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There is a time between the monster and the human where Remus is neither, and both. He is no longer a danger to others, but he also hasn’t regained his human survival instincts. The only person he could truly hurt is himself.
It was in this moment, years ago, that Minerva McGonagall first came upon her werewolf student. Poppy had come to her, worried. They’d never had a werewolf at the school before, and she was terrified those first months when he transformed. She kept a wary and nervous eye to the Shrieking Shack throughout those nights, but still, he had gotout and was somewhere in the Forbidden Forest.
Minerva set off, all those years ago, brave and determined. But as the canopy of the forest hid the moon and blackened the night, as the noises of animals — magical and not, harmless and not — enveloped, her courage faltered. She transformed to her feline form. As a cat, Minerva was fierce, her senses razor sharp.
Also, as a cat, Minerva smelled Remus before she saw him. Dirt and blood—human and animal—but mostly, that particular adolescent stench she’d been familiar with for what felt her entire life. He was lying on the ground, leaves and clumps of soil almost concealing him. He was alive, he was breathing, but he was unconscious. She didn’t know if he had just stumbled here, exhausted, and fell into a deep sleep, or if something more sinister had transpired. She padded to him, silent and alert. If the animal in her had smelled him, there would be other animals out there seeking him out as well.
There were many things she should have done. Apparition on school grounds was out, but she should have levitated him up and takenhim to the castle, but without medical advice, she was hesitant to move him. She should have sent a wand flare to Poppy, who was out searching Hogsmeade and its surroundings, but as she got closer, she saw that he was once again the boy she had got to know only a little this year, and her heart went out to him. She’d never seen this expression on his face while awake, this sadness, this desperation. There had always been a tinge of anxiety and worry there, a secret that big on that small set of shoulders and how could there not be? But this was so much worse.
And then he whimpered in his sleep and the whimper was more from heartache than bodily injury. That’s what she told herself as she gingerly pawed his arms and chest. At first, he flinched against the touch, but not enough to reassure her that he would be able to protect himself from other animal invasions.
She stood on his chest, resisting the urge to knead her paws into him, an instinct that she quite enjoyed in her feline form, though she could never say why. His heart was thumping fast and fierce against the pads of her paws as she circled his heart and then laid herself down over it.
She wasn’t sure just how much protection she could offer, but after a few moments, as his heart rate slowly lowered to match hers, she thought that maybe she wasn’t there to protect him from outside forces as much as she was there to offer him the peace and contentment that cats naturally exude.
She rubbed her chin against his, marking him as hers to the others, tickling her whiskers on his hairless face. And as his heart continued to still to normal levels, and as his whimpers turned to sighs, she began to purr, whether feline emotions, or maternal, she couldn’t say, she just felt very protective as she waited for him to wake.
Somehow she slept, but her senses alerted her when his breathing changed as he began to stir awake himself. There was a glowing mist of fog hovering just above the ground. She opened her eyes to see Remus looking down at her. He looked comically puzzled and she imagined what he would say if she were to transform into her professor self. But then he put his hand on the top of her head, right between her ears and rubbed, and she bent her head down, leaning into him, knowing that she couldn’t transform now, or ever, without alarming him severely.
She stood up and hopped off his chest and waited for him to stand and follow her to the castle. At the Entrance Hall she waited for him to make his way to the Infirmary, where he had been ordered to visit first after each full moon, before she made her way to her quarters.
In the years that followed, there were a handful of times where he would get loose from the Shack and Minerva would go and find him. She usually always found him close to the same spot as that first time, and while she could have notified Poppy or Albus that he could be found there on the nights he got loose, she didn’t. She just went and watched over him, as if that first night when she had marked him as her own had released something in her she didn’t know she’d ever craved or missed.
Motherhood had always been for other people, and she was convinced that in the everyday tediousness of it, she’d be rubbish. But there was something about this boy, this child who, against his will, transformed into an animal that reached into both the human and the feline heart of her. And it didn’t matter that he was a potential danger to her—or anyone else really. And it didn’t matter that he might never know what she did for him—for she knew her presence affected him and soothed him. She would never tell him that she was the cat sitting by him, purring away the anxiety from his rapidly beating heart. She even changed her teaching of Animagi the year she taught it to him and his peers; eliminating her favorite part, the part where she got to show off.
It was still worth it, and to her, necessary. She couldn’t imagine not doing it, not being there when he needed her.
Then, right about the time when children very much don’t want to be mothered, he suddenly stopped needing her. It happened suddenly, and though she often went to the spot he had always been at the end of his transformation, she never saw him again in that needy position. She never understood what happened, what kicked in at his fifth year that hadn’t been there before, but she selfishly admitted to herself that she missed it, missed him, missed being there for him.
And when he came back to teach all those years later, all those lives lost later, and she saw him for the first time since, her heart broke into a million pieces. Every loss, every traumatic transformation showed on his face, in his eyes. All those months, those years when he needed someone, anyone to be there, to soothe his anxiety and fear, and she had done nothing, couldn’t have done anything.
She did what she could without revealing herself that year. They had tea together once a week. When Sirius had broken into the castle, he had come to her worried, anxious and guilty, and she sensed there was something he desperately needed to say, to confess.
Then there was the night, late in the year, when Albus and Poppy had come to her, frantic. Severus had rescued three children from the werewolf, but he was out, he was unmedicated and he was loose. She wasn’t even slightly surprised just who those three children were who had been out of the castle, putting themselves in harm’s way. She sighed; it would be a miracle if they survived their remaining years at Hogwarts. But she’d deal with them later.
She rushed out of the castle and waited until she was in the Forest to transform. She found him in the exact same spot as all those years before when he had been a child. She stood on his chest, looking down on his unconscious form and thought about that first time, how little he had been, how terrified of what he was and what he could do. Now, he was no longer small and terrified, or maybe it was that the worry lines and anxiety had worn so intricately to his very person that he seemed more resigned to it than terrified.
Her heart broke all over again. What does a person have to experience to be resigned to the monster inside them?
She circled his chest a few times before stretching and finally lying over his heart. She rubbed her whiskers against the whiskers on his chin, wishing there was a way to heal the wounds while knowing that some scars can never be vanquished. She knew deep inside her that this was more than likely the last time she would be able to be there for him in this way and she sighed, filling her purr with all the love and devotion she had ever had for the boy he was then and the man he had become. She knew that as much as his continuing suffering haunted her, he was still incredibly brave and strong to have gone through all he had and still survived, had remained brave and true and had never given over to the monster he'd been made into, or the things that people thought of his kind.
She was so incredibly proud of him.
And when she woke up, she saw him open his eyes too and, seeing her, break out in a big grin that lit up his whole scarred face.
“Why, hello there, old friend. I was hoping I’d see you again.”
She tentatively stroked his face with her paw. They looked at each other for a moment before she got up and he followed her to the castle.
Later that day she heard that he had resigned his professor position and she went to him, as his colleague and friend, and tried to talk him out of it.
“Remus, you can’t!” she insisted, bursting into his chambers.
“I have to. I almost…"
“But you didn’t.”
"I could have… and it was Harry. Harry, the person I made an oath to protect, the one person I have left who ties me to… to… all I lost…”
“Oh Remus, don’t you understand? That’s exactly why you need to stay. Do you have any idea how many stupid and reckless things he and his friends get up to on an almost daily basis? How are you going to protect him out there when it’s here he is, here you belong?”
Remus looked down at his books. “I have to, for the good of the entire school. Every student needs Hogwarts—now more than ever—and how many parents are going to keep their kids here after they know?”
Minerva waved this away because she didn’t have an answer.
He closed his beat-up case and headed for the door. Stopping, with his hand at the handle, he turned to Minerva.
“Before I go, I want to say something I should have said years ago.”
“Yes?” Minerva asked.
“Thank you. For everything, for being you, both as you are now, and as you are in the mornings that I most needed you, this one, and all the ones of my childhood.”
“Wha…” she stammered. “I… wha… how did you know?” she asked, giving up the pretense.
“I always knew it was no normal cat, but I didn’t know it was you until Sirius and James showed me a picture of you in the Animagi Registry in our fifth year.”
She was curious to why James and Sirius were looking into Animagi, but it didn’t really matter when she realized that he’d known for most of his life.
“You were a tremendous help to me and my state of mind when no one else could be," he continued. "I’ve always been incredibly grateful for that. And I wanted you to know. I wanted you to know also that the memory of you; your kindness all the years since, have sustained me when the world and the monster I am gets too much. I imagine this morning’s memory will have to help me endure for a bit longer now.”
As tears sprung to Minerva’s eyes, she turned away. Words still failed her. What could she say? It was nothing. No, she’d never say that. It was my pleasure. She shivered, what message would that send? That she got pleasure out of watching his suffering? Furthest from it.
He circled around her so that she couldn’t hide and took her in his arms. Her head rested on his chest and she marveled that his heart sounded as familiar to her human self as to the feline. She fought the urge to reach up and rub her nose against his chin, against the urge to mark him as hers.
“Remus, I’ve always been particularly protective of you. I am incredibly proud of the person you have become. If there was more I could do, I surely would.”
He continued to hold her. “This is enough.”