How to be Human

It wasn’t until the sky burned in the fevered orange of the setting sun that Remus Lupin felt alive. Throughout his day, he moved slow and careful, half conscious with his eyes half open, auto-piloting his feet across the earth and sighing his way through conversations. But at night, he lived. 

It was something about the moon, something about the stars. Something about the dark. When the bright light of morning touched his skin after a night of being alive, he never felt more invisible. Yet, when the shadowed night hugged him so, and he fell comfortably into dimness, he only ever felt seen. 

Seen by the only things that mattered. Seen by himself and the navy sky and the cool wind. Seen because everyone else was asleep. Seen because he was alone. He was alive. 

Remus Lupin could confess things in the dark that he couldn’t even allow himself to think about in the light. Things like sometimes I don’t think I’m real and I’m terrified to talk because I don’t know who would listen and I’m not sure how to act like a person. The stars didn’t judge. Constellations were kind. And the moon only ever cared. 

When Remus started Hogwarts Academy of Alternative Studies four years before, he hadn’t really been a person at all. He’d only been alive for twelve years at that point, and was positively sure that he’d only existed in physicality. His thoughts were never his own. His emotions practiced, his reactions planned. He felt things so privately that he wasn’t sure he was feeling them at all. 

In his hometown, he existed in the eyes of his mother when she wasn’t under the influence, and the eyes of his father during Remus’ weekly visits to his grave. Remus began questioning his ability to feel when he’d started visiting his father, considering the fact that Lyall Lupin was the reason the boy hadn’t known how to be a person. 

When one’s existence was ignored for so long by one’s father, one began to question one’s existence entirely. 

Hope Lupin was something of a hippie. She didn’t own a pair of shoes, she smoked various herbs throughout her day, and she couldn’t for the life of her, remember her son’s birthday. She placed crystals around her house, pretended she was never married, and loved to garden. She spoke in what sounded like fortune cookies, only washed her hair once a month, and sometimes, on the days she couldn’t get out of bed, blamed Remus for his father’s death. 

Remus Lupin did not blame himself for his father’s death. 

Lyall had died in a car accident when Remus was ten. A father driving drunk in the front seat, and a son lost in thought in the back. A father who passed out behind the wheel, wrapped their black Honda around a tree, and slid ten feet down the asphalt, and a son who was buried under shattered glass, left trapped in the seat belt for hours, watching his father’s body twitch on the street until he eventually succumbed to death. 

It was a Friday afternoon, driving down their countryside road only two miles from their house. Remus hadn’t been home from school for more than an hour. His mother had picked him up, driven him home, all the while talking about things she called Nargles dancing on the dashboard. 

Hope had been high. 

Lyall had been furious. 

Remus was thrown in the back seat half an hour later and was being driven by his father to his grandparents for the weekend.

Remus Lupin did not blame himself for his father’s death, but he did blame Hope. And he believed Hope also blamed herself, which was why she blamed Remus. 

At sixteen years old, Remus had never looked more like Lyall. When he’d begun Hogwarts, he looked so much like Hope he could’ve passed as her daughter instead of her son. But after two years, every summer when Remus returned home from school, his mother liked to greet him by calling him Lyall which made Remus feel utterly sick. Or perhaps he felt nothing at all. He couldn’t be sure. 

Hope wasn’t a bad mother, but she wasn’t a good one either. Lyall hadn’t been a bad father, but he hadn’t been much else either. Remus Lupin wasn’t a bad son, and in fact, he’d always been a very good kid, in the general sense of the word, but he’d always, always, always been bad at being a person. 

He just didn’t get it. 

He couldn’t feel it. 

It was late one night, after waking up to his mother’s jazz music playing loudly throughout the house (she probably was confused on what time it actually was), when Remus Lupin felt alive for the first time. He padded, sock feet down the stairs covered in patterned red and purple carpet, and into the cream-tiled kitchen where his mother was making pancakes in a green bikini. 

At eleven years old, this had not been too odd of an occurrence. But that night, something felt different. His mother’s eyes were especially red and puffy, her skin paled, her movements slow. Like she was exhausted and was forcing herself to do what she was doing instead of just going to bed.

Where usually, she’d acknowledge her son, offer him food, and then send him back upstairs, she didn’t notice him walk in at all. Remus walked past her without a thought, slipped out the back door, and found himself standing in the back garden, socks damp from the ground, hair tickling his ears from the wind. 

Behind him, the music grew louder as she turned it up, like she was trying to drown something out. Around him was nothing but fields, the nearest house a yellow dot in the distance. Above him, the sky danced. 

And Remus let out a gut wrenching, throat aching, heart breaking scream. 

He wasn’t sure why, and it was over as soon as it started. 

The night absorbed his sorrow and the stars responded in soft twinkles, the moon in silver, calming light. He collapsed into the cool grass. 

And Remus Lupin felt alive. 

He wasn’t sure how long he laid there, never figured out why he did, and the next day had to convince himself he had at all. 

But he did and it changed everything.

When the harsh daylight finally softened, and everything alive around him finally settled down, Remus awakened from his in-between state of consciousness and something else, and he was just alive.

He was Remus and the night accepted that for what it was. 

And what it was, was enough. 

__________

It had taken Remus eleven years to figure out how to be a person in his own odd way. Another year to perfect the craft. And another year after that to relearn it all.

When Hope had come to him with a pamphlet for a school of alternative studies, he thought she was sending him to some place for broken kids who didn’t know how to learn. Who were special and unique and needed to be dealt with by professionals. 

But no. 

Hogwarts was just a school for kids who learned differently. Who needed things besides just classrooms and desks to learn. Who were beyond the everyday English or history class. Who had other interests, who needed better opportunities to thrive. Who were smart, but just needed the right environment to prove them so. 

The academy was located in the mountains, on a ginormous property that was beautiful in photos and breathtaking in person. It began with a giant lake, then a giant bridge, then a castle. A castle made of stone, with towers and statues. Multiple courtyards and miles and miles of grass and trees. 

It was owned by royalty at some point in time, the Dumbledore’s. The current owner, Albus, inherited the property when he was just twenty one. He spent the next ten years of his life turning it into a school while learning everything he could about how kids learned best.

Thirty years later, it was The Hogwarts Academy of Alternative Studies. 

Remus suspected that the headmaster needed such a school when he was a boy, and was making up for it by helping other kids he saw himself in. 

Where the school could hold tens of thousands, it only housed about one thousand students, give or take a few. Six years, about two hundred students per year, give or take a few more. It was just as successful as it was controversial. It was perfectly expected of Hope to want her son to attend, especially when she realized how odd he really was. It was equally expected for Remus to have no thoughts on the matter at all. 

Surely it wouldn’t be any worse or any better than his previous school. 

Hogwarts had many classes that one wouldn’t find in an average school. 

There was the basic history, english, math and science. There were sub genres of each like History of Scotland or The Secret History of European Conspiracies. There was also Western Literature, Classic Literature, as well as classes solely for writing and learning the genres of writings. Any type of math class was also available, including a class dedicated for inventing one's own mathematical theories. 

Classes also included Art, Theatre, Study of Woodland Creatures, Study of Magical Creatures, Origins of Fairy Tales, Divination, Martial Arts, Botany, Marine Biology, Take Flight (there were two called this, one studying planes and one studying birds, and yes, it often got confused), Cooking, Baking, Astrology, and Astronomy. 

There were also every type of sport imaginable, including classes for the history of each and even one for creating new ones. There were classes dedicated to laws of different countries and the morality of each, the justice system and how it became what it was, how to create a religion, the study of body language, and even classes on the science behind romance. 

Long story short, there were classes for everything under the sun. 

Quite a few of them were taught by the same teachers. It worked like this: each student was given the required classes they must take, and then were allowed to choose the rest, and even if only one student signed up for a subject, the class will be held anyway. First years get three alternative studies, second and third years get four, fourth and fifth get five (they can request for six), and sixth years have only alternatives, usually focused on what they planned to do with their lives, but that was not required. 

Of course there were the average classrooms. But lessons were also held in hallways, in ballrooms, in the courtyards, outside, in towers, on rooftops, in fields, and under trees. And sometimes, students would rather learn it alone and receive material to study and did so alone in their dorm rooms or in the library or wherever else they’d like. 

This all interested Remus and disinterested him at the same time.

How was he meant to choose things he’d wish to learn about if he didn’t know how to care about things? 

Out of all the lessons that The Hogwarts Academy offered, not one was on How to be Human. 

And Remus Lupin needed that lesson most of all. 

As a first year, he started off with six classes a week because that was what his mother decided for him after he continued to shrug his shoulders at every question given. He could answer questions that had a clear answer, that had a specific, pre-decided answer. But what do you want, Remus was not one of those questions. He could not answer it. 

His mother, however, did refuse to choose what classes he’d take, besides the first year required ones. So he did the only logical thing he could think of. He closed his eyes and pointed. So his three chosen classes were The Ins and Outs of American Tennis, Foundations of Crocheting, and Baking. 

At sixteen years old, he could not remember what he learned in any of them.

At Hogwarts, there were houses. 

Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. 

Each was based on different character traits and interests. First years take a very long test that decides which house they would belong to. Very little things peeked Remus’ interest, and very little things made Remus nervous. 

Knowing which house he belonged to interested him just as much as it made him nervous. How do you place a kid who was as bland and confused as he was? How do you place a person’s personality when they seemingly have and are neither?

Remus’ understanding of each house were this:

Hufflepuff’s were open-minded and open-hearted, caring and loyal, focused on all things living and how to care for them. Loyalty was everything to them and they only knew how to be good. They were the color of golden yellow and sparkled in the sun. 

Ravenclaw’s were clever and thrived in whatever subject they pursued. They were quiet in the way they lived but their knowledge was loud. They were soft around the edges and a deep, muted blue. They were the night sky and the smell of strong coffee. 

Slytherin’s were determined and focused. They were funny in the way most people didn’t understand. They were ambitious, resourceful, and strikingly cunning. They were an emerald green, rich and smooth, and the smell of rain. 

Gryffindor's were alive. They were loud and open and kind. They were driven and did everything with their entire being. They were passionate, brave, and busy. They were soft velvet and a flowing maroon, like the color blood. Like the color of life. 

They were everything Remus was not. 

And when he was placed in Gryffindor, Remus reacted in a way he never did. He felt.

He felt an abundance of things that he wasn’t sure what to do with. He was so sure they were wrong. And at sixteen, he still believed it. But there was nothing to be done about it because he wasn’t sure what house he did belong to, if any at all. 

When one gets accepted to Hogwarts, they are agreeing to move to the castle for ten months out of the year, to dedicate six years of their lives to the academy, and to live with three other people during their time there. 

Four roommates to a dorm. Each from different houses. To promote socialization, communication, and experiences, something Dumbledore believed in greatly. 

Remus Lupin had never had any friends because who would wish to be friends with a not-person. With someone who didn’t understand the function of speaking and feeling and living.

When he learned he’d be placed with three other boys, boys of which he’d live with for the next six years of his life, he felt a lot less than he should’ve. At twelve years old, he was so sure he knew how it’d play out. 

A part of him was right. The other part had never been more wrong.

Remus Lupin was Dorm 173’s dedicated Gryfinndor. 

James Potter was their Hufflepuff. 

Peter Pettigrew, their Ravenclaw. 

And Sirius Black was their Slytherin. 

At twelve years old, Remus didn’t know what to feel about any of it, so he decidedly felt nothing at all. So his first year was spent floating through the halls quietly, speaking when spoken to, learning and forgetting, and being awake and not alive. 

To his roommates, he was a mystery to be solved. 

Honestly, they were all sort of shy to begin with. They’d all been so different. And honestly, that lasted about a week before three out of the four of them fell into a rhythm, fell into familiarity, fell into friendship. They didn’t know how to work Remus into that if he wouldn’t try, but that didn’t mean they stopped. 

Remus managed to avoid them without much effort at all. Of course, he’d spoken to them, and mostly it was James because he was so there all the time and just wouldn’t allow Remus to be left out. So most of first year consisted of James inviting Remus to whatever the three of them were doing, Sirius and Peter would stand off to the side and nod encouragingly, and Remus would politely decline. Every single time. 

Sirius was bugged by this. 

Peter pitied him for it.

And James never gave up. 

By the end of the year, Remus found himself sitting with them at lunch and dinner, not speaking, and that was it. They all saw this as progress. 

__________

The summer after Remus turned 13, he fell in love with the moon. 

Spending that first year at Hogwarts had taken quite a bit out of him, and gave quite a bit to his mother. She’d created a lovely life on her own, and while she was pleased to have her son home for two months, she didn’t put any effort into letting him fall into the rhythm of her new life. 

And he didn’t try to.

He did, however, find his own. 

He’d been staying awake until the late hours of the night since that first night when he screamed at the sky. Even at Hogwarts, he spent many hours sitting in the windowsill of his dorm room tower, staring at the sky, soaking in the moonlight. He found himself thinking to the moon, not talking. The moon always wanted to listen, and encouraged anything he happened to find himself feeling. 

But that summer, he fell in love with the moon and the way it soaked up his thoughts and feelings without judgment, and for just a little while during the night, made him feel like a person. And oh how he loved feeling like a person. 

Remus took refuge in his garden under a tree and on the roof under the stars. He’d stay up late and sleep late into the morning. During the day, things were hazy and slow and painfully numb. But those navy nights sprinkled in silver made the summer go by quickly. 

Then suddenly he was back at Hogwarts, smiling at his roommates, who were all pleasantly shocked. Sirius the most of all. Although that year he didn’t feel alive, he felt he had blood running through his veins all the time, and not just at night. He chose subjects with somewhat more care and did school work at various places around the grounds. He’d spend nights outside by the lake or by the fire in the quiet common room, soaking in the feeling of feeling human. 

And when the sun rose, the feeling would slip away as the world began to wake around him no matter how hard he held on. But the days did feel more tolerable. At least he remembered some of them. 

He recalled James and Sirius becoming exceptionally close that year. Remus vaguely remembered Sirius coming back injured from Christmas break, and since then, they’d been attached at the hip. Peter, who previously was shy, came out of his shell that year, and quickly became the funniest of the three, despite how often the other two made him the but of the joke (out of love, of course). 

Everything felt settled in what it would become for the next five years of their lives.

Remus had no thoughts on this. 

But he did often think of the sun yawning in clouds of warm hues and sending the world to bed so Remus could wake up. Soon, he was staying up all through the night, reveling in the quiet, in the life of the night, feeling seen in the dark. Missing breakfast became Remus’ signature, as were naps throughout the day in between classes. Sometimes, he’d be awakened by one of his roommates who set out to look for him when he was gone for too long. 

Sirius was the first to find him asleep in the grass late one morning. He was walking to his class out by the stables when he noticed a lump of body in the shade. There were books spread out around him. Sirius found the boy face first in the grass, arms folded over his face, sleeping peacefully under the branches of the big willow tree. 

Next was James, who went out to check on him after Remus said he was going to the library to return a book. He found him curled into a bean bag chair in the corner, snoring softly in the cushions. 

This became a thing that happened often. 

It didn’t take long for his roommates to realize he wasn’t sleeping normally, but they didn’t comment on the fact. 

James, Sirius, and Peter were no doubt friends, if not the best of. Remus fit into their dynamic somehow, just none of them knew how yet. Remus often forgot they were there at all, but they always wondered about him. 

By the end of second year, the three of them considered Remus their quiet friend, and Remus considered them people that didn’t exhaust him to be around, if he considered them at all. 

__________

The summer after Remus turned fourteen, he fell in love with the stars. 

He and the sun became strangers for he was sleeping all day and living all night. He took refuge in his mother’s greenhouse that summer, enjoying the warmth and the smell of the plants around him. When late night turned early morning, when everything seemed the quietest and the darkest, that’s when he’d sit outside. 

On those nights when he felt so hollow, so nothing, so less, he found the stars to be very kind to him. They’d stretch out around him, bright and consuming, twinkling down at him as if to tell him that they’d fill up whatever he couldn’t. And sometimes he just couldn’t. So they were there, to hold him after he confessed to the moon everything too dangerous to think about during the daytime. 

His mother had been happy that summer. She’d often wake him for lunch and dinner after cooking. She’d done multiple tarot readings on him that summer. And she even had him help her with a quilt she was patching. She was also extremely high almost all of the time. That summer was the first she said that he looked like his father. 

If Remus could cry, he would’ve. 

Instead, he sought comfort in the stars.

Remus’ third year at The Hogwarts Academy was polka-dotted with moments where he felt like a living, breathing person under the sun. At night, he lived, oh how he lived in the quiet, and the dark, and the peaceful. But sometimes, a handful of times, he’d been sitting with his roommates, everyone talking and laughing and being alive together and he found himself relaxed in the breaths they took between sentences and the way they accidentally kicked or hit him when they weren’t thinking. 

Sometimes, he felt alive. 

Then, for the first time since their time there had begun, Remus had a class with one of them. Peter. Remus had chosen Herbology as one of his classes, and to his surprise, so did Peter. While looking at the list of classes months before, Remus had recalled helping his mother in the garden that summer, so he found himself checking the box next to the class. 

Remus still hadn’t gotten the unprompted talking thing down at that point, but was open to answer all the questions Peter asked him. Of course, Peter was hesitant, not having much to do with the boy before, but after the first couple questions and Remus still acting interested, he decided to continue because otherwise Remus just wouldn’t talk. 

At first, they thought Remus Lupin was shy. 

But he wasn’t shy, they realized. He was just…quiet. It was like he didn’t have many words, many thoughts. He was just there. Remus. He was just Remus. 

And while Remus couldn’t perceive himself through other’s eyes, mostly because he didn’t perceive himself through his own eyes, he didn’t understand why that was enough for them. 

But it seemed to be. It was. 

Because Remus became more familiar existing around Peter, Peter took this as them becoming real friends. James and Sirius were promptly jealous. Peter had somehow cracked the code that was Remus Lupin (or so they thought). And by cracked the code they meant Remus spoke to Peter when Remus didn’t speak much to anyone. For some reason, they always brushed over the fact that Peter always spoke to him first. 

Third year was the year Sirius Black became (lightly) obsessed with Remus Lupin. It started with him waking up one night, casually looking over to Remus’ bed, and finding it empty. He’d done that many other nights, but something about that night made him get up and go searching. Sirius didn’t have to look very far because he found Remus in the common room, sat upside down on one of the couches, head just above the floor, feet thrown over the back. 

Normally, Remus would never sit like that. But no one was around, the common room was lit by a single lamp in the corner, and no one was supposed to see him. Sirius did. 

“Having fun?” Sirius had said from the doorway. He tiredly leaned against the wooden arch of the frame, one arm across his chest, one hand rubbing his eye. Remus had jumped, startled, and stared wide-eyed at a sleepy Sirius Black. 

He didn’t know what to think or what to feel but knew he felt something.

“I am,” Remus replied, dumbly, yet truthful. He had a habit of speaking in a monotone, but at night, when he usually spoke to the moon, he tone was set to honest and to Sirius that honest felt earnest, and that made his lips twitch. 

“Why are you awake?” This, the questions, was what Remus was best at. He couldn’t trust his voice, and could trust his thoughts even less. But when he was asked questions, he gave him specifics to think about, options to choose from. 

So Remus said, “It’s quiet.” 

Sirius thought that was a perfect answer. 

Now, James Potter had always been obsessed with Remus Lupin, in the same way he obsessed with everything that he remotely cared about. He always, since first year, had asked Remus to join them, how his day was, if he needed anything when they went out. He was the perfect friend. He was perfectly Hufflepuff. Just like Peter was perfectly Ravenclaw. And just like Sirius was perfectly Slytherin. 

Remus Lupin was not perfectly Gryffindor. 

And it was third year that this began to bother him. 

Remus always knew he was out of place, and had feelings to match that. But he’d always been so good at ignoring said feelings that sometimes he forgot he had them at all. Except that year, he’d had more moments feeling human than he ever had before, and now feelings were getting harder and harder to deal with. The moon heard everything he’d been feeling.

I don’t think I belong here.

Sometimes I feel fine, and other times I feel nothing.

Feeling nothing scares me.

I’m not a Gryffindor. They made a mistake. 

I’m not brave. I’m not outgoing. I’m not human.

How do I become a human?

Why doesn’t anyone else have this problem? 

At fourteen (then fifteen) years old, Remus was sure that his third year at Hogwarts was his most confusing yet. 

At sixteen years old, he was absolutely positive it was his fourth. 

Because Remus Lupin was learning how to be human. And no one told him it would be so hard.