Disclaimer: These characters belong to J.K. Rowling. No copyright infringement is meant.
Rating: PG-13/T
Spoilers/Timeline: Written after HPB was released. Starts immediately after GoF.
A/N: Sorry for the slow updates – but you know how life is. Do read and review.
Chapter 4: Remus. Man. Werewolf.
He's not too proud to admit he was wrong about her. A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. He smiled to himself. Smartass. I never enjoyed Alexander Pope.
He and Sirius have never been anything more than good friends. In fact, if anyone should have been accused of being… anything more than just friends, it should have been Sirius and James. He smiled at the memories. Thick as thieves, both of them. He wasn't too proud to admit to himself that he had felt jealous of their connection at times, when they excluded both him and Peter from their talks. But he never begrudged them their connection – it just simply was. There was no hows or whys about it. Sirius and James had always been… Sirius and James. James and Sirius. And they had never been obnoxious about it; their camaraderie was just simply… there. Inexplicable and unexplainable.
He turns over in his bed, the springs creaking loudly.
It wasn't so much that he was hoping to become half of 'Sirius and Remus'. He yearns for the human connection to that other person, but he had never actively sought it out. The marauders' friendship was not so much an evolution, but rather forceful thrusts, yanks, and old-fashioned pummelling of his active participation through the sheer force of James and Sirius's combined wills. And he knew that the kind of connection that had existed between James and Sirius could never be replicated – it was a once-in-a-lifetime deal. You only get one best mate.
He realises that he will never get to sleep this way. Downstairs then. Maybe milk. Molly would have left some in the kitchen, knowing that he was staying over. Maybe even some of her amazing chocolate chip cookies. Or muffins. Or brownies. He scrabbled around his mind, trying to think of other goodies that Molly might have left behind. Nuts, perhaps? Or maybe even a Shepherd's Pie. Or Lorraine Quiche. He knew what was keeping him up. He tried not to think about it. Cereal. Blueberry pie. Desperately cataloguing Molly's culinary repertoire. Anything else, please, feed me so that I don't have to think.
He fails.
I don't want to go. I really don't want to go. Why me? And stops himself from questioning further. There could be no 'why's in his life. The 'why's would drive him insane, had driven his early self half-mad with the circular logic of it. There was no why about it – asking why he had to go to the colony would only result in questioning why couldn't anyone else do it. Which would lead to why was he the only werewolf in the Order. And would lead to the ultimate unanswerable question which plagued his whole life: Why am I a werewolf? Because I wanted to stay out five minutes more? Because my parents didn't look out for me? Because Greyback is a sadistic bastard?
There was no why.
There was only him.
Remus.
Man.
Werewolf.
He sighs, and shakes out a couple of cookies from the jar that Molly had left. Pours himself a glass of milk, and sits at the sink, looking out from the kitchen window into the back yard. It was beautiful in the night, with the moonlight softening the harsh edges of whatever it overlooked. He looks up at the silver disc. There you are, my lady. Beautiful and soft, and yet waxing to my eternal doom.
He feels the quiet desperation creep upon him again. At first, he fights that feeling of helplessness and uselessness. He was better than that. He was helping the fight. He wasn't useless. He was taking a disadvantage and turning it around on the war-mongers.
Play to your strengths, but never forget your weaknesses either, he hears Moody in his head. But tonight, this night, at this very place – the stars and the moon are aligned against him tonight. No, his resolve is water, is mulch tonight – tonight is about wallowing. Is about the fear. Tonight is about giving in to the nausea that he feels swirling around his belly, like a slippery swamp snake, sliding restlessly – left, right, circle, in, out.
I am going to go mad.
He swallows the last bits of the cookies and gulps down the milk, leaving the dishes and glass in the sink for Kreacher to do. A sudden wave of nausea hits him, and he retches into the sink, effectively throwing up the cookies, milk, and part of his dinner as well. He spits, and rinses out his mouth with water.
Strange how a quick vomit can make you take a load off, he muses as he casts a few quick scourgifys on the dishes. Sirius will be mad that I didn't leave them for Kreacher, he mulls hazily. He picks up the cutlery and starts to place them back on the shelf when he hears a soft scuffle of feet.
Startled, he dropped his glass and plate and whirled around, one hand stretched out to – to what, Lupin? Brace your fall? Cast a silent spell without your wand? In the milliseconds between, he cursed himself for his inattentiveness.
"Moony?" Ouch. Damn you, mongrel. From his vantage point on the floor, he looks up into Sirius' sleep-addled eyes. "Moony, what on earth are you doing?"
"Taking a nap on the kitchen floor, what else?"
"Not particularly sanitary."
"Molly keeps a clean house."
"With mops and brooms and pails that Kreacher lovingly defecates over."
"Now that's a horrid image to have." He takes his wand and turns the scourgify on himself this time, feeling the hairs on his forearms rise. He wonders, not for the first time, if there is a correlation between the physics of muggle studies, and the casting of spells. For if there was a relation, he would hazard a guess that scourgify definitely caused a moderate case of static electricity.
"Can't sleep?" Sirius walks and pours himself some milk. They sit at the kitchen table, facing the sink rather than each other, looking out through that small window which looks over the back yard, which is looked over by the moon, the beautiful moon, the smiling, inconstant moon, which Juliet refused to let Romeo swear by.
"Thinking."
"Oh. 'Bout?"
"Mission."
Sirius' brows furrow at that. "A mission? Sounds serious." His eyes dance a little at the joke, then sobers again. "Better than sitting down on my fat arse getting fatter everyday, feeding a grumpy, under-exercised hippogriff."
"It's to werewolf country." He turns to look at Sirius balefully. "Wanna trade?"
He cannot meet Sirius' stricken look, and turns away.
"When?" He almost misses the low question.
"Don't know, couple of weeks perhaps? I've got to get a little grungy and grumpy before I meet up with the first enclave, and you know me, I can't act at all, so I'd best go rough it out a week before on my own and get really ticked off at human civilisation before I go in." He tries to keep his tone light, but the gravitas of the words outweigh the quality of his speech. He does not look at Sirius.
"I'm scared."
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sirius accio a glass from the cupboard. Wandless and non-verbal to boot.
"Excellent work there, Padfoot," he says softly.
"Ten points to Gryffindor," returns Sirius, who pours him another glass of milk.
They toast, and drink their milk in silence for a while, sitting at the kitchen table, gazing at the moon.
"You'll come back."
"You don't know that."
"I know you, Moony, and you're a survivor."
"You're the one who survived Azkaban for 13 years."
"So?"
"So…" Remus realises that Sirius had a point. He sighs. "Look, I'm not really good company right now, so maybe we should just call it a night." He drains his glass a second time, cleans it, and sets it on the shelf, feeling satisfied that the milk has settled quite happily in his stomach this time around.
"Goodnight Padfoot." He turns to leave the kitchen.
"I wasn't scared."
Sirius' voice stops him.
"You were what?"
"I wasn't scared. When James asked me to be their secret-keeper." Turning back, he sees Sirius fiddling with his empty glass. "I thought it was great fun, I thought it would be cool to be their secret-keeper. I knew the risks, and I knew what was at stake, but still, it was fun then, and I wasn't scared." He raised his eyes to Remus.
"That's why you'll come back."
He banishes the glass into the sink. "And you're the only one I have left anymore, besides maybe Nym. You can't go softly into that night."
"It's 'gently into that night'," he corrects, smiling tremulously.
An airy wave of Sirius' hand. "Whatever, you know which one I mean, that Bob Dylan song. Now get thee to a beddery!"
Smiling, Remus doesn't bother to correct him.
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A/N: Too many literary allusions? I make no apologies; you guys should be smart enough to know which are the quotes and which aren't right? (I'll provide the cheat sheet in my next update…)
Shoutouts/Thank yous to: Mouseykins, Pheo, Farther, Bardlover (woot!), MrsTater, Mute Mockingbird, EllaJ.W, islandtwofourths, give em enough rope (that's a seriously scary handle you've got there!), krumfan (I love your fics!), Possum132 and NaginiFay – your love is better than ice-cream.