(The Anatomy of an) Accidental Necromancy

Chapter Summary: Fuck the first rule of magic.

“The nights are filled with explosions and motor transport, 

and wind that brings them up over

the downs a last smack of the sea. 

Day begins with a hot cup 

and a cigarette over a little table with a weak leg 

that she has repaired, provisionally,

with brown twine. 

There's never much talk 

but touches and looks, 

smiles together, curses for parting. 

It is marginal, hungry, chilly - 

most times they're too paranoid to risk a fire - 

but it's something they want to keep, 

so much that to keep it 

they will take on more than propaganda has ever asked them for. 

They are in love. Fuck the war.”

Thomas Pynchon, 1973

***

A citadel of bitter cold seeped through the wall. Far and wide it had travelled just to pierce his hopelessness. The moon was a waxing crescent that night. It was just a few days after the new moon, and Remus was already feeling nauseous. He stared morosely at the view of marching clouds that mercifully eclipsed the moon from the bedroom window that he had left wide open. 

The cold allowed him to feel something, reminding him that he existed. 

He did not know it yet, but the country was about to undergo the coldest recorded December in history.  A severe cold wave would form, lasting all through mid-late January the following year. It was called the Big Snow. Remus would’ve scoffed at the name if he knew. But he didn’t feel any of it. All of his senses were lost. As if it was him who had been courted by death and Lúttā, the goddess of Madness and Insanity. As if anything would have ever mattered anymore. 

After, when every fuck worthy event had unfolded and all the dust had settled, Remus often found himself looking back to this very night. He’d mused the choices he had made on the basis of his stubbornness and sentiment alone. Two parts of him that he never had before thought would work together.  

Fair, Remus supposed. When was he ever graced with any teaspoon of practical forethought or knowledge ever? He never knew if he had ever said the right things. Or if what he did was conscientious even. If he ever should get himself involved with the likes of these pureblood bastards. 

In any case, he should have known better. Uncertainties were the building blocks of the war they fought in the darkness. They were made of the blood and bones of friends, lovers, and enemies. 

As of right now, Remus did not know which of those three he envied more. The dead, he supposed, if he ever was so inclined to state his preference. 

There was a pile of unopened letters at the foot of his bed. He had left this flat for far too long that he wagered that about half of the senders of the letters were no longer alive. If they still were, Remus would rather dip himself in a large vat of gasoline and set himself on fire than talk to any of them. 

If anything, was there anything more seductive than blatantly ignoring your reality? Why would he ever engage in the conscientious destruction of his own life, parsed through in minute details with anecdotes and criticism? Wasn’t it enough that he had suffered through it contemporaneously? Why must he engage in the truth of it all as well?  

Many years ago, or what seemed to be decades, Remus was taught in a muggle history class at a summer school his mum made him attend - that war was a means to acquire profits. That it was easy to sell the ideology of golds and power masqueraded as an assertion of rights. Only now, lying in his bed in the twilight territory of nothing concrete, he realised how he had been used as a wartime currency. 

All along, he had thought that they were, at the very least chess pieces. Able to change something, by playing the role on the board he was dispatched to do so compliantly, But, oh no. This was worse. Much worse. 

There were galleons price tags attached to their heads, courtesy of the war profiteers. 

James’ head, regardless of it being intact or not, would fetch a pretty penny. Pureblood, new money, and so likeable to the impressionable younger students at Hogwarts by the time he was head boy. People would rally behind whatever cause he supported in a heartbeat. He was the beacon of faith and the symbol of righteousness. He was one with the people, more relatable than the mythical Dumbledore. Though it was definitely easier to rally behind a martyr, and hell, did Dumbledore exploit the fuck out of that. 

Lily’s head had been pretty expensive too, Remus wagered. The champion of the muggle-borns. Brilliant and fierceness in her own right. A mother that was willing to give up everything so that her son would live in a better world. What was there not to like? 

Him, on the other hand...  

It was far too late to realise that there were no terms of victories in this war for the likes of him. Only loss. 

He thought that he had done well to remember the lesson that Fenrir Greyback had taught him when he was five. Wizardkind was ruthless. If this was a muggle’s game of chess, the sides would collect trophies. Perhaps a bit of money that could fill up bank vaults in Switzerland. Some sort of a banking empire, maybe. But wizards would much rather have eviscerated the enemies. They are never interested in letting any speck of your lineage survive.

All the family tree branches crassly pruned off their bitter, rotten wayward. Preferably. After all, the impures are not worthy of living. 

So much so that all that would be left was a deselect little cottage in a charming wizarding village that was half blown to pieces, an heir they had failed to eviscerate, and Remus’ dignity in the form of his heart being absolutely beaten up, destroyed, left on the ground to rot, and then spit at. 

What was it they all thought? That made them so callous and so, so reckless? Some bullshit line about regretting things they didn’t do more? They were in love. Fuck the war. Fuck everything. They’d take every morsel of it while they could. Ah, to be young and utterly stupid. 

At the thought of that, Remus sat up. He reached blindly for the bottle of benzodiazepines he had easily pocketed from the corner shop with the help of a bit of sleight of hand. He downed a handful of them with some cheap alcoholic drink he nicked that was marketed for the patented misspent youth dreams and relished in the lull of a quiet mind at last. The only thing stopping him from wolfing down the entire bottle of Z was the knowledge of its ineffectiveness. 

His furry-little-problem would never let him die that easily. Fuck his life, honestly. 

***

Long before the sun rose that morning, Remus fucked off to Wales for Christmas with his mum. Well, Christmas-adjacent. Time had lost all concept of meaning to him, swirling and collapsing within each other in a myriad of fermented animal anatomy and memories of dried up herbs in a cauldron back in Slughorn’s potions class that he never seemed to master. 

But it was alright back then. He had friends and someone he thought he had loved that he could depend on. How strange to think that he had been worrying about not passing his NEWTS not five years ago. 

It never really sunk in, the horrors of war. It was not until it picked through the candescent that held up the structure of your heart that kept you going in the form of your friends, and everyone you loved - one by one until all that was left of you was the desperate wanting to succumb to it all. Even the best of them fall. That should be the propaganda. Leave it all to the true sadists to snap it up.

He knew that a world-weary (and severely traumatised) 21-year-old soldier of a son was not on any mum’s Christmas wish list. But she was the only person left in the world that Remus could tolerate being within the one-meter radius. He knew that he should’ve done better. He knew that he should’ve come bearing gifts, or at least on the actual Christmas day. 

At least it seemed so that he was late - from his vantage point, which was the thick woodlands he picked as his apparition point. The woods were just at the far edge of the tiny village he grew up in. He peeked through amongst the thickets of oak, ash, and sycamore. He saw that he seemed to be about two weeks or so too late from the lack of Christmas decorations at Mrs. Baughan’s garden and the street they lived on. 

Mrs. Baughan hated anybody who would leave their Christmas lights on past December with a passion. You’d be tempting fate if you left them anytime past New Year’s eve. So much so that she’d waddled up the path up to your garden, Tupperware in hand, stuffed full with her infamous cakes and puddings, to let you know that she meant no harm when she told you to kindly bring down them sparkly lights because that would be indecent.  

In any case, Remus felt relieved looking at the sight. He was at least still capable of feeling grateful for this little corner of the world unaffected by the war. 

As long as his parents’ mum’s cottage was still there, in its grandeur of slightly crooked chimney and the charms of being built by the river stones hauled from that old river bed that had long dried up from the Tannet valley, he’d take it. He’d gratefully take that any day over a floating beacon of death in the form of Death Eaters’ so-called Dark Mark. 

Rather scraping the barrel of creativity with that name if he was being honest. But, sometimes, the thought that nobody in the western world holds any candle to naming names had crossed his mind a couple of times. 

Anyway, what came along with the knowledge of the cottage still standing was the fact that the fidelius charm still held up. An extension to the fact was the fact that his father was still alive, somewhere, the bleeding coward. But Remus wouldn’t lie and say that brought him any sort of comfort. No. He had no trucks for lies and deceit anymore, war be damned. Of course, it might have been too late for him to learn that, but who gives a fuck.

Still clogged up with clouded judgement and thoughts, he trudged up the road carefully. Walking as casually as he could, his left hand across his chest, trying to look like he was shielding himself from the cold despite never being able to actually feel it since he was turned. His right hand was hidden in his inside jacket pocket, holding his wand tight. 

He reached his mum’s cottage without any hiccups. Though he still took the precaution to look around, pretending to admire the general splendour of the charming little village in the moonlight as his left hand rested on the gate. Finally, when he was satisfied, he pushed open the rickety gate of the cottage that he helped build when he was about six slowly; his heart beating wildly in his chest as he heard it creak. 

Remus paused for a bit, looking around the garden, not knowing what he was hoping to happen. For someone to be firing curses at him from the freshly sowed vegetable patch of broad beans, onions, and lettuce? Or a scorned murderous lover to jump up from behind the compost bin to finish him? His war commander, perhaps, to demand him answer the why and the how he had bedded a potential mass murderer for years and years and didn't manage to catch on to any of his violent tendencies? 

That last one was pretty unlikely after Grindelwald; still, Remus’ mind liked to wander and postulate scenarios. It was the little things in life that gave him pleasure. So why would he deny himself that? Fuck conundrum, fuck normalcy, fuck everything.

When any of that did not happen, Remus walked across the garden carefully, wand out and bluebell flames in the other. They were still in war as far as he was concerned. 

Before he even managed to knock on the door, it swung open. His mum was on the other side of it, wearing her pink daisy apron, hands dusted with flour, and a tired but warm smile on her face. He never did know how she managed to do that every time. It must have been one of those magical powers only mums can ever possess. 

At the sight of her, every protocol and paranoia disappeared. Remus rushed into her waiting arms like he was five again, and his mother’s hug seemed like the only thing that could put the world right again. 

Well, almost. 

Later, over breakfast, as Remus scarfed down bacon, sausages, and laverbread hungrily, his mum, Hope, watched him across the table with an unreadable expression. Her cup of tea was clutched in her hands, albeit remaining undrunk. Remus knew what would happen, but he rather let his mum do things her own way. 

If this was anyone else, he would’ve had apparated on the spot. He hated confrontations. He wagered he would have until the afternoon until his mum finally said her piece. Of course, by then, he would have managed to invent various excuses to avoid the conversation, like wanting to help oil the creaky gate, water the plants (he is a little shite considering its January), or take the compost out. 

But as always, a mother’s intuition would win out.  

“Are you going to tell me what happened, or do you need me to drag it out of you?” 

Remus sighed. This was not the plan. He looked up, mid-chew, bits of bacon and grease on his lips and everything. He looked wearily at his mum. He kind of felt like being a cheeky bastard that day, so he did. 

“I heard they finally made smacking your children illegal these days,” Remus said after a beat, choosing to deflect. His mum had never laid a finger on him, of course. She was perfect. Far too kind to him, far kinder than he felt he deserved. He tried to crack a smile along with it, wanting to make it clear that he was just joking. But his lips seemed to have forgotten how to. The joke fell flat. 

Hope did not seem that amused. 

“How’s Sirius?” Hope asked, still holding his gaze. She did not even miss a beat.

Remus had the decency to look down and wipe that out-of-place grin off his face. He bit his bottom lip and pretended that whatever was left on his breakfast plate was interesting. He poked at what remained of the sausages, and his anger translated what was supposed to be a nonchalant move into a violent one. The plate cracked in half, and the grease seeped through the broken pieces and made its way into the wooden grain and vein of the table. 

Remus stared at the shine of the grease as it flowed down a sloped grain. It stopped after losing its momentum near the teapot. 

“He betrayed Lily and James.” So Remus found himself saying, eyes still on the grease, his voice heavy with shame and guilt. 

Hope hummed, but her face remained blank. Unreadable. 

“You believe that?” She chose to ask. She had always loved Sirius. ‘Like mother, like son.’ Remus thought. 

“He blew up a street full of muggles,” Remus said in lieu of answering, in a voice that was far too soft and delicate that he wondered if his mum could still hear him. 

It was almost like he wished to not further extend the damage that had been committed. That if he was careful with what he voiced out into the world, it could undo what was done, and the sanctity of balance would return. That somehow, him treating this as something fragile instead of whatever cruelty and inhumanity that had been perpetrated was enough to rescind the horror. 

‘Well, that’s not the first time he showed his bastardry tendency,’ was what Remus had wanted to say as an answer to Hope’s question and ‘broke my heart,’ his mind uselessly supplied.   

“What of Harry?” Hope asked in a voice as thin as a whisper. Maybe finally connecting the dots and getting at what Remus was trying to say. That Lily and James were gone. Murdered, in fact. Ripped apart by the cruel hands of fate masquerading as a friend they've known since they were children in their own home. Betrayed by someone Remus thought was his everything. 

“He’s safe. Dumbledore took him,” said Remus, and his voice finally cracked, caught in his throat because damn, all the stars in the sky if he’d ever believe that. 

“Oh, love .” He heard Hope say; her voice started off full of concern and love, but she didn’t quite manage to maintain the sentiment. She broke down in the middle of saying the last word; and mouthing the last syllable instead. Her face was full of understanding of the sheer horror that had unfolded. 

Remus, who was still very determinedly staring at that spot of glistening grease on the wood grain all throughout the exchange, finally stole a glance to look at his mother. Hope’s face had turned ashen, and she swayed in her seat as she made to stand up to hug Remus, who flinched so hard at this movement that one of the plate fragments ended up on the floor. 

She froze and made herself sit back down. 

Remus forced himself to stay calm and reminded himself that this was his mum and not the enemy. He was safe in his mum’s cottage - eating breakfast at that round breakfast nook table with that one kooky leg that he couldn’t fix no matter how much magic he threw at it. He was not on a battlefield, fighting for endless war, holding onto just by the skin of his teeth. He was fine. 

Remus looked up and made himself meet his mother’s eye. Her expression was unreadable, and Remus found himself inexplicably envious that he was never privy to her thoughts. That she was a closed book and always had been. He used to think that this was her magical power; that came short to a veritaserum. Other unimaginative horrors wizardkind had managed to cook up to spill the truth; nobody could ever figure out what Hope was thinking. 

If only Remus had inherited this particular skill. Maybe all of these wouldn’t have happened. But, instead, he had fornicated his thoughts so cheaply, and easily, as soon as he thought he had belonged. He had opened his heart the moment he was so certain that Sirius, James, and Peter accepted him as one of their own.

At the thought of James, Remus’ eyes turned glassy. He wanted to flee. This was a mistake. This was horrible. This was Remus’ pain, and he should’ve never come here. What was it they said about pain? That it was no more than the price you pay for your existence? This was his burden to bear. He should have never tried to bring the whole world down with him. 

“Love?” Hope asked tentatively. Remus had never wanted to die more. Not even when it finally dawned on him that the love of his life had torn his universe right to its fundamentals and danced in the burning remains. 

He thought about Hogwarts, all the days leading up to the summer break that they’d spent on the grounds next to the Black Lake. Finally, finally, they’d be done with the exams, and excitement would translate to James and Sirius goading various Hogwarts occupants to suffer through incrementally hilarious jinxes on unsuspecting students and professors alike. 

Remus’ favourite memory of them had got to be when James had managed to convince Sirius to reclaim the lake from the giant squid. Obviously, it had to happen; it was his birthright as one of the Blacks. Probably. 

Now, of course, the whole thing was a ruse. 

They were actually trying to figure out if the rumours that the giant squid was Godric Gryffindor as an animagus were true or not. Because, why the fuck not?

Anyway, what happened instead was a betting pool of possible outcomes between the lads of the Gryffindor. They thought the whole thing was hilarious. It really was. The closest Sirius got to negotiating with the giant squid was when the squid squirted ink all over him. Sirius’ skin was dark purple for three whole days. It was the easiest 10 quid Remus had ever made. 

He also thought of London and how he believed that he had gotten his happy endings, despite being the monster in his version of the fairy tale. A regaling story of knights befriending the colossus instead of slaying the beast. Right. 

Memories of late-night talks under their duvet, fragile domestic bliss over burnt chips in the kitchen, and so much love that he thought his heart could not take it; that he had often wondered if he had imagined it all. That the one-bedroom flat just outside of Waltham Forest was Remus’ wonderland fantasy. 

His mum’s voice snapped him back into his place.

“If he were to walk into this room right now, baby Harry in his hand, he tells you he’s innocent. Ask you to run away with him, would you?’

Remus thought about how he would readily let the world burn for that to happen and another one of Hope’s soft hums was all too knowingly. He wondered if he was so easily read by the ones he loved was what brought his downfall. 

That night, as Remus lay alone in the too-small single bed of his childhood bedroom, he mulled over the conversation he had with his mother. That, and the thought of fresh flower bouquets of blooming lily of the valley and pink tulips on the windowsill and that box of delicatessen bonbon from his mum’s favourite Paris confiserie, seemed to be telling him the same thing, that maybe his father was not as much of a bastard than he thought. But, a coward. 

That was right about when Remus decided that he would awaken the dead. Fuck the first rule of magic.