In Ruins by The_Real_Hermione
Summary: Remus’ life has never been easy, but how much can he take before his life lies in ruins?

The story of Remus Lupin told through a series of snapshots.
Categories: General Fics Characters: None
Warnings: Character Death, Violence
Challenges:
Series: None
Chapters: 1 Completed: Yes Word count: 3107 Read: 1622 Published: 09/16/10 Updated: 09/18/10

1. In Ruins by The_Real_Hermione

In Ruins by The_Real_Hermione
It is the evening and Remus would usually be bouncing around the kitchen cheerfully helping his mother to prepare dinner. But tonight is different. He is sitting quietly on the floor of his upstairs room with his ear pressed to the keyhole. Hogwarts, A History lies open on his bed. He is meant to be reading it, although there is little point. He has already studied it in great detail, so he can prove to Professor Dumbledore that he knows enough about Hogwarts. He won’t let something as trivial as that ruin his chances.

It is, in fact, Professor Dumbledore whom he is in the current process of eavesdropping on.

“... I have been looking into this matter for a few months, and it seems I have found a solution.”

A solution? He hears his parents ask the same question.

“Yes. You see, there’s an old shack on the outskirts of Hogsmeade, which would be suitable for his transformations. It is easy enough to spread rumours of it being a haunted place. After all, Hogsmeade is the only all magical village in England; its inhabitants are highly superstitious.”

“But how will he get there? Surely he can’t “”

“Relax, Mr Lupin. He will not be walking through the streets of Hogsmeade at night once a month. I intend to plant a, shall we say, vicious tree on the grounds of Hogwarts, and underneath it will lie a hidden passageway leading straight to the shack. Remus will merely have to report to the Hospital Wing, from where Madam Pomfrey will accompany him to the tree “ yes Mrs Lupin, she will know how to calm the tree “ and come and collect him in the mornings. I am sure this plan needs some refinement, but as a basic idea it seems quite workable.”

“So our little Remus can really “”

“He can safely go “”

“You’re sure he won’t hurt any of the children?”

“Is it really safe or “”

“Mr and Mrs Lupin, I have looked carefully into the safety of this plan. I would not allow your son into my school if it would involve putting my students in danger. However, as it doesn’t, I am willing to offer him a place at my school. Of course, the staff will all be informed, and I will keep an eye on him personally.”

“Oh, Professor Dumbledore, we’re so very grateful, we never even thought you’d consider him...”

Meanwhile upstairs Remus’ head is spinning with the sort of excitement he has never felt before. When he hears his mother’s footsteps on the stairs, he jumps onto his bed and picks up his book. He sticks his head in it, but he is so intensely excited that he fails to notice that it is upside down.

When his mother comes in, it is obvious that she too is excited by the news, as she doesn’t notice how abnormally excited her son looks. (She doesn’t notice the upside down book, either.)

Remus goes downstairs and listens to his future Headmaster. He promises to follow the rules, not to do anything stupid. He swears to himself that he will be studious and never give the Headmaster reason to doubt his decision.

Remus is going to Hogwarts, and slowly, piece by piece, the life he never thought he’d have begins to build itself.

~

1st November, 1981

2am


Remus was wide awake.

He rarely slept through the night these days, what with James and Lily in hiding, his work for the Order, his lycanthropy and with Voldemort gnawing at his peace of mind, stealing a few more minutes of rest each day.

But tonight he had woken earlier than usual. Something wasn’t right, of that he was certain. The thought of sleeping whilst in this state of mind was ridiculous, so Remus wandered sleep drunkenly into the kitchen to grab a bite to eat. He lived in a small apartment with Sirius “ due to Remus’ lack of employability and Sirius’ inability to hold down a job due to his work for the Order, they couldn’t afford much; but it sufficed. Sirius was out that night. Peter had said he might drop by for dinner, but there’d been no sign of him. As Remus made himself a piece of toast, vague ideas of visiting contacting his friends to check they were okay took shape in his mind...

...but they were interrupted by an urgent knocking on the front door.

Albus Dumbledore was on the threshold. His eyes were darting around anxiously, and his face creased like old parchment. This was not a good sign. In all his time in the Order, Remus had never seen Dumbledore so worked up.

“Dumbledore? What is it?”

“I wanted to tell you first, Remus, so you don’t hear this from unreliable sources...” Dumbledore was pacing, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

His sleep-deprived mind suddenly realised that he hadn’t asked Dumbledore an identifying question, as they were all meant to do these days in case of Polyjuice Potion, nor had he been asked one. The Headmaster stopped pacing incessantly and his electric blue eyes bored into Remus’.

“James and Lily. They’re dead.”

“What? How? When? Dead?

“Yes. Harry survived, thought it seems Voldemort actually tried to kill him... I’m not sure why he survived yet... Voldemort is gone.”

“Gone?” How was that possible? Remus’ dreams and nightmares collided with an explosion that shattered his world.

“Yes. Somehow the curse rebounded off Harry...”

“How did he find them?” His tone was suddenly urgent, he was desperate to know the identity of the betrayer. Could it possibly be, as he had suspected “?

“Sirius.”

He had been right. For once he would have loved to have been wrong.

“Sirius?”

Dumbledore suddenly looked furious, no longer old and fragile.

“Yes. He betrayed them. Then he blew Peter up... I’m sorry Remus, they’re all gone...”

Peter gone, too?

Remus’ world shook and jolted until it became the crumbling ruin he should have known it always would be.

~

The first time his world had crumbled he had been only four years old. A little boy who loved his parents, and whose parents loved him. He had walked out into the garden in the evening. It had been late January and the sun had gone down early, shrouding the garden in a light fog. The moon had come up and winked at him invitingly. He liked the moon. The sun was all bright and glary, but the moon, it was quiet, shy... He had trundled to the gate. It was open, so he had gone through it.

Suddenly something big was looking at him. It was tall and bony, on all fours, gnashing its teeth violently. Its eyes were yellow and stared at him hungrily. Suddenly it jumped, closing the gap between them in an instant. He felt its teeth in his skin, felt it tear apart the life he was always going to have...

Yet it hadn’t only ruined his own life, it had ruined his parents’ lives too. Later on he knew that they had wanted more children, although they would never have said it to his face. They had been careful around him throughout his life, afraid to shatter the small amount of happiness that he had. He knew it had put a lot of strain on them, to keep up their appearances at work, although their son was a werewolf. He knew it cost them effort and time spent with friends to move far from any sort of civilisation so he could transform. He knew how it hurt them to hear his screams tear through the countryside every single month during his agonising transformations.

He could see it, too. Their hair had gone grey far too prematurely, though his mother had continued to magically dye it for years to come. The bags under their eyes were heavy and pronounced and his father frequently suffered from colds.

He didn’t deserve them. He was a monster.

And yet they loved him.

~

The map lay open on his desk. It was strange seeing it after all these years. It felt as if the memories of Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs were so imprinted upon this piece of parchment that they would suddenly come to life.

It goes without saying that this relic of his adolescence didn’t come without pain. The thought of the four of them creating it together; James and Sirius laughing at some stupid joke, Peter trying to help Remus, who was actually attempting to do some work on it, out where he could... Peter... poor Peter...

What Sirius had done “ sometimes he still couldn’t fathom it. Sirius, of all people. The one who had left behind his family, all his money, his house, because he couldn’t stand their support of Voldemort. It made so little sense... and yet... the evidence was incriminating.

And Sirius was out there, apparently determined to kill Harry...

He perused the map carelessly, his mind turning back to planning lessons until “

It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible.

Peter Pettigrew was not alive.

But the map never lied.

Maybe Sirius didn’t “?

~

There are curses flying everywhere and all I hope for is that this will all end before too many people die. I have seen Death, watched him filter through my life and gradually steal many of those who I care about.

Somehow he feels closer tonight than I’ve ever felt him before. As I dodge another curse, I sincerely hope that he has not come for Dora, or Harry or...

But Dora is not here. She is at home with Teddy. I made sure of that. At least if I... die ...then he’ll have someone.

Stupefy! Impedimenta! Petrificus Totalis!”

I have to be careful, for in this mess it would be only too easy to send a curse at someone on my side... I see a flash of red hair and make sure to avoid hitting that person with a curse. I see another Weasley... no... wait...

That’s pink hair, not red hair.

Nymphadora!

But I have no time to think; my wand arm is soaked in blood and pain. I grab my wand in my left hand and Stun that Death Eater who got me. I look for her. She is in a corner, shrinking back from her aunt’s spellwork. I have only one option. I can see from here that she is weak, that her aunt will overpower her.

I must save her.

But as fate always has it, I am too late.

When the green jet pierces her chest, it is not only my world that crumbles.

It is my heart. It splinters and bursts out of my chest as her body falls.

Now I am nothing, for I have no heart. I am ruthlessness and revenge, and Bellatrix Lestrange is in my way.

I never reach her. I glance to my left and see the green jet coming a moment before it hits me, Antonin Dolohov’s face split in a grimace, and “

~

“Frank and Alice?”

“Yes, they were tortured for information by Bellatrix Lestrange...”

“Are they okay?”

“Well, they’re alive.”

“And...? Will they recover?”

“There’s still hope that they might...”

“Hope that they might?”

“Lestrange was... is... particularly cruel. It seems that they “ that they have lost their minds.”

The final piece of your world crumbled. Alice had been Lily’s best friend, the first (and only) girl you’d ever loved, and Frank a close friend, especially after... what happened a week before. Voldemort was vanquished and yet still the ruins continued to fall.

And you were left. Last of the Marauders (Sirius hardly counted). Last of your close group of friends. Living proof of the horrors of war, which had left you alone when you had finally found friends, alone with only the tiniest shadow of hope to cling on to.

~

James flicked his wand lazily at the beetle scurrying across his table, and immediately transfigured it into a shiny pocket watch. Peter, who sat next to him, was sweating with frustration, as all that he had accomplished was to get his beetle to tick. Sirius’ pocket watch had a perfection beaten only by James’, whereas Remus was still working on the spell: his pocket watch, rather than being silver, was still the black colour of his beetle.

“Mr Black!”

“Yes, Professor?” Sirius asked innocently, though Remus was well aware that mere seconds before, Sirius had been levitating his re-transfigured beetle in the direction of certain Slytherin classmates...

“You know full well, Mr Black, and if I catch you levitating beetles one more time in this class, it’ll be detention!”

“Sorry Professor,” Remus’ friend replied, clearly not at all remorseful for his actions. Professor McGonagall however, having taught Sirius for nearing five years, seemed to know a lost cause when she saw one and merely tutted as she returned to the front of the class.

Sirius’ bout of rule-breaking suddenly alerted Remus to the fact that his main accomplice had been remarkably quiet throughout the lesson. The reason was not hard to find: James was staring blankly at the hair of a certain Lily Evans, and Remus thought he detected the smallest amount of drool on his friends’ lip.

Despite being extremely popular, intelligent, talented at Quidditch and good-looking, James was absolutely clueless with girls. Over the years, he’d asked one or two girls out, but had soon grown bored with their stupidity and superficiality. And when it came to Lily Evans, the first girl he’d liked for her personality, not her looks, he was pitifully tactless.

Even Remus had beaten him to having a steady girlfriend. Earlier that year, when he and Lily had begun patrolling has Prefects, she had been so concerned about his frequent illnesses that she had plucked up her courage, marched up to his friends and directly asked them what was wrong with him. They, of course, had remained loyal, but after Remus heard what had happened he decided that Lily deserved to know. She had asked, tentatively, if she could tell her best two friends: Alice Lander and Marlene McKinnon, and he had agreed.

Feeling secure for the first time that a girl might actually like him, Remus had asked out his long-time crush: Alice. For a few months, their relationship had grown steadily but had eventually faded into close friendship, and Alice was now clearly smitten with Remus’ classmate Frank Longbottom.

“Oi, Moony, full moon tonight, eh? D’you reckon we could run through Hogsmeade?” Sirius, now bored with levitating his beetle in the direction of a certain Slytherin, focussed on the night that Remus dreaded most, yet Sirius seemed to get some kind of pleasure out of. Knowing the restrictive ways of his friend’s parents, Remus supposed running around in the shape of a dog in the middle of the night would be rather exhilarating.

“Whatever Sirius,” he answered absent-mindedly, his mind still on the pocket watch.

Right now, his life was better than he’d ever imagined it would be. He had friends who cared, cared enough to do something illegal for him. Cared enough to forfeit a night of sleep once a month, to suffer welts and scratches that sometimes lasted a week...

He hated that they had to do it, but he loved that they had.

Only two months later, as he lazed the summer away in his country home, he received an owl from Sirius. It was about something he had heard his family talking about. Someone, more to the point. Someone who seemed more sinister than what Sirius usually heard at his house, hard to believe though that was.

The name of this Someone was Lord Voldemort.

Remus didn’t know it yet, but someday this man “ if he could be called that “ would destroy his world.

~

It is a strange feeling to be the last Marauder left... for the second time. This time it feels different though. Last time he was flooded with grief and anger... and now he feels only emptiness.

It had made Remus so happy to know that Sirius had never betrayed them, to see Sirius again, alive, even if not well. But he knew that the last two years of his friend’s life had hardly been good. Sirius was anything but patient; he had been the first of the Marauders to say yes to joining the Order, always been the one to promote action.

And Remus knew he’d never be enough to restore his friend’s happiness. If James, or Marlene...

He knew that was why Sirius gravitated towards Harry. For all that he promised he didn’t think of Harry as his father, it wasn’t exactly hard to tell the opposite. Remus sometimes worried about his influence on Harry, but he chose to do nothing, for taking Sirius away from Harry would be taking away the boy’s first experience of a father figure.

And it didn’t matter now anyway. Sirius was dead. After such a brief cameo in Remus’ adult life.

Peter was dead too, he had heard. As much as Remus hated Peter, the method by which he died was something that no-one deserved. But that didn’t matter either. Remus had no control over that. It had happened, and that was all there was to it.

“REMUS!”

“Dora? What is it?” He ran upstairs to find her sprawled on the bed, her face sweaty.

“It’s coming!”

“Now? But “ another week “”

“Well it’s here now, we’ve got to get to St. Mungo’s...”

“Right okay, I’ll grab the Floo Powder and we’ll go...”

Seven excruciating hours later the Healer passed Remus his son for the first time.

James had been right. Fatherhood was something... indescribable. Suddenly nothing else in his life mattered, except that he was the father of this little boy. He was so grateful now to Harry for shouting at him back at Grimmauld Place... he had been right, fathers should never leave their sons.

“And his name will be...?” the Healer prompted.

“Ted. Ted Lupin,” Remus answered. “After his grandfather.”

Dora smiled up at him weakly. Remus was so proud of her, so proud of his own little family. It didn’t matter now that his friends had been taken from him, that his world had collapsed, because here he was now, able to rebuild it.
End Notes:
I hope you enjoyed this. There were initially meant to be 7 parts, but I got a little carried away, so there's now 8. I hope you don't find the complete lack of order annoying - this was actually purposeful, so I hope it worked. I considered putting it in Dark/Angsty fics, but I don't think it's really that dark, so I've just put it in General. Please review!!!
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