Chapter Text
~*~
Summer 1976
Remus didn't dare move. He thought that if he moved, he might feel the bed sheets sticking to his back from the sweat, or he might catch a draft from the open window, or the hand on his neck would tighten its grip, not choking him, but maybe the blood would temporarily cease from reaching his brain.
Ian was a year above Remus at The London Behaviour Correctional Facility for Boys. The pair were part of the small handful staying there over the summer. Most others went home to the families who dumped them there in the first place – though, if Remus could guess, they spent little time inside their houses.
Looks-wise, Ian was extremely mediocre. He had dark brown eyes – black, even, in certain lights and quintessentially British skin: pale in the winter then gaining a slight red hue in the summer; and hair, shaved to his scalp. And just like all the other boys, his hands were covered in grimy calluses. Except, Ian was tall and big and stood out like a thumb, sore and throbbing. The facility used his burliness to their advantage – he would lift anything and everything. Hauling crates of food in the dining room, carrying boys from lower years onto the box.
Remus shuddered as he thought of it. He remembered his first time on the box in the Year 9 Easter holiday. He thought it could have been Ian who put him up there but didn't remember. All he did was nick a few fags from Mr Bell’s desk drawer and next thing he knew, he was stood on a platform in the courtyard with a sign around his neck reading ‘I am a thief’, while the other boys threw items of varying outrageousness at him; everything from wet sponges to used condoms.
“You looked lovely today, Rem,” Ian said. “I saw you walking through the quad this morning and all I could think about was how much I wanted to pounce on you – devour you.” Ian squeezed his hand around Remus’ neck before dragging it down his bare chest. Remus felt the jagged skin on the ends of Ian’s fingers trace his collarbones and stomach, their flesh fusing together. And then Ian’s horrid breath smeared its way across the plains of his chest and the inside of his thighs and every time he prayed it would stop, it kept going and going and going. Every touch was a punch to the gut until he was left winded. The air pumped out of his lungs. The blood drained from his veins.
~*~
“Obliviate,” Remus muttered into the slab of foam that served as his mattress. He thought of his wand, collecting dust while bring locked up in Matron’s cupboard. Despite his efforts to rid the evening's events from his mind, it spun around in his head like when he was a child and used to sit in front of the washing machine, fixated on how it whirred for hours on end.
As he lay in bed, he was barely able to keep his eyes open, but he managed to look down, catching a glimpse of his naked vessel of a body. Memories of Ian flashed in his head like a broken floodlight. His thighs were strewn with new cuts, where Ian nicked them with his nails, and long streams of pain seared down his back.
Suddenly, he became very aware of everything around him. The smell of the mouldy walls, which had never bothered him before, stuffed itself into his nostrils, and the loose springs of his mattress dug into his back, making dents in the scratches, which were now swollen and raised.
The room remained unchanged. The window was still cracked, but the sunrise crept through the single-glazed glass. He saw the shadows of people going about their morning from under his ajar door. Anyone could walk in at any second and if they did, they would be horrified by what they saw. He shuffled down the bed on his back and pushed the door shut, locking himself inside. The coldness of the metal door spread from his bare foot all the way up his leg, making his leg hair stand on end.
In a sense, he was lucky. The muggles in charge of the facility tended to avoid him unless absolutely necessary. They deemed his condition risky enough to justify him having his own room. It wasn’t much; by the time he was 13 years old, he could spread his arms to reach the width of it.
But it was all his: the toilet, the shower, the sink, the ripped curtain separating all these things from the bed and barred window.
As he hauled himself out of bed, his legs buckled, and his knees hit the floor with a loud thump. He thankfully managed to steady himself by gripping the toilet seat. His stomach lurched, and his face paled as he vomited into the basin.
After many minutes of retching, he was so empty, like he could disintegrate.
Eventually, he ran the shower and stepped under the head. The water cooled his skin as if it were lava in an ice bath. Ian’s aftershave grasped him, and he was desperate to get rid. His hair was long enough now that pieces of it clung to his forehead and by the time he finished cleansing himself, his soap bar was significantly smaller than when he started. He grabbed his towel as musky droplets ran down his face. Having just recovered from one of his monthly transformations, Ian’s woody, masculine scent seemed to stick particularly well into his brain.
~*~