the_debt_of_time

looking terrified. Drawing Hermione's attention away from Bill, he smiled sadly, trying to
hide his anxious concern. "You're okay? You're not hurt?"
Hermione shook her head. "I'm fine, Remus, are you all right?" She reached up,
tenderly touching the side of his face and turning him toward the light. "You've got a cut
here on your forehead."
He pulled away from her touch, glancing back at Dora as he did so and catching
the tail end of her rolling her eyes at him. Embarrassed, he refocused his attention on
Hermione. "I'm fine. But you're okay?" When she nodded, he asked, "Where's Harry?"
"I've sent young Miss Weasley to bring him here," Minerva said, just as the doors
to the hospital wing opened, revealing the boy in question.
"Harry!" Hermione shouted and leapt from her seat, barrelling past Remus.
He was quick to notice the way Harry clung tightly to Ginny's hand. For a brief
moment, Remus's breath caught in his throat; he almost thought he was looking at James
and Lily. Exhaling, he cleared his head and watched as Harry released Ginny's grip only to
open his arms to Hermione as she flew into them.
"Are you all right?" Hermione asked him.
"I'm fine, how's Bill?" Harry asked, watching anxiously as Ginny moved to stand
beside Ron at the foot of Bill's bed.
Madam Pomfrey was still fussing over the unconscious body of the eldest Weasley
boy, waving her wand, applying ointments to his skin, and stacking potion phials on the
bedside table. "I've done everything I can do, but there's no cure for werewolf bites,
unfortunately."
"But he wasn't bitten," Ron insisted. "He was scratched. And it's not a full moon.
What does that mean?"
All eyes turned to Remus as though he were an expert. Well, he technically was, but
it was annoying that they were looking at him not because of his former post as Defence
Against the Dark Arts professor but because he was the subject matter he had previously
taught.
"He won't be a full werewolf," he informed everyone, sighing. "But that doesn't
mean there won't be some contamination. Those are cursed wounds. He'll have some
wolfish characteristics from now on I suspect, and... and he'll be scarred like that... for
life."