When he thought it had come at last, what struck Remus about the end of his youth was the abruptness. It wasn’t a question of space and time; it was the realisation of the gradual collapsing of things. Or, to use a more specific metaphor, rather like daylight at the end of a tunnel. Painful and bright and shocking, even though you know it has always been there, waiting, baiting.
When Sirius left his old house and ran away to stay at James’s, all three of them understood why. The only difference was in the degree and manner of their absorption of the fact. To James, Remus knew Sirius’ escape was from an unhappy family life; to Peter, it was a show of Sirius’ determination to live life on his own terms. For Remus, it was the need to find a shelter - any place where you could breathe easier, where you were welcome.
At Hogwarts, they were students, and all students were just students most of the time. To many girls, it didn’t matter if you had a job yet, or if your living conditions held promises. They all ate the same thing in the morning, afternoon and evening. Wore the same clothes and studied the same books. Remus knew there was a balance for him, from the expansive grounds to the claustrophobic dungeons, no matter how precarious. Emboldened by his friends’ nagging, stirred by his hormones, and enticed by the loveliness of her face and the softness of her skin and the heavenly scent of her hair, he kissed her.
It didn’t matter if James or Sirius outperformed him; Remus was one of the best students in the year. He was a Prefect. He didn’t get into trouble as often as his friends. Dumbledore vouched for him. McGonagall was softer towards him. There were girls that preferred him to his two, arguably more popular friends. The possibilities were so numerous he could smell them in the air.
The agony convulsed him every month like clockwork. But his friends had taught him to have fun in spite of it. The full moons were occasions for running wild and free.
The Last Day at Hogwarts
He was alone in his room, his friends having left for breakfast. They had pestered him to come along, of course, and he’d insisted they go ahead. He sat, staring into his hands, motionless. Anybody peeking into their dorm would have claimed that his friends had hexed him with some immobilising charm. Remus was merely experiencing something profound: a sensation of weightlessness compounded by the spiraling ache of despair.
Let it rain, he wished for reasons he didn’t care to go deep into at the moment. The only immediate excuse he could think of for his prayer was that the sunlight filling up the room was too bright, too hot, too intrusive. If he thought hard, he’d know it was more than that: a smattering of rain would complement his mood, and the melodrama of that communion between emotions and weather conditions might amuse him for a while. And yet, the sun persisted.
He ran a finger over the life-line in his palm. It was long, longer than his three friends’. Sirius openly pitied him for that; he said that Remus would grow to be old. He said that Remus would have to watch his friends die, and he, the one with the shortest lifeline, would go with a bang when he had to. But Remus didn’t want to see his friends die. The life-line scared him more than he could account for because Remus wasn’t sure about his future. There was nothing appealing about existing in the fringes as an outcast, among outcasts; he shuddered at the thought of having to waste away as an unemployed half-breed while the other three got married and had kids. He was too cautious to think of their probable destinies as an alternative for himself.
And that was why he was already marking himself as different.
December, 1981
It was snowing in Godric’s Hollow. He had been standing outside James’s house for a while now, and he could feel the wetness on his shoulder where cold, white flakes had landed on, but once more, Remus was perfectly motionless.
He had been wrong. He had been so wrong. Hogwarts hadn’t been the end; he’d simply given up too early. James had immediately offered to lend him money. Sirius and Peter had tried to get him to share their flat. They had still accompanied him during the full moon nights as often as they could, and as long as they could until James got married and had to go into hiding, and Peter and Sirius had to work for the Order, until he, Remus, had to voluntarily mingle with those of his kind. If Remus had tried, he could have made the most of it. If he hadn’t been so willing to victimise himself by slowly enlarging the gap between the others and him, he wouldn’t have become a victim. Now, it was all over.
Youth. Home. Love. Hope. Laughter.
He gave them up with finality, and then wept over how easily he did it.