Work Text:
Dear, Harry!
If you reading this it means I am not at school anymore.
I imagine Minerva handed you this with that careful look she reserves for broken things she refuses to call broken. If so, I hope you waited until you were alone. Some words deserve privacy.
First—breathe. Yes, I know. You do that constantly. Still, do it properly. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The world has a habit of crowding you, and you let it, because you think it’s your responsibility. It isn’t. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
I did not leave because of you.
I am leaving because Hogwarts has always been a temporary kindness for men like me, and temporary kindnesses are best stepped away from before they curdle into regret. Secrets have a way of growing teeth. You’ve noticed.
You remind me, uncomfortably so, of myself at your age—too much spine for someone so young, too much silence where there should have been ease. James had noise. Sirius had fire. You have gravity. People feel it before they understand it, and many never bother with the second part.
This will make some of them smaller around you.
Do not shrink to console them.
You are already learning how the world treats boys who refuse to be ordinary. They will call you arrogant when you are merely capable. Dangerous when you are merely honest. They will mistake your restraint for permission. It is not.
Do not look for friends everywhere. You won’t find them. Most people do not have the capacity to understand what it costs to keep choosing the right thing when the wrong thing would be easier and quieter. They never will.
That is not a flaw in you.
One day—if you are very lucky—you will be older, a bit tired, and more scar than skin. And you will meet someone younger, sharp-eyed and reckless with their own future, who cares for little besides their craft and their principles. You will teach them as I have tried to teach you: not how to be powerful, but how to survive being so.
Until then, read a good book. Preferably one that tells the truth and doesn’t apologize for it. Learn things no one thinks to teach you. Ask questions that make adults uncomfortable. Trust your instincts even when authority frowns at them—especially then.
You have greatness in you, Harry. Not the loud sort. The kind that endures.
Don’t disappoint yourself by pretending otherwise.
If the moon is full and the night feels unkind, remember this: you were never alone in seeing the world clearly. You were simply early.
With affection,
Remus Lupin