Fic: For Remembrance
For Remembrance
by minnow_53
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter characters belong to JK Rowling and various corporations.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Era: December 1981-April 1982, some MWPP.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Remus is hazy about the events leading up to his long stay at St. Mungo’s.
Thanks: To astra_argentea for a quick beta.
Warning: Not a happy fic.
Now crossposted to the_kennel and remusxsirius.
For Remembrance
Lucy is pretty.
She wears a cape over her white robes, and carries a file stuffed with parchment.
Remus sometimes looks up and sees her watching him, and he tries to smile at her so she won’t worry about him too much. It’s been a bad couple of months, she says, but he remembers nothing. At St. Mungo’s, the potions are so delectable they ought to be illegal.
‘How many fingers am I holding up?’ she asks.
Her hair is yellow, and spills over her shoulders. It shouldn’t. She should keep her hair scraped back, like Nurse Katie, who’s old and smells of camphor.
‘Five,’ he says.
They haven’t told him much, but he has ears. He pretends to be asleep. He knows it was a wand wound, but not how it happened. Perhaps Sirius Black did it? He isn’t sure who Sirius Black is, but the Healers talk about him a lot. Remus gathers he’s a very bad person.
Not like Lucy. Lucy has brown eyes. Lucy talks about something called school, and the Houses. ‘I was in Gryffindor,’ she tells him. ‘I remember you,’ she says. ‘You went round with James Potter and Peter Pettigrew.’ He assumes these are people he knows, but the names mean nothing to him at all.
The Healers mutter things like ‘brain damage’ and ‘too early to tell’.
There’s something he should remember, about the moon. There have been a couple of mornings when he hasn’t woken up in his bed, when he’s been in some sort of makeshift cage. ‘The moon,’ he’s said afterwards, though he doesn’t know why.
‘It’s all right, Remus, we have your records,’ they say. ‘We know all about you. Nobody’ll get hurt.’
He hurts. He hurts and hurts, so much that he shouts for Lucy, and makes her sit with him. She holds his hand. ‘Poor baby,’ she says, obviously upset. There are tears pouring down her face, but he can’t imagine why.
Sometimes, his parents Floo in to see him. His mother isn’t pretty at all. She’s old, and her mouth turns down. It isn’t her fault. His father says things like, ‘Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise’ and ‘He can meet a nice girl now.’
His mother cries, which makes her even less pretty.
Why do all these women cry? He’s quite curious about them. He’s quite curious about Lucy, though she looks at him oddly when he asks whether they liked each other at this school she talks about.
‘Were we friends?’ he asks. It seems like a good question, though he’s not exactly sure what it means. He just thinks he would have liked to see a lot of Lucy, especially at those strange times he’s aching and bleeding from the wounds.
‘Silly boy,’ Lucy scolds. ‘Silly boy, I was two years above you!’ But his words seem to bother her, and she whispers to the Healer when he does his rounds.
The Healer asks him questions, mainly about what he can remember.
The short answer is ‘Not a lot.’
The Healer asks if he was depressed. ‘Just before you…the explosion,’ he explains.
‘I bet you were a Ravenclaw!’ Remus shouts, triumphant. It’s a real question, not just because Lucy’s talked about it.
The Healer is impressed. ‘That’s good, Remus. Yes, I was. Now, do you remember what happened in November?’
Remus doesn’t know what November is. He knows the wand, because the wand hurt more than the elusive moon memory. The wand was poised at his temple, and then the world erupted. He does remember that, but he doesn’t want to tell the Healer. He may tell Lucy, though.
Lucy is so kind. Her hands are cool, the nails short, cut short, not because she bites them. In his dreams, she’s an angel with feathered wings. He thinks that’s because she’s been so patient with him while he’s been ill.
The words ‘like a big sister’ come into his mind. Like someone who would always look out for him.
*
Lucy isn’t a nurse, of course, though Remus thinks she would have been a brilliant one. She’s a social worker. ‘I’m assigned to your case, Remus. We all want to help you.’
He’s happy about that, because Lucy comes to see him when he’s out of St. Mungo’s, checking that he can cope all right.
He’s probably not coping very well, actually. He can’t remember the spell to boil water, and the kettle is cold and filled with nasty fur. The fur reminds him of something that makes him uncomfortable.
Lucy waves her wand to tidy up. She’s brought a copy of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1, in case Remus can’t find his, and she takes him through Wingardium Leviosa, helping him get the wand movements right. When he grows tired and cranky, she tucks him into bed under a soft blanket the colour of leaves at the beginning of spring: he can almost smell daffodils when he looks at it. He’s pleased that he can remember those words and what they mean.
‘It’s okay,’ she reassures him. ‘You have a bad injury. It’ll take time to be yourself again.’
She looks round the flat with wide eyes, almost as if she’s scared of what’s lurking there. He’s a bit puzzled by the flat: he must live here, because that’s where the Healers brought him when they’d done as much for him as they could. But there are a few books on the shelves with that bad name in them, Sirius Black. He tells Lucy about them. He hopes she’ll take them away.
‘But Sirius was your friend,’ she explains.
Remus objects. ‘I heard you, you and the Healers. He killed people. He tried to kill me with my own wand!’
Lucy puts her hand over her mouth. She wants to keep the words in, and he watches her narrowly. After a while, he says, ‘Lucy. Lucy, please don't go yet.’
He feels so needy these days, as if something is missing from his life. He wishes he knew what it was. Lucy makes him feel more centred again, less as if he’s floating in space with nothing to hold on to.
She sits quietly on the edge of the bed, and he drifts into sleep.
*
He has a different dream that night, a dream without Lucy in her angel form. Instead, he’s with a boy with black hair and grey eyes; a handsome boy, a confident boy. He doesn’t know whether this is a memory or not. They’re in a cramped space, like a secret passage.
The words ‘secret passage’ stay with him long after the dream has faded. He mulls them over, worries them like a cavity before it’s been filled. What do they mean? There was a statue in his dream too, but mostly he was in a narrow place with stone walls.
The boy comes back the following night, and this time Remus is ready for him. ‘What is a secret passage?’ he asks, but the friend is like Lucy and doesn’t reply. Instead, he looks at Remus, his face anxious and pale, though he’s still handsome, the best-looking person Remus has ever seen. Even Lucy isn’t as good-looking.
‘I can’t tell anyone else,’ he says, and turns his head away slightly. ‘I tried to tell my mother, but it’s not much use even talking to my parents.’ He sounds bitter and sad.
‘My mother’s old and ugly,’ Remus confides, but the friend continues to ignore his contributions.
‘I don’t know if you’ll understand, really. You may be a werewolf and all, but your parents are awfully protective, aren’t they?’
‘Try me,’ he replies, happy to have known the right words, because the other boy brightens up.
‘It’s not just because you’re the only person, Moony. Well, I couldn’t tell Peter or Prongs, that’s for sure! But perhaps-’
‘Who’s Moony?’ he asks. It’s one of those annoying moments when he feels he should know something and can’t quite grasp it. ‘Moony’ feels lovely, though, round and warm, and smells of pine shampoo and the school soap, which is green and transparent.
He’s happy to recall these things, though the other boy looks puzzled and shakes his head. But it’s a good dream, a wonderful dream, and when he wakes up, he feels better than he has for a long time.
*
His parents arrive to take him to St. Mungo’s for his weekly check-up. He tells them about the dream, and his father gets that expression he could never, ever forget, with the clenched jaw, and his fists are clenched too.
‘That absolute bastard!’ he splutters, his face red, beads of sweat on his forehead.
Remus doesn’t like the idea of red and sweat, especially as his mother’s crying again. ‘Don’t, don’t,’ she sobs. ‘You always make everything worse.’
The Healer ushers them in, and tells them that Remus is improving, that his memory is coming back and St. Mungo’s have hopes that he will be as good as new. ‘In a while. Just don’t try to rush things.’
His office is like a cave, dim in the January light, with only one lamp, and jars of floating body parts on the floor-to-ceiling shelves that line the walls. Remus thinks it’s like the secret passage in his dreams; and realises he’s now recalled the meaning of those words without even trying.
The main source of light in the room is Lucy, with her bright golden hair. She’s come in specially, though she’s off-duty and wearing Muggle clothes, a short skirt and blue shirt.
‘I really think he ought to be home, with us,’ his mother frets, taking out her handkerchief again. It’s already wet and filthy. She’s so distressed that she doesn’t even Scourgify it.
‘Mrs Lupin, we agreed that Remus would be better off in his own flat,’ Lucy soothes. ‘Otherwise, he’ll never be able to pick up his life again. We haven’t abandoned him, you know! I go to see him almost every day, don’t I, Remus?’
‘Yes.’ He’s very glad of it. They’re now on Grade 3 spells, and Lucy praises him for being such a fast learner. He can boil water for tea again, and make a simple meal.
*
His memory must be coming back with his magic, because he goes back to the dream again that night, though he isn’t quite asleep yet, poised in that moment where the slightest sound will jolt him back to wakefulness.
The grey-eyed boy is grinning, and Remus finds himself smiling too. It’s wonderful to see someone happy after all those months of tears and misery and everyone round him looking so solemn.
‘I’ll bet a Galleon you don’t know, okay?’
Remus says ‘Try me,’ again, because it worked the first time. He knows Galleon: it’s a lot of money, more than he has to spend in a whole term.
The boy looks down, scraping his shoe in the dirt in the passageway. It’s already very scuffed, though Remus can tell that the boy’s robes are much better quality than his.
‘Well, Moony - ’ He still doesn’t know who or what Moony is, but this time he holds his tongue. ‘It’s all about liking other boys. Instead of girls.’
Something shifts in Remus’s head, and he’s suddenly looking down on himself from outside. He notes, in the undamaged part of his mind, that he and the other boy are really sitting very close together. He’s a bit intrigued at what a kid he looks, not at all like that frantic, strained man he sees in the mirror now. His hair is blonder too, and the friend ruffles it affectionately.
He watches himself throw back his head and laugh. ‘Oh, come on, I’m not a baby! Of course I know about stuff like that. All those Hufflepuff boys who walk round holding hands.’
The other boy laughs in his turn. ‘That’s just Hufflepuffs. They’re always being best friends and playing elves and pixies.’
‘Well, I’m not an idiot,’ Remus continues. ‘My dad’s always on about them. Queers, he calls them.’
‘Sounds like he’d get on just great with my dad. But do you think there’s something actually queer about it then?’ the friend asks, genuinely curious.
‘How would I know? It isn’t normal, is it?’
*
He’s obviously fallen asleep fully now, as he’s back in his body, not looking down any more. It strikes Remus that this friend of his is propositioning him, and he still doesn’t know his name, so he asks.
The other boy is silent for a minute, as if contemplating something. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you, Moony?’
Remus suddenly understands that he must be Moony, but in that case why does everyone he knows say ‘Remus’? He has a sense of something lost, something momentous. ‘Do other people call me that?’
Obviously, his friend hasn’t heard. ‘Padfoot. Call me Padfoot, okay?’
Padfoot seems a strange name for a boy, but he says it: ‘Padfoot.’ It tastes sweet on the surface and bitter underneath, addictive like the potion made of poppies, sad and salty as tears.
Then, the dream is sweet too. He can feel the warmth of Padfoot’s leg carelessly draped over his, the tickle of his black hair as he bends down to pick up a quill.
It’s a long time since he’s felt anything like this.
Padfoot says something about a map, but Remus doesn't quite catch it, because his Sleeping Potion is wearing off. He comes to in the real world of the unfamiliar flat, filled with books that have a stranger’s name in them. He closes his eyes tight, willing Padfoot to be there, but his friend remains absent. Remus is so sad he could cry, and maybe he does a bit, though he’d never let anyone know that.
All day long, he tries to recapture that feeling he gets when he’s with Padfoot. He wants to return to the secret passage, he so wants to be there, but he can’t get back into the blond boy’s head, can’t find him again anywhere.
*
It’s night, and he’s climbing into his bed at Hogwarts, only it’s not his bed. Padfoot is there, and his eyes are shining like all the stars out at once on a winter night, a winter night like this one.
It isn’t winter in the dream, though. He can feel the warm air, he can feel Padfoot, so nervous and excited.
‘I’m glad you came. I thought you would, but I wasn’t sure you understood.’
He hears his own voice, though he isn’t actually speaking. ‘I’m not sure what you say in a situation like this.’ He’s nervous too, but trying to keep the words light. ‘I mean, should it be something like ‘You look very elegant in your pyjamas’?’
Then, Padfoot’s kissing him, and it must be the first time. It isn’t exactly clumsy, but it’s a bit awkward, and he isn’t sure of the etiquette of a kiss either, whether one kisses back to be polite or whether one lets the kisser call the shots. It’s intensely personal, though, and he’s in awe of the courage they must have needed to get to this point.
They break away from each other and both laugh, for some reason, but it’s not funny, and it’s all rushing away, and he’s cold, shivering, and something’s wrong, because everything is white again.
Lucy’s beside his bed, and so are his parents. ‘Remus! Do you hear me?’
He croaks, ‘Yes.’
‘Remus, you took an overdose of Sleeping Potion. You’ve been out cold for three days. We had to bring you back to St. Mungo's.’
He’s a bit surprised about that. He did drain the bottle, but only because he couldn’t get anywhere near the dream. All he wanted was to sleep for long enough to see Padfoot again.
Lucy’s scolding him. ‘The Healers certainly aren’t giving you any more potions. You’ll just have to manage without.’ He realises he could have lost Lucy her job, and feels ashamed.
It occurs to him that could simply ask, ‘Who’s Padfoot?’ so he does. Probably, Padfoot is waiting anxiously for news of him, will be pleased to hear Remus hasn't forgotten him. For a moment he’s sure his parents can tell him, but then they look completely blank, and he thinks his heart will break. Maybe there is no Padfoot after all; maybe he’s just something in a dream, and he’ll never find his way back to him.
‘But Dad,’ he implores his father, snatching at an elusive shred of memory, ‘you must know Padfoot. I told you, the boy with black hair. You called him a bastard.’
‘Don’t,’ Lucy warns, but his father’s angry again, spluttering, ‘That’s Sirius Black, and I forbid you ever to mention him again! He ruined your life, Remus. Is that what you want to know?’
Remus is puzzled. How can Padfoot, who likes him so much in his dreams, be the person who tried to kill him?
‘But Sirius Black put a wand to my head,’ he says, forehead creased. He may not remember it fully, but it would be hard to forget the Healers talking about Sirius Black killing people, about wands and blood and screaming.
‘He didn’t - ’ Lucy starts, but his father interrupts, speaking directly to her. ‘He might as well have.’
Lucy doesn’t look pretty now, but stern and frowning. ‘Mr Lupin. A word with you in private, please.’
She sounds very cross, and Remus’s father follows her out of the room without arguing.
*
While Lucy and his father are gone, he drifts off again, to the sound of his mother taking deep, regular breaths as she sits on a chair by his bed. He’s in a classroom with Padfoot - no, Sirius - and he waits for the fear, the revulsion he must surely feel towards the person who tried to kill him.
‘Why did you do it?’ he asks, and twists in his seat to look at him.
Sirius Black is gazing at him with a soppy expression that he quickly tries to hide as Remus turns round.
‘Let’s give the others the slip,’ he whispers. ‘After lessons.’
‘The others?’
‘James and Peter. Who else? Unless you mean those bloody girls.’
Then, he understands at last what Lucy’s talking about when she mentions James Potter and Peter Pettigrew, because they’re part of the game he and Sirius play. He and Sirius often plan to avoid James and Peter, though they’re also friends. They’ll give them the slip after this lesson. They’ll go to a deserted classroom and kiss, hold each other close, really close. He doesn’t want to think about it.
‘What’s wrong? You’re acting funny again, Moony.’
He grabs Sirius Black’s arm and shakes it, furious. ‘What did you do to them? Where are they?’ He won’t call him Padfoot, he simply refuses to.
He desperately tries to believe this isn’t as important as it seems. ‘It was just so we could be alone for a few minutes, wasn’t it? You can bring them back now, can’t you?’
Sirius’s face crumples. Remus watches him, aghast, until he’s woken by his own voice shouting something incoherent.
*
‘You’d probably have been better Obliviating him,’ Mr Lupin grumbles. The weekly review is taking place at Remus’s bedside, not in the Healer’s office. They’re keeping him in ‘indefinitely’, because it seems that remembering is far worse than forgetting.
Mrs Lupin is making a huge effort not to cry, but even her slow, regular breathing can’t help for long this time. ‘No, it’s good,’ she insists. ‘He had to remember sometime. That poor Potter boy and his wife! And Pettigrew...’ She loses the battle against her tears, and Lucy sniffs a few times in sympathy: Remus can see her swallowing hard.
But he still wants to be with Sirius Black, even now he knows how wicked he is. Whatever Sirius has done, some part of Remus's consciousness remains drawn to him. He hasn’t the faintest idea whether his dreams are memories or echoes of another universe. He just knows there’s a world where, however hard he tries not to, Moony loves Padfoot. He loves him with all his heart, and Padfoot loves him too. They’ve even scratched it on a tree, just for fun. ‘It’ll be there forever,’ Padfoot assures him, and Remus smiles, happy that they can be together for a while.
Without the potions, he often has dreams he can orchestrate. He likes to take the two boys, whoever they are, whoever they were, into the wild garden beyond the greenhouses. He’s sure this is a real memory, one of the best: and now it can happen again and again, played out every night for as long as he’s able to control the dream.
‘This is the medicine garden,’ Padfoot always explains, and Remus, who now knows his lines, says, ‘What’s that?’
‘Where Pomfrey grows the herbs for all her healing lotions and potions. You should have taken Potions NEWT,’ he teases. ‘We’re allowed to come here and gather our own ingredients. You don’t think they arrive ready-made in jars, do you?’
‘Padfoot, I did do Potions for four years, you know. I’m not a complete failure!’
‘So why’d you try to kill yourself, then?’
The dream is off at a tangent again. Remus won’t answer, but he does have an inkling: the event is like something seen through the wrong end of a telescope. It wasn’t Sirius Black who put the wand to his head, who wanted him to die, though he’s still not completely sure when and how it happened.
‘Shut up, Padfoot!’ he cries, and tries to get angry again, but now he’s just terminally sad, as if all the ills of the world had congregated and risen up against him. He stares and stares at that face, that beautiful face, so guileless and innocent. He should be intent on beating Sirius, smashing those perfect bones, blacking those wide eyes. But even as he wrestles him to the ground, he’s incapable of feeling anything for his dear friend Padfoot besides the old affection.
They’re curled together in the long grass, and Padfoot plucks a sprig from a strong-smelling herb that looks like the needles on a Christmas tree. ‘Here’s rosemary for remembrance,’ he says, and Remus is astounded at him quoting Hamlet: Muggle Studies is probably the only subject where he’s better than Sirius.
‘You’re not supposed to say that,’ he objects, confused and upset, because the dream is now ruined beyond repair.
Sirius laughs. ‘Honestly, Moony, I’m much better at MS than you think. I like to indulge you a bit, that’s all. ’
He leans over and tucks the sprig of rosemary into the pocket of Remus’s robes. ‘Keep it for me, okay?’
‘But that isn’t what happens next!’ Remus protests. ‘It’s all wrong. Why can’t you just let it be the way it used to?’ Now, he really does feel angry.
‘Well, we can do the usual things next time,’ Sirius Black says, and he looks sad again. ‘I just don’t want you to forget what we had. Even if everyone’s telling you how evil I am. You thought I was good once.’
The scents of the garden are overwhelming, and so is the scent of the herb Sirius has been holding out. When Remus wakes, struggling up to the surface like someone half-drowned, he reaches in his pocket and finds the rosemary, still warm from the sun and from Sirius Black’s hands.
He understands and he doesn’t understand. Sometimes, he wants all the memories to go away again, but when he looks at the dark green plant in his hand, he can see himself clearly: holding the wand to his head, saying the incantation loudly and decisively, wanting only to be blasted into oblivion.
*
At the end of April, he and Lucy take a walk round the grounds of St. Mungo’s. The gardens here are tamed and landscaped, with lawns of soothing green stretching to infinity in the middle of the city.
‘Isn’t it a lovely day?’ Lucy says, stopping to pick up an errant pebble and replace it on the path.
‘Yes.’
There are still gaps, but the Healers assure him that in time they’ll be filled in. When he sneaks a look at his chart - strictly forbidden - he finds that he’s no longer considered a suicide risk and will be allowed home again soon.
He’d really like to know where Sirius Black is, but doesn’t dare ask yet, in case he’s dead. He can’t bear to think of Padfoot dead. He should be happy simply to remember him, but that’s never going to be enough. Even the nights in the medicine garden begin to elude him as time goes by.
He wishes he had enough magic to charm the dreams into following the pattern they’re supposed to. He wants Moony and Padfoot together and besotted forever. He wants them to lie under a clear summer sky, holding hands and watching the clouds go by.
‘That one’s definitely shaped like a castle,’ Remus says. ‘Or maybe a pumpkin.’
‘Don’t be so stupid, Moony! It’s a deer. It’s bloody Prongs!’
But then, the white, fluffy clouds turn grey, the sky goes dark and the first drops of rain fall on the parched grass. They have to get up and go back into school, though Remus remembers quite clearly that in real life the sun shone steadfastly for the whole afternoon.
He’ll now have to wait twelve hours until he and Sirius can be together again.
‘We’re doomed, don’t you know that?’ Sirius asked the other night, as they ran through the wet grounds. Remus has been brooding on this for three days now. He’s tempted to ask Padfoot what he means by ‘doomed’, but he doesn’t really want to hear the answer.
End
by minnow_53
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter characters belong to JK Rowling and various corporations.
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Era: December 1981-April 1982, some MWPP.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Remus is hazy about the events leading up to his long stay at St. Mungo’s.
Thanks: To astra_argentea for a quick beta.
Warning: Not a happy fic.
Now crossposted to the_kennel and remusxsirius.
For Remembrance
Lucy is pretty.
She wears a cape over her white robes, and carries a file stuffed with parchment.
Remus sometimes looks up and sees her watching him, and he tries to smile at her so she won’t worry about him too much. It’s been a bad couple of months, she says, but he remembers nothing. At St. Mungo’s, the potions are so delectable they ought to be illegal.
‘How many fingers am I holding up?’ she asks.
Her hair is yellow, and spills over her shoulders. It shouldn’t. She should keep her hair scraped back, like Nurse Katie, who’s old and smells of camphor.
‘Five,’ he says.
They haven’t told him much, but he has ears. He pretends to be asleep. He knows it was a wand wound, but not how it happened. Perhaps Sirius Black did it? He isn’t sure who Sirius Black is, but the Healers talk about him a lot. Remus gathers he’s a very bad person.
Not like Lucy. Lucy has brown eyes. Lucy talks about something called school, and the Houses. ‘I was in Gryffindor,’ she tells him. ‘I remember you,’ she says. ‘You went round with James Potter and Peter Pettigrew.’ He assumes these are people he knows, but the names mean nothing to him at all.
The Healers mutter things like ‘brain damage’ and ‘too early to tell’.
There’s something he should remember, about the moon. There have been a couple of mornings when he hasn’t woken up in his bed, when he’s been in some sort of makeshift cage. ‘The moon,’ he’s said afterwards, though he doesn’t know why.
‘It’s all right, Remus, we have your records,’ they say. ‘We know all about you. Nobody’ll get hurt.’
He hurts. He hurts and hurts, so much that he shouts for Lucy, and makes her sit with him. She holds his hand. ‘Poor baby,’ she says, obviously upset. There are tears pouring down her face, but he can’t imagine why.
Sometimes, his parents Floo in to see him. His mother isn’t pretty at all. She’s old, and her mouth turns down. It isn’t her fault. His father says things like, ‘Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise’ and ‘He can meet a nice girl now.’
His mother cries, which makes her even less pretty.
Why do all these women cry? He’s quite curious about them. He’s quite curious about Lucy, though she looks at him oddly when he asks whether they liked each other at this school she talks about.
‘Were we friends?’ he asks. It seems like a good question, though he’s not exactly sure what it means. He just thinks he would have liked to see a lot of Lucy, especially at those strange times he’s aching and bleeding from the wounds.
‘Silly boy,’ Lucy scolds. ‘Silly boy, I was two years above you!’ But his words seem to bother her, and she whispers to the Healer when he does his rounds.
The Healer asks him questions, mainly about what he can remember.
The short answer is ‘Not a lot.’
The Healer asks if he was depressed. ‘Just before you…the explosion,’ he explains.
‘I bet you were a Ravenclaw!’ Remus shouts, triumphant. It’s a real question, not just because Lucy’s talked about it.
The Healer is impressed. ‘That’s good, Remus. Yes, I was. Now, do you remember what happened in November?’
Remus doesn’t know what November is. He knows the wand, because the wand hurt more than the elusive moon memory. The wand was poised at his temple, and then the world erupted. He does remember that, but he doesn’t want to tell the Healer. He may tell Lucy, though.
Lucy is so kind. Her hands are cool, the nails short, cut short, not because she bites them. In his dreams, she’s an angel with feathered wings. He thinks that’s because she’s been so patient with him while he’s been ill.
The words ‘like a big sister’ come into his mind. Like someone who would always look out for him.
*
Lucy isn’t a nurse, of course, though Remus thinks she would have been a brilliant one. She’s a social worker. ‘I’m assigned to your case, Remus. We all want to help you.’
He’s happy about that, because Lucy comes to see him when he’s out of St. Mungo’s, checking that he can cope all right.
He’s probably not coping very well, actually. He can’t remember the spell to boil water, and the kettle is cold and filled with nasty fur. The fur reminds him of something that makes him uncomfortable.
Lucy waves her wand to tidy up. She’s brought a copy of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1, in case Remus can’t find his, and she takes him through Wingardium Leviosa, helping him get the wand movements right. When he grows tired and cranky, she tucks him into bed under a soft blanket the colour of leaves at the beginning of spring: he can almost smell daffodils when he looks at it. He’s pleased that he can remember those words and what they mean.
‘It’s okay,’ she reassures him. ‘You have a bad injury. It’ll take time to be yourself again.’
She looks round the flat with wide eyes, almost as if she’s scared of what’s lurking there. He’s a bit puzzled by the flat: he must live here, because that’s where the Healers brought him when they’d done as much for him as they could. But there are a few books on the shelves with that bad name in them, Sirius Black. He tells Lucy about them. He hopes she’ll take them away.
‘But Sirius was your friend,’ she explains.
Remus objects. ‘I heard you, you and the Healers. He killed people. He tried to kill me with my own wand!’
Lucy puts her hand over her mouth. She wants to keep the words in, and he watches her narrowly. After a while, he says, ‘Lucy. Lucy, please don't go yet.’
He feels so needy these days, as if something is missing from his life. He wishes he knew what it was. Lucy makes him feel more centred again, less as if he’s floating in space with nothing to hold on to.
She sits quietly on the edge of the bed, and he drifts into sleep.
*
He has a different dream that night, a dream without Lucy in her angel form. Instead, he’s with a boy with black hair and grey eyes; a handsome boy, a confident boy. He doesn’t know whether this is a memory or not. They’re in a cramped space, like a secret passage.
The words ‘secret passage’ stay with him long after the dream has faded. He mulls them over, worries them like a cavity before it’s been filled. What do they mean? There was a statue in his dream too, but mostly he was in a narrow place with stone walls.
The boy comes back the following night, and this time Remus is ready for him. ‘What is a secret passage?’ he asks, but the friend is like Lucy and doesn’t reply. Instead, he looks at Remus, his face anxious and pale, though he’s still handsome, the best-looking person Remus has ever seen. Even Lucy isn’t as good-looking.
‘I can’t tell anyone else,’ he says, and turns his head away slightly. ‘I tried to tell my mother, but it’s not much use even talking to my parents.’ He sounds bitter and sad.
‘My mother’s old and ugly,’ Remus confides, but the friend continues to ignore his contributions.
‘I don’t know if you’ll understand, really. You may be a werewolf and all, but your parents are awfully protective, aren’t they?’
‘Try me,’ he replies, happy to have known the right words, because the other boy brightens up.
‘It’s not just because you’re the only person, Moony. Well, I couldn’t tell Peter or Prongs, that’s for sure! But perhaps-’
‘Who’s Moony?’ he asks. It’s one of those annoying moments when he feels he should know something and can’t quite grasp it. ‘Moony’ feels lovely, though, round and warm, and smells of pine shampoo and the school soap, which is green and transparent.
He’s happy to recall these things, though the other boy looks puzzled and shakes his head. But it’s a good dream, a wonderful dream, and when he wakes up, he feels better than he has for a long time.
*
His parents arrive to take him to St. Mungo’s for his weekly check-up. He tells them about the dream, and his father gets that expression he could never, ever forget, with the clenched jaw, and his fists are clenched too.
‘That absolute bastard!’ he splutters, his face red, beads of sweat on his forehead.
Remus doesn’t like the idea of red and sweat, especially as his mother’s crying again. ‘Don’t, don’t,’ she sobs. ‘You always make everything worse.’
The Healer ushers them in, and tells them that Remus is improving, that his memory is coming back and St. Mungo’s have hopes that he will be as good as new. ‘In a while. Just don’t try to rush things.’
His office is like a cave, dim in the January light, with only one lamp, and jars of floating body parts on the floor-to-ceiling shelves that line the walls. Remus thinks it’s like the secret passage in his dreams; and realises he’s now recalled the meaning of those words without even trying.
The main source of light in the room is Lucy, with her bright golden hair. She’s come in specially, though she’s off-duty and wearing Muggle clothes, a short skirt and blue shirt.
‘I really think he ought to be home, with us,’ his mother frets, taking out her handkerchief again. It’s already wet and filthy. She’s so distressed that she doesn’t even Scourgify it.
‘Mrs Lupin, we agreed that Remus would be better off in his own flat,’ Lucy soothes. ‘Otherwise, he’ll never be able to pick up his life again. We haven’t abandoned him, you know! I go to see him almost every day, don’t I, Remus?’
‘Yes.’ He’s very glad of it. They’re now on Grade 3 spells, and Lucy praises him for being such a fast learner. He can boil water for tea again, and make a simple meal.
*
His memory must be coming back with his magic, because he goes back to the dream again that night, though he isn’t quite asleep yet, poised in that moment where the slightest sound will jolt him back to wakefulness.
The grey-eyed boy is grinning, and Remus finds himself smiling too. It’s wonderful to see someone happy after all those months of tears and misery and everyone round him looking so solemn.
‘I’ll bet a Galleon you don’t know, okay?’
Remus says ‘Try me,’ again, because it worked the first time. He knows Galleon: it’s a lot of money, more than he has to spend in a whole term.
The boy looks down, scraping his shoe in the dirt in the passageway. It’s already very scuffed, though Remus can tell that the boy’s robes are much better quality than his.
‘Well, Moony - ’ He still doesn’t know who or what Moony is, but this time he holds his tongue. ‘It’s all about liking other boys. Instead of girls.’
Something shifts in Remus’s head, and he’s suddenly looking down on himself from outside. He notes, in the undamaged part of his mind, that he and the other boy are really sitting very close together. He’s a bit intrigued at what a kid he looks, not at all like that frantic, strained man he sees in the mirror now. His hair is blonder too, and the friend ruffles it affectionately.
He watches himself throw back his head and laugh. ‘Oh, come on, I’m not a baby! Of course I know about stuff like that. All those Hufflepuff boys who walk round holding hands.’
The other boy laughs in his turn. ‘That’s just Hufflepuffs. They’re always being best friends and playing elves and pixies.’
‘Well, I’m not an idiot,’ Remus continues. ‘My dad’s always on about them. Queers, he calls them.’
‘Sounds like he’d get on just great with my dad. But do you think there’s something actually queer about it then?’ the friend asks, genuinely curious.
‘How would I know? It isn’t normal, is it?’
*
He’s obviously fallen asleep fully now, as he’s back in his body, not looking down any more. It strikes Remus that this friend of his is propositioning him, and he still doesn’t know his name, so he asks.
The other boy is silent for a minute, as if contemplating something. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you, Moony?’
Remus suddenly understands that he must be Moony, but in that case why does everyone he knows say ‘Remus’? He has a sense of something lost, something momentous. ‘Do other people call me that?’
Obviously, his friend hasn’t heard. ‘Padfoot. Call me Padfoot, okay?’
Padfoot seems a strange name for a boy, but he says it: ‘Padfoot.’ It tastes sweet on the surface and bitter underneath, addictive like the potion made of poppies, sad and salty as tears.
Then, the dream is sweet too. He can feel the warmth of Padfoot’s leg carelessly draped over his, the tickle of his black hair as he bends down to pick up a quill.
It’s a long time since he’s felt anything like this.
Padfoot says something about a map, but Remus doesn't quite catch it, because his Sleeping Potion is wearing off. He comes to in the real world of the unfamiliar flat, filled with books that have a stranger’s name in them. He closes his eyes tight, willing Padfoot to be there, but his friend remains absent. Remus is so sad he could cry, and maybe he does a bit, though he’d never let anyone know that.
All day long, he tries to recapture that feeling he gets when he’s with Padfoot. He wants to return to the secret passage, he so wants to be there, but he can’t get back into the blond boy’s head, can’t find him again anywhere.
*
It’s night, and he’s climbing into his bed at Hogwarts, only it’s not his bed. Padfoot is there, and his eyes are shining like all the stars out at once on a winter night, a winter night like this one.
It isn’t winter in the dream, though. He can feel the warm air, he can feel Padfoot, so nervous and excited.
‘I’m glad you came. I thought you would, but I wasn’t sure you understood.’
He hears his own voice, though he isn’t actually speaking. ‘I’m not sure what you say in a situation like this.’ He’s nervous too, but trying to keep the words light. ‘I mean, should it be something like ‘You look very elegant in your pyjamas’?’
Then, Padfoot’s kissing him, and it must be the first time. It isn’t exactly clumsy, but it’s a bit awkward, and he isn’t sure of the etiquette of a kiss either, whether one kisses back to be polite or whether one lets the kisser call the shots. It’s intensely personal, though, and he’s in awe of the courage they must have needed to get to this point.
They break away from each other and both laugh, for some reason, but it’s not funny, and it’s all rushing away, and he’s cold, shivering, and something’s wrong, because everything is white again.
Lucy’s beside his bed, and so are his parents. ‘Remus! Do you hear me?’
He croaks, ‘Yes.’
‘Remus, you took an overdose of Sleeping Potion. You’ve been out cold for three days. We had to bring you back to St. Mungo's.’
He’s a bit surprised about that. He did drain the bottle, but only because he couldn’t get anywhere near the dream. All he wanted was to sleep for long enough to see Padfoot again.
Lucy’s scolding him. ‘The Healers certainly aren’t giving you any more potions. You’ll just have to manage without.’ He realises he could have lost Lucy her job, and feels ashamed.
It occurs to him that could simply ask, ‘Who’s Padfoot?’ so he does. Probably, Padfoot is waiting anxiously for news of him, will be pleased to hear Remus hasn't forgotten him. For a moment he’s sure his parents can tell him, but then they look completely blank, and he thinks his heart will break. Maybe there is no Padfoot after all; maybe he’s just something in a dream, and he’ll never find his way back to him.
‘But Dad,’ he implores his father, snatching at an elusive shred of memory, ‘you must know Padfoot. I told you, the boy with black hair. You called him a bastard.’
‘Don’t,’ Lucy warns, but his father’s angry again, spluttering, ‘That’s Sirius Black, and I forbid you ever to mention him again! He ruined your life, Remus. Is that what you want to know?’
Remus is puzzled. How can Padfoot, who likes him so much in his dreams, be the person who tried to kill him?
‘But Sirius Black put a wand to my head,’ he says, forehead creased. He may not remember it fully, but it would be hard to forget the Healers talking about Sirius Black killing people, about wands and blood and screaming.
‘He didn’t - ’ Lucy starts, but his father interrupts, speaking directly to her. ‘He might as well have.’
Lucy doesn’t look pretty now, but stern and frowning. ‘Mr Lupin. A word with you in private, please.’
She sounds very cross, and Remus’s father follows her out of the room without arguing.
*
While Lucy and his father are gone, he drifts off again, to the sound of his mother taking deep, regular breaths as she sits on a chair by his bed. He’s in a classroom with Padfoot - no, Sirius - and he waits for the fear, the revulsion he must surely feel towards the person who tried to kill him.
‘Why did you do it?’ he asks, and twists in his seat to look at him.
Sirius Black is gazing at him with a soppy expression that he quickly tries to hide as Remus turns round.
‘Let’s give the others the slip,’ he whispers. ‘After lessons.’
‘The others?’
‘James and Peter. Who else? Unless you mean those bloody girls.’
Then, he understands at last what Lucy’s talking about when she mentions James Potter and Peter Pettigrew, because they’re part of the game he and Sirius play. He and Sirius often plan to avoid James and Peter, though they’re also friends. They’ll give them the slip after this lesson. They’ll go to a deserted classroom and kiss, hold each other close, really close. He doesn’t want to think about it.
‘What’s wrong? You’re acting funny again, Moony.’
He grabs Sirius Black’s arm and shakes it, furious. ‘What did you do to them? Where are they?’ He won’t call him Padfoot, he simply refuses to.
He desperately tries to believe this isn’t as important as it seems. ‘It was just so we could be alone for a few minutes, wasn’t it? You can bring them back now, can’t you?’
Sirius’s face crumples. Remus watches him, aghast, until he’s woken by his own voice shouting something incoherent.
*
‘You’d probably have been better Obliviating him,’ Mr Lupin grumbles. The weekly review is taking place at Remus’s bedside, not in the Healer’s office. They’re keeping him in ‘indefinitely’, because it seems that remembering is far worse than forgetting.
Mrs Lupin is making a huge effort not to cry, but even her slow, regular breathing can’t help for long this time. ‘No, it’s good,’ she insists. ‘He had to remember sometime. That poor Potter boy and his wife! And Pettigrew...’ She loses the battle against her tears, and Lucy sniffs a few times in sympathy: Remus can see her swallowing hard.
But he still wants to be with Sirius Black, even now he knows how wicked he is. Whatever Sirius has done, some part of Remus's consciousness remains drawn to him. He hasn’t the faintest idea whether his dreams are memories or echoes of another universe. He just knows there’s a world where, however hard he tries not to, Moony loves Padfoot. He loves him with all his heart, and Padfoot loves him too. They’ve even scratched it on a tree, just for fun. ‘It’ll be there forever,’ Padfoot assures him, and Remus smiles, happy that they can be together for a while.
Without the potions, he often has dreams he can orchestrate. He likes to take the two boys, whoever they are, whoever they were, into the wild garden beyond the greenhouses. He’s sure this is a real memory, one of the best: and now it can happen again and again, played out every night for as long as he’s able to control the dream.
‘This is the medicine garden,’ Padfoot always explains, and Remus, who now knows his lines, says, ‘What’s that?’
‘Where Pomfrey grows the herbs for all her healing lotions and potions. You should have taken Potions NEWT,’ he teases. ‘We’re allowed to come here and gather our own ingredients. You don’t think they arrive ready-made in jars, do you?’
‘Padfoot, I did do Potions for four years, you know. I’m not a complete failure!’
‘So why’d you try to kill yourself, then?’
The dream is off at a tangent again. Remus won’t answer, but he does have an inkling: the event is like something seen through the wrong end of a telescope. It wasn’t Sirius Black who put the wand to his head, who wanted him to die, though he’s still not completely sure when and how it happened.
‘Shut up, Padfoot!’ he cries, and tries to get angry again, but now he’s just terminally sad, as if all the ills of the world had congregated and risen up against him. He stares and stares at that face, that beautiful face, so guileless and innocent. He should be intent on beating Sirius, smashing those perfect bones, blacking those wide eyes. But even as he wrestles him to the ground, he’s incapable of feeling anything for his dear friend Padfoot besides the old affection.
They’re curled together in the long grass, and Padfoot plucks a sprig from a strong-smelling herb that looks like the needles on a Christmas tree. ‘Here’s rosemary for remembrance,’ he says, and Remus is astounded at him quoting Hamlet: Muggle Studies is probably the only subject where he’s better than Sirius.
‘You’re not supposed to say that,’ he objects, confused and upset, because the dream is now ruined beyond repair.
Sirius laughs. ‘Honestly, Moony, I’m much better at MS than you think. I like to indulge you a bit, that’s all. ’
He leans over and tucks the sprig of rosemary into the pocket of Remus’s robes. ‘Keep it for me, okay?’
‘But that isn’t what happens next!’ Remus protests. ‘It’s all wrong. Why can’t you just let it be the way it used to?’ Now, he really does feel angry.
‘Well, we can do the usual things next time,’ Sirius Black says, and he looks sad again. ‘I just don’t want you to forget what we had. Even if everyone’s telling you how evil I am. You thought I was good once.’
The scents of the garden are overwhelming, and so is the scent of the herb Sirius has been holding out. When Remus wakes, struggling up to the surface like someone half-drowned, he reaches in his pocket and finds the rosemary, still warm from the sun and from Sirius Black’s hands.
He understands and he doesn’t understand. Sometimes, he wants all the memories to go away again, but when he looks at the dark green plant in his hand, he can see himself clearly: holding the wand to his head, saying the incantation loudly and decisively, wanting only to be blasted into oblivion.
*
At the end of April, he and Lucy take a walk round the grounds of St. Mungo’s. The gardens here are tamed and landscaped, with lawns of soothing green stretching to infinity in the middle of the city.
‘Isn’t it a lovely day?’ Lucy says, stopping to pick up an errant pebble and replace it on the path.
‘Yes.’
There are still gaps, but the Healers assure him that in time they’ll be filled in. When he sneaks a look at his chart - strictly forbidden - he finds that he’s no longer considered a suicide risk and will be allowed home again soon.
He’d really like to know where Sirius Black is, but doesn’t dare ask yet, in case he’s dead. He can’t bear to think of Padfoot dead. He should be happy simply to remember him, but that’s never going to be enough. Even the nights in the medicine garden begin to elude him as time goes by.
He wishes he had enough magic to charm the dreams into following the pattern they’re supposed to. He wants Moony and Padfoot together and besotted forever. He wants them to lie under a clear summer sky, holding hands and watching the clouds go by.
‘That one’s definitely shaped like a castle,’ Remus says. ‘Or maybe a pumpkin.’
‘Don’t be so stupid, Moony! It’s a deer. It’s bloody Prongs!’
But then, the white, fluffy clouds turn grey, the sky goes dark and the first drops of rain fall on the parched grass. They have to get up and go back into school, though Remus remembers quite clearly that in real life the sun shone steadfastly for the whole afternoon.
He’ll now have to wait twelve hours until he and Sirius can be together again.
‘We’re doomed, don’t you know that?’ Sirius asked the other night, as they ran through the wet grounds. Remus has been brooding on this for three days now. He’s tempted to ask Padfoot what he means by ‘doomed’, but he doesn’t really want to hear the answer.
End