That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
This conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
Remus shouldered his bag and stepped out of the book-shop.
The bells on the door tinkled in unison with the distant gong of the church bells. He paused on the sidewalk, tilted his head up to the sky, and breathed in the world. For the first time since Sirius had died, some small part of him was glad to be alive.
Four o’clock.
Tower Street was always busy in the late afternoon. The background racket of roaring car engines and slamming car doors was only slightly surpassed by the classic rock music trickling out of the café on the corner. The gentleman who ran the bakery across the street would sometimes hum along when he went out to stuff and smoke his pipe. On both sides of the street, the preoccupied pedestrians were little planets trapped in perfectly elusive orbits, faceless behind raised newspapers, train schedules, and letters from strangers. Occasionally, one newspaper-reader would recognize another, and call out across two lanes of stopped traffic, “Good afternoon, my friend, good afternoon!”
Remus was walking up Tower Street and opening his book, when a resounding “crack!” rang through the din and a disheveled young man Apparated in front of him.
“Remus! Bloody hell, Remus, you’ve got to come!”
One Thousand and One Nights was suddenly tugged from his fingers. Remus looked up into Jared’s pale, frantic face and said, alarmed, “Jared, what’s wrong?”
“Sivey and Aidan are trapped!” he cried, wringing the book distractedly in his hands. “They’re in this Muggle house”and there’s this thing””
Remus frowned. “All right. Take me there.”
Jared’s fingers curled tightly around his forearm. The darkness pressed in on them for a few seconds, smothering out Tower Street like an extinguished candle-flame, but when the daylight exploded around them again, they were standing on a garden path half-way between a run-down cottage and a large manor.
“Where are we?”
“Little Hangleton,” Keelan called, running up from behind them. “Where the bloody hell’ve you been? How long did you expect they were gonna hold out against a vampire?”
As Jared opened his mouth to retort indignantly, a stifled scream echoed from within the house, like an opera crescendo in the ears of passerby two streets away. Remus drew his wand. “Where are they?”
“Second floor, I think,” Jared said breathlessly.
“Keelan”Jared”lie low here for now. If I’m not back in twenty minutes, go home and forget that we ever existed, all right?”
Keelan paled. “Remus, you can’t”” he began, but was already sprinting up the garden path alone.
Inside, the house was dead.
The late afternoon could not penetrate the filthy windows; hazy, grey light swam on the dusty, rotting floorboards and sheeted furniture. A damp, musty smell clung to the peeling brown wall-paper, and a thick layer of grime and cobwebs coated the back stairs.
When he reached the second floor landing, Remus whispered “Lumos!” and angled his lit wand into the shadows of the hall. The last door on the right was closed. It trembled in its frame as the ‘thud’ of a body hitting the floor made the stale yellow walls shudder convulsively. Remus blasted it open as he ran at it, yelling, “Sivey? Aidan?”
Just as the vampire sprang, Aidan and Sivey bolted for the opposite corner of the room. The vampire whirled, snarling, and Remus froze in horror.
He was well over six feet tall, with shoulder-length black hair and gleaming scarlet eyes sunken into his wan, skeletal face. He swept back his cloak and advanced on the pair, clicking his tongue mockingly and baring long, white fangs. He reeked of blood-lust.
Aidan’s brown curls were lank with sweat, and his dark blue eyes widened in terror; he crouched reflexively, prepared to run again, werewolf muscles rippling beneath taut skin…as the vampire stepped nearer, he rolled to one side.
Sivey hadn’t followed.
The vampire leered, eyes narrowing”then with a startlingly loud “crack!” turned into…Fenrir Greyback, half-wolf, half-man. Remus saw the open trunk lying amongst the boxes and understood at once.
Sivey was backing into the wall, tears streaming silently down her cheeks. She raised her arms protectively over her face as Greyback lunged”
Remus vaulted over the boxes and hurled himself between them.
Crack!
The sun rises and sets over the field, but it never lingers, and there is always the moon in one horizon or the other, waxing closer and closer to that which will make him into a monster again. The brown grass scratches his bare, calloused feet until they bleed. The tears on his cheeks taste of salt, and vinegar. At his feet lie the broken pieces of a stone. He runs his fingers over the cool, impassable surface, feeling the letters beneath his fingers.
Albus Wolfric Percival Brian Dumbledore.
There are other stones in this field. Gravestones. Cracked markers, dispersed in the dead grass.
Broken stones. Broken people.
Every familiar name is a knife in his heart. They are all here, all of them, under these stones…
Remus stared at the image of himself suspended in the room. Feeling the lump rise in his throat, he quickly shouted, “Riddikulus!” The image exploded into red and gold fireworks, and he forced the boggart back into the trunk.
Sivey had slumped to the floor, hiding her face. The way she had wrapped her arms around herself as she cried and rocked back and forth gave Remus the impression that she was trying to pull herself back together. Remus turned to Aidan. “Aidan, I need you to go down to the cottage and find Keelan and Jared. Tell them everything is all right, and wait for us down there.”
Aidan’s eyes flickered to Sivey. He nodded slowly, and then left.
Remus knelt and pulled the young werewolf’s hands away from her face. Cerulean eyes met his, no longer laced with fear, but with anguish and shame. “Greyback’s the one,” Remus said quietly. “He’s the one that changed you.”
Sivey wiped fiercely at her cheeks and glanced towards the trunk. “That wasn’t Greyback.”
“No,” Remus agreed gently. “It was a boggart”a shape shifter who turns into whatever you most fear. For Aidan, it was the vampire. For you, it was Greyback.”
Cold impatience flickered across her face. She sat back on her heels and crossed her arms over her chest. “Remus, I don’t blame him for what he did to me, and I sure as hell don’t need your pity.”
“Pity, Sivey, pity? No, you want empathy. Why else would you wish the horror you suffered on innocent children, if not to force people to understand what this is like, being shunned”being a monster?” His vehemence took her aback, but provoked her anger as well.
“Damn right I do. The world’s slipping by us, Remus, and I’m not going to wait for some Ministry pricks to wake up one morning and remember that werewolves are human beings, too.”
He paused, staring down at her with profound sadness. The disappointment and quiet, resolved martyrdom in his face made her flush inexplicably, but she understood at least the unspoken disbelief in his silence. At last he said softly, “I just want you to know that there is another way.”
A lone tear streaked down her cheek. She muttered, “We’d better go down. They’ll be waiting for us.” He helped her to her feet and they started out the door.
Half-way down the stairs, she asked suddenly, “Remus, what was your boggart?”
He frowned. “I don’t know. It’s always been the full moon before; I don’t understand why it’s changed.”
“Oh,” she said meekly. They didn’t speak again until they had pushed through the creaking back door and stumbled onto the gloriously alive, sun-lit lawns outside the manor house. Keelan, Jared, and Aidan were hovering near the door, all trying not to look too anxious or upset.
“Hey,” said Keelan, draping an arm over her shoulders, “We made bets about if one of you had to die, whether it’d be you or Aidan. I put my money on you.”
“Thanks,” she said dryly.
“No, thank Remus,” Keelan corrected. Four heads swiveled around to stare at Remus, who pretended not to notice.
Gratitude was awkward, weak”not the werewolf way. Remus could only feign ignorance of theirs until Aidan opened his mouth. “Don’t,” Remus shrugged. “It was nothing.”
“Okay,” Aidan agreed, relieved.
“Will you return to Wolverhampton now?”
Sivey grinned conspiratorially. “Actually, the four of us were planning on picking up a couple of chickens for dinner and spending the night in the country. Care to join us, Remus?”
“Ah…no,” said Remus honestly. “Would it do any good if I were to say ‘try and stay out of trouble’?”
“No,” Aidan and Jared said together.
“Well, you know where to find me if you need me.” Remus turned to go, then called over his shoulder almost as an afterthought, “And Jared! Next time, don’t Apparate when there are Muggles around!” With good-natured laughter ringing in his ears, he concentrated on the alley between the café and the tenements, and slipped through tight darkness back into downtown Wolverhampton.
The church bells were ringing again, striking the hour with resolute apathy.
Five o’clock.
The rusty stairs of the fire escape creaked familiarly under his feet. He fished in his pockets for the key as he climbed, but when he reached the fourth floor, the door to Room 403 was already slightly ajar.
Closing one hand around the end of his wand, Remus slowly pushed the door open and stepped into the room.
He almost didn’t recognize the witch sitting on his bed.
She had fallen asleep leaning against the wall, but even while dreaming, her expression was troubled. Lines of fatigue crossed her wan, heart-shaped face, and lank, mousy-brown hair was falling into her eyes.
“Nymphadora.” Remus touched her shoulder gently.
Without opening her eyes, she murmured, “Don’t call me Nymphadora.” He laughed. The sound of it seemed to rouse her, because her eyes flew open and she tumbled off the bed, taking the thin quilt with her. “Aren’t you going to ask me a security question?” she demanded in a vain attempt to distract him from the indignity of her position as she struggled to untangle her feet from the bedspread.
“What is the shape of the umbrella stand at headquarters that you always knock over?”
Tonks wrinkled her nose in disgust. “It’s a troll’s leg, and I don’t always trip over it!”
“All right, all right,” said Remus, chuckling as he knelt to disentangle her and replacing the quilt on the bed. “Did Dumbledore send you?’
“No, it’s nothing like that…I just wondered if we could talk.”
For the second time, Remus was struck by how exhausted and anxious she seemed to be. He considered her for a moment, and then said quietly, “I think I’d better make a pot of tea.”
He felt her intrigued eyes on his back as he put the kettle on the stove, conjured a pair of mugs, and fished behind a pile of books for a tin of tea. “Werewolves here drink strong, black coffee religiously,” Remus explained, gesturing at his secret stash. “Personally, I need my creature comforts.”
She smiled at the pun, and then remarked, “You heat water the Muggle way…like my dad.”
“Old habits are hard to break.” He poured her a cup and sat down on the other side of the table. “So, is something bothering you, Nymphadora?”
She didn’t remind him to call her Tonks, nor did she meet his eyes. Her hands curled tightly around the hot mug. “I don’t know how to say this, Remus, but…I worry about you. A lot.”
Remus raised an eyebrow skeptically. “I’m perfectly all right, thanks.”
“You haven’t been the same since Sirius””
It was Remus who was staring at his hands now. His face was impassive, but his voice broke as he murmured, “Of course I haven’t. No one has.” Both seemed to be imploring the other to understand, somehow, as they watched each other, not speaking. Remus hadn’t touched his tea, and after a few minutes of hesitant, uneasy silence, the vapor rising from the hot tea vanished and the mug grew cold.
“I don’t want you to be unhappy,” Tonks whispered, her eyes wet with stubbornly withheld tears. “I want both of us to be happy, together.” She reached across the table and slipped her hand in his. “I think…I think I’m in love with you.”
Years may well have passed in the deafening silence.
Crash!
Remus’ mug hit the floor and smashed, drenching them both in tea. “No.” His head came up sharply, and he pulled his hand away. Her anxiety, her mousy-brown hair, the way she sometimes looked at him”everything assumed a different meaning in a mere moment. “Nymphadora, I’m sorry if you were under the impression I wanted to be more than friends. Perhaps it would be best if we kept out of each other’s company, until…”
“You think by avoiding me, you can make me fall out of love with you?” Tonks said angrily, jumping to her feet.
“Perhaps! Try and be reasonable, Nymphadora!” Remus pleaded, also rising. “I’m a werewolf, I’m poor, I’m a social outcast, I’m much too old for you””
“I don’t care!”
“But I do!”
She opened her mouth to yell back, and then froze. “You care?”
“Yes,” he said, scowling. “And if I’m going to suffer, I’ll do it alone. I’m not going to let you ruin your life for me, Nymphadora. You deserve better.”
She shook her head defiantly. “I think we need to talk more about this.”
Remus closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he spoke again, the bitter words were lost in the infinite gentleness of his voice. “I think we have nothing more to say to each other.”
Her shoulders slumped. “I have to go,” she whispered, bowing her head so he wouldn’t see the impossible tears welling up in her eyes. “See you around, Remus.” With a surreally loud Crack!, she Disapparated.
He did not know how long he stood in the shards of broken china and cold tea. A numb, burning ache had lit in his chest and was rapidly consuming him, like the searing agony of standing on a leg that has gone to sleep, but multiplied a thousand times for the guilt and fear that had caught up with his alarm at Tonks’ declaration.
He started out of his reverie and knelt to collect the pieces of the mug. Broken and lusterless in his hands, they reminded him of something…
He was standing in a dry, dead field of broken stones…familiar, broken people.
The boggart. His worst fear.
It was being alone. That was it. More than anything, he feared that everyone he loved would be taken away from him, and that he would be alone…alone forever.
“If I have to suffer, I’m going to suffer alone.”
He said it aloud again, to stiffen his resolve. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and laughed, laughed because he was trapped, laughed because he couldn’t stop the world, laughed because he was no longer foolish enough to try. Then he pulled out his wand to clean up the mess.
By the time he had cleaned out the mugs, the throb of the church bells in the street was seeping into the windows, reminding him again of the hour.
Six o’clock.
A/N: If you're put out with me for the ending, do let me know. I probably deserve your wrath.
If you ever empathized with Remus, or imagined yourself in Wolverhampton, or believed that somewhere in the Potterverse there really were werewolves named Keelan and Sivey and Darkthroat, do let me know as well. It means I'm doing something right, and that doesn't happen very often.