Elemental Force

Chapter 12:
The Death of Remus Lupin

Oh, hell, trouble is coming
Out here panic and alarm
Black shapes gather in the distance
Looks like it won\'t take long
~Neil Finn


When they Apparated into the forest, Remus immediately felt the strength of the wards surrounding the area. These were not like Hogwarts where one expected to feel the power of ancient magic, but they were present and almost tangibly powerful. The discovery did make sense to him because there was most definitely something forceful here acting as a shield to all the other magic spells and rendering Ginny unplottable.

Tonks had her wand drawn defensively and was taking in as much of the surroundings as possible. It was a very ordinary forest with trees. Diurnal animals were going about their daily activities while the nocturnal animals slept. There was nothing out of place in the sounds being made that could telegraph to her that the animals might actually know something.

\"What are we looking for, Remus? Now that we\'re here, what\'s the rest of your plan?\" she asked him while keeping her eyes trained warily on the surroundings.

\"People,\" he said. \"Ginny is being held prisoner, so we have to find people.\"

Tonks sighed. How true and utterly logical that piece of information was, and how ultimately useless it was, as well. If Lupin was going to lead her on a wild Ginny chase, she was just going to have to let him do it. For now, she mentally told herself.

\"Lead the way,\" she said as she willed this expedition to be finished as soon as possible.

He fingered the wand in his pocket and started walking through the forest, picking out a narrow path that only he could see. The advantage of having the tall man walking in front of her meant that Tonks was protected from any branches and leaves in their way. She could also watch him, and this time her scrutiny would be acceptable. The Metamorphmagus still didn\'t know if he was right about finding the girl\'s location.

Ahead of her, Remus stumbled once and reached for his head. He blinked against the strange sensation. It had not felt like the pain of Ginny\'s calls that he had experienced the last two weeks. It could be something in the magic of the wards or even something related to his upcoming transformation. Though he wasn\'t sure of the cause, he knew that the available time window to find Ginny was getting shorter with each second that ticked away. He had to find her before he became a werewolf. With that sense of desperation reinforcing his singular purpose, he strode on through the forest with Tonks following in his wake.

~*~

Unaware of the visitors on his land, Moss and his crew were at the mansion preparing for the evening\'s hunting event. Frank had delivered the crossbows he had found, and Stewart had secured the girl until the time they would need her. The plan was running smoothly as they were making last minute checks on equipment and magical provisions.

Jonathan was looking forward to the evening with great anticipation. Being the musically-minded person he was, he had a song for almost every occasion. There were plenty of popular songs related to the moon, but he relied on his simple children\'s melodies to capture the mood.

\"A hunting we will go! A hunting we will go! High ho, the derry, oh! A hunting we will go...\"

His lyrical voice continued happily as he double-checked the charmed silver arrows. It was a nod to Muggle superstition about werewolves. Even if the creatures were not fatally vulnerable to the substance as the stories would have some believe, it was always better to be safe than sorry. He believed in hedging his bets and making sure there was nothing left to chance.

\"Do you think he will ever stop singing?\" Theo whispered grouchily to one of the other men who was also getting ready for the hunt.

\"Not unless you curse him with Silencio,\" his companion answered in low tones.

\"I heard that! You two don\'t sing because you don\'t have joy in your lives. How sad it is to be you,\" Moss answered with a wrinkled brow.

An irritated look passed between the two men, but they knew better than to say anything out loud again.

\"Now,\" Jonathan said to them with a serious tone that was all business, \"finish getting prepared, or my singing will be the least of your worries.\"

He raised an eyebrow and dared them to challenge him while his hand rested calmly on his crossbow. He didn\'t have to speak loudly to make threats, so they continued their work while their boss found another jolly song to sing.

~*~

\"There is nothing here,\" she growled after nearly two hours of tramping through the woods. \"If there is, we have gone around and round in circles and are no closer to finding it than we were before. Even the children in the Muggle fairy tales knew to leave a trail of bread crumbs, Remus.\"

\"I know she\'s here,\" he said softly. \"But I don\'t know why she won\'t answer me.\"

\"Right,\" she said in exasperation. \"We can just call out her name. \'Ginny! Where are you?\' Why didn\'t I think of that? I think I\'ll do that right now!\"

Tonks called out a few times in the same sarcastic manner that she used, but Remus did not rise to the bait. Instead, he sat down and tried to think his thoughts to Ginny as he had done so clearly and almost easily the night before. The pounding in his head increased, and he wondered if he was doing something wrong. Perhaps he needed to meditate into light. If it was a failure, it would not be the first time.

He took out his wand and said a quiet, \"Lumos!\"

//Ginny,// he called out across the uncharted space between them. //We\'re here, but you have to let me know where you are. Help me, Ginny.//

He tried several more times with different words but to no avail. As he incanted, \"Nox!\" he noticed Tonks, who had stopped her mocking long before this point, nervously looking to the sky and back to him. The shadows were ominously growing deeper and deeper. The sunlight of the November day would be too short, and the time of moonrise was too close.

Remus touched his face with his fingertips, inspecting his skin. Then he quietly checked his arms and a few other places on his body. The first signs of his change were starting to take place. Generally, on the day preceding the full moon, it felt to him as if his skin was literally crawling over him getting ready to reshape itself into a bloodthirsty beast. In that, it might be the closest he would ever experience to being a Metamorphmagus like Tonks, but unlike him, she never indicated that it felt uncomfortable for her when she changed. As an adult, he had learned to sublimate his pain, but his transformations were no less physically or mentally demanding.

At last, Moony stood up and calmly told her, \"You have to leave me.\"

\"Excuse me?\" Tonks replied, allowing her temper to show. \"You begged me to come with you on this poor, idiotic rescue mission of yours, and now you want me to go away? I would ask you what in hell is wrong with you, but you wouldn\'t tell me the real answer anyway.\"

\"I have some truth for you,\" he whispered with deathly stillness. \"The full moon is less than an hour away from rising, mere minutes really, and I have not taken any Wolfsbane Potion this week. That\'s right. None.\"

She opened her mouth and stared at him in silent disbelief until she got her wits back around her. \"But I saw you drink it!\"

\"You and the others saw what I wanted you to see,\" he told her again in that detached calm way that was starting to put her on edge.

Without waiting for comment, he began to take off his clothing, slowly and steadily as if she was not there watching his every movement. He folded each piece and placed it in an orderly pile.

\"Come back to the Headquarters with me, Remus,\" she begged him. \"You shouldn\'t be out here alone. If you come back with me, we can reinforce the locks on your room, but don\'t stay here.\"

\"I am not going anywhere,\" he replied. \"I won\'t leave this forest because I know she\'s still here somewhere. And you-you need to be safely away from me.\"

Tonks started to protest again, but she never finished her because he interrupted her.

\"Do you think you can really control me?\" he said as he leaned closer to her. \"If you don\'t leave, I will tear you apart. No matter how well you think you know me, you have never seen me when I am a fully transformed werewolf.\"

Tonks sucked in her breath as she realized that he was right, and then she noticed that Lupin\'s eye color was changing as she watched him.

Whatever she might have said back to him came out sounding like a frightened whimper. He continued his ritual as if she had offered no objections. When he was finally naked, she could see that the transformation that had started subtly in his eyes was moving into the rest of his body with dramatic force, changing him from a normal man into a beast.

\"Go home, Nymphadora,\" he ordered in almost a true growl. \"Bring Alastor and Kingsley back with you in the morning, and then we will find Ginny.\"

She nodded in terrified silence and then fled from the werewolf.

~*~

Hogwarts, Marauders\' 2nd year

When Remus had gone to Hogwarts, it had actually been Peter at the beginning of their second year who first figured out that he was a werewolf. For all his later faults, Peter was the most observant one in the group when it came to figuring out other people. James and Sirius were often too busy with their practical jokes and chatting up girls to be the first to notice many of the subtle things Peter observed.

\"So you seem to be gone at lease a few days every month. It must be a nice privilege,\" Peter commented to him after the September full moon.

The young Remus blushed and quickly tried to cover up his secret. \"I... I\'m a good student. The professors know I can make up the work.\"

\"I know you\'re smart. Why do you think I wanted you to be my study partner?\" the blond boy smiled.

\"Oh, you\'re good, too, Peter. You seem really good at Transfiguration,\" Remus supplied as a way to deflect the attention away from him and his monthly absences.

\"I am also good at Care of Magical Creatures,\" he said importantly, \"so I have to ask you something. Are you a werewolf, Remus?\"

There it was, out in the open. When Peter asked the question, Lupin felt like he had been punched in the stomach and all the air rushed out of his lungs. His first reaction was denial.

\"No, no, no. No, I\'m not.\" The signs of panic in his eyes indicated quite the contrary.

Peter shrugged it off aloofly. \"Whatever you say, mate, but I think it would be great to have a werewolf as a best friend. I\'ll just have to settle with you, even if you\'re not a werewolf.\"

They seemed to fall back into the same comfortable pattern that they held for the other days of the month. When the full moon came again in October and Remus made his departure, Peter found him again, asking with a laugh, \"Are you a werewolf yet?\"

Remus denied it and fled to the Shrieking Shack where he spent his transformation in lonely and painful solitude.

At the third month, November, Peter came to Remus again. \"You don\'t look too good,\" he observed. \"The full moon is tonight, so you might need to go visit your grandmother.\"

\"What do you want, Peter?\" Remus begged his friend.

Pettigrew smiled back haughtily. \"The truth would be a good start because I know I am right. You are a werewolf.\"

Remus was infuriated with that smile of his, so full of confidence. \"Sometimes you are worse than James!\"

\"So you admit it!\" He pounced on the idea with triumph.

\"Yes!\" Lupin conceded in shame. \"But if anyone finds out, I will never be able to come back here, either.\"

\"Wait a minute! Who said I was going to tell anyone?\" He looked affronted that Remus would even think that about him, but Peter relented upon considering it. \"Well, I might tell James, and you know he will have to tell Sirius. But that\'s it, really. No one else needs to know.\"

Remus sighed with the weight the truth of his lycanthropy. He simply didn\'t have the time to argue with Peter, so he walked away and slipped out one of the secret passages in the castle to go to the Shrieking Shack.

~*~

In the following morning after he had admitted the truth to Peter, Remus rushed back to the Gryffindor common room where he found both James and Sirius looking very shifty, which was not an unusual expression for either of them. Only this time, the pair looked more suspicious to the young werewolf than normal.

\"Peter told you, didn\'t he?\" he demanded anxiously.

James immediately took the look of pure innocence. \"We don\'t know anything. We\'ve been here minding our own business.\"

\"That\'s right,\" Sirius said as he gave darting glances at Remus.

\"I don\'t believe you. What do you know?\" he demanded of his two friends.

James moved closer to Sirius and passed something to him behind their backs. \"Nothing. Nothing at all.\"

Sirius deftly took whatever it was James slipped him as he smiled and nodded in cover.

By then Remus was too worried about what they might have known, so he was not alert to noticing his friends\' odd behavior. He marched right up to them and demanded in a low whisper, \"Peter told you I\'m a werewolf, didn\'t he?\"

Pettigrew, who had quietly entered the room during this exchange, defended himself by saying, \"I did no such thing. You just told them all by your own self.\"

\"You\'re a what!\" James practically shouted after he mentally digested this new piece of information.

\"Werewolf, you tosser!\" Lupin hissed back at his young friends. \"Do you have a problem with that?\"

\"No,\" Sirius said with awe in his voice. His esteem for Remus had just increased exponentially. \"That\'s amazing.\"

\"Bloody hell,\" Remus swore. \"Peter, you planned this all along, didn\'t you?\"

The blond boy nodded excitedly. \"And now that we all know, it\'s time to have fun.\"

Sirius heard the word \"fun\" and was instantly willing. \"Like what?\"

\"I have a few ideas,\" said James, the quick thinker and lead mischief maker in the group.

The four Gryffindors quickly discussed the possibilities of what they could do with the information about their friend. If they had not already been a close-knit group of friends by then, the Marauders would have officially came into existence that November day just after the full moon.

~*~

Moss Manor, After Moonrise

Ginny Weasley was a fighter when she knew what to fight against. During her first year, when the ghost of Tom Riddle had materialized and trapped her in the Chamber of Secrets, she had already gone beyond thinking of him as a friend, but his hold on her had been too strong to fight. Because she could not fight then and because she feared for her present, Ginny fought the encroaching mental darkness with the few tools she had.

She was too busy in the battlefield of her own mind to notice right away that Jonathan had appeared before her. She was trying to warn Remus of the danger to them both without being pulled under by the suffocating power of the werewolf psyche. When she finally noticed the man\'s smiling face, her sense of urgency deepened, and tried harder to reach the werewolf who could either be her salvation or another victim of Jonathan\'s cruel machinations.

Moss waved his wand, and Ginny momentarily saw the illusion of an hourglass with sands sliding through it. \"It\'s almost time, dearest. I think tonight will be special for both of us. I\'ve come to give you a present, too. I think you will enjoy it.\"

He smiled enthusiastically to her, and Ginny looked at him with distrust. \"First, it\'s time for you to have the use of your voice again. You may also be able to gain your freedom depending on how fast you can outrun a werewolf. You may not believe me, but there is one out there,\" he said as he looked at a small glowing white stone in his hand.

\"There will be other obstacles,\" he continued. \"At the same time that this werewolf is hunting you, I and my men will be hunting both of you. Be certain that we will shoot you if we see you. That means you will have to keep moving to find the break in the magical wards. There is one; I promise you that on my honor.\"

Jonathan paused and looked at Ginny while he waited for some acknowledgement from her that he understood what he was saying. She moved her head once, and he stepped closer to her and then protested what he saw.

\"I should know better than to let one of my men take care of the important things,\" he grumbled as he looked at her. The cuts that Stewart had made to make her bleed and, therefore, attract the werewolf were no longer open and flowing.

Moss put the stone in his pocket and pulled out an extremely small potion vial. He held it up to eye level with Ginny in his line of sight behind it. He uncorked the stopper and then applied the clear brown liquid on points all over her face, neck, arms and torso.

\"Pheromones,\" he said in off-handed explanation as he put the bottle back in his pocket. \"He will be able to smell you much better that way.\"

At last, Jonathan used his wand and muttered the counter-curse that would restore to Ginny the use of her voice. His blue eyes flashed with a mirth that bordered on menace when he was done.

\"Speak!\" he ordered, the traces of his manic nature coming to the fore. \"This time when you scream, I will be able to hear you.\"

She held her breath and did not speak, did not give him the pleasure of the sound of her voice. He was not concerned with her resistance to him. Jonathan grabbed Ginny by her long mane of hair and walked out of the room.

As he pulled her down the hallway behind him, she noticed an assemblage of men, many she had not seen before, who were armed with crossbows and other hunting weapons. She wondered were their wands were hiding before she dismissed the thought. She felt silly for having that moment of calm logic in a situation that wasn\'t logical at all.

When at last they\'d reached the outer doors, Jonathan removed her shackles and chains. Then he pushed her to the ground. \"Go,\" he said in a soft whisper.

Ginny looked up at him and the men flanking behind him. At first she was frozen to her spot on the ground, but her apprehension grew as one of the men stepped out in front of Moss and raised his wand to utter a curse.

\"Cru…\" he started, but Jonathan immediately grabbed the other man\'s wand hand and stopped him.

\"We do not use Unforgivables. How dare you,\" he hissed angrily.

\"Yes, sir,\" he nodded. The henchman then incanted something that the young witch had never heard before.

Most curses came out of the wand in colored jets of light, but this was not what happened. The very air seemed to take on a new quality as if a private storm had suddenly moved above her. Within the dark cloud of the night came a flash of electricity that burned through Ginny\'s body. From deep within, almost forgotten with lack of use in the short amount of time she had been a captive, her voice arose like a geyser breaking forth from the earth.

The scream that left her filled the night with such primal force that it attracted the immediate attention of an untamed being just coming in to consciousness at the fringes of the forest. The werewolf with liquid silver eyes glowing in response to the sound lifted his head, and his senses were inundated by the irresistible smell of the one who had cried. He stealthily slipped through the forest to find the source.

Beside Ginny, another piece of stimuli registered in her muddled brain. She felt the zing of an arrow as it flew past her face, the flight feather slicing into the unblemished skin of her cheek. In another instant, another arrow was lodged beside her foot, a mere hair\'s breadth from having impaled her.

She turned her wide eyes back to the men, and then she finally understood. With desperation she scrambled away, falling on her face as she went. She looked over her shoulder to see if they were following her, but they were moving with slow assurance. Her legs wobbled as unsteadily as those of a colt that has just been born, but she ran blindly into the dark night with all the determination for freedom that she had within her.

The werewolf was angry because there was something out there that belonged to him, and he wanted it back. The sound of the scream would lead him to it. He lifted his head once more to the wind, and the strong scent came to him like a flood of colors to his senses, though his eyes could see only in shades of grey. It reeked of blood and sex, and it was so clear and very close.

Ginny ran through the trees with some of the branches slapping her in the face. At one tree, her hair got tangled in a branch, and she jerked away. She came to a tree with a branch low enough for her to grab, and she scrambled to climb up into what little foliage remained during the changing season. She had to assess her situation. If there really was a break in the magical wards as Jonathan had promised, perhaps she could be able to see it. Certainly, she would not be able to see any mode of escape if she stayed on the ground and surrendered to her death.

She looked out and to the south of her she thought she saw a door of transparent blue-white light. Ginny blinked her eyes. It couldn\'t be that easy or that simple. It was a trap like any other, she assured herself.

When she heard the sound of one of the hunters approaching her, she held her breath absolutely still. A twig snapped directly under her tree, and the man just stood there staring at the red hairs that had clung to the bark. He smirked as he looked up into the tree and saw her perching there. As he moved his wand to cast a spell, Ginny jumped down from the branches, knocking him to the ground. Taking the crossbow he had dropped, she bludgeoned him to make sure he was incapacitated and ran for the door of light she saw through the trees.

After she had gone a few meters, she mentally chided herself for not thinking to take the man\'s wand. She didn\'t even break it, so when he gained his senses, he would still be armed and dangerous. I only have to worry about that if they find me, she told herself.

//Remus! Find the door of light!// she called out to him. She didn\'t know if she would make contact with him, but she had to help him if possible.

The werewolf had been tracking her by smell, but he felt something strike his thoughts. It was as infuriating as a flea, and it drew him closer to her. She was alone and moving quickly. He could almost taste the salt in the sweat that was coming off of her. When she paused moving, he sensed what caused it. There were men slipping through the forest surrounding her. The beast defied their insolence. This woman child was his! He had claimed her first.

The small hairs on Ginny\'s neck had risen, and she knew that there had most definitely been a trap in the illusion of an escape portal. She could not hear the men moving, but she felt them. Then Jonathan himself stepped out from behind one of the bushes and threw a bola around her ankles, bringing her to the ground.

Wiggling her legs like a mermaid caught out of water, Ginny tried to get away from him and undo the tethered weapon from her legs. With haste, she managed to free herself, though he looked unconcerned at her progress. His easy manner telegraphed his opinion that he knew she wouldn\'t escape. He was the cat, and she was just the mouse in his game.

She aimed the bola back at him and threw it as if it were a bludger. If she\'d had more experience with it, she could have wrapped it around his neck and strangled the man. Instead he was anticipating her move, and stopped its trajectory in midair.

A few feet from both people, the werewolf was looking into the forest. He wanted the girl. She had the warmth burning inside her that he could almost see as a color, and that fascinated him. Meanwhile the dark-haired infidel was trying to harm her. As she thrashed away, he followed her and left the other humans unaware that he had seen them.

Ginny continued to run toward the edge of the forest where she thought she saw her escape. She tried not to notice the taste of coppery salt from blood and sweat that seeped into her mouth. When bark of trees scratched her skin or when thorns hidden in the underbrush pierced her feed, she ignored the sensation.

Finally she saw that she was within reach of the barrier, so she sped up her pace even more. In her determination, she missed one vital thing. Her foot got caught in a tree root and she toppled over onto her head and smashing her knees against one of the knots in the root. With tears in her eyes, she freed herself and then rolled on her back only to find herself face to face with Moony for the first time.

She\'d never seen Lupin\'s werewolf form, and to be face to face with him was beyond comprehension. Intellectually knowing the fact and seeing the reality were two different events. She saw his silver eyes, so different from the amber color that other werewolves had, and she smelled the odors of sweat and fur. He was huge, and there was nothing about him that would have given the impression of a harmless little puppy. She didn\'t want to look at or study him; she had to flee beyond the wards and have him follow her.

Ginny awkwardly crawled backwards away from him like a crab moving across blistering sands. Then she found she could move no father away from him. At that realization, she began to softly whimper. \"No, Remus. No…\" Alternately she was tried to reach into his mind with hers. //Remus! Please!//

At the intrusion of her voice in his mind, the werewolf snarled, showing again clearly the teeth that could be used to rip her apart.

\"Don\'t hurt me,\" she softly begged. \"It\'s Ginny. You know me. Please.\"

He languidly stepped over her, and she could feel the hairs of his underbelly tickling her skin. He looked down on her with a pause and appeared to be studying her. As her hope began to fail, Ginny thought that everyone in her life had hurt her at one time or another, including those she trusted. Remus would be no different.

Then she felt his teeth slip into the juncture of her neck and shoulder, piercing her like serrated knifes. She could not cry out in pain. She gasped as tears welled in her eyes. She was so close, if only… But there was to be no \"if only.\" The werewolf was above her, feasting on her blood, and somewhere in the distance she heard the sounds of Jonathan\'s hunting party coming nearer.

She did not know how long she was there under Moony, but he had lapped up all the blood that he had released from her like he had an aching thirst that could not be sated. He finally stopped, and turned his head, giving a territorial growl at the one who would dare interrupt him.

Jonathan stepped out of the shadows and walked confidently over to them with his crossbow aimed at Remus. The black-haired man stood in the moonlight looking as handsome as he was dangerous. He had cornered both of them, and waves of power were radiating off of him. Ginny, watching him from her position pinned under the werewolf, whimpered pathetically one last time. The werewolf, however, snarled at their mutual attacker in challenge.

Moss released the trigger of his crossbow, letting fly the arrow that had been magically enhanced. The silver-tipped arrow went right through Moony\'s shoulder, making the beast fall limply on top of Ginny. She wrapped her arms around him as she felt the dead weight of the werewolf smother her, and her world disappeared into black.

---

The Neil Finn lyric used in this chapter comes from \"In the Lowlands\" performed by Crowded House on the album Temple of Low Men.