Title: No Name Face

Rating: T

Chapter One

The time that had passed had, in all actuality, not been long. But to Harry, who was now climbing the steps to a home he hadn't visited in over a year, the time seemed as though it were many lifetimes packed into a tidy package. He'd discovered so much about himself, learned so many things about what he could and couldn't have changed, and had come to accept the blame for the tasks he knew he'd completed wrongly. It almost felt as though he'd been gone a thousand years rather than one.

His time away had done little to the outside of the small cottage before him. A tree had been planted beside the front porch; a rose bush had been added to the many herbs and vegetables growing in the small corner of the yard that acted as a garden. The earth-red bricks were still the same weather washed tone they had been the night he'd stepped out of that front door and headed for the train station with a one-way ticket clasped in his fist. The worn and tired face that watched him amble up the walkway was the same worn and tired face that had bid him goodbye and good-luck and promised to watch out for Sirius what felt like a lifetime before.

Remus Lupin still appeared to be a very busy man, and he stood from his seat on the porch steps with a wince and book in his hand that looked as though it had nothing to do with pleasure reading. Honey colored eyes looked at him in neither surprise or expectation, and Harry felt like he was thirteen again, wanting to ask this man so many questions that he was ready to burst, but too polite and frightened of the answers to even open his mouth.

He wanted to know how Sirius was; wanted to know if the man had taken his temporary loss as well as Harry wished he would. He wanted to know if Hermione and Ron were okay, if the baby they'd been expecting the previous fall had come into the world healthy and strong; if the marriage they had been planning on had gone as beautifully as they had envisioned. Harry was thirsting for the knowledge of how everyone had faired in the yearlong absence of his…if the wizarding world had needed him as much as they had claimed to.

Settling for reaching out a hand to grasp Lupin's, Harry asked, quietly, "How've you been?"

It was, quite possibly, the worst thing a person could say after having been gone for…fifteen months, four days, six hours. One does not simply walk back into a life they'd practically abandoned and ask how a once friend and fellow warrior had been; Harry knew this. But Harry also knew that there was enough to be kept unsaid between them that such a question should be fine.

Time had not, it seemed, lessened the slight animosity between them.

The smile Lupin offered him was slightly strained. "I've been fine, Harry. I trust that your…endeavor went well?" A brief squeeze to his hand, and he was being motioned up and onto the porch, where the remaining sunlight of the afternoon was falling in slants across the wooden planks. Harry stepped onto the sideways pattern with an almost child-like ease and enjoyment, and sat in the wicker chair opposite Lupin.

Eternity and an instant. The saying reminded Harry that they'd sat like this once before, with Lupin offering only vague advice on the situation that Harry was presenting to him.

"Things were okay."

He paused, leaning back into the chair, considering himself. What had he come here for, exactly? The relationship he shared with the man before him wasn't exactly paternal, but Harry needed answers. He was aware that he could get answers from any source he chose to, but at least here, with Lupin, he would get the straight and flat-out truth. No bullshit catered to what he wanted, and needed, to hear. Looking up at Lupin with barely concealed curiosity, Harry asked one of the many things that were on his mind, quite possibly the foremost. "Is Sirius alright?"

Harry was slightly confused by the almost-bemused smile that graced the werewolf's features. Lupin sat back in his own chair, crossed his legs, and shut his book in one gentle movement that spoke of years of practice around pain. "Sirius is doing as well as you would expect, Harry. It was an unpleasant shock for him, but he's learned to…cope."

The way Lupin worded his answer made Harry uneasy. He knew he'd hurt Sirius with the sudden disappearance, because he hadn't told anyone, besides Remus, that he had been going. But that was how it had to be—if Sirius had known he was planning on leaving, he'd've tried to stop Harry. And Harry hadn't wanted to be stopped. Repairing what little bit was left of his mentality had been a priority, and Harry couldn't keep shirking the responsibility of taking care of him onto Sirius, who was just learning how to live a semi-normal life. Sirius deserved the chance to live his own life, one without a morbid godson who was fascinated with what effects the War had left on his system.

Ashamed with himself suddenly, Harry looked away from Lupin, from the bald truth that was staring him in the face. You didn't have the right to leave, Harry. You didn't have the right to walk away from a society that still needed a savior, and a group of people who still needed someone to depend on. They were truths he'd stared down before, but ones that had never really hit home without a reminder of the past he'd left behind.

"Did you tell him that it was something I had to do?"

Did you tell him that his godson couldn't let him live with a constant companion to the pain of an era that would soon have passed?

"I told him that you needed space. I could not, and would not, explain to him the reasons behind your…jaunt when I did not fully understand them myself, Harry. You didn't give me much of an explanation beyond the bare facts: you couldn't cope with being needed in the manner in which the wizarding world at large needed you."

"Face value," he replied automatically, looking up from his study of the recently acquired rosebush to the left of the porch. It was a concept he'd discussed, at length, with Lupin, and they both were rather sick of the meaning behinds the words. To Harry, they meant that he was nothing more than an image to pin a war on, a battle cry cried with hidden intonations that no one would ever understand. People depended on him because they had faith, and not knowledge, in him. They knew nothing of his weaknesses, and believed that they knew everything about his strengths.

Harry wasn't sure what the term meant to Lupin, but it was often an expression that raised the man's ire.

"You and I both know that face value has nothing to do with it, Harry. As a child you had been gifted with the strength to take on the responsibility given to you, and I'm well aware that the responsibility could not have been placed into better hands." Lupin snapped at him, a well-practiced argument rising to the fore in a well-practiced response.

Eternity and an instant. The principle still wasn't lost on him. Harry looked up at Remus, and scowled, a shadow of the expression he'd used in Hogwarts, as a teen that had been relatively sane under the circumstances.

They'd done this before.

"I'm not the one they should have believed in. I'm not the person that they should have placed all their faith in. Because of me, Lupin, hundreds were lost."

"And thousands were saved. Harry, when are you going to understand that they were perfectly right in their belief? You had the power to help them, and you did. In war, sacrifices have to be made."

One came to Remus Lupin for bald truths and flat-out answers. One did not come to Remus Lupin for twisted truths and flat-out lies. When would they all see that Harry wasn't the one that they had needed? When would the people see that their faith in him had been misplaced? When would they all understand?

"Sacrifices, yes, but not massacres. I'm just trying to tell you that I don't want to be acknowledged as their saving grace. I have no right to be. You and I both know that as a fact, and don't you dare tell me otherwise." He looked the man dead in the eye. "Tell me, one year and some odd months later, do they still see me as their hero? Even after I disappeared off of the face of the planet?"

Lupin's grin was sardonic, a shadow of a smile he might have given Harry months, even years, ago. This man was not the kind and gentle man that had taught him more than just how to defeat inner, and outer, demons, at one time. This man before him was a bitter reminder of why war and pain and destruction were often an ongoing process even years after the fact; he was testimony, one of the reasons why Harry had left.

"They still look at your photo and see the light of day. They still worship you, and although there are a few groups who have been…angered by your absence, the wizarding world still sees you as the man who saved them."

"I don't care," Harry stated flatly. "I stopped accepting their praise a long time ago."

"But they never stopped giving it."

"They should hate me, Lupin. They should hate me, and I'm going to live as though they do." He paused, looked at the man, and continued. "Listen, all I want to know is if Sirius is okay, alright? We can talk about this," he made a wide gesture that encompassed the lawn, the world in itself. "Later."

He didn't want to hear about England's undying case of hero-worship, of their praise, of their pity, and how they would readily offer him the world if he wanted it. He hadn't done much more than anyone else in that godforsaken war, and who was going to be the first to see that? When would they figure that out?

What he did want to hear, however, was the answers to his questions. Harry wanted to know if Sirius had been able to move on, get past the loss, if he'd ever really needed Harry that much in the first place. Harry had needed Sirius, the man had been his right hand in everything, but that hadn't meant that Sirius had needed Harry. They'd fought together in a war that both destroyed and rebuilt the order of things, and Sirius had seemed as though he were flourishing in the action and nonstop dependence people had of him.

When Harry had left, he had been sure that Sirius would be okay. But the way Remus had worded his answer had irked him—had the man been doing as well as Harry had thought he'd been? Had Harry mistakenly judged the laughs and smiles and the man's choices to go out on the town on his own? Had he wrongly assumed that Sirius was ready to start a life of his own, free of the burden that Harry had become?

Lupin looked at him, visibly calculating the way his words would affect him, what they would do. He almost perceptibly settled on his answer, and eased himself out of the wicker chair, motioning for Harry to step into the house. "At first, he refused to accept that you had left. He seemed to believe that things were okay with you, and that the war hadn't had as bad as an effect on you as others would have believed."

The screen-door opened with a creak, and Harry stepped into the sunset-lit foyer, off to the side to let Lupin pass him by and lead the way. He took Harry through his home, past the comfortable living-room, past the kitchen, down the hall and into a room that Harry had only been in once. It was an office of sorts, bookshelves and file cabinets and full of dusty papers that really had no place to be, no area in which they belonged.

Harry knew the feeling.

Looking on in sudden curiosity when Lupin began to shift through the papers, Harry stepped into the room cautiously, wary. The last time he'd been in this office was about two years ago, when everyone you could possibly imagine was still in some sort of hiding, waiting and watching their backs with paranoid glances around every corner. The werewolf had been showing him some elements of the spell/ritual that would be used to kill Voldemort, the dark items that he was well aware he could have been arrested for even looking at. It hadn't been a pretty visit, that one, and Harry carried the memory as one that he would rather forget.

"Sirius went away for a while, but he writes often. Hermione and Ronald believed that he might have gone off in search of you, but I'm not sure, personally." Crouching down to open a drawer, a few pieces of paper already clasped in his fist. Sounds of rummaging reached Harry's ears from the doorway, and he leaned to the side, trying to figure out what these papers had to do with his questions about Sirius. "He hasn't returned yet, Harry, but he's asked me to give you these if you came back before he did." Lupin stood from his crouch, joints creaking. "He always had faith that you would come back, even if no one else did."

The tone in which Lupin said that made Harry uncomfortable. It sounded as though the man had been depending on him not returning—as though he had almost counted on the fact that Harry wasn't going to come back.

Harry had thought about it, but had often come to the same conclusion: he needed Sirius, his friends, needed their companionship, their compassion, their love. Even if they hadn't, and still didn't, need him, he had wanted to come back. Even if it was only for a little while, to see how his friends had faired during the year. He knew he didn't belong with them, he'd said it before. But it still didn't stop him from wanting to try and belong.

"Take them, Harry, and see for yourself just how Sirius is."

End chapter one.

I do not own Harry Potter, and I do not claim to. No profit is being made from this piece of fanfiction.