Wednesday (Seventh year)
“It’s cursed.”
“What’s cursed? Where does it hurt? Did Crouch hex you again? He really needs to –”
“Not a Slytherin, Sirius – breakfast. I could barely force myself down here this morning, and the house elves have the gall to serve sunny-side up eggs .”
It was silly, really. Remus knew that. He managed the aches and pains and tortures and injuries of the full moon each month, and yet he was terrified to go about a normal day after one bout of the stomach flu.
“These eggs are raw , Sirius. Not cooked. We don’t eat cookie dough because it has raw eggs in it and that tastes good. So why do we choose salmonella roulette for Wednesday breakfast?”
Sirius shrugged. “Isn’t there a potion for salmonella? It seems a trivial ball for wizard medicine to drop.”
“A potion doesn’t matter if you have to feel like salmonella in order to know you should take it,” Remus replied, “Muggles have this one right. Preventative. Medicine. Cook your fucking eggs.”
Sirius eyed Remus’ head in his hands, fingers pulling at greasy hair. Joking aside, this was hard on him. He’d lost five pounds since Sunday, and most of them not from the virus.
“Remus, have you taken a shower since Monday?”
“That’s cursed too – all my old germs in there.”
“Rem. . .”
“I know, I’m being petulant. I know I need to break all my brain-curses before it gets even harder with time. It’s just –”
“Hard, I know,” Sirius grinned. “But it’s the only way to the sunny side!”
Remus groaned. Now was not the time for a stupid raw-egg pun.
Monday (Seventh year)
It was 4am, and Remus was pacing the length of the dorm. It seemed the only way to settle his nervous stomach, the rhythmic movement back and forth. Seventh year careers meeting with McGonagall in the morning, then a herbology exam in the afternoon. That shouldn’t be so bad, right? Careers would suck because of the werewolf thing, but he’d been preparing for that since his first day at Hogwarts. Thank Merlin he'd be done with herbology after Hogwarts; he could barely make himself read the textbook tonight. Could he say that was dread, though? Herbology wasn’t so bad like potions: it occasionally got in the way of better things, but most of the time it was just a neutral obligation to get through. Had the nausea come first, making it hard to read? Don’t think about it, Remus repeated to himself, deliberately keeping time with his steps. If you don’t think about it, it isn’t real.
Except it was, in fact, very real: he had to come to terms with that quickly. Sparing a moment to resent that wizards hadn’t figured out how to run away from their own bodies, of course – he'd much rather watch himself writhe from an ethereal safehouse above, thank you very much. He might’ve been dying. He might’ve yelled for his mother, before thought escaped him completely.
When he next came to, he was dizzy. Oh, so very dizzy, and vice-gripping the toilet for balance. The stench was unbearable. Something small and light touched his back. A hand?
“You with us again?” It was Sirius, asking gently. Remus wanted to reassure, the way he always did when he was hurt after the moon, but couldn’t bring himself to respond just yet. Whispering, Sirius shifted position “James – if you could go get him some water? He’ll probably want it later.”
Hospital socks – presumably James’, stolen while helping out on his mom’s ward at St. Mungo’s – padded their way to the sink. The circular motion of Sirius’ fingertips stopped for a moment in favor of a tender, shoulder kiss. It occurred vaguely to Remus that Sirius shouldn’t have kissed him if he didn’t want to be the one vomiting next – that he wouldn’t have done it, roles reversed.
Remus lost more time, leaning into the steady sounds around him. Sirius’ fingertips, still making steady circles on the sweaty fabric of his shirt. James’ feet tapping on the tile, because he could only stay still for so long. These sounds of care from his friends alongside his own mind’s phobic snarls, speaking of reasons to keep on.
The bathroom tile felt cold against his bare legs. When had he moved to sitting? His back was flattened to the wall – save for the baseboard making a wedge on his tailbone – and the water cup sat empty in his hands. He ventured a look around, and almost immediately gave in to his tears.
Only Sirius was left with him in the bathroom now. He felt a rush of gratitude for that, knowing it would be harder for him to unmask with James in the room. Not that James wouldn’t want to be there for him in his panic, but he was less comfortable with emotional nadirs as a whole. And in his own muddlement, Remus couldn’t use logic to force himself to let go.
“How long have I been here?,” Remus heard himself croak.
“Not sure. I didn’t bring a clock in here with me; should’ve asked James to bring one when he left. Alas,” Sirius replied, pausing to brush a stray curl from his eye, “How’re you feeling? With us enough to walk back to your bed?”
“Probably,” Remus nodded, then hesitated. “I just don’t want to move.”
His voice was shaking.
“It’s okay,” said Sirius, “It’s okay. We can sit here as long as you need.”
He didn’t respond; just kept staring at the wall. He couldn’t respond. Even moving a finger was scary, and his courage was sapped. But as he floated back to the dissociative abyss, gratitude won the day. We can sit here as long as you need.
We .
Tuesday (Fifth year)
Boggarts! Remus grinned. This was the perfect lesson for the day before the moon! With both his energy and his enthusiasm in the pits, riddikulus required nothing of him. When Lyall Lupin had lost all hope for his son’s classroom education after the bite, he’d made sure to teach him this one charm: he’d learned it as soon as he was old enough to hold a borrowed wand.
Lyall was a foremost expert of non-spirituous apparitions – a researcher by trade – and kept a boggart in the house for observation long after he retired to care for his werewolf son full-time. And to avoid his coworkers’ suspicions about his werewolf son, though he refused to entertain any of Remus’ guilt about that part. “Ridiculous!,” he’d say, “A father cares for his son.”
Remus’ guilt, of course, bulldozed any well-meaning assurances. He knew he was lucky to have loving parents, especially in his circumstances but not simply because of them. Take Sirius, who was left adrift by his parents the moment of his sorting.
Loving, ribbing, perfect Sirius, whom Remus absolutely didn’t wish was more to him than a best friend. And who happened to be looking straight at him across the classroom, eyes shining with a mixture of confusion and concern. Remus shook his head and smiled. This is good, I’ll tell you later.
“Hey, Remus – how are we going to deal with the boggart lesson?”
The four Marauders each sat on their beds, doing homework with varying levels of commitment. Sirius, whose commitment to potions homework consisted of crumpling the worksheet into a ball and playing one-handed catch with it, started the conversation.
“There’s nothing to be said for it,” Remus replied, “I’ve been able to cast the Boggart-banishing charm practically since I could walk. Is there going to be an option to do it in private?”
He was asking for Sirius’ benefit, of course. Sirius was private with fear, and tetchy when asked. Classic Gryffindor, he supposed.
“No, though they really should think about adding that next year. Or just make everyone do it in private and have that be that,” James chimed in, “But Remus, have you not thought about this? Everyone will see your boggart turn into the full moon, no matter how quickly you claim to cast the charm. I’m sure we can come up with a diversion plan if we put our heads together.”
Remus laughed, hard. He kept laughing, until James and Peter were both drawn up from focus and looking at him strangely.
“Oh,” Remus breathed through his last scraps of mirth, “My Boggart’s not the moon.”
“So you change into a wolf every month, which, even though you refuse to say it, we all know involves excruciating pain. Then, you have to go back to class a few days later, hiding the fact that your entire body is still scratched up and it hurts to wear robes, because if people find out that you turn into a wolf, you could go to Azkaban for the crime of – wait for it – going to school as werewolf. And your Boggart is your roommates throwing up? Please explain.”
Sirius’ volume had risen with passion by the end of the monologue, and Remus flinched. The strength of his phobia was illogical – Sirius had every right to judge.
“Yeah,” Remus sighed, “If fear were logical, the sorting hat wouldn’t know how to differentiate a Ravenclaw from a Gryffindor, and the Hogwarts world order would shut down immediately.” He hunched further, deflated, “Not that I don’t wonder whether the hat made a mistake with me.”
Lyall Lupin had another reason to teach his son the Boggart banishing charm, one that Remus rarely called to mind these days. These days, when he had friends and good medical care and academic interests he was pursuing, and the twisted logic of his emetophobia paled compared to the steady stream of reasons to take the risk. But when Lyall Lupin taught his son riddikulus – the charm and act of looking for joy in Boggarts and in the fears that stretch interminably beyond them – the phobia had controlled him.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Sirius replied, “I meant – why? I genuinely don’t understand it. Every day you manage to fascinate me, Remus Lupin, and I want to figure you out.” Remus blushed, now dividing his attention between reigning in his existing embarrassment and the weird sense that Sirius’ voice had just turned seductive.
“This existed before the moon – has always been worse. Even when I was locked in the cellar to turn for the first time, before I fully understood what a werewolf was, what I feared most was that this sickness would make me vomit,” Remus surprised himself, with how easily he articulated it. Then he turned playful. “As for the reason why my Boggart was you lot, you sleep in my room. If you’re sick, I spend the next week waiting in the limbo of panic hell and waiting for the bats to fly up.”
“Maybe you should stop sleeping in my room, then,” quipped Sirius.
“I did! Remember, at the beginning of first year? James and Peter both caught that not quite the wizard flu thing that Pomfrey didn’t know how to deal with yet? I slept in the common room until we came back for January!”
“Wait, that wasn’t because you were avoiding us? I was so mad at you!”
“Well – after I realized that avoiding my dorm-mates completely for seven years wouldn’t exactly be tenable, the two motives merged into one. Avoiding you all was a convenient excuse to sleep in the common room without fielding nosy inquiries,” Remus explained, “I do regret it, though. I’ll never forget that fight we had the night before we left for break. I said you had no right to coerce me into friendship, and you said you wished I were dead.”
“Is that why you came back to the dorm after Thanksgiving break? Because being friends again was more important than whatever not quite flu remnants you were avoiding up there?”
“Sure, I suppose you could put it that way,” Remus shrugged, “I spent that whole Christmas break wallowing in it. I’m not like you, able to see the path forward and act right away. It takes time for me to see the whole picture of a situation. I turned it over and over in my mind, until I concluded that avoiding my bedroom for the next seven years was just about as sustainable as avoiding my dorm-mates for the next seven years – it’s not. Once I got myself there, I could properly admit that I wanted to be your friend and apologize honestly for avoiding you.”
“I remember now, in your apology note,” Sirius interjected, “Always planning ahead, even at age eleven with your tail between your legs. You wrote that you avoided us because you were afraid, but you never said what you were afraid of.”
“That was the trick. I didn’t want to admit to being a cowardly Gryffindor. What Gryffindor has an irrational phobia? I figured you’d assume I was afraid of friendship. Which wasn’t wrong, but not the whole truth either.”
“Huh. The more you know,” Sirius nodded, then paused. “Remus, I know you were eleven then, but do you know now that your phobia doesn’t make you any less Gryffindor?”
“I visited McGonagall when we got back to Hogwarts, before we made up,” Remus said, “Well, she sent for me. I guess I wasn’t very good at hiding my brooding.”
“No shit, you still aren’t,” Sirius said, earning himself a playful arm-punch.
“Fuck you. Anyways, Minnie McGoo happened to catch me right when my seams were bursting with secrets, so I told her about our fights and the not quite wizard flu and how I’d made a big ol’ tangled mess of the two that I wished I could just feed to the giant squid, but knew I had to fix somehow. She’s the one who advised me to write the apology note, to plan my words. I came up with the idea to use Muggle paper and pens, of course, knowing that they’d fascinate you.”
“You were right – the Muggle ink did fascinate me. It’s probably the whole reason I forgave you, at my own volatile version of eleven,” Sirius laughed.
“Fuck you again,” Remus shot back, “But Minnie did say something that night that I’ve drawn on ever since. When I told her that my brain was cursed, she replied, ‘Remus, I know your brain is cursed. But I also know you have a wand.’”
Sirius leaned in and kissed him then, reverent and slow. "A toast to the wisdom of Minnie McGoo," he whispered, gently brushing back a lock of Remus’ sweaty hair. "And if you'll let me, a toast to the wisdom I've yet to draw from you."
Both boys fell asleep atop his blankets on Remus’ bed that night, never quite reaching the part where they closed the hangings. James and Peter, dirty to various degrees from Quidditch, left a note on Remus’ nightstand, and the nature of their love was since unquestioned.
Monday (Seventh year)
Somehow it hadn’t happened until now. Remus’ Boggart had remained nothing more than a bad (and then very good) memory. But here Sirius sat on Peter’s bed, beside the tentatively sleeping Remus who’d woken up in the middle of the night with a gastrointestinal bug.
James and Peter had gone off to the dining hall, or maybe the common room. Maybe the library. Sirius honestly had no idea where they were, but they weren’t here. “I think it’ll be the best if the lovebirds deal with this alone,” Peter said, closing the bedroom door behind him and waving like the Muggle queen. “We’re here if you need anything!,” James added, though the sentiment was useless without any details of where they could be sought and asked. Truly a scatterbrain of the highest proportions, James was.
But of course, Sirius couldn’t sit still for long – once Remus found a more sustained slumber, he set himself to work. Filling a water pitcher for the bedside table, gathering his boyfriend’s soiled pajamas and putting them in a plastic bag for the house elves, giving the bathroom just enough of a cursory scrub for the sick-stench to fade into a memory. Sirius was grateful for the rhythm of these menial tasks; hours spent humming, working, and watching the morning’s chaos recede before his eyes.
Tuesday (Seventh year)
The first thing Remus did when he woke was wiggle his feet. Each individual toe, then his whole foot. Right foot, then left. Then his legs. Calves, then thighs. Fingers, individually, then his whole hand. Right hand, then left. He ventured a glance around the dorm, one side to the other, letting his eyes stop on James’ bed, then Sirius’, then Pete’s. Three sleeping chests and the fan, rising and falling to the same beat.
Perhaps he’d woken up to use the restroom? But that was out of the question – it meant rolling from his side to his back, from lying to standing, walking to the bathroom, moving from standing to sitting to lying and closing his eyes again. So he tried to breathe, but kept sputtering to a stop, keeping his eyes closed, and laying as still as he could, praying to his mother’s Muggle God for the bliss of escape in whatever form it may find him. His lacking belief in said Muggle God felt mysteriously negligible.
Though he didn’t fall asleep, Remus did eventually find that liminal space between losing sleep and getting it; between counting sheep and dreaming of the last sheep you accounted for while you slipped away. And it was through that space that Sirius Black’s hand reached the synapses in his shoulder, jerking him back to the land of the living.
“G’morning, Moony. How’re you feeling?”
Remus paused a little too long and subsequently watched Sirius’ gentle smile turn into concern. He felt the parallel to yesterday, in how he wanted to reassure Sirius that he was cosmically fine (he is) but he couldn’t find a way to signal it right now. He couldn’t signal much of anything at all without forcing himself into motion, and he can’t seem to remember that he’s okay in the way he usually can. If I say I’m okay, it won’t stay that way .
‘Oh, great,’ he responded drily, not fully aware that it was his own brain-narrator that finally drove him to defy that very organ.
‘Hm?,’ Sirius hummed to no reply. Remus hated watching him so unsure of what to do, wanted so badly to yell, ‘The fact that you haven’t left is enough!’ and look him in the eye while rubbing his hand in reassurance, but he still couldn’t make himself move his lips or even his feet, which he’d even been able to do earlier. So he waited stock-still, and a little hopeless, watching Sirius put on robes and brush his teeth in the privacy James and Peter had given them, then pack his books for the day.
Then Sirius’ hand shook his shoulder again, harder, sending butterflies up the length of his torso – whether caused by the sudden motion or the loving boyfriend who appeared to feel very much against giving up, he wasn’t sure.
“Use your wand, sleepyface,” Sirius said, “Or at least tell me what you need. Want me to bring you food? Wait for you and walk down to breakfast together? Stay with you for the day ‘til you’re back on your feet?” Waggling his eyebrows, he added, “I have no qualms skipping class again.”
“Now we can’t have that,” Remus ventured, the earned smile from Sirius motivating him to keep going, “Perhaps you could bring me some toast from the Hall? Once you lot finish breakfast, I’ll maybe have psyched myself up to dress for class,” he shrugged, “Or at least get out of bed.”
“Now, now, that tone won’t do,” Sirius tutted at the bitterness that seeped into Remus’ tone there at the end, “But I’d be glad to bring you some toast and cream cheese from the Great Hall. We’ll go from there once you’ve eaten up. Okay?” Remus nodded, and watched Sirius bounce out the door, his corkscrew curls practically making the boing! of a spring on a child’s toy.
Remus wiggled his toes again, then his feet. Then he rolled from his side to his back, and into a sitting position from there. He felt his hands and feet go numb – the start of panic – and stopped for a time to breathe, and visualize breakfast. He started with a plate of toast, moving gradually to hardier territory. A lemon tart. Eggs. Spinach. Sausage. If I can think of food and not feel sick, then I’ll be okay to get up . And he did feel okay – maybe?
Maybe.
Wednesday (Seventh year)
And so it was that Remus managed his robes and a three-minute speed wash at the sink on the power of that one word – maybe. With numb hands he cast new charms for Flitwick; with sweaty palms on his quill he took a make-up version of his herbology exam. He knew it wasn’t his best work, and for once he allowed that to be.
Sirius made himself available for the harder stuff, and Remus allowed himself to lean, trusting in the truth of his love after all they’d walked through together so far. And Remus returned that love with his own quaint acknowledgements – a rub of the knee at breakfast time, an extra kiss when he turned out the light for sleep, the slightest trace of laughter left behind his face-scrunch when Sirius pushed him bodily into the shower.
Squirting James’ anti-dandruff shampoo in globs on his precious curls while pulling him into the stall and turning on the water, both still fully clothed.
“You! You – animal!,” Sirius screeched, reaching for Peter’s conditioner to douse Remus, “When have I ever been so cruel to you?”
Remus shrugged, giving the conditioner a smooth road off his shoulder blades, “You’ve known I’m an animal since second year, Sirius, and you became one too. Old news. May I remind you that you started this by using your entire selfhood to push me into the shower?”
“What can I say? It’s the only way to the sunny side!,” Sirius joked gleefully.
Remus, for his part, rolled his eyes and bit back some snark about rain.