Remus Lupin got dressed in the dark. His home was ever silent, save for the soft whirr of the fan in his room. No light seeped in through the curtains, not even a glimpse of sun through their blackout. Rough hands pulled up the rougher denim. Remus hadn’t any clue of the color of his jumper, he wasn’t even sure if the hue of the blue trousers would match his top. Not as though it would have mattered anyway. He flicked on the light as he entered another room, and the soft hum of a dying light bulb greeted him. He did not take a moment to look in the mirror to comb his hair, he didn’t even take a moment to ensure his outfit didn’t clash. He laced up his shoes, choosing the least tattered pair he owned; though the soles were still separating from the canvas, and the laces threatened to pull apart at any moment. He had other shoes, sure, but they were in an even sadder state.
The man walked stodgily into the kitchen, feeling detached from his own body. The light overhead was flickering, the scent of a candle he’d forgotten to blow out the night before entering his nostrils. A dark vanilla scent, that had been familiar to him at some time, and he’d even known from where. Now, however, it’d slipped away from him. The scent still brought a certain serotonin, even if the memories behind it had long faded. He made his way to the table, part of an old wooden dining set. Four chairs came with it, two that he’d kept out when there wasn’t company over. There was never more than one occupied at one time, and it had been that way for a very long time. With a flick of his wand, there was hot black coffee in his mug. The scent of it mingled with the dark vanilla now.
Remus John Lupin had been the top in his class aside from Lily Evans, had absolutely been the most adept at defense against the dark arts, and now only used his wand for domestic spells. He had opted not to become an auror and deflected every job offer that had to do with magic. It’s not that he’d prefer to live like a muggle, but rather that the magical world was messy, and his mind messier. With the war having only ended a little over a decade ago and the ministry unstable, it felt as though things would never be anything other than messy. It’d never matter that he’d been top of his class anyway, it was not like he did much at all anymore.
After draining the last few sips of coffee, Remus apparated. The sickly feeling he’d once gotten as a younger man now only a dull twist in his stomach. He’d grown accustomed to it after the countless apparitions needed during the war, after every mission he’d been on for the Order. At the time, he would almost hurl after every apparition, earning himself many lectures from Moody. Now, however, he was not apparating for a covert task. No, it was quite the opposite. A stroll through the city, followed by visiting the new art gallery that’d opened up towards the edge of town. The city was bustling, muggles all about. It was dim for a summer morning, though angry clouds and a chill blew in over the London streets. Streetlamps flickered and telephone box doors slammed shut, as buses and cars loudly drove by, kicking up water and debris from the rain the night prior. The wet cobbled street made an almost satisfying click as Remus’s shoes met it with each step taken. To an onlooker, it may have seemed that he’d been in a rush, however, he’d just adopted a more brisk pace over the years.
As Remus made his way up to the counter, he felt an uneasy tingling in his gut. Something was going to happen, something most likely unpleasant. He was never one to trust intuition over logic, but it felt like he was being mentally tugged away from the gallery. A familiar scent entered his nostrils once more, it wasn’t a perfume, more so a person, familiar blood. He wandered the depths of his mind and memories, desperate to understand the familiarity and connection to his past that it brought him, to no avail. He’d chalked up the earlier feelings of uneasiness to be because of the upcoming full moon. Shit. Remus hadn’t thought about the full moon. He had nowhere to go, and surely couldn’t lock himself in his cellar again, not after the last moon. He supposed he could go to the ministry, but that was practically just public humiliation. He decided to leave it, it wasn’t worth dwelling on now, not in this setting.
The ever-lanky man – as he’d never quite grown into his tall body, filling out to just be an awkwardly thin and tall adult – found himself lingering near a painting of a tree. It was only a tree, nothing truly notable about it, however, it smelled of the familiar smell and it bared an awful resemblance to a tree that he’d once leaned upon while studying. Scratch that, he’d leaned upon that tree many times when the school year would draw to an end and the grounds would be unbearably hot. The tree by the Great Lake, the tree that shaded him from the sun, the tree where the Marauders had done most of their plotting for pranks. He found himself stepping closer to the painting, aching to reach out and run his hands over it, aching to be a part of it.
Remus often ached. It was a constant in his life, for the last twelve or so years. He yearned for the life he’d lost in just one night. It had not been the life of his best friend, nor the life of his wife. Rather, Remus had lost his own life. The aching was mostly physical, bearing transformations alone, tearing himself apart more literally than figuratively. Just the thought of the scars beneath his jumper caused him to grip the sleeves in both hands, invisible prying eyes judging and questioning what they could not see. The painting appeared to move closer to him, and the sight of that tree was dizzying. As he tried to ground himself, he searched the painting for dissimilarities. There were no etchings of initials on it, and it did not have its most prominent branch. This couldn’t be the tree he remembered, no muggle would know what it looked like, and nobody would forget that branch.
Remus continued reassuring himself of this, surely it had just been a coincidence. His reassurance dissolved instantly as he entered the next room. No longer was he comforted by the metronome of the tapping of his shoes across the shiny floors or the bright lighting that allowed every painting to be seen in all of their glory. Remus met familiar grey eyes, then familiar browns and greens. He spun, taking in each individual set of eyes, feeling nauseated as his eyes landed on the same pair they always had. The most familiar of them all. Once again, hypnotically drawn closer to the painting. Who’d known a room full of paintings of eyes could be so exhilarating? This couldn’t have been a coincidence, no muggle had eyes like them, and almost no wizard had eyes like them. Eyes that trademarked the most noble and ancient house of Black. He exhaled as if it would give him the space he would need to inhale again, but he couldn’t. He was suffocating, just looking into eyes like these again.
When he’d managed to draw himself away once more, his eyes met a soft chocolate brown. Gold-rimmed glasses framed these eyes, though the frames were the wrong shape. They were too circular, just a minor imperfection, but one that drew him from his delirium nonetheless. Muggles had large imaginations, the grey-blue eyes were desired by many, he was sure of it, and no wizard would ever mix up those frames. Nobody could mix up those frames after they’d been on the Daily Prophet’s front cover for months. Rems couldn’t stop himself before he left the room, hazel meeting silvery blue. He stared longingly, and it’d taken every last ounce of self-control not to reach out and run his hand over the canvas.
The hallway to the next room was long. His shoe taps reverberated and fell back into a sweet, syncopated rhythm. Beaded curtains, each string of beads unique, acted as a door into the next room. Two strings were entwined, a navy blue and muted dark green. The green string had moon beads and a littering of baroque beads. The blue, however, had stars. There were topaz beads that surrounded the stars, as though protecting them. Something ached in Remus’s chest, or maybe in his head. Regardless, something had ached and burned too much for him to look further into the strands of beads.
Maybe he should have.