Chapter 5
Remus doesn’t leave his room for the next two weeks. It is not entirely up to him, mind.
After Orion Black had dragged him up to the front door of the boy’s home, lip curling in disgust that he had to grace such a place with his lordly presence, Matron had taken one look at the blood pooling on the bridge of his nose and the bruise already forming and practically fallen to Black’s feet.
It would have been endearing, if Remus hadn’t known that her concern was far more targeted towards her weekly earnings staying high than his personal safety.
It is horrible.
It is worse than horrible because Remus knows that even if Matron hadn’t locked him away, threatening far worse punishments if he stepped even another single toe out of line, he still would have stayed rotting in his bed, nothing to do beside replaying the last moments he had spent with his best friend.
His only friend.
Every time his eyes fall closed, he sees Sirius waving at him from the garden or tossing him a grin from over his shoulder.
Sirius didn’t know him. Not really. But he could have.
He could have told him his name and he could have told him about his parents and he could have seen Sirius’ eyes flicking to the scars criss crossing over his skin and told him that he doesn’t remember, he doesn’t but he remembers him, he remembers that night and he remembers the pain of Sirius’ mothers rings slicing over his face, sharp and insistent, and he hopes he can forget it all.
It would be better than remembering like this, tainting everything that was good and wonderful with the stench of betrayal.
When he finally does crack open his door, blinking at the bright sunlight flooding into his face, he knows he is not the same.
Angrier.
The Remus before would have ignored the whispers behind him, but the Remus now hears the poorly concealed “freak” reach his ears and flies at him, rage bleeding into his fists as they connect with the other boy’s face.
It earns him another five days in confinement. He can’t bring himself to care. Until he watches his hands still shake as the weak light of the full moon floods his room and realizes that his knuckles are still crusted with blood, and then he empties his stomach out the window.
When he finally does sneak out the window again, heart beating fast as he reaches the Manor, he knows that he will not find the Blacks inside.
There are cobwebs on the windows and the lawn is nearly reaching the front steps. Maybe he should be relieved, but when he looks at that house, the windows dark and the front door blown ajar by the wind, a familiar fury bubbles up inside of him.
He does not go near that part of town again. He does not go into town at all, not where people can see him. Apparently, Orion Black’s fury could not be assuaged as easily as Remus thought, because he is faced with a different kind of suspicion.
The kind that settles deep into his bones, burrowing down until it follows him everywhere he goes.
It does not get better when he goes to school. The teachers look at him like he is feral, a crazed animal, and Remus supposed he almost is one, with his shaved scalp and bared teeth and an almost - healed scab streaking across his face like a claw mark.
He has not had a friend in a very long time. And it is better that way. Easier. Remus is not exactly anticipating that will change, not even when he slides into his assigned seat in History and glares at the red-headed girl next to him and she glares back, before telling him in to uncertain terms that if he plans to “start anything” she would very much prefer he did it out of this class.
He thinks about it, just to spite her. But when an older boy sniffs at them as he passes over the sheet, muttering something about “low class sticking together”, and he comes to the next class with a brilliant black eye, Evans turns to him and smiles, a real, honest to goodness smile,
Remus smiles back. And if that smile reminds him of someone, of a boy with black curls framing his face and clear gray eyes, it is of no importance.
Absolutely none at all.
A month later, when she appears next to Remus on his way to school and starts attacking him with questions about King Richard, he only hesitates a second before answering.
And three weeks later, when the blond-haired boy who won’t stop following Lily (as he grudgingly agreed to call her) shrinks away when he sees her arm looped through Remus’, he knows that he isn’t getting rid of her.
If he was forced to admit it, he might say that he doesn’t mind. It is nice to have a friend again.
That is not to say that his thoughts do not turn to Sirius. It is hard not to, when Lily asks if he is sure he wouldn’t like to work at the Bakery with her or when she looks at him in confusion as every shop owner slams the door in his face.
But mostly they turn to himself, and the sinking knowledge that nobody gets out of a deadbeat town without money, and money is something he does not have.
“Remus?” He shakes himself out of his thoughts to focus on Evans, her freckled face downturned in a frown.
“Sorry?” He blinks innocently down at her.
“I was asking - sorry, no, bad choice of words. I was telling you that we-” she gestured to the both of them -” are going to sign up for the outreach program.
“What? Lily, you know-”
“This is our chance, Remus. To finally do something interesting for once in our lives. Plus, it means that we get to spend Friday afternoons away from all those tosspots and go into the city.”
Remus ran a hand through his curls. Matron relaxed her militaristic shaving regimen once the boys had turned sixteen, but he still tries to keep them short enough to stay below her notice on a bad day. “A music outreach program with some bloody private school? We both know exactly how that’s going to go.”
“Yep.” She grinned up at him. “Brilliant.”