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The world is harsh, and it’s cruel, and it’s so incredibly brutal. Remus Lupin had first learned that when he was four years old. The night he turned four had been a night full of cake and love and happiness. Then it wasn’t.
Out of all the nights for his father to forget to check under the bed for monsters, it had to be that night. As the clock struck twelve, and Hope and Lyall Lupin were settling in for the night, Remus screamed. Looming over his bed was a large, ferocious being. All in quick succession, the figure leaned down and fire erupted throughout Remus’s shoulder. The door shrieked under the force Lyall used to break it down, muggle shotgun and his wand in hand. Then the figure was gone, and Hope was running in, comforting her sobbing child.
That was the first time Remus Lupin learned how harsh the world is. The second time was his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
It was three and a half months into the school year, and Winter Break was starting. Remus had gotten the owl three days before, the owl that carried a letter informing him that his parents were on a business trip they couldn’t cancel so he would have to stay at school. Normally, Remus wouldn’t be so upset. But the full moon was around the corner and he couldn’t have the comfort of his parents. He couldn’t even have the slight amount of comfort that his dorm mates gave him when they visited him in the Hospital Wing whenever they heard he was there. (They didn’t know that he was a werewolf, they just knew that he got injured a lot.) His dorm mates (he wasn’t close enough to them to call them his friends, not just yet) were all going home for the holidays.
So, Remus Lupin spent that full moon alone in every way possible. He didn’t have the comfort of his friends, family, or even the comfort of familiarity for his wolf had managed to break out of the Shrieking Shack and got lost in the Forbidden Forest.
That was the second time Remus Lupin learned how cruel the world is. He learned that lesson many, many times throughout his life, but the one that nearly broke the wolf’s back was on October 31, 1981.
He had been reading the most recent letter from Lily and James, the letter he had to remember to give to Sirius to read also, when he got the news: Sirius had betrayed the Potters and now Lily and James were dead.
He had broken down, sliding down the wall and to the ground, sobbing and taking harsh, shuddering gasps. He had stayed like that for longer than he knew, processing the loss of his friends—his family— and his husband.
It had taken years for Remus to even be able to even look at the box full of things from his school years, things that practically screamed Sirius. It had taken him years to be able to look around the flat and not be overwhelmed with memories. It had taken years for Remus to find some semblance of peace.
That was the time Remus Lupin learned just how brutal the world is, the time that almost broke the wolf’s back.