This is also posted on ao3!

TW/ depression, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempt, drug use, bad BDSM etiquette & aggressive/angry sex

(it gets better, but our boy is gonna be suffering for a while & has zero healthy coping mechanisms)

After he's released from the Ministry holding cell, Remus caves to gravity.

Whatever life force kept him upright during the interrogations—sleepless nights chained to a chair, feverish from the unlawfully high Veritaserum dosage—abandons him the moment they return his wand and tell him he's free to go.

Mad-Eye gives him a gruff pat on the back. "We have to cover all our bases—you understand."

Remus looks at him blankly, too exhausted and hollowed out to register the half-apology.

"The funerals," he whispers. "Do you—when are they?"

Mad-Eye's slight flinch tells him all he needs to know.

"They're over, lad. The Potters' was on Tuesday, and Pettigrew's was the day after."

Moody looks away from Remus's empty stare and clears his throat.

"Go on then, lad. Go home."

Remus should be grateful to Moody. If it weren't for his supervision, the Aurors wouldn't have bothered to keep their interrogation methods above-board. Mostly above-board, anyway. But as far as Remus is concerned, Moody should have let the Aurors wring out every last drop of pain before bleeding him dry and leaving him for dead. But then he stumbles out onto the crowded London sidewalk and flinches back from the sharp sunlight. People shove impatiently past him on either side as he stands motionless in the middle of the path, and Remus thinks that maybe this is a fitting punishment, too: to be the last one left.

To be a ghost stranded in the world of the living.

He doesn't know why he goes back to the flat. He and Sirius hadn't been living together for over five months—the lease was still in Sirius' name, and he'd continued to pay his half of the rent after he left, but he hadn't stepped over the threshold since that last fight. Still: maybe there's something here, some clue, some scrap of explanation for how—for why—for something.

When Remus unlocks the door, the lights are off, and he doesn't turn them on. His frantic search through the drawers and closets and corners yields nothing but a dust-induced coughing fit and a pile of shredded photographs: Sirius, kissing Remus's cheek at their first pride parade; Sirius in smudged eyeliner, showing off his new leather jacket and throwing his head back in a fit of silent laughter; Sirius on his motorbike with Remus sitting behind him, arms wrapped snugly around his middle. Sirius. Sirius. Sirius.

Remus doesn't realize he's hyperventilating until it's too late. He doubles over, wheezing, scratching at his throat. The panic burns his lungs like salt water. He has medicine for his anxiety attacks—half a Xanax washed down with a Calming Draught—but his hands are too numb to summon it. Dark static buzzes at the edge of his vision. He rests his head in his knees and counts backwards from one hundred. When he gets to zero, he does it again. And again. Again.

The flat is coated in a thin sheen of ice. Snowflakes hover in the air, frozen in place. Remus is still crouched on the living room floor. His nose and fingertips are blue with cold. He slips in and out of consciousness, shivering hard enough to rattle his teeth and jaw. The hunger doesn't hurt anymore. It's almost like he's not even here at all.

Albus is crouched in front of him, looking kind and sad and much, much older than he did a week ago. Remus doesn't know how he got inside.

"You're in shock, my dear boy," murmurs Albus. "You need to warm up."

Remus closes his eyes, too tired to shake his head. He shivers so hard that his whole body seizes. Is he sleeping again? It can't be time to wake up yet. It's still too early. It's the middle of the night. It's an iceberg in the ocean, and he's drifting away on it, farther and farther out until he slips over the edge and is swallowed by the black horizon.

When Remus was fifteen, he opened his wrists in the dormitory bathroom. You're better off without me, he'd written in the note on his bedside table. All I do is ruin everything.

It was Sirius who found him, of course—Sirius always found him—and Sirius who closed up the wounds before carrying him to the hospital wing. Sirius sobbed in his arms when he woke up.

"Remy," he'd choked out, "what the hell is wrong with you?"

Remus was lying flat on his back, staring up at the tiled ceiling. "I think maybe everything."

Because the Wizarding world offered little in terms of mental healthcare beyond Cheering Charms, Madam Pomfrey had Remus shuttled off to a Squib who worked as a Muggle psychiatrist. He gave Remus a full battery of tests and promptly diagnosed him with persistent depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and panic disorder.

"What does that mean?" whispered Remus. He scratched absently at the bandages on his wrists.

The psychiatrist leaned forward. "It means that you're a good kid, Remus, but you got dealt some tough cards. Your brain is wired a little differently, and that means you need to learn how it works so you can handle your stress and low moods."

Remus's throat felt tight. "What if I can't?"

The psychiatrist smiled. "I have a really good feeling that you can."

It didn't take Remus long to figure out what the man wanted to hear, and then tell him exactly that. He wrapped up his sessions after a few months and left on the last day with a smiley face sticker and a refillable Prozac script. He planned to take all the pills at once that night, but Sirius threw a wrench into his plot.

"I'm really proud of you, Rem," he said as they were getting ready for bed.

Remus's chest clenched. "For what?"

"For trying to get better," His eyes were dark and sincere. "I don't know what I'd do without you. So, thank you. For wanting to stay."

If Remus being alive made Sirius happy, maybe he could try to live a little longer. If Remus being alive made Sirius happy, maybe it could be worth it.

Remus wakes up to the hiss of a kettle. He's bundled in blankets on the couch. The lights are on and the ice is gone. Albus putters into the living room with a steaming mug, and when he hands it to Remus, the sweet waft of lavender and honey hits his face like a warm breeze. He takes a tentative sip and shudders as the hot tea slips down his throat, soothing the burn left from the Veritaserum.

"Thank you," he whispers.

He's handed a plate of buttered toast, too, but each bite sits like bile in his stomach, and Remus is only able to nibble at the crust before setting it aside.

The couch creaks slightly as Albus sits opposite him. He stays quiet until Remus looks up and meets his pained gaze.

"There are no words," Albus says quietly, "for the profoundly devastating loss you have suffered. All I can offer you are my sincerest condolences, and the assurance that you need not endure your grief alone."

Remus looks back down. The hands holding his mug are connected to his body, but he can't quite feel them.

"It's my fault," he says.

In an instant, Albus's hand is on his chin, firmly tilting it upward.

"Remus," he says, "hear me, and hear me well. What happened to your friends was not your fault. Sirius had the whole Order fooled—myself included. You bear no more blame than any of us."

Remus pulls away. Albus lets him.

"I know how you feel, Remus," he says softly.

Remus is about to snap at him, but something in the man's voice gives him pause. He glances over at Albus, who meets his gaze levelly.

"When I was seventeen," he says, "I fell madly in love with Gellert Grindelwald."

Remus opens his mouth, and then closes it. "Oh."

"Indeed."

They sit silently for a few minutes.

"Is Harry really alive?" asks Remus.

"He is."

Something like a dry sob heaves out of Remus. He gasps for a few seconds, fighting for control, before he's able to catch his breath.

"How?"

Albus shakes his head. "As to that, I can only guess. I have my theories, of course, but they are only that—theories."

Remus has approximately a thousand questions, but he only cares about the answer to one of them. "Can I see him?"

He reads the regret on Albus's face and knows what he's about to say.

"I'm afraid not, my dear boy." He places a firm hand on Remus's knee. "Harry is living with Lily's sister and her husband, and I believe it best that he remain secluded from the magical world until it comes time for him to begin at Hogwarts."

When Remus begins to protest, Albus raises a hand to silence him. "I know that Petunia and Lily had what was, at best, a strained relationship. However, her home is the safest place in the world for Harry—there are powerful blood wards in place to protect him from uncaptured Death Eaters and others who would do him harm."

Remus wants to argue, but the words don't come. What can he do? It's not as if a werewolf would be allowed to adopt the newly christened Boy-Who-Lived. And Remus is poison. Before they died, Lily and James had hardly spoken to him in ages, and he hadn't seen Harry since Christmas. The message was obvious, and Remus received it loud and clear.

He slipped from their lives with no protest, throwing himself into his Order work among the werewolf packs with renewed vigor.

It's for the best that he stay as far away from Harry as possible, he thinks. What right does he even have to the child? The least he can do is honor Lily and James's wish of having Remus out of their son's life.

"I worry about you living here on your own," says Albus. "Have you considered contacting your father? Perhaps going to stay with him for a while?"

Remus is shaking his head before Albus is even done talking.

"Please," he whispers. "Please, just go. I can't—I need to be alone."

Albus looks at him carefully, and then nods. His eyes are hesitant. "As you wish. I will not invade your privacy. But please, if you find yourself in need of support or anything at all, owl me right away. Promise me that you will."

Remus nods dully. "Yes, sir."

Albus squeezes Remus's shoulder on the way out and closes the door so softly that it doesn't even make a sound.

A few hours later, Remus is nursing his third pint at a seedy pub a few streets over. He has a high tolerance for alcohol—whether it's a werewolf perk or just his Welsh genes at work, he couldn't say—and he's barely begun to feel that steady calm humming in his skull. The place is crowded tonight, and nobody pays Remus any mind.

Until someone grabs him by the scruff of his collar and hauls him out to the back alley.

Remus splutters and kicks the man away, but before he can draw his wand, he's disarmed and shoved to his knees.

"Fucking pathetic, Lupin."

The voice is a low, sneering drawl with a bite like acid. Remus would recognize it anywhere.

"Snape."

The man is covered by shadow, but Remus can make out the outline of his long hair, his sharp nose, his lanky body pulled taut with anger.

He jabs his wand between Remus's eyes, digging into the bridge of his nose. "Did you know Black was the traitor?"

Snape's voice is so quiet that it's nearly calm, but his burning eyes give him away.

"No."

He scoffs, and suddenly Remus is falling forward into his own mind, silhouetted memories rushing through and around and over him like a blizzard. Within moments, Snape finds what he's looking for.

It's 2am. They're in the kitchen, half-drunk, and Remus is pleading. His hands are on Sirius's shoulders, and he's trying to make the taller man look him in the eye.

"Why won't you talk to me?"

"I am talking to you."

"No, you're not." Remus presses down against the familiar panic gnawing at the inside of his ribcage, sticking his lungs with shards of glass. "You won't talk to me. You won't look at me. You can hardly stand to be in a room with me. And you won't even tell me why!"

Sirius's hand slams down on the kitchen table hard enough to rattle the cabinets. "Because I don't know who you are anymore!"

The quiet that follows seems to stretch for years.

"What do you mean?" whispers Remus.

"I don't know who you are." Sirius sucks down a rattling breath. "You disappear for weeks at a time and you come home looking like hell and you tell me it's classified, that you're sworn to secrecy by Dumbledore—"

"It's true!"

"And you say you've been with the werewolf packs, spying, but we don't seem to be getting any closer to a solid alliance, and I can't help but think—"

"That what? I'm sabotaging it? I'm fucking up on purpose?"

"I'm saying that I don't know what to think. I'm saying that when I look at you, I don't know who I see."

"That's why Lily and James and Pete have been so distant, then," says Remus bitterly. "You've turned them all against me."

"I didn't do shit, Remus. Nothing you didn't already do yourself."

Remus looks at Sirius carefully. His hands, always so restless, are twitching more than usual, his fingers clenching and unclenching with sporadic tremors. His eyes are bloodshot.

"Sirius," says Remus softly, "have you been using?"

"That has nothing to do with this."

Remus takes a step towards him, and Sirius steps back just as quickly. "You know that stuff makes you paranoid."

Sirius snarls. "No, the pills are what make it bad—the ones your quack ex-therapist gave me. I think that "manic-depressive" shit he told me about is completely made up. You just want me to feel as fucked up as you are, don't you?"

Remus inhales slowly and counts to ten. "So you haven't been taking the lithium?"

"Flushed it ages ago. Not that you noticed."

Unable to look directly at the anger blazing on Sirius's face, Remus ducks his head.

"Why don't we just go sleep this off?" he says softly. "We can talk in the morning."

He reaches again for Sirius's hand and is again shaken off. For some reason, this angers him more than anything Sirius has said tonight.

"If you're so convinced I'm a traitor," says Remus, voice shaking, "why haven't you gone to Dumbledore?"

Sirius laughs, breathless and wild and utterly devoid of humor. "Because I don't trust him either, do I? There's a reason Lily and Jamie didn't make him Secret Keeper. The man defeated Grindelwald, and he hasn't been able to off You-Know-Who in almost eleven years?"

"You-Know-Who has far surpassed Grindelwald at this point," says Remus harshly. "You can hardly put them on the same level."

"Sure I can," spits Sirius. "And just because your own father doesn't love you doesn't mean you have to keep kissing Dumbledore's arse so he'll pat you on the head and tell you you're a good boy."

Remus swings his fist blindly. He stops himself before the strike lands, but the damage is done. Sirius flinches away violently, practically hurling himself backwards into the refrigerator. Remus sees the glaze of terror in Sirius's eyes and knows exactly what memories he has just unlocked. He has never hated himself more.

"You wanna hurt me, Moony?" pants Sirius. "Go ahead. Show me what you really are. Prove me right."

He holds his arms out by his side, open and defenseless. His jaw is quivering.

Remus turns away.

"If you don't trust me," he whispers, "why are you still here?"

"Honestly, Remus? I have no idea."

Remus is thrown abruptly from the memory, and he staggers to his feet in the dark alleyway. His cheeks are wet, and he hastily scrubs his face with his sleeve.

Snape watches him coldly, lip curled in disgust.

"Do you believe me now?" asks Remus.

"You're a hopeless Occlumens. Don't flatter yourself by thinking you could have possibly deceived me." His sneer sharpens. "If I didn't believe you, rest assured that you would be dead."

The words fill Remus with a strange, eerie calm. He feels far away from his body, yet deeply sunken into it. "Do it."

"What?"

"Kill me. You saw—I didn't know he was the spy. I let him get away with it. If I had known—if I had figured it out—"

"If you want to go hurl yourself off London Bridge, I certainly won't stop you," Snape interrupts coldly, "but I won't do you the charity of putting you out of your misery myself. I owe you nothing, Lupin."

He begins to stalk away. Suddenly, the idea of being alone feels unbearable.

"Wait!" calls Remus.

Snape stops, but doesn't turn to face him.

"I'm sorry about Lily. I know you cared about her. And she cared about you, too—I know she did."

Snape's hand is on his neck in an instant, shoving him against the damp brick wall.

"Don't," he hisses. "Don't you dare speak to me about her. You know nothing. You—" he cuts himself off and draws a shuddering breath. "You're not worth it."

Remus, very slowly, places his hand around Severus's, where the long, slender fingers are clenched around his neck.

"No," he says. "I'm not."

Snape fucks him in a musty room above a tavern. The sheer notion of it, of Remus going to bed with his sworn schoolyard enemy, is so absurd that it makes him light-headed. He's reminded of the laughing gas his mother's Muggle dentist had administered while he was getting his wisdom teeth removed.

Snape shoves him onto the lumpy bed and unbuttons Remus's shirt with detached precision, moving just quickly enough that Remus can tell he's not entirely uninterested. While he works, Remus alternates between fits of hysterical laughter and choking sobs. He can't remember the last time he's cried, really cried, and now he can't seem to stop.

"For the love of—" Snape steps back and glowers at him. "Pull yourself together right now, or I'm leaving."

"I'm sorry," gasps Remus. "I—it's just—it's so much."

He really didn't think Snape would go for it—he doesn't even know if the man is queer at all, or if he just can't pass up the silver-platter opportunity to humiliate Remus. Whatever it is, Remus doesn't care. He just wants to hurt.

Once he collects himself enough for Snape to continue, he lies back on the bed and lifts his hips so Snape can tug off his trousers and pants. Remus's bare body, crisscrossed with jagged scars from his transformations and neat, methodical scars from his own razor blade, draws no comment from Snape.

"Turn over." The words are clipped and cold, and Remus hastens to obey. Once he's on his stomach, Snape's hand is in his hair, yanking at the roots, pressing his face down into the pillow, holding him there.

"Look how easy you are," he murmurs in Remus's ear. "So eager for it, aren't you, you little half-breed slag?"

Another sob tears through Remus's chest. His body shudders.

"What is it that you want? Say it, or you get nothing."

Remus has to take several breaths before he's able to choke out his answer. "Please—please, I just want you to hurt me. Do whatever you want. Just—please."

A hand cracks down on his backside, and the sting radiates slowly across his skin. "Arse up."

Remus arches his back and draws his legs up into his chest. Snape mutters a spell, and Remus's hands are lashed together with tight cords, tying him to the bedpost. There's the slow clink of a belt being undone, and then Remus's backside is being torn into by a length of heavy leather. The rhythmic smacks are sharp and stinging, and he leans into the bright, explosive pain, chasing it, savoring it. He's hard by now, but he barely notices his own arousal. The force of the hits intensifies—Snape wants him to plead, to scream, to beg. Remus bites down on his bottom lip. He stays silent.

Sirius was a spectacular tease—he loved their ongoing wrestle for dominance, loved forcing Remus to break and bend to his will and then put him back together again. He loved helping Remus abandon his neurotic self-consciousness and making him admit, over and over, just how much he craved it—to be owned, to be protected, to be controlled and cared for. Remus would beg to be slapped around and ordered and degraded in that perfect, intoxicating way that made him feel like flying.

"My good, sweet little pet," Sirius had whispered to him once. He was buried deep in Remus's arse, gripping his jaw so Remus couldn't look away. His eyes were soft and reverent, pupils swollen wide to take in Remus's flushed, sweaty face. "Just lying there and letting Daddy take care of you. You're so needy, aren't you, love?"

In answer, Remus had thrown back his head and whimpered. He was so far under; it was like lying at the bottom of a warm pool, limbs heavy, senses dulled, and mind aware of nothing but the shape of the sunlight rippling atop the water.

"Good boy," said Sirius. "Such a good boy."

When Snape gets tired of hitting Remus, he pushes himself roughly inside him and comes abruptly after only a few thrusts. He doesn't offer to help Remus finish off. He cuts the ropes from Remus's wrists, whispers a cleaning charm, and zips up his trousers, the movements jerky and odd. It's a few moments before Remus notices the telltale shaking of his shoulders and realizes that the man is crying. He reaches across the space between them to rest a tentative hand on Severus's back.

It takes longer than he anticipates for Severus to shake him off.

The war brought out the worst in Sirius and Remus. A dark, ugly corner of Remus's heart was fiercely jealous of Lily and James, who grew only closer throughout those past few years, to the point that they seemed to understand one another perfectly without saying a word.

Even at the best of times—even back at school—Sirius and Remus were always more complicated than that: magnets with repelling ends that were drawn inexorably back together, over and over again, by a pull so strong it defied logic, defied physics, defied Remus.

They were dark matter and gravity, fighting as often as they were fucking, breaking up just to feel it more intensely when they crashed back together. The drugs didn't help, and nor did the war, but Remus thinks—knows—that somehow, it would have always ended like this.

Sirius would have returned eventually, just as surely as he would leave again. And Remus would be left to wait, one half of a ruined heart, pretending that he wasn't waiting by the door for a knock that wouldn't come.

When Remus was fifteen, the hurt inside him had pinched and smarted like a thousand pinpricks, a slowly festering infection.

When Remus was twenty-one, the hurt inside him felt like a black, bottomless pit. When he tried to peer into it, he saw nothing but oblivion.