Chapter Text
On a cold night in October, Remus's world ended. Again.
* * * * *
Remus Lupin was a normal little wizarding boy for five years before his world ended for the first time. (Not that he'd realized it then, it's hard for children that young to grasp the idea of 'forever'.)
His quiet, simple life turned into a whirlwind-- going from doctor to doctor, hospital to hospital, moving houses so often Mother said the owls sometimes forgot where they lived. (They hadn't, of course, it was just the pool of people writing them letters was slowly dwindling away.)
Remus knew he was sick and had to stay inside because someone (something) had bitten him, but after every full moon when they let him back out of his room, he asked if he was 'better now'.
And every time his father would sweep him up in a big bear hug and answer without hesitation, "not yet."
* * * * *
It wasn't until much later, when the doctor's visits stopped and the moving continued, that Remus figured out not yet meant never.
* * * * *
Just before Remus turned eleven, Dumbledore casually strode into their lives with a bag of gobstones and gave Remus his life back again. Almost.
He'll get to go to school and take his O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s just like everyone else. He'll get to sleep in the dorms and have real friends again. They wouldn't have to keep moving (always moving) to stay ahead of the rumors that trailed the Lupins like hunting hounds.
He'd still have to hide once a month and it would only last for seven years-- but seven years is an eternity when you're just shy of eleven. His father tried to tell him no, because he was still desperately hoping for not yet, and this time it was Mother who stepped up and gave him the hug and told him of course he could and that everything would be alright.
* * * * *
Later, when they were Padfoot and Prongs and Wormtail and Moony and his world was perfect, Remus accepted those seven years of happiness might be all he'd ever have.
And it was more than enough.
* * * * *
After Hogwarts Remus was a monster again, but a useful one. He went where the Order couldn't and won them allies (or at least oaths of neutrality) in the human-adjacent realms where magic was life and wizards were death.
His friends welcomed him back each time like nothing had changed, like they'd be the Marauders forever, bound by ties of found family. His wolf howled with joy in the dusty corners of his mind where they've come to a truce of sorts, because he finally had pack.
* * * * *
His parents had stopped moving while he was at Hogwarts, settling into a fragile peace without him, and Remus visited as little as he could. Father was still chasing not yet's and filled Remus's bags with false hopes every time he came home and Mother would trace each new scar with her eyes, catalog every wince and grimace, and say nothing at all.
They pretended everything was okay, but it was okay-- in a way Remus knew they'd couldn't understand. But they had time, plenty of time, and someday he'd find the words to explain that being a werewolf wasn't as bad as they'd thought it would be.
* * * * *
Mother died on a quiet spring night, slipping from sleep into death on the wings of an aneurysm, and when Remus went home for her funeral, he left with empty bags and a promise to write that neither of them keep.
* * * * *
James and Lily married a few months later and he can't shake the feeling that he's not allowed to feel happy because horrible things happen whenever he does. But this isn't his wedding (it would never be his wedding) and he's here for his friends (his pack) and how could he be anything but overjoyed?
Sirius gives a (mostly sober) speech (but refuses to read off the cards), Peter spikes the punch while everyone's distracted (it was already alcoholic), and Remus gives a better, much more coherent speech, about how much he loves them all and how he wishes James and Lily all the happiness in the world.
He almost immediately regrets it.
* * * * *
James's parents die of dragon pox that summer, Lily's mother follows that winter and her father the following summer, living just long enough to see Harry come into the world.
Remus comes and goes and the Order fights on, but every time he returns, there are fewer familiar faces waiting for him.
Sirius grows gaunt and impulsive, almost feral in his quest to avenge their losses. It's an unnerving echo of his cousin Bellatrix's madness, but Sirius snarls at Remus when he gently suggests a break might be good for him. The wolf inside Remus rears up, ready to battle, so Remus never tries again.
Peter seems to sink into himself, becoming more nervous and twitchy, obsessive with planning escape routes, safe houses, and a web of what-if-what-then's to protect them against an increasingly improbable list of imagined dangers.
James and Lily insist that they have to keep fighting for Harry, but the Order disagrees and Remus can see them chafing under house arrest. He tries to tell them things will be over soon, that the war's almost won, and they just have to hold on a little longer.
Even as he says it, it sounds like not yet.
* * * * *
He's in the north deep undercover when the word comes of the Fidelius Charm and that owls to the Potters need to be routed through the Order. It was one of Peter's earliest plans --one they were saving for the worst scenarios-- and Remus almost goes home right then.
But Dumbledore says they're safe and Remus has a mission to finish. If the greatest wizard in the world can't protect them, what could a werewolf do? His wolf howls in muffled, furious misery, but he stays.
* * * * *
He never forgives himself.