[Harry Potter] Moonlight

Disclaimer: As I'm not a blonde, rich, talented Englishwoman, I'm afraid this isn't mine. Harry Potter ™ and all related characters belong to JK Rowling. I just borrowed them for a bit of fun.

Moonlight (The Blood and the Beast)

It was a warm summer night, inviting a romantic stroll in the open air. The moon was trying its best to hide its shy face behind the fluffy clouds, with no avail. The young man ran blindly, terrified and without knowing where to go. It was the day he had dreamed of, the day he had hoped would be the best of his life… All those silly wishes of a fool in love vanished now, dissipating in front of his eyes, taken tumultuously by the rivers of blood running on the ground.

Taken by his tiredness, he fell, his knees hitting the hard ground. His mind was proving unable to cope with what had happened that night. How could it be that Heaven and Hell, happiness and pain, exultation and despair were like this, so profusely intertwined that he could not distinguish the moment in which one had ended and the other had started? How? His instinct had told him not to trust his luck, to wait. His heart, however… oh, his heart had told him to take the chance in front of him. To feel jubilant for every moment, every opportunity. He had taken that chance. And he had lost.

Where was she? Was she alive? Safe?

He couldn't stay there, unmoving, serving as a target for whoever wanted to take him down. Multiple hexes had already kissed his robes. Risky as it may be, he had to help. He had to find her. Putting all his strength together, he stood again, ignoring the pain. He had barely taken a step when he felt someone coming surreptitiously up behind his back. Without stopping to think, he dove sideward onto the ground, panting a hex in the general direction of his aggressor as he fell.

"Do you really think that's enough to take me down? Honestly, cub, you've still got such a long way to go…" a voice behind him spat, barely audible above the infernal noise surrounding them. The tone used could have been mistaken for fatherly, but he knew better. That voice radiated malice, an implicit menace. That voice…

The blood froze in his veins. He knew that voice. He had heard it for the first and last time a little over a month ago. He had heard it that night.

Rolling on the ground, he let his eyes fall on the face he hated the most. Fenrir Greyback.

"And so we meet again… ready to give me just a bit more of pleasure, my charming young man?" the werewolf enquired, licking his lips in an obscene fashion, showing his yellow, rotten teeth. Somehow, this new, mocking, tone instilled even more dread in his adversary. A feeling of deep repulsion took over him, to the point he had to put up a struggle for his face to remain unchanged.

"How…? You were sent to Azkaban…"

Greyback's sadistic smile widened. "Why, I owe that to all of you…" He opened his arms in a large gesture that took in what until not so long ago had been a happy and pacific garden, but now was no more than a macabre scenario for slaughter. "Had it not been for the magnitude of this… ah…" he sighed contentedly, "…event… we would never have been able to evade prison. I guess I'll have to thank you properly this time around, Mr Weasley." A horrendous and wild smile was now playing on his filthy lips. Bill found himself wishing for something, someone to help him… He couldn't let them take Fleur, he couldn't…

Straightening himself with great effort, he stood up, shaking. He had had a very unpleasant encounter with a Death Eater on departing the improvised ballroom with Fleur and had lost her amongst the fighting masses. Of that encounter had resulted a very badly injured leg and an intense back ache, the source of which he hadn't been able to identify yet.

Shaking his head, Bill came back to reality with a very literal bang. The main tent had just exploded, causing various shrieks of panic amongst the crowds that threw themselves, utterly terrified, away from it and into the waiting arms of the Death Eaters. He turned his head just in time to see Greyback throw himself on top of him, trying to reach for his throat. Both wizards collided with the soil with a mighty crash, Bill struggling desperately in his attempts to rid himself of the werewolf. Bill's wand was lying on the ground next to him, but not close enough for him to regain possession of it. As for Greyback, he seemed to neither need nor want to use his own wand. The fresh blood pulsating in the other man's veins called for animal instincts, for ripping flesh instead of enchanting it to sleep, and that was what he intended to do.

Finally reaching his prey's throat, he squeezed it between his hands with all the force he could muster, shutting his eyes and licking his lips in the ecstasy of anticipation. He both felt and heard Bill Weasley gasp for breath for several long instants, until he finally fell unconscious on the ground, offering no more resistance. If he didn't know better, he would say that the eldest of the Weasley siblings was dead, but he could still feel that blood pulsating, driving him mad with each passing moment…

With a moan of sheer pleasure, he dove for his victim's neck, the most pleasurable part of the body for him to bite. As he opened his mouth to give Weasley the final strike, however, he felt something was terribly wrong. He both felt and smelled blood – his own blood – exiting his veins, pouring down his back, slowly at first… then, as the pain increased and spread through his body, more and more and more…

With a terrible jolt of pain, he felt something plunge deep into his aorta. He felt it burst. In a matter of mere moments, he was the one gasping for breath, his fear making his heart beat faster, his blood pouring onto the ground and staining his robes, convulsions spreading through his body.

As Fenrir Greyback collapsed, he got a view of his attacker. A face once calm, understanding and benign disfigured in the here and now by sheer hatred, savage pleasure clear in his features. The reversal of roles between the hunter and its prey after so many years.

He shut his eyes for the very last time, exhaling his last breath. From five metres away, his attacker eyed the corpse with a mixture of deep remorse and relief. Remorse for knowing he had taken a life, gruesome as Greyback might have been. Relief for knowing that that desecrated being would never again befoul anyone's blood or ruin anyone's life as he had ruined his.

He bowed his head for a moment. Around him, the battle was dying out; the invaders were being dominated by people with the same strength of will, the same craving for justice he possessed. He observed from far away as the son of one of his best friends subjugated his attacker, incapacitating him, and smiled against his will, a smile that contained no happiness behind it. If everything went well – and it would – the boy would be able to lead the life he had always desired… the life that he, Remus Lupin, had never had the chance to have due to his condition.

Justice had been done. Striding towards Greyback's body, he conjured a black veil with which he covered the other man, sparing him in death as that man had never spared anyone while he lived. With a sigh, he turned his back to him and headed towards what was left of the tents to help treat the injured. He saw Bill Weasley lying on the ground, being treated by a mediwitch from St Mungo's, one of the few already at the scene of the battle. He'd probably arrived just in time to prevent the worst from happening to his young friend.

Slowly, he raised his eyes to the moon. It was strange, he thought, that something that had brought him so much peace and serenity when he was a kid could convey feelings of such suffering to him as an adult, bearing witness to so many horrendous episodes, and keep peacefully orbiting the Earth in such an oblivious fashion. He eyed it with a determination he hadn't felt in years. One day, he swore to himself, one day he would observe the moon and would think about how good it was to be able to simply look at it, without fear. And he would keep on fighting so that that day could come.

A/N: A big thank you to my beta, Raisinous Fiendling, who helped me with this story.

Hey, HP fan! Welcome!
Uma OS sobre algo que não o Harry, o Ron ou a Hermione, unicamente, é rara de encontrar, então uma sobre o Lupin e o Bill, e criando a sua última luta com o animal que mudou a vida ao primeiro, é ainda mais complicado de encontrar! Mas fizeste um ótimo trabalho com as descrições e emoções da ação, a vingança perante o lobisomem e o respeito/medo da lua. :)

Obrigada Fox! A inspiração para escrever esta história (e a equivalente portuguesa, Lua de Sangue) foi mesmo o facto de, depois do HBP, Lupin e Bill terem um elo em comum, o Greyback. Perguntei-me a mim própria como seria escrever uma personagem como o Greyback e olha, deu nisto!
(Adoro a tua sig *.*)