Obviously, I'm not British. I can't clean the American out of the dialogue that goes through my head. I try my best, but past that, I'm not going to have a kitten over it. If you are, feel free not to read.

Chapter 3

aaaaaa

Harry watched, irritated, as Professor Lupin bandaged the bite on his arm. The man didn't make as much fuss as Madame Pomfrey would have, but he did do a considerably lot more than Harry would have bothered with if he'd been left to tend to it himself. But then again, Harry couldn't really see why Professor Lupin just hadn't left him to it. Did he honestly look like he needed someone to kiss all his booboos and make them better? Please.

"Some of these are pretty deep. You're lucky it was just the one bite." Professor Lupin gave him a small half grin, inviting Harry to laugh in chagrined humor at the whole thing. And that would have been fine, if Harry had found this even remotely funny.

"Yeah," resentment swelled up in his chest, "I'm just a luck magnet." He winced as Professor Lupin disinfected some of the deeper cuts. The bloke was infinitely gentler than Aunt Petunia would have been. He'd learned at a very early age to not go to her crying about cuts, bruises or bites. But that didn't mean that he wanted the bloke to be patching him up or that he appreciated the concern. It was just a couple scratches. Nothing life threatening, and nothing he couldn't have handled on his own. The way Professor Lupin was carrying on, it was like he was next to helpless. If a Basilisk's fang hadn't done him in, he doubted a dog bite was going to kill him.

Besides that, where had good old Professor Lupin been when he'd been five and Ripper had taken a chunk out of his calf to match the bruises Aunt Marge had given him on the shins? And where had the bloke been when he was ten and had scraped up the whole left side of his body trying to get down from the damned tree the thrice damned dog had chased him up? Where had anyone been all the times that he'd dabbed hydrogen peroxide over cuts given to him by Dudley, Piers and co.? Who had been there when he'd had the stomach flu, when he'd had strep throat, when he'd had the chicken pox?

"Care to tell me how you got attacked?" Lupin asked companionably.

"No." Well, ask a dumb question. Harry scowled as he looked away from the intensely disappointed look on Professor Lupin's face. Heaven forbid the Boy Who Lived be difficult. It was like watching a play unfold, in which he was the main character, except he didn't much feel like playing the part. They could find some other poor gullible twat to act out the role of obedient martyr for the greater good.

"All right, let me rephrase that," Professor Lupin joked amiably, setting Harry's teeth on edge, "could you please tell me what happened?"

"A dog bit me."

"And?"

"And what?"

"Harry, you have to work with me. Did you provoke it?"

::No, he didn't provoke the damned dog. What the hell, Remus! He's an angry teenager, not an animal abuser.::

Harry fought down a bubble of hysterical laughter. Oh, this was exactly why he didn't want to go into this right now, the principle of the matter aside. He was not hearing Sirius' voice in his head.

"Of course. Pissing off dogs is my favorite hobby." Just ask his Aunt Marge. According to her, he kicked puppies in his spare time. Given his bad blood, it was to be expected. She and Snape had that in common. Harry was the bad seed, the bad egg. He had a swelled head, thought himself better than his station in life, showed too little gratitude for all the offers he'd gotten from people wanting to give him an attitude adjustment.

And in all honesty? He wasn't entirely certain that they were wrong. For all of Dumbledore's talk about choices making the man, it didn't seem that simple to Harry. Because, the way he figured it, he hadn't had much choice in having this connection with Voldemort. He had no control over what his father may or may not have been like or who the man's enemies or friends had been. It never really seemed to matter to the people intent on carrying a grudge or bent on repaying a debt that he was not actually his father.

"I need details," Professor Lupin pestered, earning him another glare from Harry. He needed details? Who the fuck was Lupin to be demanding details?

Maybe it was petty and small of him, but fuck them, turnabout was fair play. "I needed to be told what was going on last summer. I needed people to be honest with me. I needed to know that Voldemort might be able to play peek-a-boo in my mind. I need to be left the fuck alone right now. Sometimes, we don't always get what we need."

::Harry, he's just trying to help.::

Yes, but it was unwanted and unneeded help, and help that was offered for all the wrong reasons.

"Look," Professor Lupin sighed tiredly, "I understand that you're frustrated. Both with me and with your situation. But I'm not doing this just to torture you. I have to know that you're healthy and safe. I have to know if there are things I need to be worried about or if there are things that are bothering you. I'm responsible for you as long as you're here."

A responsibility. An unwanted obligation. Something to put up with on the expectation that putting up with it would eventually pay off in bigger ways later. He was a person goddamn it. He was not some fucking transaction that needed to be handled. "You don't give a damn about me. You're just doing this out of some misguided sense of duty. And you know what, who asked you to butt in? Okay, cause fuck you! I don't need you." So maybe he wasn't a bloody genius at taking care of himself. But this was the way he'd been raised, this was the way he'd been taught to think and taught to react. If Professor Lupin didn't like it, then maybe he should have said something a long, long time ago. Because as far as Harry was concerned, it was much too late in the game to be playing the role of concerned caregiver now.

"So you're just going to fight off the world all by yourself? How's that been working out?" Lupin asked quietly, and Harry rolled his eyes. Not as well as he'd like, but that was pretty much the way everything went. Better to shut everyone and everything out than to try and figure out how to sort through the myriad of lies and deceits to figure out what the truth really was. "Look, I know I'm being a pain in the ass, but I've got all the time in the world, and I can sit here all night with you if that's what it takes."

::He'll do it, too.::

"Fine. Sirius bit me."

aaaaaa

"Sirius bit you?" Remus couldn't help but ask, certain he'd heard the little snot wrong. Unfortunately, Harry just nodded, a bored expression on his face as he pulled a leg up onto the blanket covered lawn chair he was sitting on that was doubling as furniture in the cabin. "Was it just a dog that looked like him?" He tried, trying to figure out how the hell Sirius' name might even fit into the picture.

"No. It was Sirius. As in my deceased godfather," Harry stated calmly, before pulling his arm out of Remus' grasp in order to start picking at the bandages. Reaching over almost automatically, Remus smacked the hand before it could fully work off the first layer of tape. He spared Harry the scolding that he'd often received from his mother for the same offenses because he was sure that if he went into it now, the kid was going to pop his cork.

"Enough of this, Harry. You have to tell me the truth." Because he'd really rather not have to strangle a willful fifteen-year-old.

"What would you rather me tell you?" The kid squared off for another fight, and Remus bit back the groan that was working its way up his throat. "That I saw some dog when I was down at the dock, tried to hit it with the hammer, and it bit me in retaliation?"

That all made sense; from the how Harry got the bite, to where the hammer had gotten to. Except, like the Sirius in his head had said, Harry wasn't an animal abuser. Even in the heat of the moment, Harry really didn't strike him as someone who lashed out at anyone without at least some kind of provocation. There had to be more to the story than that. "Is that the whole truth?"

"I dunno, do you want it to be?" The kid smirked at him, and Remus mentally counted to ten as he shot the teenager a pained look. "Not much fun is it? Trying to figure out what to believe. Who to believe."

"What really happened, Harry?" And okay, so maybe he could hear the hurt behind the kid's words. Maybe Harry did feel an overwhelming sense of betrayal from everyone who had ever bothered to look after him, from his lousy excuse of an Aunt to Dumbledore to Sirius to him. But Remus didn't have any soothing words to offer. That kind of betrayal never got easier to deal with and it never was something that ever truly went away. It was something that a bloke carried with him forever and took with him into every new relationship and every new acquaintance.

"I was sitting on the dock, messing around with the hammer. Sirius was talking at me, and then he bit me." And they were back to this being about Sirius. Which, Remus supposed was probably at the root of everything. However, while Sirius chatted away with him in his head, it was more of a step in grieving. The idea that Harry was chatting with a fictitious Sirius and then getting very real wounds on his arm was more than a little worrying.

"Does he," he fished for a second trying to find a delicate way to ask if this had happened more than once, "talk at you a lot?"

"All the time," Harry returned flippantly, before visibly pulling in on himself. There was more to this than the kid was letting on. And just from Harry's stiff stance and defensiveness, Remus could tell that it scared him. "Now, if it's all right with your highness, I'm going to take my peasant ass upstairs and get some sleep." It wasn't even worth responding to the jab.

"Fine," Remus decided spur of the moment, "but we're starting Occlumency lessons in the morning." Finally, familiar ground. Teaching Harry wouldn't be half as hard as simply trying to take care of him was turning out to be.

"In your dreams, maybe," Harry muttered before climbing up the wood ladder to the second floor.

Or maybe it was going to be just as difficult as everything else during this trip had been so far. Remus waited for the Sirius in his head to add in his two cents, but for once, the blabbermouth was uncharacteristically silent. But then again, the fucker probably would have gotten a kick out of watching Remus flounder so badly at something.

aaaaaa