Chapter Text
Remus awoke shivering. The shack was bordering on arctic this time of year, and despite Madam Pomfrey's best efforts at long-lasting warming spells, Remus almost always came to with numb fingers and goosebump-puckered flesh.
As the last vestiges of the wolf withdrew, Remus slowly pulled the pieces of his battered mind back together again. He could hear the wind wail through the shack like a lost child, and feel its icy fingers scrabble desperately on his spine. Cracking his eyes open warily, he ran his gaze around the small space and tried to get his bearings. The familiar room was still dark, barely illuminated by the first grey rays of winter sunlight: splinter-riddled floorboards; lopsided cot; blood-stained mattress; barred window.
Remus himself was curled up in the foetal position on the floor, back pressed to the door of the room so hard that the sharp edge dug into his skin. The wolf had wanted something, Remus remembered with the raw nausea that often accompanied his wolf memories. Something on the other side of that door. The memory was vague and fading, slipping through his fingers even as he tried to grasp it, but… Remus was sure it had been want . Not hunger. Not rage. Want, deep in the beast’s chest. And whatever it was the wolf had wanted, it had smelled so good , so familiar. It had smelled like-
But Remus’s train of thought was violently derailed as the pain caught up with him. He gritted his teeth against a whimper and waited for the pain to lessen enough to think. Shoulder , he thought, frustrated. My bloody shoulder is dislocated again .
In the past year, Remus’s body had begun to struggle more and more with each monthly transformation. His muscles, so often stretched to nearly snapping, had become uncooperative, sometimes spasming and cramping, sometimes becoming loose and weak. His joints had begun to dislocate, leaving him trembling with pain and gasping for breath. Some days he felt like a rag doll coming apart at the seams.
His shoulder had been by far the worst offender, and not just around the full moon. Most recently, it had slipped out of place after a particularly rough landing on his broom had sent him sprawling onto the quidditch pitch. James, who had dragged Remus out to fly lazy laps around the pitch in a misguided (if well-meaning) attempt to cheer him up, had practically fallen off his own broom cackling. Until, of course, he realised Remus was actually hurt, at which point he had instantly dropped to his side and started fussing like an overprotective mother hen. The fussing had continued long after the shoulder was back in place, persisting all the way up to the hospital wing (despite Remus’s protests), and all the way down to the great hall for dinner. James had then insisted on serving Remus like he was a member of the bloody royal family, and probably would have tried to spoon-feed him as well if Remus hadn’t firmly put his foot down. Apologies he could appreciate, but he hated being made to feel like an invalid.
Good old James , Remus thought now with a pang of something that felt a lot like homesickness.
Holding his injured arm close to his chest, Remus rolled himself onto his back. He hardly enjoyed fixing dislocations by himself, but he hated waiting even more. Remembering James’s impromptu first-aid lesson the second time his shoulder had been dislocated during a transformation, he slowly stretched his arm out to the side. He used his good arm to guide it, letting it bend at the elbow as he inched it up and around over his head. With a sickening clunk, the joint popped back into place. White-hot pain ate at the edges of his vision, but Remus refused to black out. He took a deep breath. Then another. And another.
As the pain finally receded, Remus realised that his shoulder was not his only injury. His hands were a mess, raw and bleeding and missing more than one nail. His side was badly bruised as well, red and purple blooming along his ribs, hip, thigh.
He grimaced. The wolf had clearly wanted out of its prison last night, even more than usual.
Wrapping his hands in the clean sheet Madam Pomfrey had stashed away under the bed and his shivering body in the accompanying blanket, Remus curled up on the cot and waited for the kind old witch to arrive.
It didn’t take her long; short of an emergency, she always made a point of arriving no more than 10 minutes after sunrise. Remus suspected she'd prefer to stand right outside the door while his body buckled and morphed back into human form, ready and waiting to tend to his injuries the very second it was safe. But Madam Pomfrey was a witch quite used to teenagers, and her years of experience had taught her that privacy and a sense of control was a kind of healing magic all on its own.
Her little melodic knock sounded on the door. “Remus? Can I come in, love?”
“Yes, Madam Pomfrey.” His voice was surprisingly hoarse.
The door opened, and Madam Pomfrey’s soft round figure appeared in the doorway, dull dawn light illuminating her like an angel descending from heaven. Or at least , Remus thought with a delirious kind of reverie, that's what they bloody well ought to look like . He unwound his hands from the now quite ruined sheets and held them up pitifully to be tended to. Had it been anyone else in the whole world but Poppy Pomfrey, Remus would have been mortified to show such helplessness.
Madam Pomfrey clucked sympathetically and began her work.
Twenty minutes later, Remus was lovingly tucked in a cot in the hospital wing, hands wrapped in clean white bandages and bruises soothed with a cool poultice. He knew that there was little to be done about his shoulder, and so had not mentioned it.
Remus sighed and sank back further into the pillow. He was utterly exhausted, right down to the bone. As sleep began to blur the lines between real and imagined, now and then, man and beast, the memory of a scent filled Remus’s mind. It was musky and alive like warm skin, with a hint of something sweet. It smelled so very familiar… It made him feel safe and relaxed, but it also made his chest ache. Why did this smell make him so very, very sad?
Remus fell asleep with tears on his lashes.
Unfortunately for Remus, it was a decidedly short sleep. At 7am, a first-year girl was bustled in by two of her friends, all three shrieking like banshees and talking shrilly over top of one another. Remus’s curtains were drawn, so he couldn't see what was the matter with her exactly, but eventually he managed to piece the story together. From the sounds of it, the girl had gotten on the wrong side of a Ravenclaw second-year, who had then enacted her revenge in the form of a magically modified body wash…
Remus couldn’t help but wince sympathetically. He had learned first-hand that Ravenclaws were dangerously underestimated when it came to plotting and scheming. The muggle-borns were particularly ruthless, in his opinion - he privately suspected that, had they only been born into a pureblood family, many of them would have been promptly sorted into Slytherin.
Even after Madam Pomfrey had attended to the poor girl, the borderline hysteria subsiding into whispered plottings of revenge (which he could hardly disapprove of himself), Remus found he couldn't get back to sleep. He could almost feel the wolf’s essence still clinging to him, slimy like grease and making his skin crawl. What he needed now was a very long, very hot shower and a nice nap in his own bed. Sirius should still be asleep at this time of morning, so it should be easy enough to avoid him.
Not for the first time that winter break - or for the first time that day, come to think of it - Remus missed James’s steadying presence. He had a way of making everything feel a little more normal, a little more bearable, even in the devastating wake of Sirius’s biggest betrayal yet. James had not forgiven Sirius any more than Remus himself had, but in these last hellish months he'd instinctively taken on the role of mediator. Over and over he placed himself between the two, remaining polite with Sirius while firmly maintaining the distance between the two. He made sure that Sirius never had the slightest opportunity to twist the knife he had plunged deep into Remus’s back that awful night.
And now James was gone, shipped off on the Hogwarts Express like a reluctant parcel (accompanied by Peter, who was, inexplicably, dressed up as an elf) to be hand delivered into the arms of Mr and Mrs Potter. And Remus was here, left behind like a thrice regifted sweater that was too ugly to wear and too pitiful to throw away.
Worse still, he had been left behind with Sirius.
Sirius had quietly refused James’s perfunctory invitation to spend Christmas with the Potters as usual and, not exactly having any other options, had elected to remain at Hogwarts over the winter break. This would have been perfectly fine if Remus hadn’t been notified at the last minute by Dumbledore (“Via bloody owl too, for fuck’s sake, who does that?” he had lamented to James in their dorm room later that day) that his own permission to spend winter break at the Potters had been rescinded. “Unforeseen circumstances,” the letter had cited diplomatically. “Bloody bullshit,” James had corrected indignantly.
And so Remus found himself preparing for his first friendless Christmas since second year, starting off strong with his first friendless full moon since third.
Remus sighed. No point in getting himself down about it now. He would just have to put one foot in front of the other until winter break was over, and things could go back to normal. Or at least, whatever it was that passed for normal these days.
Remus rolled himself gingerly out of bed and began to get himself sorted to leave.
Madam Pomfrey took a substantial amount of convincing to allow Remus to leave. Perhaps that was why, when he finally stepped through into the Gryffindor common room, he found it to be occupied by the one person he least wanted to see.
Sirius Black looked up from the book in his lap. Their eyes met, probably for the first time in weeks. Remus's heart dropped into the pit of his stomach.
He was sitting in one of the leather arm chairs by the fire, back pressed into the corner of the chair and legs pulled up in front of him. Large dark circles marred the delicate skin under his red-rimmed eyes. He looked small. Tired. Lost.
Remus hated him.
Remus turned abruptly and headed for the stairs up to the dorms. Behind him, there was a thump as the book slid to the floor. He didn't look back.
Remus closed the door to the dorms with remarkable control for someone on the verge of a breakdown. He sat down heavily on his bed. Heart pounding, hands shaking, chest heaving. Resting his elbows on his knees and hanging his head, Remus sat and breathed.
He had endured plenty of panic attacks in his time - apparently being bitten by a werewolf at barely 4 years old had more than one lasting impact on one's life - but they had gotten bad again recently. James had sat and talked him through each one.
And so it was hardly a surprise that it was James’s voice, low and calm, that echoed through his head as he tried not to lose the plot entirely.
You're alright , said James’s voice. You're safe. Breathe with me. In. 2. 3. 4. Hold. 2. 3. 4. Out. 2. 3. 4. Hold. 2. 3. 4.
After a few minutes of slow, rhythmic breathing, Remus straightened up. He still felt unsteady, but his heart was no longer threatening to beat itself free from its skeletal prison and throw itself out of the tower window like some doomed Shakespearean lover. So. That was an improvement. And with the addition of a therapeutic shower, he may even be able to achieve ‘holding it together’ status.
Willing his knees to cooperate, Remus stood up and headed for the bathroom.
Of course, nothing could ever be that simple for Remus Lupin, now could it? Some days Remus pondered if he had been some ruthless warlord or tyrannical dictator in a past life, because with the way his luck tended to go, he must have some truly crippling karmic debt.
Whatever his past transgressions may have been, his current (and far more pressing) one was that he had completely forgotten about his injured hands. They stung viciously under the warm water, and more than once Remus was reduced to furious teary-eyed swearing by vengeful shampoo suds in an open wound. He was also down an arm due to his bad shoulder, which left him with the relatively unscathed heel of one palm and, in a pinch, one forearm to wash himself with. He did his best, but when he finally turned off the water and stepped out in front of the bathroom mirror, his reflection’s hair was still decidedly soapy.
Fuck it, he thought to himself. At least I smell nice.
Remus dried and dressed himself carefully, shoulder aching with every move, and opened the bathroom door.
Sirius sat cross-legged on his bed like a small child, facing the bathroom door as though he had been waiting for Remus. He was rubbing the flannel of his pyjama pants between his fingers nervously, but other than that he was completely still. Remus had never seen Sirius so still. It was as though the life had been drained out of him.
Remus hated him.
Sirius ran his eyes up and down Remus's body. They lingered on the dripping bandages on Remus's hands, the stiff way he held his shoulder, the greasy soap still in his hair, and Remus could see the corners of his eyes tighten like they always did when he was worried.
Remus hated him.
Remus stood there frozen for a long time, right there in the middle of the dorm. In the middle of their dorm. Their dorm, where not even a year ago, in the sleepy haze after a full moon spent racing one another through the woods, Sirius had stroked his hair and leaned in close and-
Fuck. Remus hated him.
He hated him.
He did. He must. He had to. It had to be hate, because hate meant he could turn away, could move forward, could protect himself.
But if it was hate he felt then why, when Sirius’s breath caught uncertainly in this throat, did he not turn away? Why, when Sirius simply said, “Moony?”, voice small like everything else about him these days, did he feel a lump rise in his throat? Why, when Sirius said with a quiet desperation, “Let me help, Moony. Please,” did he not step back into the bathroom and slam the door shut between them?
If it was hate, then why, why why why , did he find that the only thing he could say back was, “I can't, Sirius. I just can't.”