Chapter 17
The July moon came too soon.
Remus stood at the sink in the back of the pub, trying his best to keep up with the influx of dirty dishes from the lunch rush. The problem was he had one day until he was set rip his skin from his body, and he was really starting to feel it. His joints hurt as they prepared to be stretched and broken beyond what was humanly possible and his ears hurt from the cacophonous noise that came from the pub every time the kitchen door swung open. Sweat dripped from his hairline into his brow, and it took everything in him not to vomit in the dishwater.
“Pick it up, Lupin,” his boss commanded down his back every few minutes.
He tried. He gritted his teeth. He washed a plate with yellow egg yolk dried to the ceramic, then a mug with pink lipstick staining the rim, then a soda glass with a cigarette butt stubbed out in the half-melted ice. Bile rose in his throat, and he barely had enough time to run to the bathroom before he emptied the contents of his stomach into the toilet, which admittedly wasn’t much since he hadn’t been able to bring himself to force down a breakfast that morning.
There was a customer washing his hands when he came out of the stall, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. The customer gave him a curious look, staring as he approached the sink to wash his hands. Remus had to fight the urge to curl his lip away from his teeth and growl at the fucker. He had to remind himself that he wasn’t the wolf. Yet.
When he went back to work, he noticed the dishes he had yet to wash were clean and already drying in the drainer. He looked around the kitchen to see who had finished his job, but there was no one around besides the line cooks who hadn’t moved from their stations.
By the grace of Merlin, Remus had the next day off work. He spent the day sleeping and getting high until it was time to take the bus to the outskirts of town. The ride there was miserable. There were too many people—they smelled awful and talked too loudly, and he had to grit his teeth every time they went over a bump and pain shot down his back and into his knees.
He had to walk a bit into the woods from where the bus dropped him off. He was glad he left early. He was dragging his feet so much that he might not have made it in time for the moon's rise if he hadn’t given himself plenty of time.
He eventually passed through the wards that surrounded the property his father owned. The wards were fresh, updated regularly, which told Remus that his father still went there sometimes. He knew it wasn’t because his father cared about him, though. He was likely just worried that the Ministry would find out about his son’s status, which would ruin his reputation as the head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Remus knew his father still held the position because he still saw his name in the Daily Prophet sometimes. It was pretty much the only thing he knew about him.
Still, this property was the last thing he had of him, and he hated that he cared so much— hated that he still missed him sometimes.
The cabin came into view once he was fully under the wards. It was a barebones little thing, a single room with no running water or electricity. The wood was swollen and rotting and the front door was hanging off the hinges; not that it mattered because the chains would prevent him from running loose lest he come across some unlucky bystander. The floor creaked as he walked inside and, if the mildew stench wasn’t enough to make him vomit again, the silver bars on the windows did the trick; the proximity to the metal making his skin prickle and his head throb. There was a lonely bucket in the corner for this reason and he promptly emptied his stomach into it once before stripping off his clothes and chaining himself up for the night.
He let himself scream as much as he wanted as he transformed. There was no one there to hear him, no one to scare or worry about him. He screamed until his screams turned to howls and then the blackness took over.
In the morning, his mum picked him up. He heard her car coming up the dirt drive and a moment later she was inside, unlocking the chains. She helped him stand up, dressed him, and tried her best to help him as he limped to the car, but he was too tall for her to carry now, and he had to bite back the urge to cry until he was able to collapse on the towel she had spread out over the backseat.
His mum looked around when they pulled up to their building, making sure none of their neighbors were outside. It would be too hard to explain why he was limping and could barely hold himself up. When she was satisfied, she rushed him into the flat and into his bedroom where she assessed the damage he did to himself. He sat on the edge of his bed and slumped, placing his head between his knees and breathing heavily.
“Where does it hurt?” She asked him.
“M’ back,” he grunted.
She pushed his shirt up and made a sound that was suspiciously close to wince. She ran her slender finger over a smarting spot on his shoulder blade. Remus angled his neck so he could look around to catch a glimpse of what she saw, and sure enough, there were three evenly placed lesions in the middle of his back. The chains hadn’t stopped him from cutting into himself, but that wasn’t what they were designed to do anyway. They weren’t for his safety but for everyone else’s.
He kept his face strategically calm and devoid of emotion, for his mum’s sake, but he really wished he could go at least one month without nearly maiming himself.
He had already laid out the supplies Madam Pomfrey had given him before he left school on his nightstand; a jar of the essence of dittany, a bottle of dreamless sleep potion, one of blood replenishing potion, and some bandages. He shoved the dittany towards his mum, and she unscrewed the lid. He knew his mum hated magic in any form, but she had seen how little muggle ointment and aspirin helped before he started school, so she seemingly put her hatred aside for him once a month.
Hope looked at his alarm clock on the bedside table and tutted. “I’m supposed to head to work soon,” she said, guiltily. “I can call out.”
“No mum, I’ll be okay,” he said. He knew she would just be pacing around the flat, anxious about missing a day of work. She had a hard enough time already making ends meet every month and it was even harder in the summer when she had two mouths to feed instead of one. “I’m just going to sleep all day anyways.”
“Oh, all right, but call if you need anything. Number’s on the fridge.”
“I will, mum,” he said. He took a large gulp of the dreamless sleep potion and was out before his mum had even left.
He had been sleeping for maybe an hour when an all-black owl tapped on his window, its feathers shining blue and green in the late morning sun. Remus pried the window open— it had nearly been painted shut, and let the bird in. It stood regal and still, unlike any kind of normal owl and Remus recognized it immediately. It was the same one Sirius received at school whenever Walburga sent him a howler or a demanding letter. Remus ripped the parchment from the bird’s claw.
It was Sirius, of course, but his handwriting wasn’t as neat as it usually was, like he had written it in a rush.
Moony,
Please Don’t Write Back, it’s too risky. I don’t even know why I’m sending this but I’ve thinking about you all night, wondering if you were okay. I told James to send you an owl bright and early so you can let him know how the moon went, but he said he wanted to let you sleep in, that tosser, so I had Regulus help me send this. I really hope you’re okay and just know that I wanted to be with you every second of last night.
Yours, Padfoot
Sirius had been thinking about him. He wanted to write back, wanted to tell him that something in the back of his mind was telling him that the wolf had missed him too. He couldn’t write back, though, so he did the next best thing and tucked the letter under his pillow for safekeeping, so he could read it over and over again when he needed it.
He took another dose of the dreamless sleep potion even though he wasn’t supposed to. There was no way he would be able to go back to sleep without it. His shoulder felt like it was on fire and his knee was stiff and achy, his injury from the previous month had yet to heal entirely and was now inflamed.
He didn’t remember hearing the Potter's owl tapping at the window, but something must have roused him from his dreamless sleep because, what felt like 10 seconds later, he was at the window letting the tawny owl in his bedroom. He didn’t even remember falling asleep a second time. The room spun as he came to, and he had to sit down immediately before he passed out. The bird hopped over to him and spat the letter out of his beak.
Hi Moony,
Hope your doing ok. Pads has been ringing me on the mirror all morning begging for me to send you this, even tho I told him you needed to rest. He’s been absolutely mental so please right back soon so he can leave me alone.
-Prongs
P.S. I really hope your not hurt to bad. Just say the word and ill send mum there to heal you! I swear she wont care about your fury little problem at all. Just let me know ok?
It was tempting. It would be easy for Mrs. Potter to apparate to him and cast a few healing spells on his back and knee. It would also ease the feeling of intense loneliness that plagued the edges of his mind, which was probably a side effect of the wolf missing what it had come to think of as it’s pack, but the flat was a mess, and he didn’t want her to see him in his loopy state after downing more than enough of the sleeping draught.
He was still feeling a bit hopped up on the dreamless sleep potion when he responded to James’ letter, but he didn’t want the owl to fly away too soon. He hardly remembered what he wrote but he had the faintest memory of waxing poetic about Sirius and the fact that he had been thinking about him all night (his words). He hoped he remembered to tell James he was ok and not to send Effie to his flat. He was asleep again before the bird was even out the window.
He ventured into the kitchen later in the day when he had woken up from a fitful sleep. His head was still spinning a bit, but the effects of the draught had mostly worn off. He pulled a half package of bacon and some eggs from the fridge, fried them up, and ate them straight from the pan. He didn’t bother to clean up after himself when he was done.
On his way back to his room, something by the front door caught his eye. A pink envelope that had been slipped through the post slot while he slept. Written in pink pen and a curling scrawl was his name and address in the middle and Lily’s in the corner. He felt bad instantly. He had put off responding to her first letter so long that he had forgotten all about it.
Remus,
I haven’t heard from you, but this should get to you after the full moon. I wanted to make sure you’re okay. Stop being a prick and write back.
Lily Evans
Tomorrow, he promised her in his head. He would write back to her tomorrow. When he was younger, he never would have thought that he would have so many people who, for one knew about his condition, and two cared enough about him to make sure he made it through the full moon. It was kind of them, but also a bit jarring and he wondered if he would ever stop feeling like a burden in everyone’s lives.
He woke the next morning when he heard his mum shut the front door as she left the flat. He was aching and already late for work. He weighed his options—go to work and suffer, maybe even throw up again, or stay home and get high. He opted for the latter, donned an old jumper over his pajamas, and walked across the hall in his socks.
He knocked loudly. The elderly woman who lived next door was hard of hearing, but her grandchildren had gifted her a phone for Christmas regardless. Since he had been home for the summer, he saw his mum go over there a few times to use the phone and it was better than going out to find a payphone in the July heat. He knocked again, louder, when there was no answer, and heard the old lady call from the other side of the door. “I’m coming,” she called. “I don’t move as fast as I used to, ya know.”
The door opened a moment later and Mrs. Dodworth was in the doorway, her gray-blue hair piled and pinned on top of her head and a housecoat pulled tight around her. “Oh, it’s Hope’s son,” she greeted. “How are ya, lad?”
“’M good, and you?”
“Oh, I’m fine dearie. Come in for some tea,” she offered.
“Maybe later, I just wanted to ask if I could ring someone on your phone really quick?”
“Oh, of course! Come on in.” She moved away from the door and let him in, pointing to where the kitchen would be. “Phone’s right through there, go on.”
Remus obliged, mumbling a quick thanks as he left her side. He pulled the phone off of the wall and dialed the back-of-house number for the pub. His manager answered, he recognized his ugly voice instantly.
“It’s Lupin,” Remus said, quickly, not giving his manager any time to interject or ask where he was. “I’m sick, can’t come in today,” he said and hung up the phone without a response. That’s all they were going to get from him.
He was about to leave Mrs. Dodworth’s flat to go back to his own when something caught his eye. It looked like a wall clock, but it had the names of what Remus assumed were the old lady’s children and grandchildren on the winding clock hands and locations instead of numbers. Remus had seen clocks like these in countless shops in Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade. They were popular gifts for mothers and grandmothers during the holidays.
Remus took the opportunity to look around more and recognized a few more items that were distinctly magical— a pair of omniocculars in front of the telly, a roll of spellotape on the writing table. Was Mrs. Dodworth a witch? He concentrated but couldn’t feel any wards surrounding her flat or the lingering magic of any recently cast spells. It was possible that she had purchased these things at a charity shop, but Remus thought it unlikely when the Department of Accidents and Catastrophes worked so hard to keep muggles unaware of their existence.
“Mrs. Dodworth?” He looked at her, the confusion clear on his face.
“What’s the problem dear? Never seen a squib before?” She laughed.
…
Marlene stared at herself in the mirror. She liked how she looked but she was in need dire need of a change. Something new. The layers she had cut into her hair over winter break had grown out and lost their shape. Now her blonde locks hung straight and limp over her ears.
She opened the potions cabinet and pulled out her father’s straight razor that he used for shaving, which he had charmed to make the hair disappear after it was cut when her mum had gotten mad at him for leaving hair in the sink and bathroom floor one too many times. She gave it a moment of thought before saying fuck it and started hacking away at her hair.
When she was done, she added a thick line of kohl around her eyes and stepped back so she could get a good look at her new self. Her hair was shorter now, the ends curling well above her shoulders and a heavy fringe covered her brows. She felt more…herself. She almost looked like a boy, she noticed. A very feminine-looking boy with impeccable taste like one of the rock stars on the albums Sirius and Remus listened to, but maybe it would help Lily and Mary get the hint. She thought about Remus’ suggestion to just date girls and hope they would figure it out, but that would mean a girl would have to agree to go on a date with her first. Who knew when that would happen?
Her parents were both at work when she made her way downstairs, looking like she had just stepped off stage at a rock concert with her new haircut. They had been busy most of the summer, so far, working on some big project for the Department of Magical Transportation where they worked together.
She had taken to spending her days in Diagon Alley, and this day was no different despite how different she felt. The flue took her to the Leaky Cauldron and Tom the barman nodded to her as she stepped out of the fireplace. She had been there so much already that summer that they had become tentative friends, and he had started to pour Marlene a cup of coffee on the house when she sat down at the counter, even though she didn’t have a taste for it yet. She much preferred tea, but she wasn’t about to complain about free coffee.
“Somethin’s different about ya,” he said in his gruff, but jolly voice. Tom was a good guy, she had decided so back at the beginning of summer. He was probably in his mid-thirties, just a few years younger than her parents, but he looked much older. He wore an eye patch over his left eye and his bare arms were covered with what looked like burn marks. She wondered what he did before becoming a barman that left him looking like he had been to hell and back, but she never had it in her to outright ask.
“I might have grown an inch or two,” she winked.
“Sure, sure, that’s it, kid.”
She sipped on her coffee, looking around at who was there. No one her age, but a few older witches and wizards that she had come to recognize. She wished Mary or Lily were connected to the flue network so they could hang out during breaks, but they both came from muggle families.
She choked down her coffee and threw a single galleon down on the counter for Tom while his back was turned; she knew he would just push it right back to her if he saw it and she felt bad for all the free coffee she had been drinking lately. Then she made her way outside and into the sweltering sun.
Her first stop was Fortescue’s Creamery. She hoped that Alice would be there, working behind the counter of her grandfather’s ice cream parlour, but when she rounded the corner she saw the line was well out the door. There was no doubt that Alice was working, her underage status preventing her from using magic to serve customers quickly, but Marlene decided not to bother her. She wished that she would run into someone else she knew, maybe someone from the team, even Potter as long as he wasn’t with Pettigrew, but most students had lives and didn’t do their school shopping until late August.
Her next stop was Quality Quidditch where she made note of all the things she would ask her parents to send her for her birthday, then Madam Malkin’s to look at the new robes they got in, then Magical Menagerie to watch the fire crabs blow smoke at each other in their little habitats.
The last shop she went into was Flourish and Botts. It was quiet in there and the bell above the door made everyone in the store turn and look at her as she entered. She went straight to the back of the shop to the entertainment section where she had been eyeing a book for the past few days: “Witches to the Front: The True Story of Witch Sisters’ Rise to Fame.” She brought the book up to the till, along with a pink-feathered quill she had picked out for Mary’s upcoming birthday.
When she had successfully wasted the better part of the day, she decided to head back to the Leaky and catch the flue back home, where she could read her new book and finally get that cup of tea she had been fiending for. She noticed, upon entering, that someone had plastered a flyer to the front door. The image of someone shredding on a guitar on lime green parchment, their fingers moving up and down the fret, and block letters advertising an open mic night at the Hopping Pot in a week. Her eyes moved over the paper as she pushed the door open, distracted by the images and becoming instantly disappointed when she noticed the small 17+ flashing in the corner. There was never anything fun for underage witches to do.
She was brought out of her thoughts by a shriek and a frustrated voice. “Watch where you’re going!”
Marlene froze. The most beautiful girl in the world stood in front of her. She was tall with long dark hair that she wore in braids. Her legs were long, her skin was dark and smooth, and a stack of golden rings adorned the ear that poked out from behind a braid. Marlene wondered in vain if she was part vela. There was no way a normal witch could be that beautiful without something else going on.
“Are you going to just stand there?” the girl asked with a huff.
Marlene realized that she had pushed the door into her while she was distracted, spilling butterbeer over the front of her tank top. “Oh Merlin,” Marlene exclaimed, coming back to the present. “I’m so sorry!”
Marlene rushed to one of the patio tables and grabbed a stack of napkins out of the dispenser, but by the time she came back, an older witch was standing before her, casting scourgio on her top and the plank flooring of the Leaky’s patio to clean up the mess. The girl thanked the helpful witch and was on her way, dropping the remainder of her drink in the trash bin on her way out. Her heels echoed on the cobblestone of the alley, and she didn’t look back at Marlene once.
Marlene was dumbfounded. She stood there with her mouth wide and agape. Should she follow the girl and try to talk to her? She wanted to ask her name, wanted to ask if she went to Hogwarts. Would that be weird? She could offer to buy her another drink since she had spilled her other one. It was a good idea, but by the time she thought of it, the girl had turned a corner, no longer in sight.
Tom gave her a knowing look as she walked back to the fireplace, her shoulders slumped in dismay.