Chapter 59: The Other Ones

"Professor?" asked Harry quietly as the evening stretched on and Ron, Ginny, and Hermione began to look very sleepy after their long journey. "Could I have a word? Alone?"

Remus nodded, and he and Harry drifted away from the group. He could feel Dora's eyes on him— he could always feel Dora's eyes on him— and he signaled to her that they needed a moment of privacy but would be back soon. She nodded that she had understood.

At least she understood something.

But Harry hadn't pulled him aside to discuss Dora. Of that, Remus was reasonably sure. When he asked Harry what was on his mind, Harry requested that Remus cast an anti-eavesdropping charm.

Curiouser and curiouser, he thought, with more than a little pride in the precautions Harry had decided to take before they chatted about… whatever it was that they were going to chat about. "That spell is more reliable if we aren't moving when I cast it," Remus told Harry. "Can we sit by the edge of the lagoon, there?"

"I've got a better place," Harry decided, and he led Remus through a barely-visible break in the foliage to a smaller, more private lagoon. "This is where I had my swimming lessons."

Remus looked around. It was quite beautiful, though almost too quiet and isolated. If they had been in the middle of a magical war, he would have insisted that he and Harry stay in a more populated area where Death Eaters couldn't sneak up on them from behind. But as the approach of Death Eaters was most unlikely, he sat beside Harry and cast the spell.

"Is Sirius all right?" asked Harry the moment Remus had concealed his wand.

"Why do you ask?"

"Why are you answering a question with a question?"

Remus couldn't decide whether to laugh or tease Harry with another question, and so he did neither. "You've seen much more of Sirius than I have this summer. I spoke to him on the night of your birthday party and again this afternoon. That's all."

"Sorry, Professor," said Harry, and Remus immediately felt terrible. He knew well how moody Sirius could be; he could have guessed why Harry would go out of his way to have this conversation.

"I should be the one apologizing," said Remus. "And if it isn't too terribly awkward, please call me Remus when we aren't at school."

The expression on Harry's face implied that it most certainly would be too terribly awkward, thank you very much. Remus understood. He could just about wrap his mind around calling his colleagues Minerva and Filius, but he still addressed the Headmaster by his title despite having been given permission to call him Albus— and it had been decades since he'd been a student.

"There's no rush to do it," Remus told Harry. "In the other— in the place where I came from, you avoided addressing me directly for the better part of three years after I was no longer your professor. By the time you called me by my first name, you were a legal adult with the full weight of the resistance on your shoulders. But you didn't ask to speak to me privately about that."

"I wouldn't mind hearing about it," said Harry quickly.

"But first, Sirius. Has he done or said anything in particular to cause you concern?"

"No, he's…" Harry paused and thought about it. "It's what he hasn't said and done. All of a sudden he's been quieter, and he's not eating as much, and…" Harry trailed off. "I wouldn't have said anything, but last year on Halloween, he could have hurt himself, right? Apparating while he was drunk and everything. At Christmas he wouldn't Apparate with me just because I asked why he changed his mind about wanting me to live with him."

Remus winced. "He could have hurt himself. He didn't. Sirius has always…" The idea of explaining Sirius to Harry was ludicrous. Harry and Sirius had been made for each other, and Harry had always understood his godfather perfectly. Then there was the matter of Sirius' privacy. Sirius hadn't been pleased when Remus had told Harry about Sirius' death, and as Remus was the only one of the three of them who had lived through Sirius' death, he felt a certain ownership over that information.

"Sirius has always what?"

"Been prone to dark moods." There. He'd said it. It wasn't as if Harry didn't already know it. It wasn't as if Harry hadn't proven himself more than capable of handling almost any truth placed before him. "Your dad could maneuver him out of that state of mind when we were children, but woe be to anyone else who tried."

"He really misses my dad, doesn't he?"

"He does. He also misses you when you're gone. He loved Hogwarts when he was a student, and he wants you to love it, too, but as the time to say goodbye to you gets closer, he dreads not having you around all the time. He dreads the approach of Halloween for the same reasons."

"I can leave school and visit him on Halloween this year, can't I?"

"You will stay and enjoy the feast on Halloween," said Remus. "Sirius would not want it any other way, and you can ask him yourself if you must. But it wouldn't be out of line for you to check in on him with your mirror."

The expression on Harry's face told Remus that Harry would be doing exactly as he pleased on Halloween, and it pleased him to visit Sirius. Remus set the thought aside to deal with in two months' time.

"I don't want him to die again," said Harry.

"Nor do I. But I don't believe that we have to worry about that in the immediate future."

"The last time— the other me— there were things I could have done. I know you said it wasn't my fault, what happened in the Department of Mysteries, but if I had looked at my mirror—"

"You believed that you were protecting Sirius by not looking at the mirror, just as you believe now that you'll be protecting him if you sneak out of the castle on Halloween to visit him."

"Do you think I'm fated to do something that will kill him? Maybe no matter how time is changed, Sirius will always die because of me?"

"Sirius didn't die because of you last time," Remus repeated. "And no, I do not believe in fate. I don't believe in the prophecy and I don't believe that things must happen a certain way. If anything, I've worried that I've taken something from you by changing the past. Deprived you of the experiences that would have forged you into the man you're meant to be by interfering with the Triwizard Tournament and the Horcruxes and the Death Eaters."

"I'd rather be a lesser man and have Sirius and Cedric be alive," said Harry quickly.

Remus smiled. "And I suppose that that proves that there's no doubt that you are growing up to be a wise and kind man, just as you did last time."

"I don't like it when people say that you have to go through adversity to become a good person or whatever," said Harry softly, confidingly. "I think it's just an excuse to make people feel better when they don't want to do something about a problem, or when they can't. It's like someone saying that staying with the Dursleys taught me to be a better person because I know what it's like to have everyone hate me, so I'm nicer to other people now. No one ever made Ron or Hermione sleep in a cupboard when there were two empty bedrooms upstairs, and they're both good people. Even though their parents love them. I think that if Sirius being alive and making the Dursleys let me have as much to eat as Dudley gets ruins me somehow, maybe I wasn't that great to begin with."

"I think it may have been the other way round," said Remus with a heavy heart. "I think you may be so extraordinary that the Dursleys didn't affect you the way they would have affected someone else."

"That's no reason to make me stay with them," said Harry. "I mean, I know that the protection that came from my Mum's sacrifice is a reason for me to stay with them, but making me stay there because it would turn me into the kind of person who would want to defeat Voldemort? That's stupid. Ron wants to defeat Voldemort, and he has the best parents."

"I quite agree," said Remus. "It would have been better if you hadn't been left with the Dursleys. And Harry, if you do decide that you want to forfeit the last two years of your mother's protection—"

"I don't," said Harry. "I'll leave when I'm seventeen or when we kill Voldemort, whichever comes first. It's not so bad when Sirius is there, anyway. It's almost fun."

"I'm glad."

Harry looked sharply at Remus. "It was your idea for him to move in, wasn't it?"

"Yes," said Remus cautiously, not sure why that was worthy of such a searching look.

"So if you knew that it wouldn't be so bad for me to be with the Dursleys if I had someone else, why didn't you ever come see me before you became my professor, Remus?"

The pointed use of his first name was a blow worthy of Lily.

"I regret that," Remus said. "I regret it, but I also think I made the best decision I could with the information I had."

"How?"

"It was absolute chaos the night your parents died. Families coming out of hiding. Wizards who had been under the Imperius Curse suddenly finding that they had been used to perform despicable acts. Above all, angry Death Eaters trying frantically to escape justice. You know, I believe, where that led for your friend Neville's parents."

"Yes," agreed Harry.

"I'm certain that Bellatrix Lestrange would rather have destroyed you if she had had the choice between you and the Longbottoms. Dumbledore made certain to hide you so that she would not have that option. Dumbledore wanted you to stay hidden from all the others like her. The Ministry wanted you to stay hidden from all the others like her. Everyone had suspected everyone else of horrible betrayals during the war, and no betrayal was more shocking than your godfather's apparent allegiance to Lord Voldemort. I was ill, alone, and penniless. I was not in a position to argue with the Ministry or with Dumbledore."

"But you could have figured out where I was. You knew my mum had one sister, and you knew I must be in the Muggle world somewhere. You didn't have to kidnap me or anything, but you could have… you could have been the nice neighbor or something."

"You're quite correct that I realized where you were hidden. But do you believe that Dumbledore wasn't watching to ensure that you did not receive unauthorized visitors from the magical world? Visitors who might wish you ill? Visitors who might be well-intentioned but who might nonetheless be capable of putting you in danger inadvertantly, perhaps by upsetting your aunt and uncle?"

"Was there some kind of mirror like the one Sirius gave me so he could watch the Dursleys?" Harry looked a bit revolted at the prospect, and Remus didn't blame him.

"Dumbledore did choose a neighbor for you. There's a woman named Arabella Figg who was in the Order of the Phoenix—"

"Mrs. Figg?" asked Harry in disbelief. "She's a witch?"

"She's a squib."

"And it was her job to spy on me?"

"Her job was to contact Dumbledore in case of an emergency. The members of the Order were hand-picked by Dumbledore not only for our skills and our willingness to die for the cause, but because we were particularly loyal to him. My loyalty to Dumbledore, for example, came from my extreme gratitude that he allowed me to attend school even though I was a werewolf. I was devoted to bringing about Voldemort's downfall. I still am. But I am loyal to Dumbledore on a personal level, and so is Arabella Figg— although I don't know why, precisely. I imagine he was kind to her despite her being a squib. That's unfortunately rare among wizards."

"So she would have thought it was an emergency if she saw you talking to me, and Dumbledore would have stopped you?"

"I don't know for certain. I don't claim to have tried it. But even if I had evaded Mrs. Figg, Harry, your aunt and uncle would not have welcomed me into your life. That house is their home, and regardless of extenuating circumstances they had a right to choose who interacted with the child they unexpectedly found themselves responsible for feeding and clothing. What standing did I have to challenge that? I'm of no blood relation to you. I'm not legally listed as your guardian, as Sirius is. You were too young to remember me; it wasn't as if I could claim to be building upon an existing relationship even if your aunt and uncle would have permitted it."

"But after I went to Hogwarts, those first two years…"

"I should have," Remus said. "I told myself that you wouldn't want to hear from some old, decrepit friend of the parents you didn't remember. I told myself that you were happy with your friends and your family and that a penniless, ill old man had no place interfering in your life. And a strange old man making uninvited contact with a child who has no memory of him—"

"You aren't that old," interrupted Harry, and Remus laughed.

"I would do it differently if I had it to do again," Remus said. "Not that I want to relive my life a third time," he added, in case any invisible forces beyond his comprehension were eavesdropping. He put the invisible forces out of his mind and focused all of his attention where it belonged: on the boy beside him. "I'm sorry, Harry. I know that an apology doesn't change anything, but I should have prioritized your well-being and I didn't. It didn't even occur to me that you might have been so unhappy with your relatives that you would have welcomed anything your parents' friend would have been able to offer. It should have."

Sirius and Dumbledore had both informed Remus in no uncertain terms that he had a blind spot because, no matter how much society as a whole disdained him, the people who had been meant to value him the most had always loved him. He had never felt their meaning as keenly as he did now.

"It's all right," said Harry awkwardly. "You didn't want to do anything to make things worse."

Remus could have told Harry that if Sirius really had been a Death Eater, Remus would have been guilty of allowing him to break into the castle to murder the Boy Who Lived. But he had no business asking Harry for absolution. (He thought of Lyall not asking Sirius to absolve him for the doubts he had had about the child Sirius had been. His father was a wise man more often than not.)

"I'll help you keep an eye on Sirius," he promised Harry, because Harry deserved better than to be told that everything was all right and he needn't worry.

"Thanks," said Harry, and something about his small, crooked smile made Remus think that he might have a chance of doing this history-changing thing properly after all.

"Where did Harry go?" Sirius asked Tonks.

"You've lost your famous godson?" she asked with a mock-sad shake of her head. Her long red hair— she'd decided to look like Ron and Ginny's older sister for purposes of escorting them halfway around the world— swung in a neat circle. "You need to be more careful, Sirius. Mum is going to scold you about this for sure."

"I imagine Anna needs a change from scolding you," Sirius shot back. "Where is he?"

"He wanted to talk to Remus and dragged him off in that direction." She gestured vaguely toward the lagoon where Harry's swimming lessons had taken place. "Should we go after them?"

Sirius shrugged. "If he wants to talk to Moony, he can talk to Moony."

Tonks glanced between Sirius and the plants that, presumably, concealed Harry and Remus. "You don't seem to be concerned."

Sirius shrugged again. "Some of us like and trust Remus, Nymphadora."

Her eyes narrowed. Despite the red hair and the changes she had made to the shape of her face, she looked like her mother in that moment. "I know he's your best mate—"

"James was my best friend," Sirius snapped with more venom than he'd meant to release. "The only best friend I will ever have."

He knew that he and Remus had shared things that James, who hadn't really had the chance to be a full-fledged adult, would never experience. He knew that he and Remus were unusually close. He knew that preserving a title for James meant absolutely nothing to James or to the universe.

It meant something to Sirius.

The loss of James was still a knife in his chest at the most unexpected of times. Harry's imminent return to school made it exponentially worse. When Harry was around, some of the noise in Sirius' head settled down. He was wanted and needed: godfather, friend, protector, tutor, confidante, thrower of parties, and provider of expensive trips. When Harry was gone, there was nothing to do but think about Halloween and how nothing was as it should be and it was his own fault.

Tonks glanced behind them surreptitiously and drew her wand. Sirius felt an anti-eavesdropping spell settle over them. He raised an eyebrow at his young cousin.

"You were angry with Remus when you first found out about the changing history thing, weren't you." Statement, not question. She already knew the answer.

Sirius nodded the confirmation she didn't need. "I was very angry."

"Are you still angry? Just a little bit?"

"Not at all," he said honestly. He wasn't certain whether he was surprised that he had come around to Remus' point of view so completely in the last year or whether he was surprised that Tonks hadn't realized as much.

"You've seen his memories, right? From the other time, with the other Tonks and the other Sirius?"

"Yes. I had to see them to try to stop them happening again."

"Don't you ever feel like you're an imitation? Some kind of replacement for another person? Someone he's manipulating into being what he thinks you should be?"

Sirius studied Tonks' face. She looked impossibly young and unsure, not at all like the fun-loving auror he knew her to be. "No," he told her. "I never feel like that. But Remus and I had a very long history before he did any of this. The way we met, the way we grew up together, the way we fought together, the way we misjudged and betrayed each other, the way we grieved by ourselves when the war ended, and the way we lost James. None of that is any different."

"But when you look at his memories, do you feel like you're seeing yourself? That man whose name was never cleared, that man who had to hide in Grimmauld Place? The man Bellatrix Lestrange killed? That other Sirius, he's not you."

"I'm afraid he is," said Sirius with a humorless chuckle. "I feel very, very close to him."

Tonks glared at the water in frustration.

"I know it's different for you," Sirius tried. "You didn't know Remus before he started playing Master of the Universe. But I don't believe he would ever try to change who you are. I don't think he could even if he wanted to— I don't think that's possible— but I don't think that's what he wants. Not remotely."

Her face was pale in the fading summer light. "In that case, I'm even more depressed."

"You're depressed?" asked Sirius. He fancied himself something of an expert on depression and he hadn't seen a trace of it in Tonks. "You've been laughing with Ginny all evening."

"Of course I'm depressed! I love him, but I don't want to be the person I'm destined to be with him. And you're just telling me all over again that that's who I am if I don't stay away from him."

"I'm not telling you anything. I couldn't. I don't even understand what you just said. I certainly don't think anyone who would decide to fall in love with Remus could be all that bad, considering he's not the easiest person in the world to love."

The flicker of rage that crossed her face almost made him laugh. "I'm not a— what do you take me for?"

"I don't mean the werewolf thing. I mean the self-pity, the compulsive need to have everyone like him—"

"Do you even like him?"

"I adore him. I'm not the one who basically threatened to kill him if he ever hit on me. Not that I imagine you're entirely capable of stopping yourself. Being overly dramatic does run in the family."

"I'm not a Black. I'm a Tonks."

Sirius snorted. "If it were that easy to escape, I would have changed my name decades ago."

To be continued.

Author's Note: This story is going on a temporary hiatus from today (12/15/19) to the first weekend in January 2020 due to holiday obligations. See you next year.

Recommendation:

Carnival of Dark and Dangerous Creatures by DragonDi. It is story ID number 4412736 on this site.

Summary: Four years ago, Remus Lupin lost his friends to death and betrayal. Now he finds himself betrayed once more, and in a place where death may very well be preferred. Winner of the 2009 Hourglass Awards Admin's Choice Award for Drama at The Unknowable Room

Remus is back in my story after Harry hijacked things for a while there, and so it's time for a Remus-centric recommendation. Warning for a hard M rating on this. The carnival of the title is, indeed, dark and dangerous. There's a lot to like about this fic, but what I like best is the spot-on description of the Ministry's toxic combination of red tape and dehumanization when it comes to regulating werewolves. Also a warning that while I frequently recommend one-shots, this one is the length of a couple of novels.