Title: And When I Have Lost Everything I Will Remember This
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Remus; Sirius, the Marauders, Mad-Eye Moody, Tonks
Challenge/Prompt: paliphrase, “Never”
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Gen [hints at het]
Copyright: Extracts taken from HP books 3-7
Spoilers: If you haven’t read the Deathly Hallows and wish to remain shiny and spoiler-free, don’t read this.
Summary: Eight ficlets. Bits and pieces of Remus’ life that JK hinted at but didn’t write.
Author’s Notes: Partially inspired by a conversation I had with leiascully, and therefore written for her, especially the end, but also because I just wanted to write this. It’s time I started messing around with Remus :D Yay angst. Although I did cry quite a bit when writing ficlet 8.



One.
It was Greyback who bit me.

It was a strange feeling, to be five years old, and not even completely comfortable with having a human body yet, and then to feel something in that human body twist and indefinably break forever. To become something new, with sharp edges too frightening to touch. And not really to understand any of it.

Remus has heard the story several times, because he asked his parents over and over in the tone usually reserved for children whining “but why can’t I have it?”, until they gave in and told him what he wanted to know. How Fenrir Greyback, all teeth and fur and blood, ran across the back garden. August, nineteen sixty-five, a hot night and the window to Remus’ room was open. There were wards, charms, but werewolves aren’t affected by magic in the same way others are, and the wolf could smell its prey mingled with roses from the garden.

Whether it was something to do with his new lycanthropy, or a defence mechanism, or because Remus was just too young, he doesn’t remember being bitten. He doesn’t remember waking up and screaming, with Greyback’s sharp yellow teeth embedded in the soft skin of his tiny arm. He doesn’t remember his parents crashing through the door, dressed in pyjamas but their wands held high. He doesn’t remember the jets of light as they forced Greyback out of the family home, red sparks and shooting flames and the window broken all over his bedroom floor, or the wolf leaping and disappearing into the night.

Remus has been told the story enough times that he can imagine his mother in tears, cradling her bleeding son, attempting to staunch the flow of red but unable to because it was a magical wound and they don’t conform to the usual laws of Healing. He can imagine his father’s white face, shaking, apologising over and over again, blaming himself. He can even imagine himself, too young to understand, whimpering with pain and with the feeling spreading through him. He can remember the feeling.

[It’s impossible to describe, through Sirius, James and Peter, eyes shining eagerly, once begged him to; as though the comic tragedy that was his life was, for them, simply an entertaining horror story. So he told his friends that the feeling was like every bone in his body splintering, reshaping itself into something different, and snapping back together; that it felt like someone was dragging his stomach out of his mouth and his fingernails were being pulled off and someone had stuck something sharp into his eyeballs and was twisting it; that suddenly he could smell in colours and sounds and shapes and it made his head swim and his brain felt like it had turned to porridge and was trickling down his spine. But it didn’t make a whole lot of sense and he couldn’t say anything more coherent; and Sirius had a huge grin on his face and said: “that’s so cool”. And Remus wanted to correct him but he didn’t know how to describe the werewolf settling into his system and making itself at home, all over the course of one blindingly painful night, in a way that wouldn’t make the whole thing sound glamorous and gory and like it came out of a cheap muggle horror film.]

He was forbidden to pick the scab on his arm. Awkward, there were clearly toothmarks etched onto his skin, the scab dark black, the skin around it an anxious sort of pinky-red. Had he been a little older, Remus might have appreciated what an impressive wound it was, but at that age all he could really focus on was the fact that it itched and his mother flinched every time she saw it. It scarred, but not that badly, a surprisingly nondescript scar given what it really meant. When he really thinks about it, Remus only had five years of something resembling humanity, though his memories of those five years mostly seem to be vague, pastel-coloured blurs, and involve a lot of knitwear, and songs that he can no longer remember the words to.

For Remus’ first transformation, the Ministry sent an auror down to keep an eye on proceedings, to make sure the young and disorientated werewolf didn’t try to escape. His mother made his favourite food for dinner and the auror, a nice enough middle-aged man with some truly impressive scars of his own, twisting his mouth into a sort of grimace that was both disturbing and fascinating, knelt down and took his right eye out, much to the enthralled Remus’ horror and excitement. Back then, they didn’t make glass eyes with x-ray vision, but when tapped the iris changed colour and that was impressive enough for Remus.

At sundown they walked him down to the garden shed, which was covered in so many charms that a fully-grown hippogriff with a flame-thrower wouldn’t have been able to escape, and his parents hugged him and Mr Moody gave him what was probably meant to be a kind smile, if his mouth had still been capable of it. And then the door shut and clicked and for the first time in his life he felt his bones lengthen and reshape themselves, fur burst through his skin, his teeth lengthen and sharpen, claws shoot from his fingernails, his back break and mend itself into a sort of arch. For the first time in his life he threw back his head and howled; he was small, barely more than a cub, but he was angry with the anger of centuries.

Two.
It seemed impossible that I would ever be able to come to Hogwarts.

By the time he is eleven, Remus has got over having temper tantrums every full moon, sobbing and screaming and clinging to his mother, refusing to go obediently into the garden shed, magically expanded on the inside but the walls were splintery and blood-stained after six years of a furious wolf trying to bite through them. He no longer clutches his parents’ hands, sobbing I don’t want to, please don’t make me, as though they could stop the transformations and the accompanying pain with a simple smile.

He is quiet, with a habit of curling up in corners and avoiding people’s eyes.

Albus Dumbledore’s eyes were almost too twinkly when he came over for tea. It was midmonth, and the half-moon was grating its way down Remus’ spine, and he wasn’t sure he was making the sort of impression he was meant to be making, barely capable of returning Professor Dumbledore’s kind smile and stirring too much sugar into his teacup until the milky drink was impossible for human – or even werewolf – consumption. His parents looked grave and the discussion flicked back and forth, as to whether he’d be able to attend Hogwarts without a) endangering himself or b) endangering everyone else in the nearby vicinity. Dumbledore was understanding, frighteningly sympathetic, and his blue eyes twinkled at Remus until he flushed and knocked his tea over and reflected that he probably shouldn’t be allowed out of the house, ever.

Remus is not entirely sure that he wants to go to Hogwarts anyway. It sounds large and generally intimidating, and there are going to be too many people and all of them are going to look at him and he might be forced to make conversation with them and everyone knows that werewolves are not known for their social skills. He sits in the corner of a carriage and stares at the countryside flash past for what feels like hours, ignoring the other children chattering excitedly about what they did over the summer and what they intend to do now.

His parents would have been disappointed if he’d told them that he didn’t want to go. They met at Hogwarts, and they don’t seem to understand that he would rather spend most of his life hiding in his room than actually leaving the house and being expected to deal with people. Or maybe they do understand a little too well, and that’s why they wrote to Dumbledore and asked him about whether there could be arrangements regarding their son’s unusual condition. And Dumbledore, empathetic bastard, came up with a way that means Remus can attend, and now he is here, with a trunk full of books and robes and things, and everyone else is busy making friends while he attempts to sink into the upholstery and simply not exist.

A girl in Remus’ compartment lets out a piercing shriek of laughter that makes his ears hurt. He isn’t used to people his own age. His mother was always sending him out to play with the local wizarding children when he was younger, but they’d always look at his scars and he’d be scared of hurting them and so he gave up. Seven years in a giant castle in the middle of nowhere avoiding talking to people looks potentially quite difficult, but Remus is sure that he can manage it.

However, the girl will not stop giggling and all her friends are giggling too and it is making Remus’ head hurt and so he stumbles his way out of the compartment, tripping over his own feet and feeling simultaneously too big and too small and completely mad. It’s cold and narrow in the corridor but at least it’s quiet and isn’t full of noisy teenage girls all of whom are wearing so much mascara it’s impossible to imagine how they keep their eyes open.

A door slides open somewhere to his right and a tall boy with too much black hair walks out, doesn’t look where he’s going, and runs right into Remus. Werewolves are vicious and excellent at general maiming, but they don’t have fabulously quick reflexes, so before Remus knows what’s happening, he’s fallen backwards to the floor.

“Shit! Sorry,” the other boy says, holding out a hand to drag Remus to his feet. Remus is about to stammer some kind of thanks, or an “it’s all right, really”, when the other boy notices the barely-healed scar that runs from the thin web of skin between Remus’ thumb and forefinger, runs right up his hand, and disappears under the cuff of his jumper. “Cool scar,” the boy adds.

Remus knows that he is flushing, and is depressed by that because when he blushes it makes the white scars on his face stand out more than ever. He stammers out something that sounds embarrassingly like “th- thanks”, but it’s all right because the other boy isn’t listening, instead running a hand back through shoulder-length dark hair to get it out of his eyes.

“I’m Sirius Black,” he says, with a winning smile, and before Remus can even offer his own name in return, or pretend that he has somewhere he really has to be, he is being pulled into the compartment.

Three.
I was terrified they would desert me the moment they found out what I was.

It the day after the moon and Remus makes his way through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor common room about an hour after everyone has returned from dinner. His joints are still aching and making faintly disconcerting creaking noises whenever he moves, and his teeth still feel uncomfortably like they don’t quite fit in his mouth, but these are after-effects that he is depressingly used to by now.

Peter is poring over his Potions homework with a perplexed expression, unconsciously chewing on ink-stained fingernails. James is actually doing some work for once, making a very valiant effort to ignore the fact that a bored Sirius is idly tickling every bit of James he can reach with the end of his quill. Remus watches the three of them for a moment with something that is very almost a smile on his sore mouth, before he makes his way over. Slow, steady, a measured pace.

“Remus!” Sirius’ smile has a few too many teeth in it, all of them even and sparkling white from his perfectly bred Pureblood family. Remus has spent more hours resenting those teeth than is probably healthy.

“Did I miss anything good?” Remus asks, collapsing into an armchair. He often uses this tactic when coming back after being rather conspicuously absent for twenty-four hours. James and Sirius have usually done something vile to Severus Snape, or discovered a new passage out of the school, or done something unbelievably creative with dungbombs on the Charms corridor, and in recounting this eagerly they forget to question him too closely about where he’s been.

“Nah.” James looks a little dejected and tired, and his eyes flick over to where a group of their fellow second-year girls are sitting by the fire, giggling and toasting marshmallows.

“James has decided that Lily Evans is definitely the one for him,” Sirius tells Remus in a stage whisper, “He’s been spending the whole day mooning over her.”

“I thought he liked Mary Macdonald,” Remus whispers back, noting James’ shoulders tensing over his parchment.

“Not anymore,” Peter says, a gleeful tone to his voice.

“Now it’s Lily and Lily alone,” Sirius adds. “Which is all very tragic, seeing as how she won’t even give him the time of day…”

“Say another word and I’ll knock your teeth out, Black,” James growls, in that irritated tone he saves solely for Sirius, blotting his essay by pressing down too hard with his quill. Surprisingly enough, Sirius obediently shuts up, leaning back in his chair with a greatly put-upon sigh, turning his eagle-feather quill over and over with his long, slim fingers. Remus lets out a breath he hadn’t even realised he was holding. His friends are too distracted by James’ crush on Lily Evans – who is a really nice girl, and doesn’t deserve to have James obsessing over her – to remember that Remus has missed yet another day of classes.

Or, at least, so he thinks.

Sirius – clearly still very bored – turns his full attention onto Remus.

“So, which of your relatives is dying this month?” he asks brightly.

James shoots him a warning look, which Sirius blithely ignores, sheer boredom overwhelming the few vestiges of tact Sirius has managed to retain.

“Is it your aunt again? Or maybe your grandmother, she hasn’t had a turn yet.”

Remus hopes that he doesn’t look as dizzy and pale as he feels. His stomach is contracting with fear, and one hand is clenching too hard on his knee.

“Sirius,” James snarls, perhaps noticing how Remus has turned chalk-white and looks like he’s going to throw up any second, intervenes. “Leave him alone.”

“I’m only saying-” Sirius begins, but he’s looking a little shifty now, faltering under James’ glare. James’ glare is practically a physical presence now, and Remus feels sicker than ever. Peter’s eyes are wide and round and he’s just staring at James and Sirius now, mouth slightly open. Remus wants to do the same, but instead he gets to his feet.

“I’m going to bed,” he announces, clenching a hand around the chairback (and almost ripping into the upholstery with fingers that are still unnaturally strong) to keep himself upright. “Goodnight.”

The words taste strange in his mouth, he feels like he’s going to fall over, but somehow Remus manages to stumble across the common room, up the stairs, and into their dormitory. He’s liked having friends, even if all that friendship was fiercely underlined with the mantra that they must never know. It’s too late now. If they’re getting close to figuring out the truth… Remus will have to leave Hogwarts, and while that thought stabs and twists something in his chest that really, really hurts, he’s more devastated at the thought of losing Peter, and James, and Sirius.

The curtains around his four-poster seem oppressive and too dark and he winds up in some claustrophobic space between awake and asleep and when he half-hears the others clattering their way into bed, he’s not sure if he imagines the whisper of sorry, Remus.

Four.
But, of course, they… worked out the truth.

Remus has carefully made a point of being prepared for every situation. It’s part of the shyness that he can’t quite shake off, the wanting to curl up in a little ball under his bed some days, and not come out at all. Of course, they frown on that at Hogwarts, and so he has done his very best to pretend that he is sociable, sane, and very and completely normal. He spends so much time pretending that Remus wonders if anyone even knows the real him, if his friends have ever seen a glimpse of who he really is (but that isn’t a comforting thought, and he tries not to have it too often).

Part of the being prepared for everything means that he has planned out several conversations on the subject of… being a werewolf. While he hopes he’ll have covered his tracks, James and Sirius are the cleverest students in the year, and Peter is more observant than they all give him credit for, and he goes missing once a month, always at the same sort of time, and sooner or later someone is going to put two and two together and come up with wolf. Remus just hopes he’ll have long enough to explain himself before it is spread round the school and he is asked to leave.

He can vividly see Sirius’ face twisting up with disgust, Peter turning away with some strange mix of fear and dislike, James shaking his head and asking Sirius why he even bothered talking to the weird-looking scarred boy on the train in the first place. And that’s the most palatable scenario. He has darker, more dangerous fears.

In reality, the whole thing is so different that when it begins, Remus doesn’t even notice.

They’re lying around in the dormitory, just the four of them. Christmas has been and gone but the whole room still smells faintly of brandy anyhow, and James is complaining about how many relatives he was swamped with over the holidays, how there was never a moments’ peace and quiet, and how he is so glad to be back at school. Remus watches the tightness in Sirius’ mouth and suddenly realises that Sirius has not said one word about his own holidays; not about what presents he received, or whether the food was any good, or how his parents/grandparents/cousins drove him up the wall. Not one word.

“What about you?” James rolls onto his stomach and fixes Remus with a firm stare. “How were your family?”

“They’re all right,” Remus replies. The Lupins are a quiet lot; stiff upper lips formed in plaster casts, and much preferring the eat-rather-than-make-small-talk method of doing Christmas.

Sirius is looking thoughtful now, and much less tense.

“Aren’t about seven of them dying of horrible diseases?” he enquires. Peter gives an anxious sort of wriggle and James bites his lower lip. Remus struggles to find words, mouth moving uselessly.

“Look, Remus,” James begins, obviously thinking it would be more sensible if he spoke rather than Sirius, “You’re a really, really godawful liar. Sorry, but you are. It’s a pity and it’s going to lead to a few awkward situations for us in the future, but you couldn’t lie to save your life.”

“What-” Remus realises, with a sort of sickening crunch somewhere in the region of his ribcage, what’s coming next.

“We know you’re a werewolf,” Sirius explains in a matter-of-fact sort of tone.

“It was rather obvious,” Peter adds, shifting uncomfortably. “Sorry.”

Remus thinks that he is actually going to be sick, or possibly just pass out completely. He realises, in a detached sort of way, that he is shaking uncontrollably. He can’t seem to form a coherent sentence, can’t think of anything to defend himself with. His mind is blank with shock and for a horrible second he can feel hot tears burning in the back of his throat.

“I’ll just-” he begins, wondering exactly what will happen to him when he’s thrown out of Hogwarts. “I’ll just be-”

It takes a Herculean effort to get off his bed and stand upright, and he sways slightly.

“Where are you going?” Peter asks tentatively. Remus isn’t entirely sure, so he sits down again. His brain feels like it’s been taken out and replaced with jelly. Squishy, inarticulate jelly.

“This is so cool,” James says, apparently ignoring the fact Remus is doing his best to have a stroke. “I mean, Remus, it’s so unbelievably cool.”

“It is?” Remus asks faintly.

“Definitely,” Sirius cuts in. He’s grinning in a slightly unsettling way.

“I always wanted to be a werewolf,” James says in a nostalgic sort of way. “I read this book when I was about eight, there was this wolf bloke in it. By day he was all mild-mannered, worked for the Ministry and everything, and then at night, he used to… oh, it was awesome.” He sits up straight, apparently seized by a sudden exciting thought. “Hey, Remus, you don’t think you could-”

“No.” Remus finds his voice again, with difficulty. “Definitely not, James.”

In all his carefully laid plans, the first question his friends asked was always could you please get out of my sight and never darken my doorway again? It was never oh, could you please bite me so I can become a wolf-man? He supposes that he’s greatly underestimated teenage boys.

“Have you ever, you know,” Sirius leans closer, a conspiratory expression on his face, “Killed anyone?”

“No!” Remus exclaims, horrified at the mere thought.

“Never torn anyone’s throat out in a fit of passion?”

“Steady on Sirius, this is Remus we’re talking about,” James interrupts, laughing. “The boy who has jumpers that match his socks.”

Sirius only looks disappointed for a moment.

“Do you…” Peter trails off, then cups his hands around his mouth and does a pretty passable howl.

Remus nods, and watches his friends’ eyes shine with badly suppressed excitement. He isn’t sure if he should be feeling grateful or terrified at this moment in time. Apparently, he still has friends. Unfortunately, they seem to like him more now that they’re certain he’s a homicidal creature of darkness. Remus isn’t sure what that says about his taste in companions. The fact it’s all out in the open makes him feel both relieved and more anxious than ever, and he has to get up quickly and stumble to the bathrooms in time to be spectacularly sick.

“Is he ok?” Sirius shouts. James pokes his head around the door.

“You know those werewolves,” he shouts back, “Such delicate constitutions…”

Five.
I think Dumbledore might have hoped I would be able to exercise some control over my best friends. I need scarcely say that I failed dismally.

Sirius looks faintly sheepish as he, James and Remus make their way down the staircase from Dumbledore’s office. James doesn’t look the least bit concerned and Remus is feeling faintly dizzy after yet another interview with Dumbledore’s blue eyes staring at them all in disappointment. Remus stammering helplessly no, professor, I had no idea that they were planning this. Trying to convey without words that he would try and stop his friends next time. Though he’s beginning to realise that there is no force on Earth that can stop James Potter and Sirius Black from Doing Exactly What They Like.

There’s a silence that is amused on James and Sirius’ half, and irritated on Remus’, but nobody breaks it. Remus is beginning to seriously resent the gold shield pinned to his chest. It seems to cause nothing but trouble. He can’t stop his friends from their mad plans, because if he does he’ll lose them, but if he doesn’t then he has to cope with the looks his teachers give him. A mixture of pity and exasperation, and Remus isn’t sure which one he hates more.

Losing his temper with the whole idea of being a prefect, which is completely ruining fifth year for him, Remus unpins the badge and throws it down the stairs in front of him. It makes a dejected clattering sound as it falls round a bend and out of sight, and Sirius and James turn to look at him in amusement.

“Nice try, Moony,” James offers. Remus frowns, and then looks down at his chest. Somehow, the badge is pinned to his robes again.

“You can’t get rid of it,” Sirius explains briskly. “Stops you shirking your duties, or other students stealing it.”

“And you would know this because?” Remus is almost certain that he doesn’t want to know the answer, but he asks the question anyway.

“Well…” James and Sirius exchange awkward looks. “We tried to borrow it once. For a prank.” James has the grace to look slightly ashamed, “But it wouldn’t leave your bedside table.”

Remus laughs, but there’s no humour in it. He loves James and Sirius, as brothers and friends and God knows what else, but sometimes he is tired of them and their constant need to break rules, to push boundaries, to make life impossible for everyone around them. Just for once…

“You’re not angry, Moony, are you?” Sirius has that kicked-dog expression on his face, grey eyes big and positively swimming with guilt, or, at least, imagined guilt. Sirius Black, able to lie, not only through his teeth, but through every single pore of his body.

Remus sighs.

“No, I’m not angry,” he says. “I’d like it, though, if… just for once… you’d…” Words fail him. They always do. For some stupid reason, probably because he’s so very desperate to retain their friendship, he can never tell James and Sirius off. He can’t deduct points. He can’t even tell Professor McGonagall about the stupidly dangerous schemes they come up with when he actually knows about them. He can only remain silent, and look vaguely wounded. The thought of James and Sirius and Peter turning their backs on him, giving him up as a stuffy lost cause, is one that physically hurts Remus more than any moonlit transformation.

It’s bloody emotional blackmail, is what it is.

And the worst thing is that James and Sirius have no idea that they’re doing it.

“Oh, don’t, Moony.” Sirius is looking more kicked-dog than ever, and even James looks awkward. Remus lives for these moments sometimes. When, by looking generally dejected and futile and miserable, he can induce some genuine guilt in his wayward friends. It’s a lovely feeling, and more than makes up for the times when they’re running down the corridor under James’ cloak, laughing hysterically, and he can’t stop them even though he knows that McGonagall is going to look over her glasses at him the next day and ask him why.

At the bottom of the stairs, they almost run into a man walking up them.

“Should watch where you’re going,” he says in a voice that’s a deep, rumbling growl, words spit out from a mouth that’s more a twisted rip in his face than anything else. One of his eyes is glass, and brilliant blue, and seems to be staring through them all. Remus resists the insane urge to look down and find out if there’s something fascinating written on his lungs (maybe I’m a werewolf! or, more probably, I’m a pushover!)

“Ah, young Lupin.” The magical eye rests on his face, and Remus manages a weak smile.

“Er… hello, sir.” The ‘sir’ pops out of its own accord, and Remus wonders exactly when he became afraid of Moody, the auror who spent a good two years supervising his earliest transformations.

Moody seems to register that he’s coming down the stairs from Dumbledore’s office.

“Not in trouble, are you?” he rumbles, fixing both eyes in a rather penetrating death-stare on Remus’ face, as though he can see right through to his brain, and all the lies he’s ever told, and the innumerable times he’s covered up for James and Sirius.

“N-no sir,” Remus breathes, apparently aged seven again, and hating himself for it.

“Good.” Moody gives something that might tentatively be called a smile. There are teeth in it, anyhow. “Get going! And stay vigilant!”

He begins clunking his way up the stairs. Remus, hoping he isn’t flushing too much, turns to look at James and Sirius, fully expecting one or both of them to come out with something along the lines of: he’s a nutter, isn’t he?

The words don’t come. In fact, both boys look rather awed.

“You know Mad-Eye Moody?” Sirius breathes.

“Er… yes.” Remus manages a small smile. His friends continue to look impressed, and Remus remembers ah, yes, of course, career counselling last week. And most boys in the year seem to have decided that they want to be aurors. Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody is as much of a hero as any Quidditch player at the moment. It’s rather sweet. Remus doesn’t quite share the hero-worship his classmates do, if only because he rather suspects Moody has seen him naked and bloody on several occasions. He feels embarrassment more than any kind of admiration.

“You didn’t tell us you knew him, Moony,” James says, looking suddenly very serious. “I’m wounded, I tell you, wounded.”

“You’re not supposed to keep any secrets from us,” Sirius adds. “You said you wouldn’t. What should we do to him, Prongs?”

James’ hazel eyes narrow. And Remus, although he doesn’t have any cool werewolf reflexes, has learned rather a lot about Sirius Black and James Potter, over the last five years. So he moves a split second before they both move to jump on him, and instead tears off down the corridor, giving himself a moment’s head start before a laughing James and Sirius start running after him.

Six.
Yes, I knew him. Or I thought I did.

It is a full moon on the night of October thirty-first, nineteen eighty-one, and therefore Remus has the best Halloween costume in most of England. He is locked in the basement of the Order’s headquarters, with a dozen strong charms on the door and Emmeline Vance and Dedalus Diggle standing watch, should he try to escape. The wolf can sense that things are different, slams itself against the walls until its bones shatter and blood gets in its eyes. It growls between pointed teeth, tips back its head and howls. Every inch of it can feel something, something big building and breaking apart, but it’s too tired and too full of kill kill kill blood tear rip bite shred tangle slash wrench break kill kill kill to analyse what it means.

And by the time Remus is human again, bruised and bloody and feeling rather like he’s spent the night in a muggle blender, it is too late.

Emmeline cradles him in deceptively strong arms, forces healing potion that burns and smokes slightly down his throat, and Remus whimpers, some strange cross between a man and a wolf cub for a little while longer, curled up and in pain and still feeling something different and not knowing what. Dedalus makes him a cup of tea, there’s a strange expression on his face, sort of like glee and misery mixed up together into something uncomfortable-looking. Remus wraps himself up in a worn jumper with a hole that James made in the elbow and drinks his tea obediently while he pulls himself back together.

“What’s happened?” he asks, when words become possible again.

[With hindsight, Remus thinks that he would like to have stayed forever in that moment, hot mug in his hands, steam in his eyes, dressed the faded green jumper and a pair of holey jeans Sirius had leant him, feet bare on the cold flagstone floor. The few vague minutes before the world as he knew it came crashing inelegantly down.

Emmeline and Dedalus were sympathetic. Calm. They explained, as best they could, that Voldemort had been defeated, and Remus grinned, not understanding, unable to comprehend why they weren’t more excited. And then it spilt out, cracked words, James and Lily were dead, Harry had withstood Avada Kedavra, and no one knew why, and… here Emmeline got up to pace and Dedalus look uncharacteristically grave and became fascinated in his own knees. And Sirius Black, James Potter’s best friend, best man at the wedding, Harry Potter’s godfather, the boy who’d pulled Remus into his compartment on the first day of school and befriended him instantly, the man who rode a flying motorbike and had fought so bravely alongside them in the Order… Sirius Black had sold Lily and James Potter to Voldemort.]

Remus lets his tea crash to the floor, spilling across the cold flagstones and the hot liquid scalds his bare toes. He gets to his feet, nearly falls, grabs a nearby table to hold himself upright. Emmeline’s eyes are tear-filled when she looks at Remus, her dark hair falling around her cheeks, grief raw on her face.

“But… but how can it have been Sirius?” Remus asks, trembling, begging them to be wrong.

“The Fidelus charm,” Emmeline explains in a quivering voice. “Sirius was the secret-keeper. He’s the only one who could have told… told You-Know-Who.”

There is silence in the kitchen, and Remus can feel his legs trying to give out beneath him, his legs encased in Sirius’ jeans, and the thought makes him physically sick.

“I’m going after him,” Remus says. The wolf isn’t quite gone yet, the snarl that escapes from his lips is barely human, and he’s shaking, actually shaking, with anger. There will be time for misery later, but right now he is nothing but blind white fury.

“Half the Order’s out looking,” Dedalus says in a placating tone, standing close enough to show solidarity but having enough sense not to touch Remus. Bloodlust is raw and hot in Remus’ veins, he imagines ripping Sirius’ throat out with his teeth, with his human teeth, and the idea is disturbingly appealing.

His friends… James, and Lily… and Sirius, who he trusted perhaps above all others. Grief, terrible, yawning grief, takes over the anger, makes it cold and grey and suffocating.

“You should go,” he murmurs, finding his voice. “Help with the search. Or celebrate. Celebrate that Voldemort’s gone.”

Emmeline and Dedalus look at him in concern.

“If you’re sure…” Dedalus begins.

“I’ll be fine.” Remus forces a smile onto his face. “Just need to…”

The other two seem to understand, and Remus waits until they’re gone before he sinks to the floor, pressing the back of his hand against his quivering mouth. There’s hot tea seeping into the jeans, and he’s weak and tired and still not quite right, and somehow everything has fallen apart without him being able to help or hinder it in any way at all.

Remus didn’t cry when Gideon and Fabian Prewett were found, barely recognisable as human beings when the Death Eaters had finished with their bodies. Remus didn’t cry when his own parents were killed, caught in a random attack in Canterbury. He didn’t even cry when Frank and Alice Longbottom were rushed into St Mungo’s, staring at things that weren’t there. But he cries now. Sits on the cold floor, drenched in tea, covers his face with his hands and sobs his heart out.

By the time the news arrives about Peter Pettigrew, the dead muggles, and Sirius Black laughing all the way to Azkaban, Remus Lupin has cried all the tears he has. He is a different man now; hardened, quiet, distrusting. Alone.

Seven.
Lie low at Lupin’s for a while.

Voldemort is back. And Sirius is sitting on one of Remus’ kitchen chairs, tipping it back on two legs, looking faintly mutinous. Dumbledore has ordered Sirius to stay here, and Remus wouldn’t mind an old friend sleeping on his sofa for a while – he’s almost indecently glad of the company, he’s sick of people flinching every time they see him – except that Sirius is silent and grave and giving every impression of wanting to be somewhere very far away.

Remus makes tea because that’s really all he knows how to do, and watches Sirius’ tense shoulders, hunched under a shirt so filthy that Remus wants to burn it on sight, and doesn’t say anything at all. They sit at the kitchen table, not looking each other in the eye, sipping tea that’s too hot and too bitter and too black, and all in all practically undrinkable, because it’s easier than talking.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that something’s been lost in the last thirteen years. Azkaban ripped the glow from Sirius’ eyes and it hasn’t exactly been a picnic for Remus either, quickly realising that real life is nothing like Hogwarts and nothing like the situation during a war either; that people don’t have to like you just because you’re a nice person and are capable of brushing your hair more than once a week. But it’s more than just what life threw at them. Remus spent innumerable years blaming Sirius for the deaths of James and Lily, and although he’s glad that Sirius is innocent, he hates that now he has to blame himself. For not being careful enough, for not noticing the signs that Peter was slipping from them, for obviously being so untrustworthy that his best friends in the whole world couldn’t tell him that their plan had changed. Remus clenches his teeth and realises just in time that he’s biting the teacup; he carefully puts it down before he can bite right through the china.

They hugged each other, there in the Shrieking Shack: a touch of desperation and shock and loss and what they believed would be triumph. It was something momentary and much needed; but Remus can’t help wondering how much friendship, if any, remains between them now. If they’re something so much more complicated than they used to be. Sirius’ hands are trembling around his mug, he’s holding it so carefully as though afraid it will fall and smash. Remus won’t mind if it does. He’s got used to repairing things technically too old for repair, for making things last longer than they were ever meant to last. He can’t afford anything new anymore. And it’s not just the material things that are the problem.

Words dry up and turn to dust in his throat. How was being on the run for you? Go anywhere nice? Remus wonders in a blackly amused sort of way if that’s the most inappropriate conversation opener ever, possibly only beaten by: so, how was Azkaban? The moon was two days ago, he still feels weak, there’s a scratch above his elbow that doesn’t want to heal, making every movement of his arm hurt. There’s still something monstrous under his eyes, stuck between his teeth, and things were jagged enough before Sirius arrived.

“You could do better than this, Moony,” Sirius says softly, not looking up but managing to encompass all of Remus’ cramped flat, full of furniture that wasn’t close to new when it was bought, books with broken spines, clothes made up more of darning and repairs than whatever they were made of to begin with. He knows that Sirius isn’t launching a personal attack, but it doesn’t stop Remus feeling sixteen again, with his second-hand textbooks and the dressrobes that were so hideous they were shoved down the back of his trunk and never worn, not ever. Sirius and James were dashing, looking like twins in bottle green, dark hair sweeping perfect cheekbones, with pretty girls to drag to the Yule Ball. Remus hid in his room with a book and pretended that none of it mattered anyway.

“Yes, but not all of us are the sole heir of filthy rich Pureblood families,” Remus returns. They’re the words of his sixteen-year-old self, but with eighteen years of bitterness on top of them, and they come out sounding resentful and cold.

Sirius’ face darkens, making his eyes look more dead and sunken, his hollow cheeks even more gaunt.

“Blame me for fucking everything, the way you always do.” And his voice is a cruel snarl, a tone Remus has never heard before, an edge battered into him through betrayal and imprisonment and never staying in one place for long. It rakes cold fingernails down Remus’ spine. “It’s my fault no one ever looked twice at you at school, my fault Snape won’t talk to you, my fault Lily and James are dead, my fault-”

“Don’t.” It’s a simple word and barely a plea, but Sirius sighs and looks faintly ashamed of himself. Maybe he realises that things are edgy enough without either of them exacerbating the situation.

“Jesus, Moony.” Sirius runs a hand across his face and Remus can’t help something that’s almost a smile as the tension between them cracks and vanishes.

“What have you done to your hair?” he asks, feeling the smirk twitching the corners of his mouth. Sirius glares, but not without affection.

“Severing charm,” he explains. “At least, I tried.”

“I can see that.” Sirius’ hair is filthy and raggedly uneven at the ends. “I can see you tried very hard.”

“Sod off.” There’s something in Sirius’ grin that’s reminiscent of his teenage self; Remus wants to cling to the fact there’s something left in that shell of the man he once knew.

He cuts Sirius’ hair over the bathtub with a pair of scissors, hands steady, though both of them are laughing helplessly, and for a blissful hour it’s as though nothing at all has changed.

Eight.
He was duelling Dolohov… haven’t seen him since.

Remus can taste blood in his mouth and though this is absolutely nothing new, it’s different now. For at least the tenth time in the last few minutes, he wishes that there had been a simple Avada Kedavra, and that was that. He’s not entirely sure what he’s been hit with, a cross between Sectumsempra and something dark and twisted that he’s never come across before, and it hurts unbelievably badly, even for a werewolf with a high pain threshold.

In a practical sort of way, Remus knows that he is dying. There is nothing he can do about it; he’s so weak that he can’t move, can’t speak, and can barely see. His last minutes spent looking at dark grass, hearing the sounds of spells being shouted in the distance. He tries to summon up the energy to panic, or to feel saddened, but all he can feel is guilty.

He outlived James, outlived Sirius, even outlived poor, mistaken Peter. Maybe it’s selfish to selfish to assume that one of the Marauders would survive long enough to see forty. Especially him. Remus would laugh, if he could, because his life has been carefully sketched and cut out to resemble a great tragedy. Being bitten by a werewolf as a child, having fantastic friends for a few years, and then… losing them. Shunned and hated by most of wizarding society. And then killed in the new war, leaving behind a young wife and a baby boy who will, now, never have a father.

It is in no way a good sign when agonizing pain starts receding and Remus assumes that the muggy black cloud closing over his vision is only going to get worse. Sprawled inelegantly in the mud, bleeding out because Dolohov was too much of a bastard to make it quick and clean. Remus has no manner of luck at all, and he is tired now. Tired of dragging himself through a largely thankless existence, one with too little happiness and too much loss.

There is blood trickling out of his mouth, and he’s going to die here alone in the grass, at Hogwarts. He almost smiles. He has always been happy here, running around the grounds with his best friends, his three best friends, all of them blissfully unaware of the future; and even as an adult, returning to teach, respected by the students and safe from the judgemental eyes of the wizarding world.

But there’s running, running footsteps, coloured spell-sparks, and Remus hears the screaming as though underwater. No, he thinks helplessly, Dora, no, please no, but it’s too late. Nymphadora Lupin-Tonks, his wife, her hair a long, glossy black, is running towards him. She shouldn’t be here, it’s dangerous, so dangerous, and he doesn’t want her to see him like this. Remus wants her to see him when he’s been tidied up a bit, face wiped clean of dirt and blood, dressed in a decent pair of dressrobes for burial. Not now, not inches from death, undignified and helpless.

Dora drops to her knees beside him, rolling him over in a way that makes every inch of him ache. Tears are streaming from her eyes so fast that she’s paying no attention to them whatsoever, as she takes in the dirt and blood that covers most of him.

“Oh, Remus…” The sound she makes is broken and lost and he hates it, hates watching her cry. She reaches and wipes a trickle of blood away from his chin with the sleeve of her robes, dark hair tickling his cheek for a moment. She mustn’t be here. She must get out of here. Teddy needs her. He needs her to be safe. “Remus, please don’t be…”

Remus manages to blink and she gives a choking sound of something that might almost be relief, but Dora’s not stupid and she’s got to know that there’s no way out of this for him.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobs, and presses a kiss to his forehead, lips quivering. When she sits back, Remus can see past her. Can see the black hooded figure stalking soundlessly across the grass behind his wife, wand raised. He can see and he cannot warn her, knelt beside him crying as though her world is ending. Remus needs to warn her and he tries to move and he can’t, he can’t, he can’t.

There are green-coloured sparks and then there is nothing. Nothing at all.