Note: I'm behind in my correspondence, but your review replies are coming! Thank you to all my wonderful readers, and especially the anonymous ones who I cannot thank personally! I simply had to post, because it seemed too cruel to leave Remus sitting on those steps any longer than I had to…

Also, I know the security in Gringotts is insane. But having an unguarded space in the vestibule is a matter of customer service.

In Desperate Manner: Part Three

Remus subsisted in an agonising space of hazy awareness, ribcage heaving with the effort of drawing breath, all too cognizant of the fact that at any moment he might lose the battle with his beleaguered body and faint away after all. The sounds of the street around him seemed louder than before, battering his ears and intensifying his throbbing headache. There was a deep stinging in his long bones now, and the pain in his hands and his jaw was maddening. He knew he was running short on time, that he had to get up, to get out of here, to find some way back to his poor little sanctuary on the moors, but he could not move. He dared not even raise his head. Hot waves of sickness swelled and broke over him, each one leaving him more wretchedly chilled than the last.

Feet in whole, sturdy shoes clopped past him, darting up and down the stairs of the bank. Now and then the corner of someone's cloak would brush against his side. No one stopped, no one paused. Perhaps they did not notice him. Perhaps they did not care. It did not much matter to Remus which was the case. He was grateful that they passed by. He could not bear the kindness of strangers now, when he was so blisteringly aware of the truth that would drive them to revile him if they even suspected.

He screwed his eyes tightly closed, flinching as someone passed too near. Diagon Alley was busier now than it had been that morning. Already the crowds were winding him up to the breaking point. Already the mass of humanity around him was too much to bear.

There was a heavy footfall on the pavement, followed by an equally weighty clump and, a moment later, a crisp tap. The sequence of sounds was strange, unlike the rhythm of all the other pedestrians around him, and Remus's brain snagged on the unfamiliar stimulus. He buried his face more deeply in his arms, arms that quaked to the very marrow with cold and fever and the strain of approaching moonrise. Thump, clump, tap: there it was again.

And again, the quality of the sound changing a little as flagstones were traded for marble and whoever-it-was mounted the first step of the bank. Something was niggling at the back of Remus's mind, half-lost in the fog of misery. That sound. He knew that sound. He ought to know that sound.

'Lupin? That you?'

The voice was gruff, stern, demanding. Remus's first instinct was to shrink away as if from an accusation or the threat of a blow. The muscles of his arms and legs twitched reflexively, but they lacked either the strength or the will to actually move him. Instead he raised his head from his arms, feeling a swarm of nausea swirl behind his eyes as he did so. He did not dare to actually lift it, to look up at the shape looming darkly over him. He let his gaze slide to the broadly planted feet instead.

One leather boot, well-worn and scuffed but sturdy and expensively made, with a buckle across the ankle and several more running up the length of the shaft to snug it up to a perfect fit. The other foot was what told Remus all he needed to know. It was carven wood, not flesh: an ornate but ominous, clawed thing that gleamed with tung oil where it was not spattered with mud. A little further along, the base of a stout walking-stick was braced firmly on the step.

Slowly, Remus dared to lift his gaze, bleary, stinging eyes searching out a scarred and curse-pocked face, grizzled hair, and a keen, penetrating gaze. Penetrating in more than the spiritual sense, for though one eye was living and natural the other was a shrill electric blue, bulging in its socket and rolling independent of its partner as it raked down the curve of Remus's spine and the forgiving folds of his shabby cloak.

'Alastor,' Remus croaked.

He would not have wished to be seen like this by anyone he had known in the old days. Those who remembered him as he had been – young, intelligent, skilled, always engaged in his work for the Order, always useful, so good to have at your back in a duel that even those members of the Order of the Phoenix who had loathed the idea of a werewolf in their midst would seek him out for the most dangerous missions – would not know what to make of him now. And especially today, when he had bled away his humanity for eight meagre Galleons, when he had scarfed down half a pound of raw stewing meat in a butcher's alleyway, when he had failed even to help one of his own kind find a safe place to transform. The last shreds of living warmth left Remus's limbs, even as a ball of molten mortification burned in his chest.

'How good of you to remember,' Alastor Moody said dryly. His living eye flicked up from Remus's face as someone passed behind him, bound for the bank doors. The artificial eye, the one that could see through doors and walls and bone, whirled up into his head as it made a panoramic sweep of the street. 'What are you doing here?'

There was probably no accusation in those words, but Remus heard one anyway. He felt shrivelled with shame, remembering what he had done. But his arm flopped to his side, making his cloak fall open and exposing his drenched robes to the cold air again. He groped for his parcels, tilting his head faintly towards them in place of a nod. 'I bought…' he mumbled, but his throat was dry and his mouth tasted of copper and gall, and he could not finish the thought anyway.

Suddenly Moody was crouching beside him, his false leg braced determinedly against the rise of the next step. One hand gripped the shaft of his walking stick for much-needed balance, but the other slapped down across Remus's brow. It was an inefficient way to gauge a fever, being more a more reliable measure of the relative difference between the temperature of your own palm and the thing you were touching than anything else, but it was a gesture of no-nonsense control and so perfectly suited to Moody's manner.

'You're hot,' he observed bluntly. 'You look wretched. What's the matter with you?'

A harsh huff of air broke from Remus's lips – not quite the bitter laugh the question warranted, perhaps, but all that he had in him at the moment. But shame swamped bitterness very swiftly and he hung his head, slipping free of Moody's palm. The Auror withdrew his hand half a dozen inches, tellingly unsure. No one ever knew what to make of a werewolf, however open-minded they were about the business.

There was no putting off Alastor Moody, though. Remus knew that from long experience. If he tried, the man would only mount a full investigation into the matter, not stopping until every last, awful truth had been brought to light. Thankfully there was one answer he could offer, simple and straightforward enough, that would put paid to any further questions.

'The moon,' Remus rasped, praying that no one else was near, that no one had paused to listen to these two strange figures as they spoke on the steps of Gringotts. 'It's… full… tonight.'

Moody made a sound in the back of his throat, sharp and comprehending, yet somehow neither startled nor repulsed. 'I see,' he said, his gruff tone unchanged. 'That would account for it, I suppose.'

Remus nodded. It was a mistake. A wave of dizziness broke over him and he swayed where he sat. The strong, calloused hand reached out to brace him, gripping Remus's shoulder. There was a faint squelch of wet cloth. A convulsive shiver ran through Remus's body.

'You're wet,' Moody said shortly. He closed his fingers briefly on Remus's forearm, then patted his chest with a splayed palm. 'You're soaked to the skin. Are you mad, boy, sitting out in the cold with your robes in that state? You'll catch your death!'

Before Remus could speak, to defend himself or demur against his misery or offer some half-hatched explanation that did not involve swooning into the gutter of Knockturn Alley, Moody had his wand in his hand. He muttered an incantation, and Remus felt a sudden radiating warmth up and down the length of his body. Wisps of steam and a faint odour of soggy cloth rose from his garments, and his robes were suddenly dry.

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask the man to cast a Warming Charm on his clothing as well, but Remus caught himself just in time. That was not the sort of favour you asked of an old acquaintance upon the occasion of your first meeting in years. It was a relief enough not to be sopping with icy water, he told himself, even as he had to clench his jaw against teeth that wanted very much to chatter. He reached with brittle fingers to tug his cloak back over his exposed shoulder, unable to resist the urge to hug the worn cloth tightly to him.

'Do you have business in the bank?' asked Moody. 'I was just going in. Payday. Doesn't do to keep gold lying about: asking for trouble.'

Payday. Remus could not help but feel a little twinge of envy at the word. He quashed it. Alastor was a respected Auror, a war hero, one of the pillars of law and order propping up wizarding society. He had a right to earn a comfortable living. A werewolf did not, and there was an end to it. There was no use in coveting what he could not have.

'I would've thought you'd feel more comfortable keeping your money under the hearthstones,' he said instead, trying feebly to jest. 'If you want something done right…'

His voice and the thought trailed off together. Alastor snorted.

'I'd sooner trust a goblin than a wizard with my money any day,' he said. 'You know where you stand with goblins. Give them their fee, and they're faithful to the end.'

He straightened up, leaning heavily on his stick as he did so. 'Are you coming?' he asked again.

Remus had come staggering to this place with no thought other than to sit down and let his fainting fit pass. He certainly had not had any intention of transacting business in the bank. But now, faced with the prospect of abandoning this fleeting opportunity for conversation, for genuine human interaction, he could not bear to admit that he had no reason to go inside. His other agonies suddenly paled before the ache of loneliness. He would follow Moody anywhere, he realised pathetically, if it meant the other man would talk to him a little while longer, make one of his gruff, deadpan jokes, perhaps even grip his arm again.

And there was something he could do in the bank after all. Something that might have occurred to him to do anyway, if his mind were not so scrambled with want of food and lack of blood and the drag of the coming transformation.

'I need to change some money,' he breathed, pretext taking on the shade of truth. If he exchanged a couple of his Galleons for pound notes, he would be able to buy food far closer to home. He would be able to conserve his strength and cut down on his travel as he recovered from the full moon. And he could buy some of those horrible, packaged Muggle foodstuffs that were unappetising and far too salty but so much less costly than fresh, wholesome foods.

'Right, then, let's get out of this damp,' said Moody, offering his hand. Remus hesitated for a moment before taking it. Alastor had never shown the aversion to touching him that so many exhibited when they knew the truth – as if lycanthropy could be transmitted like a head cold, from hand to hand. All the same, it had crossed his mind in other vulnerable moments before this that the Auror was merely being kind in his own grim, standoffish way and he shouldn't take advantage.

But he wasn't sure he could get to his feet unaided, and he caved to the offer of help. He had to tug rather harder than he had hoped upon the other man's arm, and his legs trembled perilously as he got them beneath him. But Moody was a rock, unwavering and immovable, and soon Remus was standing on the marble steps, shivering and lightheaded but upright at last.

He had to stoop down again to retrieve his frugal purchases. He wasn't about to let Moody do it, not balancing on a wooden leg as he was, and it wasn't until he had the sacks of oats and beans in the crook of his arm that it occurred to Remus that either one of them – well, Alastor, at least – could have simply used a wand.

He was swaying worse than before when he straightened at last, but Moody stumped around to his other side, guiding him as he turned and offering an arm to lean against as they climbed the stairs. Remus took it gladly, as hungry for the simple contact as he was desperate for the support.

'Been a long time,' Moody said when they had climbed a few more steps. 'Since we saw each other last, I mean. Eight years?'

'Eight,' Remus whispered, not trusting himself to nod. It had been almost exactly eight years, less a few weeks, since the day he had collected Alastor from the Spell-Damage Ward at St Mungo's hospital. Then, the magic eye had been a recent acquisition. Then, it had been Moody who had needed an arm to lean on, still grappling with vertigo as he adjusted to the all-seeing device. At the time, Remus had wondered why, of all the people who would have gladly come to fetch him, Moody had sent for a werewolf. A grief-stricken werewolf at that, so crippled by anguish and bewildered betrayal that he had been hard-pressed to care for himself, much less anyone else. But he had come when he received the letter. Of course he had.

They were at the door now, and Moody released Remus's arm to haul it open. The warm place where his hand had been throbbed, and Remus was suddenly freshly aware of the pulsing sting in the crook of his other elbow. The place where the apothecary had lanced his vein was hard and aching now, and he did not need to pull back his sleeve to know that there would be a goose-egg-sized bruise there. The bleeding had stopped when he fell on his bent arm in Knockturn Alley, and that was what mattered.

'Hurry up,' Moody grunted, jerking his head to indicate that Remus should clear the threshold. 'Day's wasting.'

Those words tightened the knot of dread in Remus's chest. He hurried into the bank, caring less for the traffic he might be holding up than he did for his first anxious glimpse of the clock over the row of ornate wickets. Five past two. He had less than three hours now.

The door clanged shut. Remus was standing helplessly in the middle of the grand vestibule. His head was swimming, partly from the exertion of climbing the steps and partly from the magnitude of his problem. He knew Apparation was out of the question. He had to keep reminding himself that Apparation was out of the question, or he would cave to the desperation of his need and try it. But the thought filled him with panic. What was he going to do?

'Alastor…' he began, trying to look around for the Auror. But the motion was too much for his swimming head, and he reeled.

Two strong arms caught him this time, the walking stick clattering to the ground with an echo that seemed to fill the splendid space. Remus's eyes fogged perilously for a moment, then cleared. He found himself staring into Moody's mismatched ones, the brows above them now furrowed with worry.

'You're not well, Lupin!' he snapped. To Remus's ears, it sounded like an accusation. But Alastor was looking away from him now, head turned sharply. 'You! Pick up my stick and give us a hand.'

A passing wizard, stocky and rather bookish, jumped at the tone of command. He scurried to retrieve Moody's walking stick, and took uncertain hold of Remus's arm as the Auror snatched his staff. Together, the two men guided him to one of the ornate benches that sheltered between the marble pillars supporting the gallery above. Remus tried to sit with some measure of grace, but his knees gave out almost at the sight of the bench and he sagged down upon it. He still had the two sacks and the packet of tea in his arms, and Moody snatched them away before they could fall. He set them squarely next to Remus's hip, and waved a dismissive hand at the other wizard.

'You can go,' he said shortly.

'Thank you for your kindness,' Remus breathed, the words tripping out almost automatically, even though he didn't feel strong enough to speak.

The bookish man hurried off, brushing his hands on his robes and stealing anxious glances back over his shoulder as if he was not quite sure what he had just been caught up in, but he fervently hoped this was the end of it.

'You need to sit here and gather your senses,' Moody said gruffly, tugging Remus's cloak to fold it around him. It covered his patched old robes, and afforded a little more warmth to his trembling body. The air inside Gringotts was drier and not so biting as the air in the street, but it was far from cosy. Cool and spectacular: that was the impression the goblins wanted. Remus hugged his thin arms to his hitching ribs and tried to nod.

'Give me the money,' said Moody.

'What?' The question was a plaintive puff of air. Remus did not understand.

'The money, boy. The money you need changing. I'll see to it for you, of course: no sense in dragging yourself all the way up to the window just to drag yourself back again.' Moody held out his strong hand, broad palm upturned.

Dazedly, Remus fished in his inner pocket. His fingers closed on the coins, an unfamiliar weight against him. He drew out two Galleons and gave them to Moody, then hesitated before tugging out a third. 'Thank you,' he whispered, but the Auror was already gone.

He was back almost before Remus knew it. At first, he thought he had drifted into a stupor or perhaps even the first indistinct phase of exhausted slumber, but an anxious glance at the clock set him straight. Moody hadn't been gone more than five minutes. He must have marched straight to the head of the queue and cut in. Remus didn't suppose many patrons would want to pick an argument with Mad-Eye Moody, renowned Dark Wizard hunter and champion of justice. Even those few who might not know his face from the countless articles The Daily Prophet had run over the span of his illustrious career would surely take one look at his scarred, wilful countenance and lose all interest in quarrelling.

'Right. Here you are,' Moody said. He handed Remus a small sheaf of colourful pound notes. When he had folded them and tucked them mechanically away, the Auror dropped a few coins into his palm. They were almost comically light, tiny and fragile like currency for a doll's house. Remus pocketed them with care, remembering just how long he could live on a twenty-pence piece if he had to.

'Today's exchange is six pounds fourpence the Galleon, whatever that means,' said Moody. 'Goblin wouldn't bargain, and he wouldn't tell me whether that's a good rate or a bad one.'

'It's good,' Remus said hoarsely. Six pounds fourpence the Galleon meant he had… he had… he didn't know. He couldn't work through the math. Simple, simple math, and it was beyond his grasp. His eyelids fluttered low, dragged as if by lead weights. Dimly he remembered that something more was owed. 'Th-thank you, Alastor.'

'Hmph.' Moody stumped off to the side. For a horrible moment Remus thought he would leave him, but he only moved up the bench, turned around with a broad certainty that dispelled any sense of clumsiness, and sat heavily down. 'Best if you sit a little longer, I think. You're grey as old cheese.'

Remus did not say anything. It was such a relief to be off his feet again, this time with his back bolstered up by the intricately carved mahogany. He let his head sink forward so that his chin rested in the notch of his collarbone. He dragged in slow breaths, laboured but increasingly steady. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

'Never used to affect you like this, the moon,' Alastor muttered, speaking the last words out of the corner of his mouth. Remus supposed it was surprising that he spoke them at all. Moody had always been a stickler for security, and that included security of information. He was the one who had taught them all what could and could not be written down, even in code: what could not be hinted at where others might hear. He was the one who had insisted that the Order cease using owls for their privileged communications. That had caused an uproar, because of course the Floo Network wasn't secure either, and they had needed some means of contacting each other long-distance.

They had found a workaround in the end. Well, Remus had found a workaround. Sometimes he still felt a warm burst of pride when he remembered that. No one else – not Professor Dumbledore with his vast talents, nor Professor Flitwick with his world-renowned skill in charms, nor Marlene McKinnon with her penchant for impossible riddles, nor even James and Lily and Sirius with their brilliant minds – had contrived a solution. But when Remus had found a way to make their Patronuses speak, the Order's communication problem had dissolved.

A small sound of suffering hitched in the back of Remus's throat, snagging against the parched passage and emerging only as a dry little click. Sirius. He had failed to guard his mind against the name, and now it struck him with the force of a Death Eater's Stunner. Sirius.

'The Battle of Nomansland Common,' Moody was musing, mercifully spared the dark and muddled thoughts now swirling through Remus's aching head. 'That was the afternoon before, wasn't it? I remember when it was over Black kept trying to leap out from cover before the area was secure. Had to Apparate you off to a safe place, he did. You'd worn yourself out fighting, but even then you didn't look like this.'

'It's… the years haven't been kind,' Remus murmured desolately, not knowing what else to say. The memory of Sirius so agitated, risking his own life to whisk Remus off to safety, was unbearable.

Moody huffed appreciatively. 'That's the truth,' he agreed. 'I feel every one of 'em in my bones these days. Don't know how much longer I'll keep it up. Auroring. I could always cut back on the active duty and work with the trainees, I suppose.' He sighed as if this prospect held little appeal. He twisted on the bench, looking at Remus more squarely with his living eye. The other made another sweep of their surroundings. 'Tell me what you need, Lupin, and I'll do what I can.'

The statement was so blunt, so pragmatic and unemotional, that at first Remus did not understand what Moody had said. Then it penetrated his tempestuous brain and all at once he could not think at all. What he needed… a thousand things, great and small, flooded his mind all at once. He needed steady, reliable work, preferably something that was not too physically taxing, though at the moment he would have been content to be strapped to a plough like an ox, if only it paid. He needed a cupboard full of good, wholesome food: fresh fruit and meat, tinned goods, spices, soup bones and flour and a twenty-pound sack of potatoes. He needed roofing slate and the skill to install it. He needed a new blanket, one that wasn't worn thin and motheaten. He needed shoes that didn't let in the water, robes that were presentable enough to make him look like a trustworthy employment prospect, warm woollen socks and undergarments that were more than just webs of ragged cloth. He needed shampoo, toothpaste, proper laundry soap, a saucepan with its handle still attached. He needed potions for pain and fever and blood loss, needed a paraffin heater for those times when he was too weak in the wake of the moon to conjure up a fire or cast a Warming Charm on his narrow slat bed. He needed so many things that he had once taken for granted and now lived without.

He couldn't articulate any of this. Wouldn't have done even if he could. It was not Moody's worry how he was living. It wasn't Moody's responsibility to provide for him. But there was one thing that truly would be Moody's problem if it went too long unattended. Moody's problem, and that of every normal witch and wizard, every normal human being, for miles around.

'I need…' Remus said, his voice trembling with the awfulness of the admission and all that it implied. 'I need help to get home.'

discidium

For an indeterminate age, Moody sat there in silence. The clock ticked and the wickets rattled. Piles of coin sang and clattered in nimble goblin hands. A vault door creaked. Far away there was a ratchetting rattle that could only be a mine car building speed. All manner of voices chattered, some irritated, some bored, some friendly. Remus wanted to shrink to nothing, to slink away from the Auror's steady gaze. How could he have been such a fool, to come down to London on the day of the full moon? How could he have let himself grow so weak that he could not even get home? How could he have let it all come to this?

'Well, then,' said Moody at last; 'we'd best get you home. You can't Apparate, that's plain enough. Floo?'

Remus shook his head, regretting it as the sickening, tilting feeling took the world again. 'Not on the Network,' he said. 'Too risky.'

Moody nodded appreciatively. He was a man who respected a sound risk-assessment. 'Sensible,' he said. 'Good of you to put the safety of strangers over your personal convenience, Lupin. You always were a responsible sort.'

It was a compliment, but it felt like a blistering criticism. How responsible had he been today? He had let his hunger and his longing to survive override his better judgement. He had put himself in a position that no werewolf ever should: the very position that James had been wont to rail against in the old days, back before the Animagus transformation and all that had come with it. He had left himself with nowhere safe to secure himself when the inhuman madness took him.

'Simple enough,' said Moody. 'I'll take you. Side-Along. Still have that flat in Lancaster?'

Had he possessed the strength, Remus might have been surprised into a laugh by that. The flat in Lancaster – in truth a sorry little bedsit overlooking a rubbish-choked vacant lot – had been lost long ago. Without his friends' support, Remus had not managed to hold onto it for even half a year. He hadn't wanted to stay there, not after all that had happened. Not when he couldn't even walk down the high street a quarter mile from his room without seeing that vast dark square of new pavement where the Muggles thought a gas line had exploded and remembering… everything. He wouldn't have clung to the lease so fiercely, desperately trying to scrape up the rent every month, except that he hadn't the gold for first and last's on a new place, not without James's money behind him.

James's money, which had always before come in a neat leather pouch pressed into his hands with a thoughtful word and no question of refusal, had been brought to him by proxy near the end. By proxy, because Remus could no longer remember where James and Lily lived, had no idea where they might have gone after the grand house at Godric Manor had fallen to Fiendfyre, no idea where he had visited them all those times, eaten so many hot dinners, enjoyed two blissful Christmases. The memories had been vivid, wonderful, sustaining to him in dark moments through the last months of the war, but they had been strangely incomplete after James and Lily went into hiding, with a vast gaping hole where his knowledge of the location should have been. The effects of the Fidelius Charm had been immediate and disorienting – almost as much as the effects of its breaking had been.

'Well?' said Moody, and Remus realised he had lapsed into that mournful reverie without answering the question. Now he could not recall what the question had been. 'Lancaster?'

Oh. 'No…' Remus mumbled, clamping down on the instinct to shake his pulsing head. 'No, I'm… it's a cottage…'

'Have you a picture?' asked Moody. 'I don't Apparate blind: you know that, Lupin. Sure recipe for disaster.'

Remus did not have a picture. Where would he have gotten a picture? It wasn't as though he had gone through an estate agent's. And anyway, it never would have occurred to him to carry such a thing around with him. He did shake his head now, hopelessly.

'Knight Bus, then,' Moody said briskly, dusting off the lap of his robes and picking up his staff. He was in the process of heaving himself to his feet when Remus's answer made him sink back.

'I can't,' Remus croaked.

Moody glared at him. 'If it's the money that worries you, I'll front you the fare,' he said. 'Got to get you home safely, unless you want to spend the night locked up in the bowels of the Ministry. I wouldn't advise it. No way of knowing who you'll get at intake, or who'll let you out in the morning. Bad business, falling afoul of the wrong bloke in the Beast Division. Seen lives ruined that way, I have.'

At the moment it was difficult to imagine his life any more ruinous, but Remus knew Moody was right. To turn to the Ministry for help in securing himself would be to admit he was too incapable and irresponsible to do it on his own. He would be branded a negligent werewolf, and that would haunt him all the rest of his days.

'It's not the fare,' he said softly, though the thought of such a prodigal outpouring of money made him sick. 'The Knight Bus is too slow. It would take hours. I… it rises just before five o'clock.'

There was a moment's silence as Moody unpacked this statement. His real eye was fixed on Remus, pensive. The other pivoted to the side, staring through his temple at the clock on the wall.

'Well, then, I'll need your address,' he said at last.

'Haven't got an address,' Remus sighed. 'It's a cottage, on the moors. In… in the Dales National Park.'

'Name of the cottage, then,' said Moody. 'The Ministry's triangulation service can work off a name.'

Ministry's triangulation service? Something about that phrase made Remus feel uneasy, but he had a more pressing piece of information to communicate.

'Hasn't got a name,' he whispered. He wasn't trying to be obstreperous, truly he was not. But his thoughts were clumsy and hobbled, and just trying to get the words to his lips required an enormous effort.

'Well, how am I supposed to find it, then?' Moody demanded. 'How did you register the property?'

'I didn't,' Remus confessed, feeling another gnawing shudder of humiliation through his viscera. 'I didn't buy it, I don't let it. I just… I live there.'

'It's a squat,' said Moody bluntly, clarifying.

'Yes,' Remus whispered, unable to nod, unable to meet the other man's eyes. He felt the need to explain. 'It was abandoned. It's not worth anything. There are hundreds of cottages like it, all over Yorkshire. When the population collapsed in the… I-I'm not taking anything anyone else would want.'

It was a feeble defence, a pitiable protest. He couldn't afford to eat: there was never any money for shelter. The pittance that his father had to his name at his death had all gone for the burial. And Remus had struggled for years before he found the little cottage, derelict and empty on land owned by the Crown. That drab bedsit in Lancaster had only been the first of increasingly untenable options, until one grim spring when he had found himself with nowhere to go at all.

'You've a right to put a roof over your head, Lupin: how you do it makes no difference to me,' said Moody. 'The question is how we get you back there. Without an address or any idea where I'm going – I don't suppose you know the coordinates?'

'No.' Remus could only mouth the word. All the despair and misery that had overwhelmed him in the street was cresting high again.

'Somewhere nearby, then?' Moody pressed, undaunted. 'A neighbour? A crossroads? A landmark?'

He was using his Auror voice, his interrogation voice: tripping from one option to the next so quickly that one felt compelled to dredge up an answer just to stop the barrage.

'Thwaite Bridge,' Remus said, even before he knew he had thought of an answer. He looked up in surprise, tricked into meeting Moody's eyes again. His own widened a little, and he felt rather breathless. 'Thwaite Bridge, off the A684. Over the River Ure.'

'All right, then,' said Moody. He looked around as if searching for something, frowned when he didn't see it, then fished in his robes. He brought out a small slip of parchment: the receipt for the deposit he had left with the goblins. Left it with the goblins instead of depositing it in his vault personally, Remus thought. That seemed out of character for Moody. Had he interrupted a busy day for the Auror?

It occurred to him that perhaps Moody had not liked the idea of leaving him alone in such a state.

'Thwaite Bridge, off the A684,' muttered the older wizard, setting the piece of parchment on the seat between them. His magical eye was making a steady sweep, but it seemed to see nothing of concern, because Moody tapped his wand to the paper and said, 'Portus.'

The piece of parchment glowed briefly blue, then faded back into unremarkableness. For the first time since sinking onto the bench, Remus found the strength to sit up straight, choking on his consternation.

'You can't do that!' he cried, horrified. 'That's illegal! The penalty if you're caught—'

'Quiet, boy, don't make a scene,' Moody said briskly, tucking away his wand. He glared at a witch who had just come through the doors and was staring at Remus. She wilted under the Auror's gaze and trotted away. 'What's the Ministry going to do? Send Shacklebolt to arrest me? Hah!'

He got to his feet and socked Remus's groceries into the crook of the arm that held his stick. With the other he grabbed Remus by the arm and hauled him to his feet. He left him there, swaying, as he snatched up the paper. 'Grab hold, now, and don't be stubborn,' snapped Moody, so imperiously that Remus was compelled to obey. 'Right, then, brace yourself. Four, three, two, one…'

The unearthly feeling of a hook pulling him from behind the navel seized Remus, and Gringotts melted away around them as the Portkey took effect.