He woke up to the sound of beeping. His brain booted online when the beeping started to get on his nerves, the why much more than it being a methodical noise made to annoy. He'd been here before, more than once too. It was Mungo's, the noise next to him one of the few muggle inventions they adopted to keep an eye on others heat beats. He'd been hooked up to it many times, usually when he lost more than one limb and the Potters didn't have time to stitch it back on before his body rejected it.

He was in pain, everywhere, which further proved that something bad had happened last night. Last time, if he remembered correctly, he had used his claws to rip out most of his neck. It was on one of the nights James was home from school too, the boy waking Remus up many a night afterward to make sure he was still breathing. He belatedly hoped this time that it wasn't too bad, maybe just a few missing fingers or toes they had trouble finding in the cellar before rushing him here. The older Potters didn't really mind the blood and gore, having known what they were getting into when they brought him home, but Remus hated the babying that came after a stint in Mungo's. He needed time to lick his wounds not sit around being piled with more and more cake because of something that was just as natural as the sun rising.

His eyes were sticky, lashes refusing to separate long enough to let a glimpse of light in. It took a few tries to get his hand up and rub them open, the familiar sight of the werewolf ward greeting him when he did. Sitting up was impossible he realised, since even if his hands were working his lower half was clasped in so many bandages he couldn't bend anything. The most he could do was lean on his elbows and use his head, trying to gauge which of the Potters he would have to soothe.

Only, none of them were around. He flopped back onto the pillows, cursing quietly when his neck and open wounds protested the bounce. He supposed they were off getting something to drink. Who knew how long he'd been in there, and it wasn't like they needed to stick around just for him.

Time passed, and eventually, just as Remus was wondering if he could try and move the jug of water to his mouth with his mind, someone familiar stepped in. But- wait, that wasn't right.

It was Sirius, his dark hair, long again, pulled back with some flower clip with the rest of him clad in muggle clothes. He didn't look all too well, his face paler than Remus had ever seen it and dark circles under his eyes. He looked worse than when he first came to stay with the Potters last year, and, most importantly, he wasn't supposed to be there at all.

'You should be in school,' Remus said, his voice croaking around the words. He really needed that jug.

'Yeah,' Sirius agreed, Remus barely hearing him it came out so quiet. 'I gotta go get James.'

'He should be in school too.' A brief smile stretched onto Sirius' gaunt face, gone in an instant as almost guilt replaced it.

Sirius was gone for more than a couple of minutes. He was hours really, and Remus was wondering if he could get the Potters could put in another complaint at Mungo's about werewolf services when James finally came through with one of the healers.

He looked just as bad, if not worse than Sirius. His glasses were cracked, askew on his face, when Remus asked James said he kept breaking them and Sirius was fed up of fixing them so they were staying like this for a while. He sat on the mattress with Remus, ignoring the healer when she frowned about it. He didn't say anything while she puttered about, looking like she was useful when in actual fact she was just making sure Remus wasn't going to die before leaving to another, more important patient.

Finally, when the silence stretched long after the healers' absence, Remus got the courage to ask, 'What's happened? Why are you home from school?' Since there was no way he had slept through two weeks.

James opened his mouth, looking like he was going to speak before biting his lip so hard it turned white. Tears were welling in his eyes, and Remus didn't need someone then to tell him that something bad had happened.

Eventually it was Sirius that told him everything, coming back in from wherever he'd went to give them privacy. Herding James away by telling him the auror's waned another word with him. Auror's; something really bad had happened.

'Sirius?' Remus begged before he too could leave. He needed to know, and thankfully Sirius agreed since he pulled up a chair and delivered possibly one of the worst things Remus had ever heard.

'They know it wasn't your fault,' Sirius finished with. 'They think you were trying to protect them. From what they saw when they got there apparently your wolf wasn't big enough to have left those marks.' Just thinking about the Potters, torn up like his mother, like the people in that village, like him. It made him sick. 'They think it was organised. They said that the wolves left the other houses. It was like they knew where to go.'

'Just like last time,' Remus said. He remembered the wolves, how they had seemed to be sniffing for something, communicating like they were searching for a target. How they possibly left the other survivors to focus on Remus and his family. He'd never really thought about that night like an organised attack, but the more he thought about it, the more he heard about the Potters and how similar it was, it seemed like they were just too similar to dismiss.

'I'm so sorry Remus,' Sirius told him, holding his hand, tight and safe, the bandages the only thing separating them. 'They had to get us out of school. Dumbledore just strode in and told us. He didn't even have time to pull us aside it happened so fast. I think he was hoping they would be okay if we got to them in time. But-' It was strange to see Sirius cry. He'd never seen it, and he allowed a part of him to be jealous of how good he looked doing it, just like he looked good doing everything. When he thought like that it helped block out the reality of why he was crying. That it wasn't just Remus and James that had lost their home. He knew what it was like to be taken in by the Potters, how they made him feel so much at home that it was home. Sirius was just as much a part of their family as he was, and, like him, he'd lost them as well as his old one now.

It didn't really register with Remus for a while. Not until James came back looking more angry than anything else. By that time Remus had received the story four times over from Sirius. How the wolves had broken into his home. How Remus had busted himself up beyond belief, the Auror's actually believing he was dead by the time they got there. How it had taken more than one stunning spell to get him back to an unconscious state since Remus was sure the Auror's were out to hurt his family too. He heard Sirius try and cheer himself up by saying they were probably the talk of Hogwarts. He listened as, more often than not Sirius broke down, curling up in the chair beside Remus' bed.

James was a breath of fresh air after all this. For a bad reason they found out. Mungo's was lucky James had been brought up to respect well to do establishments, otherwise Remus knew he would be doing more than huffing in place.

It turned out the Potter family's bad eggs hadn't just extended to Mrs Potter's sister. Almost as soon as Mr and Mrs Potter were declared dead Mr Potter's brother swooped in and tried to take the lot. The house James lost, Mr Potter's brother making a good argument that James didn't have the money to keep up with the costs of keeping a house. He took the furniture, the clothes and was adamant he wasn't giving up his bachelor lifestyle to look after his newly orphaned nephew. he would have gotten their money too had Dumbledore not stuck around. Thanks to him James had financial security. But that was all he had. His home was gone. Remus' home was gone.

Which reminded him, 'What's going to happen to me?'

'You?' James didn't look to have given it much thought, the dawning horror overcoming him until he was racing out the room again.

It was another hour before Remus was told his fate. With James, which had him letting out the first tear since he'd woken up. This was real, it was happening. He had almost lost James along with everything else and-

He napped for a while after that, the wounds and drugs making him sleepy. He heard James and Sirius filter in every now and then, talking about what had happened with the house. Mrs Potter's dinners. Everything and anything that came to mind really.

'We can stay with you, right?' James asked at one point.

'Of course you can. I'm not leaving you alone mate.' Sirius had moved, somewhere, a crinkle and smell of chocolate keeping Remus on the more awake side of things. 'You can tell Remus though.'

The bed moved, James chuckling slightly. 'He doesn't hate you, you know. You can tell him yourself.'

Sirius' flat was small. That was all Remus was going to say about it. Sirius had offered them a place to stay after all, it wasn't up to him to turn his nose up at a roof over his head. Thankfully Sirius recognised the flats faults, telling them it was only a temporary thing for over the summer, planning on getting a better one next year when they finally left school.

They moved in right away since there was no use James and Sirius going back to school. Exams were finished, and with nothing else but summer reading assigned to them, all they really needed were their trunks. Unfortunately Remus didn't have such a luxury. He hadn't had to compile his whole life in one compartment before, not like James and Sirius had for the past six years. Everything he had was back at the Potters house. Which, he was told when he was sick of wearing James' too short jeans, had been sold on and his clothes gone to who knew where. They had nothing after all.

Shopping however, was on the last on their list. The flat only had one bedroom, the first night they moved in the three of them playing a hasty game of exploding snap poker to decide who was getting it. Strangely they were all playing for someone else. James saying Remus needed the mattress, Remus saying he was fine with a blanket on the floor and Sirius adamant that the two of them were guests and it was the least he could do. They solved it with James winning, Remus getting the bed for the night. He ended up sneaking out when he was sure James and Sirius were asleep, and switching himself for James. He got an earful in the morning about pulling his wound and being just generally disobedient, but since James slept in for the first time since this all started he felt his actions justified. He argued at some point he would have put Sirius there instead but he knew he was a light sleeper.

'I can hear you tossing,' Remus said when Sirius asked about it. Which had his cheeks turning red as other nights came to mind, ones which Remus had turned a blind ear to.

When the bed situation was finally sorted out with James and Sirius sharing while Remus got the settee Remus clued the two hopeless wizards into life on their own. Something that helped keep Remus' mind off the ever present guilt and grief, and he could see helped James and Sirius too. Food shopping was high on their adult list, James and Sirius not having a clue what to eat or even what went into making something tasty.

By the end of their trip to the nearest shop Remus declared shopping his responsibility from now on. Along with cooking when James was so out of it he blew up their new toaster. Clothes washing was on his list too, Sirius making an attempt and changing everything green. Remus didn't even know how that was possible since he was sure none of them wore green except Remus, whose clothes were all gone now.

The lack of productivity on James and Sirius' part eventually blew up. It was just after James was doing the dishes, having been stuck on one plate for a good few minutes. It ended with him smashing it, declaring he couldn't do anything and wishing his parents were still around.

Remus felt the same. He wished more than anything that they were still there to help James learn how to stand on his own two feet, but they weren't, and there was nothing Remus could do except say. 'You can. You can do a lot of things James, it just takes time and practice. But maybe let me do that for now.'