SEQ CHAPTER h r 1He ran away with his hair dyed a chestnut brown. He told himself it was a chance to start over. He felt as if it was a chance to drown. In June, he rented a damp, empty apartment at the end of a crime-ridden street on the west side of the city. It had one window and one skylight, which was cracked down the center and badly patched with bits of once white plaster that had begun to turn a moldy black and flake off onto the wood floors. When it rained, droplets of reeking brown water from the rusty tiled roof trickled in through the widening crack, leaving a dark warped shape on the wood floor.

And he thought, "I will fold the burnt edges of myself away slowly, like a waxing moon."

In July he bought three gallons of black paint and covered the walls in dark reflections of his eyes, of the night sky, of silky black fur. By August, deciding he did not want to be reminded of Sirius ever again, he purchased four gallons of gray, and repainted.

For the musty apartment he bought a used mattress. A desk. An old leather chair. A bucket for the dripping skylight. 317 Preway became home.

He moved into the one-room studio without luggage. That is to say, there were no duffle bags, no suitcases, no pieces of antique furniture, or cardboard boxes of silverware and wool sweaters. In fact, he left even his razor behind, and two weeks later noticed the err when he caught his reflection in the glass of a window. Besides his newly acquired furnishings, there were two boxes situated at one end of the makeshift kitchen, the smaller sitting centered on top of the larger, and both dusty and neglected, even as the months passed.

When the sun rose, Remus lay in the empty, sagging mattress on the floor and stared at the cracked ceiling, rising occasionally to drink cold tea or eat the food he bought from the grocer around the street. His diet was simple now, mostly citrus fruits and bread. He'd given up meat; he didn't know exactly why. On some days he sat at the desk and wrote letters to James and to Peter, to Lily. His fingers hit the keys of the typewriter in sharp staccato pecks that resounded through the barren apartment with an almost agonizing emptiness. Occasionally, he wrote to Sirius. The habit was strange, each letter always ripped and hurled to the floorboards to fall into the layer of dust that had begun to form there. These were letters they would never receive; no one would ever receive. Not even Remus would dare to read them again, and they would lay forgotten in piles and crumpled heaps around the dirty flat. At night he fell back into the mattress again, continuing another perpetual and seemingly endless stretch of the same foggy days.

The first of the two boxes which had accompanied Remus to 317 Preway was unduly heavy, as the mover had noted as he wheeled it up the stairs in the windy July. Occasionally it was a mystery to even Remus as to why he had bothered to bring it along. It was a trunk of books. Old literature from his school days mostly, potions tomes and volumes on defense and transfigurations and astronomy. Others too, several novels, one or two rolled magazines he'd kept for various reasons, some long forgotten.

Transformations were done alone. After all, he was alone. It was those moments the most when he wondered if Sirius thought about him. He had a vision of what he imagined an Azkaban cell would be like, black with mold and mildew and moss, and dripping, oozing, seeping with filth over cold, hard stone. There was the vision of a hunched, emaciated Sirius, braced against a corner. At first he'd tried to keep his mind from those thoughts, he'd blocked them and pounded and squeezed them, and still they returned. There was the reoccurring word that haunted him. Murderer.

In September he went to the grocer at the end of his street for oranges and a stale baguette, and caught a strand of music drifting through the window of a parked car. He recognized the symphony, it was a muggle one. Sleepy, with out of tune violins and a soloist who seemed to have forgotten the notes of e minor. He plodded through most of the fall until the last of his money ran out and the electricity was shut off in his lonely apartment. It was November.

When it rained particularly hard one evening, the skylight began to leak again with new resolve, and he dragged the second crate that had accompanied him from his past life under the skylight, and threw the skylight bucket on top of it to catch the muddy rainwater. The bucket leaked, and the filthy water seeped down into the cracks of the box. Remus watched it without emotion.

November was too cold to be without electricity. Heat. Warm water. It was so much harder then he had imagined it would be to become an anonymous muggle. Magic was a crutch he'd never thought about losing. Money was something he'd never concerned himself with.

In December his two weak hands found a pair of muggle jeans and pulled them on to what had become a thin and starved frame. A t-shirt, two socks, a ripped sweater with a dark brown stain across its middle. He found that it had become an effort just to stand. In five months, he'd forgotten why he existed. Is there an answer for that? Whispered a parched voice in his swimming head. He didn't answer it.

The bar was behind a large wooden door with black iron handles and massive blackened bolts, down a long, extremely narrow hallway of red brick which was tinged black as if fire might have at sometime caressed its baked stones. He found the owner sweeping a broom across the muddy floor.

The place was bathed in blue light from several blue glass sconces nailed into the brick and a curving florescent track light, which overlooked a curving zinc topped bar. There was a stage and a few tables. It was almost desolate. On one of the brick walls was painted a Starry Night-esque mural of a black night sky. Gazing at the foggy depiction he felt the nudge of a memory; flashes of James and Sirius drinking butterbeer on top of the astronomy tower hit him with an icy cold. God, so long ago.

"What's your name?" The middle aged, blue-haired manager asked as he finished stacking the chairs onto tabletops.

Quietly: "Remus."

"You can start tomorrow if you like, Remus. You have a last name?"

Remus looked into the dark mural on the cracked wall, "Loupseule." He said.