Content Warning: Heavy references to suicide and suicidal thoughts

Chapter 12: Shadow of the Wolf

"Look, Harry - look who's come to visit!"

"Oh - oh my goodness," said Remus, blinking as Lily reached the foot of the stairs and he saw, snug in her arms, a round pink head dusted with black hair and a pair of tiny socked feet pedalling the air.

"Say hello to our little terror, Moony," said James.

"H-hello."

It had been months since Remus smiled a proper smile, but now a wide grin of amazement spread across his face. Though Lily's large green eyes were hooded with exhaustion, they twinkled as she kissed the top of her baby's head. Harry's mouth gaped open and shut, his little red fingers clenching and unclenching.

"Do you want to hold him?"

"Me? Are you sure? I - I don't know how - "

"Go on," said James, prodding Remus in the back. "He doesn't bite - not yet anyway."

Nervously, Remus tried to arrange his arms as Lily brought Harry closer.

"That's it," she said, delicately transferring the soft bundle, "one hand under his bottom like that…and the other for his head…perfect!"

Harry squirmed, his fists wheeling, loosening the blanket that wrapped around his scarlet onesie but, before Remus could glance back at Lily for instructions, he started to settle. Remus stared, wondering how it was possible for a nose to be so miniature and for a life so big to be contained in a bundle so small. It was peaceful holding Harry: the world seemed to shrink until all that existed was this brand new being, knowing nothing of the world's turmoil, wanting only milk, sleep and a pair of warm arms to comfort him. Harry's eyes began to shut.

"You're a natural, Moony. He's not usually this chilled with strangers," said James.

"He knows Moony's not a stranger," said Lily.

"You've got to visit more often if this is the effect you have on him, mate. How's your calendar looking at two o'clock in the morning, every morning?"

"And three o'clock…and five o'clock…" Lily whispered, resting her head on Remus' shoulder, her dark red hair tumbling down his arm as she tucked Harry's blanket closer around him.

"Welcome to the world, Harry," Remus said quietly. "I apologise that it's in such a sorry state."

James put his arm around them both. Remus wished he could freeze the moment, wished the little family of three could always be held safe like this, and wished something else too - something he couldn't bear to put into words, even inside his own head.

He could no longer resist the inevitable. Dogged by Death Eaters, Remus had tried everywhere else. He'd sought Harry, Ron and Hermione at every possible address, leaving just the one remaining. The place repelled him, but he knew he had no choice. It was to London he must go: to the looming black-bricked terrace, the shadowy tunnelled halls of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. At least when he arrived, everything would slot into place. Uninterpretable memories would no longer harangue him. Glass windows would stop exploding behind his eardrums. Duty would enfold him, obliterate him, save him.

The Islington alleyway stank of rot and urine. A fox, scraping its claws across a discarded bin bag to release its fetid juices, skittered away when Remus appeared. Kicking aside the silver canisters that littered the ground, Remus emerged onto the street. A passerby bumped against him and the butterbeers he'd purchased with money not his own clinked inside his cloak.

There was a familiar sight in the square. Bathed in spots of yellow from the street lamps, two Death Eaters were staking out the house: too many to easily dispatch, too few to know that Harry was inside. Remus waited until they turned their heads in conversation then apparated onto the topmost step, quickly pushing the coiled snake door knocker so that the next breath he took was inside Sirius' ancestral home. It was like inhaling the past. The smell hurtled up through his nostrils, summoning wide paws that padded down the stairs, a bottle that slammed onto a tabletop, a young Auror who tilted her electric pink head in his direction, grinning wickedly -

"Severus Snape?" Mad Eye Moody asked.

A hoary gust of air filled the corridor, blinding him, and his tongue curled to the roof of his mouth. Remus watched as Dumbledore's corpse rose up from the floor and began to soar towards him, flying faster and faster down the thin hallway, with holes instead of eyes and skin that dripped from a raised, accusing finger. But Remus felt no fear. He had seen things far more terrible than the dead.

"It was not I who killed you, Albus."

The grey figure exploded into dust. Somewhere behind the cloud, Remus heard the voice of the boy on whom his fate depended.

"Don't move!"

"MUDBLOODS AND FILTH DISHONOURING MY HOUSE - "

Remus winced and stepped back. Not because of the shriek but because his foot had nudged the troll leg umbrella stand that lay, concealed by the fog, on the floor. He heard rapid footsteps and raised his arms above his head.

"Hold your fire, it's me, Remus!"

"Oh, thank goodness."

It was Hermione. Remus heard the swish of curtains and Sirius' mother fell silent.

"Show yourself!" Called Harry, his voice containing none of the relief of Hermione's.

Remus stepped out of the mist, his arms still held aloft.

"I am Remus John Lupin, werewolf, sometimes known as Moony, one of the four creators of the Marauder's Map, married to Nymphadora, usually known as Tonks, and I taught you how to produce a Patronus, Harry, which takes the form of a stag."

"Oh. Alright," said Harry, lowering his wand, "but I had to check, didn't I?"

"Speaking as your ex-Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, I quite agree that you had to check. Ron, Hermione, you shouldn't be quite so quick to lower your defences."

There was so much they needed him to teach them. Remus managed a smile at that thought and the three ran down the stairs to greet him.

"No sign of Severus then?"

"No," Harry replied quickly. "What's going on? Is everyone okay?"

"Yes, but we're all being watched."

His voice sounded confident, taut with control, as he told them of the extent of the Death Eaters' surveillance. But as they descended into the kitchen and the fire sprang in the hearth, sending light rippling on the walls just as it always used to, Remus felt a shiver. He should not have summoned her by speaking her name, unconsciously letting the truth that was now a lie cross his lips. They sat down at the table and Remus handed out the butterbeers, imparted the first of his updates, and then asked, "So, you came straight here after the wedding?"

Hearing of their confrontation on Tottenham Court Road made the bottle wobble in his fingers and fizzing butterbeer overflow down his front. If Voldemort had a new way of tracking Harry, then they were in even direr need of his protection than he'd thought. This conviction only grew as Remus spoke on, telling them of Rufus Scrimgeour's death, of Order houses burnt to the ground, of Ted and Andromeda…

"And are they bothering to give an excuse for torturing Harry's whereabouts out of people?" Hermione demanded.

"Well…"

He hesitated before pulling the Daily Prophet from his pocket. Remus' face may never have been splashed across a front page, but he knew what it was to be exiled - and it gave him no joy to break this news to Harry.

"Here," he said, pushing the paper across the table, "you'll know sooner or later anyway. That's their pretext for going after you."

Harry smoothed it out and his mouth hardened to a stoic line. As if he was their teacher once more, Remus laid out Voldemort's strategy to them - the smooth coup, the puppet Minister, the artful spread of suspicion across the population.

"…unless you can prove that you have at least one close wizarding relative, you are now deemed to have obtained your magical power illegally and must suffer the punishment," he finished.

"What if purebloods and halfbloods swear a muggleborn's part of their family?" Ron protested. "I'll tell everyone Hermione's my cousin."

Ron looked at Hermione with such familiar bright-eyed defiance that Remus had to glance away. Only when Hermione changed the subject to ask about Hogwarts was he able to concentrate once more.

"It's…" Harry said, looking sickened at the news of the muggleborns' exclusion, "it's…"

"I know," said Remus.

There was a pause and Remus readied himself. He'd memorised the carefully chosen words and the time had come to deliver them.

"I'll understand if you can't confirm this, Harry, but the Order is under the impression that Dumbledore left you a mission."

"He did. Ron and Hermione are in on it and they're coming with me."

"Can you confide in me what the mission is?"

"I can't, Remus. I'm sorry. If Dumbledore didn't tell you, I don't think I can."

Though Remus had anticipated this possible rebuttal, had even rehearsed how to respond, it grieved him no less to hear it.

"I thought you'd say that," he said. "But I may still be of some use to you. You know what I am and what I can do. I could come with you to provide protection. There would be no need to tell me exactly what you were up to."

Though he'd appealed directly to Harry, it was Hermione who responded. She looked confused.

"But what about Tonks?"

"What about her?"

She flinched. "Well, you're married! How does she feel about you going away with us?"

The question seemed an absurdity. He was parted from Tonks. The earth was scorched, the ground salted behind him.

"Tonks will be perfectly safe. She'll be at her parents' house."

Harry and Ron's faces twitched into frowns to match Hermione's.

"Remus," Hermione said slowly, 'is everything alright…you know…between you and - ?"

"Everything is fine, thank you."

Hermione bit her lip and twisted her fingers together. The three of them stared at him across the table, the lie hanging in the kitchen's smoky air.

"Tonks is going to have a baby."

It was as much truth as he could stand giving them: just enough, he hoped, for them to grasp his wretchedness and more than enough to shock them into never mentioning it again. But although it felt to Remus like he'd just thumped something oozing and repulsive onto the table between them, their faces leapt into surprised smiles.

"Oh, how wonderful!" Hermione cried.

"Excellent!" Said Ron.

"Congratulations," said Harry.

Remus' own face mimicked them automatically, but he felt sick. He had to return the conversation to its proper course. Absolution for what he had done was impossible, but they had to let him help them. They had to.

"So…do you accept my offer? Will three become four? I cannot believe Dumbledore would have disapproved, he appointed me your Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, after all. And I must tell you that I believe we are facing magic many of us have never encountered or imagined."

Ron and Hermione looked at Harry. Harry should have appeared pleased - or, at the very least, relieved - but instead Remus struggled to read his expression.

"Just - just to be clear," he said. "You want to leave Tonks at her parents' house and come away with us?"

"She'll be perfectly safe there, they'll look after her."

When Harry said nothing, Remus leaned forward in his chair. "Harry, I'm sure James would have wanted me to stick with you."

"Well," he said slowly, "I'm not. I'm pretty sure my father would have wanted to know why you aren't sticking with your own kid, actually."

Remus' heart tripped on its rhythm.

"You don't understand."

"Explain, then."

Harry's voice was cold, interrogatory. It was uncanny to see Lily's eyes in James' face when they belonged to a person Remus didn't recognise: a person suddenly devoid of reason, of mercy.

"I - " Remus began.

He was barely able to catch his breath. A chill - like that of de-robing on the brink of a full moon - was coming over him and a hiss of white noise was gathering in his brain.

"I made a grave mistake in marrying Tonks. I did it against my better judgement and I have regretted it very much ever since."

"I see, so you're just going to dump her and the kid and run off with us?"

Instinct moved him. Ron and Hermione jumped in their seats, staring up at him in fright - but the fear in their eyes only enraged Remus more, evidence as it was of the ignorance and cruelty of the world and every person in it: whether they loved him or hated him, rejected him or clung to him, they were all the same; none of them understood - none of them wanted to understand - and Remus couldn't stand it anymore. He had never asked to be born or to be cursed, to become monstrous, to make Tonks fall in catastrophic love with him but it had all happened and he was undone: a traitor to himself, a traitor to her, ruined and good for nothing but war - and if these three stupid, lost children could not comprehend that then he would make them.

"Don't you understand what I've done to my wife and my unborn child? I should never have married her, I've made her an outcast!"

His voice echoed from every corner, filling the room, tormenting him. Remus kicked his fallen chair which skidded across the floor to smash against the wall.

"You have only ever seen me amongst the Order, or under Dumbledore's protection at Hogwarts! You don't know how most of the wizarding world sees creatures like me! When they know of my affliction, they can barely talk to me! Don't you see what I've done? Even her own family is disgusted by our marriage, what parents want their only daughter to marry a werewolf? And the child - the child - "

He yanked at his hair. He wanted to dash his head against the wall at the thought of the baby: the scarless werewolf, the helpless innocent cursed by its father.

"My kind don't usually breed! It will be like me, I am convinced of it - how can I forgive myself, when I knowingly risked passing on my own condition to an innocent child? And if, by some miracle, it is not like me, then it will be better off, a hundred times so, without a father of whom it must always be ashamed!"

"Remus!" Whispered Hermione, tears of pity springing to her eyes. "Don't say that - how could any child be ashamed of you?"

"Oh, I don't know, Hermione," said Harry. "I'd be pretty ashamed of him."

Harry was on his feet too. Remus glared at him: this boy who thought he was a man; this ungrateful, unschooled boy who would gamble with the very future of their world out of naive principle; this green boy who had the gall to reject the life that Remus was trying to lay down for him, refusing to grant him even a flake of redemption, spurning his help, reducing him to worse than nothing.

"If the new regime thinks muggleborns are bad, what will they do to a half-werewolf whose father's in the Order? My father died trying to protect my mother and me, and you reckon he'd tell you to abandon your kid and go on an adventure with us?"

Remus stuttered with the pure shock of it. "How - how dare you? This is not about a desire for - for danger or personal glory - how dare you suggest such a - "

"I think you're feeling a bit of a daredevil," said Harry, his voice steeped in contempt. "You fancy stepping into Sirius' shoes."

"Harry, no!" Hermione cried, frightened by whatever she saw in Remus' frozen face.

"I'd never have believed this. The man who taught me to fight dementors - a coward."

Faster than a blink, Remus' wand was in his hand. He surrendered to his terrible thirst, to his shadow's boundless fury, and he blasted Harry off his feet, sending him slamming hard against the wall, his head striking the stone.

And then he ran.

From a bridge suspended between two cliffs, to a tidal beach with city lights reflected on inky water, to a low and dripping canal-side tunnel, Remus stopped long enough to see only a flash of every scene; forcing his body to crush itself through space again and again, as if the speed and the wind of travel could shake off the word -

Coward

- as if every snap of displacement could squeeze the urges - to tear and hurt and rip - out of him, the urges that the word -

Coward

- had spawned in his brain, as if fleeing and fleeing again could block out the full moon burning inside him. He didn't stop, even when he lost the third fingernail, even when a dizzy buzz howled in his ears -

Coward

- he kept going until finally he turned his ankle on uneven moorland and fell to the springy ground. The air he drew into his searing lungs was laced with something acrid and his eyeballs stung. He forced himself up onto shaking wrists and saw nothing but a dark horizon, smoke rising like grey snakes from the ground. When he crawled forwards, he found the burnt bones of the cottage. There was nothing for him here, only ash and charred heather beneath an accusing sky, and he knew he must go instead to the one place of shelter he had left: the hole he'd tried to forget, the pit that had waited for him all these long years.

Inside the shack, Remus pressed his face to the black mould of the damp wall and screamed his shame to it. He dragged his bleeding fingers down the old claw marks, fresh blood sliding down the splintered wood to join the faded stains. His brow was wet with sweat and his clothes clung to him. The nape of his neck was burning as the realisation sank in. He was the wolf now, he was an animal, he was wilfully cruel, lustily violent, he was everything he had so desperately wanted to believe a werewolf didn't have to be, he had fallen to the lowest fate of his blood. He clutched his scar and dug his fingers into the flesh, trying to pierce the skin's surface as Greyback once did; Greyback who was now victorious, his progeny finally the monster he'd hoped he would become.

I harmed Harry. He may not have lashed out with his hands, but that made the act no less savage. He'd hurt his best friends' son, Sirius' godson, a boy who deserved his protection - for nothing more than the crime of telling Remus the truth of what kind of beast he really was.

I made Tonks suffer. He'd punished her for loving him, crushed her heart, taken her love and bludgeoned her with it.

I abandoned my baby. Remus pushed his bleeding fingers through his hair and sank to the ground. I am a coward.

Faces assailed him - Tonks, Harry, Sirius, James, Lily, Dumbledore, Mad Eye, his mother, his father - they had all trusted him and he'd let them down, every one.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

Greyback and his werewolves had been right about one thing: Remus wasn't like the people who had loved him. He didn't belong with them. He was a waste of love, a waste of breath, and now he was wailing; haunting the place like he used to. He wasn't a ghost, but he felt barely alive. The life before him was a narrowing tunnel with a pinprick of dying light. He couldn't go on feeling this way, it was impossible to endure: he couldn't live each day drenched in guilt, each night wrapped in the torturous reality of what he had become. He couldn't live a life in which the full moon became his only respite, its horror an escape from an even worse pain.

Remus pressed his thumb and forefinger to either side of his throat, feeling the veins twitch. The throbbing of blood was a privilege he didn't deserve. It wasn't right, wasn't natural, when the pulses of all those so much better than himself had been stopped. He remembered the step he'd once taken towards the veil. This time the hall was empty. He was alone and drawing nearer. He was falling weightlessly, easily, through the archway. Descending and ascending at the same time, the curse loosening its grip and drifting from him, his broken body following, his name detaching itself and leaving him free, in flight, travelling deeper into a nothingness that was neither dark nor light, where there was no pain.

Remus opened his eyes, relaxed his pressing fingers, and felt his heartbeat slow. Calm, precious calm, stole over him. Hadn't part of him always known it would come to this? There was, and always had been, only one way to cure a werewolf. He got slowly to his feet and smoothed down his clothes, took out his wand and felt the weight of it, examined the cypress grain. It was a friend. It was nothing to be afraid of. He touched his scar again, but softly this time, vengefully: the thing would die with him.

Not here though. He wouldn't lay himself to rest in the Shrieking Shack. Perhaps he would go to the beach on which he and Tonks had made love on their wedding night: he could float facedown on the waves, the salt in his lungs like the salt he'd licked from her skin. Or perhaps he would find peace in the forest where they'd once embraced under blooming Spring leaves - but no, Remus didn't want to corrupt those places of beauty. Better by far to fly out to sea, to glide and soar with Tonks' wild abandon before slipping away…but he had no broomstick - and he did not wish for his final act to be the theft of one - where then…and how…?

The world he was trying to leave behind tugged at Remus, insistent, muddying his thoughts. He tried to focus on the nothingness again, but all the details of the somethingness wouldn't leave him. He didn't want Tonks or Harry to know. Even though it was for them, not because of them, that he must do this, he knew they would not see it that way. They hated him but their hearts were too loving not to falsely blame themselves and Remus wanted to free them, not leave them with a legacy of yet more heartache. But the only other solution - faking a Death Eater confrontation - was wrong too. He couldn't allow himself to be remembered as a hero.

He had to find a way to bow out unnoticed. So many of his friends had already crossed the threshold, all he had to do was follow, but…Remus began to pace, panic tangling his brain…no, there could be no buts, he had no choice, the pain would never leave him otherwise…it would always be with him…always. He tried to reclaim the peace he'd felt when the permanence of death had first offered itself to him, but a different will other than the will to oblivion was working upon him, muffling death's sirens and forcing him to look away from the pain he was trying to convince himself would never end and towards another pain instead…another's pain…

"Please don't leave."

He remembered the words, not as spoken to him, but as if spoken by him and when he wrapped his arms around himself, it wasn't bloody sweaty robes concealing a bite scar that he felt, but velvet concealing a body changing in ways she hardly understood. Instead of seething self-disgust, he felt the high, pure sorrow of abandonment. Remus felt every cruel word as a twisting stab to the gut, the wounds coming again and again, and he spoke her name, seeing himself through her eyes: the man she loved, transformed into something unrecognisable, an adult changeling.

"Body and soul," Remus whispered, feeling Tonks' lips move, letting her words fill him, trying to understand what they could mean in the face of such terrible betrayal. "Forever."

More lasting than marriage vows, more binding than death, they spoke of a love that no amount of suffering could overthrow. Even as he renounced her as his wife, even as he split her heart apart, even as she teetered on the edge of control with a wand pointed at his chest, still Tonks wanted Remus to live, still she held out a hand for him to grasp, still she refused to believe his pain in life was truly endless.

But I don't have the strength, Dora. How can I bear to face you after everything I've done? How can I endure the rest of my life?

Remus entered the graveyard through the kissing gate. With his head bowed and hooded, he passed through the deserted lines of tombstones. Though he had come here only the once before, he knew the way. Soon he was kneeling before the patch of ground that Lily and James shared.

"Help me."

Remus pressed his hands against the earth, his fingers sinking between the blades of grass.

"Help me," he begged them, begging his mother and Sirius too, "please."

On the night the phoenix song had guided him, it had felt as if the dead themselves had reached out across the divide to tell him what he must do. But they weren't speaking to him now. He was alone and, wherever they were - if indeed they were anywhere at all - they couldn't hear him. They kept their peace for themselves and left none behind for the living.

Just as there would be no peace for Tonks if I truly left her. Remus dipped his gaze, holding the thought tight. It wouldn't be freedom to cut his own life short, but banishment; a denial of all other possibilities -

But I don't deserve any other possibilities. His mind warred against itself, different perceptions jostling to take position as reality. His stomach curdled with sour bile as he recalled his many cruelties. How could he even consider darkening Tonks' door once more? Hadn't he hurt her enough already? Besides, she would never forgive him. She said it herself. Their marriage was over.

There are other ways to love someone. If he bore the guilt, if he found the courage to carry the regret without letting it break him, there was good he could still do for her. If not as a husband, then as a friend - even if it took years to earn the right to call himself even that.

I could do my best to be a father. At that, Remus began to cry. Not the hacking sobs of before, but clean, silent, blazing tears. For the first time in his life, he let himself imagine his own child in his arms and the brand new love hit him with the force of an avalanche. Tonks had been right about him. He had always, always, wanted a family of his own - and whatever shape his family would take, Remus still had the chance to make sure his baby knew it had two parents who loved it without question - and a father who would never turn his face away again.

James had died for his wife and child. All Remus had to do was live for his.

Closing his eyes, he remembered how Tonks had looked when she'd danced at the wedding. He hadn't understood it then, but he did now. He could feel her wonder, her awed euphoria mingled with fear, her love for something that had not yet come to be. Remus raised his head and read the words engraved on the headstone:

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.

He began to walk, not stopping until he was out of the village and surrounded by black fields. Mud caked the hem of his robes, his vision became hazy and the stars above him began to smudge. He had barely eaten, hardly slept in days. The grass flattened beneath him as he lay back, staring at the vastness above, the midnight blue clouds that seemed to stroke the gleaming white moon. He could smell damp earth, feel the journeys of the tiny lives that crawled within its depths, and felt himself as a part of it all. The moon waxed, but it also waned. Death would come for him one day, but he did not have to hurry it.

His mind still streamed with shame, fear, self-hatred - and he knew that some portion of it always would - but perhaps that was alright. Because, however loud his shadow thoughts had become, they'd never truly succeeded in drowning out the rest of him. He was still the professor, smiling as his quill marked the parchment of a troubled student starting to excel; still the man who counted his blessings with a hot mug between his hands as he watched the dusk burn pink before a new moon; still the happy little boy in his father's favourite photo, untouched by any curse and laughing on.

His lips moved, forming silent words of gratitude, "I am Remus John Lupin, werewolf, sometimes known as Moony, one of the four creators of the Marauder's Map, married to Nymphadora, usually known as Tonks, and I taught you how to use a Patronus, Harry, which takes the form of a stag."

It was time to go home.