The Face in the Mirror
Nearly a week had passed with Severus as director, and the cast and crew were getting used to his no-nonsense, critical approach.
One afternoon before rehearsal, as Sirius sat on a beanbag chair backstage working out a set design budget, Harry and Hermione burst through the backdoor huffing and puffing like a couple of theatre kids (which they were) forced to do laps in gym class (which they weren't). They must have sprinted the seven blocks from their high school.
“Is Mr. Lupin here yet?” Hermione panted, hurriedly peeling off her jacket and dropping it to the floor.
“Nope, just me,” replied Sirius, chuckling inwardly at the formal ‘Mr. Lupin.’ The teens in the play almost always referred to Remus that way, as he was a substitute teacher at the high school, and as often as he told them the theatre was different and they could be friends there, the kids stayed stuck in their ways.
“Good.” Hermione turned to Harry with a triumphant smile. “I knew we could beat him.”
But a second later her face was grave, as was Harry’s as he cleared his throat and, with a slight wheeze, said, “Sirius, we have to ask you something personal.”
Sirius stood from his beanbag chair and waited. There was a long pause while Harry caught his breath and gathered his wits, and Hermione prodded him to speak with an elbow to his side. Finally, Harry blurted, “Does Mr. Lupin cut?”
Sirius was no stranger to what they meant, but he was so surprised to hear it said aloud that he asked anyway, “Cut? You mean, cut himself?”
Both teens nodded. “We thought you would know,” Harry said, “since you and he are so close. A couple of times in class he’s reached up to write something on the board and his sleeve has slipped down his arm – you know, he usually wears that loose cardigan – and we’ve seen –”
Hermione cut him off. “Little cuts going across his forearm. Not extremely bloody, you know, but bright red like they’re fresh, just oozing slightly like small cuts will. There’s a girl in our English class who self-harms, and she says it can look like that; she thinks he’s doing it.”
“We didn’t want to tell the principal,” Harry continued. “We were afraid Mr. Lupin would be fired by the district. Maybe we should have gone to the guidance counselor… But anyway, he subbed Film Studies today, and it was worse.”
“Shit.” Sirius slumped back onto the beanbag. “How bad is it?”
“He’s got a bandage on his arm,” Hermione said, sounding desperate, “and you could see the blood coming through it. It looks horrible. We think you should help him bandage it properly at least; the whole class is so worried about him, Sirius. Everyone loves Mr. Lupin.”
“Don’t we all?” said Sirius, truly meaning it, even as his fists clenched in anger. He was always furious when his friend harmed himself, but at the same time he knew that he must keep himself as calm and non-judgmental as he could possibly manage if he wanted to be of any use; if Remus was made to feel bad, he would continue to spiral into an ever-deeper self-loathing. And self-loathing was the reason he cut in the first place.
So minutes later, when he heard the sputter and squeal of Remus’ old Honda clunker outside, Sirius got ready with the first-aid kit and ushered Remus into a dressing room before he’d even had a chance to remove his coat. He locked the door behind them.
“All right, push up your sleeve and let’s get a look at the damage,” he said, dragging two stools up to a counter that ran the length of a mirror lit from above by bright globe lights.
“How did you know?” Remus asked with genuine astonishment as he exposed a bloody bandage tied halfway between his right elbow and wrist.
“Do you really think you can hide such a scandal from high schoolers? They’ve got a sixth sense for teachers behaving like human beings.”
Remus’ slender body lurched forward on his stool in an agonized spasm, his elbows landing on the counter and his forehead in his cupped hands. “I never meant for them to see it,” he gasped, shaking his head into his palms as he spoke until his hair was a shaggy mess. “The school called for a sub after I’d already hurt myself. I tried to turn them down, but they had no one else, and it was for Film Studies class. The students love Film Studies; I couldn’t disappoint them.” He looked up mournfully at Sirius, but for the briefest moment a wistful smile graced his lips as he added, “They were watching Beetlejuice, and they adored it.”
Sirius had been gently unwrapping the bandage as he listened. Now, he ran warm water in the sink beside them and held Remus’ arm near the steady stream, splashing the wound to wash away the sticky blood that had gelled over and around it. Clearing the wound caused it to reopen, but in the one clean moment before the fresh blood covered it over, Sirius could see that it was uneven in thickness and severity, with the worst of it over to one side. This was no quick slash with a razor blade.
“What did you even use?” he asked, applying a disinfectant around the edges.
Remus winced and mumbled, “It stings,” then admitted, “I smashed my bathroom mirror to bits this morning. I used a piece of it on myself. I know, I’m such an idiot.”
Sirius sighed. “Oh, Moony,” he breathed, too sad to say more. He stroked the mangled arm as he wrapped it in a clean bandage.
“Sirius,” Remus was studying himself in the mirror, “what do you think of me? Of my looks, I mean.”
Sirius smiled cheekily. “Reems, you know I think you’re a sexy motherfucker.”
Remus rolled his eyes. “I meant more specifically…” He touched his fingers lightly to the scars that ran diagonally down his face. “… This. Am I so ugly that no one will ever want me?”
Sirius bit down hard on his lip to keep calm, keep his voice steady. God, he hated how much Remus hated himself. “Is that why you broke your mirror? You didn’t want to look at yourself?”
He nodded. “It was something Severus said yesterday. You weren’t in the room.”
Sirius wasn’t surprised that despite the large cast and crew of Romeo and Juliet, Remus knew who was or was not in the room at any given moment. During his years of being beaten, starved, tortured, and trafficked, he had learned the importance of knowing where everyone was in relation to himself, and he was able to keep those mental tabs on people without even thinking about it.
Remus continued, “He didn’t think Bella seemed smitten enough with me, so he said to her, ‘You just have to imagine he doesn’t have the scars.’”
That did it: Sirius couldn’t hold back any longer. “That is so fucked!” he yelled, getting up and pacing the floor. “He’s wrong, absolutely wrong! You fucking know that, Remus, don’t you?”
Outside of the dressing room he could hear the voices of Rubeus and Nymphadora, Lucius and Albus. People were arriving and chatting, getting ready to start rehearsal. He needed to make this quick and quiet. Standing behind Remus, he bent and put his lips to his ear so that he could speak very softly.
“Moony,” he murmured, and he felt Remus’ head bend closer, pressing their temples together, at the sound of his pet-name, “I’ll be honest. When I look at your face I see the mean, sadistic sonofabitch who took a pitchfork to his own son’s face after a horrific beating and only just missed blinding him. I see that every day, and I would kill the guy who did that to you if he was still alive today. But even more than that, I see your strength. I see how your body has healed itself because – make no mistake, Moony – that’s what those scars really are. That’s where you’ve healed. The monster caused the wounds, but it’s your own skin that stopped the bleeding. Those scars are a perfect picture of your strong body taking good care of you. Understand?”
Remus nodded, silent, his amber eyes wet. Sirius slid his friend’s sleeve back down, hiding the bandage, and pulled him to his feet. As the two stepped out of the dressing room into the bustling backstage, Sirius put his hand on Remus’ back and said, “And the thing I see most of all when I look at your face is how amazingly beautiful you are. I mean that, Remus.”
Remus smiled shyly and ducked his head. He mumbled something that sounded like a return of the compliment, but Sirius just waved it off with a flick of his wrist and gave a reassuring smile to Harry and Hermione. And all was well for the moment.