Chapter Text
Chapter 1:
Perhaps life is the lighting of a cigarette
Between the narcotic repose of two lovemakings
Or the puzzled passage of a passerby
Tipping his hat
Saying good morning to another passerby with a vacant smile
-Forough Farrokhzad, Another Birth
*
It’s been three years since Remus stopped suffering. It happened sometime after he buried his best friends and realised there was no one they knew left to attend their funeral.
After seeing his shrill face bunch up with sobs in the mirror one night, he realised how strange the figure in the reflection looked. No, it wasn’t him. It was just a hollow shell, a ghost of a man who once lived, but it wasn’t him. This hollow, yellowed skin and those bloodshot eyes didn’t look like this, his cheeks have never been so sunken. Still, the fear of seeing such desperation and agony was so debilitating that he simply decided to stop suffering.
It’s been weirdly easy, actually, he has realised after a few months. Days were spent with work, his usual shift at the bookshop during the day and whatever he could find at night, followed by hangovers and death-like sleep. With potions he gulped down and all those cheap wines, the crush of white little sweets in his palm and dust in his eyes, it’s been quite easy. As fake plastic euphoria washed over him he could almost, almost forget the throbbing and open wound that has become his life. In fact, he became so good at pretending that he sometimes would feel a deep ache within him that had no source, almost as though a scab was forming over the root. Almost as though something was healed.
Almost.
Perhaps it is the universe’s sense of humour, or perhaps it’s his mother’s ghost whispering in his ear, but in the end, his insistence to refuse sobriety at any point is what brings him so close to breaking his promise to himself. Remus has decided to stop suffering and has been relatively successful before it all comes crashing down on him in the form of five-year-old Harry Potter who was about as big as Remus's flattened-out pillow.
In that exact moment, fast-forwarded to three years later, as he barely opens the door and hears the scared whimpers of Harry echoing from under the bed once again, he thinks he is going to break down in a sort of agony the world has never witnessed before. Surely, if people ever felt this pain in their life they would all simply perish one after the other.
In his usual moments of despair, he would usually tell himself lies about how it couldn’t have been worse, and with years of training in self-deception, he would believe it. But now, he is sure that this is his personal hell, an intricate mechanism designed to ensure his utmost desperation in life. If he hears the quiet, pained whimpering one more time, these walls and these grounds, ugly brown and crumbling, and the entirety of this ugly, wretched house is going to collapse on his tiny neck and end his tiny little painful life.
He slides down on the door, unable to form thoughts or words, unable to comprehend and find solutions. The floor is cold, he can feel the tiny splinters on the door scratching his back through his thin shirt. He likes the cold, it makes him feel alive and reminds him of how he is alive, while no-fucking-body is, and that’s exactly why he needs to stay alive. For little Harry.
Little Harry, who is so scared, so innocently terrified of the entire world that Remus cannot open the door without making him silently sob in horror. Little Harry, who has been kidnapped from his house by him mere hours ago, who has no one but him, no one to care about him but fucking Remus Lupin.
*
He does not exactly remember the moment he decides to find Harry, or why he did it after all those years. It was one of those drunk revelations that come when one is so insanely intoxicated that existence sounds like a great plan. Someone was laying on his thighs which wasn’t necessarily horrible but the random head of black curls looked so much like someone he desperately tried to forget that his chest stung. He barely remembers pushing the head aside and getting up, then there is a black hole from when he got up to when he found himself in Hagrid’s door, somewhat sobered.
Now, when he looks back, he doesn’t even remember why he chose Hagrid. In his mind, he could trace the child back to Dumbledore, and perhaps McGonagall, both targets quite unlikely to give him anything he wants, especially if he went there half out of his mind and smelling like a dive bar restroom. Divine intervention, he thinks, or maybe sheer luck for once, but as he waited in front of the hut he knew Hagrid could give him what he wanted: Harry James Potter’s location.
He has never had a sweet mouth. When he was younger, he had been painfully shy and failed to lure people into liking him with the flick of his wrist or his wit, unlike Sirius or James. He had never been very charming or lovely, definitely not particularly sweet or memorable either.
Nonetheless, Remus Lupin was granted the gift of shapeshifting without ever needing any magic. He knew better than anybody how to talk and walk and laugh like someone else, how to keep your shoulders straight and how to lean forward when reaching a hand to their hair. For years, he had been honing his skills in deception, and this was simply another mask he had to put on.
As he entered the small hut, he was walking and talking copy of Sirius Black, with his holier-than-thou attitude and black jeans and a lopsided smile that could weaken any knee. He smiled confidently at Hagrid’s confused face and talked swiftly with a soft allure. After two glasses of something he can’t even remember, Hagrid babbled out the street’s name, tears in his eyes. He could sense the man’s longing for a child he had almost never met.
“He is a good fella, that kid,” he said as he sniffed loudly before falling asleep on the armchair.
He thought it would be a good idea to find Harry, find him and look at him and buy him toys and books and things. Take him to the park once a month. Tell him stories of his parents. He thought it would give him a reason to actually work, a reason to get up on a random Sunday morning, and a reason to wash the dust off of his emotions. Perhaps he was being selfish again, trying to quieten his screaming conscience. Perhaps even he, only half a human, couldn’t stand the loneliness anymore.
In a way, he wanted to prove to himself that he could love again, someone or something. He wanted to prove to himself that he could be happy again, that he could smile and laugh and enjoy the sunlight grazing his face in the morning and not be disappointed to have woken up.
That’s why he sneaked behind Petunia Dursley’s annoyingly well-kept bushes and started watching the Dursleys that night, his vision blurry from tears rather than wine for once. It was mesmerising in the worst way possible. Deep inside, he was hoping to see how happy Harry was, how happy and content and joyous he was so that Remus could see he had no role in the boy’s life. He wanted to see the boy thrive with enough joy to last him a lifetime, to see his little body was resilient enough to forgo the tragedies it has endured.
He didn’t expect a five-year-old to be carrying plates to the sink and doing the dishes until midnight, so tired and so hungry he could barely stand. He did not expect the cookie in his pocket to get him a slap on the back of his head.
He was so unpleasantly surprised at how much you could peek into someone’s life by looking at their back window even for the shortest amount of time. The dim lighting was always in the kitchen, which was where the boy usually was doing one chore or another. He could see the silhouettes of the living room furniture, white light coming from a squeaky telly and another child crying in the background.
He could see how Harry sat at the table by himself, eating leftovers from a paper plate while the cooing noises for the other child in the house echoed from the walls. How he had this exhausted look in his eyes that made his small features look almost unnerving. How his clothes were hanging haphazardly from his tiny frame.
Remus, for a bit, could only see and do nothing else, stunned in place with guilt and fear and a need to scream his guts out until someone came to sort things out for him, or at least tell him it was a dream.
No one came.
He only stopped watching when he realised he had to get out of this trance and he had to stop them, and he had to do it now. When he hurried off, running like he hasn’t done in years, his mind was short-circuiting, repeating the exact words again and again. Go. Get help. Get help. Get he–
*
Sixteen hours later, Remus found himself in the Hogwarts infirmary with a toddler he just kidnapped, a toddler who was asleep on the kitchen floor and was still unnervingly still in his arms as multiple voices around him screamed for an explanation.
What have you done, Remus? They kept asking him.
What have you done?
*
“He didn’t–” he tried to explain between hiccups, pointing at Albus Dumbledore who was watching from a few meters away with a serene expression. “He didn’t let me do it properly– I had– I had to–”
*
“Is that the–”
“--Potter kid–”
“--see the scar?”
“Harry Potter?”
*
“I asked him,” Remus whispered to Arthur Weasley, who placed a strong hand on his shoulder, grounding him. “He wouldn’t do it, Arthur, he wouldn’t take him out of there.”
“You did the right thing,” Arthur Weasley whispered back. Remus thought no one has touched him with such a warm hand since all his friends died. He looked up with mild surprise to see if the man was serious in his support.
“He–” Arthur cut himself off, his sweet features looking uncharacteristically distressed, “the poor boy– Remus. Ron hasn’t been this small in years.”
For a second, Remus wished he didn’t have the man’s support if it meant he wouldn’t have to hear this.
*
As Pomfrey started examining the boy, he once again felt young and naive, remembering the days of real Remus where he lived and suffered, and moments when he heard Prewetts died and Benjy died and Dorcas died. The ache. The sweaty hands. The vertigo. He remembered how he would put his hands on the old chestnut table in the flat they shared with Sirius and feel the little splinters on his hands, like the matted carpet, and how it would remind him that he was alive. They were gone, but he was alive.
Pomfrey gave Harry a drop of sleeping draught and explained the boy would need to keep taking some potions for malnutrition and overexertion and stunted growth and–
His head spun. Harry slept. Remus watched. People were in and out, checking on the kid, checking on him.
“The child must be reinstated with his relatives,” Dumbledore was telling him over and over again as he watched everything through a blurry lens, laying his arguments without giving him a chance to speak.
“Not with those horrible people–”
Those people who made his little body exhausted from chores and those people who never seemed to hug him or give him a pat on the head and a nice little kiss on the nose and those people who Lily absolutely and wholeheartedly despised and those–
“Lily’s blood magic–”
“--they were starving him!”
Those were the words that granted him a couple of quiet seconds in the infirmary along with quiet gasps. “Everybody out,” Madam Pomfrey said immediately after, “now.”
The quiet wasn’t there for long, but it still made everyone in the room sick to their stomach.
McGonagall was the only one who dared to speak. “Is that– is that right, Albus?”
The headmaster didn’t grant her a response but rather turned to Remus again with his maddening serenity. “Who do you suggest should take over Mr Potter’s care, then, Mr Lupin?”
He was mocking him, Remus knew, he was the butt of the joke, the punchline. Who do you suggest should take over Mr Potter’s care, Mr Lupin, the alcoholic werewolf who can’t keep a job for more than a month? Who, the man who left the face of the earth after his friends died and never even bothered to call or look for the child they left behind?
“He surely cannot go back to those muggles,” Professor McGonagall said in a scandalised voice.
Yes, Remus thought. He cannot. “I will keep him.”
He couldn’t dare look people in the face as he told them he would keep him as if talking about a puppy. He couldn’t dare look them in the eyes and see the immense pity and apprehension, the disappointment shortly followed by the inevitable questioning. Are you sure, Remus? He couldn’t dare see how their eyes would tell him that he wasn’t enough, that he wouldn’t succeed and make the boy more miserable than he was ever before.
He would never dare say that he thought he was the most loving, caring paternal figure there was, but deep in his gut he knew he was the only reasonable choice because he could never, never let anyone hurt him again, and none of these people understood that gut-wrenching primal instinct. Suddenly he understood why Moody screamed “Constant Vigilance!” to their faces so vehemently and why everyone was so keen on Fidelius charms.
Now that he held the boy in his arms once, now that he has seen what people were capable of, he was wary of anyone and everyone. He was wary of Arthur Weasley who was on the brink of tears as he lightly patted the sleeping boy, reminded of his own Ron and he was wary of Pomfrey who was examining the child. He was wary of the gaggle of schoolchildren behind the doors that could possibly enter.
He was wary of himself.
He hadn’t eaten for more than thirty hours and had been awake for much longer with nothing but vodka in his veins and tears in his eyes. Remus was sitting inside a decaying body, and now the body had been a shield for a boy who was just sprung to life. Yet even then, he knew there was no one else who hadn’t let the boy down, and no one else who was willing to try just as hard as he was.
He kept looking at Dumbledore and the way the man’s eyes seemed glued on the boy.
“Try one of your tricks,” he told him quietly, “and I will take him, and I will disappear from the face of the earth.”
When the older man smiled, it looked as though he pitied him.
As dawn hit the blue skies they were escorted to a safe house, with one last thinly veiled threat from Dumbledore. “Think about it as probation, Mr. Lupin.”
“I dare you,” he whispered, making sure the sleeping boy wasn’t bothered, “to try and take him.” What crossed Dumbledore’s eyes might have just been apprehension, but Remus, for once, was glad to be the monster under the bed.
*
That’s how the suffering comes back to him like an avalanche as though it has never left after three long, numb years.
When he hears Harry’s soft cries, the suffering blinds Remus. Perhaps it’s the lack of practice.
“It’s alright, Harry,” he says softly, “you’re alright now. We had to leave your aunt and uncle’s house because they got very, very sick and I wanted to make sure you were safe.”
He looks through the door and there the little boy is, cowering under the bed, merely hours after he brought him here. After he kidnapped him, removed him away from any resemblance of a life he’s ever known without a single plan or thought about the future, and now trapped him in a house with Remus of all people.
He feels like he is closing in on a wild animal, so wild yet so scared, so fragile. He won’t admit it, but his eyes are watering. They are certainly not tears of joy, but they still have a happy tune to them. Happy as in seeing the flowers planted in your mother’s grave grow, and happy as in surviving a war, surviving but alone. There, just under the bed is the living proof that Remus Lupin was once a teen with dreams and friends and a life, something more than a broken shell and old scars. When the little child’s lips start trembling, not to form a sob but a word, Remus thinks he will shed tears of joy.
“Where are we?” he says very quietly. His voice has a soft edge, a dumb melody only children have. Remus actually sheds a tear and something grand, good and bad, and an avalanche unlocks in his chest.
“Hi Harry,” he says silently, not as Remus-the-shell but as the young boy who held James’s hand as he cried with fear because he just became a father. “I am sorry that we scared you,” he says, “you are at my house. I– I was a friend of your mum and dad.”
“I am sorry,” Harry says after a while. He sounds louder now, just as loud as a kitten.
“No need to be sorry,” Remus replies. He is overwhelmed with the intensity of the love he feels for this tiny tiny human, who is scared of looking him in the eye. “Would you like to come out so we can talk?”
Harry says nothing, just slightly crawls out until he can crane his neck to get a better look at Remus. “I won’t come near you if you don’t want to,” Remus adds. They sit there and crawl towards each other for what feels like hours, a few random words spoken every once in a while. At one point Remus Accio’s some tea and biscuits. Harry is apprehensive at first, refusing to even look at the food.
When they are close enough that there is only the tray of food between them, Remus slightly nudges the plate in his direction. “Don’t you like biscuits, Harry?” he asks. He could bring sandwiches too, he thinks. He is a shit cook, but he would try. He could make eggs and pasta and fry some sausage or something. He would kidnap a chef and make him cook if it meant Harry would speak with him.
Harry seems like he is having a hard time understanding him. “Not allowed,” he says finally.
Remus thinks of crying or perhaps throwing up. He thinks about getting up and banging his head on a wall, screaming until his mother comes for help. Instead, he takes a deep breath and nudges the plate forward again.
“It’s okay,” he says soothingly. “You can have a biscuit.”
Harry looks up as if trying to see if this is a test. “Go on,” Remus nudges again. Harry tentatively reaches out to grab one that looks up at Remus again. “As many as you want,” the man assures again.
His voice is barely audible. “Two biscuits?”
“Harry,” Remus says seriously, “You can eat every single biscuit in the universe if you want to.”
Harry’s eyes grow with surprise. “Eve– every biscuit?”
“All the biscuits,” Remus says, “even the raisin ones.”
Harry giggles, very quietly and very shortly. A frail, baby-bird sound.
He is glad that Harry is not old enough to understand the difference between an offer and a plead because he is about to get down on his knees and beg this little child to please, please, fuck, please have a biscuit. Surprisingly, Harry does take one off the plate without him starting sobbing or pleading. Then he breaks it into two with his trembling hands, giving Remus one half. As their hands brush together, he gives Remus the tiniest similes. Remus sheds another tear. This is how their friendship starts.
*
Remus is not sure of what his role should be in the boy’s life, it feels like a crime to think of himself as filling the hole James and Lily’s absence created, but Harry deserves better than just a “friend”. Then again, it makes his tongue go limp in his mouth, suffocating him to think he would be a fraction of what James was like as a father.
He was so perfect, so effortlessly and so insanely perfect. If he wanted to be a father, he could. If he wanted to be an Auror or a Healer or a Quidditch Player, he could, unlike Remus, who struggled to be anything but fire, consuming and ruining and destroying and burning along with everything.
But right now, he is in the house with the children and is supposed to be the one that stops the fire though no one ever taught him how to extinguish it. He only knows to spread and hurt himself more than anyone, and he was hardly ever been taught to heal his own scars.
In moments like this, he fills with inexplicable anguish thinking about his old life. How he was finally starting to learn how to stop little fires before they spread. How Lily would hold his hand and caress his hair as he rolled in his bed with pain the day after his change. How they taught him it’s okay to not be okay and taught him that it was okay to fall and that they would be there and hold his hand and get him on his feet, then all left him rotting in the dark.
How they taught him how to love and left him with no one to love.
Maybe, he thinks, and he knows it’s absurd and impossible, but he still thinks that maybe they sent him to Harry, and they sent Harry to him. Not to fix each other, that would be too much, but perhaps to hold onto each other as they stumbled. Perhaps to commemorate what they have lost together and cry and mourn and suffer. Perhaps, most importantly, they thought it is high time that Remus smiles again, sincerely, like the days in Hogwarts. Like he is a human again, not just a hollow bag of bones. Perhaps they think he should stop just existing, and live again. Perhaps.