Four-shot. (Is that even a term?)
A chapter for each Marauder.
Dear Harry Potter fandom, you scare the living shit out of me. Please don't eat me alive, because I secretly love you. x's and o's
Dedicated to Megawatts, obviously. For totally being my bitch and being smart and because I need someone to sit there and look at me disapprovingly when I say those awful things I say.
(And rohanfox whose Breakfast may or may not have blatantly inspired me to write this. Our love expands over fandoms.)
Remus is perfecting the art of acting human.
Not being, but acting. He can't be human, because he isn't one. He used to be, but that was years and years and years ago. Now, all he can do is sit up straight, shove his nose in a book, and try not to tear everyone around him to little bits and pieces.
He plays pretend. It's the best he can do.
Most little boys his age run around and act like Prince Charmings or Knights in Shining Armor or the Dashing Hero, but not Remus. His big performance is Little Boy. Little Human Boy. He sits in his rickety old wooden chair at the kitchen table and studies. Practices. Acts.
His mother furrows her eyebrows while she reads, he's noticed. Chubby fingers grab at the beaten pages of a newspaper of days past, and he dissects the old news. All the while the fur—hair—of his eyebrows crinkles inward. His father chews his lips while he's in thought, so while Remus contemplates the disease that is his life, he rips his fangsteeth into the pink flesh around his mouth. Always trying to imitate his parents—his beautifully, wonderfully, deliciously human parents—perfectly, but always failing. He can only produce a bad wolfish parody of their mannerisms.
His father drinks coffee. Not tea, but coffee. Black and plain and empty. He reads the newspaper while Remus watches, old mug of coffee on the table, legs bent at perfect 90 degree angles. Feet planted firmly on the floor, as he anchors himself to the Earth. His son tries to imitate him, stretching his small pallid scar-coated legs as far down as they will go, but he can only ever get his toes to kiss the ground. He holds his picture books like a newspaper, biting his lips too hard and furrowing his eyebrows too harshly.
It smells nice. The coffee. It always has. He asks for a sip of it—one little drink. A drop of it, really. He's just curious. The Wolf in him always wanting, always craving, always needing, and the bitter smell wraps around its nose and it's strong and sharp and tantalizing and "One sip, Daddy. Please. One little drink."
"No, Rem, you're too young." He chuckles affectionately, licking his fingers and turning to the next page of the paper. If his little boy wasn't a dirty rotten animal, he probably would've run his fingers affectionately through the tawny brown hair. The mangy fuzz.
And Remus is left high and dry. His thirst never quenched; his curiosity ever present and malignant.
Mother makes him toast for breakfast. Burnt and scratchy as he swallows it plain—never any coffee to chase the bread. He'll get fruit, sometimes, but not usually. The rainbow of strawberries and raspberries and oranges burn at his golden little eyes and the juice always dribbles too far down his chin. The redred berry flesh embeds itself in between his whitewhite incisors and hangs on for dear life. Mother has to wipe the fruit's remains off her baby boy's face, and God forbid she has to touch the thing.
Fried eggs are given with even rarer occurrence. On his birthday, usually. More often than that if he's lucky.
Every morning, grease pops in the pan. The sticky scent of burning flesh fills the air. Mum's skillet goes brown and oily as she prepares bacon. Sausages. Ham. All of those delicious dead things which make children grow up big and strong. She slides them off the pan, still spitting fire and grease and venom, and onto Daddy's plate. Hands her son another slice of toast.
(And God forbid the thing grow a taste for flesh.)
Not that he minds much. Because, really, he doesn't. The Wolfman cries and whines and begs and pleads for any scrap of meat; a bit of corpse or a drop of blood, he—it—whines. So while his small stomach rolls and gurgles and grumbles whenever the greasy fat starts hissing at him from its home on the stovetop, Remus denies it. He doesn't want it, doesn't deserve it. His tiny eyes swell with tiny tears because it's what the Wolf wants and he hates the Wolf, but this means he has to hate a bit of himself too.
It's sizzling on the stove. His snoutnose burns.
The daily news enraptures his father, if the tooth dug inside of the older man's lip is any indication, so Remus decides it's worth a try. He reaches out for the white cup like it's the light at the end of the tunnel, and grabs it. The warmth of the porcelain spreads through his skin like an infection, and he smiles. His father brings a finger to his mouth, licks it, and flips to the next page of the paper. Oblivious as ever. (Almost as much as he was on a certain night during a certain time when a little boy died and a Monster took over.)
The mug is quietly dragged across the table. Remus brings it to his mouth. Sips it.
It's black and bitter and empty. The taste it leaves in his mouth is like a Black Abyss, dark and vile. Its flavor resembles its look, Remus thinks, and he promises himself not to drink coffee ever again.
His sweet little retching noises alert his father, and Mr. Lupin gazes across the breakfast table to smile sadly at his son. "Little boys shouldn't drink this stuff, Remus. It's gross." And he ruffles the boy's hair and kisses his forehead, but walks across the kitchen and dumps the coffee in the sink. Afraid of the wolfy germs.
Remus thinks he likes it more. Since, now, he isn't supposed to.
After this, he will always move his chair a little too close. Scraping the wooden legs along the floorboards to get a bit nearer. Smell his father's cologne mixed in with the blackened grinds. He tries to remember what it used to be like beforehand, when his father would sit him on his lap and tell him fairytales and sing him lullabies and regale old stories about magic and when Remus had strong arms to hold him and he didn't have to comfort himself from his own nightmares. Because Daddy may say nothing's changed, he loves Remus just as much as he used to, but no one wants to hold and love and console an animal.
When he gets his letter from Hogwarts, his parents don't know if they should be disgusted or thrilled. The letter comes in the post, and Father flips through the mail. Bills, bills, bills, a postcard or two from Auntie (Muggle) who's off on some fabulous vacation somewhere, bills, bills, and the vital letter with its bright red wax seal. Little Remus doesn't even know what he's looking at, but the breath still catches in his throat when he sees it. Badger, Eagle, Snake, Lion. His parents lock eyes over the breakfast table, and they snatch the letter away before it's opened. Hide it away like a treasure. They rush over to a room, any room, and they lock the door.
If they wanted to, Remus' ears could be listening in. They could pick up every word, every breath, every tiny little inhale and exhale of his parents' conversation.
(They've been decent parents, though, and he thinks they've earned their privacy.)
His parents return from their verbal sparring match and they place themselves neatly in their respective seats at the kitchen table. Remus returns to his battered copy of whatever-on-Earth-he's-reading-this-morning and promptly shoves his nose inside of it.
(Well, they certainly haven't been the greatest parents in the world. He couldn't help but hear words like, "dangerous," "beast," "magic," and forgive him if his hopes are too high but, "we can at least let him try to be normal.")
But then it's a few months later, and Remus is accepted. Accepted. He says it a lot, more than he should, because he's so very shocked by it all. He gets to go to school and be normal and maybe even make friends. And he's buoyant and beaming and he bounces around London while his dad goes to take him to Diagon Alley for they first time. He's so happy and he's smiling so brightly as they purchase his various school supplies he can't even be bothered to let his smile falter when the sweet old woman at the robes shop asks him about the masterpiece of angry red marks and pink scar tissue covering the canvas of his skin.
"It's nothing," And he's smiling so very brightly, she very much would like to believe him. "Don't worry about it!"
His arms are full of books and robes and a cauldron and a wand and they stop by The Leaky Cauldron for lunch. Remus can't remember for the life of him what he ordered, but Father got a big steamy mug of coffee. Black.
And he's in such a fabulous mood that when the hot dark mug is slide across the table, Remus has to take a small sip.
He gags. Father chuckles, fingers tangling themselves into soft brown hair in an affectionate tousle. If that grin gets any wider, it may just break…
…
At the breakfast table with his back ramrod straight, he's thinking he should maybe put a bit more effort into the perfect human slouch.
He's lost in the sea of teenage girls and boys, all in various states of disarray. Jabbering on in their colloquialisms and poor grammar. Their less-than-perfect manners. The boys to his left and right choking their utensils in awkward fists. Food shoved unceremoniously in open waiting mouths. Fast and unskillful half-chews. Talking while they grind their bacon and eggs. Dead bits spitting out of their mouths.
Sitting around with the other Gryffindors, Remus realizes this is what real little boys and girls act like. Outside of his parents' skewed view of reality and the harsh black and white words of any book.
He's old enough now that his chubby fingers are thinning and elongating. They reach up to nonchalantly loosen the red and gold tie.
Remus is getting skittish. Worried. Nervous. His friends have been eying him curiously, and Remus is too smart not to notice. He second guesses himself constantly. He's always looking behind his back. As if to make sure he doesn't do anything too…wolfy.
He eats his meals slowly, and has been taking smaller portions of sausage with breakfast. Wolves are carnivores, yes, but meat is disgusting to Remus. He doesn't much fancy the idea of sinking his fangs—teeth—into dead, rotting flesh and sucking the blood and juice out of it. Gnawing on the glorified remains of what once was a living breathing thing. He hates it.
But he can't help it. He always takes two helpings of chicken with dinner.
The Wolf is always in the back of his mind, always controlling the things he does. His likes and dislikes, his wants and needs: they all go back to the man-eating beast in the back of his head. He can't control himself sometimes. The Wolf takes over more than once a month. It's. Basic. Animal. Instinct.
There's no exact reason behind it, but he pours himself a cup of coffee with breakfast.
Black.
He looks into the cup, the brownish foamy bubbles on the top fading fast. Scrutinizes his reflection in the dark liquid, noticing a new angry line along his face. Peter asked him about it yesterday. "I fell down some stairs…" because isn't this always the answer?
He looks at the drink in his cup, and can't help but think how perfect it is. It's…itself. Raw and honest truth. In a beverage. It looks and smells and feels hot and black and bitter, and when Remus drinks it, that's what it tastes like. It's been so long since the little brunette has been able to take anything at face value; he revels in this small victory.
He finishes his cup, going to pour himself another.
It's burning hot—scorching—and Remus burns his tongue. The steam drizzling out of the open hole of the mug should've told him as much. He still smiles. This is coffee. Just coffee. Not a meek little boy who reads too much but once a month craves the bloody mangled ripped-open corpses of his friends and family. Not a little nerd who has to put up a front. "Mother's sick…" to hide his creaturemonsterhorror. It's. Just. Black. Coffee.
"Didn't know you drank coffee, Remus." James comments, reaching across the table to grab himself a biscuit. Proceeds to stuff in his face like it'll be the last time he'll get to eat. Ever.
And he curses himself, our poor little Animal Boy. He's gone and done something abnormal again. All eyes on him, he bites his lip as his father does and furrows his eyebrows how his mother would. Like he's trying to wave his humanity around on a scarlet flag.
"Oh, um…Well, I do."
All they do is nod. Return to their food. Carelessly stuffing themselves like animals and not having to worry about whether or not someone will actually think them to be one.
Remus grabs himself another piece of toast.