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Remus Apparated to London at dawn. He had breakfast at the Leaky Cauldron, then wandered into Diagon Alley for some last-minute shopping. After he picked up a few items he thought might come in handy with the older students, he returned to the Leaky Cauldron, bundles in hand, for a cup of tea. Sipping slowly, trying not to think, he listened to the conversations of those around him, gossip about Mrs. Owenbilly's second daughter and debate about the uselessness of reconstituted wormwort powder, speculation about the Minister of Magic's latest statement and remarks on the two-for-one sale on brass cauldrons at Codlooper's Cauldron Shoppe.
With a sigh, Remus glanced idly at the tea leaves in the bottom of his cup: a fat little blob, something that looked like a palm tree, and a horse head with an abnormally long tongue.
Well, that was easy enough to read: What the hell are you doing here, mate?
Remus shook the cup to scatter the leaves and set it down with a clink.
At ten o'clock, he Apparated to Kings Cross and walked slowly through the station, his worn briefcase in hand. Between Platforms Nine and Ten, he glanced around to be certain no Muggles were eying him and stepped through the barrier. The Hogwarts Express was already at the platform, quietly puffing steam and awaiting the swarm of students. Remus paced the Platform for several minutes, exchanging a few polite words with the conductor.
Yes, I'm the new teacher this year. Yes, I've heard about the dementors. Yes, I've heard about Sirius Black.
He watched the students arrive with their families. Trunks, owls, brooms and robes, hearty advice and teary farewells, scared little faces and embarrassed teenaged smiles, skewed uniform ties and hastily combed hair.
Remus had trekked through the Himalaya to places where no white man had ever been before. He'd sipped tea atop the highest road in the world and chased ancient ghosts across the world's harshest desert. He'd shivered on the frozen coast of the Weddell Sea and spent a terrifying midnight vigil on the Serengeti plains, listening to hyenas laugh all around. He'd walked through the peaceful cedar forests of Montana and stood on ridges of barren, red rock in Utah. He'd visited the basilicas of Italy, the temples of India, the pyramids of Egypt.
And he had never seen a world so alien and bewildering as Platform Nine and Three-Quarters on the first of September.
I hope that you will consider my offer, Dumbledore had written.
When the owl had fluttered into a serene forest in the Bitterroot Mountains, bearing a letter and a copy of the Daily Prophet, the foundation had dropped out from beneath Remus' world.
These events are quite unexpected.
The more unexpected the shock, the longer the newspapers crowed. Remus glanced at a smiling couple, waving farewell to their son and daughter, fresh-faced youngsters with crisp new robes and polished new wands. The mother was dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief; the father had a rolled newspaper under his arm.
Black Still At Large! Ministry Baffled!
It was time again to draw the lines, dig the trenches, recruit the children. The crowd was growing, and the platform was filling with noise and bustle. Remus watched them, trying not to stare, trying not to wonder if they were scared of the dementors, scared of the escaped madman, if they would write home about their studies or about the danger, if this year at Hogwarts would always be marked in their minds as the year Sirius Black menaced the school.
It would also be a comfort to me to have you present until he is caught again.
Remus knew when he was being manipulated, but in the crisp early morning, before the sun broke through the trees to shine on the camp high in the Rockies, he had made his decision.
You are the last among us who knew him well.
Remus climbed into the train and located an empty compartment.
He had used a Muggle pen, with the parchment smoothed across his knee, writing carefully so as not to punch holes in the letter. He had told his American friends that it was a family emergency, something he could not ignore. He told them that he did not know when he would see them again.
An odd choice of words, to say that I knew him.
That is what he had written in return.
And what he did not write: I knew the shape of his face, the line of his shoulders, the taste of his mouth, the sly glint in his eyes, the intoxicating sound of his laughter, the gentleness of his breath in the night.
But the rest -- I did not know him at all.
He stowed his briefcase, sat by the window, and leaned back against the seat, listening to the shouts of laughter and stampede of feet in the corridor.
I will be at Hogwarts on the first of September.
Remus closed his eyes.