AUTHOR: 127stars
TITLE: Seven Wishes to Tell Him
FANDOM: Harry Potter: PoA, MWPP, post-PoA
RATING: K+
PAIRING: Wolfstar, Remus/Sirius
WORD COUNT: WIP
WARNING: None
SUMMARY: "Is there anything you wish to tell me, Remus?" This question haunted Remus Lupin throughout his schooldays at Hogwarts and the fifteen lost years that followed the deaths of James and Lily. Now, thirty-three years old and dogged by ache and emptiness, Remus finds this question once again at the lips of Albus Dumbledore. It forces him to remember, and condemns him to one more betrayal for the sake of cold, twisted bedsheets and the half-forgotten memory of black fur in moonlight.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own this universe, nor its characters.
NOTES: After years of reading wolfstar and roleplaying Remus on the forums back in the day, this is my first ever fanfiction. Any feedback is much appreciated. More chapters to come soon. I hope you enjoy reading this little fic.
ONE.
"Is there anything you wish to tell me, Remus?"
Remus stared at the toes of his shoes; they were undeniably scuffed and worn, but determinedly polished nonetheless. He never thought he would find himself here again, at Hogwarts, cringing in the ornate wooden chair before Dumbledore's desk. The curves of the ornately carved backrest dug into his back, the feeling both hostile and familiar at the same time. He never thought he'd find himself here at all: back at Hogwarts, back in wizarding society, after all this time - plucked from the obscurity of Muggle life and the succession of facades it cost him to survive there. Merlin, he didn't even know how Dumbledore had managed to track him down, his movement from one end of the country to the other was always swift and covert, his tracks covered by concealment charms and hostile hexes. But then, Remus thought, chancing a look from his shoes to the blue-eyed gaze he couldn't quite bear to hold, this was Dumbledore.
Dumbledore. This man had always been more to Remus than merely his headmaster. He signified wisdom, compassion, acceptance; safety, opportunity and home. He would never forget the first of Dumbledore's unexpected visits, now more than twenty years ago. The Lupins had returned to their quiet home to find a tall, robed man, as Mrs Lupin was later to put it, cluttering up her kitchen and dogearing her latest copy of Knitters' Weekly. Remus remembered how his ten-year-old self had smirked as his father had tripped over his words, his feet and, indeed, the kettle cord in his haste to make his old headmaster feel welcome in his small family home, mumbling all the while something about over enthusiastic hexes, detentions and water under bridges. His mother, altogether more bemused than befuddled at this strange man's sudden and quite unexpected appearance in their rural abode (being Muggle-born, and therefore exempt from the strange powers this man seem to exert over her husband), had calmly taken charge of the tea tray and ushered them over to the kitchen table, her determination to charge this situation with some semblance of normality explicit in her somewhat assertive placement of the ginger biscuit tin in between her husband, her son, and Professor Albus Dumbledore.
They had sipped tea, and Remus made the kind of polite conversation he had been schooled in from a long age - polite but vague, lacking in detail but not in civility - and tried to take advantage of the strange situation by slipping a forbidden third ginger biscuit. However, as his fingers made contraband contact with the sweet prize so within his sights, something made him look up at the old man. Dumbledore was watching him, Remus thought, almost intently. As their eyes met, Dumbledore had smiled kindly at him, and Remus had smiled back, but something in that kind gaze had nonetheless made him return his reaching hand to his lap, and shift uncomfortably in his seat.
"Sir," he had asked, his voice steady and, Remus thought, disguising quite admirably his burgeoning curiosity. "Who exactly are you?"
"Well now," the old wizard had said, humming to himself slightly as he replaced his tea cup and shifted in his seat so he was facing the young Remus Lupin entirely. Remus had held his breath; there was something inexplicably overwhelming about the force of this man's attention. His mind raced wildly, thoughts running to Ministry officials and yet another house move, to bigger cages and tighter bonds, but Dumbledore had clicked his tongue kindly, shaking his head ever so slightly as if he had read Remus' fears on his face. "My name is Professor Albus Dumbledore," he had continued kindly, blue eyes never leaving Remus'. "I am the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
Remus gripped the arms of the wooden chair, closing his eyes momentarily to try and clear his mind of this obtrusive memory. The gaze of Albus Dumbledore was as overwhelming and inescapable to the thirty-three year old man as it had been to the ten year old boy. Remus risked another glimpse at the Headmaster, now, like him, twenty years older, but feeling impossibly more so. He scratched almost subconsciously at the patch of worn, brown corduroy that concealed his brand, his number: an indignity this man had sheltered him from for the first eighteen years of his life. A brand which had, nonetheless, condemned him for the last fifteen years to a life of obscurity, deception and poverty. It was into this life that Albus Dumbledore had, for the second time in Remus' life, unexpectedly appeared. Remus had been passing through Muggle London, paying rent by the day to an sullen muggle landlord for a dark room in an unsavoury block of flats in Elephant and Castle. It was exactly the kind of place Remus had been living for the fifteen years since his world had fallen apart; dark corridors, downturned faces, dirt under his fingernails. No one asked questions, not even after hearing screams in the dark, cringing from the hammering and shouting of police raids in the early hours, nor watching the scared faces of young women and children, smuggled through the dark. In short, it was everything that Remus needed, wanted and, deep down, what he thought he deserved. And it was in this underworld that Dumbledore had paid Remus this second unexpected visit.
Despite himself, Remus had been wrongfooted; he felt like his father blundering around the kitchen under the guilt of some duelling got out of hand with, apparently, a "cocky Gryffindor who wouldn't shut up in the library". Remus had felt the guilt of his entire thirty three years hit him in the chest as he had cringed away from the force of Dumbledore's gaze. He had heard it in his mumbled apologies for the state of his room, his unshaven face and his unwashed clothes. He had seen it as he tried to position himself in front of the row of empty bottles of muggle vodka and whisky, in his averted eyes, in his downturned face. He had wished it away in his unspoken regret that he had burnt his robes, his books, his Gryffindor scarf; that there was nothing here by which Dumbledore could recognise him.
"Remus," Dumbledore had said simply, plonking himself down on Remus' unmade bed where his dirty sheets released a puff of stale dust. Remus had refused to look at him, skulking in the doorway, feeling suddenly all the rage of abandonment, of fifteen years of sadness which felt intensified only by the seven years of happiness that this man had allowed him. "I need you to come back," Dumbledore had continued simply, folding his hands in his lap. Remus had reeled round, fists clenched, hoping Dumbledore would flinch, or at least look surprised, at this show of aggression. But Dumbledore had not flinched, had not even blinked, had only held Remus' gaze calmly as if, Remus had thought, to say: I know you're no longer the boy you were. "But still, Remus," Dumbledore had continued, and Remus had flinched himself, feeling again like the ten-year-old spelling his feelings on his face, "You need to come back."
And he had. Back to Dumbledore, back to Hogwarts, back to a wizarding world which watched Harry Potter closely with curiosity and apprehension. Back in robes, back to books, back to magic. No sooner had Remus acquiesced with a terse nod, Dumbledore had vanished again, again leaving Remus slumped in a chair, head in his hands, reaching for a drink. Remus tried to cry, tried to feel something other than the numbness of the last fifteen years, the emptiness of betrayal and the ache of loss that had been his constant companion. He must have slept, for he had been woken by a Hogwarts owl tapping at his window, bearing him a month's wages in advance and a train ticket: 1st September, 11 o'clock, platform nine and three quarters. Remus felt the weight of the wizard gold in his hand; turning over galleons and sickles and knuts, refusing to succumb to the memories that clawed at his chest with phantom claws more painful that the wolf's. Standing suddenly, Remus had carefully retrieved his wand from a long forgotten corner of his suitcase:eleven and a half inches, ash, reasonably supple, unicorn hair. Whispering the details to himself sounded like a prayer. He had grabbed a razor and a towel and headed to the communal bathroom, the slam of his door knocking the alcohol bottles to the floor where they lay, smashed and empty, abandoned on the dirty bedsit floor.
Remus felt the unfamiliar weight of eleven and a half inches of reasonably supple ash and unicorn hair against his chest as his heart seemed to hammer there. Remus felt like a imposter, a wolf in sheep's clothing, in his wizard's robes with the premise of 'Professor Lupin' on an office door somewhere in the castle. This was just another role allocated to him by Dumbledore, another casting he would abandon at the older wizard's behest, another brief chance at happiness to rub salt into the wounds of the solitude that would surely follow. He realised he was still gripping the arms of the chair before Dumbledore's desk, realised that the weight of Dumbledore's unanswered question still hung in the air.
"Is there anything you wish to tell me, Remus?"
Remus tried to regain the stillness, the emptiness and the lack of emotion that had characterised the last fifteen years, tried to feel nothing against the squirming rage of emotions that threatened to overtake him. He wished to tell Dumbledore how much he hated him; how every kindness this man had ever shown him was punctuated by cavernous abandonment and emptiness, or the sharp slap of pain on seeing the reflection of his dead friends in Harry's scared face on the Hogwarts Express that same morning. He wanted to rage at the Headmaster for showing him everything when he had been left with nothing. He wanted to tear his books down from the bookshelves, smash every glass vial in sight, grab Dumbledore's fragile-looking skin until it pinched red and hard, shake the wizard until he understood what he was asking him to do, what he was asking him to say.
But, of course, Remus knew that Dumbledore could read the deception in his face. Remus swallowed, steeled himself and looked up to meet the cool, blue gaze. If any other witch or wizard had searched this man's face for a vestige of the boy's kindness, good humour and patience, they would have found nothing but the hard lines of hatred, self-loathing and the practiced art of deceit. Remus, in this place, did not allow his face to soften at the memories of black fur in moonlight, at the half-forgotten scent of fur and forest, at the traitorous whisper of a schoolboy nickname Remus so often woke with on his lips, his back shining with sweat, his bedclothes twisted and cold. Remus did not allow those memories of tenderness to soften his eyes, did not allow the moonlit memories of closeness to warm his body, did not dare to admit the ache into his heart. This was just one more betrayal, thought Remus. One more refusal to remember, one final moment of loyalty to a truth he had fought for fifteen years to believe.
"No, Headmaster," replied Remus coolly. "Nothing at all."
tbc