Interlude: A Summer of Turmoil

With the dramatically tumultuous end of their fifth year being what it was, it was no surprise that the summer before sixth year got off to a rocky start for all of the students involved in the incident. James's initial anger at Sirius for his part in the almost-tragedy had not faded by the time the Hogwarts Express set out from Hogsmeade, and Sirius chose to go home with Peter for the summer rather than spend it with the Potters. But after only a week or so apart, James had managed to convince himself that things hadn't really been as bad as all that, and that Sirius couldn't possibly have been expected to know that Snape was stupid enough to confront a werewolf, so it wasn't really his fault anyway. This sudden shift may have been partly due to the well-meaning efforts of Mr. and Mrs. Potter, who, not knowing what exactly James and Sirius were fighting about, assumed it was a minor brotherly spat and encouraged their son to reach out to his friend. James, despite knowing deep down that his parents' advice was meaningless without their knowing any of the context, eagerly latched on to anything that would allow him to overcome not only his rift with Sirius, but his own lingering guilt. By the end of two weeks James had written to Sirius and invited him back to Potter Manor, and his friend, bored to tears with only Peter and Mrs. Pettigrew for company, accepted immediately. Double Trouble were so focused on mending their own relationship and reuniting that it barely occurred to them to think of Peter, firmly put back in his place as the least of the Marauders and abandoned as soon as someone better came along. Though the other boys had no way of knowing, their actions that summer were the beginning of the end, setting Peter on a path that would lead to treachery and tragedy for them all in the years to come.

Remus himself was nearly as forgotten as Peter that summer, at least as far as the Marauders were concerned. Admittedly, he had never interacted much with the other boys in the summer months other than a few letters, but even those went unsent that year. The werewolf boy was too angry at his so-called friends to bother writing to them, still unable to believe that they had set him up to potentially kill any other student, let alone someone who he considered his friend as well. He had been told that he had clawed at Severus as a wolf, and knew that he could just as easily have bitten him, or Lily when she came to help the Hufflepuff boy. The thought that he might have killed them or cursed them with the wretched life that he himself was forced to live was unbearable. He spent the summer alone, wallowing in guilt and misery, sure that the Hufflepuffs must hate him. Lily wrote to Remus every week, and Severus several times over the course of the summer, but he threw away all their letters unopened. Remus didn't hate himself quite enough to subject himself to reading letters that he assumed were full of loathing and blame for what he had done and almost done to them. He eventually admitted to his mother what had happened and she tried to console him, claiming that it wasn't his fault at all, only that of the other boys, but Remus assumed she was just lying to comfort him. His father berated him for not being more careful, for jeopardizing his place at Hogwarts, just barely stopping short of blaming him alone for the entire incident. Mr. Lupin's words were full of the fear and shame that the wizard could never quite hide from his werewolf son; they were far more believable to Remus than Mrs. Lupin's placations.

Nightmares plagued Severus, twisted memories of walking into a room expecting to see his favorite professor and being instead attacked by a wolf. In his dreams he couldn't run, could only face down a horrifying monster with glowing red eyes and blood-covered fangs while Potter and Black cheered from the sidelines. He felt himself being torn apart in those nightmares, saw Lily staggering down a shrinking tunnel with her robes soaked in blood. Some nights his dream self killed the wolf, and it transformed back into Remus before dying, staring at him in fear and confusion with eyes begging to know why Severus had killed him. Many nights he woke shaking, shivering despite the heat of his tiny bedroom, hoping that he hadn't cried out and woken his parents. He hadn't told them what had happened at the end of the year, and it didn't seem that the school had sent them any sort of message. Severus wasn't sure whether to feel upset or relieved by that fact. His mother had noticed the new scar on his arm, but had apparently been satisfied with the potions accident he had made up to explain it. His father hadn't even bothered to ask, if he noticed his son's injury at all. Severus counted the days until he could return to school and get away from the little house that felt even more suffocating than in years past. He wandered beside the river and through the dirty streets, trying to make sense of his own thoughts. He wished he could see Remus, talk to him and reassure himself that the boy he had befriended was still there, that he would not be left with only the monster of his dreams. Severus had never had an issue with werewolves in general, or with Remus when he had known theoretically that the Gryffindor was one, but he could not instantaneously push aside the terror of meeting the wolf face to face, no matter how much he wanted to. He hoped it would become easier to separate the monster from the friend.

Lily spent the summer writing letters. Letters to Remus, to which she received no response. Letters to Severus, in which she poured out her heart and soul, confessing the fear she had felt when she saw him staggering down the tunnel under the willow, her anger at Sirius Black and James Potter, and her worries about Remus and what he must be going through. Letters to the other Gryffindor boys, horrible hateful letters cursing them for what they had done to her, to Severus, to Remus — those letters she burned, or shredded into tiny pieces, and felt better for it. She even wrote letters to herself as a sort of diary, trying to understand her own swirling mess of emotions, though she had stopped keeping a journal long before she went off to Hogwarts. The writing helped, stopped her from bottling things up. Talking helped too. She had debated whether to tell her parents what had happened, but they had seen through her happy facade immediately, and their gentle prompting had let to her tearfully explaining the incident within an hour of getting home from the train. Curled up on the couch with her parents' arms wrapped around her, she was able to start putting herself back together. It would take many such evenings, times when she could simply talk and they would listen, before she felt ready to face returning to Hogwarts, but it would come. More than once in the summer both Hufflepuffs wished that Severus's parents had a telephone in their house so they could talk without waiting for the slow muggle mail system. But reading Severus's letters helped too, and she hoped that hers were helping him as well; to his surprise the boy found that the letter writing did help, both the sending and receiving. The anger would eventually lessen, though it could never be forgotten entirely, and the fear and hurt would fade with time.

Author's Note: Thanks for reading! If you're enjoying the story, please feel free to leave me a comment to let me know what you think! Sorry that this was such a short chapter, I wanted to keep this summer interlude as a standalone so that it could serve as a clear turning point in our story, a moment to reflect on where things stand and where they're going before we move into the second half of the story starting with sixth year. Our next chapter will have a lot going on, so stay tuned!