Of all of the places for Remus' world to turn on its head, Molly Weasley's kitchen strikes him as an unlikely one. And yet here he is.

"Molly?" he manages to ask. He is surprised by how even his voice is. "I'm going to ask you something strange. And I need you to do it. I promise I'll explain later."

She frowns, her expression confused but trusting.

"Yes, dear?"

"The-the rat your boys are playing with. Can you bring it to me?"

Molly stares at him and something like pity flashes across her face, but she blinks that back quickly. Remus ignores it, he knows (at least suspects) that the other parents in his learning co-op think he's a little unhinged. It doesn't matter right now, because something is terribly wrong, he has been terribly, terribly wrong about something and he is not certain Harry is safe and keeping his seven-year-old godson safe is the only thing that matters.

"Molly," he says again. "Please."

Remus has been Harry's legal guardian for five years now, and protecting the little boy has become the purpose of his entire life and sometimes he knows he does it too thoroughly. After the hard-won battle for custody - it took a year, few people wanted to see the savior of the wizarding world raised by a werewolf, he knows he only won because Minerva McGonagall, Alastor Moody, Susan Bones and several other Order members through their weight and resources around - he has felt his responsibility to Harry as an honor. As his reason for existing.

Honestly, he's not sure he would have bothered existing anymore if Harry's well-being hadn't been on the line. Remus didn't properly remember the first couple months after That October. He'd spent it in mindless, terrified grief, trying desperately to claw his way out of his own skin, attempting to obliterate his pain (or maybe himself) in a toxic combination of alcohol, sex with nameless strangers and the shocking amount of drugs he'd uncovered in his old apartment. It wasn't until Professor McGonagall found him, wanting to air her concerns about the Dursleys' suitability, that he'd managed to find a focal point in his violently unmoored world.

"Petunia?" Remus had asked in disbelief, staring blearly at his old professor across a cafe table. She'd taken one look at his apartment and insisted on buying him lunch.

McGonagall's mouth pinched disapprovingly. "I'm sure Albus made the choice he thought best," she said in a terse tone that made it clear she didn't agree. "You have the best case, Lupin, for an alternative guardian-"

"I'm the queer wolf junkie who was literally sleeping with the enemy," Remus cut in harshly, too raw to process the lurch of hope that accompanied her suggestion. "No one will listen to me."

She held his gaze steadily, though her mouth turned down in sorrow. He'd never been entirely sure if she knew the real nature of his relationship with Sirius, but her face expressed no surprise. Remus' tears, never far from the surface, threatened to spill over. He wished he'd brought a flask along. Pointless thought, though. Her next words would have undone him drunk or sober.

"Remus," she said quietly. "I know it doesn't feel like this, dear boy, but you're going to be alright."

He had been, after a fashion. She'd championed his cause with Dumbledore - not a minor feat. Dumbledore had not been impressed by Remus' lingering doubts about the absolute guilt of the traitor (doubts that eventually faded in the face of the other Order members' certainty). McGonagall made enough imperious visits to his flat that he eventually started keeping it tidy again. He suspected that her presence and her faith in him was what made his parents 'suddenly' decide to retire to a place by the coast, to will him the cottage he'd grown up in (nothing impressive but a better place to bring a toddler than his dingy flat).

And then Harry had been in his life again, a sweet, shy little boy with his father's hair and his mother's eyes, and Remus had been stunned to find his battered heart still willing to wrap itself around another living thing. He'd thrown everything he could into providing Harry with a warm and safe home. He built them a cozy, tiny world. And as Harry thrived, he rebuilt in Remus some measure of trust in himself. Some confidence in his own abilities, a sense of worth and purpose. As Harry grew, Remus even found himself learning to trust the other parents in the small schooling group that had been cobbled together with the Weasleys, Lovegoods and himself.

Harry had given Remus a new life and so they'd forged ahead together and Remus found that if he kept his gaze on Harry, on the direction going forward, he could - at least most of the time - escape his clinging ghosts.

"The rat?" Molly clarifies one more time. It's getting on toward evening, approaching dinner time. Remus had just stopped by to pick up Harry and take Luna home, but Molly had roped him into a cup of tea. Harry was happily laughing with Ron, Ginny and Luna over the antics of Charlie's new pet. Remus had ignored this at first, enjoying chatting with Molly about the lesson plans for the coming months (he typically teaches reading and literature when their rotating school is at his place). It was nice to talk after the day he'd spent buried alone in books in his office.

But then Remus had glanced over as there was a particularly shrill squeal of laughter. The pet - he'd thought it was a toad - had apparently rejected one of the Bertie Botts beans it was offered.

It was like being dosed with cold water, a physical shock. Remus had recognized his old friend in his animagus form just as surely as he would have recognized the man himself. The wolf chimes in from somewhere deep inside, and suddenly Remus catches the scent of his old friend, faint amidst the scents of Harry and the Weasleys.

His first instinctive reaction was bewildered joy. To have a lost friend - any one of them - back was a dream he never allowed himself to indulge in. (Well, some dreams, at his worst, but those were more like murderous fantasies.) He nearly jumped out of his seat at the kitchen table, nearly ran to yank the rat out of Ron's hands, but his thoughts went immediately, as they always did, to Harry. To what Harry would think, to what he would ask. And then his mind hit a wall.

How? How had he survived? And if he did, why be a rat? Fear? Of what? Had he been tortured, gone mad? None of the answers were likely to be appropriate to spill in front of a bunch of kids, not to mention the spectacle of a rat turning into a possibly insane 28-year-old man would be at least mildly traumatizing. Remus feels a sudden, wild urge to laugh, and the face that impulse drags up makes his skin crawl.

"Yes, the rat," Remus repeats to Molly. He wants to add 'don't let him see me' but suspects that will just increase any concerns Molly might have about his sanity.

"What's wrong, Remus?" Molly asks, not moving. "Is there some sort of danger?"

He realizes that she knows him better than he thinks she does. Perhaps he's going pale. He realizes he's hardly breathing. He forgets, sometimes, that this is Gideon and Fabian's sister, that she probably would have been at their side in the Order had it not been for the many children running around this house.

"I don't know," he says. He wars with himself for a moment, caught between keeping one his oldest, most wrenching secrets, and his shared responsibility to Molly as a friend and fellow parent. The thought of trusting her with this makes his head pound.

"That's an animagus," he forces out. "That's not a rat."

Molly's eyes widen in alarm and she moves immediately, hurrying to the coffee table the kids are gathered around. Remus remains, paralyzed with anticipation and strange dread, in the kitchen.

"Oh, will you look at that," Molly says a little too loudly, startling the kids, who look up at her. "Poor mite nicked his tail, let me look by the window."

Charlie looks deeply offended by the suggestion that he's mistreated his pet, but he doesn't say anything as Molly scoops the rat off the table. Only Remus sees her stun the small creature as she turns her back on the kids and hurries back to the kitchen. She beckons him to follow her to the counter by the back window, and dumps her burden onto a tea towel.

Later, Remus does not remember getting up, he is just suddenly standing next to Molly, looking down at the sad, curled, unconscious rodent. He notices dimly that he's missing one of his front toes.

"Well?" Molly whispers.

"It's him."

"Who?"

"Peter Pettigrew."