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sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-08 04:01 pm
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-08 04:01 pm
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Sweet Home, 6 of 7
The good company of Alice's dance and a cupful of alcohol did help Remus gain his equilibrium, as did the warmth of the jumper. The chill shock of Athena Smith's questioning faded as his muscles forcibly relaxed under the influence of the wine, and it occurred to him that, although it was well-spread-out, he'd had an awful lot to drink this evening.
Children were being taken home, some of them already asleep on their parents' shoulders, some asking if they couldn't stay another few minutes. The older celebrators were leaving as well, thinning the crowd to people Remus' age, some a little older, some a little younger, plus a few delinquents from the next town over whose parents probably didn't know they were there. He saw his father leave with Hadrian and Alice, and reckoned they were staying at the farm tonight; his father carried a carton which probably contained most of the masks.
The Queen was still wearing hers, but then it had been braided into her hair and probably wouldn't be undone until her hair was. He remembered being seventeen, away from school on a special pass, admiring the intricate twining of rich black hair and pale silk on the Queen that year. He'd tried a line on her about how the Queen used to do fertility rites in the field, a line that was far older than he himself was, and been gently rebuffed; two years later Sirius had made the line work --
He would not think about Sirius tonight, but the walls he built around his former life wre dissolving in the second cup of wine, and with them some of his self control. When a woman slipped up to him and tried a line about the Green Man's virility, he let himself fall for it, and gallantly brought her a cup of wine as well, as they stood near the slowly-burning-down bonfire and watched the dancers, the knots of people who had broken up into small groups to talk, the shadowy pairs slowly disappearing into the trees.
This was something he'd wanted to give Gabriel, some day. He'd wanted to show him the Masques. He'd shown James and Lily, Peter, Sirius -- shown them all one year, since they'd been curious. Lily with her big green eyes, an impossibly lovely woman on James' arm, saying to Remus how wonderful it was, that Muggles could do magic too when they wanted. Peter, astoundingly drunk, and Sirius only a little less so, singing ribald songs --
There went the songs, he thought, as a couple of rowdy young men burst into off-key verse.
"They sing that every year," said the girl he was standing with.
"A part of the tradition," he answered.
"Is it?" she linked her arm in his. "I guess the whole night is tradition, when you get down to it."
"All of it," he agreed, knowing where this, too, was going; another sort of dance than the maze-walk, another sort of fight than the battle with the Maze Bull.
"You know what else is traditional," the girl murmured, and the hand that had been lying on his wrist where their arms were linked slid down his thigh.
"Tell me," he said, without preamble, "Have you ever had sex in the forest?"
She laughed, and it was a nice enough laugh. And she was pretty, and it was...after all...tradition.
Neither of them noticed the name he said, as they writhed together on a soft patch of grass in the darkened forest, as she gasped encouragements and he lost himself inside her --
The name wasn't hers. If she had listened she might have thought it was a girlfriend somewhere, but it wasn't; if he had heard himself over the rush of orgasm, he might have thought it was a drunken mistake, but he would have known better, even if he wouldn't have admitted it.
And he certainly wouldn't have admitted it, if he knew.
Remus woke sometime in the night, shivering with cold, and gathered his clothing about him; the girl had already gone. He pulled on the trousers for what warmth they'd give him, and the jumper, now damp from dew. He staggered out into the clearing, but the bonfire had been doused, and even the most -- he laughed rather shiveringly at the idea -- even the most die-hard traditionalist had gone home. The maze was gone; the dais, in the dark, merely a hulking shadow.
The walk home made sure that any alcohol left in his system was well gone by the time he arrived. The house was dark, except for the porch-light and a light in his room. Thoughtful of his father to leave that, and also not to wait up to scold him. Then again, he was a grown man, which his father knew, and anyway his father had Alice -- wise to be traditional in one's own bed, rather than a cold patch of grass in the middle of the countryside.
He didn't blame him. If he had Alice --
Well, if he had Alice, he answered himself sternly, he'd have strangled Hadrian by now. That was no way to be thinking about his...well, his stepmother, for all intents and purposes, even if she was only five years older than he was.
He made his way up to the house, pausing at the bottom step up to the porch. Twenty three years ago he'd stood here when the werewolf had clamped its jaws around his leg. His father had beaten it away from his son with the rifle stock until it splintered, until he was bludgeoning the creature with the naked steel barrel. Seventeen years ago he'd stood here with his trunk and his books and his wand and gone off to Hogwarts, where he locked himself up every month to keep from eating his fellow students. Twelve years ago he'd had his picture taken here in his dress robes, holding his NEWTs scores, while his father admired them. Where had that picture gone, he wondered.
Eight years ago he'd crossed here on his way to America -- anywhere to escape the photographs, the reporters, the whispers, the memories of James and Lily and Peter, slain by a man he'd trusted and been betrayed by once already before.
It was a night for history, it seemed.
He climbed the steps to the door, let himself inside and walked softly up to his room, easing the door open so as not to wake anyone -- Hadrian was almost certainly in the guest-bedroom next to his, and Rufus and Alice across the hall.
If he had Alice, he thought, picking up the thread of internal monologue where he'd left off, he wouldn't have stayed even as long as Rufus had at the bonfire. He shucked his trousers and the jumper and climbed naked between the fresh, clean sheets. No, he would have left much sooner. He wouldn't be at the farm at all, in fact; he'd have moved into the little flat above Alice's bookshop and sod the farm, hired a manager to run it.
Not a bad idea, he thought sleepily, wrapping himself in the blankets and staring idly at his left hand, stretched on the pillow next to him. He'd talk to Rufus about in the morning. Rufus could move into town and he, Remus, would run the farm; he'd never have to deal with anyone outside of crop buyers and farm hands ever again. It would be peaceful, quiet, and calm; a perfect stasis, nothing changing, no-one leaving because there was no-one to leave. Just him and the chickens.
That's what he'd do.
***
He was woken the next morning by his father, who shook his shoulder and forced some pepper-up potion down his throat before he even managed to sit up. Remus clapped his hands over his smoking ears and shouted something that Hadrian probably shouldn't have heard, picked up from a very nasty street pimp he'd encountered as an Auror in Australia.
"Language!" his father grunted, setting the empty (but still steaming) cup on his bedside table. The tingle of the potion faded, and Remus blinked up at his father confusedly. "Good to see you made it home in one piece. I had my doubts."
"Thanks for leaving a light on," Remus managed, sitting up. Rufus clapped him on the shoulder and grinned.
"I hope you got the young lady's name," he said gently. Remus blushed to the tips of his ears. "We were all young once, lad. No shame in it."
"Tradition," Remus mumbled. Rufus laughed and picked up the goblet.
"There's breakfast downstairs," he said as he left. "Get a move on, Lupin!"
"Yes, dad," Remus sighed, sliding out of bed and fumbling for clothing. There had been something he wanted to tell his father, or ask him -- some plan he'd had, in his addled brain the night before. Probably foolish; just as well to discard it, but it had seemed like such a good idea at the time.
He padded into the kitchen in pyjama pants and the same brown jumper from the night before, hastily tidied with a cleaning spell. Hadrian giggled at his appearance, but Rufus merely kicked a chair out from the table and spooned some potatoes onto his plate. Alice looked up from her perusal of the Daily Prophet, gave him a smile, and returned to her reading. Remus felt a pang of guilt, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out why; he hadn't done anything wrong.
"You did very well at the Masques last night," Alice said, as if she was reading his mind. "Everyone said so. Cole Greyson said that was the best fight he'd seen in years."
"Thanks," Remus mumbled, around a mouthful of egg.
"Hadrian was that impressed, weren't you?" Alice asked, tousling Hadrian's hair. The boy scowled, but nodded at Remus. "Going to be King of the Green yourself some day."
"Naw," Hadrian said. "I'm gonna be the Maze Bull. He got to chop your head off," he said to Remus, who smirked.
"All the pretty girls like the King of the Green," Remus replied. Hadrian made a face. "You think that now, but you wait a few years," he added, and felt the strange stab of guilt once more. He put it down to anonymous sex with a town-girl he barely knew, and stared at his breakfast.
"Well, you did a good job as Page," Alice continued. "And I imagine the Queen couldn't ask for a more pleasant dance partner. Maybe one," she added, and gave Rufus a sidelong grin, which he returned. Remus wondered if Hadrian was old enough to notice, and glanced at the boy.
Hadrian was building a castle out of scrambled eggs, with fried-bread soldiers for support posts.
Remus had a moment of surreality; for just a second he felt as though he was the only person in the world who was actually real, and the loneliness threatened to strangle him. It lasted barely a second, hardly long enough for him to even feel it, but the yawning chasm was there, and he felt himself look into it.
And heard himself think my god, that's inside of me.
When he looked away from the pit, which for that single moment had been very real and very frightening, he met Alice's eyes.
"Remus?" she asked. "Are you all right? You seem quiet."
"Boy's just tired. I would be too," Rufus answered, but Alice didn't look away. Remus shrugged.
"It's exhausting, isn't it?" he said, with a despairing sort of calm. "I think I might sleep a bit more after breakfast, unless I'm needed."
"Harvest is in, wood's cut, masks're all put up, save the Queen's mask, but Alice says she'll pick it up in town," Rufus replied with a shrug. "Sleep if you like."
"Ta. Yell if I'm needed," Remus said, taking a final bite of his breakfast, which tasted rather like sawdust in his mouth. He suppressed the urge to bolt as he stood and left the table. He did feel tired, with the thick-headed blurryness that comes of physical fatigue; perhaps all he needed was a few days' rest after the hubbub of the Masques.
He lay in bed, drowsing for some time, but every time he drifted off he saw the chasm again, and sometimes it had Lacon Chaney's face in it, staring up at him.
***
Autumn had passed into winter almost before the Masques, and the last dead leaves froze and cracked to dust and blew away soon enough. The farmhands had long since left the barn, but Remus preferred the dim cellar for his full moons; he couldn't be accidentally heard there, the thick stone effective soundproofing, and there was no wood to splinter into his fingers.
He regularly woke from the full moon nights with fingernails that cracked and bled, causing Alice to scold him for being a nail-biter. She and Hadrian were at the farm rarely, but there wasn't much to do in the winter months other than see to the animals, and he and Rufus went into town more often. Around the time Augusta came home from Beauxbatons for Christmas, Remus got a job in one of the High Street shops, helping to stock merchandise while the usual stockboys worked the tills overrun by holiday shoppers.
The work kept him in town except for weekends and full moons, and he rented a little room above the pub, though Alice had offered a bed and half of Hadrian's bedroom in her little flat. He declined, half because it would have meant sharing rooms with a ten year old, half because --
Well, he didn't want to live with Alice. It wasn't anything she did, or a dislike of her; it was just that he didn't, and that was all.
He did like Alice, he decided. She was intelligent, and like him she'd seen her share of trouble young; she was settled, and he envied her that, her secure existence with her books and children and his father. Meanwhile, he was nearly thirty and stocking shelves in the back of a shop, because the shopkeeper didn't mind that he took a few days off every four weeks.
He saw Alice even more often than his father did, he realised one day; he usually went up to the bookshop on his lunch breaks and brought sandwiches for them, in return for a few quiet minutes with a book. His salary was barely covering his room and meals, but it wasn't, all in all, a bad existence. Certainly more peaceful than being an Auror, and less stressful than teaching. When he mentioned it to her, she smiled and shrugged.
"We always see each other less, in winter," she answered. "Roads're bad this time of year, and there's a lot more business -- I can't get away as often."
"Hard on you."
"Harder on Rufus, I imagine. You know how it is, he never complains, but I can't help thinking it's lonely."
Remus leaned against the counter, feeling Hadrian tug on his sleeve, trying to pull him away. "I never considered it lonely," he replied. Hadrian yanked on his sleeve again. "Not now, Hadrian."
"Really?" Alice asked. "That big empty house, and no-one else around to talk to?"
"You'll make me feel guilty in a minute. Hadrian, what is it?"
"Come play chess with us," Hadrian insisted.
"In a little while. I'll come upstairs," Remus answered, and Hadrian gave him a wide grin before clumping up the stairs. He heard, over their heads, footsteps cross the floor and a closet being opened. He turned back to Alice. "There's plenty to do, still. Letters to write and all."
"And you Lupins are not the most sociable of men," she added. He ducked his head.
"I suppose not," he replied. "Does it bother you?"
She gave him a warm smile. "As long as the pair of you are sociable enough to come to dinner occasionally, no."
Remus felt a very worrying warmth in the pit of his stomach at that smile.
"Rufus and I have our own places," she continued, oblivious. "It's always worked best that way. It's nice to see you coming round more often, though."
"I'd better go see to Hadrian and Augusta before they wreck something," Remus said abruptly, and before she could answer he'd run swiftly up the stairs, arriving just in time to mediate a dispute over who got to be what colour. He was unaccountably relieved to have escaped to the tedious but easily-solved rivalry of Alice's children.
His job ended in early January, and he moved back to the farm. If his father had been lonely or missed his presence, he didn't say, but Remus couldn't imagine he had, much; he had been absent for years before now, and though they had written regularly, his father was a self-sufficient man. Augusta returned to Beauxbatons and Alice closed the shop for two weeks in the post-holiday lull, to come out to the farm for a holiday with Hadrian. It was...comfortable, in a way, though it made Remus uneasy. Comfort, he found, was usually the last stage before a major upheaval, and so he stayed vigilant. They wouldn't be there during the full moon, thankfully, but it came barely two days after they were supposed to leave, which was too close for his liking.
Sooner or later Alice would have to be told, but not just yet. If it came down to a fear for her children -- and Remus wouldn't blame her -- he would leave them to their domestic bliss and stop causing trouble. He'd left before, after all.
Their holiday at the Lupin farm went well, in all. Remus kept to himself, reading and doing small chores his father was getting to be too old and stiff for; Hadrian learned to feed the chickens instead of harassing them, and together he and Hadrian mucked out the barn to prepare it for the spring. The day before Alice and Hadrian were to leave, Rufus suggested an overnight hunting expedition out at the far end of their lands, and Hadrian eagerly agreed; Remus declined, his muscles already feeling the pull of the full moon and aching on account of it.
He hadn't realised Alice would stay behind also, or he might have gone anyway; it was awkward, just the two of them in the house.
"Remus!" she called up to him, a few hours after Hadrian and Rufus had tramped off into the slowly setting sun. He put his head out his bedroom door and found her at the bottom of the stairs. "Are you coming down to dinner?"
"Dinner?" he asked.
"I've made soup."
He emerged hesitantly and descended, following her into the kitchen. "I thought we'd just cook for ourselves," he mumbled, as she handed him a steaming bowl.
"Well, it's as easy to cook for two as for one, and you've been doing a lot of the cooking lately -- plus you look worn out," she added, following him to the kitchen table. "Are you sure you're all right?"
"It comes and goes, it's nothing," he said, and the excuse still made him vaguely bitter every time he said it, though he'd been saying it since he was eleven. Sick again, Remus? Oh, it comes and goes, Professor...
"Well, eat up, and I'm sure it'll be gone before you know it," she said. "I was wondering if you'd show me the north garden after dinner, Rufus said Hadrian and I could plant some rose-bushes there in the spring."
"Hope you're planning on planting hearty ones," Remus said, adding some crackers to his soup. "The soil's not very good. We can plow it up and mix in some fertiliser before we plant, and perhaps cast a few greenhouse charms to keep the roses at an even temperature, but they're never going to be the same as actual hothouse roses."
"Oh, I don't care," Alice said. "I just thought it might be nice to fill up the empty plot, and then we'll have roses whenever we come to visit you two."
Remus nodded into his meal, and they finished in comfortable silence -- perhaps a little too comfortable, but then he was trying to ignore that.
The North Garden had once been some kind of livestock yard, or possibly a vegetable garden back before the southern farmlands had been added to the Lupin plot. It was a little walled-in space hidden mostly by hedges, with crusty, dusty dirt that didn't look as if it could support weeds, much less rosebushes. It was chilly in the evening, and the rustling of the wind-blown hedges was almost eerie. Alice rubbed her arms as she inspected it, kicking the dirt, peering at the fencing, and pacing out the size of the garden.
"It looks like someone ought to be buried here," she said, almost cheerfully. He mmhm'ed an answer, watching the way her hips moved as she paced, until she turned over her shoulder to glance at him. "Nobody is buried here, are they?"
"Not that I know of, but you know how the older generations were. Live on the farm, die on the farm. If we plow up any bones I'll make sure we put them back," he added lightly.
"You're not going to bring the big plow into this little place, are you?"
"No," he said, as she returned to the entrance, noting the measurements in a little book she took from her pocket. "Reckon I'll bring out one of the old iron plows and do a bit of charmwork with it."
"You?" she asked curiously.
"Why not?"
"I just assumed Rufus would be the one helping more. You seem to avoid us, when you can."
"That's not true," he said, then amended, "Not anymore. I came to see you all the time over the holiday, didn't I?"
"I suppose you did," she answered teasingly. "And brought us food to keep us quiet while you escaped with a book."
"I don't hate you, Alice."
"I know you don't," she said, tapping the notebook against his arm playfully. "Not anymore. I just never know how to read you, Remus. You're very self-contained."
"Believe me, that's a good thing," he murmured. "We should be getting back before it's too dark to see."
"The moon's almost full," she said, pointing as it slipped above the line of the hedges. Remus felt it like a tug on a marionette's strings, and had to keep himself from twitching. "We'll have plenty of light."
"I hate the moonlight," he answered.
"Why? I love it," she said, stretching her arms. "It makes everything seem -- "
" -- ghostly," he finished. "And strange. It distorts things."
"Do you think so?" she asked, facing him again. He ducked his head.
"I just don't think it's the great shakes everyone's always talking about. Poets and playwrights and singers. It makes things false."
She smiled. "I don't think I've ever heard you so passionate about anything."
He felt an ache blossom in his chest, a sudden homesickness that was unrelated to where home was, but rather to where comfort might be; he didn't want to be here, didn't want to have to walk back, he just wanted to hide somewhere. He felt dizzy under the moon, and lost in the silvery landscape it created.
Desperately, he pulled Alice forward by the wrist and kissed her, his right palm touching her cheek, left hand holding hers against his shoulder. The feel of soft curving breasts against his chest was marvelous, and the sway of her hips against his, unfamiliar as the feeling was, flooded his body with sensation. The slightly salty taste of her lips --
She wasn't kissing him back.
She pulled away just as he realised this, and his reflexes were fast enough that he didn't think she'd noticed the absolute iron grip with which he'd held her against him before he let her go. He came to his senses as though she'd slapped him, which she might have done, as oblivious to the world as he had been.
They regarded each other across the expanse of near-sterile soil, her eyes wide in shock, his breath coming shallow and almost panicked. She moved forward slowly, until they were close -- not as close as they had been, but nearly. She touched his arm.
"Remus," she said quietly. "I'm so sorry."
He put a hand up to cover his eyes; he'd half-expected it, but one never really thinks one may be pushed aside until the words are spoken.
"No, you have my apologies," he managed, voice cracking slightly on the last word.
"I had no idea -- "
"Please, Alice, it was a slip in judgement," he said quickly, the words coming from some other Remus far away. "It was nothing. I'm quite sorry."
"Remus, I love your father -- "
"I know -- "
" -- and I loved him first," she continued. "Even if I didn't love him best, we have a life together, a past together. And I do love him best."
He nodded, hand drifting down to wipe his mouth, to try and brush her taste off his lips.
"Alice, please believe me, it was -- I didn't mean it," he said, though he had, and even all the lies he'd told couldn't have prepared him for the magnitude of this one. "It was the moon," he added, almost whimsically, and she gave him a small smile. "I told you it makes things false. Don't -- I was just lonely," he said, hoping this confession would cover the larger sin.
"Of course," she agreed, still rubbing his arm. "It must be very hard on you. I understand."
"We should go back to the farmhouse," he said. "I...think that would be wisest."
"I agree."
"And...I'd prefer it if you didn't tell my father. I should, if anyone does."
"I see no reason he needs to know, not from me. Anymore than he would need to know if you spilled soup, or tore a shirt," she said, and he sighed, relieved.
"I am sorry," he said, as they started the walk back to the house.
"I know," she answered, and the tone of her voice told him he hadn't fooled her in the slightest.
They were silent the rest of the way home.
***
Rufus and Hadrian returned through the fields the next afternoon, carrying three dead hares and a live turtle they'd come across. Remus was sitting on the back porch, nursing a firewhiskey. When Rufus saw his face, he sent Hadrian inside and stayed on the back porch, crossing his arms. Remus silently offered him a drink, and he took it; after a few sips, he set it down on the railing.
"What did she say to you?" he asked. Remus looked away. "I know, Remus. I'm your father, I've watched you fall in love before. What did she say to you when you told her?"
"I didn't tell her," Remus answered, eyes fixing on a distant point in the southern horizon. "I kissed her."
"I see."
Remus looked up at that, and saw the fear and worry in his father's face. He realised his father was actually afraid that Alice might have chosen him.
"She didn't kiss me back," he added. "She said she loves you best."
Lupin men were very good at self control. Barely a flicker of triumph passed through his father's eyes, followed closely by sympathy. And, perhaps, just a little pity.
"I'll stay until spring planting's done," Remus continued, sipping his firewhiskey. "Then I'll go."
"You needn't," his father said softly.
"Yes, I rather think I do," Remus answered. Rufus drained his drink, and crossed his arms.
"If it was between her and you, Remus, you're my son -- "
"It's not. I wouldn't make you choose."
Rufus nodded. "If you change your mind between now and the end of planting, you've only to say so."
He went inside, and Remus heard Alice's joyful greeting; their low voices for a minute, interrupted by Hadrian, and then silence as they moved into the kitchen, where Rufus would no doubt be dressing the hares for cooking.
Remus bent forward and rested his face in his hands, not weeping, merely thinking. He stayed there, slouched in the late afternoon light, until he was called in to dinner.
***
"There's just one last thing," Remus had said, as he was being shown to the door by the matron of the house.
She'd stopped, and turned to look at him, her perfectly-made-up face mildly questioning.
"I think you ought to know before you make your decision," he'd said.
"I don't see that there's anything that could keep us from hiring you, Mister Lupin," she'd replied with a laugh. He'd smiled, because she so patently expected it.
"I have a...medical condition," he'd said delicately. "Nothing contagious or progressive; it's a small matter, really, but I require treatment every four weeks, and I'll have to be absent for two or three days. I can give you the dates in advance for the next year," he added.
This line -- possibly, he was willing to admit, in conjunction with two vicious facial scars -- had lost him the three previous jobs he'd applied for; two because it wasn't believed he wouldn't somehow infect their precious children, one because that would leave the shop short-handed three days a month. One had been with a school, too, and he could probably have cried discrimination, but why make trouble? He wouldn't take the job if it was given, if he had to sue them to get it.
Unlike the other mother, who had kept her face carefully (a little too carefully) blank, this woman raised her eyebrows a fraction -- as much as she was able to, given a recent face-lift, he decided -- and drew them together slightly.
"It's predictable and controllable, and I don't have any special dietary requirements," he'd added. He had a whimsical image of planning out his menu for the week with "fresh human" listed under the full moon days.
"That shouldn't be a problem, if you're as reliable as your references say," she'd said with a smile, finally. "We'll notify you of our decision tomorrow; you were the last of the tutors to be interviewed."
"Thank you, Ms. Edwards-Clarke," he'd replied, and begun to brace himself against the rejection he'd likely get on the following day.
Now he lay in the little hostel-room he'd rented for a few quid, in the bottom bunk, and stared at the slats of the bed above him. Yes, his references were excellent. One from Anson in Australia, attesting his fitness for physical activity as a former police officer with the Australian service; one from Alice attesting to his work ethic, though he'd never worked in her shop. In addition there was a somewhat elderly one from Dumbledore, regarding his education and abilities.
A tutoring job with a wealthy family seemed to be his best bet, and London seemed as good a start as any; it was comfortably far away from his father and Alice, and it was a big metropolitan city, easy to get lost in.
Leaving home had been surprisingly easy. When the planting ended, he'd simply begun packing. Saying goodbye to his father wasn't difficult; he'd left a short note for Augusta and Hadrian, promising to send them something from London, and hadn't said goodbye to Alice, who was good and understanding and would no doubt be slightly relieved to have him off the farm and out of their lives. He didn't blame her.
The hardest part had little to do with either leaving or the reasons behind leaving; it was, ludicrously, a bit of baggage.
He'd been considering using his old Hogwarts trunk, though it seemed a little large for his needs and he had no desire at all to clean it out. He'd been standing in front of his bed, piled neatly with folded clothes, books, odds and ends, and a few small boxes from his youth he hadn't wanted to open, when his father knocked on the door. Remus grunted permission to enter, and Rufus pushed the door open, carrying a plain brown package in one hand.
"Had it in the coat closet," he explained, giving it to Remus. "Forgot to give it to you sooner -- customs form says it's a suitcase. It might be useful," he added, apologetically. Remus turned it over and over in his hands.
American postmark. Green customs form, Muggle post -- well, that was wise, if it was transatlantic. Familiar handwriting --
Gabriel.
He sucked in a breath, sharply.
"I'll go, if you like," his father said. Remus, after a stunned moment, shook his head.
"It's nothing," he said, tearing off the brown paper. Yes; his old suitcase, a gift from his students at the Academy, reading Professor R.J. Lupin across the top. His father smiled.
"That's as good a reference as any, a suitcase labeled that," Rufus said. Remus studied the lettering, which had begun to peel and chip a little.
"I suppose so," he said softly. He laid it on the bed and flipped the latches, opening it; tucked inside a flap were a few books, tied together with string. His father didn't ask this time; he merely faded back into the hallway, and Remus hardly heard his footsteps down the stairs.
He looked through the books, recognising the handwriting in the margins as his, before he put them on the book-pile on his bed, and began to pack his clothing into the suitcase.
And he'd left and caught a train to London, found a hostel to stay in and begun scanning the "better papers" for jobs. It was hard to even get an interview without a recommendation, but he'd managed. He had one up on most of the tutors who wanted to work for the wealthy families in the area: he'd been a police officer, and could serve as a bodyguard as well.
London was large and frightening, not a city he was at all familiar with, but then he'd learned his way around America, which was even larger and more frightening; he'd learned Sydney too, eventually. So he did what he had to. He always did what he had to, in fact; just once it would be nice to do what he wanted to.
He haunted the telephone in the hostel's common-room all day; it was the only telephone number he'd been able to give to Ms. Edwards-Clarke. He spent the time making a list of new jobs he could apply for -- pathetically short -- and reading the rest of the paper as well. He could have picked up a Prophet, if he'd gone down to the Leaky Cauldron, but he'd learned his lesson in Sydney, and he wanted to stay away from wizarding society for a while.
The telephone rang around two in the afternoon. He scrambled for it, despite knowing what she would say.
"Mr. Lupin," Ms. Edwards-Clarke said, smoothly. "I'm calling to notify you that we've selected you for the position of tutor for our children. I'd like you to come tomorrow to have brunch with us, to discuss the job requirements; I've spoken with my husband and there are some requests we'd like to make of you before you accept the position."
"Of -- of course," he'd stammered, shocked. The calm acceptance of a rejection had already been on his lips, and he could hardly believe his luck. "My day is open; name your time."
"Ten-thirty should be fine," she replied, and he agreed that he would be there.
A job. He had a job. With room and board paid, and he would never have to try to kill anyone. Well, theoretically. Glorified babysitter perhaps, but there were worse jobs than trying to cram Latin and English Grammar and Fencing between the ears of the future leaders of the country.
He ran back to the bunk-room and undid the magical sticking charm on his locker door, digging through his clothing for his best white shirt. He had no tie or appropriate jacket, but his black Auror trousers would do, and he had ninety-two Muggle pounds in his wallet. He could buy a tie and a cheap jacket between now and then.
As he pulled out his shirt to hang it properly, so that it could air, one of the books Gabriel had sent him tumbled out, and he righted it carefully. Perhaps he owed this job to Gabriel; he'd taught him how to fence, after all.
He was greeted at the door by the maid the next morning, in his new tie and white shirt and new jacket. She smiled at him and led him into a window-lined breakfast room, where Mr. and Ms. Edwards-Clarke were already drinking their tea. He hadn't met the husband before, and had the idea that Ms. Edwards-Clarke was the real head of the family, no matter that her husband worked for the government and she "merely ran the house". They reminded him strongly of Sirius' parents, minus the vitriol.
There was dainty finger food to be eaten, but he was nervous and barely nibbled on what was put before him; odd that he could go hand-to-hand with street-punk Muggles in Sydney and yet be completely at a loss in an elegant town-house in London. Ms. Edwards-Clarke did all the talking, explaining that they wished to hire him to bodyguard the children as well as educate them, which he'd been expecting, and would like him to sleep in a room in the children's suite, which they understood some people found degrading and wanted to be sure he accepted. He would have slept in one of their racing-car beds if it meant he really had the job.
The children themselves, whom he had yet to be introduced to, arrived at that point; Ackerley, the elder, was just turning ten, while his brother Chadwick was five-and-a-half. Remus let Chadwick (oh, what a name) climb into his lap and pick at his food, while Ackerley sat more politely at a chair brought by a butler and ate with a decorum Remus certainly hadn't had when he was Ackerley's age.
"You see, Richard?" Ms. Edwards-Clarke said, pointing to Remus. "They love him already, don't you Chadwick?"
Chadwick, halfway through a bite of egg, looked up at her.
"Is he our new Mr. Mason?" Ackerley asked.
"Mr. Mason was their last tutor. He was...unacceptable," Ms. Edwards-Clarke said. She made a drinking motion with one hand, and Remus made the appropriately shocked face.
"Do you want juice, mum?" Ackerley asked.
"No, sweetheart," Ms. Edwards-Clarke said. "Don't interrupt when grownups are talking."
Remus eyed Ackerley, who smiled hesitantly at him.
"We were sure once you saw the boys you wouldn't be able to turn down the job," Mr. Edwards-Clarke said, getting a word in edgewise.
"They're charming lads," Remus answered. Chadwick offered him a piece of toast, and he ate it with a grin.
"Of course they are," Ms. Edwards-Clarke said, stroking Ackerley's head with a perfectly-manicured hand. "Now they have a Governess, Miss Helit -- that's Susan Helit, I'll introduce you later, daughter of a duke, trying to make her own way in life, very nice girl -- who gets them up and dressed. You'll be expected to meet them for breakfast, and in the mornings they go to museums and parks. You'll accompany Miss Helit, and then the boys are in your care in the afternoons. Mr. Mason's lesson plans are available so that you can begin right where he left off. I believe you said you could start immediately?"
"This afternoon, if I have time to pack my belongings and bring them here," Remus replied.
"We'll send a driver with you," Ms. Edwards-Clarke said. "Will you need help lifting anything?"
Remus thought reservedly of his suitcase and haversack, neither one completely full.
"No, I shouldn't think so," he said.
***
When he arrived at the suite which was to be his -- a room which connected to the boys' bedroom and the hallway, with a private bath and balcony -- Ackerly and Chadwick were sitting on his bed, small pale faces upturned to his hopefully. He had taught children only a little older than Ackerly, but Chadwick would be something new and challenging, much younger than any child he'd previously encountered.
They stared at him.
He stared at them.
"Well then," he said finally, and set his suitcase next to the bed. "You're Chackerly and Adwick, eh?"
Chadwick giggled. Ackerly looked solemn.
"What do they call you on the playground?" Remus asked, hanging his haversack on the back of a chair that butted up against an old mahogany desk. It was neatly arranged with two pencils and two fairly expensive ballpoint pens in a small cup, a desk-set and a pile of papers labeled "Lesson Plans".
"Ack," Ackerly said. "And Wick."
"Wise children," Remus answered. "You may call me Mr. Lupin, or Remus if your parents aren't listening," he added with a wink. He opened the suitcase and unpacked his precious few books, setting them on the shelf above the desk. "I imagine we'll be spending a lot of time together."
"Mr. Mason got thrown out," Wick supplied helpfully. "He broke bottles."
"He hit the bottle," Ack corrected. "That's what Mum said."
"Yes, well, I don't make a habit of hitting anything," Remus answered.
"Where'd you get those marks on your face?" Ack asked.
"Australia."
"How?"
"Got in a fight," Remus answered, amused a little by the boy's bluntness. "Are you going to watch me unpack everything, then?"
Ack nodded placidly.
"Pants and all?"
Both boys made faces.
"Here," Remus said, passing Ack his copy of Sherlock Holmes. "Entertain yourself, as I am not paid to entertain you until tomorrow morning. Wick, do you like spinny tops?"
"Spinny tops?" Wick asked. Remus removed a sneakoscope he'd picked up in Australia, dormant and dark in this house of bright windows and cheerful children, and gave it to him to play with, showing him how to spin it between his fingers. Ack had curled up on the bed at once with the book, and was reading with the fierce concentration of a child who is going to be required to make a vocabulary list later.
Remus turned to his unpacking, sorting clothing into the dresser and wardrobe, papers into a drawer in the desk, toiletries on the bathroom sink. He was just coming back from hiding his Shearsides -- a dangerous toy in the hands of a child, even a Muggle child -- when he found a young woman in the room also, holding up his wand and examining it. She glanced over the top of it to meet his eyes with the most piercing stare he'd encountered in some time.
"Lucky stick?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow. She had a pale face with a hint of a birthmark crossing one cheek, hair already white with only a streak of black running through it, curled tightly into a bun at the back of her head. She wore a plain dress that identified her immediately as Governess. Indeed, the word fit her the way it hadn't fit women since the Brontes, he suspected.
"You must be Miss Helit," he said, carefully disentangling her fingers from the wand and setting it on the high shelf, behind the books. Thank god she hadn't waved it about. "I was -- "
" -- warned about me?"
"Informed you would be here," he finished smoothly. "I've just been unpacking. Remus Lupin," he added, holding out his hand belatedly. She examined the scar across his thumb (third full moon of 1985, reopened sometime in 87, he thought it gave his hands character) before accepting it. She had a firm grip, but they didn't actually shake; merely gripped each others' hands and then dropped them.
"Susan Helit," she answered. "This is a very tiresome business so let's dispense with it promptly. Yes, I am the daughter of a Duke, no I have no ancestral lands, I prefer to make my own way in the world and I am not available for dinner Friday next."
"So noted," he said, gravely.
"Also, you are not to call the boys Ack or Wick. The former is an exclamation and the latter is a candle component," she said.
"Too late, I'm afraid. Ack and Wick they have called themselves and Ack and Wick they shall remain," he answered indifferently. He closed his suitcase, snapping the locks shut. "Do you really believe Ackerly and Chadwick are any less mortifying?"
"Those are their names, regrettably," Miss Helit said.
"Very well, in the mornings they may be Ackerly and Chadwick when they are out with you at the museum and in the afternoons when they do their long-division they will be Ack and Wick."
"They're well-past long-division," Miss Helit said, not quickly but promptly. Remus gave Wick a dubious look.
"Chadwick, what is eighty divided by eleven?" she asked, without turning around.
"Seven and a quarter and a bit," Wick answered.
"Would you like one biscuit 'and a bit' for tea?"
Wick sighed and looked up from the sneakoscope. "Seven point two seven three," he corrected.
Remus looked impressed.
"He's a prodigy," Miss Helit explained.
"Do his parents know?"
"Good lord no, they'd send him to some horrible school for prodigies somewhere and he'd never get to do anything else."
Remus gave her an appraising look. "I'm guessing the unlamented Mr. Mason...?"
"If you haven't studied much trigonometry I suggest you leave his mathematical education to me as Mr. Mason did, and concentrate on trying to get him to enjoy his history lessons," Miss Helit said bluntly.
"Am I permitted to participate in the education of Master Ack?"
"Yeah, she's bored with me. I don't like science," Ack said.
"Oh yes? Why not?"
"I like magic better. Turning lead into gold and things. This book is good, isn't it? It's all murder and clues."
"Take it with you then," Remus suggested, bemused by Ack's self-professed fondness for 'magic'. "I'll expect an oral report from you on the contents of the first story by dinner tomorrow."
Miss Helit looked approving, which surprised him; he didn't think proper governesses usually considered Sherlock Holmes appropriate bedtime reading for ten-year-olds.
"All right then," she said, helping Wick off the bed and taking the sneakoscope, pondering it for a second before placing it in Remus' outstretched palm. "Mr. Lupin has a lot to do to prepare for tomorrow's lessons, so let's leave him in peace for now and go see how your plants are growing. You'll find notes on the greenhouse project in the second folder down," she said to Remus, nodding at the pile of papers on the desk. "There's tea at three-thirty in the playroom and dinner at seven-thirty downstairs; the children eat with their parents and we generally have a sit-down with the cook and butler in the kitchen."
"I think I'll give tea a miss," he said, indicating the notes. "Should I be surprised if most of them aren't in Mr. Mason's handwriting?"
She gave him a brief, fleeting smile. "I'll see you at dinner, Mr. Lupin."
***
As he usually did, given a solid structure to live within, Remus fell into the house's schedule easily in his first months as the childrens' tutor. He rose early and washed, met Miss Helit and the children for breakfast at eight, escorted them wherever they wished to go in the mornings and generally had to carry Wick back by the time they were done. Lunch was usually sandwiches in the kitchen, and then Wick would typically fall asleep for an hour or so while Ack and Remus worked on his lessons. Miss Helit did maths with Wick, and then they all had a history lesson together after tea. Miss Helit called it "storytime", but it amounted to gory tales of beheading, chivalry, naval battles, peasant uprisings, and European revolutions with a few dates scattered in to make it legitimate.
The house was large and beautiful, the garden big enough for two inquisitive children to entertain themselves in, and his life was, for once, on an even keel. It was a very secure house, to be sure, with walls and extra locks, thick windows that didn't open and an intercom system for calling into various rooms. Still, he found he didn't mind the security, and it was easy enough to slip by it with the quite legitimate monthly excuse that he was going for treatment for his illness. The boys always waved to him from the window as he left, and were usually quiet and respectful when he returned, a day later, the worst of the damage hidden or healed.
It was clear that Miss Helit had been teaching them most of what they knew, and Remus wondered how even a man with Mr. Mason's reputation could have wasted so much of his time when there were two relatively keen young minds waiting to be informed about the world. Ack sped through his literary assignments, though he was lethargic at best when it came to anything related to science. Wick was apparently having trouble grasping trigonometry fully, but then Wick still made a mess trying to feed himself occasionally.
Miss Helit herself sometimes seemed like a complex mathematical equation, all edges and symbols and numbers, but he had no real urge to solve it; if they were left alone together while the children played, he watched them closely and asked her questions to make small talk, nothing more. She learned that he was an only child from a farm in the north; he learned that she had played lacrosse at school and had a grandfather who kept a fishpond. There was a cool professional courtesy between them borne of her refusal to be anything other than a governess and his lack of desire to be anything other than a tutor.
Still, after a while -- especially when, after his "treatments" every full moon, she brought chicken broth for him instead of biscuits with their tea -- he began to wonder just what Susan Helit was. It took a while to summon the tact and proper wording to ask her, but in January they were walking through a portrait gallery in a minor south London museum, and while Wick and Ack sat and contemplated a painting of a woman with an enormously prodigious nose, he shoved his hands in his pockets and glanced at her.
"Miss Helit, I have a rather personal question to ask you," he said. "If you don't mind."
"I won't go to the cinema with you tonight," she answered. He grinned; she didn't.
"That wasn't it at all, I'm afraid," he replied. "I was wondering what brought you to London. And these children in particular. Not that you're ill-fitted to the task, but you couldn't have known Wick was a prodigy, and I know you're better at maths than the average public-school girl."
She did smile then, but it wasn't a very reassuring one. "I suppose you're owed that much knowledge," she said cryptically. "My Grandfather -- "
"The old patriarch."
"Hmm, yes -- he has a way of knowing about people. He was in the house when the boys' grandfather died, and he asked if I wouldn't pop round and look after them for a few years."
"Just like that?"
"One doesn't say no to Grandfather. He had his reasons with Chadwick, but I rather thought he decided Ackerly could use an understanding ear as well, on occasion."
Remus glanced at her again before his eyes slid, as they were trained to do, back to the boys. Ack was posing as the large-nosed woman now, much to Wick's handclapping delight.
"Oh? How so?"
"Oh, Ackerly's a wizard," Miss Helit replied, and Remus flinched.
"How do you mea -- "
"A wizard. Magic wands, silly robes, the whole bit. He's been making pencils dance around to entertain Chadwick since he was eight. I'm surprised he hasn't shown you yet, all things considered. You know."
Remus blinked. "How would I -- "
"Please don't assume I'm dense, you aren't any good at it. Grandfather probably arranged for you to be hired as well. He has a way with things like that. Normally Mrs. Edwards-Clarke would never hire anyone with a chronic disease, non-contagious or otherwise. But it's good for the boy to have one of his own kind to take him to the train in September."
"Are you one of us?" Remus asked, lowering his voice.
"Not precisely. It's neither here nor there, Mr. Lupin, as the point of the matter is that Ackerly's going off to Dogwarts or whatever that school is -- "
" -- Hogwarts -- "
"And someone's going to have to handle things with his parents. Buy his books and such. Certainly you can't picture Mrs. Edwards-Clarke even admitting what the school is."
Remus had to admit that either of the very proper Edwards-Clarkes would stand out like a sore thumb in Diagon Alley.
"Chadwick's perfectly normal, of course, hasn't shown a lick of magical ability, thank goodness. I suppose eventually someone's bound to find out about his maths, but by then hopefully he'll have mastered quantum physics and can pick a nice university to study at. In the meantime, Ackerly's just got to keep things under wraps until autumn." She sighed. "I'm so glad Grandfather picked someone with a little sense about Muggles. I suppose the werewolf bit can't be helped."
Remus tensed. "If you tell anyone -- "
"Like who?" she asked bluntly. "Our circles don't cross, Mr. Lupin, except in that we both teach the children. No-one who knows you would believe me, and no-one who would believe me knows you, so please don't pitch a fit in the middle of the gallery. Chadwick, Ackerly, next room if you please, you've made fun of that poor woman long enough."
"Who is your grandfather, anyway?" he asked, as they passed into the next room. "Is he a wizard?"
"Sort of, only not."
"And he knows the Edwards-Clarkes?"
"Oh yes. He knows everyone," she said, and moved towards the children to discuss what Ackerly called 'a really brilliant beheading'.
***
Remus undressed for bed that night with less ease than usual, though his door was closed and windows shuttered. He felt as though Susan Helit had swiftly and carelessly stripped him bare, announcing all his secrets to him as though she'd read a book on his life. He'd been with the family almost ten months, and never a hint of strangeness had he seen from either her or Ack, though if she said the boy was a wizard, Remus was willing to believe it. A Muggle-born, but then Remus himself was half and half, so that was no matter.
He'd known there was something odd about Miss Helit, but clearly she'd hidden it and he'd tried so desperately to have a normal life here (despite locking himself in an abandoned basement once a month to rip his own skin off) that he'd ignored it. Perhaps she was part veela, or somesuch.
Not that it mattered.
In May Ackerly would turn eleven, and his letter would probably come fairly soon thereafter; he would have to take the boy to Diagon Alley and then to the platform and the Hogwarts Express. Perhaps if he was lucky nobody else he knew would be --
Of course nobody else he knew would be there. Everyone he knew from Hogwarts -- everyone he knew at all well -- was dead.
He pulled the pyjama pants over his hips and fell onto the bed, staring at the ceiling, arms crooked above him. Would he have to talk to Ack about being a wizard? Was that expected of him? He had barely managed to make it through reproductive biology with the lad.
Would he have to talk to Wick about not being a wizard? He didn't think Wick would mind, much.
Didn't they send people to do this sort of thing, when the parents were oblivious Muggles? Perhaps he wouldn't have to do much, just hand the boy off to someone from the Ministry's Muggle-Relations department. That would be better for everyone, wouldn't it?
September was eight months away. Ack's whole lesson scheme would have to be rethought. More Latin, less Muggle history, some basic Wizarding history; an introduction to charms, since clearly Ack had mastered Wingardium Leviosa already....
He fell asleep revising the next day's lesson in his head; woke in the night, freezing, and crawled under the blankets to dream about art galleries and the slightly-too-knowing eyes of Susan Helit.
***
The Ministry did send a courier to deliver the Hogwarts letter, who sat with the Edwards-Clarkes for half an hour and explained Hogwarts to them as best they could understand it; they seemed to come away with the belief that it was some sort of specialised school for children interested in classical history and advanced scholarship. They brightened considerably when they discovered it was Mr. Lupin's alma mater, and by the end of the courier's visit, Remus had agreed to take the boy to Diagon Alley to buy his supplies, and put him on the Hogwarts Express. By then Ack was already comfortable with Wizarding history and slang, and seemed vaguely excited by the idea of actually doing magic instead of just reading about it, though Remus sensed he didn't truly believe he was going to get to do any magic.
He had wanted to spend the rest of his life avoiding Diagon Alley and most of the Wizarding World, but it appeared life had other plans, Remus thought ruefully. He was running out of things to avoid; his family, his heritage, his school, his past. Perhaps he was strong enough now, now that he didn't seem to feel anything anymore, to face them.
So at the end of August he helped Ack into the long black car and told the chauffeur to take them to Charing Cross Road, and said he would catch a cab back the following day. They stood outside the Leaky Cauldron, in the late-summer heat that seemed to waver up from the sidewalk all around them.
"Right then, lad," Remus said, taking a deep breath. "Ready?"
"Yes, sir," Ack answered, staring at the dim little pub door distrustfully. Remus pushed it open, and followed him inside.
The pub wasn't crowded at that time of day, before the rush for lunch, and one more man leading a young child through to Diagon Alley hardly drew any attention at all. Out the other side (Ack wide-eyed and grinning, now) they did get some strange looks for Remus' scars and their Muggle clothing, but nothing too far out of the ordinary for Remus.
Books and supplies, robes and a trunk, and an owl to carry letters from the Hogsmeade post-office where the Muggle mail for students came; some sweets and a change from Muggle cash to Galleons and Sickles and Knuts, the money absolutely alien to him now. Alien to Ack too, who nevertheless seemed to enjoy every moment of it. Remus found he looked at the buildings with impunity; nostalgia didn't enter into it, nor did sorrow. It was simply a place he'd once been and now had to navigate again. He was rather pleased with himself. No-one seemed to know him and he didn't recognise many faces, but then that was perhaps not so unusual.
No -- in all, he thought, as he slept in the bed next to Ack's, at a room over the Leaky Cauldron he'd reserved weeks ago, knowing that there would be precious little spare space come the end of August -- in all, the trip had gone well. Tomorrow he was taking Ack to the train, and then he'd catch a cab back to the house and have tea and do lessons with Wick. The Edwards-Clarkeses had promised him he would still have a job until Wick was ready to attend a proper preparatory school as well, and in the meantime he could tutor Ack on holidays, and help him with his school assignments if he really truly needed it.
And then it was morning, and in the whirl of wash-dress-bacon-and-eggs-get-to-the-station-and-find-the-platform-again, Remus kept his head and kept track of all of Ack's things, even the shirt he nearly forgot and the extra bag of owl treats that fell out on their way to the platform. He showed Ack the trick of getting through and followed him effortlessly, and still he felt nothing, merely the urgency of getting Ack onto the train on time. They carried the trunk between them and settled him in a compartment, with his owl cage on top and his wand safely tucked in his coat pocket. Remus gave him a few final instructions -- don't be afraid of the Sorting Hat, don't shake your wand without proper instruction, remember to change into your robes by twilight -- and left him there, already chatting with a few other boys and sharing around his Every Flavour Beans.
He descended the steps of the train with a self-satisfied smirk; he had survived, and fared far better than he ever had as a student. In fact, he had --
"Oh, excuse me," said a redheaded woman, as she bumped into him while trying to help a younger boy with a distinct family resemblance try to navigate his cart. "There you are, Percy, I just want to see where Ron went, he's somewhere behind us -- "
Remus ducked away as the woman raised her hand to wave at another child, who waved back and nearly ran him down with the trolly he pushed. Remus stepped backwards quickly, cursing the crowds more than what appeared to be an enthusiastic first-year, and then dodged again as a second boy passed. The boy glanced up at him briefly, almost dismissively, and Remus froze.
Those were Lily's eyes.
Lily's green eyes in a young boy's face, with the same narrow jaw and slightly snub nose James had when he was eleven. The boy was forced to stop and wait while others boarded the train, and he leaned against the trolley's handle with James' indolent hip-tilt, brushing his hair off his forehead, tousled black hair like James had.
James, his mind whispered. James, James and Lily, Lily and James.
The boy glanced over his shoulder, a trifle impatient, and Remus saw a hint of scarring on his forehead. James' forehead, Lily's eyes.
My god, the boy has Lily's eyes exactly.
That was Lily Evans' son.
James Potter's son.
That was Harry.
Remus felt, actually physically felt, when something shattered inside him from looking at Harry, son of his best friend, the only child the four of them had and therefore communally their child, his and James' and Lily's and Peter's and accursed Sirius'. A thin, baggy-trousered boy with a snowy owl and a trunk nearly as big as he was. How could he not have known? How could he not have remembered? Harry was eleven too, and alive in the world. And those were Lily's eyes, he had no right to have Lily's eyes.
But something inside him was broken and he could feel tears bleeding out of his eyes against his will, could feel his chest constricting until his ribs would surely shatter and pierce his lungs and heart -- if he stayed here he would die. The steam of the train and the children with their trunks and the excited calls to each other across the platform would kill him, the ghosts of James and Peter on the edges of his vision would rip his heart right out of his chest, and it was more than one man could be expected to bear, to see the boy with Lily's eyes board the train.
The boy turned again on the stairs to the train. Remus fled, through the barrier and the train station, conscious that people were staring at a grown man sobbing and hyperventilating and looking merely for some dark corner to draw himself together in, but even when he found a filthy niche in the wall, away from the light and noise, he couldn't stop. He could not stop. Two seconds and those eyes in that face had stolen all his hard-earned indifference to the world. He leaned against the wall and covered his face in his hands and tried to stop, and found he couldn't. It was too much. Too much.
***
He had no idea he'd called the Edwards-Clarkeses to tell them Ack was on the train, or that he managed to sound relatively sane while doing so, though apparently he had; he knew they didn't send anyone to look for him, because when he did finally return the household was asleep and there was a note on his door thanking him for taking Ackerly to the train.
He had dim memories of finding himself drained and empty and cold, so cold his hands trembled and could not be stopped, and he knew they trembled because at some point he'd found a cafe outside the train station and bought himself a cheap cup of tea. It had rattled against its saucer when he tried to pick it up. The receipt in his pocket showed he'd bought food, as well, but he couldn't recall eating any of it and it was likely he'd simply left it there, wherever he'd bought it in the first place.
He didn't know what he'd done with the afternoon, only that he'd eventually managed to find a cab and collapse in the back-seat, not caring that the driver was lost twice before finding the proper house. He nearly fumbled the security code to get in, and when he heard movement in the kitchen he froze in the shadows of the front hall until it had passed. He could not fathom moving in the presence of another person.
His room was cold; the door to Wick's bedroom had been left open, and he closed it quietly. He stood in the middle of the room for a while and simply stared at the furnishings as though they were new and alien, and in some way they were. It was such a tidy, empty room, he thought, and yet he suffered so much mess within it -- the mess of his memories, the mess of Miss Helit and Wick and Ack, the mess of responsibility for two children. To pile atop that this new mess, this grief that he was entirely unprepared for, this ten-year-old hole in his soul -- no. He would not.
It reminded him of his departure from the Academy in Alabama, though he was not so calm this time and every movement was an effort of will. This knowing-of-people clearly had to stop; he could not know people anymore, it was too difficult, too hard when they left him or died or didn't love him or when he had to leave them.
He stuffed the books carelessly into his suitcase and the clothing on top of it and in his haversack, leaving the lesson plans strewn as they were about the room. He had no personal papers or correspondence save the letters from his father, which he had kept in the suitcase at any rate. He threw out the recommendations and the transcripts, burning them smokelessly with his wand. He left the sneakoscope for Wick and a letter for the adults, written with a forcibly calm hand, but he had very little clue what he had written, other than that Ack was safely on the train, and he was forced through sudden family emergency to withdraw from employment immediately. He thought later he might have given Susan some kind of reference, or mentioned her work with Wick, but he was never sure. He never saw Susan or Wick again.
He breathed easier in the night air, with the haversack on his shoulder and the suitcase in one hand. He had twenty-two days until the next full moon, but he didn't anticipate a problem; he would find a place to live where he could Change, as well.
He decided perhaps the conservatives weren't so wrong after all. Werewolves clearly needed locking up away from people.
Chapter 7
Children were being taken home, some of them already asleep on their parents' shoulders, some asking if they couldn't stay another few minutes. The older celebrators were leaving as well, thinning the crowd to people Remus' age, some a little older, some a little younger, plus a few delinquents from the next town over whose parents probably didn't know they were there. He saw his father leave with Hadrian and Alice, and reckoned they were staying at the farm tonight; his father carried a carton which probably contained most of the masks.
The Queen was still wearing hers, but then it had been braided into her hair and probably wouldn't be undone until her hair was. He remembered being seventeen, away from school on a special pass, admiring the intricate twining of rich black hair and pale silk on the Queen that year. He'd tried a line on her about how the Queen used to do fertility rites in the field, a line that was far older than he himself was, and been gently rebuffed; two years later Sirius had made the line work --
He would not think about Sirius tonight, but the walls he built around his former life wre dissolving in the second cup of wine, and with them some of his self control. When a woman slipped up to him and tried a line about the Green Man's virility, he let himself fall for it, and gallantly brought her a cup of wine as well, as they stood near the slowly-burning-down bonfire and watched the dancers, the knots of people who had broken up into small groups to talk, the shadowy pairs slowly disappearing into the trees.
This was something he'd wanted to give Gabriel, some day. He'd wanted to show him the Masques. He'd shown James and Lily, Peter, Sirius -- shown them all one year, since they'd been curious. Lily with her big green eyes, an impossibly lovely woman on James' arm, saying to Remus how wonderful it was, that Muggles could do magic too when they wanted. Peter, astoundingly drunk, and Sirius only a little less so, singing ribald songs --
There went the songs, he thought, as a couple of rowdy young men burst into off-key verse.
"They sing that every year," said the girl he was standing with.
"A part of the tradition," he answered.
"Is it?" she linked her arm in his. "I guess the whole night is tradition, when you get down to it."
"All of it," he agreed, knowing where this, too, was going; another sort of dance than the maze-walk, another sort of fight than the battle with the Maze Bull.
"You know what else is traditional," the girl murmured, and the hand that had been lying on his wrist where their arms were linked slid down his thigh.
"Tell me," he said, without preamble, "Have you ever had sex in the forest?"
She laughed, and it was a nice enough laugh. And she was pretty, and it was...after all...tradition.
Neither of them noticed the name he said, as they writhed together on a soft patch of grass in the darkened forest, as she gasped encouragements and he lost himself inside her --
The name wasn't hers. If she had listened she might have thought it was a girlfriend somewhere, but it wasn't; if he had heard himself over the rush of orgasm, he might have thought it was a drunken mistake, but he would have known better, even if he wouldn't have admitted it.
And he certainly wouldn't have admitted it, if he knew.
Remus woke sometime in the night, shivering with cold, and gathered his clothing about him; the girl had already gone. He pulled on the trousers for what warmth they'd give him, and the jumper, now damp from dew. He staggered out into the clearing, but the bonfire had been doused, and even the most -- he laughed rather shiveringly at the idea -- even the most die-hard traditionalist had gone home. The maze was gone; the dais, in the dark, merely a hulking shadow.
The walk home made sure that any alcohol left in his system was well gone by the time he arrived. The house was dark, except for the porch-light and a light in his room. Thoughtful of his father to leave that, and also not to wait up to scold him. Then again, he was a grown man, which his father knew, and anyway his father had Alice -- wise to be traditional in one's own bed, rather than a cold patch of grass in the middle of the countryside.
He didn't blame him. If he had Alice --
Well, if he had Alice, he answered himself sternly, he'd have strangled Hadrian by now. That was no way to be thinking about his...well, his stepmother, for all intents and purposes, even if she was only five years older than he was.
He made his way up to the house, pausing at the bottom step up to the porch. Twenty three years ago he'd stood here when the werewolf had clamped its jaws around his leg. His father had beaten it away from his son with the rifle stock until it splintered, until he was bludgeoning the creature with the naked steel barrel. Seventeen years ago he'd stood here with his trunk and his books and his wand and gone off to Hogwarts, where he locked himself up every month to keep from eating his fellow students. Twelve years ago he'd had his picture taken here in his dress robes, holding his NEWTs scores, while his father admired them. Where had that picture gone, he wondered.
Eight years ago he'd crossed here on his way to America -- anywhere to escape the photographs, the reporters, the whispers, the memories of James and Lily and Peter, slain by a man he'd trusted and been betrayed by once already before.
It was a night for history, it seemed.
He climbed the steps to the door, let himself inside and walked softly up to his room, easing the door open so as not to wake anyone -- Hadrian was almost certainly in the guest-bedroom next to his, and Rufus and Alice across the hall.
If he had Alice, he thought, picking up the thread of internal monologue where he'd left off, he wouldn't have stayed even as long as Rufus had at the bonfire. He shucked his trousers and the jumper and climbed naked between the fresh, clean sheets. No, he would have left much sooner. He wouldn't be at the farm at all, in fact; he'd have moved into the little flat above Alice's bookshop and sod the farm, hired a manager to run it.
Not a bad idea, he thought sleepily, wrapping himself in the blankets and staring idly at his left hand, stretched on the pillow next to him. He'd talk to Rufus about in the morning. Rufus could move into town and he, Remus, would run the farm; he'd never have to deal with anyone outside of crop buyers and farm hands ever again. It would be peaceful, quiet, and calm; a perfect stasis, nothing changing, no-one leaving because there was no-one to leave. Just him and the chickens.
That's what he'd do.
***
He was woken the next morning by his father, who shook his shoulder and forced some pepper-up potion down his throat before he even managed to sit up. Remus clapped his hands over his smoking ears and shouted something that Hadrian probably shouldn't have heard, picked up from a very nasty street pimp he'd encountered as an Auror in Australia.
"Language!" his father grunted, setting the empty (but still steaming) cup on his bedside table. The tingle of the potion faded, and Remus blinked up at his father confusedly. "Good to see you made it home in one piece. I had my doubts."
"Thanks for leaving a light on," Remus managed, sitting up. Rufus clapped him on the shoulder and grinned.
"I hope you got the young lady's name," he said gently. Remus blushed to the tips of his ears. "We were all young once, lad. No shame in it."
"Tradition," Remus mumbled. Rufus laughed and picked up the goblet.
"There's breakfast downstairs," he said as he left. "Get a move on, Lupin!"
"Yes, dad," Remus sighed, sliding out of bed and fumbling for clothing. There had been something he wanted to tell his father, or ask him -- some plan he'd had, in his addled brain the night before. Probably foolish; just as well to discard it, but it had seemed like such a good idea at the time.
He padded into the kitchen in pyjama pants and the same brown jumper from the night before, hastily tidied with a cleaning spell. Hadrian giggled at his appearance, but Rufus merely kicked a chair out from the table and spooned some potatoes onto his plate. Alice looked up from her perusal of the Daily Prophet, gave him a smile, and returned to her reading. Remus felt a pang of guilt, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out why; he hadn't done anything wrong.
"You did very well at the Masques last night," Alice said, as if she was reading his mind. "Everyone said so. Cole Greyson said that was the best fight he'd seen in years."
"Thanks," Remus mumbled, around a mouthful of egg.
"Hadrian was that impressed, weren't you?" Alice asked, tousling Hadrian's hair. The boy scowled, but nodded at Remus. "Going to be King of the Green yourself some day."
"Naw," Hadrian said. "I'm gonna be the Maze Bull. He got to chop your head off," he said to Remus, who smirked.
"All the pretty girls like the King of the Green," Remus replied. Hadrian made a face. "You think that now, but you wait a few years," he added, and felt the strange stab of guilt once more. He put it down to anonymous sex with a town-girl he barely knew, and stared at his breakfast.
"Well, you did a good job as Page," Alice continued. "And I imagine the Queen couldn't ask for a more pleasant dance partner. Maybe one," she added, and gave Rufus a sidelong grin, which he returned. Remus wondered if Hadrian was old enough to notice, and glanced at the boy.
Hadrian was building a castle out of scrambled eggs, with fried-bread soldiers for support posts.
Remus had a moment of surreality; for just a second he felt as though he was the only person in the world who was actually real, and the loneliness threatened to strangle him. It lasted barely a second, hardly long enough for him to even feel it, but the yawning chasm was there, and he felt himself look into it.
And heard himself think my god, that's inside of me.
When he looked away from the pit, which for that single moment had been very real and very frightening, he met Alice's eyes.
"Remus?" she asked. "Are you all right? You seem quiet."
"Boy's just tired. I would be too," Rufus answered, but Alice didn't look away. Remus shrugged.
"It's exhausting, isn't it?" he said, with a despairing sort of calm. "I think I might sleep a bit more after breakfast, unless I'm needed."
"Harvest is in, wood's cut, masks're all put up, save the Queen's mask, but Alice says she'll pick it up in town," Rufus replied with a shrug. "Sleep if you like."
"Ta. Yell if I'm needed," Remus said, taking a final bite of his breakfast, which tasted rather like sawdust in his mouth. He suppressed the urge to bolt as he stood and left the table. He did feel tired, with the thick-headed blurryness that comes of physical fatigue; perhaps all he needed was a few days' rest after the hubbub of the Masques.
He lay in bed, drowsing for some time, but every time he drifted off he saw the chasm again, and sometimes it had Lacon Chaney's face in it, staring up at him.
***
Autumn had passed into winter almost before the Masques, and the last dead leaves froze and cracked to dust and blew away soon enough. The farmhands had long since left the barn, but Remus preferred the dim cellar for his full moons; he couldn't be accidentally heard there, the thick stone effective soundproofing, and there was no wood to splinter into his fingers.
He regularly woke from the full moon nights with fingernails that cracked and bled, causing Alice to scold him for being a nail-biter. She and Hadrian were at the farm rarely, but there wasn't much to do in the winter months other than see to the animals, and he and Rufus went into town more often. Around the time Augusta came home from Beauxbatons for Christmas, Remus got a job in one of the High Street shops, helping to stock merchandise while the usual stockboys worked the tills overrun by holiday shoppers.
The work kept him in town except for weekends and full moons, and he rented a little room above the pub, though Alice had offered a bed and half of Hadrian's bedroom in her little flat. He declined, half because it would have meant sharing rooms with a ten year old, half because --
Well, he didn't want to live with Alice. It wasn't anything she did, or a dislike of her; it was just that he didn't, and that was all.
He did like Alice, he decided. She was intelligent, and like him she'd seen her share of trouble young; she was settled, and he envied her that, her secure existence with her books and children and his father. Meanwhile, he was nearly thirty and stocking shelves in the back of a shop, because the shopkeeper didn't mind that he took a few days off every four weeks.
He saw Alice even more often than his father did, he realised one day; he usually went up to the bookshop on his lunch breaks and brought sandwiches for them, in return for a few quiet minutes with a book. His salary was barely covering his room and meals, but it wasn't, all in all, a bad existence. Certainly more peaceful than being an Auror, and less stressful than teaching. When he mentioned it to her, she smiled and shrugged.
"We always see each other less, in winter," she answered. "Roads're bad this time of year, and there's a lot more business -- I can't get away as often."
"Hard on you."
"Harder on Rufus, I imagine. You know how it is, he never complains, but I can't help thinking it's lonely."
Remus leaned against the counter, feeling Hadrian tug on his sleeve, trying to pull him away. "I never considered it lonely," he replied. Hadrian yanked on his sleeve again. "Not now, Hadrian."
"Really?" Alice asked. "That big empty house, and no-one else around to talk to?"
"You'll make me feel guilty in a minute. Hadrian, what is it?"
"Come play chess with us," Hadrian insisted.
"In a little while. I'll come upstairs," Remus answered, and Hadrian gave him a wide grin before clumping up the stairs. He heard, over their heads, footsteps cross the floor and a closet being opened. He turned back to Alice. "There's plenty to do, still. Letters to write and all."
"And you Lupins are not the most sociable of men," she added. He ducked his head.
"I suppose not," he replied. "Does it bother you?"
She gave him a warm smile. "As long as the pair of you are sociable enough to come to dinner occasionally, no."
Remus felt a very worrying warmth in the pit of his stomach at that smile.
"Rufus and I have our own places," she continued, oblivious. "It's always worked best that way. It's nice to see you coming round more often, though."
"I'd better go see to Hadrian and Augusta before they wreck something," Remus said abruptly, and before she could answer he'd run swiftly up the stairs, arriving just in time to mediate a dispute over who got to be what colour. He was unaccountably relieved to have escaped to the tedious but easily-solved rivalry of Alice's children.
His job ended in early January, and he moved back to the farm. If his father had been lonely or missed his presence, he didn't say, but Remus couldn't imagine he had, much; he had been absent for years before now, and though they had written regularly, his father was a self-sufficient man. Augusta returned to Beauxbatons and Alice closed the shop for two weeks in the post-holiday lull, to come out to the farm for a holiday with Hadrian. It was...comfortable, in a way, though it made Remus uneasy. Comfort, he found, was usually the last stage before a major upheaval, and so he stayed vigilant. They wouldn't be there during the full moon, thankfully, but it came barely two days after they were supposed to leave, which was too close for his liking.
Sooner or later Alice would have to be told, but not just yet. If it came down to a fear for her children -- and Remus wouldn't blame her -- he would leave them to their domestic bliss and stop causing trouble. He'd left before, after all.
Their holiday at the Lupin farm went well, in all. Remus kept to himself, reading and doing small chores his father was getting to be too old and stiff for; Hadrian learned to feed the chickens instead of harassing them, and together he and Hadrian mucked out the barn to prepare it for the spring. The day before Alice and Hadrian were to leave, Rufus suggested an overnight hunting expedition out at the far end of their lands, and Hadrian eagerly agreed; Remus declined, his muscles already feeling the pull of the full moon and aching on account of it.
He hadn't realised Alice would stay behind also, or he might have gone anyway; it was awkward, just the two of them in the house.
"Remus!" she called up to him, a few hours after Hadrian and Rufus had tramped off into the slowly setting sun. He put his head out his bedroom door and found her at the bottom of the stairs. "Are you coming down to dinner?"
"Dinner?" he asked.
"I've made soup."
He emerged hesitantly and descended, following her into the kitchen. "I thought we'd just cook for ourselves," he mumbled, as she handed him a steaming bowl.
"Well, it's as easy to cook for two as for one, and you've been doing a lot of the cooking lately -- plus you look worn out," she added, following him to the kitchen table. "Are you sure you're all right?"
"It comes and goes, it's nothing," he said, and the excuse still made him vaguely bitter every time he said it, though he'd been saying it since he was eleven. Sick again, Remus? Oh, it comes and goes, Professor...
"Well, eat up, and I'm sure it'll be gone before you know it," she said. "I was wondering if you'd show me the north garden after dinner, Rufus said Hadrian and I could plant some rose-bushes there in the spring."
"Hope you're planning on planting hearty ones," Remus said, adding some crackers to his soup. "The soil's not very good. We can plow it up and mix in some fertiliser before we plant, and perhaps cast a few greenhouse charms to keep the roses at an even temperature, but they're never going to be the same as actual hothouse roses."
"Oh, I don't care," Alice said. "I just thought it might be nice to fill up the empty plot, and then we'll have roses whenever we come to visit you two."
Remus nodded into his meal, and they finished in comfortable silence -- perhaps a little too comfortable, but then he was trying to ignore that.
The North Garden had once been some kind of livestock yard, or possibly a vegetable garden back before the southern farmlands had been added to the Lupin plot. It was a little walled-in space hidden mostly by hedges, with crusty, dusty dirt that didn't look as if it could support weeds, much less rosebushes. It was chilly in the evening, and the rustling of the wind-blown hedges was almost eerie. Alice rubbed her arms as she inspected it, kicking the dirt, peering at the fencing, and pacing out the size of the garden.
"It looks like someone ought to be buried here," she said, almost cheerfully. He mmhm'ed an answer, watching the way her hips moved as she paced, until she turned over her shoulder to glance at him. "Nobody is buried here, are they?"
"Not that I know of, but you know how the older generations were. Live on the farm, die on the farm. If we plow up any bones I'll make sure we put them back," he added lightly.
"You're not going to bring the big plow into this little place, are you?"
"No," he said, as she returned to the entrance, noting the measurements in a little book she took from her pocket. "Reckon I'll bring out one of the old iron plows and do a bit of charmwork with it."
"You?" she asked curiously.
"Why not?"
"I just assumed Rufus would be the one helping more. You seem to avoid us, when you can."
"That's not true," he said, then amended, "Not anymore. I came to see you all the time over the holiday, didn't I?"
"I suppose you did," she answered teasingly. "And brought us food to keep us quiet while you escaped with a book."
"I don't hate you, Alice."
"I know you don't," she said, tapping the notebook against his arm playfully. "Not anymore. I just never know how to read you, Remus. You're very self-contained."
"Believe me, that's a good thing," he murmured. "We should be getting back before it's too dark to see."
"The moon's almost full," she said, pointing as it slipped above the line of the hedges. Remus felt it like a tug on a marionette's strings, and had to keep himself from twitching. "We'll have plenty of light."
"I hate the moonlight," he answered.
"Why? I love it," she said, stretching her arms. "It makes everything seem -- "
" -- ghostly," he finished. "And strange. It distorts things."
"Do you think so?" she asked, facing him again. He ducked his head.
"I just don't think it's the great shakes everyone's always talking about. Poets and playwrights and singers. It makes things false."
She smiled. "I don't think I've ever heard you so passionate about anything."
He felt an ache blossom in his chest, a sudden homesickness that was unrelated to where home was, but rather to where comfort might be; he didn't want to be here, didn't want to have to walk back, he just wanted to hide somewhere. He felt dizzy under the moon, and lost in the silvery landscape it created.
Desperately, he pulled Alice forward by the wrist and kissed her, his right palm touching her cheek, left hand holding hers against his shoulder. The feel of soft curving breasts against his chest was marvelous, and the sway of her hips against his, unfamiliar as the feeling was, flooded his body with sensation. The slightly salty taste of her lips --
She wasn't kissing him back.
She pulled away just as he realised this, and his reflexes were fast enough that he didn't think she'd noticed the absolute iron grip with which he'd held her against him before he let her go. He came to his senses as though she'd slapped him, which she might have done, as oblivious to the world as he had been.
They regarded each other across the expanse of near-sterile soil, her eyes wide in shock, his breath coming shallow and almost panicked. She moved forward slowly, until they were close -- not as close as they had been, but nearly. She touched his arm.
"Remus," she said quietly. "I'm so sorry."
He put a hand up to cover his eyes; he'd half-expected it, but one never really thinks one may be pushed aside until the words are spoken.
"No, you have my apologies," he managed, voice cracking slightly on the last word.
"I had no idea -- "
"Please, Alice, it was a slip in judgement," he said quickly, the words coming from some other Remus far away. "It was nothing. I'm quite sorry."
"Remus, I love your father -- "
"I know -- "
" -- and I loved him first," she continued. "Even if I didn't love him best, we have a life together, a past together. And I do love him best."
He nodded, hand drifting down to wipe his mouth, to try and brush her taste off his lips.
"Alice, please believe me, it was -- I didn't mean it," he said, though he had, and even all the lies he'd told couldn't have prepared him for the magnitude of this one. "It was the moon," he added, almost whimsically, and she gave him a small smile. "I told you it makes things false. Don't -- I was just lonely," he said, hoping this confession would cover the larger sin.
"Of course," she agreed, still rubbing his arm. "It must be very hard on you. I understand."
"We should go back to the farmhouse," he said. "I...think that would be wisest."
"I agree."
"And...I'd prefer it if you didn't tell my father. I should, if anyone does."
"I see no reason he needs to know, not from me. Anymore than he would need to know if you spilled soup, or tore a shirt," she said, and he sighed, relieved.
"I am sorry," he said, as they started the walk back to the house.
"I know," she answered, and the tone of her voice told him he hadn't fooled her in the slightest.
They were silent the rest of the way home.
***
Rufus and Hadrian returned through the fields the next afternoon, carrying three dead hares and a live turtle they'd come across. Remus was sitting on the back porch, nursing a firewhiskey. When Rufus saw his face, he sent Hadrian inside and stayed on the back porch, crossing his arms. Remus silently offered him a drink, and he took it; after a few sips, he set it down on the railing.
"What did she say to you?" he asked. Remus looked away. "I know, Remus. I'm your father, I've watched you fall in love before. What did she say to you when you told her?"
"I didn't tell her," Remus answered, eyes fixing on a distant point in the southern horizon. "I kissed her."
"I see."
Remus looked up at that, and saw the fear and worry in his father's face. He realised his father was actually afraid that Alice might have chosen him.
"She didn't kiss me back," he added. "She said she loves you best."
Lupin men were very good at self control. Barely a flicker of triumph passed through his father's eyes, followed closely by sympathy. And, perhaps, just a little pity.
"I'll stay until spring planting's done," Remus continued, sipping his firewhiskey. "Then I'll go."
"You needn't," his father said softly.
"Yes, I rather think I do," Remus answered. Rufus drained his drink, and crossed his arms.
"If it was between her and you, Remus, you're my son -- "
"It's not. I wouldn't make you choose."
Rufus nodded. "If you change your mind between now and the end of planting, you've only to say so."
He went inside, and Remus heard Alice's joyful greeting; their low voices for a minute, interrupted by Hadrian, and then silence as they moved into the kitchen, where Rufus would no doubt be dressing the hares for cooking.
Remus bent forward and rested his face in his hands, not weeping, merely thinking. He stayed there, slouched in the late afternoon light, until he was called in to dinner.
***
"There's just one last thing," Remus had said, as he was being shown to the door by the matron of the house.
She'd stopped, and turned to look at him, her perfectly-made-up face mildly questioning.
"I think you ought to know before you make your decision," he'd said.
"I don't see that there's anything that could keep us from hiring you, Mister Lupin," she'd replied with a laugh. He'd smiled, because she so patently expected it.
"I have a...medical condition," he'd said delicately. "Nothing contagious or progressive; it's a small matter, really, but I require treatment every four weeks, and I'll have to be absent for two or three days. I can give you the dates in advance for the next year," he added.
This line -- possibly, he was willing to admit, in conjunction with two vicious facial scars -- had lost him the three previous jobs he'd applied for; two because it wasn't believed he wouldn't somehow infect their precious children, one because that would leave the shop short-handed three days a month. One had been with a school, too, and he could probably have cried discrimination, but why make trouble? He wouldn't take the job if it was given, if he had to sue them to get it.
Unlike the other mother, who had kept her face carefully (a little too carefully) blank, this woman raised her eyebrows a fraction -- as much as she was able to, given a recent face-lift, he decided -- and drew them together slightly.
"It's predictable and controllable, and I don't have any special dietary requirements," he'd added. He had a whimsical image of planning out his menu for the week with "fresh human" listed under the full moon days.
"That shouldn't be a problem, if you're as reliable as your references say," she'd said with a smile, finally. "We'll notify you of our decision tomorrow; you were the last of the tutors to be interviewed."
"Thank you, Ms. Edwards-Clarke," he'd replied, and begun to brace himself against the rejection he'd likely get on the following day.
Now he lay in the little hostel-room he'd rented for a few quid, in the bottom bunk, and stared at the slats of the bed above him. Yes, his references were excellent. One from Anson in Australia, attesting his fitness for physical activity as a former police officer with the Australian service; one from Alice attesting to his work ethic, though he'd never worked in her shop. In addition there was a somewhat elderly one from Dumbledore, regarding his education and abilities.
A tutoring job with a wealthy family seemed to be his best bet, and London seemed as good a start as any; it was comfortably far away from his father and Alice, and it was a big metropolitan city, easy to get lost in.
Leaving home had been surprisingly easy. When the planting ended, he'd simply begun packing. Saying goodbye to his father wasn't difficult; he'd left a short note for Augusta and Hadrian, promising to send them something from London, and hadn't said goodbye to Alice, who was good and understanding and would no doubt be slightly relieved to have him off the farm and out of their lives. He didn't blame her.
The hardest part had little to do with either leaving or the reasons behind leaving; it was, ludicrously, a bit of baggage.
He'd been considering using his old Hogwarts trunk, though it seemed a little large for his needs and he had no desire at all to clean it out. He'd been standing in front of his bed, piled neatly with folded clothes, books, odds and ends, and a few small boxes from his youth he hadn't wanted to open, when his father knocked on the door. Remus grunted permission to enter, and Rufus pushed the door open, carrying a plain brown package in one hand.
"Had it in the coat closet," he explained, giving it to Remus. "Forgot to give it to you sooner -- customs form says it's a suitcase. It might be useful," he added, apologetically. Remus turned it over and over in his hands.
American postmark. Green customs form, Muggle post -- well, that was wise, if it was transatlantic. Familiar handwriting --
Gabriel.
He sucked in a breath, sharply.
"I'll go, if you like," his father said. Remus, after a stunned moment, shook his head.
"It's nothing," he said, tearing off the brown paper. Yes; his old suitcase, a gift from his students at the Academy, reading Professor R.J. Lupin across the top. His father smiled.
"That's as good a reference as any, a suitcase labeled that," Rufus said. Remus studied the lettering, which had begun to peel and chip a little.
"I suppose so," he said softly. He laid it on the bed and flipped the latches, opening it; tucked inside a flap were a few books, tied together with string. His father didn't ask this time; he merely faded back into the hallway, and Remus hardly heard his footsteps down the stairs.
He looked through the books, recognising the handwriting in the margins as his, before he put them on the book-pile on his bed, and began to pack his clothing into the suitcase.
And he'd left and caught a train to London, found a hostel to stay in and begun scanning the "better papers" for jobs. It was hard to even get an interview without a recommendation, but he'd managed. He had one up on most of the tutors who wanted to work for the wealthy families in the area: he'd been a police officer, and could serve as a bodyguard as well.
London was large and frightening, not a city he was at all familiar with, but then he'd learned his way around America, which was even larger and more frightening; he'd learned Sydney too, eventually. So he did what he had to. He always did what he had to, in fact; just once it would be nice to do what he wanted to.
He haunted the telephone in the hostel's common-room all day; it was the only telephone number he'd been able to give to Ms. Edwards-Clarke. He spent the time making a list of new jobs he could apply for -- pathetically short -- and reading the rest of the paper as well. He could have picked up a Prophet, if he'd gone down to the Leaky Cauldron, but he'd learned his lesson in Sydney, and he wanted to stay away from wizarding society for a while.
The telephone rang around two in the afternoon. He scrambled for it, despite knowing what she would say.
"Mr. Lupin," Ms. Edwards-Clarke said, smoothly. "I'm calling to notify you that we've selected you for the position of tutor for our children. I'd like you to come tomorrow to have brunch with us, to discuss the job requirements; I've spoken with my husband and there are some requests we'd like to make of you before you accept the position."
"Of -- of course," he'd stammered, shocked. The calm acceptance of a rejection had already been on his lips, and he could hardly believe his luck. "My day is open; name your time."
"Ten-thirty should be fine," she replied, and he agreed that he would be there.
A job. He had a job. With room and board paid, and he would never have to try to kill anyone. Well, theoretically. Glorified babysitter perhaps, but there were worse jobs than trying to cram Latin and English Grammar and Fencing between the ears of the future leaders of the country.
He ran back to the bunk-room and undid the magical sticking charm on his locker door, digging through his clothing for his best white shirt. He had no tie or appropriate jacket, but his black Auror trousers would do, and he had ninety-two Muggle pounds in his wallet. He could buy a tie and a cheap jacket between now and then.
As he pulled out his shirt to hang it properly, so that it could air, one of the books Gabriel had sent him tumbled out, and he righted it carefully. Perhaps he owed this job to Gabriel; he'd taught him how to fence, after all.
He was greeted at the door by the maid the next morning, in his new tie and white shirt and new jacket. She smiled at him and led him into a window-lined breakfast room, where Mr. and Ms. Edwards-Clarke were already drinking their tea. He hadn't met the husband before, and had the idea that Ms. Edwards-Clarke was the real head of the family, no matter that her husband worked for the government and she "merely ran the house". They reminded him strongly of Sirius' parents, minus the vitriol.
There was dainty finger food to be eaten, but he was nervous and barely nibbled on what was put before him; odd that he could go hand-to-hand with street-punk Muggles in Sydney and yet be completely at a loss in an elegant town-house in London. Ms. Edwards-Clarke did all the talking, explaining that they wished to hire him to bodyguard the children as well as educate them, which he'd been expecting, and would like him to sleep in a room in the children's suite, which they understood some people found degrading and wanted to be sure he accepted. He would have slept in one of their racing-car beds if it meant he really had the job.
The children themselves, whom he had yet to be introduced to, arrived at that point; Ackerley, the elder, was just turning ten, while his brother Chadwick was five-and-a-half. Remus let Chadwick (oh, what a name) climb into his lap and pick at his food, while Ackerley sat more politely at a chair brought by a butler and ate with a decorum Remus certainly hadn't had when he was Ackerley's age.
"You see, Richard?" Ms. Edwards-Clarke said, pointing to Remus. "They love him already, don't you Chadwick?"
Chadwick, halfway through a bite of egg, looked up at her.
"Is he our new Mr. Mason?" Ackerley asked.
"Mr. Mason was their last tutor. He was...unacceptable," Ms. Edwards-Clarke said. She made a drinking motion with one hand, and Remus made the appropriately shocked face.
"Do you want juice, mum?" Ackerley asked.
"No, sweetheart," Ms. Edwards-Clarke said. "Don't interrupt when grownups are talking."
Remus eyed Ackerley, who smiled hesitantly at him.
"We were sure once you saw the boys you wouldn't be able to turn down the job," Mr. Edwards-Clarke said, getting a word in edgewise.
"They're charming lads," Remus answered. Chadwick offered him a piece of toast, and he ate it with a grin.
"Of course they are," Ms. Edwards-Clarke said, stroking Ackerley's head with a perfectly-manicured hand. "Now they have a Governess, Miss Helit -- that's Susan Helit, I'll introduce you later, daughter of a duke, trying to make her own way in life, very nice girl -- who gets them up and dressed. You'll be expected to meet them for breakfast, and in the mornings they go to museums and parks. You'll accompany Miss Helit, and then the boys are in your care in the afternoons. Mr. Mason's lesson plans are available so that you can begin right where he left off. I believe you said you could start immediately?"
"This afternoon, if I have time to pack my belongings and bring them here," Remus replied.
"We'll send a driver with you," Ms. Edwards-Clarke said. "Will you need help lifting anything?"
Remus thought reservedly of his suitcase and haversack, neither one completely full.
"No, I shouldn't think so," he said.
***
When he arrived at the suite which was to be his -- a room which connected to the boys' bedroom and the hallway, with a private bath and balcony -- Ackerly and Chadwick were sitting on his bed, small pale faces upturned to his hopefully. He had taught children only a little older than Ackerly, but Chadwick would be something new and challenging, much younger than any child he'd previously encountered.
They stared at him.
He stared at them.
"Well then," he said finally, and set his suitcase next to the bed. "You're Chackerly and Adwick, eh?"
Chadwick giggled. Ackerly looked solemn.
"What do they call you on the playground?" Remus asked, hanging his haversack on the back of a chair that butted up against an old mahogany desk. It was neatly arranged with two pencils and two fairly expensive ballpoint pens in a small cup, a desk-set and a pile of papers labeled "Lesson Plans".
"Ack," Ackerly said. "And Wick."
"Wise children," Remus answered. "You may call me Mr. Lupin, or Remus if your parents aren't listening," he added with a wink. He opened the suitcase and unpacked his precious few books, setting them on the shelf above the desk. "I imagine we'll be spending a lot of time together."
"Mr. Mason got thrown out," Wick supplied helpfully. "He broke bottles."
"He hit the bottle," Ack corrected. "That's what Mum said."
"Yes, well, I don't make a habit of hitting anything," Remus answered.
"Where'd you get those marks on your face?" Ack asked.
"Australia."
"How?"
"Got in a fight," Remus answered, amused a little by the boy's bluntness. "Are you going to watch me unpack everything, then?"
Ack nodded placidly.
"Pants and all?"
Both boys made faces.
"Here," Remus said, passing Ack his copy of Sherlock Holmes. "Entertain yourself, as I am not paid to entertain you until tomorrow morning. Wick, do you like spinny tops?"
"Spinny tops?" Wick asked. Remus removed a sneakoscope he'd picked up in Australia, dormant and dark in this house of bright windows and cheerful children, and gave it to him to play with, showing him how to spin it between his fingers. Ack had curled up on the bed at once with the book, and was reading with the fierce concentration of a child who is going to be required to make a vocabulary list later.
Remus turned to his unpacking, sorting clothing into the dresser and wardrobe, papers into a drawer in the desk, toiletries on the bathroom sink. He was just coming back from hiding his Shearsides -- a dangerous toy in the hands of a child, even a Muggle child -- when he found a young woman in the room also, holding up his wand and examining it. She glanced over the top of it to meet his eyes with the most piercing stare he'd encountered in some time.
"Lucky stick?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow. She had a pale face with a hint of a birthmark crossing one cheek, hair already white with only a streak of black running through it, curled tightly into a bun at the back of her head. She wore a plain dress that identified her immediately as Governess. Indeed, the word fit her the way it hadn't fit women since the Brontes, he suspected.
"You must be Miss Helit," he said, carefully disentangling her fingers from the wand and setting it on the high shelf, behind the books. Thank god she hadn't waved it about. "I was -- "
" -- warned about me?"
"Informed you would be here," he finished smoothly. "I've just been unpacking. Remus Lupin," he added, holding out his hand belatedly. She examined the scar across his thumb (third full moon of 1985, reopened sometime in 87, he thought it gave his hands character) before accepting it. She had a firm grip, but they didn't actually shake; merely gripped each others' hands and then dropped them.
"Susan Helit," she answered. "This is a very tiresome business so let's dispense with it promptly. Yes, I am the daughter of a Duke, no I have no ancestral lands, I prefer to make my own way in the world and I am not available for dinner Friday next."
"So noted," he said, gravely.
"Also, you are not to call the boys Ack or Wick. The former is an exclamation and the latter is a candle component," she said.
"Too late, I'm afraid. Ack and Wick they have called themselves and Ack and Wick they shall remain," he answered indifferently. He closed his suitcase, snapping the locks shut. "Do you really believe Ackerly and Chadwick are any less mortifying?"
"Those are their names, regrettably," Miss Helit said.
"Very well, in the mornings they may be Ackerly and Chadwick when they are out with you at the museum and in the afternoons when they do their long-division they will be Ack and Wick."
"They're well-past long-division," Miss Helit said, not quickly but promptly. Remus gave Wick a dubious look.
"Chadwick, what is eighty divided by eleven?" she asked, without turning around.
"Seven and a quarter and a bit," Wick answered.
"Would you like one biscuit 'and a bit' for tea?"
Wick sighed and looked up from the sneakoscope. "Seven point two seven three," he corrected.
Remus looked impressed.
"He's a prodigy," Miss Helit explained.
"Do his parents know?"
"Good lord no, they'd send him to some horrible school for prodigies somewhere and he'd never get to do anything else."
Remus gave her an appraising look. "I'm guessing the unlamented Mr. Mason...?"
"If you haven't studied much trigonometry I suggest you leave his mathematical education to me as Mr. Mason did, and concentrate on trying to get him to enjoy his history lessons," Miss Helit said bluntly.
"Am I permitted to participate in the education of Master Ack?"
"Yeah, she's bored with me. I don't like science," Ack said.
"Oh yes? Why not?"
"I like magic better. Turning lead into gold and things. This book is good, isn't it? It's all murder and clues."
"Take it with you then," Remus suggested, bemused by Ack's self-professed fondness for 'magic'. "I'll expect an oral report from you on the contents of the first story by dinner tomorrow."
Miss Helit looked approving, which surprised him; he didn't think proper governesses usually considered Sherlock Holmes appropriate bedtime reading for ten-year-olds.
"All right then," she said, helping Wick off the bed and taking the sneakoscope, pondering it for a second before placing it in Remus' outstretched palm. "Mr. Lupin has a lot to do to prepare for tomorrow's lessons, so let's leave him in peace for now and go see how your plants are growing. You'll find notes on the greenhouse project in the second folder down," she said to Remus, nodding at the pile of papers on the desk. "There's tea at three-thirty in the playroom and dinner at seven-thirty downstairs; the children eat with their parents and we generally have a sit-down with the cook and butler in the kitchen."
"I think I'll give tea a miss," he said, indicating the notes. "Should I be surprised if most of them aren't in Mr. Mason's handwriting?"
She gave him a brief, fleeting smile. "I'll see you at dinner, Mr. Lupin."
***
As he usually did, given a solid structure to live within, Remus fell into the house's schedule easily in his first months as the childrens' tutor. He rose early and washed, met Miss Helit and the children for breakfast at eight, escorted them wherever they wished to go in the mornings and generally had to carry Wick back by the time they were done. Lunch was usually sandwiches in the kitchen, and then Wick would typically fall asleep for an hour or so while Ack and Remus worked on his lessons. Miss Helit did maths with Wick, and then they all had a history lesson together after tea. Miss Helit called it "storytime", but it amounted to gory tales of beheading, chivalry, naval battles, peasant uprisings, and European revolutions with a few dates scattered in to make it legitimate.
The house was large and beautiful, the garden big enough for two inquisitive children to entertain themselves in, and his life was, for once, on an even keel. It was a very secure house, to be sure, with walls and extra locks, thick windows that didn't open and an intercom system for calling into various rooms. Still, he found he didn't mind the security, and it was easy enough to slip by it with the quite legitimate monthly excuse that he was going for treatment for his illness. The boys always waved to him from the window as he left, and were usually quiet and respectful when he returned, a day later, the worst of the damage hidden or healed.
It was clear that Miss Helit had been teaching them most of what they knew, and Remus wondered how even a man with Mr. Mason's reputation could have wasted so much of his time when there were two relatively keen young minds waiting to be informed about the world. Ack sped through his literary assignments, though he was lethargic at best when it came to anything related to science. Wick was apparently having trouble grasping trigonometry fully, but then Wick still made a mess trying to feed himself occasionally.
Miss Helit herself sometimes seemed like a complex mathematical equation, all edges and symbols and numbers, but he had no real urge to solve it; if they were left alone together while the children played, he watched them closely and asked her questions to make small talk, nothing more. She learned that he was an only child from a farm in the north; he learned that she had played lacrosse at school and had a grandfather who kept a fishpond. There was a cool professional courtesy between them borne of her refusal to be anything other than a governess and his lack of desire to be anything other than a tutor.
Still, after a while -- especially when, after his "treatments" every full moon, she brought chicken broth for him instead of biscuits with their tea -- he began to wonder just what Susan Helit was. It took a while to summon the tact and proper wording to ask her, but in January they were walking through a portrait gallery in a minor south London museum, and while Wick and Ack sat and contemplated a painting of a woman with an enormously prodigious nose, he shoved his hands in his pockets and glanced at her.
"Miss Helit, I have a rather personal question to ask you," he said. "If you don't mind."
"I won't go to the cinema with you tonight," she answered. He grinned; she didn't.
"That wasn't it at all, I'm afraid," he replied. "I was wondering what brought you to London. And these children in particular. Not that you're ill-fitted to the task, but you couldn't have known Wick was a prodigy, and I know you're better at maths than the average public-school girl."
She did smile then, but it wasn't a very reassuring one. "I suppose you're owed that much knowledge," she said cryptically. "My Grandfather -- "
"The old patriarch."
"Hmm, yes -- he has a way of knowing about people. He was in the house when the boys' grandfather died, and he asked if I wouldn't pop round and look after them for a few years."
"Just like that?"
"One doesn't say no to Grandfather. He had his reasons with Chadwick, but I rather thought he decided Ackerly could use an understanding ear as well, on occasion."
Remus glanced at her again before his eyes slid, as they were trained to do, back to the boys. Ack was posing as the large-nosed woman now, much to Wick's handclapping delight.
"Oh? How so?"
"Oh, Ackerly's a wizard," Miss Helit replied, and Remus flinched.
"How do you mea -- "
"A wizard. Magic wands, silly robes, the whole bit. He's been making pencils dance around to entertain Chadwick since he was eight. I'm surprised he hasn't shown you yet, all things considered. You know."
Remus blinked. "How would I -- "
"Please don't assume I'm dense, you aren't any good at it. Grandfather probably arranged for you to be hired as well. He has a way with things like that. Normally Mrs. Edwards-Clarke would never hire anyone with a chronic disease, non-contagious or otherwise. But it's good for the boy to have one of his own kind to take him to the train in September."
"Are you one of us?" Remus asked, lowering his voice.
"Not precisely. It's neither here nor there, Mr. Lupin, as the point of the matter is that Ackerly's going off to Dogwarts or whatever that school is -- "
" -- Hogwarts -- "
"And someone's going to have to handle things with his parents. Buy his books and such. Certainly you can't picture Mrs. Edwards-Clarke even admitting what the school is."
Remus had to admit that either of the very proper Edwards-Clarkes would stand out like a sore thumb in Diagon Alley.
"Chadwick's perfectly normal, of course, hasn't shown a lick of magical ability, thank goodness. I suppose eventually someone's bound to find out about his maths, but by then hopefully he'll have mastered quantum physics and can pick a nice university to study at. In the meantime, Ackerly's just got to keep things under wraps until autumn." She sighed. "I'm so glad Grandfather picked someone with a little sense about Muggles. I suppose the werewolf bit can't be helped."
Remus tensed. "If you tell anyone -- "
"Like who?" she asked bluntly. "Our circles don't cross, Mr. Lupin, except in that we both teach the children. No-one who knows you would believe me, and no-one who would believe me knows you, so please don't pitch a fit in the middle of the gallery. Chadwick, Ackerly, next room if you please, you've made fun of that poor woman long enough."
"Who is your grandfather, anyway?" he asked, as they passed into the next room. "Is he a wizard?"
"Sort of, only not."
"And he knows the Edwards-Clarkes?"
"Oh yes. He knows everyone," she said, and moved towards the children to discuss what Ackerly called 'a really brilliant beheading'.
***
Remus undressed for bed that night with less ease than usual, though his door was closed and windows shuttered. He felt as though Susan Helit had swiftly and carelessly stripped him bare, announcing all his secrets to him as though she'd read a book on his life. He'd been with the family almost ten months, and never a hint of strangeness had he seen from either her or Ack, though if she said the boy was a wizard, Remus was willing to believe it. A Muggle-born, but then Remus himself was half and half, so that was no matter.
He'd known there was something odd about Miss Helit, but clearly she'd hidden it and he'd tried so desperately to have a normal life here (despite locking himself in an abandoned basement once a month to rip his own skin off) that he'd ignored it. Perhaps she was part veela, or somesuch.
Not that it mattered.
In May Ackerly would turn eleven, and his letter would probably come fairly soon thereafter; he would have to take the boy to Diagon Alley and then to the platform and the Hogwarts Express. Perhaps if he was lucky nobody else he knew would be --
Of course nobody else he knew would be there. Everyone he knew from Hogwarts -- everyone he knew at all well -- was dead.
He pulled the pyjama pants over his hips and fell onto the bed, staring at the ceiling, arms crooked above him. Would he have to talk to Ack about being a wizard? Was that expected of him? He had barely managed to make it through reproductive biology with the lad.
Would he have to talk to Wick about not being a wizard? He didn't think Wick would mind, much.
Didn't they send people to do this sort of thing, when the parents were oblivious Muggles? Perhaps he wouldn't have to do much, just hand the boy off to someone from the Ministry's Muggle-Relations department. That would be better for everyone, wouldn't it?
September was eight months away. Ack's whole lesson scheme would have to be rethought. More Latin, less Muggle history, some basic Wizarding history; an introduction to charms, since clearly Ack had mastered Wingardium Leviosa already....
He fell asleep revising the next day's lesson in his head; woke in the night, freezing, and crawled under the blankets to dream about art galleries and the slightly-too-knowing eyes of Susan Helit.
***
The Ministry did send a courier to deliver the Hogwarts letter, who sat with the Edwards-Clarkes for half an hour and explained Hogwarts to them as best they could understand it; they seemed to come away with the belief that it was some sort of specialised school for children interested in classical history and advanced scholarship. They brightened considerably when they discovered it was Mr. Lupin's alma mater, and by the end of the courier's visit, Remus had agreed to take the boy to Diagon Alley to buy his supplies, and put him on the Hogwarts Express. By then Ack was already comfortable with Wizarding history and slang, and seemed vaguely excited by the idea of actually doing magic instead of just reading about it, though Remus sensed he didn't truly believe he was going to get to do any magic.
He had wanted to spend the rest of his life avoiding Diagon Alley and most of the Wizarding World, but it appeared life had other plans, Remus thought ruefully. He was running out of things to avoid; his family, his heritage, his school, his past. Perhaps he was strong enough now, now that he didn't seem to feel anything anymore, to face them.
So at the end of August he helped Ack into the long black car and told the chauffeur to take them to Charing Cross Road, and said he would catch a cab back the following day. They stood outside the Leaky Cauldron, in the late-summer heat that seemed to waver up from the sidewalk all around them.
"Right then, lad," Remus said, taking a deep breath. "Ready?"
"Yes, sir," Ack answered, staring at the dim little pub door distrustfully. Remus pushed it open, and followed him inside.
The pub wasn't crowded at that time of day, before the rush for lunch, and one more man leading a young child through to Diagon Alley hardly drew any attention at all. Out the other side (Ack wide-eyed and grinning, now) they did get some strange looks for Remus' scars and their Muggle clothing, but nothing too far out of the ordinary for Remus.
Books and supplies, robes and a trunk, and an owl to carry letters from the Hogsmeade post-office where the Muggle mail for students came; some sweets and a change from Muggle cash to Galleons and Sickles and Knuts, the money absolutely alien to him now. Alien to Ack too, who nevertheless seemed to enjoy every moment of it. Remus found he looked at the buildings with impunity; nostalgia didn't enter into it, nor did sorrow. It was simply a place he'd once been and now had to navigate again. He was rather pleased with himself. No-one seemed to know him and he didn't recognise many faces, but then that was perhaps not so unusual.
No -- in all, he thought, as he slept in the bed next to Ack's, at a room over the Leaky Cauldron he'd reserved weeks ago, knowing that there would be precious little spare space come the end of August -- in all, the trip had gone well. Tomorrow he was taking Ack to the train, and then he'd catch a cab back to the house and have tea and do lessons with Wick. The Edwards-Clarkeses had promised him he would still have a job until Wick was ready to attend a proper preparatory school as well, and in the meantime he could tutor Ack on holidays, and help him with his school assignments if he really truly needed it.
And then it was morning, and in the whirl of wash-dress-bacon-and-eggs-get-to-the-station-and-find-the-platform-again, Remus kept his head and kept track of all of Ack's things, even the shirt he nearly forgot and the extra bag of owl treats that fell out on their way to the platform. He showed Ack the trick of getting through and followed him effortlessly, and still he felt nothing, merely the urgency of getting Ack onto the train on time. They carried the trunk between them and settled him in a compartment, with his owl cage on top and his wand safely tucked in his coat pocket. Remus gave him a few final instructions -- don't be afraid of the Sorting Hat, don't shake your wand without proper instruction, remember to change into your robes by twilight -- and left him there, already chatting with a few other boys and sharing around his Every Flavour Beans.
He descended the steps of the train with a self-satisfied smirk; he had survived, and fared far better than he ever had as a student. In fact, he had --
"Oh, excuse me," said a redheaded woman, as she bumped into him while trying to help a younger boy with a distinct family resemblance try to navigate his cart. "There you are, Percy, I just want to see where Ron went, he's somewhere behind us -- "
Remus ducked away as the woman raised her hand to wave at another child, who waved back and nearly ran him down with the trolly he pushed. Remus stepped backwards quickly, cursing the crowds more than what appeared to be an enthusiastic first-year, and then dodged again as a second boy passed. The boy glanced up at him briefly, almost dismissively, and Remus froze.
Those were Lily's eyes.
Lily's green eyes in a young boy's face, with the same narrow jaw and slightly snub nose James had when he was eleven. The boy was forced to stop and wait while others boarded the train, and he leaned against the trolley's handle with James' indolent hip-tilt, brushing his hair off his forehead, tousled black hair like James had.
James, his mind whispered. James, James and Lily, Lily and James.
The boy glanced over his shoulder, a trifle impatient, and Remus saw a hint of scarring on his forehead. James' forehead, Lily's eyes.
My god, the boy has Lily's eyes exactly.
That was Lily Evans' son.
James Potter's son.
That was Harry.
Remus felt, actually physically felt, when something shattered inside him from looking at Harry, son of his best friend, the only child the four of them had and therefore communally their child, his and James' and Lily's and Peter's and accursed Sirius'. A thin, baggy-trousered boy with a snowy owl and a trunk nearly as big as he was. How could he not have known? How could he not have remembered? Harry was eleven too, and alive in the world. And those were Lily's eyes, he had no right to have Lily's eyes.
But something inside him was broken and he could feel tears bleeding out of his eyes against his will, could feel his chest constricting until his ribs would surely shatter and pierce his lungs and heart -- if he stayed here he would die. The steam of the train and the children with their trunks and the excited calls to each other across the platform would kill him, the ghosts of James and Peter on the edges of his vision would rip his heart right out of his chest, and it was more than one man could be expected to bear, to see the boy with Lily's eyes board the train.
The boy turned again on the stairs to the train. Remus fled, through the barrier and the train station, conscious that people were staring at a grown man sobbing and hyperventilating and looking merely for some dark corner to draw himself together in, but even when he found a filthy niche in the wall, away from the light and noise, he couldn't stop. He could not stop. Two seconds and those eyes in that face had stolen all his hard-earned indifference to the world. He leaned against the wall and covered his face in his hands and tried to stop, and found he couldn't. It was too much. Too much.
***
He had no idea he'd called the Edwards-Clarkeses to tell them Ack was on the train, or that he managed to sound relatively sane while doing so, though apparently he had; he knew they didn't send anyone to look for him, because when he did finally return the household was asleep and there was a note on his door thanking him for taking Ackerly to the train.
He had dim memories of finding himself drained and empty and cold, so cold his hands trembled and could not be stopped, and he knew they trembled because at some point he'd found a cafe outside the train station and bought himself a cheap cup of tea. It had rattled against its saucer when he tried to pick it up. The receipt in his pocket showed he'd bought food, as well, but he couldn't recall eating any of it and it was likely he'd simply left it there, wherever he'd bought it in the first place.
He didn't know what he'd done with the afternoon, only that he'd eventually managed to find a cab and collapse in the back-seat, not caring that the driver was lost twice before finding the proper house. He nearly fumbled the security code to get in, and when he heard movement in the kitchen he froze in the shadows of the front hall until it had passed. He could not fathom moving in the presence of another person.
His room was cold; the door to Wick's bedroom had been left open, and he closed it quietly. He stood in the middle of the room for a while and simply stared at the furnishings as though they were new and alien, and in some way they were. It was such a tidy, empty room, he thought, and yet he suffered so much mess within it -- the mess of his memories, the mess of Miss Helit and Wick and Ack, the mess of responsibility for two children. To pile atop that this new mess, this grief that he was entirely unprepared for, this ten-year-old hole in his soul -- no. He would not.
It reminded him of his departure from the Academy in Alabama, though he was not so calm this time and every movement was an effort of will. This knowing-of-people clearly had to stop; he could not know people anymore, it was too difficult, too hard when they left him or died or didn't love him or when he had to leave them.
He stuffed the books carelessly into his suitcase and the clothing on top of it and in his haversack, leaving the lesson plans strewn as they were about the room. He had no personal papers or correspondence save the letters from his father, which he had kept in the suitcase at any rate. He threw out the recommendations and the transcripts, burning them smokelessly with his wand. He left the sneakoscope for Wick and a letter for the adults, written with a forcibly calm hand, but he had very little clue what he had written, other than that Ack was safely on the train, and he was forced through sudden family emergency to withdraw from employment immediately. He thought later he might have given Susan some kind of reference, or mentioned her work with Wick, but he was never sure. He never saw Susan or Wick again.
He breathed easier in the night air, with the haversack on his shoulder and the suitcase in one hand. He had twenty-two days until the next full moon, but he didn't anticipate a problem; he would find a place to live where he could Change, as well.
He decided perhaps the conservatives weren't so wrong after all. Werewolves clearly needed locking up away from people.
Chapter 7
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Nice one Samuel. Very nice indeed.