Chapter Text
It was bafflingly ironic that Remus Lupin had come to be so beloved by his peers.
This wasn’t because he was a strange or unpleasant boy in any way—ask anyone in the castle, and they would enthusiastically agree that Remus was absolutely lovely. They would also, more likely than not, stop to share a heartfelt story about a time when he had been a pillar of support to them. The fact that he was well-loved was ironic simply because his approach to school life was founded on the exact opposite expectation. Before he had even set foot on Platform 9¾, Remus had accepted wholesale rejection as a regrettable but understandable eventuality.
His fellow classmates poured their creative energy into projecting their personalities into the world. A scant few, like James, succeeded brilliantly, while most others were lost in the noise and bustle of adolescent society. Remus, meanwhile, kept himself tucked neatly under wraps. As the unwilling vessel for a dark, hungry secret, Remus’s first instinct was to deflect conversations away from the topic of himself as smoothly as possible.
He had slipped into his first year of school noiselessly, never outright avoiding interactions but seldom seeking out any kind of connection. But as he acclimated to being surrounded by children his age, he grew more adept at navigating their world by asking the kinds of thoughtful, nuanced questions that kept the subject focused on whomever he was talking to and, vitally, well-clear of himself.
He would listen quietly, leaning in with his head tilted down in the same posture he wore when trying to absorb every word of McGonagall’s complicated Transfiguration lectures. He never interrupted, only speaking up to ask for more details or offer encouragement, and discovered just how much eleven-year-olds had to say when they didn’t have to fight to be the centre of attention. As a result, Remus had developed a remarkably deep understanding of practicality every student in his year by the time their first Christmas break rolled around. He had been surprised to receive a constant stream of owls bearing long-winded stories about his classmates’ visits home, and, come Christmas morning, he had blinked disbelievingly at the sizable pile of presents amassed on his desk. In the Christmases that followed, the pile only continued to grow until he had to start blocking off time in his January revision schedule to write thank you notes.
His dormmates were the cool ones, though. That much was clear from day one. Sirius was in-your-face handsome with the kind of aloofness that made everyone want to impress him. Those lucky enough to glimpse a sliver of the vulnerable soul beneath the bravado only wanted him more. James was confident, funny, and athletic. He was a born leader and entertainer, qualities that made him the natural choice for quidditch captain when fifth year rolled around. And then there was Peter, amplifying their light from behind. He had a handy way of extracting favours and information around the school, and everyone knew that if you wanted in on some legendary feats of mischief, Peter was your man.
So it was that everyone in the school was dazzled by the idea of being friends with the Marauders, but of the four of them, Remus had the most actual friends. Girls doodled Sirius’s name in the margins of their notebooks but asked Remus to walk with them between classes. Boys would toss the quaffle with James before lessons and snigger with Peter when he spelled Slytherins’ shoelaces together, but in the blue of the evenings it was Remus they sought out for advice and assurance. Remus always insisted that he didn’t have enough life experience to give advice, but that never seemed to matter once they’d talked their conundrums out.
Sirius, James, and Peter, in their teenage conceit, each considered himself closest to Remus. James had been the first one to suss out Remus’s lycanthropy in their second year and had thus appointed himself the principal defender of Remus’s secret. Peter saw Remus as a fellow second-tier Marauder and leaned heavily on that perceived solidarity, opting to pair with Remus for class projects and milder pranks. Sirius wouldn’t share his mother’s letters with anyone else, having once glimpsed similar sentiments inked in a note from Remus’s father on his bedside table. And while they all knew that Remus was also friends with “the girls” of Gryffindor tower, was considered an “honorary housemate” by the Ravenclaws, led a lakeside study group with “the Puffs,” and was even on good terms with a smattering of “snakes,” they didn’t seem to give his involvement in these lesser factions much credence.
Which was why it was a surprise to all four of the Marauders at the dawning of sixth year when Remus—the supportive shoulder, the ineffective prefect, the fourth-seat-from-the-front-row scholar—found himself the most sought-after student in all of Hogwarts.
☽
They noticed it gradually as the first weeks of term came and went. First Peter, then James, then an irritated Sirius. It took a few weeks longer for Remus to admit that anything was different, as it was an accumulation of small things that were individually easy to write off.
For instance, James had given him a bottle of eau de cologne for his birthday (regifted from a package his mother had sent the year before), and girls had begun leaning in to compliment him on the warm amber scent during lectures. At first it was just a smattering of sweet comments, but it quickly grew into a consistent stream whether he was wearing the scent or not. Finally, when Darcy Clements asked her neighbour in Potions to switch cauldrons so she could sit closer to Remus, James coyly asked Sirius to swap with him, too, so he could “nestle his nose in Moony’s sweet locks.” Sirius then doused James with a pungent distillation of vole’s feet and lion's mane, and girls and boys alike gave him a wide radius for the rest of the day.
It wasn’t as if Remus had had a massive transformation over the summer. (Technically, he’d had gone through three massively gruesome transformations, but those were nothing new.) He was still two inches shy of Sirius’s height, still several shades paler than James, and still even clumsier on a broomstick than Peter. But his father had put him to work on all the days he’d been well enough to walk, and his threadbare sweaters fit slightly differently across the shoulders. His jaw cast a harder shadow, his voice sat on a lower note, and he’d shorn his hair a little closer on the sides when he’d given up on the pair of rusty kitchen scissors his mum had always used on him and borrowed a neighbour’s clippers instead. But besides those minor differences, he was still the same Remus Lupin the school had known for just over five years. Still as mild-mannered as ever, still happy to listen, still sporting an expression of pleasant surprise whenever anyone expressed an interest in spending time with him.
In late October, school clubs began recruiting new members. Remus already participated in several study groups, but suddenly he found he couldn’t walk ten metres without being accosted with invitations to join the Charms Club, Dragon Club, Chudley Cannons Fan Club, Hogwarts Choral Assembly, Advanced Defense League, Ravenshop Quartet—
“But I don’t sing,” a bewildered Remus told Dan Walters, a seventh year Ravenclaw who was trying to hand him a scroll of sheet music. “I can’t even carry a whistle. What makes you think I’d be any good in your quartet?”
Dan just shrugged and dropped the music into Remus’s open bag. “Anyone can learn baritone. We all agreed you’d make a great fourth since Quincey graduated and left us one short.”
“Quincey’s voice was like phoenix song. I could never fill those shoes. Besides, you couldn’t call yourselves ‘Ravenshop’ with a Gryffindor in the mix.”
“Shoot, that’s true. What about… ‘The Gryffinclaw Quartet’?”
“Bit violent, that. ‘Swotapella,’ more like.”
Dan chuckled and said, “I like it. Anyways, think about it, I’m serious! See you round, Lupin.”
He patted Remus’s shoulder and walked off as the clocktower above them chimed two.
“Hear that? He’s ‘serious,’” Sirius echoed in lazy derision, materialising at Remus’s side as Dan turned the corner. “Too bad you’re already part of a group of four, Lupin.”
“Are you proposing the Marauders take up harmonics?” Remus asked, throwing Sirius an amused glance as he buckled his bag and slung it over his shoulder. They had five minutes to get all the way down to the dungeons for Potions, but Sirius set a leisurely pace with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t even have his school bag with him, just a book tucked under one elbow.
“I’m proposing gits like Walters stay out of your hair,” Sirius retorted. “You’re one of us. What do you need them for?”
“I like Dan,” Remus said with a frown. “He’s a nice guy. Remember back in third year when Mulciber nearly tricked a kid into drowning in the lake? That was his little sister. He visited the hospital wing every day while she was healing from the grindylow bites. I was recovering from the April full at the time.”
Sirius grimaced and softened a shade when he looked over at Remus. “I remember that full. That was a bad one.”
“Mm,” Remus dismissed the memory with a short hum.
It had been an especially gruesome night: the wolf had smelled rust on the hinges to the rear door of the shack and tried to charge through the weakened metal, leaving behind a shattered shoulder and a fracture running down Remus’s left parietal. But he’d made it through the night alive, and he’d decided years before that that was the only thing that mattered once the moon and his bones had set. The months were too short to waste any time thinking about the transformations behind him.
“All I remember is Dan showing me photos from their last holiday and teaching Sophie and me how to play rummy.”
“Sophie?” Sirius raised his eyebrows.
“His kid sister,” Remus explained.
“Sorry. There are just so many women in your life now. Can’t keep up.”
“Hardly.” Remus rolled his eyes and ducked under a tapestry concealing a shortcut leading down to the dungeons. He had half a mind to let the heavy cloth fall in Sirius’s face, but held it back behind him. Sirius stepped into the dimly lit passage with his typical grace, and for a moment Remus couldn’t help feeling more like a white-gloved footman than a Category-5 deadly beast. He’d come to accept the feeling as a common side effect of being close friends with the heir to the House of Black.
“So?” Sirius pressed as they made their way down the passage. “You’re not ditching us for a bunch of songbirds, then?”
“No, Sirius,” Remus sighed. “And speaking of birds, you’re sounding more and more like a little girl by the minute.”
“Oi!” Sirius thwacked a playful arm out sideways to cuff Remus round the head. Remus, grinning, ducked out of the way just in time, but the momentum sent his book bag swinging from his shoulder. It hit the stone wall of the narrow corridor and the buckle burst free, sending papers, quills and ink bottles scattering across the floor.
“Damn,” he murmured under his breath, squatting on his toes to gather what he could reach before the ink spread over all of his class notes. “You should go on ahead. No point in us both being late for Slughorn’s.”
Sirius didn’t dignify Remus’s suggestion with an answer. His shiny black shoes stayed firmly planted on the cobblestones, reflecting the twinkling point of light from his wand tip as he swept it slowly from side to side over the ground.
“Thanks,” Remus said once his worn leather bag was stuffed full again and wandlight failed to reveal any more stray quill nibs.
Sirius nodded his welcome and set about rearranging Remus’s books and scrolls so that the buckle could close properly.
“You need a better system, mate,” he said, frowning as he shuffled through a dozen crumpled scraps of torn parchment. Most were scribbled invitations bearing dates and times for study sessions and outings. A few were friendly little notes written on torn-off corners, and one was topped off with a sparkly pink lipstick kiss.
“‘Thanks for the great advice! You really are the best. xx, Emmeline,’” Sirius read aloud, holding the scrap up to the torchlight for inspection.
It was too dim in the passageway to make out much colour, but the shadowy hollows of Remus’s cheeks seemed to darken a shade.
“You can just vanish those. I was going to clean them out at the end of the week anyway.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to go to… Scrivenshafts on Saturday with… Thesius?” Sirius asked, squinting to decipher a messily scrawled note. “Hang on, Thesius Beaumont? Isn’t he in Slytherin?”
“He is, but he’s all right, really. But I actually can’t go anywhere this Hogsmeade weekend. I promised James I’d invite him along to join me and Lily for dinner by the lake after our weekly prefect update.”
“Oh, you mean your long, dusky walks along the lakeshore,” Sirius said sagely. “Very official business. Not at all romantic. I commend your stalwart commitment to your prefectorial duties, Mr Moony.”
Remus huffed. “Look, you lot can take the piss all you like, but it’s not easy being a prefect in Gryffindor house. Sometimes it just helps to take a walk and vent with someone who actually gets it.”
“And is Lily ‘getting it’?”
“Sirius!” Remus rounded on him. “Will you lay off? I don’t know if I can make it any clearer that I don’t want to talk about this.”
“About what?” Sirius asked, his face an unflappable mask.
“I don’t know—girls? My other friends? Because that’s what Emmeline and Lily are: friends. I’m allowed to talk to other people besides you, James and Peter.”
“Never said you weren’t,” Sirius said calmly, continuing down the last stretch of the dim corridor. Remus followed a few paces behind, hands shoved in his pockets. “But as someone who’s heard you in the shower, I’d still suggest a pass on the Ravenshop invite.”
Remus never sang in the shower and they both knew it. Still, he shrugged in agreement with an amused huff as Sirius pushed open the door leading out of the passage and onto the floor above the dungeon.
“It’s not a bad thing, you know,” Sirius carried on after a minute as if they hadn’t broken off the conversation at the passage’s end. “Having a few girls after you.”
“Says the bloke whose initials mark up half the notebooks of Hogwarts’ female student body.”
“Please. You know I’d never go out with any of the girls here.”
“Yeah, you’ve always said as much.”
There was an unusually hard note in Remus’s voice that made Sirius glance over at him. A dark line had worked itself into the gentle slope between Remus’s eyebrows and the corners of his mouth looked sharper before he opened it to ask, “And why is that?”
Sirius turned his gaze through the wavy glass at the base of the towering, iron-framed windows they were passing as they made their way deeper into the castle.
“Because I’m not that bored, that’s why,” he tossed out flippantly. “None of them interest me.”
Remus huffed something unintelligible under his breath, but the word “bored” was distinctly echoed back.
“What was that, Moons?” Sirius asked loudly, his voice ricocheting off the walls.
“Nothing, Pads.”
“Bloody what?”
“Fine, it’s—none of them are good enough for you, is that it?”
“Hey! That’s not—”
“Because Evelyn Porter is probably the most stunning girl I’ll see in my lifetime, and Marlene’s an actual rockstar in her free time off campus, and Demi O’Connell is as golden hearted as they come—with a unicorn Patronus to prove it.”
“Okay?”
“And, even putting our most remarkable female classmates aside for a moment, not a single one of the girls here is an outlet for boredom. They’re real people, Padfoot, with real, meaningful lives and feelings. You know they’ve all fancied you, and I know you don’t buy into any of your family’s blood status nonsense, but you still go around like none of them are good enough for the Young Lord Bl—”
“Remus!” Sirius barked, grabbing his shoulder but dropping his hand and shaking it like it burned a second later. “That’s not what it’s like. That’s not what I’m like; how could you think—”
“Black!” A voice rang out from the other side of the open Potions classroom door. They’d reached the bottom of the staircase to the dungeons and half the Potions class had swivelled around on their stools to stare at them. “And Lupin, I expect better from our prefects. You’re ten minutes late, boys. That’ll be ten points from Gryffindor. Each.”
Sirius didn’t even blink at Slughorn’s reprimands, his eyes still locked on Remus as they dropped their things on the workbenches next to James and Peter.
“Remus, I don’t—” he started in an insistent whisper.
“I know, Sirius,” Remus interrupted tiredly, his attention already focused on flipping through his heavily stained textbook to the page marked on the blackboard. “I’m sorry, all right?”
Sirius didn’t answer, his jaw clenching at the dismissal. James slid his book over so they could share and Sirius finally turned away to mumble a question about the ingredients list in his ear.
⟡
Remus didn’t seem much surprised that evening when James and Peter ventured out for an after-dinner Honeydukes run and Sirius announced he was staying behind. Within ten minutes of their departure from the common room, he claimed the chair opposite Remus with a distinct air of intent, spine straight and arms planted on the armrests like a king.
“What did you mean?” he demanded without preamble.
“I’m sorry?” Remus asked mildly, glancing up from the Arithmancy essay he was revising on his lap.
“Are you?”
Remus raised an eyebrow and set his quill down in its inkpot. “I don’t… know,” he replied after a moment’s thought.
Sirius glowered at him. “You’re impossible.”
“I don’t mean to be.” This time, his tired voice actually sounded apologetic.
“‘No one is good enough for the Young Lord Black.’ That’s where we left off. How about finishing that line of thought?”
Remus ran a hand over his face and set his essay to the side. “I don’t know, Sirius. I suppose I was annoyed after all your comments about my other friends.”
“So you came up with that load of rubbish on the spot, did you?”
“No, I—”
“You meant it, then.” Sirius crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Why.”
“Because you—” Remus cut himself off and seemed unable to look into Sirius’s face. “You’ve always had… everything. But you turn your nose up at it, and I used to think that was cool. But with this year shaping up the way it is, now that I’m getting some of that same kind of… I don’t know—attention, I guess? I’m realising what a gift it is to have people actively wanting you in their world. I know I’ve had that with you, James, and Pete since second year, but that was the first and only time I’d been invited into a friend group and the circumstances were… different. With—you know. You three learning about my problem and all. And you know I wouldn’t trade the world for you lot, but being a Marauder doesn’t make me see anyone else as ‘less than.’”
“And I do?”
“Well, when you’ve snubbed nearly every girl in—”
“Merlin! It’s not about girls!” Sirius growled. “It’s only ever been about… look, I’m just not interested, all right? I don’t care about anyone’s social status or how pretty they are or any of that tosh. If James wasn’t head-over-heels about Evans, would you be saying the same to him?”
Remus looked at him thoughtfully, head cocked to the side. “No,” he mused eventually, “I probably wouldn’t.”
“Right,” Sirius said, breathing rather too hard for someone sitting down. He took a steadying breath and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Moony, I—”
“Remus!” Mary Macdonald squealed, and a mass of curly hair obscured Remus from view for a moment as she fell into his lap, heels kicking up in the air. “You didn’t stick around for pudding! We were supposed to go stargazing after dinner, remember?”
“Hi, Mary,” Remus’s voice came from behind the veil of dark locks. He brushed it out of his face and grinned up at her bemusedly. “Was that meant to be tonight? Sorry, when we talked after class I thought we were making plans for another time.”
“Our Moony’s schedule is pretty full these days, Macdonald,” Sirius drawled.
Mary glanced over at him, confused by the nickname, then turned back to Remus with a shrug.
“That’s all right,” she said sweetly, repositioning herself to perch on the armrest with one leg still draped over Remus’s. “It looked a little cloudy out there, anyways. But we should do it soon so we can take care of our star charts for both Astronomy and Divination. Sinistra's assignment is due this Friday.”
“Of course. Did you happen to catch what she said about finding Capricornus before it crosses the horizon? I missed that bit and haven’t been able to see it...”
Sirius, tired of being ignored, stood with a scowl and crossed over to the boy’s dormitory staircase. Remus didn’t seem to notice him leaving, busy listening to something Mary was saying. But when Sirius turned around at the top of the stairs it was to see Remus looking up at him, still trapped under a stockinged leg with his head tilted in that inquisitive way of his. It was a look that had always made Sirius feel seen, a look he sought out when it seemed the rest of the wizarding world would only ever view him through the warped lens of his parentage.
“First year,” he called down to Remus. The common room went quiet as everyone stopped what they were doing to listen in. A pocket of eleven-year-olds perked up excitedly, but he ignored their upturned faces.
“You’ve had us since first year. You just didn’t understand what that meant until second.”
He ducked through the doorway to the dormitory before Remus could catch the flush spreading over his features.