Archive of Our Own ^beta

It had been twenty-five years since Remus had last spoken to Lyall, and at some point — probably when the time he’d spent away had exceeded the time spent under that roof — he’d stopped getting angry every time he thought about him.

(That was the worst part: the thinking. Remembering the man who’d raised him, who he had looked up to with all the holy devotion of a child. At least, until… well. Until.)

Remus took a deep breath and shook his head, turning his attention back to the letter in his hands.

...next of kin ... released for home palliative care… limited healers available...

Christ.

He could burn it. There would be no real consequences, no one to come knocking. No one to blame him. No one would blame him, at least that he cared about. His family knew his story — hell, Sirius had been there when the final nail had been driven in. Remus had already grieved the father he thought he’d known and buried the memory of him alongside his mother’s body in that little cemetery plot in Glais. There was nothing to be gained by going.

And yet.

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” Remus muttered to no one, an aggrieved sigh hissing from his lips. “Fucking hell.”

—

The sun was just beginning to set when he arrived on Lyall's doorstep — on time, for once in his life. The last time Remus had been here, Sirius had thrown him over his shoulder and carried him off literally kicking and screaming, a red haze of fury blurring the edges of his vision.

At least it wasn't raining this time.

The door was still the same shade of blue that he and his mother had painted it the summer before his seventh year, though the paint was now chipped and badly peeling. The garden his mother had loved had long gone to seed, overrun with weeds and wildflowers and crawling vines where once there had been vegetables and herbs. Remus supposed there was a certain poetry to that; as far as Lyall had been concerned, the act of caring was best left to his wife, and with her gone, so went any semblance of home.

Or maintenance at all, apparently. The house was falling apart nearly as badly as Grimmauld had been, like it was trying to sink back into the hillside it was built into in some last act of defiance against the shadow of a man that yet haunted its halls.

Remus had never knocked on the door to that house once in his life, but it hadn’t been Home since his mother passed, so he rapped his knuckles three times against the wood. And he waited.

The door opened, revealing a wizened old healer nearly half his size who peered up at him, squinting over a pair of thick spectacles that amplified the size of her eyes to a degree that would have been comical under any other circumstance. They widened as she focused on his face, her wrinkled mouth twisting into a tiny ‘o’ of surprise.

“You must be Remus,” she said in a voice as insubstantial as the dandelion puffs dotting the yard. “I’m Healer Granford. Your father speaks of you often — you do so look like him, you know.”

Remus was painfully aware of this; it was hard not to notice when he looked in the mirror and saw the man staring back at him. Especially now that he was nearly the same age as Lyall had been when they’d parted ways — though Remus was far greyer around the temples, owing to the stress of his monthly transformations (and ta very much for that.)

At any rate, he summoned his mildest smile and nodded.

“I do hear that a lot, yes.” (He didn’t.) “Is he awake?”

The healer shook her head sadly, and Remus almost felt bad about lying to her face.

Almost.

“I’m so sorry, duck. He's down for the night, I'm afraid.”

“That’s alright,” Remus assured her, genuinely this time. “It’ll give me time to get the lay of the land without him being contrary.”

That got a laugh out of her; obviously Lyall hadn’t changed much in the intervening years — for better or worse.

“You’re a good son”—Remus’ eye twitched—“coming to look after your father like this. Too often I see folk dropping their parents off at St Agatha’s once they’re ready to go. Don’t want to deal with it, and all.” She sighed, oblivious to his sudden discomfort, and ushered him inside. “Follow me; I can let you know what his routine has been.”

Remus hesitated for the briefest moment before crossing the threshold. He remained two steps behind, casting his eyes around the place and searching for the remnants of his childhood inside the once-quaint little cottage.

Hardly anything had changed.

All along the walls were the very same pictures in the very same frames, sitting in the very same places. As if none of them had been moved in the quarter-century since he’d last set foot there. Even the dishes in the drying rack were the same, if now slightly chipped with age. The only difference was the single, solitary placemat at the table, and the unsettling near-silence, broken only by their footsteps and the steady hum of magic coming from the back of the house, where—

Where the bedrooms were. Where his father was.

Healer Granford rattled off a lengthy list of potions and salves that were to be administered and when — "He'll try to tell you he can do it himself, but don't you let him" — and the meal schedule she’d drawn up for him, nutritionally balanced and bland as sin. Remus was certain that would be a sticking point if nothing else.

Eventually, she led him dutifully down the hall, past his old room and into his parents’, still with the exact same furniture, right down to the old patterned quilt, beneath which lay—

(“So, what, this is my fault? I didn’t ask for any of this!”

“Neither did we! And she loved you right into her grave anyway —”)

He paused in the doorway.

“It’s alright, love,” Healer Granford assured him, gesturing for him to step closer. “You won’t wake him. He sleeps like the — well, you know.”

He did; Lyall had always been a heavy sleeper, something which Remus had inherited right along with his broad shoulders and perpetually furrowed brow. A thunder-clap temper, sudden and terrible. The way he’d mouth the words back to himself as he read.

But there was something unsettling about how still he was, the hiss and rattle of his breath as he slept when he never used to so much as snore, and Remus couldn’t reconcile the memory of the mountain of a man he’d left behind with this diminished wraith tucked beneath the fraying quilt his mother had made.

Remus stepped forward, letting the healer demonstrate all the monitoring charms that needed to go around his bed at night, emergency spells he could cast if his father started to choke in his sleep, if his heart stopped, if, if, if. He took it all in with the stoic professionalism that had served him so well through the years, gritting his teeth and shoving everything back and down behind a placid smile.

He hadn’t known what he’d been expecting to feel upon seeing Lyall again; a ghost of that old anger, perhaps. Maybe pity. He’d briefly entertained the notion of spite.

But this… this was something else entirely.

The titan he remembered from his youth was gone; this was just an old man, slowly dying alone in the empty shell of a house that used to be a home.

He hardly registered Healer Granford taking her leave, nor her paper-thin assurances that she’d be back again at the end of the week to check on them. She did not thank him; it was a son’s duty to care for his father, after all. She did not know.

Remus closed the door behind her and sank into the kitchen chair, his head in his hands and his thoughts racing. Settling on nothing.

He would not sleep.

—

There was a wizard in the south of France who'd claimed he could fix him.

Remus was five, a pale whisper of a child with tiny fingers swallowed up in Daddy's hand, swallowed up by a vast blue sky and mountains taller than he'd ever seen, and he hadn't liked the way the man smelled. It was the bog-sour scent of rot and meat and something Other that set the hairs on the back of his neck bristling.

He'd asked Daddy — quietly — if they could leave.

"He's scary."

But Daddy shook his head and let go of his hand.

"He's not going to hurt you, bachgen. And we can't leave until you're better, so go on now then. Be good."

There was a sheet on the table and it was white and it made Remus feel itchy all over, but he couldn't scratch because the man had pinned him down with a spell so he could paint weird lines all over him. Told him it was so he didn't smudge them.

Remus didn't remember much after that, but he remembered something foul being poured down his throat, his lungs burning, filling with ash. He remembered mind-numbing terror. He remembered waking up in Daddy's arms, staring up at a sky that was black instead of blue, a dark sheet with a million tiny holes poked through.

It reminded him of home. He wanted to go home. He wanted to go home.

("We can't leave until you're better.")

"Am I better now?"

Daddy's voice shook when he answered.

"Not yet, bach. Not yet."

He smelled like meat.

—

The sun was just beginning to peek over the hills when Remus heard the first signs of movement at the back of the house. A brief coughing fit that had him straightening in his chair, heavy footsteps shuffling unevenly off to the loo. Remus kept his eyes trained on his tea — black, no sugar — in the same mug he used to use as a boy, and he listened for the sounds of Lyall going through his morning routine, albeit far slower than he recalled. Unsteadier, now. Accompanied by the thud of a cane.

It was one small eternity later that the footsteps stopped just short of the kitchen, and Remus became dimly aware he’d nearly rubbed his thumb raw against the chip on the mug handle.

“...Remus?”

His voice was thinner, raspier than Remus recalled, but the sound still cut straight into the meat of him. Laid him open. He looked up, meeting his father’s eyes for the first time since — since, and acknowledged him with a slight nod.

“Shwmae.”

“Ofnadwy,” Lyall answered honestly, and Remus thought that was as good a start as he could have hoped for. “What are you—”

“Having tea. I’m told you’re not allowed to take it with milk anymore?”

Lyall simply stared at him as though if he blinked, Remus would vanish into thin air again.

(He was still considering it, to be fair.)

He nodded, and Remus wandlessly summoned a second mug from the cupboard and poured a cup for him, setting it on the opposite side of the table, his father’s usual seat.

"Well?" Remus asked when no movement was evident. "I was under the impression your legs still worked — or was the healer having me on?"

That got a proper reaction; Lyall huffed, stepping forward slowly to take his seat. Even with the help of the cane, Remus noted that his feet dragged a bit now, as if he no longer quite had the strength to walk properly. A trip hazard, if he'd ever seen one.

"Still chopsy as ever, you are," Lyall groused as he carefully sat down. Remus arched a brow.

“Problem?”

“Na, just missed hearing it, is all.” He pulled his mug closer, missing the thunderstruck expression on his son’s face. “You and your mam commenting on all and sundry. The looks.”

(A conspiring grin shot his way over a mug rim, green eyes with laugh lines and freckles dusting her nose. The music of her voice and, oh, he thinks he's clever, he does. Watch this—)

"I remember," said Remus flatly. His father frowned at him, open concern in his eyes as though he had any right to it.

"You know… I don't know if it matters to you now, but I'm sorry for what I said then."

Remus sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Are we really having this conversation now?"

"It's as good a time as any."

"Hardly; not even so much as a 'hello, how are you'—"

"How've you been, Remus? 'Oh,'" Lyall's voice dropped slightly, affecting his son's dry tones, "'you know. Fine.' And I'll nod and we'll grunt at each other, like, and pretend that's enough to cover twenty-five years. Sound about right to you?"

The worst part was that he wasn't wrong; it was exactly how Remus would have responded to the question, dodging anything approaching personal detail — or any detail at all, for that matter.

It would have been nice to have had the option, though.

(It would have been even nicer if his father wasn’t out of breath just from speaking. Didn’t feel sporting.)

"Had a bad patch in the eighties," Remus offered grudgingly, throwing him a bone, "but otherwise, yes — things have been fine. Good, even, recently."

It was nothing that wouldn't have been common knowledge anyway.

Lyall let out an amused sort of snort as he lifted his mug to his lips with hands as steady as Remus' nerves. A bit of tea sloshed over the side, but he didn't appear to notice — for him, at least, this was nothing new.

"I knew about that already," he grumbled. "Certainly drove home the point that you meant it when you said you'd rather die than ask for my help."

More tea spilt onto the table, and Remus swept a napkin over the mess reflexively — it didn't occur to him to Vanish it, not in his mother's house. He sat back down without meeting Lyall's eyes.

"Well, I didn't die, so—"

Lyall set his mug back down on the table harder than was strictly necessary, spilling yet more tea, and Remus winced.

"You damn well could have!" he snapped, coughing slightly. "I know it’s been years, and you’re bloody well past it now, but Merlin wept, Remus, did you ever once think—?"

He broke off suddenly, overcome by an awful, rasping coughing fit that set him to wheezing and clutching at his chest. Remus was all business in an instant, wand in hand and casting the charms that Healer Granford had showed him. Checking his vitals, clearing his lungs and casting a charm to help him pull in more oxygen. Prolonging the inevitable.

If his hands shook, he ignored it; Remus was well-versed in denial.

He’d learned from the best, after all.

The charms did their work in short order, and Lyall was able to eat his meagre breakfast of potions and tea with a bit of toast to keep it all down — though now in brooding silence. He stood with no small amount of difficulty, grudgingly accepting Remus’ hand when he held it out to help steady him. They both let go quickly.

Lyall made a strange, jerky movement as if he had been about to clap Remus on the shoulder and thought better of it. Drawing his hand back as if burned, fist clenched as he dropped it uselessly to his side. He nodded and left the kitchen as quickly as he could manage without saying another word.

“Well,” Remus muttered under his breath, “this is going well.”

They didn’t talk much for the rest of the day, Lyall going about his usual business (slowly and unsteadily, like everything else now) and speaking only to respond to direct questions. He was packing files into boxes, a lifetime of work reduced to a single cardboard tote with “L. R. Lupin - Research” marked on the front in shaky black ink. Healer Granford had said Lyall was allowed his wand so long as he wasn’t casting anything too strenuous — was a Levitation Charm too strenuous? Remus didn't think so, but it never hurt to be close on hand. He hovered in the margins, watching his father’s hands tremble as he worked, and wondered.

“D’you want a hand?”

“No.”

Remus shrugged. He would have said the same thing.

“Suit yourself.”

Supper that evening tasted like beige. It was the only way Remus could think to describe it: tasteless, textureless, and dry — though the latter was admittedly because he’d overcooked it a touch. He’d been distracted, remembering the last time he'd stood at this stove, helping his mother cook while she could still manage.

She hadn't been able to manage very long.

Remus suffered through the meal in silence, watching Lyall out of the corner of his eye. Watching him push his food around aimlessly, occasionally taking a bite.

"I know it's shite, but you do need to eat," Remus admonished him.

(“Clear your plate, bach.”)

"M'not hungry."

"Can you manage the peas at least?"

Lyall answered with a slight scowl and a deliberate forkful. Remus acknowledged the gesture with a curt nod and returned his attention to his own plate.

It was strange to be the adult in the room now. The caretaker to the parent that had never put the work in to begin with. But Remus had done it for his mother — in part; he wouldn’t be so daft as to claim Lyall hadn’t done his best by her, at least. It was the least Remus could do for the man she’d loved.

It wasn’t until Remus had helped his father into bed for the evening and began casting the monitoring charms that Lyall quietly called his name, addressing him directly for the first time since breakfast. Remus looked up from his work to see his father watching him through exhausted, shadowed eyes.

“Why’d you come?” Lyall asked.

That was the question, wasn't it?

He had no obligation to be here, despite what Healer Granford had intimated. Remus had cut ties with Lyall permanently at twenty-one, though truthfully he'd slammed the door on their relationship far earlier. He owed him nothing, and the man was fully aware of that.

"I dunno."

It was honest, if nothing else; he could manage that much. Lyall sighed and sank back into the pillows, but his vitals looked fine — considering — so Remus put out the lights and left.

He didn't sleep that night either.

—

Once it was clear that "better" simply wasn't in the cards, his dad began pushing for "best."

"People won't accept a werewolf," he warned gruffly. "Soon as they figure out what you are, they'll chase you away. You've got to be good enough that if you can't hide it, they might pretend not to know."

While his dad was at work, Remus would take it in turns helping his mam in the yard and puzzling over the readings his dad had set him, taking notes for him to read over when he got home.

Then, after…

"Again."

Remus was ten, and his knees were scraped and bloodied from the heavy impact of spells — never anything dangerous, but enough to knock him down again and again and—

"I said again."

Remus rose and faced him, jaw tight and eyes stinging. He needed to do this. He needed to learn, like Dad said, because if wizards weren't satisfied with just chasing him off, he'd need to protect himself.

He needed to be better. He needed to be good.

The first jet of light came flying and he twisted left, the spell passing so close he could taste it. The air sizzled on the tip of his tongue, hot and acrid like burned tyres. The curses kept coming, faster now, and his traitorous blood hummed in his veins. Sang with thrill at the chase, like it was a game, but it wasn’t. This was his life. This was always going to be his life: divining intent from every twitch of a brow, waiting for a drawn wand or a knife at his throat.

He was ten.

And when he was eleven, a man appeared that offered his hand in friendship, opened a door that Remus had long been told was off-limits.

Dear Mr Lupin,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry…

—

The days passed in much the same manner as the first, with Lyall slowly putting his affairs in order and Remus only inserting himself just far enough into what remained of his father's life to ensure he didn't hurt himself. Conversation was stilted, but Remus thought he had to give the man points for trying, even if it was thirty years too late.

Healer Granford checked in on them every third day to ensure Lyall still had a pulse and was comfortable.

“Have you had any trouble managing his pain?” she asked.

I’m not the best judge of that, Remus thought, but shook his head.

“Everything’s under control.”

She checked Lyall's vitals and hummed and clucked appropriately at his grousing that had grown toothless with age. Remus observed with the same detached curiosity that he reserved for spiders spinning webs in the windows. Such attention to detail for something that could be swept away in the morning.

“Deep breath,” she directed, pressing a stethoscope against Lyall’s chest.

(Remus obeyed.)

“Still working?” Lyall quipped, and Healer Granford gave a surprisingly indelicate snort.

“For now, it seems. Now breathe out—” Lyall let out a laboured huff; Remus sighed. “Good. You’ve still got a bit of fluid build up in your lungs, but we expected that…”

She went on to explain to Lyall what he was likely to expect as his condition continued to deteriorate — milestones, for lack of a better term — and Remus found himself quietly marvelling over how calmly his father was taking it. Simply accepting what was, rather than begging for a miracle cure that simply didn’t exist.

Maybe he knew better now.

Maybe it didn’t matter.

“... but we’ll mount that broom when we get to it. Now, you,” Healer Granford said, turning her attention suddenly to Remus, “look like you haven’t slept a wink since you got here.”

Remus blinked.

“I’m fine,” he protested. She ignored him and pulled her bag open.

“Men,” she scoffed as she rummaged through her supplies, finally shoving a few small vials into his hands. “Here. This one’s a tincture of valerian root, ashwagandha, and chamomile. Add three drops to a peppermint tea half an hour before bedtime, and that should settle you enough to sleep.”

“Oh. Erm, I don’t think we have—”

“Yes, you do; I’ve left you some in the cupboard above the stove, duck. Now the other is an oil made from lavender and lemon balm — just put a dab on your skin somewhere, only keep it away from anywhere particularly delicate if you take my meaning.”

Remus nodded, his face heating uncomfortably as she continued without missing a beat.

“Now this third is a mix of holy basil and poppy—”

“Leave the man be, Millie,” Lyall cut in. “Two’s enough; he's got more than enough to keep track of with all mine, he has."

Healer Granford pursed her lips but conceded, placing the third vial back into her bag.

She fussed around for a few moments longer before she was satisfied that Remus was at least doing a passable job of keeping Lyall comfortable and finally let him escort her to the door with only three ominous warnings of what would happen if he didn’t take his tea.

He returned to his father’s room to find him still sitting on the bed, trying to button his shirt back up with fingers that weren’t quite cooperating like they used to. The sight of his wasted chest wasn’t the gut punch it had been that first night, but it still left Remus with an uncomfortable twisting sensation in his chest.

“She finally gone?” Lyall asked with only the barest glance up.

“Took a bit of convincing, but yes.” Remus crossed his arms, leaning against the doorframe. “You on first-name basis with all the healers, or is she just special?”

“What, Millie?” Lyall snorted. “Not bloody likely. She’s just been the only one stubborn enough to not fob me off on someone else. No one likes treating the cranky old bastards, let alone the dying ones.”

Remus remained silent, watching his father struggle with his buttons for another moment before he pushed off from the door frame and batted his hands away gently.

"Here," he said, buttoning Lyall's shirt for him. And then, quietly: "Thank you."

Lyall gave a low grunt of acknowledgement and nothing else.

It was unnerving to realise that his father was aware of exactly why the eighties had been bad for him, though he supposed that if the man knew enough to know he’d been starving, it wasn’t a great leap to get to the rest of it. The statistics for his kind were what they were, and Lyall had worked for the Ministry until he’d become too ill to make it to the office; it was a simple thing to keep tabs on your werewolf son when you had government resources at your disposal.

Remus wasn't entirely sure how to feel about the fact that his father had been keeping up with his life — as best he could, anyway. On the one hand, it felt like a violation. If he had wanted his father to know how many times he'd been arrested during the Dark Years, he'd have mentioned it himself. Which is to say, he’d never have told him.

On the other… there was a part of him that was still a little boy, crying with his arms outstretched: notice me, want me, love me. He’d be a fool not to acknowledge it; it was why the silence still stung after all these years, never mind that Remus had initiated it. Never mind that if Lyall had ever shown up at his door, he’d have slammed it in his face. He only ever wanted him to just try.

Naturally, now that Lyall was trying — in his way — Remus found he couldn't stomach it.

"I'll go get supper started," he said lamely, and left.

It was too little too late.

—

A few days before the full moon, Remus was helping to organise the office when a picture fell out of one of Lyall’s old files.

It was a sepia-toned Muggle photograph of Lyall in his prime, tall as an oak and barrel-chested, his dark curls shifting in some unseen breeze as he adjusted a pack slung across his shoulder with one hand, the other clinging to a tiny boy half-hidden behind his leg.

There was something familiar about it, but Remus couldn't quite place it.

“When was this taken?” he asked, showing the photograph to his father as he turned to see.

“Ah,” Lyall said. “Would’ve been… summer of ‘65, I think? Villar-Loubière, out in the Alps. Middle of bleeding nowhere, that was. Pretty, though.”

There was a curious caginess in his tone, and suddenly it clicked.

France. The mountains. The sky.

“I don’t remember this picture being taken.”

Lyall paused, suddenly becoming very interested in the book he was holding.

“Reckon there’s a lot you don’t remember about that trip,” he muttered, and Remus bristled.

“Wonder why that was,” he said coolly.

It had become a pattern between them: one of them (usually Lyall) would cautiously attempt to connect over some half-forgotten memory and wind up inadvertently stepping on a landmine. One sending the other (usually Remus) into a hissing, spitting fit over one thing or another, slights old and new.

However, this time, Lyall simply shook his head, refusing to bite.

“You have no idea the lengths I’d go to for you.”

“What, you mean carting me all over creation to get poked at by crackpot healers?” Remus asked mildly. “Or the backbreaking torture sessions you called practical lessons?”

“I won’t apologise for keeping you alive. I didn’t then, and I won’t now.”

“Oh, is that what you thought you were doing?”

“Must have done you some good,” Lyall remarked in that superior way he often had that made Remus’ teeth ache. “Something I taught you must have stuck in that brain of yours, seeing as you went and earned yourself an Order of Merlin with it.”

Remus stilled, a low growl rising from his chest.

“Lyall.”

“First Class, was it?”

“Don’t.”

“I’m only saying—”

He broke off with a violent start as Remus slammed his fist against the desktop hard enough to rattle the frames on the walls, photographs and awards alike.

“You do not get to claim credit for that,” Remus seethed. “Not while you were sat here, cowering behind your fucking books with your fancy Ministry job and your wand up your arse — both times — while children fought your war for you.”

Stormclouds gathered in Lyall’s eyes, his jaw set in a way that reminded Remus of those evenings in the garden, of hellfire and spellburn, of I’m doing this for you. It was off-kilter, somehow — perhaps the lack of a wand in his father’s hand, the absent whip-crack of a Stunner across his face. But the moon was too close for comfort, white noise buzzing in his veins, making his skin crawl like a hive, and Remus couldn’t find it within himself to look closer.

Lyall watched him warily from the floor. Remus took a deep breath.

(He took three and counted to ten.)

“Is that really what you think I was doing?” Lyall asked, tone like a wounded dove, and Remus wanted to scream.

“Weren’t you?” he bit out instead.

“No.” Lyall shook his head. “I stayed put in my ‘fancy Ministry job,’ and I abused the devil out of my position to cover your tracks for you and to try to protect those camps of yours where I could. And when I couldn’t? Well, who do you think set fire to the records office now then?”

Remus blinked.

“That was in ‘79.”

“It was.”

Remus heaved out a sigh, biting his tongue as he swallowed back everything he knew he shouldn’t say: that this wasn’t a transaction, that it changed nothing, that his sacrifices were appreciated but he hadn’t held a sixteen-year-old girl’s intestines in his hands as she bled out on the battleground he’d so conveniently avoided—

(“Give it a rest, cariad. He’s only doing his best.”)

He glared at the ceiling.

“Fine.” Remus relaxed his shoulders and gestured towards the stack of books that Lyall had slowly been sorting through. “You want a hand with those?”

He was choosing armistice over his burning need to be contrary.

…For once.

Lyall looked up at him, the permanent crease between his brows deepening. But he raised the book in his hands like an olive branch, and Remus took it gingerly, inspecting the cover as his father gave a few deep, barking coughs.

(Only a few. No need for concern, this time.)

It was an old book, though well cared-for, with a thick brown leather spine and dog-eared pages that crinkled most satisfyingly under his fingers. Heavy enough it could have served as a murder weapon. Though with a title like that — Hunting the Hunters: A Laywizard’s Guide to Dark Beasts — it probably had. He moved it towards the tote marked ‘Resource Texts’, making a mental note to burn it at the first opportunity.

“Mind that one,” Lyall cautioned. “You can scarcely read it for all the notes in the margins.”

“I’m sure I’ll manage.”

He had no intention of ever opening it.

There was a long stretch of blessed quiet as they sorted through the remaining books, marking some for the library, some for donation, and some strictly for research that Remus silently swore would never be touched. Even if the books held anything more than fearmongering and anti-werewolf propaganda, he had nothing to gain by reading them. He was quite sure he knew all he wanted to know about what it meant to be afflicted, and he was unqualified to make any developments for his own quality of life.

(Though there was something to be said for the cathartic process of burning things. He’d burned all of Sirius’ old records once. He’d regretted it the next morning, but it had certainly improved his quality of life in the moment.)

Lyall cleared his throat awkwardly, breaking the silence.

"You still with, erm…?"

Twelve ways to kill a werewolf ought to be upgraded to thirteen, Remus thought dryly, the last being ‘small talk.’

"Yes," he replied, helpfully.

"How long's it been now then?"

"Twenty-nine years, counting the, erm…."

"Right." A shadow flickered across his eyes, but otherwise Lyall betrayed no emotion, letting that particular sleeping dog lie. "Merlin, twenty-nine… that's longer'n your mam and I had, it is."

Remus frowned; that couldn’t be right, and yet as he counted backwards — twice, three times — the math worked out.

“How did that happen?” he asked faintly, and his father let out a wheezy chuckle as he carefully set another book in the tote.

“Time, bach. Catches up to the best of us in the end.”

Remus ducked his head, fixing his gaze on anything but his father’s face, with its newly sharp angles and sallow colour. Instead, he studied the backs of his own hands, realising with a jolt how much they’d changed since he’d last really looked. They were thinner, somehow, the joints more prominent, the veins and tendons more visible beneath his skin.

They were his father’s.

He shoved the book into the tote with perhaps more force than was strictly necessary.

“Right. Well, I’d best get the roast started. Takes ages to cook properly.”

“Just don’t pickle the damn thing,” Lyall quipped, chuckling breathlessly to himself as Remus whirled on him with an air of mighty offence. “Sorry, m’only being funny — your mam did that first time she ever tried to cook for me. Reckon she confused the measurements for the water and vinegar. Worst thing I’ve ever eaten in my life.”

“You… actually ate it?” asked Remus, bewildered, and his father nodded, coughing lightly.

“When someone you love makes you a meal,” he said gravely, “you’d better damn well eat it without complaint.”

Remus thought back to the chalky mess of the first night, and Lyall’s scarcely touched plate.

“Noted.”

—

The thing that Remus remembered the most about the night he’d left was the snow. The all-encompassing stillness that felt entirely at odds with the sensation of his worldview collapsing around him. The bite of a cold he didn’t feel.

He was fifteen and falling apart and all he could think of was that James lived in Combe Down and that Sirius was there, and that maybe between the two of them, they might be able to hold him together. They always did, somehow.

Every house he passed seemed to glow with warmth like candles in the dark: fathers carving roasts, mothers fussing over children squirming in their holiday best. It was familiar and foreign all at once.

He found the door he was looking for, and he knocked.

James was very like his father, Remus realised, when Monty found him shivering on his doorstep. He was ushered in quietly and a drying charm applied, thick blanket wrapped around him before a single question was asked.

Priorities.

(His coat was at home. He wasn’t injured. Yes, he had his wand. No, he didn’t want to call his parents.)

He let Monty and Effie fuss over him and tried not to think of his own parents, sitting at home in the wreckage of the family dinner he’d abandoned. Of the colour draining from his mother’s face as Remus drew the truth from his father like poison. Her sobs and the shattering of glass as he’d slammed the door behind him.

(“...You knew, didn’t you?”

“Remus, wait—”)

Sirius and James dealt him into their card game and pushed the biscuit tin in his direction. They did not ask, and he was grateful for the time to wrap his mind around the seething anger bubbling deep in the pit of his stomach.

(“Soulless, evil, deserving only of death.”)

They took his side when he told them, tangled up in boy-legs and blankets on the floor like the children they still were. Remus had never had anyone to take his side before; his mother was dedicated to peace at any cost and his father — no, Lyall had built their entire lives around the lie that all of this could have been avoided if Remus had only been good.

(“...Greyback would go on to bite three children in Brockham later that night, killing two (see: Victims, page 3.)”)

In a sick, twisted sort of way, the knowledge was a relief. Remus had done everything that had ever been asked of him and more. He’d submitted himself to years of snake-oil treatments and experimental studies without complaint. He’d been a quick study at his lessons, both at home and at school. He was (generally) well-behaved. He had never gotten better, and he’d never be the best, but he’d been good.

And none of it mattered. None of it ever mattered, and while Remus could excuse his mother’s part in it, he could never forgive Lyall for setting him on this path in the first place.

“I have spent my entire life thinking this was my fault,” he whispered, eyes fluttering closed, “but it was him. All this time, it was him.”

Never.

—

“I’m gonna wind up killing him before his lungs do, fucksake,” Remus groused to himself. He was leaning out the attic window, waiting for moonrise with a cigarette jammed firmly between his teeth, and he was certainly not going to call Sirius.

He could do this. By himself.

He had to, at any rate; his father hadn’t been able to make it up the ladder in years. There were piles upon piles of old boxes and chests, coated in decades of dust and detritus. It would be a bitch to sort through when he got to it.

No Boggarts, thankfully, only the Dementor in the master bedroom downstairs.

Remus winced, blowing smoke out into the wind, away from the house. That was uncharitable, even for him. He could chase a Dementor off with a well-cast Patronus. Couldn't very well do that to his father; the man could barely walk anymore.

He drew his wand and summoned his Patronus, watching the canine form materialise, ghostly tail wagging happily, and imagined Padfoot was there with him properly.

He was not going to call Sirius only to subject him to Lyall. There was no love lost between those two; any interaction between them would only end in headaches — and heartaches — for all.

No, Remus had done this for years alone out of necessity; he could do it again. Though it certainly wasn’t his fault that Lyall didn’t trust an expertly crafted potion to do its job (just because he got it from Hermione and not an apothecary didn’t mean it was any less effective) or to trust Remus to know what level of precaution he needed to take when he had been the one transforming for the last — fuck — forty-one years, bloody hell. But Remus was willing to appease him this once and lock himself in the sodding attic, if only to prove that his system worked just fine, thank you very much.

He felt ancient. He felt like he was sixteen again, trapped in a house with a man who should have loved him, but didn’t. Who had made him the monster he so feared. He felt like his spine was going to burst out of his skin.

(Well. To be fair…)

Remus leaned out and stubbed the cigarette out on the roof tiles just like when he was sixteen, vanishing the butt with a twist of his wrist like he was twenty, and closed the window, latching it tightly.

The sun was a mere sliver on the horizon now. His clothes were piled in the corner; Sirius would be proud of him for actually folding them this time instead of just flinging them around and wondering where his pants had got to the next morning.

Remus was not going to call him.

But Merlin, did he want to.

—

It was unusual for Lyall to be in bed so late.

Remus had already trudged downstairs, blearily fixed himself some tea and toast — only tried to stick the teabag in the toaster once, which was progress — and gotten a bit of porridge whipped up for when his father finally shuffled into the kitchen.

Only he hadn’t.

Remus, who was normally still asleep well into the evening after the full moon, was nonetheless awake enough to feel unease cracking in the back of his mind like an egg, trickling down his spine.

He grabbed a bowl of porridge and made his way back to his father’s room, keeping an ear out for any strange sounds and hearing nothing alarming.

Lyall was still in bed, his head turning towards Remus as he entered the room.

“Have I missed breakfast?” he asked hoarsely, and Remus shook his head.

“No, I’ve brought it for you.” He waved his wand, letting Lyall sit upright in the bed without needing to support himself. “Think you can manage a spoon?”

Lyall grumbled something unintelligible but reached his hands out to relieve Remus of the porridge, drawing it into his lap and taking small, shaky spoonfuls. Remus watched him closely, ready to intervene at any moment.

“Good,” he said simply. “I certainly wasn’t going to make aeroplane noises for you.”

“You’re relentless, you are.”

“I get that a lot.”

“And here I was thinking you were saving all this bile for me.”

Remus shrugged.

“That, too.”

“You know, I never expected you to actually show up,” Lyall mused, stirring his porridge aimlessly. “Thought you’d toss the letter, if I’m going to be honest.”

“Not going to lie to you; I nearly did.”

“And now I’m like a dog chasing his tail, I am. Finally caught the bloody thing and now I don’t know what to do with it.”

“What does that mean?”

“You came. Grudging, like, and with a chip on your shoulder the size of fucking Gibraltar, but… you still came.”

“Ha! Ta for that—”

“No, I mean it. You didn’t have to, and I… wouldn’t have blamed you for it.” Lyall sighed, sinking back into the pillows slightly, the porridge bowl forgotten in his lap. “This hasn’t been what I expected. Nor you, for that matter.”

Remus stiffened.

“Sorry to disappoint.”

Lyall shook his head, somehow greyer and more exhausted than he'd been all month.

“No, you’re just too much like me," he explained, and Remus absorbed the words like a blow to the face. "You sink your teeth into something and you don’t let go, no matter how much it hurts. Now, your mam? Patron saint of forgiveness, she was. But you? Me? I don’t think we know how.”

Remus thought suddenly of Sirius, of that breathless realisation that he’d been a fool. Of that first desperate embrace in the gloom of the Shack.

(“Forgive me.”)

And he had, immediately and completely.

“I don’t think it’s as simple as all that,” Remus murmured.

Lyall hummed faintly, eyelids drooping as he began to nod off again. Remus collected his nearly untouched bowl of porridge and set it on his bedside table with a charm to preserve it, casting a critical eye towards the overnight monitoring charms. The readings were technically within normal range (for Lyall) though they had been trending lower as time went on; this was no different.

He ran tests, just to be safe.

Blood pressure was low. Oxygen was at 89 per cent — quite low. Skin felt cool and clammy to the touch. Nothing was setting off any alarms: it was still all within expected levels for his condition.

The back of his neck continued prickling regardless, and Remus — no longer one to ignore his instincts — summoned his Patronus in one fluid movement.

“Healer Granford, I’m sorry to bother you so early, but I think I may need a second set of eyes here….”

—

The world ended on a Tuesday.

The skies had cracked open and unleashed a flood of rain that felt like it could drown the whole valley, and he’d gone and broken all the windows, let in the cold and the damp.

(“So, what, this is my fault? I didn’t ask for any of this!”

“Neither did we! But she loved you right into her grave anyway—”)

He was cracked straight through, blackened and charred, a once-mighty oak hollowed out by a bolt of grief, and he was holding it together by splinters, by a straightjacket embrace and a whisper in his ear — “You’re alright, love, I’ve got you” — but he wasn’t alright. Nothing was alright. He was burning.

(“—and I let her… Merlin help me, I let her.”)

She was dead. She was dead she was dead shewasdeadshewasd e a d

“Hey, I’m here, alright? I’m not going anywhere. Breathe, Remus.”

She hadn’t recognised him, at the end. She’d looked into his face and she hadn’t been there, eyes blank as river stones and mumbling — “Check… bed. Check… under. Check. Check check check…” — but there was nothing. Space as blank as she was, conversations stalled in time and there was still so much he’d wanted to ask her and now couldn’t. She was gone, disease catching on a loose thread in her brain and unravelling her down to the last stitch. Gone.

He had thought — for her — that he could unburn bridges. For her, mother and martyr, suing for peace with her last coherent breath. He’d do anything.

(“You’re all he’s got now, cariad.”)

He’d tried. He’d opened himself up to the possibility, he'd had the olive branch in hand but before he got the chance to extend it…

Monster.

A kiss to his brow, warm fingers around his nape. The chiming of glass as magic wove the windows back together, the sounds of the city outside dulling. The dogs stopped howling.

Nothing seemed real, not the shoulders pressed against his own, not the pungent spices in the curry set out on the table. Not the grave dirt on the carpet, muddy footprints tracking the last thing he’d ever have of his mother all over the floor.

There was only Remus, and the sting of shame over losing control.

(“Fuck you! It should have been you!”)

It should have been you.

It should have been—

Tiny hands clutched at the collar of his shirt, tiny sharp nails catching his skin, and Remus looked down to see Lily all but pouring Harry into his lap.

“You want to give Moony a cwtch?” she asked softly, eyes asking Remus for permission she didn’t need. “I think he could use one.”

The baby rested his head against Remus’ chest, reaching out to inspect the buttons on his best shirt with vaguely gooey fingers, and Remus pulled him in a little closer, pressing a kiss to the soft place on the crown of his head.

He wasn’t alone. He wasn’t; he hadn’t been for years.

If he thought about it — pushed through the acid haze of grief — he could recognise that his mother had been the only thing tying him to Lyall. He still had his family right here: Sirius and James and Lily and Harry and — well, wherever the hell Pete had got to. Blood was nothing; they were all he needed.

(It wasn’t him that was burning; it was only the bridges he’d been trying to rebuild.)

Remus closed his eyes and focused on the little heartbeat against his own, soft hair tickling his nose, and swore he’d do better than Lyall had done by him.

It might take time, but he would be okay. He would be good.

—

Remus stared at the numbers on the chart. At the readings that had stopped looking like a series of waves and lines and more like an amusement park silhouette against a parchment sky.

“I don’t understand,” he said faintly. “I was just talking to him.”

Healer Granford gave him a sympathetic smile, her tiny wizened hand finding his and squeezing with surprising strength.

“Dying can be funny like that sometimes.” She took off her stethoscope, stashing it in her bag. “It doesn’t always look the way we expect it to, duck. I know you know that, better than most.”

He did, but this was different. This wasn’t a battlefield — nothing like the stories, no glory to be found — this was a bedside. He’d lost a parent before, sat at her side and held her hand and watched the lights go out, and it had been a slow slide over the course of weeks, not…

“It just seems like the bottom dropped out all at once, is all,” he insisted. “Like, he seemed to be doing alright, if declining, but—”

“Your father’s been on borrowed time for months, Remus,” she chided gently. “I’m genuinely shocked he was up and around as long as he was. I reckon he was just waiting for you.”

Remus recoiled from her, jumping up from his chair and back to Lyall’s bedside, certain that if he listened to one more meaningless platitude, he was going to say something regrettable.

If Lyall had been waiting for him, it would only have been to make an absolute nuisance of himself. To have the last word, as he always did. Arrogant bastard. Not even giving his son a chance to air his grievances properly before he kicked it. Fucker.

“He may be in and out as he goes,” Healer Granford cautioned, apparently sensing the need for a subject change, “but I would wager it’ll be more of the latter. There’s not much more you can do for him but make sure he’s comfortable, I’m afraid.”

Remus nodded tersely and settled in at his father’s bedside, fuming and fully prepared to give him hell when he woke again.

And he would wake again. He would.

—

He didn’t.

—

There was no timeline on death, Remus had learned. It came when it bloody well felt like it, and damn your plans. It’s why the healers always dealt in estimates: his father could last another week, or a month, or a year. They didn’t know any better than he did.

Still. It should not have come as a surprise, and yet it did. This sudden realisation that his father wasn’t just sick, he was dying. He was dying, right there on the bed in front of him. He’d known it on an academic level: Lyall’s body was disintegrating from the inside out, broken down by too much time and not enough maintenance and the want of someone to share the burden of surviving with. Remus knew firsthand how heavy a load that was, and he’d still…

He dropped his head into his hands, the realisation settling in his chest, and peered over his fingertips at the sunken lines of his father’s face. The shallow rise and fall of his chest getting shallower all the while.

I hate you.

He didn’t.

I love you.

He wasn’t sure.

Don’t go.

The words wouldn’t come; what was the point? This was it. This was it. He’d had his chance for closure — twenty-five years of it — and he’d blown it out of sheer bloodymindedness. His father would never wake again.

Remus considered the symmetry of it all, life and death all together in this little room, cold fingers clasped over the blanket his mother had finished making just three weeks before he’d been born. There was a picture of her on the bedside table, wrapped in that blanket with a smile like a sleepy sunrise, and Remus could see his own newborn face scowling out over her arms.

Feet first and a week late, contrary from birth. He’d never grown out of it, even now — older than his mother ever got to be. And Remus still thought, in dark moments like now, that he must have left some of that contrariness in her. Why else would her body rebel against her so fiercely? When it made her forget how to move, made her forget her son and her husband both. She’d suffocated in her own skin, quiet and confused in those last hours tucked beneath this very blanket in this very bed and her breath rattling the same way his was and Remus thought he might suffocate, too.

I hate you.

He didn’t.

I love you.

He wasn’t sure.

Don’t go.

His father stopped breathing.

And Remus was alone.

—

The hours after his father’s passing were a blur; Remus had notified St. Mungo’s, and they’d come and collected the body and gave their condolences and a tower of forms to fill out. Remus took them with a thin smile and put a kettle on. It seemed the only sensible thing to do. He stood and clutched a mug of tea to his chest like a talisman against the memory of too-cool skin beneath his hand and stared at a point just to the left of the table, letting the conversation wash over him as they shuffled out the door.

He didn’t know what to do. More than that, he didn’t know what to feel.

Remus felt a hand on his forearm and looked down to see Healer Granford gazing up at him with her magnified eyes shining with sincere grief.

“Is there anyone you can call, duck?” she asked carefully.

He didn’t know. Somehow the idea of calling Sirius twisted his stomach into knots; Sirius would most likely start rattling off all the reasons that Remus shouldn’t care that his father was dead, as if Remus didn’t already know them. Aside from him, the rest of his remaining friends and chosen family had no experience with this sort of thing, all coming from happy, unbroken families.

Well. Almost all of them.

“I’ve got someone, yes,” he assured her with a smile that felt as paper-thin as it probably looked. Regardless, the old healer patted his arm and after asking him if he’d like some company (“I should be alright, but thank you,”) took her leave as well.

Remus pulled the old mirror out of his pocket and spoke the name of the last person he should probably be calling.

“Harry Potter.”

It only took a moment for his godson to appear in the glass, clearly having ducked into the supply closet at the shop.

"Alright, Da?"

It had been years since Harry had first slipped up and called him that, but it still never failed to bring a smile to Remus’ face, even as it was accompanied by a bittersweet pang.

"Morning, Harry. How's your better half?"

"Very ready to be done being pregnant." He grinned widely, an aura of joy and excitement radiating from him. It was almost contagious. "She knocked her sandwich off the table with the baby yesterday and in all the years I've known her, I don't think I've ever seen her cry like that."

Remus laughed, despite himself.

"You know, your mum did something similar when she was pregnant with you; couldn't reach a pack of biscuits your dad stuck in the back of the pantry without bumping half the boxes off the shelves. Poor girl just sat down on the floor and sobbed her heart out for a good twenty minutes."

"Ha! Good to know it's a common experience, I suppose." (Remus wouldn't know; his sample size was two.) "Speaking of parents, though, how's your dad holding up?"

"Ah. He's, erm… he's dead, actually."

"Oh." Harry frowned, hesitating. "You alright?"

"...I dunno." He could lie to himself, but never to Harry. "It's only been a few hours. Haven't really had time to process everything, I suppose."

Harry sent him a long, searching look.

“Where are you?”

“Still at the house.” He did not say Home. “They’ve only just taken him.”

“Is Dad with you?” There was the chiming of tiny bells on Harry’s side, and he peered out of the closet door, his expression brightening as he waved. “Well, that answers that question. Have you told him?”

“Not yet.”

“Right. I’m going to pass you over to him for a mo, and he’s going to watch the shop with Ginny so they can call me if the baby comes—” he waved Remus off impatiently as he attempted to object —“don’t even think about it. Where’s your dad live?”

Lived, Remus thought helplessly, as Sirius replaced Harry in the mirror’s frame, giving the coordinates in Remus’ stead.

“Lyall?” Sirius confirmed in lieu of a greeting.

“Gone.”

Sirius nodded, no trace of resentment in his face that he hadn’t been the first to be told.

“How are you feeling?” Remus shrugged in answer, and Sirius snorted. “And I suppose you didn’t need me trying to hype you up while you’re still feeling all tangled about it, right?”

“Well shit, when you put it that way—”

“It’s fine.” There was a crack in the background as Harry Disapparated, and Sirius smirked. “I’m not the one you need right now. I’m not so self-centred I can’t see that.”

Normally, Remus might have made a crack at that: who are you, and what have you done with Sirius Black? But all he could manage was a shaky smile that wiped all trace of teasing right off Sirius’ face.

“Hey,” Sirius said quietly. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“I’ll swing by later, alright?”

Remus nodded woodenly and ended the call.

It was nearly a half-hour before Harry came striding through the door with his arms full of groceries that he deposited unceremoniously on the table before sweeping Remus up into a much-needed hug.

(He didn’t knock.)

“Have you eaten yet?” asked Harry, and Remus shook his head. Harry turned to his grocery bags, pulling out a loaf of bread and a jam jar, and setting about making toast and putting the rest away without any further ado.

He didn't let Remus help.

Remus huffed out a laugh as Harry set his food down in front of him, a pointed quirk to his brow so like his father's that it set Remus' heart to aching properly.

"What's so funny?" Harry asked around a mouthful of toast (and that was his father's, too.)

Remus tore a small piece off his slice and ate it, chewing thoughtfully. And Harry waited.

"I was just thinking. About life and all. How cyclical it is."

Harry nodded.

“It is, a bit.”

“It’s just…” Remus trailed off, grasping for the right words. “Things ending the same way they started, only backwards. Same people, same bloody blanket, only now I’m the one doing the holding.”

He tore off another piece of toast, and tore it again. And still Harry waited, letting him breathe.

“This sounds mad.” Remus dropped the mangled bits of toast and dragged his hands over his face. “I just can’t help thinking that we’re all brought into this world with return labels included. And any day now, you’re going to be sitting by a bedside waiting for your child to take their first breath, and years from now, they’ll be sitting by yours waiting for you to take your last. And somewhere in between there, you’ll be sitting by mine — hopefully, anyway. Don’t want to presume.”

“You’re not going anywhere alone,” Harry assured him quietly, and Remus nodded, briefly overcome.

“This is so fucking morbid,” he mumbled into his fingertips, laughing weakly.

“I think it makes sense, though.” Harry leaned forward, toying absently with his mug. “But then I have a bit of a weird relationship with death as it is. Which you are of course well aware of—”

“I will still happily shove that Snitch right up that old bastard’s wrinkled—”

“Look, you have to admit that ‘I open at the close’ was pretty good,” Harry quipped, ignoring Remus’ half-hearted glare, “and isn’t that what this is all about? Cycles and all?”

Remus could give him that, grudgingly.

“This isn’t how I expected to feel.” He sighed, leaning back and staring at his father’s chair, left empty. “Just thought I’d be… I dunno. That I’d either be upset about it or that it just wouldn’t affect me any more than the weather.”

“Looks like rain,” Harry said lightly, busying himself with peeling an orange, “oh, also your dad’s snuffed it.”

Remus let out a sharp bark of laughter at that, guilt twisting in his gut like a knife — he shouldn’t be laughing about this, but he was. Like it was the easiest thing in the world.

“Shame, that,” he fired back with an air of faint surprise. “Did you hear about the Cannons match last week?”

Harry snorted — he had his mother’s laugh, poor dab — and popped a slice of orange into his mouth, subtly nudging his plate towards Remus in offering.

“Seriously though, what was it you said to me after Hogwarts?”

“Haven’t the foggiest,” Remus lied, carefully grabbing a slice of his own. “Memory’s gone off in my old age.”

Harry rolled his eyes and kicked him in the ankle— gently, always gently. Always giving what he had never been shown as a child.

“Prat.” (He was.) “If you insist on playing that game… you told me that it was alright to feel whatever it was I was feeling, however I was feeling it. That there didn’t have to be any rational explanation for it, it was just… my body’s way of telling me that something had happened, and adjusting.”

“That’s good advice.”

“It is.” Harry leaned in, bumping their shoulders together. “You should try taking it sometimes.”

If it had been Sirius telling him to take his own advice, he might have laughed him off, digging his heels in on principle. (“You’re not a monster, Lupin, just a mule.”) He might have taken a slice of orange and shoved it into Sirius’ mouth to shut him up, to distract himself from the absence of his name on his father’s lips. Sirius had always been willing to let him process how he wanted to — which is to say, ignore it. Bury it like a bone in the back of his mind to forget about until time and seasons pushed it back to the surface to rest amongst the wildflowers and weeds.

But Remus couldn’t lie to himself around Harry.

“I don’t know what to do with all of this.” He gestured vaguely at his chest. “It’s like it’s too much for my brain to wrap itself around. It’s fucking… eldritch. Like if I look at it straight on, I’ll go mad or something.”

“Well, what do you want to do with it?” Harry asked, as if it were just that simple. Remus snorted.

“What I want is to chuck it all into the fucking sea. I want it gone. Out.”

“Alright.”

Harry stood up abruptly, motioning for Remus to join him as he pulled his jacket back on. Remus frowned at him.

“...Where are we going?”

“The sea, obviously.”

“Harry, it’s October.”

“So? We’re wizards, Da.” He stared down at Remus as though he were the daft one, and — well alright, yeah, he had a point. “Grab some things you want to chuck, and let’s go.”

Remus dropped his gaze to his hands — his father’s hands — and laughed, pushing himself up from the table with only a slight groan.

“You’re relentless, you are.”

Harry’s grin was cheeky, but his eyes were warm.

“I learned from the best.”

—

They Apparated out to an area Remus recalled from his childhood, some cliffside down Rhossli way. He had vetoed the idea of throwing his father’s old things into the sea — satisfying though that might be — settling instead on hurling stones as fast and far as they could manage. No magic.

Remus palmed a stone the size of a Snitch, checking it for sharp bits, and checking his heart for the same.

“Do you think you could ever bring yourself to forgive her?” he asked. Harry cocked his head at him curiously. “Your aunt, I mean.”

“Oh.” Harry wound up and threw, his stone vanishing quickly into the distance. If it made a splash as it hit the water, it was lost among the waves. “I dunno, haven’t really thought about it.”

“Fair.”

Remus hadn’t thought about it either. About whether it was possible to love someone without forgiveness. About whether or not his father's attempts at atonement cancelled out his sins. Was his anger still justified?

He didn't know.

They took turns throwing stones in silence for a few moments, and Remus allowed himself to breathe.

In: the salt air, the swell of the sea, sweet oranges and bitter tea.

Out: the roar and crash of the waves, seabirds wheeling and screaming overhead, and the screaming inside his head.

He loosed a stone like an arrow shot, aimed at nothing. At everything. At the sky, still threatening to swallow him.

“Probably not,” Harry sighed, finally. “Reckon there’s a bit too much there. Can’t be arsed to hate her — too much effort by half, but… doesn’t mean I forget. You know?”

“Yeah,” Remus said heavily, clapping him on the shoulder and squeezing gently. “I know.”

“You can still be angry with him if you want.” Harry’s mouth was set in a grim half-smile, eyes too dark and knowing for twenty-five, and Remus could see himself reflected there too. “I mean, I think I would. If that’s what you’re asking me.”

Remus nodded slowly.

“I think it is.”

—

By the time they returned to the house, windblown and vaguely damp, Sirius met them at the door with a wave.

“Your wife’s thrown me out of the kitchen,” he told Harry as he took Remus’ coat. “She’s determined to make Molly’s shepherd pie, and no amount of fussing on my part was dissuading her.”

Harry winced and hurried past them to where Ginny was banging about the cupboards and swearing viciously under her breath as she looked for the rosemary.

“Where is it, sodding Narnia?”

“Top shelf there, love,” Remus called to her, turning to Sirius with a sigh of relief. “Hi.”

“Come here,” Sirius breathed, pulling Remus into a firm embrace that he returned with interest. He hadn’t realised how badly he’d needed him until precisely that moment. “Hard day?”

“Strange day.” Remus ducked his head, tucking his face into the crook of Sirius’ neck. “'M glad you’re here.”

“I’d have come tonight regardless, since I gathered you weren’t going to ask.”

“Sorry.” (He was.) “I just didn’t want to inflict him on anyone else.”

“I could have handled him,” Sirius said as he pulled away, “but I understand.”

Remus nodded. He knew, though it didn’t change anything.

Dinner came together nicely once Harry had intervened; Ginny was many wonderful things, but a good cook was not one of them. Remus filled them in on the facts of the last few weeks, the routine he’d settled into of checking stats and fixing the blandest meals known to man, and walking on eggshells around landmines long-buried but not forgotten.

He was honest enough to admit that most of them were his.

They all loved him enough not to judge.

It was good to have family at the table again, and that, if nothing else, was what settled things for him. Once the food had been cleared away and the dishes washed, the three of them followed Remus into the back garden and together they built a pyre, piled high with bits of broken fences and furniture that Remus had no intention of repairing. His old bed, with the claw marks in the headboard.

Ginny sat on the bench with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, a mug of hot cocoa clutched protectively to her chest. Harry and Sirius took it in turns to hand Remus books from the tote marked “Resource Texts,” and he hurled them into the bonfire, watching them wither and burn one by one.

He held his hand out for another.

One second stretched into five.

“Remus.”

He turned to see Harry and Sirius huddled together, frowning down at one of the books, lying open in Harry’s hands.

“Remus,” Sirius repeated slowly, a note of danger in his voice that he hadn’t used in years, “I think you need to see this.”

He took the book from Harry’s hands — Hunting the Hunters, back again — discovering that there was a newspaper article tucked into the pages from some French publication, decades-old. The image was displayed in grainy monochrome, but the face was unforgettable: deep-shadowed eyes, a face like hewn stone. Remus could remember the clammy feel of his hand wrapped around his own, the false honey of his voice. The smell of rot and meat, of dark magic and malintent.

He froze.

“What does this say?” Remus asked quietly; he could speak French passably well, but couldn’t read it worth a damn.

“Just that he disappeared in ‘65,” Sirius explained in equally hushed tones. “Estranged youngest son of some old house with a lot of sway… looks like Lyall was interested in this for some reason.”

There was a question in his tone that Remus didn’t know how to answer.

The mountains. The sky. The smell of meat.

(“You have no idea the lengths I’d go to for you.”)

He looked at Harry, meeting his gaze straight on, and saw him: the baby and the boy and the father-to-be all at once, and he remembered the way that Harry had stood there in Dumbledore’s office, numbly explaining that he was destined to die. Remembered the way he’d stood in that same spot, after, half-listening to a portrait apologise like it meant something.

Remus looked back down at the book in his hands, with the newspaper article and the notes scribbled in the margins with an explanation he’d never fucking asked for. He didn’t want penance. He wanted something he was never going to get, and wouldn’t have even if Lyall was still alive, still trying to apologise for the wrong thing.

He closed the book with a snap and cast it into the fire, ignoring Harry's gasp of protest behind him.

It was all the same thing.

He had never asked to be Lyall’s greater good, only his son.

Sirius stared at him quietly for a moment, and Remus saw the sudden understanding spark in his eyes. The subtle nod as he leaned down to pick up the remainder of the books and hurled the entire thing onto the pyre, box and all.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, fingers twined together, and watched it burn.

—

Lyall was buried on a Tuesday in that little cemetery in Glais, laid to rest beside his wife beneath the blanket that she’d made, and Remus felt nothing.

Not the ghost of old anger — still often rearing its head at inopportune moments — nor the fresh fury of the prior week. Certainly not the wildfire grief he’d felt at his mother’s passing.

It was more a curious sense of absence. An acknowledgement of loss without emotion. A nothing.

He managed a eulogy, much to his own surprise. Said something trite about Lyall’s exhaustive list of achievements over his relatively short life. Shared a few innocuous stories about his parents together, highlighting his father’s quick wit and stubbornness. His inexhaustible need to fix things even when he had no idea how.

(The example he used had been about his mother’s vacuum cleaner, and he told it with humour, but it went a little deeper than all that.)

But Remus also told the story about that one glorious day at the seaside. He’d been four, scrambling over rocks and chasing the screaming birds with a little plastic shovel in his hands. He told them how his mother had taken him wading into the water and he’d charged at the waves, kicking them with tiny feet. Fighting things he had no chance of winning against for the sheer thrill of it, even then. He told them about his father lifting him onto his shoulders to make him feel tall, the boom of his laugh.

It had been the last summer before Greyback, before Remus had become the cause that Lyall destroyed himself for. It was the image that he held firmly in his mind when he remembered his dad. How loved he was.

“I’ll miss him,” he told them.

(“I’m never getting that back,” he meant.)

He stood at the graveside, watching his father’s casket descend, and took a moment to see who had come to pay their respects: a few people from the Ministry, the healers who had worked with him. No friends, no family present aside from Remus… and Sirius, who had been hovering half a step behind him all day, unwilling to let him go it alone again.

Remus sighed and looked up at the sky: overcast, but not a drop of rain.

The weather had held. He had held.

Once his father was buried and the small crowd dispersed, the priest invited him to have lunch with his mother’s congregation. Remus smiled and shook his head.

“We appreciate the offer, Father,” he said kindly (but pointedly), “but our son’s wife just had their first last night, and we’re eager to get back to them.”

Eventually, he’d have to figure out what to do with the house — rent it, sell it, burn it (no, Moony) — and what to donate and what he could use, but for now…

He’d done what he had set out to do. He had shown up, so he’d never have to wonder, “what if?” He hadn’t let his father die alone, and even if he never got the closure he truly wanted, he’d gotten that. And he’d gotten answers — even if they weren’t the ones he’d been waiting for.

It was fine. His father could take the rest of his secrets with him, and all the things they’d never said; Remus was going to be fine. Better, even.

He was good.

And he was going Home.