Chapter 1
Relationships were difficult at best, never mind that one partner was bearing the burden of a secret that he would rather die than have exposed. Not that Remus didn’t trust Morgan, but this was different. It was bad enough that James, Sirius, and Peter had all figured it out, and worst of all, made it their own personal mission to help him in whatever way they could, including becoming illegal animagi so he wouldn’t have to suffer through the full moons alone anymore. He hadn’t told them, explicitly, they had worked it out themselves, and Remus remembered the panic he felt when they confronted him, the tightness in his chest, the air that became trapped, the tears he shed when he assumed that the very best friends he had ever had now wanted nothing to do with him, the thought that he would need to drop out of school, the guilt and the shame.
But it hadn’t happened. His friends didn’t abandon him when they found out about his “furry little problem”, and he held out the slightest bit of hope that Morgan wouldn’t either, but he couldn’t be certain. It was easier to avoid telling her, for her to not catch on to all the excuses Remus would make about being sick once a month, going home to visit his sick mother at home. He didn’t share a dormitory with her like he did with James, Sirius, and Peter. They shared the same year, and several classes, but that was it. Remus had convinced himself that he would spend his entire life alone, he had friends of course, the other Marauders, as they called themselves, were very hard to shake, not that Remus had ever tried before, but they idea of being with another person in the way that he had imagined with Morgan was one that terrified him.
His lycanthropy was a disease; a curse that he would never be rid of, and he didn’t want to subject anyone to that life more than he already had, with his parents and his friends. Morgan was an absolute treasure, a gem hidden among rocks. She was one of most caring people he had ever known, never one to let a friend or a stranger go without. She’d give you the robes off her back if you’d ask. Not to say she was pushover, however. Despite the fact that she would help you with homework you didn’t understand, she wouldn’t hesitate to hex you if you copied off her. Peter learned that the hard way. The last time he tried, it had taken the collective minds of Remus, James, and Sirius to use a counter curse to reverse whatever wordless hex Morgan had thrown at him.
Lily thought it was hilarious, as did Marlene and Mary, and they never hesitated to threaten whatever Marauder who was annoying them by sending Morgan over. They had all been friends since first year, but it wasn’t until the middle of fifth year that Remus had begun to see Morgan in a different way.
It was after the full moon, when Sirius had taken it upon himself to prank Snape by exposing Remus as a werewolf, and Remus was understandably livid. He made small talk with James and Peter, while completely ignoring Sirius, but even then, it was only about homework, and Remus would stand up and leave the second James and Peter even mentioned the idea of Remus forgiving Sirius.
He spent the majority of his time in the library, attempting to study for his O.W.L’s, it was uncommon to see Morgan huddle over a small table by the window, her tongue between her teeth, ink bleeding into her hair from where she scratched her head with her quill. It was something all their friends laughed about, but it had never seemed as endearing as it had when Morgan looked up at Remus, a few feet away from her with his heavy bookbag across his shoulder and remaining textbooks cradled under his arm. She invited him to join her, and he did, sitting opposite of her at the crowded table, watching as she piled her unused books on the floor by her chair, taking extra care to not upend the open bottle of ink by her side.
Studying with the other Marauders, or the girls wasn’t an uncommon thing, but over the next several weeks, it became a sort of ritual that brought Remus an enormous amount of peace that he wasn’t used to. From the time he was four years old, Remus’s life was full of chaos, intentional or not. It was nice to be around Morgan, who was calm and steadfast, nothing particularly unexpected came from the times they spent together, in the library quizzing each other over facts of the Goblin Rebellion, or in the courtyard, practicing wand movements. That was what Remus liked about her, among other things. He didn’t notice that his feelings had changed from platonic friendship to fancying infatuation until nearly the end of the year, when O.W.L’s were completed, Sirius had been forgiven and Remus still spent as much time as he possibly could with Morgan until the end of the term.
“I’ve never seen him like this before.” Sirius whispered quite loudly to James as they stood on Platform 9 ¾ , watching as Morgan wrote down her family’s address on a spare piece of parchment before slipping it gently into Remus’s hand and pressing a kiss to his cheek before running through the barrier to meet her parents on the other side. His cheek flushed as James threw an arm around his shoulder and shook him, “Moony’s got a girlfriend!”
It felt strange to hear, and even stranger to say out loud, but Remus supposed James was right. Morgan wrote to him every day of the summer, and Remus was diligent to respond, even when the full moon slowly crept upon him, and he lay in bed for days leading up to it, barely able to eat, but always mustering enough energy to flop onto his desk chair and write a response, even if it was incredibly short. His parents noticed the change in his behaviour, and he knew his Ma was dying to know who had caught her son’s attention after almost five years at school. He wasn’t even this excited to respond to letters from his other friends. But they never questioned him, even when they brought him back to the Hogwarts Express on September 1st and pretended not to watch as Morgan practically threw herself at their son, who held her in his arms as he took the brunt of her weight and shyly kissed her hair. For that, Remus was eternally grateful. His friends were not as subtle. Though their teasing did bother him to some extent, they were always careful to toe the line of respect without ever crossing over it, though Sirius almost had a time or two.
The next two years were some of the best of Remus’s life. Despite the fact that the war was looming over them all and didn’t seem to be coming to an end any time soon, Remus had never been happier. It was strange to think that before he had been a boy of ten, he had already decided that love was not in the cards for him, and now he was in love with one of the kindest, most generous person he had ever met in his life. But nothing lasts forever. As graduation slowly came around the corner, Remus began to distance himself from Morgan. He had more and more time to think about their relationship and where it was headed. Everything was going amazingly, and that’s what scared Remus the most. He saw how everyone around them was going forward in their relationships. After years of being enemies, Lily and James were dating, and when James informed the group of his plans to purpose to Lily in the summer, Remus felt his heart clench tightly in his chest.
He was overwhelmed with thoughts, some of them were good, most of them were not. They were getting older, it was natural for them to want to move on in life, and Remus was ecstatic to hear about James’s plans. There was no doubt in his mind that Lily would agree to being Mrs. Evans-Potter, that he, Sirius, and Peter would be his groomsmen, that Marlene, Mary, and Morgan would be Lily’s bridesmaids. He would probably walk down the aisle with Morgan on his arm, and the thought should leave him just as excited as the idea of maybe having their own wedding one day. But it didn’t. In fact, Remus felt quite the opposite.
He had no doubts that Morgan would want more of a commitment when they were out of school, she had always expressed interest in having a large family, as she grew up an only child in London, the only witch of her family. She loved going to the Potter’s during the last week of the summers, when she got to meet all of James’s family. It shocked her that Sirius and his brother didn’t get along, even if he was in Slytherin, and had the same ideologies as his pureblood supremacist family. She had never experienced a large family gathering, and neither had Remus. It made sense for the both of them to get married as soon as they could, like James and Lily, and have an entire Quidditch team of their own. Of course, Morgan would agree to be his wife if he had asked her. But he wouldn’t; he couldn’t.
Nearly four years of being together and Remus had kept from Morgan that he was a werewolf. Even at the insistence of James, Sirius, and Peter, Remus would come up with excuses. She wouldn’t understand. She would leave me. She would tell everyone. None of those things were true, and Remus knew it. No, the reason he refused to tell her was because that he was scared. She would understand, she wouldn’t leave him, and she wouldn’t hate him for something that was out of his control. That wasn’t what he feared. Rather, he feared her getting too close to him, more than she already had. He feared that she would be frightened of him, if she ever saw what he could do, what he could become. He feared passing his disease on to an innocent child, as he knew that Morgan wanted a family of her own. It was safer for her to not know, to not be around him anymore. It killed him to do it, but, he thought with tears in his eyes, it was better to kill him now, then to kill her and whatever children they might have had later.
It was before James and Lily’s wedding that he broke up with Morgan over an owl. He was too much of a coward to do it in person. He watched day after day as Morgan’s brown barn owl swooped through his bedroom window, carrying letter after letter that Remus tucked away in an old shoebox, unread. Weeks had gone by, letters had gone unread, until eventually, they stopped coming altogether. It hurt to know that Morgan was no longer in his life, but by extension, she was no longer in any of their lives. That was the worst part, by Remus’s decision to walk away, he had unintentionally lost a friend not only for himself, but for James, Sirius, Peter, Lily, Mary, and Marlene as well. It hurt Lily and James that she didn’t show up for their wedding, Lily especially. She cried all night after when she and James should have been celebrating their honeymoon. Nobody had told Remus this, but he could tell.
Years went by and Remus remained single, not wanting to risk getting attached to another person the way he was attached to Morgan. He hadn’t seen her in years, she didn’t join the Order of the Phoenix as the rest of them had, although Dumbledore insisted that he had sent her many owls. She hadn’t been there when Harry was born, this time Lily sobbed to James that Harry would not have a godmother with her staying away. That broke Remus’s heart, but he knew it was for the better. There were days that he thought of contacting her, but decided against it. Many letters were written with her family’s old address on the front of a wax sealed envelope, but they remained in the old shoebox with the letters she had sent that Remus refused to open.
There was hardly a day that went by where Remus didn’t think of her. Where was she now? Did she get the job she wanted as a Healer at St. Mungo’s? Did she move on to another man? He had no right to wonder about these things, he reminded himself, but he couldn’t help it. He loved her. He would always love her. If things had been different, if he wasn’t cursed with lycanthropy, he would have purposed to Morgan when James purposed to Lily. They would live in a cottage in Godric’s Hallow, maybe even be next door neighbors to the Potter’s, Harry and their child would be best friends. She would have had everything she ever wanted, a big family, a house with a picket fence, magical flowers, herbs and plants in the back garden. They could have been happy.
But no, Remus reminded himself, it was better this way. He didn’t believe that, but perhaps if he said it often enough, that would somehow make it true.