one," her mother reminds her, but the protest is a half-hearted one. It is a good story, afterall. And one the woman likes to tell. She likes to remember the old friend whose name her daughter bears. And she hopes the story might one day teach her daughter to ignore the whispers she knows the girl will get when she goes out into the world. They will be the same whispers the woman herself dealt with. The same ones her daughter's namesake endured.

"Not all of it!" the little girl protests, pausing her motion, and apparently redirecting her energy towards convincing her mother. "You always say you'll tell me all of it one day but you never do." Her eyes are wide and pleading and the picture of innocent distress. "Please!" she adds, resuming her bouncing, though with perhaps less fervor than before.

"Oh alright," the woman relents. It is true, after all. She hasn't told the whole story. And she certainly hasn't gone into the details. And perhaps it is time. For some of those details, anyway because all of them... well. The woman doesn't know if a child that age could handle all of them. But even so...

"Settle down, then," the woman says gently, "Let me tuck you in." The little girl ceass her bouncing and scrambles under the sheets without needing to be told twice, the frantic movement at odds with the end it aims to achieve. Knowing this, the woman smiles, pulling the covers up to her daughter's chin. "There," she says softly, brushing the hair out of the little girl's face. "Much better, right?"

"Tell me the story!" the girl begs, her bouncing leg evident beneath the covers and her voice a whining reprimand of her mother for taking so long.

The woman's smile widens. "Alright. Here we go. A long time ago," she begins, sitting down on the edge of the bed, "when your father and I were still very young, we met a girl named Luna, who everyone said was crazy."

~~ 23 Years Previously ~~

It started with the full moon. It ended that way too, which was fitting, really. But it started with the full moon. Or more precisely, with the full moon, two children, and several mistakes.

The full moon was obvious, and might have been incidental were it not for the first child's affliction. An affliction that was new. Too new. If it had been old, then perhaps his mother might have known how to deal with it. If it had been old, then perhaps she would have known that simple cages didn't keep a hungry werewolf at bay. If it had been old, then perhaps she would have allowed him those seconds he'd asked for at dinner, no matter how much it might have strained her purse.

But it wasn't. And she hadn't.

That was the first mistake.

Because now he was hungry. Hungry and these bars were keeping him from food. He knew it was out there. He could smell it. In the house, there was food. In the yard just a little ways away, there was food.