Withdrawal is hell. Remus hadn't realized quite how reliant he'd become on his near-daily cocktail of substances until they're all taken away. He spends the better part of three days shaking and sweating and begging for just a little hit of something, and when his initial seventy-two hours are up, Anton puts him on an indefinite involuntary hold. This doesn't go over well.

"You can't do this!" says Remus. "I'm not a prisoner, am I? Don't I have rights?"

Anton doesn't bat an eye. "Of course you have rights, Mr. Howell. If you'd like, I can put you in touch with the hospital's lawyer."

Remus accepts the offer, already knowing it'll be a dead end. Maybe if he makes enough ruckus, they'll kick him out just so they don't have to be bothered anymore.

On the fourth day, Remus wakes up from a particularly bad nightmare, and he slams his head repeatedly against the wall to shake it from his mind. It takes three Healing Assistants threatening to stun him to make him stop and settle down.

"Sounds like you had a tough night, Mr. Howell," says Anton at their morning session the next day.

Remus runs a hand through his hair. His head is still a little sore. "You can just call me John," he says tiredly.

Anton smiles. "Alright, John. Want to tell me about what happened?"

"Not really."

Anton puts Remus back on Prozac and says he should start feeling a lift in the next few days. Remus knows that no "lift" will ever compare to the high of Liquid Lightning or cocaine or Helios Oil or crushed up pills or the thrill of seeing Sirius appear beside him like nothing had ever changed. The craving itches beneath his skin, and when Remus tries to scratch it out, Anton puts a softening charm on his hands and gives him an ice cube to hold against his arm. Remus chucks the ice back at him and tells him to fuck off. Someone threatens to stun him again.

There are ten other patients in the mental ward. Everyone pretty much keeps to themselves. They eat meals together, and sometimes play Wizard's Chess in the rec room, but that's essentially the extent of their interaction. With nothing to do and no one to talk to, Remus is restless and agitated, constantly pacing around and twitching with anxious energy. He spends an entire day doing laps around the ward, refusing meals, refusing to speak to Anton, refusing to sleep. On the eighteenth hour of this, someone finally does stun him.

"John? There's a Mr. Dumbledore here to see you."

Remus freezes. He looks up from his book—the hospital's selection of literature is slim, but he managed to dig out a battered copy of War and Peace—and sees Albus standing next to the Healing Assistant, donning purple robes and a soft smile.

Remus splutters. "How—how did you—"

Albus approaches Remus slowly and takes a seat across from him. He nods to the Healing Assistant, who excuses herself.

"I have eyes and ears in all sorts of places," he says. "I've been worried about you, Remus. Ah, my apologies—it seems you're going by John now?"

Remus flushes. "It's just my stage name."

Albus laughs softly. "I hear you're taking Europe by storm. I'm sure you've been a fine addition to your band."

"It was a good distraction," says Remus. He looks away. "But I'm tired of distracting myself."

"I'm sure you are," says Albus gently.

There's a beat of quiet. The recreation room is empty save for a lone patient in the corner, who's scribbling furiously in a notebook and muttering to herself.

"Can you get me out of here?" asks Remus. "I really didn't try to—to do what they think I did. It was a misunderstanding."

Albus sighs. "I should never have left you to your own devices back in November. I will not make the same mistake twice. If the Healers have deemed you in need of inpatient care, I defer to their judgement."

Remus feels the floor being pulled out from under him. Desperately, he shakes his head. "Please don't leave me here. They're not helping me—I just feel worse than I did before. And I'm not worth their time. Or effort."

Albus makes a small, pained noise. "If you sincerely believe that you are not worth anyone's time or effort," he says, "then I have failed you more greatly than I realized."

Remus blinks. "What do you mean?"

"I wanted you to come to Hogwarts so you could experience what it was to be supported and educated and empowered—the experience every magical child is entitled to. I should have done more to make you feel…valued."

"You went above and beyond for me," protests Remus. "You did everything you could. I'm just broken."

Albus lowers his head into his hands. He takes a moment to compose himself, and when he looks back up at Remus, his eyes are wet. "You are in terrible pain, Remus. You are not broken."

The words pinch Remus in some tender place deep inside his ribcage. The sensation nearly makes him flinch—now that he's sober, his emotions are amplified and sharpened, coursing in a volatile rhythm just below his skin, and he doesn't even have a blade or a cigarette or a doped-up needle to relieve the pressure. It's agony.

"Why am I still here?" whispers Remus. "Why did it have to be me who was left behind?"

A tear drips down Albus's cheek and vanishes into his silvery beard. He reaches over and cups Remus's face in his soft, wrinkled hand.

"If only you knew," he says quietly, "how many times I have asked myself that very same question. How I wish I had an answer. How I wish I could take this burden from you."

"But you can take it from me," insists Remus. "Help me get out of here, and I can—I can be at peace."

Albus is crying in earnest now, silently and steadily. "My dear boy," he whispers, "I love you far too much to let you go that way."

Remus's hands are shaking. "If you really cared about me, you wouldn't let me keep suffering."

Albus just shakes his head. "This is the only way I can help you, Remus," he whispers. "I'm sorry it has to be like this. But this is the only way. I hope you will come to see that."

Remus curls his legs into his chest and rests his head in his knees. He doesn't move until long after Albus leaves.

Remus develops a new strategy. He's decided to come completely clean and give Anton a quick but thorough speed-run of his life. Surely, after hearing it all, he'll agree that Remus doesn't have much going for him; maybe most people deserve to be helped, but Remus can prove that he isn't among them. And once Anton is on the same page, he'll have Remus discharged and let him do the world a favor by leaving it for good.

"So, you were bitten when you were…five years old?" asks Anton, jotting something down in his notepad.

Remus nods. "And my father hated me for it. He felt like it was his fault, the whole incident, so he was pretty torn up. He ignored me most of the time."

"I see," says Anton. "And your mother?"

"We were very close. She died when I was sixteen. Brain cancer."

Anton purses his lips. "I'm sorry for your loss. Can you tell me a little more about her?"

"I'd rather keep going, if you don't mind," says Remus. "I have a lot of ground to cover."

Anton waves him on. A few minutes later, he's struggling to keep up as Remus details his school years.

"So, this…Marauding gang…consisted of you, James, Sirius, and Peter? And they all became Animagi so they could transform with you on the full moons in the…shack…underneath the…murder tree?"

"Yes."

"And in your fifth year, Sirius told your enemy—uh, Snake, to go to the murder tree on the full moon and see you in your werewolf form?"

"It's Snape. But, yes."

"Snape…isn't he the one you said you just ended a relationship with?"

"Not a relationship. Just sex. A few different times. But, yes. We stopped seeing each other because he's a prick."

"Right." Anton frowns slightly. "And the incident with Snape and the murder tree was…before or after your first suicide attempt?"

"After. That was back in the fall, and the Snape prank was in the spring."

"I see." Anton blows out a puff of air as he rereads his notes. "So, this…prank…disrupted your relationship with Sirius, I imagine?"

"Well, yeah. I didn't speak to him for the rest of the year or pretty much all summer. But then my mum got sick, and he…wanted to be there for me. So I tried to trust him again. I had also been in love with him since third year, and I—I missed him. I wanted to forgive him, and eventually, I did."

"But at this point, Sirius…didn't return your romantic affections?"

"Well, I didn't think he did. I was planning to take it to my grave. But then in the winter of sixth year, he came to visit me over Christmas break, and we went out walking in the snow, and he…he reached over to brush some of the snow off my hair, and then we just sort of stared at each other until he leaned over and kissed me. After that, we were always together."

"But you mentioned the relationship was a bit tumultuous?"

Remus nods. "We fought a lot. Mostly about stupid stuff. We were very different—we communicated in different ways, and reacted to things in different ways. Drove each other mad, sometimes. But I think we both just had this feeling that…that we were the only people for each other. So we kept coming back."

"I see." Anton flips to a fresh sheet of paper. "So by the time you graduated, We-Know-You had been in power for several years already, yes?"

Remus doesn't bother correcting him. "Yes. And my friends and I all joined our headmaster's vigilante group to help fight him."

Anton pauses and does a double-take. "Let's rewind for a moment," he says. "I think we sort of glossed over your first suicide attempt. Let's circle back to that."

"What else is there to say about it?" asks Remus impatiently. "I was fifteen. I'd hated myself for my entire life, and I didn't want to take up space anymore."

"Was it at this point that you were first prescribed medication?"

Remus nods.

"And am I to assume that you also received some sort of diagnosis?"

"Depression—persistent depression, I think he called it? Dysthymia, maybe?—and anxiety. And a panic disorder."

"Had you already been self-harming before the attempt?"

Remus shakes his head. "I started after. The meds helped a little, but it was still…I was still bad. I mostly stuck around for Sirius, because he was really torn up after I…after it happened."

Anton hums and jots something else down.

"Did Sirius know about the self-harm?"

Remus feels that they're really starting to veer off topic. "Well, yeah. He didn't like it, obviously. But he couldn't get me to stop, so he'd just take care of me afterward and make sure the cuts didn't get infected. I didn't do it very often, anyway. Not usually."

Anton seems to sense Remus's irritation, because he tells him to keep talking about what happened post-graduation. Remus fills him in on the rest of the war, his spy work with the werewolf packs, the final decline of his relationship with Sirius, the cold shoulder from his friends who no longer trusted him.

"And then Sirius broke the Fidelius Charm and betrayed Lily and James and their son to You-Know-Who, and then he blew up Peter and twelve other Muggles in broad daylight, so he got life in Azkaban," he concludes. "That's why I don't want to live anymore."

When Anton doesn't immediately respond, Remus prods, "It makes sense for me to die, doesn't it? I've got nothing left."

To his dismay, Anton doesn't voice his agreement. He doesn't even nod. "What have you been doing since Sirius's imprisonment?" he asks instead.

Remus blinks, feeling a bit thrown off. "I got rid of the flat we shared. Then I went on a bit of a bender and ran into an old friend who asked me to Obliviate her because she couldn't stand the memories of the war. After that, I went to Paris and worked as a chef for a little while, but I got fired because of all the drugs, and I ended up getting asked to join this band who needed a pianist. So I've been traveling with them."

"Hm." Anton sets his notepad aside and gives Remus a thoughtful look. "What was going through your mind, right before you attempted?"

Remus feels himself getting frustrated, but he tries to keep his composure. "What do you mean?" he asks.

"Well," says Anton, "did something trigger it?"

Remus shakes his head. "I just realized I was living on borrowed time. I would have offed myself right after it happened if I hadn't been…well, I got it in my head that I was doing them all a favor, by staying alive. But then I realized that wasn't true."

The panic is back again, crawling and buzzing over his skin like insects. He presses a hand to his chest and tries to count back from one hundred. He only makes it to ninety-two before the panic intensifies.

"Fuck—are you sure there isn't anything you can give me?" he wheezes.

Anton, as usual, tells him no. He sits with Remus and talks him through the panic until the shrill buzzing quiets to a low hum.

"Why don't we end here for today?" says Anton kindly. "This is obviously very draining for you to talk about. But I'm really impressed, John—it took a lot of courage for you to tell me all that. And if you can continue being honest with me, I think we'll have a much easier time working together."

Remus feels like a bucket of ice water has been dumped over him.

Maybe it was stupid to think that the man whose job is to keep Remus alive would give Remus his blessing to go kill himself.

Yes, it was definitely stupid.

But wasn't it equally stupid to keep dragging Remus along like this? To keep trying and trying, when it was obvious he'd never change? That he was a lost cause?

That he was too tired to be found?