A tentacle poked the sleeping form of Remus Lupin. "Hey, wake up!"
Remus stirred, then groaned. "Ugh, what happened?"
"You ate part of a soul and survived unharmed. Not many mortals can say they've done that. Though, you aren't really mortal anymore," the tentacle-covered creature said.
Remus stared at it. It had a lot of tentacles... and eyes... and mouths... and just about every other body part that could possibly exist on any animal at all. Really, it was just a gargantuan, bulging mass of flesh. It was also sort of familiar to him. He squinted. "Nyarl?"
"Nyarlathotep, actually," the outer god corrected. "But you already knew that."
"Hey, what do you mean, 'not really mortal anymore'?" Remus inquired hesitantly.
"Exactly that. Between what I did to you and what you did to yourself, you ascended. Not to godhood, mind you, but you're definitely above a mere human now. Any one of those things on their own, and you wouldn't have done it. Together, however..." Nyarlathotep motioned to the space around them with a wing and three tentacles. "You come here."
The world around him looked like a forest, but of obsidian-black trees, lit by a crimson sky. "Where are we?"
"Whatever you're seeing, that's just your mind's first interpretation of it. As you get stronger and your mind becomes accustomed to this place, you'll start seeing it for what it really is, understand? This is, for lack of a better term that you'd understand, the in-between. It is your new home."
Remus's head whipped back and forth. "What? No! I can't stay here, I have to go back!"
A tentacle pressed itself against Remus's cheek, calming him down. "Remus Lupin, I said home, not prison. You may come and go as you wish; that is your choice." The same tentacle twirled itself around Remus and picked him up, depositing him on his feet. "Walk with me.
"The in-between connects every point in space and time in the multiverse. From here, you can access everything that is, was, will be, won't be, can't be, isn't, doesn't, and shouldn't. You can go to places where the concepts of geometry, time, location, existence, communication, or any other abstract concept you can or can't imagine does or doesn't exist." One of the outer god's countless eyes gazed at Remus's face. "I see that you are confused. Allow me to vastly oversimplify it. Imagine a work of fiction; you can find a real version of it here, in one of the infinite worlds. You can also find any crossover of it with any other work."
A tall, cloaked figure walked between them, going the opposite direction. "Pardon me," it said in an extremely raspy voice. With a start, Remus realized that the figure was a dementor.
"Yes, angels, demons, dementors, djinns, phoenixes, and all sorts of other immortal beings live here, coming and going as they please," Nyarlathotep said. He pointed, this time with a finger. "See that small tree? That is your mind's representation of your home dimension. You will find, if you examine it, that you can see all the possible pasts and futures involved with it."
"Why is it so much smaller than the others?" Remus asked.
"Because it is younger. I broke off a branch from another world-tree and planted it there. Any time traveler in your old tree would find that they could not go forwards beyond a certain date in that timeline; in your current one, they cannot go back before that same date," Nyarl explained. "You and anyone you take with you, of course, being the exceptions. Now, I believe time travel might be a little difficult for you at the moment, though you should be able to access alternate versions of your present with ease. I also believe you can easily access your local afterlife variants, as well as any pocket dimensions attached to your timeline. Understand?"
"So, basically, I can move side to side within my own branch, but not up or down?" Remus summarized, making some assumptions based on what he was seeing.
Nyarl patted him on the back. "Exactly, although I think you'll find even that quite exhausting right now. You need to eat souls to gain this sort of strength, and currently, you've eaten only one sixty-fourth of Voldemort's soul, the smallest piece in fact. And speaking of that soul piece, you finished my third task for you. So, what would you like as your payment? There will be other opportunities for work in the future, so pick what you need now."
Remus thought. The answer came to him easily. "You told me that my payments needed to be selfish, right? Well then, I want power and knowledge. I want to be able to protect the people I care about."
"Good. I will return you to the place and time you left to come here, the morning of December twenty-second, 1981. Your past-self exits the room of requirement on the evening of January first, 1982. If you return to that room after that date, you will find it stocked with books and tools that you didn't have access to before. You will also find that you have the ability to slow your own passage through time to a small degree, allowing you to extend the time you have in the room. And lastly, if you ask it, you should find a larger portion of Voldemort's soul hidden within the room itself." Nyarlathotep chuckled (screeched-shrieked-wailed) and added, "Do try and savor it. Souls taste so much better if you chew first."
"I'll take that into consideration," Remus replied, honestly shocked that he wasn't lying when he said that. He figured that if there was any soul worth eating, it was Voldemort's.
"Good. Now, off you go my wonderful little employee."
Remus awoke with a gasp, sitting upright in an instant. He could feel his heart beating in his chest, drumming in his ears louder than ever before. Not even his former werewolf transformations made him hear his own heart that loudly.
He looked around. The windows of the house had a thick layer of frost on them, as did the garden plants, but that was about the extent of the damage. A wave of his wand and a quick warming charm later, and even that was gone.
Through the glass door, he could see the Dursleys watching him, a fussy Harry and Dudley in each of their arms. He smiled and waved. "I'm fine. It worked."
"That... was horrid," Vernon said as Moony stepped inside. "The cold... and that sense of hopelessness..."
Moony, of course, knew exactly what that was. "Dementor exposure. The curse I used gave me a dementor's powers, but as you can see, this is the cost. Luckily, there's an antidote: chocolate. It'll warm you up faster than hot tea by the fire, though that's good too."
The family raided their chocolate supply and started a fire. Remus made sure to keep his magical aura as tightly bound as he could so that the chill didn't return. Without the dementor-chill, without the whispers of Dumbledore's spells, and without the radiant evil of the soul fragment, the Dursley household was the most pleasant it had been in a while.
After a hearty breakfast, courtesy of Petunia, Remus gave them some advice. "Keep diaries and reread them often. We're defending against someone who can alter your mind and memories, so the best defense is leaving yourselves evidence that can be used to find yourself again. Get to know each other better, get intimate with each other. Learn each other's little nuances so that you can tell when they change."
Vernon chuckled. "You know, that almost sounds like marriage advice." He looked at his wife with the eyes of someone who was comfortably, happily in love. "I wouldn't mind a little more intimacy."
Petunia cracked a wry grin. "That sounds like magic."
Remus deliberately averted his gaze from the couple and focused on the boys. Unlike the first time he had come to see Harry, where Dudley was keeping his distance, now the two boys were practically atop each other as they played. Remus flicked his wand, animating the various plush toys scattered around the room. He made the plushy toys taunt the boys into chasing them; the boys obliged, toddling as fast as their chubby legs could carry them.
Moony smiled.
Remus had come to the Dursley household many times over the course days he spent waiting for his past self to emerge from the room of requirement. He found himself to be quickly becoming a close friend to Vernon and Petunia. Vernon was a practical man who loved efficiency and being in charge; it was a stark contrast to James and Sirius, but Remus found himself enjoying the down-to-earth man's company. As for Petunia, she struck Remus as the Slytherin version of her little sister — whereas Lily was like a hammer, Petunia was a sword.
The wizard also found himself dragged to one of the neighborhood's book club meetings, which was really a gossip party in everything but name. He was passed around and displayed like a trophy that Petunia had collected, even if she called him her friend. It would have been a bit insulting and uncomfortable had Remus not enjoyed being at the center of attention, but as it was, Remus loved it.
One of the women had brushed up against him and discovered his unusually high body heat. Once he'd convinced her and the rest of the room that no, he did not have a fever, he suddenly found the women being much more touchy-feely than before, especially the women he'd originally pegged as the most uptight.
To his surprise, he found a familiar face in the crowd. "Sorry I'm late," she'd announced as she shuffled into the room.
"Arabella? Arabella Figg?" Remus asked.
"Remus Lupin? It's been a while," she said, making her way towards him. She looked him over, her eyes taking in the slightly tight muggle clothes he wore. "I didn't expect to see you here. You are looking much better than the last time I saw you."
"You two know each other?" Petunia asked.
"As acquaintances, yes," Remus replied. "Arabella and I belonged to the same small organization, the one Lily also belonged to. It's not something I really want to talk about." Looking back at Mrs. Figg, he said, "I didn't realize you lived out here."
"Oh, I only moved here a few weeks ago," she replied. "I'm in number eight."
Remus's eyes narrowed. With Dumbledore being the way he was, he had no doubt that the squib was a spy for him, possibly not even willingly. The lights in the house flickered, while the cold and hopelessness oozed out of Remus's body. "Excuse me." He made his leave.
The sudden change of atmosphere killed the gossip party, leaving several of the guests alternating between confused glances between each other and curious stares at Arabella. Petunia, knowing a few more details, eyed Arabella with suspicion. As for Mrs. Figg, she felt that she was no longer welcome at today's book club meeting, and made her own exit.
Remus sat at the edge of his own property, waiting for his past self to come out. Past-Remus had just arrived home, meaning that he didn't have long to wait before past-Remus apparated away to gather the ingredients he'd needed. The crack of displaced air signaled his past's departure and gave him the all-clear.
Remus popped inside for only a minute, needing only to grab the mail his past-self had neglected to take with him. He flipped through the letters quickly. Three were Christmas cards, five were from people who'd been successfully cured of lycanthropy, one was a positive response from the DMLE regarding the letter he'd sent them about Dumbledore's behavior, and the last was a notification from Gringotts saying that the Potter will had finally been unsealed and enacted and that he'd received a small portion of the Potter fortune.
In regards to that last one, the Potters weren't that rich of a wizarding family and Remus hadn't gotten that much of what money they did have; it would pay the bills for a while, at least. To be honest, he was glad that they hadn't left him more; Harry deserved every knut of that little fortune.
The white-haired man wrote out a quick reply to each that needed it. He apparated to Diagon Alley, dropped the letters in the post box (since he didn't have an owl of his own at the moment), and then apparated again, appearing at the edge of Hogwart's wards.
He had to hide from Filch's cat once as he snuck in, but other than that, he made it into the castle for the second time with remarkable ease. Having only done it once before, and then only accidentally, Remus paced the length of hallway where the room was hidden, exactly retracing his steps from a month ago. Sure enough, the room opened for him.
This time, he found not a few books, but a virtual mountain of them. There were other things too, such as a wide selection of magical and physical exercise equipment, a pool, a kitchen, a bedroom — really, everything he needed to live there and maximize his training time.
But, the thing that drew his attention the most was a diadem sitting on a table near the door, bearing the crest of Ravenclaw. That it was Ravenclaw's lost diadem didn't attract his attention so much as what Remus could see in it with the exposed eye on his chest. It was a soul fragment from Voldemort, one twice as large as the one he'd extracted from Harry.
Remus didn't even hesitate as he called upon the vile magic to help him devour the soul fragment. It was exquisitely delicious and gave him a rush of pure power. As he chewed it up, he could see fragments of Voldemort's memories — not whole memories, but flashes of names, faces, emotions, and more, but never anything concrete.
The room snatched the diadem away from Remus the moment he had purified it as if it was afraid that he'd taint it again. He hadn't planned on anything of the sort, but Remus figured that he didn't mind so long as the room didn't throw books at him.
He settled into a routine almost immediately after. It took him a bit of work, but he eventually managed to slow his own passage through time, as Nyarl had said he could. It wasn't nearly as impressive as he'd hoped, squeezing only two extra hours out of every twenty-four; by comparison, a standard time turner could go back six hours every twelve. The upshot, however, was that there was no risk of world-ending paradox.
Following his acquisition of extra time, his schedule broke down like this: mornings were reserved for exercising his body and magic, midday ways for reading, afternoons were for practicing what he'd read, and evenings were for scrying and astral projection. There were only a few things he was interested in: Wormtail's location, the location of Voldemort's other soul fragments, Dumbledore's whereabouts, the Dursleys, and Sirius Black. He scryed the Dursleys to check up on them and Harry, and he used astral projection to talk to them and his Azkaban-bound friend.
"And that's what's happened so far," Remus told his fellow Marauder as he concluded his story.
Sirius leaned back against the wall of his cell. "Remus, if you weren't you, I wouldn't believe you at all. As it is, I don't believe you, but I believe you believe yourself. As such, I demand proof."
"Proof? Of what?"
Sirius gestured his hands around wildly. "I don't know. All of it."
Remus pondered the challenge. "Well, I think the boneless dementor is still stuck in that hole I dug. And I'm pretty certain I could get Nyarl to prove himself to you if I asked him the right way."
"You're insane," Sirius deadpanned.
Moony shrugged. "Lily once said that the whole world was mad. I'm not debating you two on that. Just... Maybe I'm letting it out a bit more than usual?"
"You are," Padfoot agreed. "Welcome to Wonderland, Moony; it's time for tea. Sit down, take a load off. Let us revel in our madness together."
Moony held up an imaginary teacup. "Cheers." He drank the imaginary tea.
"So, what else is new in the land of the free?"
Again, Remus shrugged, though this time he had a goofy grin on his face. "I wouldn't know; I'm not an American. In the land of the marginally oppressed, however, I seem to have become the object of much interest among the lonely housewives of Surrey."
Sirius gave him a thumbs up. A lecherous smirk spread across his face. "Way to go, Moony. Woo the hot mums with your animalistic charms. Show them the wild their domestic husbands can't give them."
As any university-aged man with a magically augmented libido would, Remus found himself enjoying the idea. Not that it was in any way proper or feasible, but the idea of sleeping with the various married women was abstractly tantalizing. He smiled. "I do like your thinking, Sirius Black."
For a while, Remus got away with acting as he had before he'd removed the horcrux from Harry's head, from before that conversation with Nyarlathotep in the in-between. Nothing had outwardly changed for him; he felt basically the same - fundamentally human.
But he couldn't pretend now, not with half of his arm missing. It didn't hurt, having had his limb blown off, but perhaps that made it all the worse. He'd been trying to combine two spells that didn't normally go together, and had underestimated how explosive the reaction would be. In the end, it wasn't the severed limb that made him question his humanity, but the fact that he was quickly regrowing the limb automatically. Humans didn't do that.
"Nyarlathotep..." he murmured.
"You called?" Remus spun. There, in the room with him, was the outer god.
"Why?" That was all he could articulate. There were so many questions buzzing through his head, fighting to get out, that the only word he could say was the one word they had in common. Then something came to mind that helped him put his feelings to words. "You've been leading me on, pointing me down a path. Before I knew it, I'm halfway down with no way up. So what the hell do you want with me?"
"Many things. You are correct in your assumption that I am leading you 'down,' meaning away from humanity. And you are right that there's no longer a path back up. But there's not just one path before you. There are billions of possible futures, of which I would like you to end up in any one of them. There are billions more that aren't on the path I set for you, but don't prevent you from reaching one of my goals if you come back later, or from stumbling on it by yourself. And then there are billions of futures where you become something else entirely. To use a metaphor, I am the wind in your sails, but the ship is yours, Captain Remus."
"And what are those futures you want like for me?" Remus asked.
The outer god's human disguise smiled. "Pleasant, but busy."
After a moment of the god not speaking, Remus asked, "Is that it?"
"How else do you want me to summarize a billion futures?" the god countered. "I may be quintillions of years old, but even I don't want to spend a hundred billion years explaining it all to you."