Chapter Text
Remus takes stock of the boy cradled in his arms with the heart of some explorer who’s discovered something precious yet incredibly fragile. The slightly damp black hair which curls at the ends and somehow still smells like baby when Remus presses his face to Harry’s scalp. The adorable way his godson has nosed his way into Remus’s chest. The way slow, easy warm breaths puff out of his mouth. The slightly brittle contented expression on his face now that he’s long stopped crying.
The warmth in Remus’s belly curdles as he realizes they cannot lay here forever. They— He cannot ignore what he saw.
He whispers, “Harry?”
“Mm?” The boy presses impossibly closer to his godfather.
“You awake?” Remus infuses as much faux indifference into his voice as possible. It feels like he’s walking atop the surface of barely cooled magma.
Harry groans as he pulls away,sitting on the edge of the bed, facing away from his godfather. “No. Still sleeping.”
Remus cringes as Harry’s signature sarcasm makes its way back into his voice. He sits up and stares at Harry’s back.
“Love—“
“What did I say about that?” Harry’s voice is biting and full of sudden anger.
Remus presses his lips together, forcing back the tears every parental atom in his body is trying to cry for Harry. For this boy in front of him, so broken and jaded and conditioned to push away any and every helping hand.
“Sorry, sorry.” Remus swallows. “I know you probably don’t want to,” Remus forces a short, wet laugh out, “I bet you’re wishing Sirius would barge in that door and give you an excuse to flee the room. But—“
The muscles in Harry’s back tense and ripple.
Remus’s voice cracks a little. “But we have to talk about it.”
“Why?” Harry’s voice is so full of venom Remus flinches back on the bed. “So you can post on your fucking Facebook that you and your poof husband saved an extra broken kid? So you can get double the brownie points and write a stupid fucking memoir all about how harrowing it was to raise such a fucking victim !?” Harry’s chest heaves with the force of his outburst, his knuckles white on the duvet.
“Harry, no. ” Remus can’t help how broken his voice sounds because this, this is the kid he sang to sleep while James and Lily went on their rare date nights, the kid who used to giggle every time his Uncle Moony kissed Paddy on the cheek, the kid who used to demand to braid Sirius’s hair.
“Harry, I just want to know so I know how to help you—and if you’re hurt, we need to get you a doctor’s appointment and—”
“Well lucky I’m not fucking hurt and I don’t need your fucking help.”
Remus can hear the pain behind his godson’s voice. “Even if you aren’t physically hurt right this minute, it—it still hurts when someone hurts you like that, no matter how long ago it was. And, and talking about it—it helps.” Remus reaches forward and lays a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “You don’t have to carry things all alone anymore, okay?”
Throughout Remus’s whole speech, he could see the façade Harry had put back on slowly crumble, and by the end, Harry was hunched over, arms over his face.
“I—I don’t know…” His voice is so quiet.
Remus waits a moment, watching the sunlight from the window halo Harry’s unruly hair. “Don’t know what?”
“How to talk about it.”
Remus tightens his grip on Harry’s shoulder, attempting to rub away the subtle shivers ratcheting up and down the thin boy.
“How about if I ask some questions? All you have to do is answer the best you can. Would that help?”
Harry nods.
“Alright—and you don’t have to answer if you don’t feel comfortable, okay?” Remus settles more comfortably behind Harry, legs diagonal across the bed. “Okay. Do you think you can tell me who gave you those scars?”
Harry whimpers, a quick, almost involuntary sound, before he lowers his arms and stares at his hands. He whispers, “Dudley.”
Remus’s heart somehow drops further. “Your cousin?”
Harry sucks back snot, wipes his nose. “Yeah, I know, it’s fucking gross.”
The nonchalant, untouchable delivery is almost successful, until Harry’s voice cracks on the lack word, revealing just how young he really is.
“You are not gross. Whatever he did to you does not change how me or Sirius see you. You are still my beautiful godson, okay?”
Harry stays silent, and Remus cannot bear the idea that his own godson feels less than because of what was done to him. A tear runs down his face.
“Harry, are you alright? Are you—Can—Do you think you can answer a couple more questions?”
Remus holds his breath, preparing himself for another verbal lashing, for Harry to storm out of the room.
But instead, a meek, hesitant, but there “Okay.”
“When did it happen?”
Harry snorts. “Which time?”
Remus closes his eyes and it feels like his chest is caving in for the fortieth time that evening. He has to do this, be strong for Harry. He can cry into Sirius’s shoulder later. “M-maybe the first?”
“I—I—Well, we were ten. Aunt Petunia and Uncle—Uncle Vernon were out at one of his stupid business dinners. I was—I was—I—“
Harry's breaths begin coming faster, sputtering like an old car’s exhaust.
“ Breathe , Harry.” Remus rubs his shoulder, swallows his own emotion in favor of supporting his godson. “You’re okay.”
Harry laughs—or cries—as he begins to speak again. “I was cooking fucking dinner for him! Be-because that was my responsibility, of course, feeding the fucking pig. And then he comes up behind me, as I’m like mid-strain with the pasta, and he says, ‘Just leave it.’ And I’m fucking confused of course because what the hell? I mean, because, like, it would have to freeze over for Dudley to turn down a meal. So, so I’m frozen there over the sink and he c-comes up behind me, and puts his fat fucking face right nextto mine and says ‘Leave it, I’m not hungry. Come upstairs and clean my room up for me before Mum’s back. I’ll even let you have a go on my old Nintendo, yeah?’ And, and I’m such a fucking idiot that I listen to him and follow him past my fucking cupboard , up the stairs to his fucking bedroom , and then he’s pushing me against his wardrobe, and he’s—he’s stuck his ha-and—and I’m telling him, I’m screaming , and then, then he’s, he’s biting me and he, he put my—in his—in his—his—and I promise , I swear I didn’t want—I didn’t—“
Tears stream down Remus’s face as he watches as his godson dissolves in panicked breathing and violent shivers.“Oh, Harry.”
Harry’s screaming now. “I DIDN’T—I TOLD HIM I DIDN’T—HE SH-SHOULDN'T HAVE DONE THAT TO ME!”
Harry begins to rock back and forth, hands gripping his hair and pulling— hard .
“Harry, Harry, Harry.” Remus grabs hold of his godson’s arms and wraps them around the boy, hugging him with two sets of arms. He follows Harry’s rhythm of rocking as the boy screams. “You’re right, Harry, you’re right,” Remus says as he presses his face into the dark head of hair below him. “He shouldn’t’ve done that to you. No one should do that to anybody.”
After a moment, Harry stops screaming and slowly, ever so slowly, leans back into Remus’s embrace. The rocking settles to a subtle swaying.
They sway. As Harry pants and as Remus attempts to dry his tears, for ten minutes, for half an hour. They sway.
Harry—still refusing to look back at his godfather—whispers something quietly under his breath.
“What was that, love?”
“I—it helped.” Harry grips one of his hands around Remus’s forearm, holding him in place. “To—to let a bit of it out. E-even if I didn’t do it right.”
“Oh, Harry, there’s no ‘right way’ to do it. You just have to start. And I’m so proud of you for—for telling me that. So proud of you, lov—” Remus pulls his head from atop Harry’s. “Sorry! Sorry, I know you don’t like it when I call you that.”
Harry bites his lip. “No. No, it’s—I like it. I,” Harry pauses. “I like it. Being here, with you and Sirius, it’s—it’s better. I know I said, but you’re, you are good at this. Dealing with me. I w-want to stay. Here.”
Remus sees an embarrassed blush rise in Harry’s cheeks. His throat tightens at the sobering youth of the boy, of the awkward teenageness so often shrouded in a stony exterior. His heart aches for him, doubly so now that he’s been given a glimpse into the horror he was forced to live in while Remus was settled down and happily in love in Sirius’s arms.
He’d spend the rest of eternity making up for it.
“You are not going anywhere,” He says.“Love.”