When James and Lily died, when Sirius was taken away, when Peter's terrible finger was all that was left to point at the past; a ghastly accusation and a reminder, something that would have been hilarious if it hadn't been real; Remus went home. Not to the school, which was the genesis of all things he'd known to be beautiful and true, as well as the seat of all wrongs. There were too many memories there of the bitter sort.
No, he went home, to the house where he'd come into the world, unblemished and squalling and minus an everlasting set of nectarine-colored scars. His father still lived there, and still got the paper at ten and the post at eleven. It was routine that saved his life that time, kept him waking up in the morning and going to bed at night. It was the paper at ten and the post at eleven that kept him eating and drinking and not thinking too much, crucial. It was tea at four o'clock sharp that kept him from remembering the color of anyone's eyes, dinner and the telly that sealed up everything that had been Remus Lupin, and shoved it into a box for later examination.
An examination that was not to come for twelve years. Out of necessity, or survival, or sheer bloody stubbornness.
He went home a second time, having seen the changed face of Sirius Black, and the debut of Harry as a player in their old, old game. The map was the same, the passages, the jokes, the expressions on the children's faces when they got caught at something. It was familiar, and for a few minutes here and there, Remus could almost forget that he was the grownup now, and the rest were mad or dead or evil.
This time around, his father was dead, and had been for years. The building had been in Remus' possession for that long, and in his neglect for longer, as the old man wasted away. There were books, and tatty blankets, a couch and a broken rabbit-eared set. It was a house, but not much more. He had not looked at it, really looked, since before… when ? When his mother died ? Since he left Hogwarts ? At any rate, he could not remember. Things had left their places and ended up on different floors; entire patterns of china had vanished. At some point he'd started to repaint a room and gotten bored, or distracted, or ceased to be able to afford paint. And there was a hell of a lot of dust. It gave him a genuine shock, enough to draw him out of his funk and into something perhaps more dangerous. What he remembered about the place was tucked up in an unchanging memory- what he saw instead was a mockery of the past, a shadow, a mistake. It had come out wrong.
It was rather like looking at Sirius.