November 30th, 1982: Remus Lupin

Lily brews the Wolfsbane Potion herself again this month. She's handed off the potion that goes with the Fidelius Charm to Alice, who's been teaching it and others to Reg and Arabella, but she insists on being personally responsible for anything to do with easing Remus's transformations even after he suggests she give herself a break from it for a while. "It'll be good for me," she tells him when he tries to ask her if Alice might want to brew it next month. "It keeps my mind off of things."

"It's just—you lost James right on the heels of losing Em and Mary, and that wasn't long after Marlene died, either. You moved into the same house as Snape, for god's sake."

"Yes, well, all of that happened to you, too."

"But Snape wasn't my best friend once," he says with pursed lips. "And I didn't just find out… what Sirius did to him in fifth year."

"Remus, it's nothing. I'm past it," she says rather tartly.

"Are you? Because it's been over two weeks, and you're still burying yourself so deep in him that I'd think you were after my boyfriend if I didn't know you were avoiding the way you feel about him—if I couldn't see the way you look at him sometimes."

Lily flushes. "We've been over this. I'm sorry I kissed him, okay? It was a stupid moment of weakness, and it's not going to happen again. I don't even have feelings for him—not those kinds of feelings, anyway."

"Lily, it's fine. I know you don't," Remus sighs. "I'm not concerned because I think you're trying to steal him away from me. I'm concerned because you've had a shock that you don't seem to really be processing. You can't just drown yourself in Sirius until you forget what he did."

"Can't I?" she snaps. "After all, that's what both of you keep saying that you did when it first happened, isn't it?"

And Remus doesn't have a reply to that—not a good one, anyway. "You're better than me," he says finally. "You don't deserve to have to cover up the way it makes you feel about him."

"What if I'm not better than you? What if I'm just as codependent—make just as many excuses? I married James and befriended you and Sirius and Peter knowing full well everything you'd all done to Severus over the years, didn't I?"

"You can't think like that. James—"

"—Was a bully, and Severus was a Black Magic-loving Death Eater, and Sirius was apparently an attempted murderer, and these are the people I've chosen to allow into my life. I mean, I may as well accept who I really am, right? I'm a terrible, gullible, hypocritical person, and I deserve exactly whom I've chosen for myself. It's not like I have a choice, right? We're all trapped in this house together. Nobody's going anywhere else."

"Lily—"

"I'll brew the potion next month again," she says adamantly. "Sitting on my arse doing nothing about the war or Severus or Sirius or you, for that matter, isn't going to help me 'process' or whatever it is you think I'm supposed to be doing. At least this way I can do something to move forward."

She has a point: it's probably not helping her to be stuck in this house with very little to do all day besides hang around him, Sirius, and Harry. Remus feels moderately guilty about none of them talking much to Alice, who's been gravitating mostly toward Frank, Sturgis, and Kingsley since getting out of Azkaban. He even feels a little guilty knowing that Peter is locked in the attic with nobody for company except, occasionally, Reg.

It's strange being stuck in Grimmauld Place with the same few people day in and day out. The cliquey claustrophobia reminds Remus a lot of Hogwarts—feeling trapped in time and totally absorbing himself in drama to distract himself from how powerless he really feels. Of course, this time, it's not like Hogwarts at all: this time, one of his best friends is a two-year-old, and the Order is debating at meetings about whether they ought to be assassinating Death Eaters.

He wishes Dumbledore were here to formulate a plan that everyone could agree on. Then again, as badly as Remus feels that Dumbledore's still stuck in Azkaban, Dumbledore was awfully secretive about the Horcruxes: if he were here and did have a plan, he probably would leave Remus and the others all in the dark about what exactly it was.

Remus knows there are others who wish Dumbledore were here to turn to, but nobody dares bring it up at meetings, not when Reg worked so hard to get them all free and probably feels awful about letting Dumbledore down. Besides, it's not like they can do anything to break him out of Azkaban now. Reg was the Order's only chance at freeing anybody from outside: now that his cover is blown, there's nothing anybody can do.

Undecided on how to proceed with the war effort, Remus and the rest of the Order don't have much to do to occupy their time here in Grimmauld Place—but as hard as it is on Remus, it's got to be ten times worse for Harry. The poor kid spent more than the first year of his life trapped in Godric's Hollow, and now that he knows what it's like to go outside and actually experience the world, he's not taking it nearly as well as he took being stuck in Grimmauld Place. It's a good thing tonight is a full moon: telling Harry that he can spend the night playing with Moony and Padfoot just barely rescues Lily from the throes of a toddler tantrum.

He does what he can to keep Harry occupied during the day, knowing Lily would probably drown without Remus and Sirius's help. Frankly, he doesn't know how she's holding on without James. Remus doesn't know how any of them is holding on without James.

Sirius transforms a couple of hours before Remus does, and Padfoot is chasing Harry around the kitchen when Remus looks up to find Alice and Reg both hovering in the doorway, a stack of dirty dishes levitated in the air behind them. "Hey," Remus says, unsure what else to say. It's not like he and Alice have particularly spent much time around each other since before Azkaban, not like Remus knows he owes her after how rough she had it in there. Plus, everybody knows that the person Remus is dating—the person with whom he's allied himself—is leading the opposite side as Reg and Alice of the debate about whether the Order should become vigilantes again.

"We were just going to clean up from dinner," says Alice awkwardly. She brightens a little when Harry runs to her and flings his arms around her legs, Padfoot following and barking happily. When Alice crouches down to pull Harry into a proper hug, she grins when Padfoot takes the opportunity to lick all over her hands.

"Padfoot, that's disgusting. Have some manners," says Remus dryly.

"I don't mind," Alice murmurs. She looks sad again, suddenly, and Remus wonders if she's regretting that Neville won't be here to join Harry for tonight's full moon.

"Where's Lily?" asks Reg.

"Taking a nap upstairs," says Remus equally nonchalantly, even though everyone in this room (except Harry, anyway) knows that there's no way Lily's actually asleep. "Here, let me help you with these," he adds, nodding toward the dishes. "Pads, are you okay to look after Harry for a while?"

Padfoot barks and nuzzles into Harry's side. Harry squeals.

It doesn't take long to siphon the scraps off the plates and silverware, dry them, and stack them where they belong: they've got magic to help them, after all. When they're done, Alice looks just about ready to slouch off with Reg again, but Remus suddenly knows what he needs to do. They've got a responsibility to loop her into their lives, he and Sirius and Lily, and if there's one thing Remus can do to involve her—

"Al, can I talk to you upstairs?"

"Aren't you transforming soon?"

"I've got at least an hour before I do. Please?"

xx

When the whole damn story unravels, Alice sits there staring at him in silence for such a long time that he's convinced he's just lost all of her respect. "Oh," she finally says.

"Do you hate him?" Remus pleads. "Do you hate me?"

Eventually, Alice shakes her head. "It's not that."

"Then—what is it? I mean, I know it's bad. I don't think murder was what was going through Sirius's mind at the time, but—"

"No, that's not what I mean," she adds, and Remus wonders for a second if she—"It's just… you're telling me that's what Lily has been so worked up about lately? We're in hiding for our lives, and almost half the Order has died over the last few years, and the Death Eaters are running the Ministry—and Lily's throwing a fit about some drama that went down between the four of you blokes and Snape all the way back in fifth year?"

Remus closes his jaw and gives this a moment's consideration. "Okay, yeah," he says finally. "I know how this probably sounds to you—"

"After the dementors… I just don't have it in me to care who hurt whom that many years ago. It's in the past, and we have bigger problems now."

"I know that, and I'm not going to say I'm not relieved you see it that way, but… it's more complicated than that for Lily. For her, it's like it's happening right now, and it's especially confusing because of her history with Snape and the fact that James never told her what went down. I think… I think she sees it like James introduced into her life the man who almost had her best friend killed and convinced her to trust him without ever revealing who he really was or what he was capable of."

Alice's lips twist. "So what you're saying is that you think I'm supposed to hate you both and Pettigrew and James's memory, too, for knowing about this and sitting on it?"

"Yes? No? I don't know. It… wasn't just some stupid fight we got into years ago. There were high stakes. Two people almost died."

"James ended up dying anyway," says Alice flatly, "and who knows how many people Snape killed before he switched sides? What would it have mattered?"

And Remus doesn't think he fully appreciated until this very moment just how badly Azkaban affected Alice—how lost she is without Neville here. "I… Al…"

"Don't say you're worried about me," she mumbles, folding her hands on each other in her lap. "I'm just being practical."

"Alice—"

The door bangs open—it's Reg, looking flustered and red in the face. "We're having a meeting downstairs. Ten minutes."

"But—I'll be Moony before it's over. Can't it wait a night?"

"Sturgis got the curse-identification orb working. We need to decide what to do about it before it goes off—and with the way things have been going, it's probably going to go off tonight."

Remus and Alice look at each other. "I'll get Lily up," he offers. "You two keep rounding everyone up."

"Okay," says Reg, but Alice doesn't look satisfied and asks, "You know how Reg and I are voting, Remus. Can we count on your support?"

And Remus knows he could make excuses to get out of this—protest that he won't be able to defend anybody's position when he's stuck as Moony for the night, unable to speak or write or do anything but bark incoherently to try to convey his thoughts. If he wanted, he could offer to keep Harry company upstairs, away from the action; if he wanted, he could keep straddling the line between sides, put off the moment he's got to tell Sirius what he really thinks of his and Lily's plan.

He sucks in a breath.

"I'm with you," he swears, and a little of the tension that's been behind Alice's eyes all these weeks lightens.