Remus didn't do much of anything the next day.
Madam Pomfrey tried to get him to have a conversation, but he answered in monosyllables until she backed off.
He didn't eat much of his meals. Madam Pomfrey wasn't happy about that, but he didn't care.
He took a bath that afternoon, and he didn't emerge until his skin was pruned and his wounds ached horribly from the water.
His friends visited in the evening. Madam Pomfrey told them to wait outside, and then she peeked inside Remus' room and opened her mouth, presumably to ask if he was up for visitors.
Remus shook his head before she could even say anything.
She nodded, and then she shut the door behind her.
"What do you mean, he's not up for visitors?" Remus heard James cry. "He's always up for visitors! You have to let us in!"
"I do not have to let you do anything," Madam Pomfrey snapped. "Remus isn't feeling well, and he doesn't want to see you. He deserves to make his own decisions."
"Not stupid ones."
"Yes, even stupid ones. Now go find someone else to bother."
They left.
"Thank you," said Remus tiredly when she came back to his room.
"Oh, don't thank me," she said sharply. "I'm not happy with your decision, either. If it hadn't been my duty as the matron to let you rest when you wanted, I'd've let them in without even asking."
"But…"
"You're isolating yourself, Remus. I know it's tempting to isolate yourself when you feel like this, but it's not healthy. The best thing you can do right now is spend some time with them. It'll make you feel a little more normal, I promise."
"Why shouldn't I isolate myself?" Remus said. "Most of the population hates me to the point that some people think that werewolf apologists are Death Eaters, I'm ill all the time, and now I can't even get my mood under control. I'm being annoying and repetitive and I'm totally unfixable…."
"You wouldn't be unfixable if you would just take the damn potion."
"I'm not taking the potion."
"Fine! Then the second-best way to heal is seeing your friends. They're good for you."
"No. I'm tired. I'm tired of everything, and I feel like every single thing is such a huge chore. I can't."
"Remus…" Madam Pomfrey sighed. "You're in a very dark place right now. Just let your friends come in for a bit. They'll chatter about Quidditch and girls and whatever else you talk about. All you have to do is sit here and listen. That's not too much of a chore, is it?"
"It feels like one."
"Chores usually go a little bit easier once you start them. Starting is the hardest part."
"I just want to sleep."
"You've been doing nothing but that recently. You need to break the routine, or start a new one. It'll help you feel like you're in control."
"I don't want to!"
"So you want to keep feeling like this instead?"
"My mood doesn't matter! It's not going to help anything!"
"It helps everything!" Madam Pomfrey twisted her hands together, frustrated. "Remus Lupin, you listen to me carefully. As the Hogwarts matron who knows everything about physical health and next to nothing about mental health, I'm not equipped to deal with this. I've done my research, but I can't just fix it for you. You have to do one of two things to move forward: you have to either take the potion, or you have to take the necessary steps to move forward naturally. You can't just wallow in sorrow for the rest of your life, no matter how appealing it may sound. And no one is expecting you to be happy right now, but I am expecting you to move forward—just a little—bit by bit. Try. All right?"
Remus sighed. "All right," he said. "Let them in. Just for a bit. And could you tell them that I hurt my throat or something? I don't want to talk much if I can help it."
"Trust me: James Potter will not allow you to talk much regardless. I'll let them in, and I'm not going to lie."
Before she left, she turned back and gave Remus a long, searching look. "Thank you," she said. "I know it's unpleasant, but I do worry about you, you know. This makes me feel better, too."
"Okay," was Remus' minimal response, and then she was gone.
Madam Pomfrey thought Remus was sleeping, but he wasn't. He was present, therefore, to overhear her conversation with his friends outside the Hospital Wing. He prayed Manard was sleeping and/or not able to hear it, because that would give Manard even more ammunition to use against Remus.
"Give him about twenty minutes," Madam Pomfrey told them. "He'll be ready for you as soon as he wakes up."
James groaned. "Good. I can't believe he didn't want to see us. That's mad."
"Is he okay?" asked Peter. "He really has seemed… off, lately."
Remus heard Madam Pomfrey sigh, and then she said, "He's depressed."
Remus clenched his hands convulsively under the covers. That wasn't exactly public information… but Remus told himself that he didn't care, didn't care, because apathy was easier than caring.
"He's what?" asked Sirius after a slight pause.
"He's been a werewolf for nearly ten years. I… let's go further down the corridor."
They did, and now their voices were very, very quiet, but Remus could still hear them.
"He's been a werewolf for nearly ten years," Madam Pomfrey repeated. "I don't know if you can fathom the idea of going through what he goes through, month after month, year after year, but I assure you that it is worse than you can imagine. He has next to no chance of living to old age—stop it, Potter; I am his matron and I know better than anyone how broken his body is at the early age of fourteen—and he'll find difficulty in giving meaning to his remaining years when most of the world hates him, he's constantly incapacitated by full moons, and he's in the middle of a war.
"To Remus, things feel pointless. He's suffering so much and getting hardly anything out of it. The good moments don't overrule and make up for the bad moments. He has very little control over his own life… and he's tired of it. That's all. I've been expecting it for years."
"Why now?" Peter asked, and his voice was quiet enough that Remus thought perhaps he imagined it.
"That's what he asked me. We're not exactly sure, but these things can happen at any moment."
"Is he going to get better?" James asked.
"I think so," said Madam Pomfrey. There was a pause, and then she added, "I hope so."
"You hope so?!"
"Well, it depends on what you expect 'better' to look like. I don't think he was ever exactly mentally healthy. Going through what he does, I don't think anybody could be. But he's trying his best, and all you can do is be there for him… without smothering him, please. He'll work things out on his own terms. I just tell you these things so that you can be sensitive, and so that you know what's going on. He loves the three of you; he's just… not able to be available all the time. Give him space and time. "
Remus sighed and buried his head deeper into the pillow.
Space and time were two things that the Marauders were very bad at indeed.
His friends came back a little while later, and Madam Pomfrey let them in.
"Hey, Moony," whispered James, sticking his head through the door. "How are you feeling?"
"Fine," said Remus. His voice was raspy.
"Poppy told us it was bad this month."
"It's always bad."
"Yeah." James entered the room fully, followed by Peter and Sirius, and Peter closed the door behind them. Remus watched them, exhausted. His eyes seemed to be crossing and closing of their own accord… but he struggled to keep them open anyway, because for some reason, he didn't really feel like sleeping right now.
"I'm fine," blurted Remus. "I heard Madam Pomfrey talking to you lot in the corridor, but I'm fine. I really am. I'm just tired, that's all."
"She says you want more control," said James. "I can fix that."
Remus blinked blearily. "No, you can't. There is no cure for lycanthropy."
"No cure, maybe, but we can make it fun! We'll all be together on the night of the full moon—run around a bit in the Shack—play a game. Sleep. We can stop you from attacking yourself!"
"You sure can!" said Remus with sarcastic cheer. "You'll stop me from attacking myself by forcing me to attack you instead! It'll be such fun! What a lark!"
"That's not fair."
"It's true. Why do you think Dumbledore fixes up the furniture in the Shrieking Shack after every full moon? It's because I attack everything in sight, so he figures I may as well occupy myself with something besides myself. I will target anything in that room, human or not. Becoming Animagi will not help a thing."
"Yes, you've said all that. But come on! We won't know till we try."
"I don't want to try!" The words had come out far louder and more panicky than Remus had intended; Sirius cast a weak Soundproofing Charm on the door in alarm. "I don't want to try anything. I don't want to fix it. It's all so much work, it's so frustrating, it's so… so deflating when it turns out to be pointless."
"You can't deflate without being inflated first. Since you don't have any hope that it'll work, then it won't be deflating."
"No. No! My answer is no. Why can't you take no for an answer?"
"We wouldn't have to if you'd just say yes," said James.
"Sometimes I really hate you."
"And sometimes we really hate you, you self-destructive idiot!" Peter cried.
Peter?
Remus stared at Peter, totally stunned. "I've never heard you shout before," he said.
"Well, I'm really, really annoyed. You're my best friend, Moony, and you're just letting yourself die early?! You're okay with that? How is that even possible?"
"Of course I'm going to die early. Complaining about it won't solve anything. It's not that I'm okay with it."
"That's exactly what it is! You're okay with it! We have the opportunity to help you, and you just won't let us! I didn't even want to do it at first, because I was terrified, but I got through my fear and did something that scared me. I've always wanted to be brave, and I've never felt more brave than I did while holding that Mandrake leaf in my mouth. And then… what? I can't do it, just because you think maybe something bad will happen?"
"I'm not…"
"You're treating us like we're stupid! Everyone always calls me stupid, and I'm sick of it!"
"I'm not calling you stupid!"
"Yes, you are! You can handle it, because you're so much more mature than we are, is that right? You know so much better than we do, even though we've spent hours upon hours researching all this. You don't trust us to do it correctly, and you don't trust us to protect ourselves come full moon."
"Of course I don't!"
"Yes, of course you don't! I should have seen this coming, because we all know that Remus Lupin has a terrifically unhealthy obsession with being in control, and he'd literally rather die than pass off control to someone else!"
"I PASS OFF CONTROL EVERY SINGLE MONTH! I PASS OFF CONTROL TO A TERRIFYING, MONSTROUS, EVIL CREATURE OF THE DARK…"
"WHO, FOR SOME REASON, YOU TRUST MORE THAN YOU TRUST YOUR BEST FRIENDS!"
"IT'S NOT THE SAME THING!" Remus slammed his hand on his bedside table, which hurt immensely, but he didn't even flinch. "If I could give one of you control over my mind instead of… that awful, twisted version of me, I would. But this isn't the same thing! I'm still relinquishing control to the mind of a wolf… it's just that you three are putting yourselves in its path of destruction. It's not the same thing at all!"
"You're right, it's not the same thing. But my point still stands! You need to trust us to keep you under control. You need to trust us to stay away from your claws and teeth if need be. You need to trust us to go through the Animagus process correctly. If you're so concerned about us doing it wrong, then help us!"
"But…"
Remus wasn't sure how to finish that sentence, so he shut up. Peter drew a long, deep breath, and then he said, "I'm no genius, Moony, but I'm not stupid. Give us a chance to help you before you give up entirely. Please."
Remus looked at Peter, then James, then Sirius. They all stared at him with the same hopeful eyes.
"Is it really so bad to want to protect you?" Remus whispered.
"We've been asking you the same thing, except in reverse," said James. "You worry you're hurting us by letting us help you. We worry you're hurting yourself by refusing to do the same. The more logical choice would be to pick the option that has the possibility of no one getting hurt."
"If you keep up what you're doing now," said Peter, "then nothing is going to change. You'll be stuck in the same cycle, forever and ever, with no way out. But if you'd only break the cycle—switch up the routine—just a little bit—then you have a shot. Don't you want a shot?"
"I know I do," interrupted James. "Vodka sounds nice."
Remus snorted. "You'll never change," he said.
Never change.
Never.
Could Remus deal with never?
Never was an overarching, terrifying word—a black veil with nothing behind it. Never was the absence of hope, the absence of light, and the absence of good. Never, as Remus had learned summer before last, was the cornerstone of grief.
When John Questus had died, Remus hadn't really felt sympathy for him. The man had been a former Auror. He hadn't suffered, and he was used to pain, anyhow. He hadn't had a zest for life. He'd been expecting to die for ages. Remus hadn't felt bad for Professor Questus one bit, because he'd lived a full life and had nothing left to look forward to.
But he'd felt bad for himself, because grief came attached to never. Remus would never sit in Professor Questus' house again, drinking tea and talking through his problems. He'd never hear Questus' snarky, sarcastic remarks. He'd never be able to borrow from Questus' well of sometimes-misguided reason ever again.
Never always hurt. There were barbs attached to every letter, and they poked in all the wrong places.
And, oddly enough, never and always often went hand-in-hand. Remus loved routine primarily because of the always aspect of it: things would happen as expected, no matter what, forever and always. It was a promise. There was security in routine.
But security came with never, too. It would never change. It would never get better. It would never, never, never…
Remus hated the nevers.
When he finally spoke, his voice was pitifully broken. "I don't want to be responsible for your deaths," he said.
"You won't be. Not if we're careful."
"I… I'm sorry. I'll have to think about it. I can't give you an answer right now. I'm… not in my right mind, I'm ill, I'm… depressed, I guess. I can't give you an answer."
"So it's a maybe?" James asked.
"It's a…"
Memories, unbidden, invaded Remus' head. Crying in bed, blood all over, rain dripping through the broken window. Waiting in the dark, shivering, confused, as the full moon rose and his very first transformation approached. Days spent on the sofa, resting. Soup from his mother. Jokes from his father. Masking the pain, hiding it, keeping secrets, he was fine he was fine he was fine, because why make his parents cry if they couldn't even do anything about it?
The terror of the Shrieking Shack. The waiting. The Darkness—with a capital D, because even though Remus could see in it well, there was nothing darker than the Shrieking Shack in the hours leading up to the full moon.
Fact #15: Remus could remember everything he did as a wolf. The thought processes. The reasoning. The actions. It was still him—his motives and morality had just changed, and he didn't even realize it till morning….
Fact #16: Remus was afraid of himself.
Fact #17: Rigidity and Facts were good, but they were also bad.
Fact #18: Remus wanted company on the full moon more than anything.
Fact #19: His friends very rarely led him astray. He did trust them. Wasn't that what humans did? They trusted each other? Humans were codependent, while werewolves only cared about themselves…
Fact #20: Before Remus had even realized it, he had given his friends permission to continue their Animagi efforts. "Promise? No take-backs?" James had asked, and Remus had swallowed hard before affirming that he would not go back on his word. That, he decided, was the final Fact he was ever going to admit to himself, because some Facts really hurt.
His friends had left before Remus could change his mind, and Remus had cried, the apathy dripping from his body in one moment that was both relieving and horrifying.
"Maybe," hissed Manard's imaginary voice in Remus' head, "you have what feels like a human mind right now, but it's changing—little by little, day by day—and you won't even notice before you adopt the mindset of Fenrir Greyback. You'll start lying about little things—you'll say you feel fine, and then you'll say you're not angry, and then you'll say you don't feel a dangerous rage whenever you look at people, and then you'll say you didn't murder a student, and then… then you'll be too far gone, out of your control, and you won't even be able to tell right from wrong to know it."
Madam Pomfrey came in a little while later with some food. "How are you feeling?" she asked softly. "Did the visit help?"
"Not really," said Remus dully.
"I heard Black cast the Soundproofing Charm, but I figured you needed to talk alone."
"Thank you. Erm… Madam Pomfrey, can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"I was thinking. On the full moon, my motivations and morals change. I still have a brain, and I'm still thinking things through. I'm more… feral, I suppose, and animalistic, but I reason and plan. Not to the same degree, and not in the same way, but I definitely do. It's mostly the end goal that changes, you know?"
"All right."
"And I think I'm in the right at the time. It's sort of like when you're dreaming. You're thinking of all these crazy scenarios, but while you're in the dream, you don't realize how improbable they really are. You think, oh, this makes sense, and you don't realize how stupid it was until you wake up. Then you're stunned that you didn't realize that it was a dream. So you tell yourself, next time, I'll know, but you don't. You can dream of the exact same thing dozens of times and never learn. You know?"
"Yes, I believe I understand."
"It's a little bit like that. But here's the thing: if part of the dream is not knowing you're dreaming, then how do we know this is real?"
"…What?"
"Right now, I'm completely, one-hundred-percent convinced that I am a person. I am convinced that the me on the full moon is immoral and awful. My desires and reasoning makes sense to me, and I think I'm doing the right thing. But… on the full moon, it's exactly the same way. I genuinely think I'm in the right during the full moon, Madam Pomfrey. And if I'm totally certain that I'm right now, and I'm totally certain that I'm right then… then how can I be sure which one is right?"
Madam Pomfrey sighed. "What is your reasoning on the full moon, Remus?"
"I… just want to attack and kill. That's all I can think about. It's itching, sort of. Instinct."
"There you have it. On the full moon, your complex mind reforms into something far less complex, something with a certain instinct at the forefront that clouds your judgement. This, right now, is your mind as it should be. You can reason and make decisions when the cloud is gone, as it is now. Do you understand?"
"Yes. But I don't even think about all that on the full moon. If I don't know that I'm wrong when I'm wrong, then how do I know when I'm wrong?"
"What?"
"What if," said Remus quietly, "what if my morals are changing right now, and I don't even know it? What if I do something unspeakably bad and think it's good? When I can't see the cloud that obscures my judgement, then how do I know it's not there? What if there's one there right now? What if my morals aren't completely human?"
"Then you wouldn't be worried about this," said Madam Pomfrey with a soft smile. "The fact that you worry about being a good person is precisely how I know that you are one. But, Remus, I have to ask… have you done something unspeakably bad recently?"
Yes, Remus wanted to say. I've just about killed my friends. On a whim, I gave into my wolfish instinct of self-preservation and might have murdered some of the only people who will ever care for me. I'm letting them endanger themselves because I can't handle a little bit of sadness every now and again, and I'm a terrible, terrible person… if I even am one.
"No," said Remus. "I was just wondering."
Somehow, Professor Manard had gotten inside Remus' head, and Remus hated it.
