A Werewolf for Christmas

Christmas Morning

Remus Lupin sat nervously on board the Knight Bus, his briefcase laying across his lap, a couple small packages wrapped in plain brown paper and string balanced on top. He looked a bit green about the face as the bus lurched forward and backward, his body swaying one way and then the other so violently he rather wondered if it was possible to get whiplash in a magical vehicle as it was in a muggle one?

He swallowed back the urge to throw up as upstairs the sound of a witch retching came down through the narrow stair. He looked at his watch to distract himself, then chanced a glance out the window as the bus lurched forward yet again, popping and reappearing near Piccadilly Circus. He took a deep breath - somewhere, another passenger was getting sick, and a baby was crying, the sounds echoing off the violently purple interiors.

Finally -

"Chidden, Waterlooville!"

The conductor of the Knight Bus was calling out from the front of the bus and Remus grabbed hold of a handle hanging down over his seat to stabilize himself as the bus halted rather abruptly at the end of a narrow lane, overgrown with brush. He wrapped his neck in a very, ridiculously long woolen Gryffindor scarf, which wrapped three times about his narrow frame, and pulled his shabby coat close about. He dropped the last of his sickles into the conductor's palm as a tip as he carried his briefcase and the small packages down the steps of the bus and into the packed snow-covered lane.

"You need any help with luggage from the undercarriage, sir?" the conductor asked.

Remus shook his head, "Got it all here, thank you, mate."

The conductor nodded, then climbed back aboard the bus, tipping his cap at Remus, who backed away from the bus only just in time before - CRACK - it was gone.

The air was cold and it nipped at Remus's nose as he moved along, his socks getting quite damp from the snow leaking into his old loafers so that he felt his toes getting a bit frost bitten. He would remember to later look up a spell for repairing the loafers, he told himself, he'd been forgetting far too long and if he lost a toe over this, he wouldn't ever forgive himself - considering all the other ridiculously dangerous things he'd done in his life that hadn't resulted in any lasting bodily injury. Aside from his scars, that is.

He rubbed his nose absent mindedly at the thought of his scars and felt the puckered edge of the streak that ran over his face from temple to opposite cheek.

The new moon had come on the night of the 20th, and here it was the 25th and Remus could still feel the terrible effects of the thing through his bones - though not nearly as terribly as he'd done on the Hogwarts Express the day Tonks had invited him here for Christmas, which had been the morning before the New Moon's rising. New Moons were nearly as terrible as the Full ones these days - the older he got, the more the New Moon seemed to sink into him, draining the energy out of him.

This, Mr. Scamander had once told him, was Remus Lupin at his most vulnerable, when the werewolf venom circulating through his body was it's most dormant, no moon to awaken it, no moon to send the strength that came from being a werewolf through his body. It was Remus as he was - weak from years of carrying all of the burdens and pains that his transformations really gave him. That weakness was far worse, Remus thought, than the tearing of flesh and gnashing of teeth that dominated his worlds on the full moon nights.

Especially now.

He never thought he would think it, but sometimes - just sometimes, mind - he thought that perhaps it was better to be the wolf than himself. His furry little problem, as James had called it, at least allowed him a few hours of blissful forgetfulness...

He shook himself. He couldn't be falling into a pit of wallowing self pity now. Not on Christmas. Not when he was putting in such an effort to make Tonks happy. It was such a nice thing she had offered - to be his family for a day was the kindest gesture that anyone had made toward him in... well, in years... and he simply couldn't ruin it by letting himself fall into a consuming darkness.