Part one of two.
For the only person I'd want to touch me after a tragedy.
Disclaimer: The existence of certain plotlines proves that I did not write Harry Potter.
Magic, as taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was a logical force. Certainly the students came to it with varying degrees of aptitude or ability, but on a basic, rational level, it proscribed to a certain set of rules. There was a stimulus and a response, an action and a reaction, an event and its consequence. One performed certain steps and, to a certain degree, a predictable outcome followed.
But there was an older magic than the practiced structure of Hogwarts students. A more capricious and elemental force. It was magic of the sort that small magical children activated without harnessing, without knowing how. It was magic that came on the wind and governed the spontaneity of the world, the bounds of luck and love.
For all his dedication to order and reason, Remus Lupin had a very good understanding of this earth-magic. Better than most, for this was the magic that tugged on his bones with every waxing moon until it coaxed the wolf forth in a violent burst of moonlight. Even the families with the oldest of magic in their blood did not have the sense for this he did. It might, in another life, have been convenient.
In the life he was leading, however, it was rather unpleasant. He knew, in some way he could not have explained, that something of great magnitude was about to happen. His skin crawled with it. Full moon was nearly a week away, and he should not have been feeling so out of sorts yet. Still he started every time someone opened a door and kept twitchily looking over his shoulder all day.
"Merlin, Moony, what's the matter?" James asked, when an owl swooping into the common room to deliver a message to some second-year girl caused Remus to jump so he spilled tea all over his Potions book. "You've been off all afternoon."
"All day, even," Peter chimed in. "Didn't eat a bite at breakfast, kept watching the owls like he was waiting for post."
Remus looked up from blotting tea out of his good jumper and sighed. "Just not feeling well, I suppose. It's probably nothing." He shrugged and tried to appear nonchalant despite the squirming of his insides and the yawn forcing its way from his mouth.
Sirius raised one eyebrow to a phenomenal height. "Tired, Moony?"
"Er, yes?" He said. "Didn't sleep too well. Strange dreams. Probably not helping."
"Maybe you could get a wink before dinner," James suggested. "Might make you feel a bit more relaxed."
Remus glanced out the window at the bright sun shining with relentless cheerfulness. He wavered. "I don't know, I've got loads of work…"
"Go on up, Moony," Sirius urged. "I'll get you in an hour or so. You're in no state to work as it is."
Peter nodded.
And so Remus gathered his books and went up to the dormitory. Where he found a raven sitting on his bed.
He froze. The raven looked at him with its beady black bird eyes. "Well, shoo," Remus said finally and the bird flew out the open window. Remus stepped forward and sat on is bed, head in his hands against his building headache.
Only then did he notice the message the raven had left behind.
When Sirius came to wake him from his nap, he found Remus hurriedly packing his trunk and muttering to himself.
"Dress robes'll need to be pressed—bugger—" He bent to pick up an escaped pair of socks, and encountered Sirius's helpful hand, which had already rescued the truant socks.
"Where are you going?" He asked, brow creased.
"Erm, home," Remus said, flushing. "My mother wrote. There's been… My father. Has died."
Sirius had never felt for his family the way other people did for theirs. But while he did not understand the tenderness with which his mates sometimes spoke of home, he knew that this was a terrible thing for a family like Moony's. He felt himself turn a warm, shamed color. "Fuck, Moony, I… fuck. I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do?"
Remus ran his fingers through his hair. "Just… I need to get my things together. I need to get home. Mum's left it to me to set up how… I'll need to open a Floo transport… I've got to make the funeral arrangements, Mum's hopeless, and my homework, shit, what'll I do about that?"
"Don't worry about that," Sirius said. "You just think about your Mum right now, James and I'll tell the professors… something." He wanted to hug Remus but he didn't know how. Remus kept moving, anyway, so half the trouble would have been catching him. He looked so blurry he might disintegrate if touched. "You just… do what needs to be done, we'll take care of the rest."
Remus nodded, absentmindedly chewing one fingernail. "I've sent word to Dumbledore. All that's left is…" And he lapsed back into his private world, throwing essentials into his trunk and bustling about the room with the matter-of-fact busy manner unique to those who are ignoring bereavement.
A few hours later, after a hurried goodbye to James and Peter, Remus was gone.
Sirius suspected he and the other Marauders had been forgotten entirely in the stress and aftermath, until he received a short note on a torn piece of paper:
The funeral is Saturday at three. Please come. –M.