The second part of the double update! Also, if anyone's noticing, there are references to the sacred and beloved Shoebox Project in this fic. They are little sentence-long homages, and I in no way claim them to be original. Though honestly most are so small that they're pretty ambiguous, and you'd have to be an OBSESSIVE reader of Shoebox Project to get them. It's just me being funny only to myself again weeeeeee.

Chapter Nine:
Things to Come

That summer Remus doesn't put the Not around his neck.

His parents try. They use the same reasons that persuaded him before. Yes, Remus knows what life would be like if he were found out. He knows that it's helped him keep his mouth shut in the past. No, he will not put on the Not. It comes up over and over, about once every week and a half.

The entire time, he is afraid his Mam will cry. If she cries, he will put on the Not; there is no resisting her. But no, she doesn't cry, she just sits there, stony, elbows planted on the cheap plastic table cloth. It is hot out, for once. The whole house smells like her fags.

Today there is a letter from Lily in his pocket. Remus doesn't want to look at it again. He can't understand why she's writing to him about this. Why not all her friends, all those sweet-smelling girls who surround her at school? Girls seem to feel so comfortable around him, so safe. He wants to scream at them and tell them what he really is.

I am your nightmares.

"If that's what you want, Remus," Mam finally says, looking up with dry eyes. They're green. Remus always wished he had his Mam's eyes. His were green when he was a kid, but they flattened and darkened to brown like his father's as he grew up. It has nothing to do with the wolf, just genes. Just aging.

"It's what I want," he agrees. Dad doesn't look at him, just watches Mam. They all watch Mam, all the time. They watch the sweat on her arms, the print of her sundress that has wrinkled from the humid heat. They watch the smoke curl out of her lips.

"Open a window, Remus," Mam says irritably. He jumps to comply. Lily's letter feels brittle in his pocket. She wrote it on parchment instead of Muggle paper, so it makes a louder noise than he expects when he stretches in his trousers.

Remus wants to go outside, to stop watching his Mam and go out to the cliff, but no one will be there. He wants to talk to Sirius, even if Sirius has nothing useful to say.

Remus stays in the kitchen. This is his family, brittle as they are. There is a debt here, so huge and awful that he will never be able to repay it. Even knowing this, he's not wearing the Not. Maybe this makes him a terrible person. He hopes it doesn't, but knows it's possible.

Dad washes some dishes that aren't dirty. He takes them right out of the cupboard and into the sink. Remus stands by the open window, trying to get a whiff of fresh air.

Sometimes Sirius sends letters, if you could call them that. They're hardly more than a sentence or two, normally. His parents aren't letting him go to Devonshire anymore, or anywhere as far as Remus can tell. The freedom of third year has fallen away. Sometimes there are no letters at all, just bits of things Sirius has found. Little things, often shiny ones. Chipped and twisted bits of chrome. A tinted light bulb. A girls' plastic compact with a picture of Disney's Cinderella on the outside. All things Sirius can pick up off the sidewalks of Islington. If there's a signature, it's normally just a P. or a sketched dog's pawprint.

Remus puts them away in places no one will look, hopefully. Lately he's been putting them in a shoebox. He never leaves them out to clutter his room. He knows Sirius probably sends similar things to James and Peter, but not the same things. Never the same things. Remus takes the Cinderella mirror down with him into the bunker, and carefully washes the blood off every morning after.

When Mam finishes her cigarette she gets out her reading glasses and pulls a folder of bills out of a kitchen drawer and spreads them out on the table. It doesn't look like she'll need the two of them, so Remus and his Dad drift off, Dad to the living room, Remus to his desk.

He tries to work on the summer homework for Defence, but it feels difficult and pointless. They'll just have a new teacher again next year who'll want different things.

Resigned, he draws Lily's letter out of his pocket, overly cautious lest it begin to crumble.

Of course, it does not. The script is familiar, from all the time he's spent checking over Lily's Defence Against the Dark Arts homework, while she tries to help him in Potions. Remus feels rather guilty, thinking how put out James will be if he realises Lily has written to Remus but not to him. She knows James fancies her, and she knows Remus is James's friend. He's almost a little angry that she's put him in this position.

But he reads it again anyway.

Remus,

I hope you're doing alright. There have been a few scares lately, haven't there? I hope it hasn't really reached you. Do you mind if I talk about it a little? I hope not.

Myself and several others I know have been receiving anti-muggleborn hate mail recently. I seem to be getting the lion's share, from what I can tell. Maybe it's because I turned in Rosier and his little cronies for teasing some Hufflepuff girls after final exams last year. If so, I have no regrets. I hope they get hung from the Quidditch hoops by their toes (but don't tell anyone I said it).

Some of the letters are hexed to cause boils or rashes, which I learned the hard way. My parents are both Muggles, so they can't heal it and to be honest I don't want them to know. They think magic is all fun and games and fairy tales. It's an illusion, but they love it so much that I can't bring myself to break it.

Normally I'd ask Severus for some healing potions – I didn't bring many home after last term, and I used one up with the first cursed letter. Actually I did ask him, but at first he didn't reply. I tried again, thinking maybe the owl had got lost or delivered to the wrong place – she's Alice Shepperd's, I was borrowing her. He responded and said that I should have "kept my head down" or I'd "never have gotten myself into this mess". He's been my friend for almost ten years.

Maybe I did behave in an antagonistic way, and I am not about to regret it. But most of the others receiving the letters this summer have kept quiet. I have to wonder what in God's name they want from us. I love the wizarding world. I love magic. I can't understand though, what they want. Do they just want people like me to disappear? Do they want me to be meek and quiet? I don't think I could be.

I know both Muggle and wizarding history. I will tell you what I see: people are afraid. There aren't many witches and wizards and there are so many Muggles. There's not a lot of money right now. Even the goblins are restless. There's too much propaganda and too much hate. You're smart, Remus, and I suspect you, unlike your compatriots, read the paper. You know what this can mean. I hope I'm wrong, and this is just stupid teenage hazing. You might have noticed, reading this letter, that I hope a lot of things.

I read every letter I receive (with the help of dragon hide gloves, of course) firstly because I want to understand, and secondly because I am far, far more angry than I am afraid. "Know thine enemy", or so they say. If I recognize the handwriting on them anywhere else, I am going to request the spell you used on Bulstrode last semester. That was a nasty piece of work, and I know you thought no one saw you do it, so I wasn't going to bring it up. And to be honest I didn't really approve - but I'm beginning to appreciate it. The people who send these deserve it.

They're not just attacking me, and that's why I'm so furious. I've snapped three quills just writing this, and I haven't many left. It's a lot of other muggleborn students, mostly the young ones. I keep hearing about it, maybe three a month. Little Olive Caradan was hexed in broad daylight on Diagon Alley. They got the gits who did it, but they got barely a slap on the wrist. She had "MUDBLOOD" across her forehead like they'd burned it there.

Some of the Gryffindor girls like Olive have written to me, asking for help or guidance – anything. I don't know what to tell them. I think they don't believe I would get this type of mail.

Thank you for your time,

Lily Evans

Remus doesn't think she wants a response. He almost wants to ask her why, why, why me? Why not Alice Shepperd, who's close enough to Lily to lend her an owl? And why does she let him see a little peak at Lily's vulnerable side, which Remus wasn't completely sure existed up until now? She didn't want to destroy the illusion for her parents, but she's fine with destroying his vision of her as this unbreakable thing?

Yet another part of him is glad. Glad that she trusts him. Glad that he might have a friend in her, even if she'd hate to admit it. And if he's honest, she just seems stronger to him now. Remus would bet she's already responded to all those letters asking for help, and that in each one she said just the right things.

This summer can't last forever. Cooler weather will have to come eventually and take away the heat that drives them all mad. They'll all take the train up to Scotland and he can see his friends again. Sirius will become more than a steady supply of desperate trinkets that seem to scream "Yes, I still exist!" in a worrying sort of way.

Sirius has taken to getting into trouble on purpose so they'll lock him in his room and he has more time to practice. The dog is beginning to feel like a new friend, always present, half-formed in his mind. This could be the spell or this could be Sirius's imagination, but Sirius does not care either way. Any friendly company is welcome right now.

Today he's managed to become significantly more hairy all over, not quite enough for a real dog, but quite a bit for a human. Sirius fancies he looks a bit like those completely inaccurate pictures of werewolves in the books he and the others poured through, looking for help for Remus.

They're still looking for a spell to force themselves back in case they really botch up the transformation, but none of them have it yet, though James says he's close.

James bloody well needs one of those spells. He writes updates in his progress in invisible ink on the back of more mundane letters he sends to Sirius. So far he's managed to transfigure himself a set of deer teeth (painful, very ugly) and his stomach (he was a vegetarian for a while, much to the confusion of his parents). Peter is not faring any better, but the only time he's really shrunk and got stuck there was at Hogwarts, so there have been no major disasters as of yet.

Then there is of course this fur. It would be easier to celebrate what a big step forward this is if it weren't so hot today. Sirius scratches and sighs. He has until this evening for the fur to wear off. As much as he'd love to show up to a formal supper looking quite a lot like a gorilla, that will hardly keep their secret.

Sirius takes a moment to remember just how illegal this whole thing is and grins. Maybe after supper he'll sneak out; he's in that sort of mood. London seems to tremble outside the windows, filled with some magnetic energy he loves and hates in equal measure.

For now he's trapped. Sirius sits on the floor and gazes up at his Gryffindor banners. His parents hardly ever come into the room anymore, which is helpful, really, but Sirius hates being alone. Not that he wants the company of anyone in this house. There are some letters he's charmed to stick to the slats on the bottom of his bed, so they can only be found if someone goes under there and looks up. Kreacher certainly doesn't bother dusting under Sirius's bed. It is, admittedly, a jungle under there.

The worst thing about summer is easily the isolation. Sirius misses Godric's Hollow with something akin to homesickness, and he's only spent Christmas and Easter there, and Bristol – a city he's never even visited – seems like heaven. And of course Wales, with that little cottage on the side of the nameless mountain. Well, that place has Remus. He needn't explain more.

By early evening the hair still hasn't gone away, even with several spells attempted on it. Sirius locks and bars his door, gets into a screaming fight with his mother, and sulks by the windows as, over supper, the dark, thick dog hair morphs back into its normal human counterpart. He looks perfectly normal when he's hauled down the stairs by the hood of his robes by Father, and thrown into the cellar for the night.

It is very, very dark.

It is very, very quiet.

He breathes. It is very important to breathe. Otherwise sitting in the cellar feels a bit like being dead.

To pass the time Sirius tries to think of new things to send his friends. Letters. But Remus never responds to letters; still doesn't write when Sirius is at home. Sirius is not stupid enough that he can't understand the reasons, but it still burns a little.

"I would write to him," he whispers aloud. His voice sounds too Londoner, too posh, too Black. He wishes he could speak like Remus when Remus forgets himself and Wales rushes into his voice and bends it into strange little loops and vowels.

Sirius wishes he could bottle up light. To keep for himself or to send to Remus, he's not sure.

The first evening at Hogwarts, fresh from the start of term feast and the Sorting, Sirius learns that Andromeda had her baby three months ago.

"Dear Merlin," says Sirius to the others who are tucking into their beds, barely bothering to strip off their robes and stumble into pyjamas. Remus changes in the nook beside his bed, but Sirius can see a new set of scratches along his back, messily healed. He almost forgets what he's saying.

"What's the matter, Padfoot?" demands James sleepily. "Because if that letter you're holding is anything short of a note from Lily expounding upon her incredible desire to go to Hogsmeade with me, I do not care."

"'Dromeda named her daughter Nymphadora," he tells them.

Remus grunts. "It's a pretty name. Where's the problem?"

"Where's the problem?" cries Sirius. "Can you imagine people calling you Nymphadora? And what about the child – she won't be able to say her own name until she's ten! It's a continuation of the Black family travesty of name-giving. I had a hard enough time getting my mouth around 'Sirius'. Poor Regulus – little bint – half bit his tongue off when he was three."

"Well, it's not really following your family tradition, is it?" says Peter.

Sirius looks up from the parchment he's been holding.

"All the Blacks you hate are named after stars and constellations and galaxies. I may not be the sharpest, but even I know that Nymphadora isn't a constellation. We would've learned it by now in astronomy," explains Peter, very matter-of-factly.

"He has a point," adds Remus. Sirius had thought he'd gone to sleep, but apparently a Moony can't resist an academic debate, no matter how stuffed with chocolate éclairs that Moony happens to be.

"Nymphadora means 'gift of the nymphs', derived from classical mythology," Remus says in his Teacher Voice. "After the Renaissance northern Europeans decided that nymphs were the equivalent of elves, so 'gift of the elves'. Often in Elf lore, the 'gift' elves would leave for humans would be a trick they played, stealing human babies and replacing them with infant elves. The switched children were called changelings." He smiles, hard to see in the darkness, but Sirius is looking for it. "Not very Black of her at all, suggesting her daughter is a changeling. If Elves did exist somewhere, I'd bet they would be treated as subhuman filth by all the blood supremacists."

"He's got you there," mumbles James, face in his pillow. Sirius scowls.

"Plus," adds Remus, sounding smug, "you can always shorten it to Dora, which I think is a lovely name."

Sirius throws a pillow at him.

For a long time there is just breathing, and the soft sound of wind through the trees so far away in the Forbidden Forest and mosquitoes bumping off their repellent charms on the window.

"Say, your family don't have any moon names, do they?" Remus whispers. "Because then we'd have to change mine."

"Not a single one. You're the only Moony." Sirius likes the way he can draw out the middle of the name, make it long and silly and something strange in his chest. Or maybe that's the éclairs.

"Remus."

A soft snore.

"Remus, give me back my pillow!"

The first thing he says to Madam Pomfrey is, "Cover up the mirror. I don't want to see it."

It's dark outside and at first that throws Remus off, but there is a candle glowing by his hospital bed, throwing light into the little space under the drapes. The mirror is supposed to show him that he's human. It's a testament to how badly off he is that Pomfrey complies right away.

From what he saw before the cloth slid over the reflection, his face has been slit open so you can see his teeth and jaw. Around it is red and swollen, and his hair is gone in some places, hopefully thanks to Pomfrey needing a better look at his bruised skull and not the wolf's claws.

And that's just above his neck. There are many aches, a lot of them a post-healing echo that's more his body in shock than the injury Pomfrey has mended. Remus tries not to think about what her priorities have been if she could so easily ignore his mangled face.

"I had to spend the morning stabilizing you. Hardly any real healing; your body couldn't take it."

This is what Remus likes about the matron. She will tell him what is wrong with him, and he doesn't even have to ask. Mam and Dad always try to keep the extent of it from him.

"So I'm a bit behind. I'll get to your face in a minute. Don't touch anything."

As if his fingers can move on their own accord right about now. When he was eleven and first came into this room and into her care, she put a slight paralysis spells on him, but soon discovered there was no need. When the pain's really bad he can't move, and the rest of the time willpower is enough to keep still.

"There won't be a scar on your face," she tells him, doing something with an arm he cannot feel. Her spells worm their way into his chest cavity and probe around. It's a rather horrible sensation. "You must have slammed your head against something sharp. A corner of one of the tables, maybe. But it wasn't werewolf inflicted, so I'll be able to knit it up. I wanted to leave it be for a while, in case you touched it at all. Let the Dark Creature's essence drain away.

It's good that it won't scar. It means fewer questions, and Remus really can't stand the scars. He won't mourn the loss of this one.

"You gave us a bit of a fright, Mr. Lupin. Even the Headmaster came by earlier."

"Sorry," croaks Remus. Then, "Dumbledore was here?"

"Professor Dumbledore, Mr. Lupin. Yes, he was. There was no reason for further concern after you stabilized, but he insisted."

"Pardon," says Remus faintly.

"Sleep, Mr. Lupin."

It's dawn when she finally lets him go, and Remus is rather surprised that she does. In previous years Pomfrey's kept him an extra day for much lesser things.

Maybe she's just tired. She studies him and Remus tries to look a little less frail. He really is fine, he's got all his body parts, and his face is just a little tender. Pomfrey's eyes are bloodshot and tired and there is blood on her apron. She waves her wand in a quick, efficient scourgify. The skin around her eyes has that softness to it that only dawn after a sleepless night can bring. It reminds Remus a little of Sirius, who he sometimes finds perched on the windowsill at half past four, watching the sky go blue-green.

"Go," says Pomfrey finally, brushing her palm along the length of her wand, eyes on the windows. "I trust you'll be well taken care of."

He doesn't wait for her to change her mind.

Sirius is waiting in the torchlit corridor. As soon as Remus shuts the door to the Hospital Wing all the way, Sirius whips off James's Invisibility Cloak and jumps to his feet. His mouth is slightly parted like he wants to speak, but for a moment he's too distracted to do so.

Remus stands, swaying, and waits.

"We didn't know how long you'd be," Sirius whispers, eyes roaming over Remus's body, even the parts where Remus knows his robes cover the presence of bandages. "James was going to keep watch, but I said I'd do it." He takes a step closer. "Moony."

He says it, Remus thinks, in the voice his Mam would use to take the Lord's name in vain. Like asking how and why all at once.

"It was just a bad one, Sirius," Remus says. His voice rasps without his consent. "They happen."

James would have let it go, but not Sirius; never Sirius.

"They've never been this bad before," he says, so fucking confident. He's right of course. Remus sighs and shrugs it off – not literally; twelve hours ago he had a punctured lung and a shoulder ripped out of its socket. Sighing and shrugging are far-off luxuries, as far as Remus is concerned.

He tries a smile and winces.

"Well, good gentleman, why don't you help me down the stairs."

"But of course, gentle maiden of the moon!" cries Sirius, slipping an arm under Remus's, and wrapping around his shoulder. It feels strange when that arm doesn't pull away as suddenly as it comes, or attempt to throw Remus somewhere unpleasant, like the lake or into a knot of cat-fighting Ravenclaws or Pete's Christmas pudding. It just stays there, and it's probably just Sirius's luck that he chose the good arm and is gripping the good ribs, but right now Remus is not about to hold luck against him.

"Someday you will insult me when I have full use of my limbs," he threatens as Sirius steers them deftly down the steps and through a hidden passageway he and James discovered last Sunday. "Then you'll be sorry."

"Whatever you say, Moony."

Neither of them can imagine Remus actually getting into a fistfight. Sirius laughs his muted, night time laugh. It's a soft, warm chuckle and much too close.

"Oh, piss off, Padfoot."

James and Peter send up a joking cheer when Remus and Sirius stumble through the door.

"Hail, the returning soldiers!"

Remus laughs with them, even if it does jar his sensitive ribs. He seats himself gingerly on his bed.

"What time is it?"

"Five. You've got a good four hours before the first class, which I suggest you both use sleeping," says James.

"All I do up in the Hospital Wing is sleep," grumbles Remus, but he kicks off his trainers and pulls back his coverlet anyway.

"We'll get you breakfast," Peter promises. "Loads of it."

Remus groans.

"Just porridge for me, thanks."

"Get what you think I'd want, Prongs. Don't let Peter slip in any peppermint humbugs, I hate the things."

"As if I'd ever!" says Peter in mock offense.

Remus wakes up to someone thundering down the stairs of the boys' dormitories, swearing up and down. It's probably Frank Longbottom, a fifth year boy who's generally very responsible but is always running late for things.

Remus looks over to the other beds. Peter and James's, the furthest away, are empty tangles of quilt and sheets. To his left, Sirius has the drapes open. He's staring up at the scarlet canopy. Remus can see the whites of his eyes glinting in the shadows cast by the drapes.

"Sorry about the mirror," Sirius rasps. "I thought it would be helpful. For…you know." It's strange how still Sirius lies. He's hardly ever still. Remus, feeling a bit better himself, starts to worry in earnest. He wonders when Sirius last slept. Ate. Did he go to classes yesterday?

He doubts Sirius will give a straight answer if he asks.

"No. I'm grateful for the mirror. This was just a bad one."

"How many bad ones are there going to be?" asks Sirius, voice suddenly a little too loud for the silent dormitories.

Remus doesn't answer.

"Do you not know? Do you not want to say?" He's beginning to sound angry now, this boy in the bed next to his.

"Sirius, it's not like that."

Sirius doesn't say anything more, but he stares. His eyes are very gray with a silvery sheen. Their questions are loud and desperate and strange.

Remus sighs, draws his knees up to his chest. He didn't change before he collapsed into bed and it feels very strange to be wearing robes. They get caught under him and twisted in the sheets.

"As I get older, as I grow, the Werewolf I become does as well. I'm just fourteen now, but a grown man knows how to be violent better than a toddler does, and he's more effective at it. It's the same with the wolf."

They can hear the far-off beating of wings. Mail has arrived at the Great Hall for breakfast. It is a September morning, warm and bright.

"Sirius," Remus says, breaking the not-quite-silence. There's a question he wants to ask before Peter and James return to wake them up. "What did Madam Pomfrey mean when she said there had been 'cause for concern'? Why did Dumbledore come?"

He feels that familiar stab of guilt. It always seems as if Dumbledore knows that he told them. And yes, James and Sirius had guessed and it was Peter who set them on the right track, but Remus did tell them after explicitly promising that he would not. He can still remember the cold of that room, the snow outside, their breaths hanging frozen in front of them.

It is one of the things he thinks of when he summons a Patronus. The way their breaths sparkled, and how terrified and free he was.

Sirius is not answering his question.

"I know you were probably there, under the cloak. You saw it better than I did. I was capsized."

Remus is treated to a flash of a grin.

"'Capsized'? Moony, you're talking crazy," he teases, even though Remus knows Sirius knows exactly what Remus means. Then he sobers. There is another pause, but this one feels like Sirius gathering his breath.

"What Pomfrey meant is that when she found you in the Shack, you weren't breathing. She finally got you to the Hospital Wing, where you promptly went into cardiac arrest before she could give you the potions to replenish the blood you'd lost. Your lips were very, very blue, Moony. One of the nurses went for Dumbledore. That's why he was there. There were other injuries too. I can't remember them so well.

"Oh," says Remus. "I'm…very sorry you had to see that."

Sirius shrugs, an interesting contortion for someone lying down.

"Not a problem, Moony-maiden. Just get your beauty sleep. Blue really is not your colour." He gasps when Remus rolls his eyes. "Oh, you just don't appreciate my doting care."

Remus is casting about for his wand to retaliate when James and Peter quietly push open the door.

"Shit," says James when he sees they're awake, "We were hoping we would at least have the chance to throw ice water on you both."

"Or Lily's cat," adds Peter.

James sighs, hand to his chest. "As tempting as that is, Wormtail, I am wooing the lady, and should not throw her pets."

"You'll just do it anyway, when you get a bit bored next Sunday," says Peter pragmatically. Remus has to admit that he's probably right. Maybe he should apologize to Lily in advance.

"That cat's boring anyway. Bacon?"

"All mine!" cries Sirius, bounding off his bed.

"How are you doing, Remus?" asks James, who knows how to have this conversation like a bloody sane person, instead of calling him horrific girly nicknames and staring across the strange gulf that exists between two beds. Peter offers up toast, porridge with spiced apples in, and a flask of pumpkin juice.

"Didn't even eat any of yours on the way up, though I did snag some muffins for myself."

"I'm honoured, Pete," Remus says drily, but they all know he's grateful. "Thanks James, I'm doing a lot better, or so I'm told. It sounds like you three got the worst of it. I was unconscious."

Sirius and James exchange glances. It's one of those glances that make Remus and Peter wonder if James and Sirius haven't developed some sort of personal Legilimency, and can read each other's minds at lightning speed.

For no reason really, Remus flushes a little at the idea that James can see everything he and Sirius said and did the night before. He can feel it on his neck and wishes there were a way to override the body's impulse. But since when has his body listened to him, and he doesn't just mean the Werewolf. There are other things too, Perfectly Natural things, as some would say.

"Well," says James, "You weren't totally out. You just weren't aware of what was going on, really."

"It wasn't as freaky as I'd think it would be," says Peter, cramming his History of Magic textbook into his bag. "'Cause you were so obviously…you, I guess. Just…."

"A bit capsized," laughs Sirius. "Or so he says. I might want to try those potions Pomfrey gives you," he tells Remus. "They look even better than gillyweed!"

"Keep dreaming, Sirius," say Remus and James together.