For the past few years of his life, I'd been Remus's best friend.
Caretaker was my more formal job title. That's how this all started, anyways. My younger cousin had asked me for help getting wolfsbane, and after a bit of interrogation, I was able to convince her to let me take over the monthly deliveries. It took a few months of trades and forcing conversation before I could convince Remus, but eventually he let me take him back to live at my place, and make sure he was being fed and taken care of.
We were strictly a business relationship for most of the time, light small talk and such. With my continuous prodding, Remus saw I wasn't letting up and ended up letting me in. After that, we became friends, then best friends. We would do everything together, not like we had anyone else to hang out with, and told each other everything. From remus’ stoic past to my personal affairs, we knew one another forwards and backwards.
I’ve decided it's important to keep that in mind on nights donning a full moon. He’d change a bit the days leading up to it- more easily aggravated and sensitive to more scents and textures. The distance he tried to put between us the days before was the hardest to manage, and as much as I knew he was just trying to protect me, I needed him to know I was just doing the same for him. I always had to put it in my head that I know Remus, and he's not meaning to be like this on purpose.
My thick skin to his actions during full moons was what made me the perfect caretaker for him. Someone he could trust, and someone that could bare to be around him. So, every month, I'd walk to the shack he stayed the night in, bandaged him up, and helped him back to the house. Occasionally, we could get our hands on wolfsbane, but most of the time he just had to tough it out. It was another one of those nights, tonight. One where he just had to go and hope for the best. One where I had to hope for the best.
I watch the sun slowly move up the horizon, the indigo sky fading downwards to a purple, then to red. The moon and constellations that had dotted the sky just an hour previous had dissolved. I grabbed my bag and headed towards the shack, preparing for the worst and praying for the best. We had done this for years, now. There was no need to worry, he’d be just fine.
I give my 4 knocks on the door to let Remus know it's me, turning the silver knob to the right and pushing in the oak. There are more scratches on the other side, typical of my friend.
“Wakey wakey Remus! Where are you hiding?” I call out into the shack, listening for any sort of clue. A pained groan comes from the back, breathier than usual. “Alright?” I call again as I rush down the stairs.
My heart falls to my stomach at the sight.
So much crimson.
Everything is covered in it.
He’s covered in it.
I try to maintain my composure. The last thing Remus needs is me in a panic at his side. He needs reassurance and help. Help quickly. Fuck, y/n, he needs help, stop staring.
“I take it you're not alright then.” I gulp and drop to my knees, pulling bandages and potions out of my bag by the handful, trying to figure out where to start. “I need you to talk to me, mate. Anything.”
“Knew…this would hap-happen.” Remus mutters.
His eyes are squinted and his hand has a firm hold on his abdomen, groaning in pain every moment or two. His clothes are torn to shreds, or at least I hope that's his clothes. Everything is soaked in his blood, it's hard to tell the difference without touching.
“Any liquor in these cupboards by chance?”
“Youre not- not having a-fuck- a drink without me.”
“Yeah…you'll need a drink for what I need it for. Is any here?”
He nods his head, gulping down saliva and tears, trying to stay strong. I take the go ahead to rummage through the only chest still standing, finding half a bottle of old vodka and a pair of shot glasses. I try to find the humor in it for a moment, and hope Remus can too. I pour him a shot, and end up taking it myself before bringing it back to his side and pouring a second.
“Here, you'll want this in just a moment.”
“Why? What are you-“
I take a rag out of my bag, pouring nearly all the liquor left in the bottle on the laceration on his leg before pressing the cloth to it.
“AAAH FUCK! WHAT THE HELL!”
Remus’s scream turns into a sputter towards the end, but he ends up throwing back his shot as I push on with his medical attention.
“Fuck- y-you” he reiterates after the drink goes down.
“I know, I know. Pour yourself another, it's about to get worse.”
I had only put it in here for the worst case scenario. Magic can do so much, I shouldn't ever need it. I shouldn't have needed the vodka. I should've been able to fight back all my muggle knowledge in place of spells, but I couldn't come up with one strong enough to help him. I thread the string from my bag through a needle, holding back my vomit as I pull it through his skin.
“FUCK JUST LET ME BLEED!” He yelps, voice straining quickly.
“You will bleed out too fast if I leave it open. You might bleed out too fast even when I close it. Our deal is that I do what I can.”
Every stitch makes his leg feel 10 meters longer. The feeling of lacing his skin up is one I'll never forget, and wished I could get rid of sooner. Eventually, I finish up on the leg, apologizing profusely and handing Remus a potion to ease the pain. I hope that it's the only major issue he had tonight and push on with my inspection.
I sat him up off the wall, only to find an even larger gash on his pelvis, sticking out from what's left of his trousers waistband. More wounds patterned across his arms and the back of his head. Blood drips down his neck and back, pooling against the wall where he’d lain himself.
“Shit.” I whisper.
“Don't tell me you need to sew me up more.” He tries to laugh, sputtering into a deep cough. I catch the blood coming up, even as he tries to hide it in his palm.
“No.” I laugh with him, laying him back against the wall and holding his hand in mine. “Remus, I need you to listen real closely, okay?”
“Hmm?”
“There is not enough time for me to get you to a healer. You would bleed out before we got there, and a splinch if we attempted apparition-“
“Could kill me.”
“Right. I have done everything that I can do.” I smile at him, trying not to focus on the fact that for once his eyes aren't looking at me like they are ready to die.
“I know. You did brilliant, by the way.”
Remus aches, shifting his position constantly and the muffled, pained groans make that apparent. There's a strong tension in the room, our fingers loosely intertwined but our voices straying from being heard. It's funny, the feeling of knowing death is approaching and knowing there's no way to stop it. There's nothing to say or do. We just sit here until it takes him I suppose.
“How long, you think? 10 minutes?” Remus asks, pulling me back from my morbid thoughts to our morbid reality.
“I think it might depend. You could try and fight it, give you a few more minutes. You could completely give up now, then I think there's about 10 minutes. Or you could let nature take its course and live on like you have no clue it's coming, then maybe…15? 20?”
He just nods his head at first, absorbing the information and taking everything into account. We joked about this sort of thing all the time. He always had a witty response, a remark that made me wonder just how much we were toeing on the edge. This time though, there was nothing. He just sat in silence, using his index finger to swirl around the edge of the liquor bottle. He coughs and more blood comes up. I hand him a handkerchief.
“You're my best friend, you know.” I mutter, trying to relax the both of us.
“I know.”
“I’m gonna miss you.”
“I know.”
“You're a mingebag.”
He laughs a bit that time before he responds. “I know.”
I squeeze our hands a bit tighter together, looking at him and his side profile. He has a soft smile, but it seems more like the kind you give just before you start to cry. Remus tilts his head to the side and carefully shuffles his body to be leaning against mine. I can tell hes trying to keep his weight off of me and just have his head rest on my shoulder, but before long he can't help it.
“I bet there's time for one more of your stories. Surely with your life flashing before your eyes you've thought of one more prank you and the others pulled.” I joke and try to get him to talk to me. “Or you could just tell me about right now. Or something you love about me before you go, give me an ego boost for the end of time.”
Minutes pass, and if it weren't for how heavy he has to breathe to get any oxygen, I'd be worried that he's already passed. I kiss the top of his head softly before leaning mine on his. It gave me some comfort being this close to him, considering it would be the last time.
“Did I tell you about the hard boiled eggs?”
“Only 20 times.” I say dryly, raking my free hand through his mess of sandy brown curls.
“It’s my favorite one,” he starts, another cough interrupting him. “I can see James’ smile so clearly when I think of it.”
I ignore the warm droplet that seeps through the material of my shirt. I ignore that for once in his life, Remus Lupin does not want to die, and it happens to be the one time that he is. I ignore the fact that I can't come up with a joke to make him feel better, and I ignore that he hates it when I get all sappy.
“I’ll make sure I tell everyone, then. Make sure that's what they remember you by.”
“Y/N-”
“I know, I know. It’s just that…I love you, and I’m probably never going to get over this. My house is going to be empty and no one else is going to laugh at my jokes. Everyone else thinks that they're terribly dark and horrible.”
“Y/N, I’m tired.”
“Oh.”
We both knew what that meant. I checked the clock on the wall and sure enough, it had been 7 minutes since he'd made his guess of 10 minutes.
“This feels scarier than I'd imagined.” He mutters, snuggling further into my skin to get more comfortable.
“I’ll stay here with you. There's no need to be afraid, you just go ahead when you're ready, alright? You don't have to stay and fight, it's okay to let go.”
I scratch his back and comb through his hair. The scratching turns more into supporting him and keeping him from falling flat on the floor. I try to make it as comfortable as possible. There's no helping the way I stare at his face, watching as his eyelashes flutter closed, and stop opening back up. The way his lips tremble with his breathing. Anything that gives me clues. I mutter some sentences that I think are comforting, telling him how loved he is and that everything was going to be okay. That he wouldn't hurt anymore.
“Tell your friends I said hello.” I whisper as I feel his breathing strain further. “It's okay to go to them.”
I had always assumed that the first time I watched someone breathe their last breath, I'd be in tears. I imagined more dramatics and flare, not that the blood covering my clothes and hands wasn't theatrical, and assumed I'd be screaming over their dead body. Instead, I found myself just giving his hand one last squeeze.
That's a funny thing- dead hands. In the books and movies, they tell you about how a body grows cold after death. I suppose it was naive of me to think the temperature would drop so quickly. His hands had the same familiar warmth they always had. He was losing color more quickly than I anticipated. His hands used to have freckles, and rosey finger tips, and a pale blush color under the nails. Now, his nail bed, fingertips, and skin around the fingers were all the same freakish shade of pale yellow. They looked completely fake, and I wondered if the rest of his body would do the same.
The worst part is that there's no one to tell. He has no friends, no family, no employer. There is no one aside from me left in this world that cares if he's dead or alive. There's no calls to be made.
All that's left to do is to go back home.
Go back home, and never stop crying.