Disease
By Atomic Café
Disclaimer: Harry Potter fan fiction is based on the series by JK Rowling. All characters and situations other than my own are the property of the original author.
The first time that Remus Lupin considered lycanthropy a disease was when he realized that it meant he could no longer keep a diary. As a very small child, just after he learned to scrawl his name on a piece of paper, he had begun keeping a journal. It had begun about nothing in particular. What did a child that young have to say, anyway? After the fateful night in which he was bitten, he began writing about that. First there were descriptions about the attack, then long stories about his transformations. He wrote about how it felt to be a test subject for multiple attempts at cures, and he began a story about a young werewolf who discovers a cure and saves all of the werewolves. When he showed it to his mother, thrilled with his creation, she taught him a trick.
"When a story is so good," she told him with a small smile, "sometimes it's better told verbally than written." And then she would throw the parchment into the fire, watching it to make sure that no scraps remained. It took him until he reached Hogwarts to understand that her actions were to keep his entries anonymous and make sure that no one ever found them and discovered his secret.
As he entered school, he experimented with keeping a journal before he found that it was nearly impossible. He wanted his journal to be the place where he spoke about things that he couldn't otherwise get off his chest, to solve problems that he couldn't think through if they were kept solely in his head. He wrote about crushes he had, but each time, it would lead back to how he wouldn't force the burden of his problem onto someone else. When he wrote about the stresses of school, he realized it was because of the classes he missed the day after the full moon. Struggles with friends? Because he couldn't be honest with them. Problems at home? Because his parents wanted to try more and more cures on him.
He had begun to realize that being a werewolf was his sole purpose in life. Remus Lupin, Werewolf Extraordinaire. Nothing else.
This strange habit of his - writing down whatever was on his mind and then quickly burning it as soon as he was finished - stayed with him for many years. He literally burned through more parchment than he knew was sane, but it calmed him for some reason. By this point, he had probably burned up the only accurate record of werewolf transformation and attempted cures, along with a collection of writings on every thought deep within him that he would never share. It was what truly kept him sane, he reasoned; without writing, he would probably be a bitter person who spent his time complaining to people. Without burning, he would be so terrified of someone seeing what he had written that he would lose contact with all the people he loved.
As he finished another roll of parchment, he took a brief moment to glance at what he had written. He never took the time to re-read everything, knowing that the parchment would last so temporarily that there would have been little to no change in his thoughts during the time of its existence to bother reviewing his thoughts. Without hesitation, he rolled up the parchment and fed it into the fire, watching it burn.
"What is that?" he heard from the doorway behind him. He didn't bother turning to see Sirius; he knew that voice already.
As his friend walked deeper into the room, the gloom of Grimmauld Place casting shadows around his still-gaunt face, he heard him speak again. "I've seen you do that since you were eleven, and I've never understood it."
"Understood what?" Remus asked calmly. He didn't want to consider how he would explain it to Sirius, someone who would probably not understand why he wrote and burned.
"Why you do that. I just see you take off into a corner and write for hours on end, and when I look next, you're burning a piece of parchment." Sirius sat down beside him, noticing the ink well and dirty quill. "Did you just burn what you were writing?"
"Yes."
Sirius raised an eyebrow, glancing into the fire. Remus had not thrown the parchment in well enough, and only a part of it had burned already. "You burned what you just wrote," Sirius repeated, still staring at the remnants.
"Yes."
"Why?"
Remus shrugged, putting the cap on the ink well as he leaned back in his chair. "It calms me."
"Are you a pyromaniac?"
With a smile, Remus shook his head. "I'm afraid you're getting me confused with James now."
The mention of the name made them both fall silent for a long moment as they stared into the fire. Remus felt a knot of guilt grow in his stomach; he hadn't meant to bring up James, but it slipped out so easily. Whenever he began writing, he felt so calm that he forgot everything going on. If it weren't for writing, he wasn't sure he would have made it through that Halloween. He had spent most of the his last paycheck buying parchment after that night, and he stayed in his room for three days, scribbling down everything he could. It had become the full history of the Marauders, complete with an ironic twist in which he wanted to say he knew all along that Sirius was the traitor, but he could never find a story about them that hinted towards it.
"Why write if you're going to burn it?" Sirius finally asked as the last of the parchment caught fire and dissolved into black ash. "Is it something for your mission that no one can see?"
"It's for me," Remus answered simply.
Sirius stared him down for a long moment, and Remus could see the dog-like playfulness grow on his face. It was becoming a game, trying to wrestle as much information out of Remus as he possibly could. Remus smile to himself, glad that he could at least provide Sirius with some entertainment for the evening.
"Is it a love letter?"
Remus laughed out loud now, and Sirius' eyes gleamed as he sat up. "I knew it, Moony! Who's it to? Could it be one of your illustrious former coworkers? Perchance to a certain Transfiguration professor?"
"Oh, Sirius, you know she'd prefer something less..." He poked at the ashes with a fire poker. "Less ash-y."
"To me, perhaps?" Sirius asked, a wide grin on his face. "Moony, I had no idea you felt that way about me, but it could certainly explain why you spent so many years throwing away these love letters whenever I entered the room!"
"Only in your dreams. Besides, you know that if I wrote you love letters, I'd much prefer to wrap them around a nice bone to leave in your dish."
"Oof, Moony, that one hurt."
"Wrapped around a raw steak perhaps?"
"Please, I have more taste than that." Sirius grinned. "If you're going to wrap it around something, make it Fudge."
Remus gave him a long look, trying to hide his smile. "If that was a pun, Sirius, you just lost your next love letter."
Sirius bit back his laugh, immediately trying to sober up. "Really, Remus, what's the deal with the random writing sprees?"
"It's just..." Remus almost said 'how I cope' before he caught himself. "It's just what I do." When he saw Sirius' disappointed look, he smiled. "I've been doing it since I was a little kid."
"So you were a pyromaniac?"
With a smile, Remus explained, "I enjoy writing. It calms me down. When I was a child, I got into the habit of burning anything I wrote. It makes things easier. Nothing to carry, nothing to ruminate on, nothing holding you down to one mindset. As long as there are no tracks, there's..."
"There's no you." At Sirius' words, Remus turned to face him. "If it means so much to you to write, why just throw it away? Don't get rid of something that means so much to you."
"Do you write?"
"No."
Remus nodded with a smile. "Then trust me. It makes me feel better."
Sirius considered him silently for a long moment, and Remus watched the fire. The parchment had long since burned, but he thought about the things he had been writing. Just more challenges to work through...
"What do you write about?" Sirius finally asked.
"I'm not telling you." Remus' smile widened as Sirius leaned over the table, giving him a desperate look.
"Look, Moony. If you acted like a normal person and kept a journal, I'd be able to laugh at you, call you a girl, and snoop through your entries to figure out about your sick crush on McGonagall. If you're going to burn everything before I get that chance, you can at least satisfy my desires."
"I write about everything."
Sirius sighed, trying to drag himself closer to Remus. He was already half-lying on the table, and Remus couldn't help but grin. It had been a long time since he saw Sirius having so much fun, and he was willing to drag it on for as long as he needed to give Sirius something to do while he was cooped up in the musty, old house.
"If you tell me what you write about, I'll -" Sirius glanced around, trying to find an appropriate sacrifice.
"You'll leave me alone about it?" Sirius nodded eagerly, and Remus faced the fire again to think.
"I really do write about everything," he said slowly, then quickly added once he saw the disappointment on Sirius' face, "such as missions I do, people I see, what I'm thinking. I will admit to once writing something approaching a love letter." He glanced at Sirius in time to see the dangerous gleam in his eyes as his smile widened. "When I was younger, it was mostly about transforming and trying to hide it from you three."
"You mean we could have found out so much earlier if we snooped through your diary?" Sirius looked disappointed. "What a waste of two years!"
"I could have been the reason for thirteen year olds becoming illegal Animagi," Remus mused. "How appealing."
Sirius had turned to the fire and watched the flames for a moment before asking quietly, "Have you ever written about me?"
Remus almost answered before he noticed Sirius' face. He was staring intently at the flame, and he knew it wasn't a joking question. The sudden change in atmosphere surprised him, but he understood.
"Of course," Remus whispered, nodding at the flames instead of Sirius. He could see the other man turn from the corner of his eye. "You're in most of them. I spent two years writing about how scared I was to lose you if you ever found out about me. Spent nine years writing about how happy I was to have you. Another twelve about how much I hated... how much I hated losing you. And now I have two years worth of burned parchment about how happy I am to have you."
He didn't look at Sirius. Instead, he waited for the inevitable joke to lighten the mood. It didn't come. Instead, Sirius said, his voice so low that Remus wasn't sure if he really heard it, "I like you writing about me."
"You wouldn't have always. I tried so hard to write awful things about you for years." Remus gave the fire a sad smile. He couldn't even count the number of inches he spent writing about how much he hated Sirius and wanted him to rot in Azkaban. He rested his hand on the table, waiting for Sirius to thread his fingers into Remus', their hands holding each other steady. It was a gesture they had only adopted recently, just since they had been reunited after their years apart. It was not a particularly romantic gesture for them, but rather an anchor; they both knew that they could reach out for the other when they needed it, and they most definitely needed it at times. Between the nightmares that made Sirius wake in the middle of the night to crawl into Remus' bed and the physical care Remus needed after each full moon, they had come to require some sort of physical touch from one another. It kept them grounded, much like writing had always done for Remus.
When he was around Sirius, the majority of his writing revolved around the other man. They were never about things he kept bottled within himself in these cases; instead, he always wrote about things he wanted to remind himself about. The fact that Sirius would do anything to protect him. The way he would stroke Remus' hair back when they sat close together. The way he kept his arm on Remus' arm rest when they sat beside each other in meetings. The way that he was capable of making Remus feel whole and yet also a half of a pair.
Writing was the real disease. It had a way of making him soft.