Chapter Text
Remus Lupin has never been particularly punctual, with two notable exceptions: One being the obvious one, and the other being King's Cross. He's always early for the Hogwarts Express, he and his shabby possessions and his Muggle mum and his absent Dad and the heart-stopping fear that the train is going to leave him behind this time. Then fate will catch up with him, and he'll have to be less than ordinary again.
He's less terrified nowadays, but for old times' sake, Professor R. J. Lupin crosses the near-empty platform early on a rainy September morning and claims an empty compartment, as if he's still saving them seats.
Fenrir Greyback got to him when he was four, but Remus has been mostly okay. It's not until he's fourteen that fate knocks and says, remember me?
And when it does, he opens the door wide and says, how could I forget. You're the wolf, and you're all my moons, and you're thirty pieces of silver. You're always coming for me.
Remember you might die within the decade, says fate. Remember you might die within the year.
Hold on, he says. I don't want to die. I don't even have my O.W.L.s yet. I haven't kissed anyone I like. I'll leave nothing but bloodstains on floorboards and three heavier hearts. Then what was the point?
I'm fate, says fate. I don't deal in fairness.
September of 1974 brings with it a sharp drop in temperature and wind gusts that tug and shake and slow down the Hogwarts Express. Remus has saved his friends seats on the train, as he usually does.
The train ride is chillier than usual, and it's clear why. Even in one of his post-summer moods, Sirius Black is a catalyst: They need him to be funny. But his seat, today, is empty.
Peter bravely attempts conversation anyway. His choice of topic, however, is counterproductive. "I'll need to lay off the pranking a bit this year," he says. "My mum wasn't happy with my report card."
"Bollocks," says James darkly.
"No, seriously," says Peter. "She's right. I somehow haven't managed to learn a single thing in Transfiguration. She reckons I actually know less than this time last year." He shrugs helplessly.
"Then we'll drag you through," says James. "We'll need a lookout. Do you want to go down in history or not?"
Remus looks at James briefly, to find out if it's worth it, or if today is a particularly bossy day. "Actually," he begins, "I reckon Peter's being quite reasonable –"
"Bet you ten Galleons that Peter will bedazzle you with his advanced Transfiguration skills before the year is over," says James. "Isn't that right, Peter?"
"I don't have ten Galleons," Remus points out.
"If James's sense of secrecy doesn't improve, I hardly think that'll matter," says Peter sourly. Which, surprisingly, shuts James up.
"Should I even ask?" says Remus. Peter just shakes his head, and that is the end of that conversation.
Remus tries to settle as he always does on the Hogwarts Express, his cheek against the window pane, watching industrial buildings and outlet stores and the inside of tunnels pass by. With one of his many unnatural senses, he knows James is still watching him intently. "How was your summer, Moony?" James says.
"Same old," he lies. "You?"
Last year, James had treated them all to a long-winded account of his summer, collecting tadpoles in mason jars, illicit late-night Quidditch matches over the lake, dragon spotting in Hungary, and Remus and Peter had been there for some of it, but not Sirius, never Sirius, because Sirius vanishes into the black hole of Grimmauld Place every year. Its gravitational pull allows no light to escape, let alone news, or letters, or Sirius himself, until the summer is over.
"Not same old," says James, and he draws his cloak tighter around him against the unseasonal chill. "Sirius came to stay for a bit."
"What," says Peter.
"They let him?" says Remus.
"Not exactly," says James, and so much for his sense of secrecy. He drags a confused hand through his hair. "Oh bugger," he adds. "I'm going to look for him, he's got to be somewhere on the train."
They're just outside London and the shuffle outside the compartment has finally died down. When James returns, he looks puzzled and betrayed and doesn't say another word.
When they're past Grantham, Peter has enough of moody James and goes looking for Sirius himself, and he returns looking like he was caught in an explosion, cheeks reddened, hair puffed up and robes faintly smoking.
So naturally, when they run out of chocolate around the time the train passes Doncaster, Remus goes looking for Sirius, too.
He finds them in a compartment on the far end of the train. They're hiding in washed-out grey shadows with the lights off, a chilly draft in the air, a bit like Remus imagines Grimmauld Place to be.
Regulus is a slip of a kid at thirteen, curled up on two train seats, almost vanishing under his elaborate travelling cloak. He sleeps like the dead. Sirius's thin hands worry as he threads them through Regulus's hair, and he looks up when Remus peers through the door, a sharp, hyperawake look that dares him to comment. Never an explanation.
Remus makes his way back alone, navigates the aisle as the train judders and shakes, doesn't fall until his seat is in front of him, and then he falls into it with gusto.
"What is wrong with him?" he asks.
"Actually," says James, and swallows, "actually, I've got a bit of a list."
The moon is on the other side of the planet right now, but Remus feels it as sharply as if it were in front of him, waxing, bulging, ready to pop, because as fast as the train goes, the moon is chasing him faster. And all the while he's still feeling the last one, still not quite right after the August full, and he knows that that's how it starts: The damage piles up faster than he can heal.
He listens to James and his bullet point list on why James thinks something is very wrong with Sirius, and he keeps his eyes fixed on the raincloud-heavy sky outside the train window, watching ragged dark shapes streak past behind sheets of rain.
Something is wrong with all of them.
He keeps telling himself that. It almost drowns out the voice inside his head, the one that keeps whispering, Remember you might die within the day.
Because fate is coming for him. September 2nd, 1974, four thirty-two a.m.
Something is staring at him, but without eyes. That thought comes first: He's here, again, wherever here is, and something is aware of that. It stares without eyes, but it doesn't see light, and it breathes without lungs, but it doesn't breathe air. If he were to stretch out a hand, what would he even touch?
Remus doesn't regain consciousness so much as he just runs the fuck away from that thing. The darkness drops away all around him, and before he sees anything, hears anything, he feels his bones and his flesh and his skin. Hurt. All over.
Again.
There's touch, too, a light, warm hand on the side of his head, a thumb stroking his hair. It's the touch that reminds him that, in many ways, he's still a child. When he can spare the attention, he realises there's a voice telling him it's time to come back. He cracks open his eyes, and there's light, a golden September morning. It's been more than twenty-four hours and he's probably late for –
"Potions," he croaks.
"Priorities," comes the answer. After thirty or so moons, they don't need many words.
Remus mentally collects his limbs, even if he's temporarily unsure of their shape, or how many he has left, then attempts to prop himself up on his arms. That hand on his head applies just the tiniest bit of pressure.
Poppy Pomfrey's young, round face is absurdly serious when she shakes her head. "Not yet," she says. Then she doesn't say anything for a long while, just looks down on him with that same pitiful expression, and he resents it, resents being here at all. If he has to be a child, then why can't he just be in Potions right now? Melt his cauldron in peace, like a regular kid. Like James and Peter and Sirius.
He stares her down until she says what went wrong this time.
"The wolf," she says eventually, looking away. "Would you say it's growing up?"
For a moment, he considers lying. But she's the one person in this castle he is not supposed to lie to. "Yes," he says.
It's as good an explanation as any for why the past few moons have been so terrible: The wolf is growing up faster than Remus does. At least that's what he's gathered. It's not like anyone can check on him while he's transformed. And not much is known about teenage Werewolves because it's so uncommon for a child to survive the bite. The few there are don't go to Hogwarts. They are not locked up during the moon. They don't try to eat themselves every month.
Maybe he's not meant to be locked up, he thinks, and a long-suffering voice pipes up to inform him that this is a wolf thought. Be that as it may, though, maybe he's meant to roam free, maybe that's how he'll survive.
He breathes out. The alternative isn't freedom, he tells himself. The alternative is death. The Ministry will see to that.
At last, Pomfrey's hand leaves his hair to take his right hand, checking the pulse with her thumb. "Can you move your fingers for me?" she says. "Imagine you're playing a melody. Bach's minuet in G major?"
"Too easy," he says. Also, famously not by Bach, he wants to add.
"Just try."
He chooses the fugue in G minor instead, but Poppy doesn't even notice. When he closes his eyes, he feels his fingers moving, feels his dried-out, cracked skin stretch over each knuckle as he hits imaginary keys. Remembers piano lessons to keep his ever-breaking fingers nimble. Imaginary keys, imaginary music. Imaginary movement.
But he hears it, the fugue imprinted on his brain, and with it comes a memory, as fleeting and unseizable as a dream: Sirius Black playing the broken piano in the Shrieking Shack. A note of discord disturbs that baroque harmony, that odd non-memory.
Sirius has never been to the Shack.
"I think I'm a bit loopy still," he admits.
"Don't let Peeves hear that, it's been two years and he's still hasn't let go of the 'loony'," says Pomfrey. "Does it hurt when I do this?"
He waits for a moment, eyes still closed. "Do what?"
"Never mind," says Pomfrey. "We'll give this another shot later."
Something is probably wrong. Remus feels like he has forgotten something, like there is some elephant in the room, something he needs to acknowledge, or remember, or accept –
Like the truly baroque pain in his right arm, just below the elbow, and when he closes his eyes, something flashes up, like a memory, but brief, and scattered, bloodstains on floorboards –
That's my wand arm, he thinks, and he wants to point it out, but to what end? Pomfrey already knows. "How was the summer?" she asks.
Again he considers lying. Again he decides against it. "July wasn't good," he tells her. "So I asked Dad to –" oh God, he thinks, he's in for a scolding. "I asked him to chain me up for August, so the wolf wouldn't move so much, but –"
Pomfrey pales at this. "No," she says. "Don't do that."
"Bit out of ideas," he says. "I'm sorry."
"Broke your wrists, did you?" she says gently. "I noticed they were still weak."
He nods. There's no hiding from this woman.
"We're not out of ideas yet," she says. "Can you sit up for me? I've prepared a few potions."
Obediently, he lets her help him into a sitting position and wedge a pillow behind his back and then she hands him, one by one, the various liquids she has lined up on the table.
The first goblet turns out to be water, and it's when he has trouble holding it that it finally occurs to him that he's not, in fact, wearing white pyjamas, it's just that both his arms are bandaged thickly from the knuckles of his hands to over his elbows.
He drains the goblet, then asks, "Do I even want to know?"
Pomfrey gives him a sardonic smile. "Let's keep it a surprise for now," she says, and he has a feeling he's not going to wear short sleeves ever again.
He can discern most of the potions by taste. Blood replenisher. Antiemetic. Analgesic. Skele-Gro (oh god. Again?).
The last one is alarmingly purple. He's sure he's see it before somewhere, maybe in Potions? But trying to remember anything from that class is torture under the best of circumstances. The taste is mild, with hints of blueberries and black tea. "What's that?" he asks.
"Dreamless sleep potion," says Pomfrey.
Remus turns his attention to the window, behind which a golden September beckons. Who knows how long the weather will hold. Forget melting cauldrons, he wants out. Anywhere but here, with its smell of medicine and disinfectant and underlying notes of blood and irrational rage.
"How am I supposed to go to class when I'm asleep?" he asks, which is probably not the cleverest of arguments but the best he can come up with right now.
"You're not," says Pomfrey. "You'll need to rest for a little while longer. It'll take effect in a bit."
"I sleep just fine without it," he says, because if there's one thing he wants to keep secret, it's the damn nightmares, where he's running from the giant wolf, through the underwood, over rocks, off the cliffs and into the water. He's fairly sure he knows what those mean.
"You really don't, you know," she says. "Do you need the toilet?"
Fuck's sake, he thinks, because he does, and realises he's actually said that one out loud. Fortunately, Pomfrey is no stranger to foul language. Sometimes, he hears her mutter when she thinks he's unconscious.
"I'll go," he says.
"Need assistance?"
"God, no," he says.
He gets up slowly, because he knows he will drop like a sack of bricks if he rights himself too quickly. Pomfrey walks him to the bathroom, a steady hand on his shoulder, past the horrible rotting thing standing beside the window. He notices he's taller than Pomfrey now, when the fuck did that happen?
Then, finally, he closes the bathroom door behind him and a wave of nausea washes over him, his stomach cramps up and he retches over the sink, but nothing comes up. The antiemetic is working. Good to know. Remus takes several deep breaths, reminds himself that while everything hurts, at least that means it's still attached, that he can move pretty much everything except his right arm, and that he can bloody well finish the task he came in here for.
Just maybe not standing up.
Meanwhile, a low-level commotion is starting up outside, but he pays it no mind – it's unfortunately a common occurrence in his life. He's sure he can hear James's and Peter's voices, and who the fuck knows where Sirius has gone off to these days.
When he washes his hands at the sink, or tries to, weak fingers worrying the taps until they release a thin stream of lukewarm water, he catches sight of himself in the mirror for the first time. He wishes he hadn't. He doesn't look sick, he looks dead. A still life with skull - ghostly pale, his skin waxen and stiff to move when he furrows his brow, eyes dark as bruises and about as lively as a backwater pond.
Remember you might die within the day, he thinks. He knows the statistic. All Werewolves die young, more than half of them by their own hand. It's a bullshit statistic: The wolf claims them all, in different ways.
"The patient needs rest, Mr Potter," he hears Pomfrey's annoyed voice through the door. "That's what patients do. And I'm sure you're late for class."
"Five minutes?" says James. "We're just bringing chocolate. And homework. I know, I know, it sounds horrible, but he actually asked us to?"
"No, you're attempting to distract the nurse while your friend sneaks through the back door," says Pomfrey conversationally. "This is a hospital wing, not a train station."
(Then why can Remus hear an engine? Of course, it's more likely to be the hammering in his head.)
Someone is knocking on the bathroom door. "You in there?" says Peter's voice on the other side. "What are you doing?"
"Mr Pettigrew! I swear, if you bother him -"
Remus sighs inwardly. "Beating a statistic," he says through the door.
"As long as that's all you're beating," says Peter. "Will you come out? James is having a conniption. He's half convinced you died and they're hushing it up."
"James is such a drama queen," says Remus.
"It's getting worse every day," comes Peter's reply from the other side of the door. "Sirius hasn't been around to ground him, you know."
Remus snorts before returning to the problem at hand. There's several options here, none of which are good. Come out and they'll worry. Hide in here and they'll worry. Let Pomfrey sort it out and they'll never let him hear the end of it.
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. He opens the door, but remains leaning against the doorframe, so at least they can't see him shaking in the cold breeze from the window.
"Alive," he says. "Now piss off to Potions, I'll be needing your notes later."
James and Peter are staring at the sight of him, momentarily out of things to say, and Pomfrey exploits this moment to bully them out of her hospital wing. When the door closes behind them, she turns, arms crossed over her chest, and gives Remus a look.
"Is this wise, Mr Lupin?" she says.
He looks at his feet. "They know, Poppy," he says, feeling like a failure for being unable to maintain the ongoing fiction that he successfully kept his secret. It's only the minimum requirement for his staying at school: Keep the secret. But to be fair, he failed that one in second year.
"You told them?" she says.
"Brilliant plan, wasn't it," he says drily. "Accept a Werewolf to Hogwarts. Make him room with a pair of child prodigies. What could possibly go wrong?"
In the corner of his eyes, something catches his attention, something perfectly obvious he's been ignoring. Starkly outlined against the brilliant white walls and the bright morning light, something dark is lurking, something rotten, something barely alive. How could he have missed it? A memento mori if there ever was one.
He blinks, but it's still there, staring him down without eyes.
Pomfrey sighs. "Back to bed, Lupin. I'll talk to them later. Make sure they're taking this seriously."
"But Poppy," he begins, "can't you see there's a –" but his eyelids droop and his speech slurs as she guides him back to the bed.
Before the dreamless sleep claims him, he wonders where Sirius has wandered off to.
Must be a bad batch of Dreamless Sleep Potion, because surely Remus is dreaming this. Dusk is spilling into the room, bringing shadows and faint glowing outlines, and there's this thing again, this ancient, decaying presence at the wall opposite his bed, staring at him down from shadowy eye sockets, and it moves forward, footsteps like cracking thin ice over a puddle, curtains of black hair, black robes, and his vision swims –
"Sirius?"
"Don't you wish, Lupin." A laugh like an offended crow, a voice like damp seaweed. "You missed Potions again."
Bad batch or not, Remus feels entirely too groggy to be having this conversation, even though it seems rather important to get it right. Where is Pomfrey?
"'S creepy, Severus," he informs Snape. "Following me around. Like a thingy. Stalker. Creep." Turns out he is a lot more honest on this potion.
"Knew you had a secret," says Snape from where he looms at the foot of his bed. "Though I am a bit disappointed it is as mundane as this." He stares down at Remus, and Remus half-heartedly follows his gaze.
Both his arms are bandaged tightly from his knuckles to underneath is pyjama sleeves. Oh yeah.
Deflective action seems necessary. "Talked to Lily," Remus croaks. "She reckons it's creepy, too."
Snape doesn't even react to that, a sure sign he thinks he has the upper hand. Unfortunately, he sort of does.
"What is the matter with you, did the prospect of rooming with these imbeciles for another year finally wear you down?" Snape says with a sneer.
"'S not what it looks like, you creepy scarecrow," is what Remus almost replies. It occurs to him that a diversion of these proportions is potentially the only thing that may keep Snape off his tracks for a little while longer. The git is far too observant. He opts for awkward silence.
"If I may offer my expertise?" says Snape. "Nearly every potion in this hospital wing is deadly in large doses." He winks, which looks horrible on him. "If you weren't so hopeless at the subject, you could even work out which one is painless."
"Fuck off, Severus."
He really must be dreaming, Remus thinks, because Snape never fucks off when Remus wants him to. But Snape glides away sideways, and where he was, at the foot of his bed, the dead, rotting thing continues to sway in a non-existent breeze.
This time, Remus stares back.
At least, until the unnatural sleep sucker punches him once more.
To be continued.