~ 10 ~

To Find Value in Survival

Remus woke early, shivering. His two threadbare blankets were never quite enough against the damp grey chill of dawn.

The room around him—the living room of the last of a cluster of three abandoned houses taken over years ago by Greyback's pack—was full of steady quiet breathing and the occasional soft mutter. This was the driest room in the house, since the roof over the bedrooms upstairs tended to leak. So this was where he, and the seven other members of the camp who lived in this house, all slept.

Remus rubbed a hand over his face and got creakily to his feet, folding the blankets into a tidy pile. He straightened his rumpled clothing and pulled on his boots. Then he crept, as quietly as muscles still a little stiff from the last transformation would allow, across the room to the front door.

Once outside, he picked up a pair of plastic buckets that sat near the ashes of the cooking fire and went down the bank to fill them in the river. It wasn't raining today (small mercies), but the sky was thick with clouds. Sunrise was nothing but a faint reddish glow to the southeast.

Remus hauled the buckets back up the short slope, managing not to slosh very much water over his leaky boots in the process, and set them in their usual place. Then he stood for a moment, nudging with his foot at a charred stick of firewood that had fallen out of the half of an oil drum they used as a fireplace. Normally, when he was the first one up, he would take one of the precious hoard of stolen matches and a handful of kindling and work to get the fire started for the day. It was his habit to make himself as useful as possible around the camp—that, along with the his talent for scavenging objects from rubbish tips in the town that squatted along the riverbank a few miles downstream, made just enough of a contribution that he had staved off actually having to steal things to keep his place here.

So far, at least.

Today, though—cooking fire be damned—he turned his back on the camp and set off through the wood. He had to get away before the others woke up. He simply couldn't face the thin veneer of small talk that did nothing to conceal the hostility and suspicion with which almost everyone still regarded him, even after three months. Even at this end of the camp, furthest away from Greyback's inner circle.

Not today.

To the rest of the pack, today was a handful of days after the October moon.

To Remus, who kept a calendar and a lunar chart in his rucksack, today was Hallowe'en.

~o~

Tonks woke early in her tiny room in the Aurors' cottage in Hogsmeade, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She dressed quickly, pulling on her robes and her heavy boots, and slung her satchel over her shoulder. Then she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and Apparated to a spot just outside the gates of Hogwarts.

~o~

Remus found a place along the river, upstream from the camp, where he could settle among the spreading roots of an enormous oak, lean back against the trunk, and watch the swirling current. He pulled an apple and a chunk of stale bread from his pocket and ate them slowly, not because he had any actual appetite, but because it was the only way to pacify the sharp pains that were starting to gnaw at his stomach. When he had finished, he tossed the apple core into the water and watched it bob along until a bend in the river hid it from view. Then he settled his muffler more securely around his neck, pulled his sleeves down over his hands, and huddled into his robes.

Leaves and sticks and bits of bark floated past, fetching up against rocks or sliding into tiny whirlpools. The sound of the water gave him something to listen to that wasn't inside his own head.

That was why he was here.

~o~

Hogwarts lit up the dark morning. A warm glow spilled from hundreds of windows, brightening even the oily mist that marked the dementors' infestation of the countryside.

Tonks slipped through the entrance doors, meeting old Filch's suspicious glower with a cheeky smile. A few sleepy-looking students were already making their way to the Great Hall for breakfast, but none of them gave her a second look as she hurried past.

~o~

Remus had years of practice at keeping memories bottled up, locked away—where they belonged. But a swirling current that pulls leaves under the surface sometimes spits them out again downstream. And the approach of Hallowe'en always, always made it easier for unwanted thoughts to float up from the depths.

There was that first year, of course. Finding out—only after the fireworks had started all up and down the country—that James and Lily were dead, that Sirius had gone after Peter. Seeing the ruins of the cottage in Godric's Hollow that used to be filled to bursting with laughter—James's and Lily's, and Sirius's, and Remus's own (though not Peter's, so much, toward the end, and they hadn't noticed), and even baby Harry's squeals. The funeral, with warm bright Lily lying so pale and cold, and restless James so still and quiet, and nothing could have been more wrong—

Memories of the second year were, in their own way, just as acrid. Remus could still taste how desperately he had wanted to get thoroughly, staggeringly drunk, which was the only way he knew to shut out the voices in his head that broke through his defences more and more often as the end of October drew near. But he hadn't even been able to do that. Never mind the problem of the cost of a bottle of firewhisky—Hallowe'en that year was the night before the full moon. Getting so drunk that he might forget to take enough precautions for the transformation was never an option, no matter the provocation.

The wolf had, unsurprisingly, just about torn itself to shreds.

Later years were not quite so bad. His memories of most Hallowe'ens were more vague—most, indeed, surfaced only through a thick haze of alcohol. But one could get used to anything, including an annual reminder of the worst night of one's life. And if full moons close to Hallowe'en were particularly difficult, well, one could plan for that, too.

Hallowe'en at Hogwarts, three years ago, had been something entirely different. Sirius had broken into the castle and slashed at the Fat Lady's portrait. For once—what with his fear for the safety of James and Lily's son, his own (at the time) white-hot rage against Sirius for even (so he thought) trying to harm a hair on Harry's head, the thorn in his side that was Severus doing his level best to shake Dumbledore's (perhaps ill-founded) trust in him, and his convulsions of conscience over keeping quiet about Sirius's Animagus form—Remus hardly remembered to grieve for his losses at all.

And after that year, everything had changed. The next October, Remus sat alone in a shabby pub somewhere in the Midlands and raised a glass of firewhisky to Sirius, for luck, and to James and Lily, for remembrance. Now his bitter anger was for Wormtail. But he hadn't felt the need to drink himself to oblivion. He had got Padfoot back, and, while old losses still hurt, the grief didn't fester the way it once had. And so he raised his glass, and drank his toast, and Apparated home to his little basement flat to wait for November to dawn.

And then there was last year.

Last year, he had been too worried about Sirius's dark moods to have any of his own. He poured all of his energy into rousing and cheering and distracting Padfoot, who had already felt trapped in the old house on Grimmauld Place before October even began.

And last year, there was Nymphadora.

She had understood about Hallowe'en. She stopped in at the old Black house even more often than usual all that week, doing her level best to tease Sirius out of his moods—it hadn't always worked, but sometimes, it had.

And there was concern in her eyes for Remus, too. Warmth. She brought him cups of tea. In her usual friendly way, she rested her hand on his arm, or nudged his shoulder with hers. And once, she touched his hand, covering his cold fingers with her small, strong ones and squeezing, holding tight just long enough to warm him right through—

A fish jumped in the river with a hollow plop, startling Remus out of his reverie. He discovered that he had caught up one end of his muffler in his hands and was slowly, mindlessly smoothing his fingers over the rough lumpy wool.

Nymphadora's muffler. The one she had made for him.

He swallowed, hard, and made himself tuck it back under the collar of his robes.

~o~

This early in the morning, the Potions classroom was still deserted. Tonks counted and measured, chopped and stirred, and slowly, the classroom filled with thick and rather foul-smelling steam.

It was Hallowe'en today.

That only made her all the more determined to get this right.

~o~

"Oi. Lupin."

Remus blinked and looked up. Matthias Malkin was coming along the path from the camp with a few rabbit snares slung over one shoulder.

"Hullo, Malkin," he said.

The voice inside his head snarled: Am I to have no peace? Not even today?

But he smiled, blandly, and reached into his pocket for a scrap of cloth in which he'd tied up a useful bit of fishing line, complete with a hook and an only slightly bedraggled lure, that he'd untangled from a bush along the river a few days before. "Thought I'd come out here and see if I could catch something."

Malkin stood for a moment, looking down at Remus. Then he dropped his snares in a heap along the path and folded his tall frame into another pocket among the roots of the oak.

Remus liked Malkin well enough. He was reserved, but not hostile. He did venture forth on occasion to "find"—the local euphemism for "steal"—things in town, but he was more likely to spend his days snaring rabbits or birds in the wood. And he seemed just as interested in keeping his distance from Greyback as Remus certainly was.

Remus had even hoped, in the beginning, that Malkin might become his first ally in the pack. But it had proved much more difficult than he had expected to get Malkin alone, so that he could try to get some sense of the younger man's perspective on Death Eaters and the coming conflict. All of which made the present moment an invaluable opportunity to try to make some manner of progress on Remus's actual mission for the Order.

If only it hadn't been today.

Remus wrapped the scrap of cloth around his hand and wound the end of the fishing line around that. With his other hand he tossed the hook and lure into the river, letting it drift downstream. He thought, for a moment, of long summer days spent fishing with his father when he was very small, but then he gave his head a small sharp shake. Focus, you fool. The job at hand was to start a conversation with Malkin.

Only, Malkin got there first.

"You knew the Potters, didn't you," he said. "The ones the Dark Lord killed."

"Yes," said Remus. The sting was somehow not as bitter as it would have been even three years ago. "I did."

"I thought so." There was actual sympathy in the dark-blue eyes. "I remember you and Potter being thick at Hogwarts."

Remus pulled in the line and tossed the dripping lure out into the river again. It would, of course, work much better with an actual fishing rod.

"You've been different, since the moon," said Malkin. "Keeping to yourself more."

Remus looked up, sharply. Had Malkin been studying him, all the while he'd been studying Malkin?

~o~

Tonks held her breath while Horace Slughorn sniffed at her potion (wrinkling his nose). He pulled a glass vial from his pocket and took a sample, which he bombarded with a flurry of wordless spells until it glowed red and then purple, emitting a puff of blue smoke.

She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from fidgeting. She had grown oddly fond of the old ham over the course of the autumn. But she would bet Galleons to billywigs that he was going to draw this moment out for maximum dramatic effect.

When he finally turned back to Tonks, he offered her a funny little bow. "You've done it, my dear. That's perfect Wolfsbane Potion for the third time in a row."

She breathed again. She'd been pretty sure it was all right—she'd got used to the tricky bits after practicing so many times. But it was nice to hear the official pronouncement.

"I certify you," said Slughorn, "as fully qualified to brew it safely on your own."

~o~

"I know it was this time of year that the Dark Lord fell," said Malkin. "I was—wondering. If that was why you've been different."

Remus eyed him carefully. Malkin had been a Slytherin, and he said "Dark Lord." Was he, or was he not, a sympathiser?

"It's difficult," was all he said. "To lose good friends."

Pain slammed at him, hard, in the gut, making him draw a harsh breath. But it wasn't the pain he had been bracing for.

Because he suddenly understood, for the first time, that as much as he mourned for James and Lily—as acutely as he felt the fresh, raw, needless loss of Sirius—

—nothing hurt as much as missing Nymphadora.

And that was because she, at least, was not dead. She was in Hogsmeade, patrolling for dementors, carrying out surveillance missions for the Order.

If he went to her this very minute, and held out his arms, she would kiss him—Merlin, he could taste her sweet kiss again, right now—

But instead, he had to live the rest of his life knowing that he must never seek out what he wanted the most. Even though Nymphadora would give it to him in a heartbeat, if he asked her for it.

Because then she would be the one to pay for his selfishness. For the rest of her life.

~o~

"Right," said Tonks. "Good."

She shook Slughorn's hand, thanked him profusely for his help, and set to work sealing up this batch of the potion for donation to St. Mungos.

But as soon as Slughorn had left the classroom, she threw her head back and punched the air.

She had done it. She was ready.

Once Remus was back from this accursed mission to Greyback's pack, she was going to ensure that he never saw a full moon without Wolfsbane ever again.

Whether he finally stopped being a complete git and let her love him, or not.

~o~

"And that's why you're here," said Malkin.

Remus blinked.

"Because you had nowhere else to go. That's what you told us when you came." Malkin smiled, a little bitterly. "Most of us here can say that, you know. My father disowned me when I was bitten, about five years ago." He looked out over the river. "I wouldn't have chosen to follow Greyback, myself, but I didn't have a lot of other options."

Remus took a deep, slow breath. Pain or no pain, the Order needed him here, to do this.

"I'd be interested," he said, "to think about other options."

He pulled the fishing line in again. Still nothing.

But he cast the lure out once more, scattering drops of water that sparkled like diamonds in a sudden shaft of sunlight.

~o~

Author's notes: An earlier version of the Remus scenes from this chapter was originally posted at the rt_morelove community on LiveJournal, for "Twelfth Night Tales" in January 2016. The title comes from one of the prompts I used for that event: 'Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.' —C.S Lewis