Time seemed to fly after the full moon; the days quickly turned to weeks and before any of them were ready, the dreaded full moon was mere days away from making an appearance. There was nothing Harry could do to stop it from happening. Between classwork, homework, and Quidditch, he barely had time to work on his potion, and it made him irritable. Without Severus’ help, he would have never gotten as much done as he had. As the full moon came closer, he could feel his patience fading a little bit every day. He felt like there was electricity coursing through his veins, regardless of how tired he became. Everything was vivid; his senses, his thoughts and his dreams all seemed to become more intense with every passing night. Food tasted stronger, and though he couldn’t see clearly without his glasses, his vision somehow seemed more… intense. It was almost alarming how strongly he felt things, like the carpet under his bare feet or the taste of a sweet bun.
Remus had proven himself as a good ally and person to confide in; it helped that he was able to relate to everything Harry was saying and give him advice to make things easier. The best part of his week was when he read in the Daily Prophet that a werewolf had been caught near Severus’ place and was being placed in an environment where he could learn to control his new impulses; Harry hoped it was the werewolf that had bitten him. The name Voldemort was also becoming more and more present in the paper. The articles spoke of his attacks on villages and the things he had done to the muggles and muggle-borns. Severus had stared at Lily after reading the latest issue, as though seeing her for the first time.
Then the day came when Severus asked Harry, “Are you ready to take the potion? I’ll go along.”
Harry sighed. “The full moon is tomorrow, so I guess so. Slughorn says something like this will need time to settle into my system.”
He left out the part where it would give him time to recover any unfortunate side effects before the moon actually rose. Harry and Severus had spent hours testing the potion on his blood sample, and it seemed to be doing what it was supposed to do, but they wouldn’t know for sure until he actually consumed it.
“It’s too bad we can’t cure it all together,” Harry muttered to Slughorn when he presented himself to the professor.
“Take it one step at a time, Harry! The rewrites to your DNA would be fatal to reverse, and it would be a painful death,” Slughorn informed the disappointed boy.
It didn’t seem fair to Harry. He just wanted to be normal for once in his life. He had finally found people he fit in with, and now this was happening.
“Let’s get it over with,” Slughorn said. “I need to work on my giggling goo. I’ve been waking in the middle of the night giggling, and yesterday when Professor McGonagall was informing us about a particularly nasty incident in class, I burst into giggles! She wanted to rip my head off.”
Harry silently wished that his own troubles were so small. The dull grey potion sat on the table, and just the sight of it caused his stomach to bubble nervously. Who knew what was going to happen when he drank it?
“Alright, Harry, remember to swallow all of it no matter how bad it tastes, and let us know if you feel any discomfort at all,” Slughorn ordered.
Taking a deep breath, Harry picked up the potion and gulped it all down. At first, the only thing that registered was how bad it tasted—even worse than the time Dudley made him suck on his sweaty sock. Heck, it made the sock seem like a treat. For a few seconds, the taste lingered in his mouth before his stomach violently sent the potion spewing onto the floor. Severus and Slughorn barely managed to avoid the mess.
Harry tried to speak, but this merely resulted in losing his lunch. By the time words could actually come out of his mouth, he was almost too tired to talk, but he knew if he didn’t assure Severus and Slughorn that he was okay, he would be going straight to the hospital wing.
“I’m fine!” Harry gasped as he wiped the tears from his cheeks and slowly glanced up towards Severus’ pale, worried face.
“You should sit down,” Slughorn instructed him. “The potion wasn’t compatible. We’ll need to stabilise it a little more before you try again.”
* * *
The full moon passed, and Harry and Severus got back to the potion with more eagerness than before. Though it had not fully worked this time, it was clear they were close. For the first hour, Harry had actually kept his mind intact—not exactly complete control, but a selective control over certain behaviours.
He was close to figuring it out, he knew he was, but there was something missing, something that would tie everything together, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that the answer was right in front of him. It was for this reason that he felt himself growing more and more frustrated. Experiments were conducted, blood drawn and analysed, and Harry was starting to feel more like a living, breathing pin cushion than a person. He often joked with Severus about being surprised he had any blood left to test.
After several hours of staring at parchment and cauldrons, he found that his vision was blurring, and he felt restless. He still couldn’t figure out why the wolfsbane was reacting to the tarragon. It was obvious this was the reason he’d thrown up, but both ingredients were needed for the potion.
Finally, Harry decided to take a break before he got totally frustrated and destroyed everything.
Severus and Harry made their way to the Great Hall where they had a cup of tea and took a few moments to settle down. By the time Harry had calmed enough to focus once again, it was seven o’clock and there were only a few hours until curfew.
Returning to the classroom, Harry felt his stomach jump into his throat. Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black, and James Potter stood in the room looking at Harry’s notes–the notes that not only stated that he was a werewolf, but also contained information about Remus’ infliction, as well. Sirius and James were glancing back and forth from the notes to each other while Peter was simply walking around nervously, rubbing his hands together in a creepy manner.
“Can I help you?” Severus said, startling James and Sirius from their thoughts and causing cowardly Peter to pale and run from the room like a child caught in the cookie jar.
James and Sirius looked stunned and unable to form words for the first time since Harry had met them.
“I- I-umm, we were just leaving,” James said as the two of them stepped from the room, and Harry could have sworn he heard the boys muttering apologies as they dashed down the corridors clumsily.
Over the next few weeks, Harry found himself wondering if James, Sirius, and Peter were going to tell anyone what they had discovered. As much as he wanted to convince himself that they hadn’t figured it out, the glances they were giving him said otherwise, but they didn’t seem to be watching him with any type of malicious intent. They weren’t treating Remus any differently than usual, either. If anything, James and Sirius seemed to have changed a little bit. They were acting less conceited; it was refreshing to not see James strutting around like he owned the place.
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