Poetry, Art, Music, Craft

Poetry, Art, Music, Craft

Remus shifted in his chair, uncomfortable on the hard plastic, uncomfortable in his clothes, uncomfortable in his skin, and listened as the others went around in a circle.

Remus hated poetry when it came from people with no imaginations, people who thought rhyming sick with prick was the epitome of poetic. He had no patience for hearing the pretty redhead group leader gently prod them each in turn—

Always gently. No need to upset the natives.

—to take their turn to share.

Remus would rather rip his skin open and flip it inside out to share his thoughts and ideas and misery. They didn’t want that though, they wanted to hear healing and love and acceptance.

Remus wanted to spit their acceptance in their faces.

“I’m starting to think I have an attraction to impossibility.
I’m starting to think that I’m courting the night sky, eternally shunned by the sunshine.
I’m starting to think that my mother was right, and some stars should never shine.
I’m starting to think that the end game for me is a small coffin and an early grave.
I’m starting to see that in the end, even the impossible night sky doesn’t need my star.
I’m starting to see that it’ll always be you and I; myself and my self-hate.”

Remus cocked his head curiously at the soft spoken voice from the boy who finally wrote a poem worth hearing.

This boy, with his head ducked and dark ringlets of hair falling in his face- Remus bet they would be glossy if they had proper soaps here -held his paper tightly in clenched hands with bones that stuck out so sharply they looked ready to snap. Remus wondered how he’d never noticed him before, but…

But they were all adept at being invisible, weren’t they?

They were just six invisible boys, floating through life, then drug under harsh lights through harsher circumstances. So Remus could forgive himself for not noticing this boy before then.

“Excellent job, Regulus,” the red headed counselor said, her voice hesitant but leading the boy, Regulus, to nod and lean back in his chair, his head still ducked. “And Remus now?”

That finally caught the boy’s attention, he looked up, his posture shy and uncertain, but his eyes- those eyes -were as sharp as they were stormy and caught Remus in his gaze.

Remus’ mouth fell open, taking in the sharp features, regal and pronounced, framed by the curls that his fingers itched to test the softness of.

“Remus?”

Remus shook his head and glanced dismissively at the redhead with the green eyes too pitiful to do anything but set him off.

“Roses are red, violets are blue.
I hate myself, and I hate you all too,” he said.

It hadn’t been what he wrote, but how was he meant to follow up a beautiful poem from a beautiful boy with his garbage thoughts?

Remus crumpled the original poem in his hand when the counselor sighed- everyone was always disappointed in the broken boys who didn’t try hard enough -and dismissed them all for dinner. He tossed the paper toward the bin while he followed his roommate, Peter, in their single file line to the dining room.

He never saw when deft and clever fingers reached out and snagged the crumpled ball before it ever hit the bin.

“Let’s talk, Remus.”

“Excellent plan. How’s your day?”

“I’d rather hear about your day, if you don’t mind?”

“Mm, so we aren’t talking, you want me to talk and you to listen.”

“Yes, I suppose that is what I want.”

“Well, you know what The Rolling Stones say; you can’t always get what you want.”

“Everyone pick an easel!” Lily, for Remus finally learned the young red-headed group counselors name, cried happily when the six boys were led into the art room.

The art room was the same as the rest of the floor they spent their existence haunting; stark white, no visible outlets, dull, lifeless.

It did have a current perk of having six easels set up in a semi-circle, each with a table beside it covered in paints, brushes, and glasses of water.

Remus would bet all the money in the bank account he didn’t have that the paints were nontoxic.

Remus chose the easel at the end closest to the thick window, the one that couldn’t be broken no matter how many chairs people threw at it. He ignored Lily’s instructions to ‘posting what made them happy’, what a bloody joke, and instead inspected the brushes that were undoubtedly donated and well-used.

To his mild surprise, the brushes were firm and most of the bristles were straight and unmarked.

“We have an hour, boys, so let’s get to it!” Lily turned on an old radio, one that played irritatingly poppy music, and ignored the six disdainful looks from the group of teenagers who didn’t enjoy being spoken to as if they were children.

As loathe as he was to participate, Remus didn’t want to spend his life there and he did enjoy painting. Painting reminded him of days back at home— before the accident, before the hospitals, before the everything changed.

So Remus began pouring greens and browns and blues out on his palette. He wouldn’t paint ‘what made him happy’ (how do you paint nothing?), but he would paint.

Of course he would.

Remus tried to lose himself in the paint. He tried to forget where he was and why he was there. He tried to paint broad brown strokes, adding speckles of green, but he got interrupted by a soft voice.

“Oh. You actually know how to paint?”

Remus hadn’t noticed, but the soft-spoken boy with the sharp eyes and dark curls from last weeks group meeting had taken up the easel beside him. Remus turned his head slightly, hiding the patchwork from his surgery from view while trying to see what this boy had painted thus far.

“A bit,” Remus admitted. He squinted at the pink blob on the other boy’s canvas. “You don’t,” he said flatly, disappointed that the boy with the poetry in his heart had no art in his long and thin fingers.

The boy, Regulus, Remus recalled, smiled blandly and waved his paintbrush at the blob.

“Only poofs paint,” he said.

Remus bristled immediately and narrowed his eyes at him. “You believe that?”

“No. My mother does though, lovely woman.”

Remus did not return his cynical look, instead he curled his lip up in a sneer.

“I suppose I’ll never accept a dinner invite from her,” Remus said coolly.

Regulus hummed and turned his face away from Remus— hiding those lovely features from Remus’ unworthy eyes —and made another stroke across the canvas, adding a lump to the blob.

“She is dead, so it would be difficult for her to invite you to tea.”

Remus poured out new paint, mixing together black and white until he had the shade of grey he wanted.

“Is she?” he said, uninterested in a dead bigot even if her son was beautiful.

“Mmhmm. My brother,” Regulus swung his paintbrush toward where two of the boys on the opposite end of them stood flinging paint at each other while Lily fussed behind them, “he killed her. He’s quite the hero.”

Remus’ hand froze mid-stroke. He studied the laughing boys and decided the one with the wavy black hair and regal bone structure, the one laughing and looking so terribly merry as he flung purple paint at the other boy with the glasses and messy black hair, had to be Regulus’ brother.

“He looks truly torn up about it,” Remus said with a biting tone.

He’d give the whole world to have his mother back. He’d trade his life for hers in an instant—

Remus would give his life for anyone who asked though, so perhaps it wasn’t as touching a sentiment as he thought.

—and Regulus’ brother was having a paint fight after taking his mother away.

Regulus had a tiny smile when he looked over at his brother. When he called him his hero, he hadn’t been being sarcastic at all. Regulus looked at his brother like Remus used to look at the doctors in the pediatric wards; Regulus looked at his brother as if he knew he would save his life, as if he did.

“His medication needs adjusting,” Regulus said with a single huff of a laugh. He sounded sarcastic and fond and there were a million emotions in his voice when he looked at his brother and spoke about him. “Sirius is terribly manic.” He turned those storm filled eyes to Remus and curled one side of his lips up in a smirk, “Bipolar, you know. It wasn’t his fault he killed her, he was manic.”

Remus was too caught in Regulus’ storm to ask what he wanted to- was he manic? did he kill her on purpose? was it an accident? was Regulus happy she died?- but he wasn’t getting paid to ask questions like that, so he didn’t bother trying.

“Bipolar is a genetic illness,” Remus said dismissively, turning back to his painting as if those eyes didn’t set his heart racing. He didn’t want to dismiss Regulus, he wanted to drown in him.

How could grey be the first splash of color that Remus had seen in months?

Regulus laughed again, just a soft sound, and then fell quiet when footsteps approached them.

“Oh! Regulus!” Lily stepped up between them and had her back to Remus while she inspected Regulus’ painting. “This is so wonderful! What is it?”

Remus snorted, loudly. How did she know it was wonderful if she didn’t know what it was?

Regulus’ voice, the soft and cutting voice of the baby bird he made Remus think of, was different. Brighter, more alive, conforming.

“A flower,” Regulus told Lily, so sickly sweet now. Not that Lily noticed, Remus could just imagine the wide smile she would be bestowing on Regulus if he were able to see her face.

“Ooh, flowers make me happy too,” Lily assured him.

She always spoke like they were stupid as well as sick. Remus thought she was the daft one, but he couldn’t go around shouting that, could he?

He probably could actually.

Peter screamed much more incriminating things than that at all hours of the day. Remus personally enjoyed his frantically shouted theories that the doctor stole his soul and ripped it in seven tiny pieces before feeding them to the rest of them.

“Don’t eat my soul, Remus!” Peter sobbed so pathetically when Remus just wanted to sleep.

Remus flipped on his side and gave Peter only his back to cry at. “Too late. I did and it’s gone now. You tasted like shit.”

No one ever accused Remus of being kind.

“—a garden behind the house, I loved it.”

Remus was ripped from his own waves of self-hate— self-hate was blue, a dark blue that wanted to squeeze the air from his lungs —by Regulus’ charming explanation to Lily.

“Well I adore it,” Lily gushed brightly. Remus saw her hand raise from the corner of his eyes, as if she were going to lift it and touch Regulus, but she pulled back at the last second.

No touching.

No personal connections.

‘This is a safe place. A place for healing.’

It was a joke.

Everything was a joke and then you died.

Unless you had bad aim and sweaty hands; then everything was a joke, you went to a hospital, and you got back to dying once you were free.

“And you, Remus, what are you painting?”

Remus kept his face impassive and as unimpressed as he could make it as he looked from Lily’s enthusiastic and open face to his painting.

“It’s a noose, obviously,” he said. He tried to feign the peppy tone Lily herself used, but Remus didn’t have much practice being fake.

Regulus waited until Lily walked off with another disappointed shake of her head to release a quiet scoff.

“Your noose has bark on it,” Regulus scoffed, ever so dryly once more. Remus preferred that, he couldn’t swallow false niceties even before he destroyed his throat.

“Hm, she didn’t seem to notice, did she?”

“It’s as if you never want let out,” Regulus mused with a thoughtful expression. “Comfortable here, with your scars and your secrets, Remus Lupin?”

Remus stiffened.

“How’d you know my last name?”

Nobody, aside from the doctor, ever used last names. Remus’ scars weren’t exactly a hidden secret, as much he wished he could peel them from his throat and his forearms.

“I looked in your file,” Regulus said so solemn and brazen that Remus didn’t think to doubt him. “You’re interesting.”

Remus was interesting in the way that Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’ was interesting. He was interesting in the way that a bloodstain on pavement was interesting.

Remus was only interesting if you were morbid and adored shitty tragedies.

“I’m not,” Remus said flatly. His wrist itched and it took all his concentration to not scratch it. He turned back to his canvas, intent to actually finish his painting now that he could imagine the shade he needed for the sky, and missed Regulus’ smile.

“I’m quite interesting,” Regulus said, abandoning his work altogether to pester Remus. “You have yet to even ask me why I’m here. It’s terribly rude, but what should I expect from a boy from Islington, hm?”

Remus smirked at Regulus’ arrogant lilt as he taunted Remus with his knowledge of where he was raised. As if Remus ever spent much time in the tiny flat that was warmer on the inside than the outside ever revealed.

“Bipolar,” Remus guessed. He made a vicious slash against the canvas, making the outline of his treetops harsh and unfriendly.

The best art imitated life.

“Wrong,” Regulus said.

Remus glanced at him before sending a pointed look to where his brother, Sirius, he said, had began teaming up with the glasses boy and flinging paint at a quiet boy with greasy black hair and a long nose.

“Just because Sirius’ disease is genetic hardly means I have it,” Regulus sneered.

Remus thought Regulus’ obvious pride in denying his brother’s mental illness was more than a bit misplaced, considering he wouldn’t be painting a flower beside Remus if he weren’t broken in some irreparable way.

Obligingly, Remus gave Regulus a searching look. He looked from the top of his head, where those curls framed his angular face, clear down to his yellow socked feet, and back up.

“Tell me or don’t, I won’t beg for it,” Remus said dismissively. He looked to the clock on the wall, the one hidden behind iron bars, as if they would climb the wall, crack the glass, and slit their wrists open with the broken pieces.

Remus would, if he could.

But he only had forty minutes to finish his painting, which didn’t leave much room for climbing walls and busting clocks.

“They call it anorexia.” Regulus said his diagnosis as if it were a dirty word, a shameful label. He said it all in a rush too, trying to get it out there as quickly as he could so he could move on.

Remus looked at Regulus more carefully and saw it then. The angular face, the slender fingers, the wrist bones…

“You should eat something,” Remus said, half-jest, half-unwilling concern.

Regulus threw his head back and let out a laugh so bright and warm that the others looked over to them— Lily looked pleased. She would probably be shocked if she knew Remus had been the one to make him laugh like that. Remus was shocked he has made Regulus laugh like that.

It wasn’t forced. And it was enchanting, seeing Regulus laugh with remarkable abandon.

“You’re a piece of work, aren’t you, Mister Lupin?” Regulus said once he’d finished laughing and Remus was only pretending to paint. He didn’t sound angry or defensive, nearly… fond.

Fond was something people typically weren’t when they spoke to Remus. Not since his parents, not anymore, not ever again.

“Has anyone ever told you to stop being depressed?”

Remus smiled faintly and switched from green to grey, focusing on the sky in his painting and avoiding the eyes that inspired it.

“Never,” Remus said with a nonchalant drawl. “It’s truly an excellent idea though, hallelujah, I’m healed.”

“Who needs Prozac when you could merely quit dreaming of suicide, hm?”

Remus’ smile stretched to a grimace and he felt an irrational flame of anger ignite in his chest.

“Fuck off,” Remus said, his voice a quiet growl.

“Clearly Sirius isn’t the only one who needs his medicine adjusted,” Regulus murmured before falling silent.

Remus ignored him- the pretty boy with the wrist bones and clever eyes and sharp tongue. And, when their hour was up and Remus’ sky was a deep grey with a half-moon lifting in the side of it, Remus slashed the painting with a giant red X.

When Remus sat with Peter at dinner, he watched Regulus as subtly as he could. Regulus caught Remus’ eye when he went to eat a cold carrot stick. He held it up in a mocking salute before taking a bite.

“Remus, what would you like to discuss today?”

“The same as usual, if you don’t mind; nothing.”

“Don’t you wish to move forward? How can we accomplish that goal if you don’t communicate with me?”

“That wasn’t my goal.”

“It should be. Surely you don’t want to spend more time here than necessary? A smart lad like you? You could be going to school, making uni applications?”

“Living in a shelter?”

“Remus, you know that we will not release you to a shelter. We’ve spoken with Children’s Services, and—”

“I don’t care.”

“I think you do.”

“I SAID I DON’T BLOODY CARE.”

Remus scratched at the new bandages on his wrists, the ones that covered his scars and his scratches to keep him from picking at them.

The stoic nurse with the rolls of bandages and bottles of pills didn’t understand, Remus wasn’t self-harming, he didn’t fit in his skin and needed to alter it. He needed to scratch until he felt that hitch in his chest release.

Remus thought again about yanking the stitches from his neck, but all that had earned him last time was a week of pain dulled with narcotics and a setback on when he could leave the godforsaken unit he’d been dropped in.

A Godless boy in a Godless ward with five… no… Remus shook his head and counted the line again… when had they gone down to only four other boys? Who was missing?

Not Regulus, his curls were visible in front of Peter. Regulus’ brother was in front of him. Either the greasy kid or the glasses kid, but Remus couldn’t tell as Sirius was too tall to see past. Unable to immediately solve the puzzle, Remus lost interest.

Everything was hazy for Remus, it always was when they adjusted his medicine. The first few days was a haze, then he felt normal, and normal was worse than hazy.

Hazy was itchy though, and Remus wished for claws so he could rip his skin off.

“Remus? Dear? Are you okay?”

Remus lifted his head from his hands—

How did he get there? In the music room? A fingernail digging at the scratches inside the crook of his elbow?

The others were looking at Remus, not as if he were mad though, that would be hypocritical and they were crazy, not hypocrites. Their eyes were filled with something more painful than judgement; they looked understanding.

Remus flipped them off and settled back in the hard plastic chair. He gave Lily a look of as much ‘Piss off’ as he could muster and snapped his jaw shut.

Lily smiled brightly despite Remus’ minor episode- he dug his thumb nail in his elbow harder when he felt eyes watching him from two chairs over.

He wouldn’t look.

“You boys can use any instrument you want,” Lily told them, waving slender arms around at the hand-selected and undoubtedly safe instruments.

No guitars.

No bass.

Nothing with strings.

“If you need help, let me know!” Lily told them. She waved her hands. “Have fun!”

Remus stayed in his seat.

If he didn’t want to have fun, then he didn’t have to participate. He was never leaving anyway, who cared how much he refused to join in these mad activities?

Fuck them.

Remus had his head buried in his hands once more, fighting against nausea instead of playing musical group therapy.

It was torture masked as healing. No person should be expected to listen to a bunch of crazy boys blowing on flutes, laughing and shrieking, and not be expected to take a second shot at themselves.

Remus was too tired to shoot himself even if he could. Perhaps that’s what the goal of medication was, you couldn’t be depressed if you were too filled with fog.

He’d cracked the code. He’d sell his theory to the media after he was kicked out and expose big pharma as the scam they were. He’d use the money for a flat, something posh and clean that smelled like biscuits and ginger. NHS didn’t cover youth psychiatric services for 18 year olds. Remus only had to suffer for another…

11 months.

Lovely.

“Oi, mate, want a harmonica?”

Remus’ snarl died in his throat when he lifted his head and saw a bright smile being aimed at him. Regulus’ brother, Sirius, had a harmonica in both hands and offered one to Remus.

“It makes you seem less crazy if you play a harmonica,” Sirius said, wiggling the silver and red out to Remus. “C’mon, mate, don’t you want out?”

Remus huffed and accepted the harmonica, though he hadn’t anticipated Sirius plopping down beside him and blowing the most ear-splitting notes on his own.

“It’s not as if you’ll be released by playing their games,” Remus muttered. He saw Lily look at them so he blew a few notes on his. He winced when he sounded no better than Sirius though.

“Reggie told you about that then?” Sirius bounced in his seat and looked to where his brother sat on the floor with Peter and the greasy haired kid, the three of them each tinkering with a different instrument. ‘Reggie’ looked up, not to Remus, to his brother, and smiled so worshipfully.

“I did have a good excuse you know,” Sirius said when Regulus looked back down at the xylophone he tapped a light tune out on.

“Oh yeah? Had to be a bloody brilliant one to kill a woman in cold blood,” Remus scowled. He didn’t know the details, not for a lack of trying. Whatever Regulus did in his individual therapy sessions that got him time alone in the office to snoop was a luxury not offered to Remus.

Remus had been curious about the two brothers- the skinny one who pecked at his meals like a bird and sent such sweet smiles to the other. The older one, with the manic energy, who killed their mother and still bounced around with a disposition so sunny Remus needed sunglasses to look at him.

Sirius leaned toward Remus until his mouth was directly by his ear.

“I’m insane,” he whispered. Sirius followed it up with a mad laugh. Even if it had been faked for whatever legal defense Remus suspected he had, it was rather convincing.

“We’re all mad here,” Remus said flatly.

“That’s the spirit.” Sirius winked at him before blowing a loud note on the harmonica. “I’ll be here all week!” he called cheerfully to where the other three boys sat.

“James left me,” Sirius told Remus, apropos of nothing and with no invitation from Remus, after only a single minute of silence between them. “We were roommates, and now I’m alone until the next crazy shows up.”

Remus gave him an unwillingly curious look. “I though Regulus was your roommate?”

“Ooh, Regulus,” Sirius chuckled and waggled his brows at Remus until Remus flushed. “No,” he said in response to Remus’ question. “The good doctor said Regulus and I have ‘unhealthy levels of codependency’.”

“You do,” Remus said scathingly. He thought of the worship in Regulus’ eyes, two shades darker than his brothers. He thought of the way Sirius couldn’t speak more than a sentence without glancing toward Regulus protectively.

Remus wished he had a brother.

He’d be so bloody codependent that they’d keep his hypothetical brother in a different country to keep him safe from the weight of Remus’ need.

“Family is important,” Sirius sniffed with haughtiness.

“You killed you mother.”

A shadow passed through Sirius’ eyes, making him look as mad as the rest of them. A shadow that suggested mania was merely a convenient excuse to pin a murder on.

“She wasn’t my family,” Sirius snarled. He looked at his brother when Regulus moved from the floor to the piano bench and the shadow in his eyes disappeared immediately. “Ooh, Reggie’s going to play. Listen.”

Remus couldn’t have ignored Regulus if he wanted.

And he wanted.

Probably.

Regulus had the attention of every person in the room as those slender fingers began flying across the keys, filling the room with music so sweet, so sad, that Remus’ chest tightened and his haze slipped away for a moment.

“Für Elise,” Sirius murmured, as captivated as the others. His face lost his glowing happiness for more of a muted one, a protective look of love as he watched his brother. Regulus had his eyes closed as his hands moved so quickly and played so accurately. “Reggie’s showing off.”

“He should,” Remus said quietly. His lips turned up in a ghost of a smile to see Regulus look as at peace on the piano bench as Remus used to feel in the windowsill of his parents’ sitting room, a dog earred book in his lap.

Regulus played piano like a cool fall day and Remus wanted nothing more than to take a nap while the notes enveloped him in a feeling of home he hadn’t felt in a year.

So he leaned back against his chair and did just that.

“Can we discuss the accident, Remus?”

“So you admit it was an accident?”

“I was referring to your parents’ wreck. Though we can discuss the suicide attempt as well.”

“I told you it was an accident. You’re quite the know it all.”

“Perhaps I’ve seen many cases like yours before. What you did was not shameful, but it would be beneficial to see it for what it was.”

“I think I’d rather discuss my parents’ wreck.”

“We can do that.”

“Of fucking course we can…”

When clarity came, it came with a tangled ball of yarn and two plastic knitting needles too dull to properly stab anyone with.

Lily set them loose with the crafts. Another counselor kept her company while they moved around- two babysitters for the craft room. Too much risk that they’ll kill themselves or each other.

Remus can’t be arsed to off himself, not when he sees the knitting needles and feels the soft green yarn.

It felt like the air got punched from his lungs.

Every cap Remus wore from when he was in nappies until last year had been hand knitted.

Every cap had felt as if his mother’s fingers entwined magic in the yarn.

Every cap that Hope Lupin made had kept Remus’ ears warm and his heart happy.

Remus didn’t know he’d been crying as he stood by the plastic table, cradling that ball of yarn as lovingly as a parent would their newborn, until a cold and bony set of knuckles brushed his cheek.

“You look as if you’re having a breakthrough.”

Regulus had an endearing pink tint to his hollow cheeks and his eyes were shifty as if he knew he’d interrupted a private moment when Remus jolted at his touch.

Remus shouldn’t be having private moments in the middle of group therapy, but he shouldn’t have to take a piss in front of a schizophrenic 17 year old, yet so was life.

“I’m not,” Remus denied. He used to bundle of yarn to dry his face and snatched the plastic needles before they could be taken.

Everything good got taken from Remus; why not those needles as well? Why not this one fragile connection to the last person in the world who loved him?

Remus sat on the floor and inched backward until his back was against the rough brick and he began unspooling the yarn.

“Let me help you.” Regulus sat beside Remus and held the yarn gently, letting Remus untangle it. “I can’t crochet at all, you know,” he said factually.

“It’s knitting,” Remus corrected him with an ache in his chest. “And I can’t play piano, so I suppose we’re even.”

Regulus brightened as if Remus’ tiny admission had meant anything at all.

“Sirius taught me piano,” Regulus said. On cue, his eyes turned from the side of Remus’ head toward where his brother was pasting pipecleaners to a paper with his tongue stuck between his teeth.

“How extraordinarily lovely for you,” Remus snapped, taking an especially hard tug on the yarn. “It must be bloody delightful to have a brother who loves you so god damned-” another tug on the yarn, “-much that he taught you the piano and cares about you to the point where you can’t even be roommates.”

Remus actually growled when Regulus reached out and wrapped his fingers around Remus’ wrist, squeezing hard until Remus met his eyes.

“My brother is going to be locked up for another decade once he ages out of here,” Regulus hissed, his eyes flashing with danger and fear both. A juxtaposition that made Remus’ stomach flip. “Sirius saved my life and ruined it by doing what he did. Did you think I checked myself in this disgusting excuse for a hospital?”

Remus had, actually. He thought Regulus cheerfully followed his brother straight to the mad house.

“Don’t ever speak about something you don’t understand,” Regulus spat, tossing Remus’ hand away from him with a look of anger that made him look ten times more alive- a thousand times more lovely -than he had since Remus first noticed him.

The two of them sat frozen in time for a long moment, staring in each other’s eyes.

Remus wondered if Regulus saw his loneliness as easily as Remus saw Regulus’ uncertainty and fear.

Then Remus nodded and turned his attention back to the yarn.

“My mum taught me to knit,” Remus told Regulus. He began working the needles, slightly uncomfortable with their thickness and he held them in awkward positions by fingers that hadn’t used them in years.

Regulus hummed softly. “You cared for her?” he asked quietly. “Her and your father both?”

Remus blinked back the grief that tried to hide the yarn from his view. He pushed down the memories of his parents spending days in uncomfortable hospital chairs because Remus had been a sick child who spent more time in isolated hospital beds than he had his own.

His mother wore a tired smile. His father wore crumpled cardigans. They never let Remus feel a lack of love.

Not for the sixteen years they had together.

“They were the best people,” Remus said. It was easier to talk while he knitted. The sound of the needles, the scratch of the yarn between his fingers, could trick him in to believing he was back home at a flat that didn’t belong to him anymore.

“I miss them so fucking much,” Remus whispered. He used his arm to wipe his face, ashamed of how pathetic he sounded.

Regulus held the ball of yarn with one hand while the other inched over to rest on Remus’ knee; forbidden, but it wasn’t as if Remus would be tattling.

“I don’t know how you feel because I’m glad my mother is dead, but… but I imagine you don’t feel well. So… that’s sad, I suppose.”

Remus let out a chuckle when he peeked over and saw Regulus looked rather terribly uncomfortable.

“Was that your best effort to console a grieving orphan?” he asked him. “Bloody hell, mate, you suck.”

Regulus bared his teeth in a grimace. “It isn’t as if I go around comforting others on a regular basis,” he drawled. His eyes ticked over to his brother, a flash of amusement when he saw Sirius pasting a pipe cleaner to the end of Peter’s nose. “Sirius is simply never sad.”

Remus shot Regulus a suspicious look before glancing quickly toward his brother and then back to his yarn.

“That bipolar must be incredible to never have depressive episodes,” he murmured softly.

Regulus flashed Remus a wide and amused smile.

“It is incredible, isn’t it?”

Regulus made decent company as Remus knit. He offered up quiet comments about himself, prodding at Remus when he wanted a proper response.

“I didn’t ask why David Bowie is your favorite singer, I asked if you were tone deaf?”

When Lily came to check on them, she gushed over the half of a hat Remus had made.

“I’ll bring more yarn next week!” she said, so easily placated by the smallest amount of participation. “If you promise to knit me a cap,” she added with a jaunty wink before flouncing off to check on the rowdier boys.

“By God, do you think she goes home and just cries after wasting all her energy on us?” Regulus snarked with a shake of his head.

“I hope so,” Remus muttered.

By the time their hour of craft time had ended, Remus had a decent, if lopsided, dark green cap to show for it and ears filled with Lily’s endless praise.

He’d also silently cried his tears all over it, leaving it blotchy in spots that would eventually dry.

“Take it,” Remus told Regulus, thrusting the cap to him before they lined up for dinner.

Regulus looked surprised, though not displeased, when he accepted it.

“You’re certain?” he asked hesitantly. “I’d hate for your ears to be cold when you sleep on the streets this winter.”

Remus smirked at his cheek and silently swore to get an opportunity soon to check Regulus’ file.

“I’ve… I’ve got plenty of caps,” he said, forcing his tone to sound light as he thought of the knitted hat he’d received for every birthday. He had a burgundy one that had been given to him for his sixteenth birthday, three weeks before a drunk killed his parents, a month before Remus put his father’s revolver against his skin and tried to take his life.

Perhaps… perhaps if he ever left… he’d wear it. If only to feel the warmth his parents’ love had once given him.

“I don’t want to be here forever.”

“What will you do when you leave?”

“Travel, maybe? Go to uni, somewhere out of London.”

“A wonderful goal. Shall we begin planning the steps you’ll need to take to achieve it?”

“…yeah, alright.”

Nine months before he turned eighteen, Remus was released from the hospital with a ‘clean enough’ bill of psychiatric health.

He stood on the sidewalk with a backpack filled with paperwork and prescription notes, and blinked at the sun. He had an address in his pocket, a train ticket to take him to the Children’s Services Office that would help him establish housing.

It felt… it felt overwhelming and Remus suddenly wondered if he should run back inside and scream and sob until they readmitted him.

“Remus!”

It took Remus a few blinks and a hard rub of his eyes to remove the white spots so he could focus on the figure jogging down the sidewalk with a dark green knitted cap on and a hand waving at him.

Remus wasn’t entirely certain he hadn’t gone mad once he recognized who it was. “Regulus?”

He hadn’t seen Regulus since he’d hit his weight goal and ‘graduated’ out of the hospital a month ago.

Graduation was a fancy way of saying ‘we have no more medical diagnosis’ to give you and thus cannot profit from your shit life, get out’.

But there he was, looking smug as he stuck his hands in his navy blue blazer pockets and rocked back on his heels.

“Don’t you want to know how I knew you were being released today?” Regulus asked him with a pleasant smirk on a face rounder than it had been the first time Remus noticed it.

Remus rolled his eyes and held his backpack more securely to his chest. “Sirius, I presume.”

Regulus arched a brow at Remus. “There was a breaking and entering incident involved as well, don’t be rude. Walk with me and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“I can’t. Train station’s that way,” Remus said regretfully as Regulus began walking in the opposite direction.

Regulus turned back and scrunched his nose up at Remus.

“Whatever are you going to the filthy station for?” he asked.

“An appointment to find some poor family to house me for the next nine months,” Remus said with an unhappy curl of his upper lip.

Regulus laughed and reached out to grab Remus’ wrist, pulling him alongside himself as he walked confidently in the wrong direction.

“Don’t be absurd,” he said haughtily. “You’ll be staying with me.”

“Oh?” Remus gave him an interested look; a look that became all the more interested when Regulus slid his hand from Remus’ wrist to his hand and he laced their fingers together. Remus tossed his backpack over the opposite shoulder, having no issue with holding hands with a beautiful broken boy who used phrases like ‘with me’.

“I have a perfectly acceptable home here in London, six bedrooms and one bloodstained foyer.” Regulus smiled fondly, as he did every time he mentioned his mother’s death. He looked over at Remus before biting his lip and ducking his head, his haughty demeanor hidden beneath the vulnerability of insecurity. “If you’d rather?”

Remus considered his options, as he’d been doing recently in therapy.

He could turn around, go to the train station, stop by Children’s Services, and move on to a temporary foster home.

Or he could let himself be drug along by this beautiful and lonely boy to a house that was undoubtedly filled with ghosts not of Remus’ making.

“We need to stop by Chel’s so I can get my medicine,” Remus told him casually, smirking when Regulus gave him a look of delight. “Unless you’d rather I eventually add my own bloodstain to your foyer?”

“It won’t hurt the decor any more than it already is,” Regulus said with such a small grin and a sparkle in his eyes. His eyes were more cloudy in that moment as they locked on Remus’, less storm ridden and cast with shadows.

“Come, let’s fill your medicine and I can enthrall you with how Sirius broke in to the good doctor’s office.”

Remus laughed quietly as he was jerked along by a boy who still weighed less than eight stone.

“We should buy something to eat and you can also tell me how a sixteen year old took possession of a crime scene house as well,” Remus told him.

Regulus’ smile was brighter than the sun, stronger than Remus’ fear.

“It’s a lovely story,” Regulus said enthusiastically. “So there I was, forging signatures, as you do…”

It was somehow less overwhelming to begin life again with Regulus guiding the way.