A/N: Hey y'all! This was written for Hogwarts. Writing Club prompts are listed below. :)

WARNINGS: Previous self-hate (mentioned in depth), mild language

Charms Task 2: Write about someone coming out of their shell

Word Count: 3594

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Those rights go to JK Rowling.

Enjoy!

The first thing Remus noticed was the darkness.

It threw him off guard—moments ago he had been on a battlefield illuminated by flying curses. Remus squared his shoulders and searched for his wand, but could not find it. Most wizards would panic, but Remus was skilled in most wandless magic.

When his other senses picked up no immediate danger, he held up his hand and summoned a flame to his palm. The blue light revealed absolutely nothing; it was as though he was standing in the middle of a starless space. Remus reached out a hand and walked a few steps forward, but he couldn't feel any surface. He was very clearly standing on something, but it had no reflection, or any other indication that he was walking on something other than air.

Remus ran a hand through his greying brown hair, unsettled to realize that it wasn't clumped together with sweat and blood like it had been on the battlefield.

This was an unfamiliar magic, and Remus was wise enough to fear it.

"Come on, Lupin," he murmured to himself. He needed to hear a voice—something to prove that there was life in this terrifying pit of emptiness. "What are you afraid of?"

As if in answer, four brilliant pillars of white light erupted from the floor in front of him, in two columns as though they were lining a walkway. Remus stumbled back, wishing he had his wand, but after a few tense moments, he relaxed slightly. The pillars were doing nothing more than rearing upwards, as far as Remus' eyes could see. As his fear of them subsided, the man examined them more closely.

These lights left a reflection on the ground, and, upon closer inspection, they appeared to have faint images flitting through them. Remus walked cautiously closer, his amber eyes—which were no less bright than they had been in his youth—gazing at the nearest pillar to his right.

His curiosity of the new magic overpowered his fear. He reached out a hand, and his index finger just barely grazed the pillar of light—but it was enough.

Remus felt a pull at his navel, as though he was travelling by Portkey, and a flash of light enveloped him. When he opened his eyes again, he was somewhere else.

Eleven-year-old Remus Lupin sat on his deep scarlet comforter, an open book in his lap. Though his eyes moved across the page, he wasn't actually reading; his mind was replaying the day's events in his head. Maybe in hindsight it wasn't the worst thing in the world, but being partnerless in Potions class that afternoon hadn't felt good. Professor Slughorn had had to find someone willing to work with him, and Remus had never been so humiliated in his life.

It was so easy for some people; two of the boys in his dorm had befriended each other immediately. For someone who was harboring such a big secret—and had been taught to hide that part of himself his whole life—the idea of opening up to strangers was terrifying and rendered him immobile. Still, Remus longed for that connection with others his age; he convinced himself that he couldn't have that sort of relationship with anyone, lest they discover what he was.

A werewolf, he told himself, doesn't deserve friends.

Sirius Black and James Potter burst into the room then, followed by a nervous-looking Peter Pettigrew—Remus' dorm mates. He glanced up when they entered, fingering the edge of his book uncomfortably. He never knew what to do when they came in—did he greet them? Stay quiet? Wave hello? He wasn't sure.

It didn't matter though; James and Sirius walked right past, and Peter just gave him a fleeting smile before he retreated to his bed. Remus looked back down at his book. The pad of his thumb traced over a scar on his left wrist. This was what marked him as different from the others—an outsider. And as much as Remus hated the wolf within, it was a part of him that he was forced to live with.

It wasn't any use, he thought, to wish for the impossible.

He stood up to go to the library, but before he went, he grabbed a bar of chocolate off of his bedside table. As nightmarish as his Potions class had been, he suddenly realized that Peter's had been worse—Slughorn had very loudly listed all the mistakes the boy had made while brewing, much to the Slytherins' delight.

He walked over to Peter's bed and pulled back the curtains slightly. He slipped his arm through and dropped the chocolate in the other boy's pudgy hands, with a murmured, "Slughorn is a git."

He didn't catch Peter's teary smile or James and Sirius' intrigued looks as he walked from the room, but they were there nonetheless.

Remus blinked again and was back in the dark room. The experience had been a bit like that of a Pensieve; he had witnessed the memory play out, but had been unable to effect the events in any way.

Remus glanced at the pillar to his left, considering his options. He could give in to desire and go through every memory available to him, or he could figure out a way to get back to the battlefield. It wasn't much of a choice; Remus was loyal to a fault. He turned around to walk back to where he started, but found that he couldn't—there was some sort of invisible force keeping him from going back the way he had come.

Panic set in—he couldn't stay here, there was a war going on! He had to be there to defend his friends and family; his son, Harry…

It suddenly struck him that he could be dead.

It made sense. The absence of blood, the unfamiliar room, these pillars of light… it would certainly explain why he'd never read about anything quite like this before. The harder he thought about it, the more he remembered a hazy figure pointing a wand at him, and a jet of green light, and then—he'd woken up here.

It was odd; though he was no longer panicking, regret overwhelmed him. Had he failed the people he loved the most? Had he done enough in his thirty-eight years of life? Or was there something he had left unfinished? He thought of Teddy, and sorrow like he'd never known washed over him. He'd wanted to be there for his son—he'd wanted to hear his first words, see his first steps, see him off to Hogwarts…

It was ironic that, just when he was finally happy to be alive, his previous wish of death was granted.

And his wife—

Remus turned to the pillar on his left. He needed a distraction—or a way out of here, because this couldn't be the afterlife.

He reached out to touch it.

The cold was the first thing he noticed. His frail body was shivering violently as he laid, abandoned, in the Shrieking Shack the morning after his transformation. Wounded and in pain, the boy carefully pushed himself into a sitting position.

Like after every transformation, his soul felt as though it was only loosely clinging to his body—like at any moment it could float up and away, leaving an empty shell behind. Last night had been a longer moon; the winter nights were always the longest.

Remus lifted his hand to his face; it was an odd mixture of chalk white and dark red. He hated the blood on his fingers. The monster inside him had done that, and it would continue to as long as there was breath in his body. He couldn't escape his life; he couldn't escape the wolf. Sometimes he wondered why he tried so hard to overcome the beast inside him when all everyone else would see was the monster.

He thought back to all the words he wished he could say to his friends, all the times he'd kept his mouth shut around them. He longed to tell them the truth, to show them who he really was and see how they liked it, but he knew he never would; the fear of rejection was too strong. He longed to laugh freely around them, to be able to clap them on the back without fearing their reaction—but he couldn't. He was afraid; he was a coward. Once his friends knew what he was, he'd have more to lose than just his pride.

Remus shook his head to chase away those thoughts. They wouldn't help him, and the last thing he needed was to put himself down. Still, he couldn't help but long for someone to visit him in the Hospital Wing later, to assure him that he was more than the beast that had torn him apart, that he was still a good person. James, Sirius, Peter—as much as he loved them, as brilliant as they were, they would be horrified to learn what he was.

The wolf inside his mind was telling him to hate them for that; to use his anger and hatred to come out on top, and be the one looked up to for a change.

And on mornings like this, it was hard not to become bitter; it was hard to keep a positive outlook, and to rise above the ruined child he had become.

But he did. After every transformation, without fail, Remus stood up, and he walked away from the Shrieking Shack—battered and bloody, but still alive.

It didn't stop him from wishing for a release—an end.

Remus reeled back, horrified at that memory—it had been the opposite of what he'd been hoping for; it had brought back every feeling of self-hatred he'd ever felt, especially in his youth. James, Sirius, and even Peter's faces had been comforting. This… hadn't been.

He reached for the next one anyway.

Remus was in first year, and he was recovering from a transformation—without his dorm mates' knowledge, of course. He was sitting in the Potions classroom before the period had begun, when his dorm mates came running in. Well—James and Sirius ran; Peter walked. James' hazel eyes shone with excitement as he recounted one of his escapades to Sirius, who grey eyes were filled to the brim with mirth; Remus was instantly jealous of their closeness, though he tried not to be.

The rest of the class slowly filed into the room, then proceeded to take their seats. Remus didn't pay much attention to them until he caught a few words to his right.

"Be quiet, Pettigrew. You're starting to annoy me."

Remus tensed and turned to face the Slytherin who had spoken. Peter hadn't even been talking to him; he'd been talking to a disinterested Gryffindor girl. Peter's mouth snapped shut and he looked down, his face burning. Remus itched to say something, but his brain kept reminding him of what he'd been taught since he'd been bitten: it was better to go unnoticed.

"Merlin, Pettigrew! Are you crying? It was a bloody inkwell."

Remus glanced over to see Peter on the ground, desperately trying to sop up his spilled ink as his lower lip wobbled. Remus watched the door, cursing silently; of all the days Slughorn had to be late…

"L-leave me alone…"

"Is that the best you can do? Pitiful Pettigrew. Pathetic. Why, I bet—"

"Leave him alone."

Remus had stood up, and spoken more loudly than he ever had before. His voice rang through the classroom, and all conversation ceased. Every eye was glued on Remus, and though this was the opposite of what he wanted to happen, at the moment he didn't care; no one should speak to someone as if they weren't worth something.

The Slytherin—Avery, Remus recalled—turned his beady eyes to the young Gryffindor. "Who the hell are you?"

Remus ignored the question, his shoulders tensed and his back straight. "Leave Peter alone. He hasn't done anything to you."

Avery laughed, his dark hair falling briefly in front of his eyes. "I asked you a question."

"And I chose not to answer it," Remus bit back angrily. He was physically exhausted, and just plain tired of the people in this school feeling like they could walk over others. There were worse things than blood status. "Leave Peter alone."

"You heard Remus," Sirius said calmly from behind him. "Leave Peter alone, Avery."

James came to stand on his other side, a severe expression on his normally cheerful face. "Back off."

Remus looked back down at Peter, whose shocked expression strengthened Remus' resolve. The werewolf bent down to help the other boy to his feet, keeping an eye on Avery. "You can use my ink," he murmured.

And Remus didn't know it then, but those were the words that would set the best years of his life in motion.

When Remus opened his eyes again, he realized they were watering. He looked past the pillar of light he'd just come out of, and realized that more had appeared behind it. All of his memories—some that he'd forgotten—were here, and he knew that he could get lost in a place like this.

Remus took a step forward, intending to see if he could walk past the end of the walkway the pillars had created, but he couldn't resist touching another one. And then another. And another.

This time, he wasn't in school. He wasn't being shown a grand prank, or a tender moment with Lily; this was when he was much, much older…

Remus Lupin, thirty-three, stared numbly at the deranged man in the picture he was holding. Wild eyes full of anger, a mouth turned down in a sneer, and a haunted look about his face—this was not the person Remus remembered. He remembered grey eyes full of joy, a laughing mouth, and a certain reckless handsomeness that seemed untamable.

But the Sirius he had known was gone. If any of him had been left after he'd condemned the Potters, then it was most certainly destroyed in Azkaban.

Remus looked around the room, thinking back on how much he himself had changed. Years ago, he'd assumed that when he reached the age he was now, his house would be full of James' children—maybe even his own—with Sirius bounding after them as Padfoot, and Peter quietly laughing in the corner. He'd have a study full of Defense artifacts, and the beginnings of a manuscript that stood a chance at being published.

He didn't have any of that, though. Instead, he had an empty apartment, a poor-paying job, and a liquor cabinet for when the memories got to be too much. He never used to drink in excess; everything had changed with the deaths of Lily and James.

And now Sirius had escaped from his prison, successfully upsetting Remus' life once again.

Well, Sirius could come; Remus didn't care. There wasn't anything left for him, anyway. All he had were memories, and the only person left alive to share them was insane.

Remus grabbed a bottle of firewhiskey, wishing that it wasn't so close to the Potters' wedding anniversary; he'd be able to think properly, then.

A part of him knew that he couldn't go on like this; that he was making himself sick, and was on the path of self-destruction. A larger part of him didn't care. The war was over; Harry was safe. He was just a man without a purpose now.

Remus shuddered as he left the memory, trying to regain control of his scattered thoughts. His hands were shaking slightly; unlike his school memories, this one was recent—raw. It wasn't too long ago that he'd thought like that.

Remus shivered, wishing that he had the courage to just leave this place. There wasn't much doubt in his mind that he could, but he feared the answers—he feared where he would end up.

But most of all, he feared Lily and James. After all, what would they say to him? For over a decade, he'd abandoned their son, letting him grow up without a single person to love him. Harry had had no knowledge of the wizarding world, and Remus still hadn't contacted him when he began at Hogwarts—he'd even taught the boy for a year without letting on that he knew Harry as more than a student. When Sirius had died, he'd still kept his distance from Harry. He'd failed at protecting their son, and if the roles were reversed and it was Teddy who had been abused in such a way… he didn't know if he'd be able to forgive the people who'd put his boy through that. Why should James and Lily?

"Remus. You are not to blame."

His head shot up as fast as lightning, and he stared, wide-eyed, at the man who had suddenly appeared in front of him. Hazel eyes, crooked glasses, hair that looked like it'd just been electrified—there was no mistaking him.

"James," he croaked. "You… you're—"

He had the nerve to laugh, the bastard. "Moony, did you really think I'd let you waste away in here? I know your curiosity knows no bounds, but even you can't be content to hop from memory to memory for eternity."

Remus didn't respond; he was too busy taking in the man before him. James looked exactly as he remembered—young and whole. Happy.

It was breaking Remus' heart. Somehow, just like he'd been able to in school, James picked up on this.

"Remus." The man took a few steps forward, and Remus tried to remind himself that if he was dead, then James wasn't technically a ghost; after all these years, he was finally real. "Mate, Lily and I don't blame you for what happened. It was war, things got out of hand, and—Merlin, Remus, it's just too good to see you."

Remus couldn't help the breathy laugh that escaped him, and the large grin that he hadn't seen in so long overtook James' face. James' eyes were a bit sad, but there was true joy in them; joy that was directed at Remus.

Remus resisted the urge to touch his old friend. "It's… it's been a long time."

James snorted. "If that isn't the understatement of the century, then I don't know what is." His eyes softened, and he held out his hand. "Let's go home. There are people waiting for you."

Remus was about to take it, but then stopped himself. This was James, he knew that—but it was so, so odd to finally be near him again; he was afraid that this was all a dream and that he'd wake up. He did, however, have some questions he wanted answered. "What is this place?"

James considered him for a moment, his glasses reflecting the light of the pillars. "A sort of in-between, I suppose. Everyone stops here, and they take a peek at their life—from a different angle. Depending on which side you're attracted to, you then move on to the next plane of existence."

Remus frowned. "What do the sides—ah."

James smirked. "Figured it out at last, did you? The left is everything… negative, I suppose. Mistakes, wrongs, things you dislike about yourself… but also sins. Power-hungry people can become obsessed with those memories. Among others, of course. The right side is filled with everything you've done right—anything that is generally viewed as good."

Remus took a step back. "I didn't… I just looked at the memories. I didn't crave one side more than the other."

James smiled patiently, as though he'd been expecting this answer. "If you look for the light, you will often find it. But if you look for the dark, that is all you'll ever see. You can see the light in those other memories. You aren't consumed with hate at the sight of your mistakes, and you don't wish for more at the expense of others. Moony, you'd much rather see the memories on the right. Just trust me. I know you."

James held out his hand once again to his friend. "Now, are you ready to go home?"

Remus hesitated. He longed for the peace that James had promised, but he couldn't help but think of everything he was leaving behind. "But… the war—"

"Is finished for you," James interrupted softly. "I know that it's hard to accept right now, but there isn't anything more that you can do. You've fulfilled your role."

Remus shook his head in wonder. Then he finally voiced his greatest sorrow. "Prongs. My son…"

James looked surprised for a split second before he put a hand on his friend's shoulder—their first true contact in sixteen years. Sadness and understanding clouded James' gaze. "He has people to love him. And something tells me that he'll grow up in a safer world."

Remus nodded, a lump in his throat. He cast one last look around the room, his gaze lingering on the one memory he hadn't yet touched.

"That's us in seventh year," James told him happily. "Finally a proper family. We're in our dorm, dancing like the idiots we are to some Muggle band the night before graduation."

A laugh escaped Remus' lips, but he didn't question his friend. "This is it, isn't it? It's actually the end."

James pulled him into a hug, and the two held on to each other like they'd never see each other again. "Nah. It's only the beginning. It's… it's so good to see you again."

Remus tightened his grip on his friend. "It's good to see you, too."

He followed James out of the room, and he didn't look back.

A/N: Writing Club Prompts:

Character Appreciation: Hermione Granger — (House) Gryffindor

Disney Challenge: Mowgli — write about someone who struggles with change / write about a brave child.

Dark Lady's Diabolical Lair: (word) secret

Book Club: The Queen — (word) release, (dialogue) "You are not to blame.", (plot point) being trapped—in any sense,

Showtime: Masquerade — (dialogue) "What are you afraid of?"

Amber's Attic: "Home is any place that makes you forget the world is on fire." (5 point bonus)

Lyric Alley: How am I the lucky one?

Ami's Audio Admirations: Marked — write about someone with odd scars or markings /

Angel's Arcade: Miles "Tails" Prower — (relationship) best friends, (plot point) being bullied, (trait) shy

Lo's Lowdown: "If you look for the light, you can often find it. But if you look for the dark, that is all you'll ever see." — Iroh

Bex's Basement: James and the Giant Peach — write about someone whose biggest desire is friendship

Film Festival: (dialogue) "Be quiet. You're starting to annoy me."