Durmstrang: The End of Life

"It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die."—Maggie Stiefvater

Write a story about a prophecy foretelling death. (Restriction: it cannot be a prophecy from canon)

Prompts: [Character] Remus Lupin (main); [Quote] "Get busy living or get busy dying."—Stephen King.

TW: discussion of death, one mention of animal death

WC: 990

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Remus knew he was going to die.

It wasn't with the odd detachment that most children knew they were going to die from what he had managed to work out. He didn't play much with the children in the village near their house. They viewed him as a curiosity, something to be studied and dissected later, and he viewed them as fragile.

When he was seven, they — Remus only included in the small group as they were still in awe of the quiet boy from the house in the woods with his skin littered with silver scars — found a dead cat in the road. And they didn't understand, curious but not sad.

They didn't know.

Remus didn't go into the village anymore after that.

He went to his Aunt Cassandra's instead throughout his childhood, where he was given a large book to read, curled up on her armchair so that the cushion eventually conformed to the curve of his hip and the press of his cheek.

She wasn't used to children. His Aunt Cassandra loved him. She showed that in the way she listened intently when he spoke — her head tilted to one side and dark eyes glittering as she watched him like an oversized hawk — and she remembered, far better than his father or mother did. But there was a hesitancy to her actions, pausing before she hugged as if she was gauging the pressure, worried about breaking him. Her hands hovered over the cutlery when they were so sure over the spines of the books she plucked from the shelves.

When he was younger, before the bite, she told him that he would ask her why she lived away from everyone, why he would be dropped off with supplies for her like Red Riding Hood visiting her grandmother.

After the bite, he didn't have to ask.

He knew.

Remus Lupin knew he was a werewolf. And he knew he was going to die.

The memory of his first transformation was blurred by the passage of time, but he felt the same pain every month — bones shattering and joining anew, bones breaking only to shift and heal in the same screaming breath.

He knew he must have been in his Aunt Cassandra's basement. The memory was coloured by his previous full moons down there — the stale scent of sweat and blood in the air that even copious applications of her modified cleaning charms and, eventually, bleach couldn't shift. In his nightmares, she was next to him or just out of sight on the stairs. All he could remember were her eyes, huge and black and gleaming like a void, and her voice.

Aunt Cassandra's voice was deep, almost musical with rolling constantents but her prophecy was delivered in a voice as cold as the grave, with the rasp of eons past.

"Death will dog your steps. Then He will come for you."

She didn't remember. She never remembered.

Remus could never forget.

He knew he was going to die.

Death seemed so present since that night. He had looked it up the morning after, as his parents wept on Aunt Cassandra's hearth rug and she hovered over them after pressing a sweet cup of tea into his hands and leaving him alone. Remus had slipped out of the armchair the moment the door closed behind her — thin blanket too heavy on his bruised and bloodied shoulders — and crept to the bookshelves on legs that felt half broken.

'Death: A permanent cessation of all vital functions - the end of life.'

He had crept back to read the definition over and over again, learning the larger words in the days and weeks following when he was dropped off at Aunt Cassandra's house again and again.

Remus saw it wherever he looked — from the plants slowly rotting on the windowsill, their petal curling at the edges, to the small bones that littered the forest surrounding his home, a mismatched puzzle scattered over an impossible distance.

Cassandra was a prophet, and the rest of the family knew. She isolated herself in her small cottage in the woods — a living relic from a fairytale in the flesh — so she wouldn't prophesize.

It wasn't a perfect system. She once caught a glimpse of one of the village children wandering through the woods with flowers braided into her hair and wound up with bite marks scared into her knuckles as she swallowed down the words, feet cut to shreds as she ran blindly away.

But his father was desperate after Remus' bite, willing to risk a prophecy, forgotten by his young son or whispered into nothingness. Remus wanted to blame him. He wanted to blame him for causing Greyback to target him, for being unable to wait next to Remus on the night of his first possible transformation, for risking a prophecy that was repeated to him every month — he whispered the words along with her eventually as they had become as familiar as a lullaby, a sign that his transformation was over and he was safe and contained.

Hogwarts had seemed impossible. He was a werewolf. He was dangerous. Remus had settled himself into being content with nothing but the four walls of his home and his aunt's home, even as envy burned in the pit of his stomach. His life would be isolated, and he would have to learn to be happy with that.

Remus hadn't been able to stop himself from accepting Dumbledore's offer.

Death was a constant in his life, but he knew he couldn't get away from that.

The Hogwarts Express gleamed a deep scarlet, and Remus stumbled slightly as he made his way down the corridor, peering nervously into each carriage as he passed. No sooner had he found an empty one and placed his case down, then the door was thrown open.

"Hi, I'm James Potter! This is Sirius Black. Can we sit with you?"

Remus looked at the boy's beaming smile, expression mirrored on the other boy behind him, and grinned back, the movement almost foreign to him. "Yeah, sure."