Content Warning: Vague description of some nasty injuries on a child.

Note: This is probably not one hundred percent canon compliant. I've been listening to the audiobooks and just got through most of PoA, and my knowledge of Literally Everything is rusty at best. It's been about eight years since I wrote Harry Potter fanfiction and probably five since I destroyed it all, haha. So this is a shrugging sort of apology for any inconsistencies and also any Americanisms.

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Professor R. J. Lupin spends his first Hogwarts staff meeting feeling vaguely ill and like he's going to wake up any second. McGonagall very seriously inquires as to his opinion on the Dementor situation, and his startled, "Well, Prof- er, Minerva," echoes back at him relentlessly for the rest of the meeting, no matter that Minerva laughed it off, no matter that no one else commented. Not even Snape, who Remus can't - can't quite look at, actually.

He has sat across a table from Minerva McGonagall while they mapped an escape route that they both knew would be a last resort, both knew would probably serve better as a self-sacrificial distraction than any hope of survival, and the Pray they don't need it, Minerva, had come easily enough.

It's the context. It's Hogwarts. It's McGonagall in her staff robes and her hat, trying to placate Argus Filch on the subject of discontinued student punishments. This is not Minerva, this is not the witch pacing up and down a stranger's empty kitchen, dark circles under her eyes, robes rumpled and hands twitching, trying just as hard as Remus not to check the time. This is Professor McGonagall, and Professor McGonagall once caught him actively not-watching while his friends bewitched a row of paintings to speak backwards French.

They pass nearly an hour, hashing out last-minute schedule changes(apparently there's an incoming third year whose schedule is so full she's been given special permission to use a Time-Turner; Remus is both horrified and deeply impressed, and tries to look like he is neither, because the others all seem to take this news in stride), comparing course loads and dates against one another to ensure the students won't be swamped with impossible amounts of homework(and what would he have made of that, half a lifetime ago, back when Peter was begging for his help on yet another essay and Sirius was muttering about teachers who'd obviously forgotten what it was like to be a student and oh, no, don't think about that), and trying in vain to argue about the Dementors(because everyone is angry about it, but they all basically agree).

And then the chatter begins to die down, but nobody is moving to leave. One by one, heads begin to turn, almost imperceptibly, in his direction. You wouldn't even notice, maybe, if you hadn't been looking for it, waiting for it.

Remus has been, and he does.

He tries on a calm, genial smile. "Well," he says. "Shall we address the smallish, furry elephant in the room, then?"

It's all a little bit ridiculous.

He keeps staring down at his syllabus, worried that he's putting too much focus on practical work and should probably plan a few more reading assignments, and then he'll stop moving and go very cold, because, oh, right, Sirius Black has escaped.

No matter which thing he worries about, it never quite feels right. Sirius Black has escaped and Remus is terrified that he's going to be an awful teacher; there are lessons to plan and Remus wants to curl up under his desk and scream. The castle brings back fond memories that shouldn't be, things that make him think, things that make him wonder, could I have seen it coming, even back then, how early did it start, was I just so desperate for friends –

These are not new thoughts. They're twelve years old, stale and rehearsed and routine, except now, here, they feel fresh again.

Sirius Black has escaped and Remus has lessons to plan and in less than a week the school is going to be full of children who have no idea one of their professors is a werewolf, Sirius Black has escaped and Severus Snape is going to brew Remus a Wolfsbane potion every month and Remus isn't sure he's ever adequately apologized for the bullying he never put a stop to, Sirius Black has escaped and Sirius Black is an unregistered Animagus and Remus is the only one left who knows this and he still hasn't told anyone, Sirius Black has escaped and Peter Pettigrew is dead and Lily Evans is dead and James Potter is dead and the Dementors will be coming soon and Remus is rethinking his plan to trust a bunch of teenagers with a live Grindylow.

I'll be teaching Harry Potter, he thinks, and isn't that strange, he'll be teaching The Boy Who Lived, the boy they had all worked so frantically to keep safe.

I'll be teaching their son, he thinks, and then holds very still. For about half an hour.

There was only one other person at the staff meeting who sounded even half as nervous as he felt, and Remus did his best not to look at him, either.

It's just –

Everything about Hogwarts takes Remus back to something. He's hoping it will wear off by the time the term actually starts, this feeling of - of having been, somehow, plucked out of time and put back in the wrong spot. In this corridor he is thirteen, overtired from studying and worried about the OWLs; on the courtyard in front of the lake he is seventeen and worried about so much more; in the bathroom on the ground floor he is twelve, hiding, shaking, having just run from his three best friends because they figured him out and they're going to hate him; on the grand staircase he is fifteen and still a little awed and a little embarrassed by the shiny new prefect badge on his chest, and Lily Evans is very spiritedly telling him everything she did over the summer.

He is thirty-three and he is a teacher. He has a job to do, here.

And he knows –

He knows –

He looks out across the grounds, at that cheerful wood cabin, and he knows exactly where and when he'll be, if he sets foot inside.

He marches himself down to Hagrid's the next morning, because he is thirty-three, and he is a teacher, and Hagrid is a colleague, and a friend. They went to war together.

It's just.

The context.

Running into Hagrid at Order safe houses, exchanging terse nods and tense greetings, it's all very… different.

Very different, walking down to Hagrid's house from the castle.

"Morning," Remus says brightly, and Hagrid looks up with a start and then beams at him from where he is currently attacking a patch of weeds in his garden.

"Remus! Wha' brings you out here?"

"Oh," says Remus, and he sticks his hands in his pockets and tries to look nonchalant. "Just getting some exercise, thought I'd stop by and say hello."

"Glad yeh did!" Hagrid throws a clump of something green and quietly shrieking into a wheelbarrow. "Didn' quite catch yeh yesterday."

It is not quite accusatory. Remus sighs anyway. "Sorry about that, Hagrid. It's all just been a bit… Well."

Hagrid waves his apology aside with a very large, very sharp trowel. "I un'erstand. How've yeh been?"

"Keeping busy," Remus says, and tries to sound friendly, because if he's not exactly offering up a wealth of information it's only because there isn't much worth telling. "Working where I can. When I can."

"Hmm." Hagrid straightens up and shakes the dirt from his gloved hands, offers Remus a grimace of understanding. "Lookin' forwar' to the year?"

"I think so," says Remus, and tries to grin. "Are you?"

"Oh, yeah!" Hagrid grins back, and it looks much more genuine than Remus's feels. "Bin gettin' ready fer weeks now! Just got ter clear all this away," he adds, gesturing with displeasure at the expanse of weeds. "Took hold overnight, bu' Professor Sprout reckons I've caught'em in time." And he kneels back down, tugging at a length of greyish vine, which snarls at him.

"So you're not…" says Remus, faintly, and lets the sentence hang. Just keeps watching Hagrid dig up the garden, and feels very far away.

"Not wha'?" Hagrid grunts, tearing up a particularly stubborn weed and slicing the roots off with the trowel when they start trying to twine up his arm.

Remus swallows. "Terrified."

"Oh," says Hagrid, and dumps the dead weed, almost apologetically, into the wheelbarrow. "Well, o' course, there's that."

"Oh, good." Remus conjures a pair of gloves and takes two long strides to an untouched patch of overgrowth, sinks to his knees, and starts digging. "I thought it was just me."

A couple of hours later, Hagrid invites him in for tea. Remus steps over the threshold and he is –

still thirty-three, and also eleven, and twelve, and thirteen, and on up through seventeen. The memories are warm, the largely unspoken mutual commiseration a thread that still holds. Remus greets Fang, pretends it doesn't hurt, looking at this big black dog, who lays his heavy head in Remus's lap and whines until Remus pets him. Hagrid chatters nervously about lesson plans and backup lesson plans, laughs heartily about the book he's assigned, tells him how odd it was to walk into that particular staff meeting even though he's already been to hundreds of them as the gamekeeper. Remus complains about looking for work and it's not half as bitter as he was afraid it might come out, and he asks Hagrid if he thinks the students will benefit from his more practical approach to Defense Against the Dark Arts or if he should have planned for more bookwork, and he tells him he thinks he's probably going to go back home for a few days before the start of term, clear his head, maybe come back on the train.

"Who would'a thought," Hagrid says, eventually, when they've both been quiet for just a little bit too long, and Remus doesn't look at him. He scratches behind Fang's ear and stares into the unlit fireplace. And Hagrid continues, his voice low. "The two of us."

Remus forces himself to look up, to meet Hagrid's eyes. Hagrid takes a deep breath, and whispers: "Teachers."

Remus grins, and raises his (rather large) empty teacup, waiting for Hagrid to follow suit so they can clink them together. "Professors, even," he agrees, and is surprised by the warmth in his own voice.

.

.

Remus is eleven years old and he wakes up slowly and tries not to scream.

He is naked, wrapped in and covered by several blankets, and everything hurts. He is used to this, and he wishes that made it better. There is a deep ache, in his joints, in his head, in his bones, and bubbling just above that is a sharper pain; he can feel – gouges, in his stomach, in his legs, there is a chunk missing from his left arm and –

he is not where he is supposed to be. This doesn't – this place isn't – it sounds and smells nothing like the small room he's been given, the room he has woken up in twice now, the room that's meant to keep the rest of the school safe from him – and it's definitely not the hospital wing, either. His blood runs cold and he cannot, will not, open his eyes, doesn't want to see where he is, what he might have done. He never should have done this, never should have come to school, played at being normal, he's probably killed somebody, this is not where he is supposed to be.

"Easy, now, don' move aroun' too much! Yer all righ', lad, yer safe!"

The gamekeeper's voice is enough to startle Remus into opening his eyes. This doesn't actually give him much to work with – the room is mercifully dim; there is a fire behind him, warm and crackling and not giving off much light. "Hagrid?" he croaks, and then coughs, and a blanket shifts against the wound in his arm and he bites his lip to keep from whimpering. "Wh- why am I- what's going- d-did I-?" Did I hurt anyone, he wants to ask, did I kill anyone, did I turn anyone else into this, am I going to be expelled, arrested, what did I do.

A blanket drags against his stomach this time as he draws breath, and instead of asking any of these questions, he bursts into tears.

"You're all righ'," Hagrid says again, hastily. From his spot on the floor, all Remus can see of him is two enormous boots, which take one step towards him and then two steps back. "Madam Pomfrey went ter fetch yeh, an' – an' you was a little more banged up than she were countin' on, is all, and she didn' want ter take yeh no farther like this, so she left yeh here and just nipped up to the castle fer some more supplies, didn' wan'ter risk a summoning charm, someone might'a… She did what she could, I - I know yer in pain," and his voice goes very soft, "but believe you me, yer a right sight better than when yeh first got here."

Remus takes a deep, trembling breath, and whispers: "So I didn't – I didn't kill anyone?"

The boots approach him again, faster this time and apparently more determined, because a moment later Hagrid is crouching down very low in front of him – low enough for Remus to see his face, which looks very, very serious. "No," Hagrid says firmly. "Yeh didn' kill no one, Remus. Everythin's goin' ter be fine."

Remus shuts his eyes and tries desperately to stop crying. He's shaking badly and it keeps dragging the blankets against his wounds, but he almost doesn't feel it anymore. "I will, though. I will kill someone, I'm not–" he didn't mean to say that, he did not mean to say that at all, but suddenly three months' worth of frantic worries are spilling out of his mouth – "I'm not safe, it's not safe, doing this, it's not ffff-fair, t-to - to all the others, is it, they d-don't even know, they don't even know they're g-going to sc-school with a monster."

There is suddenly a very large hand resting on the back of Remus's head, which is just about the only part of his body that feels uninjured. He wonders if it started out that way or if that was something Madam Pomfrey fixed before she left.

"Yer not," Hagrid says, quietly. "Yer not a monster, Remus, listen to me, you. are. not."

Remus shakes his head under Hagrid's hand, tears coming faster and faster. "I am, I am, I'm – I'm – I'm a–"

"Yer a boy," Hagrid says. His voice is gentle, low, but there is steel in it. "Yer a child. Yer a student, a wizard, yer–"

"A werewolf," Remus snaps, and he needs to calm down, he needs to calm down, crying hurts and he shouldn't be doing it anyway. "I'm a werewolf, Hagrid!"

There is a long pause. But Hagrid does not take his hand away, and that is somehow – comforting. Finally, Hagrid speaks again, still in that same low, firm voice. "Yer a lot o' things. Werewolf's on'y one of'em."

"It's the only – one that – matters," Remus bites out, trying to slow his breathing. "It's the only one people see."

"Those people aren' worth it!" Hagrid says, so sharply and so heatedly it nearly shocks Remus out of crying altogether. "Not worth yer time, not worth yeh worryin' abou' wha' they think, you just do what you have'ta ter get by with them in this world and you find the people who matter."

"What do you mean," Remus says, breathless, dizzy, "what people?"

"The good ones," says Hagrid, and his voice is back to a gentle, firm resolve, all traces of anger gone. "They're out there. They c'n be ruddy difficult ter find, bu' they're out there, an' they won' – they won' look at yeh and see a werewolf, all righ'? They'll see – they'll see a werewolf an' a boy, they'll see everythin' you are, not just tha' one piece. I won' – I won' lie to yeh, I won' tell yeh the world is full o' people like that. You keep yer guard up. You watch ou' fer the bad ones, but – but yeh watch out fer the good ones, too."

"The good ones," Remus whispers, and thinks – thinks he might pass out again, very soon.

There are footsteps outside, hurried, and a clamor of voices. He recognizes Madam Pomfrey's.

"You are not," Hagrid says, very quietly, as the door swings open and the world goes grey, "a monster."