everything looks different in the morning

[onewizardwolfpack]

Everything seemed familiar as Remus woke. His world was small and concentrated around the pain in his body, the stale metal taste in his mouth. His thoughts were sluggish and his senses felt incredibly dull. He was lying on his side, his shoulder wedged uncomfortably beneath his body, and as he clumsily pushed himself upright his blood started to move more freely, which made him grimace.

He'd made a mess of the floor.

With a rough sound he let his fingers hover over the deepest cut in his arm, and closed his eyes, willing the skin to knit, just enough where the bleeding would stop. Nothing happened. It had been a while since a transformation, even one as violent as this one had apparently been, had stopped him from doing nonverbal magic. If the burning pain in his legs and side were any indication, getting a hold of his wand was going to be a bitch. Gritting his teeth together, he started to his feet, tucking his arm tight against his stomach, and stumbled in the direction he'd left his clothing and wand, folded up and wedged tight between the crap old tool bench and cold masonry wall.

Only none of those things were there.

The room he was in was larger than the one he used for his transformations. There was a cluster of washers and dryers- was he in a laundry? Oh fuckssake, was this a laundry?- were set in the middle of the room. No, no windows, it couldn't have been a proper laundromat. It was some basement, someone's basement. He'd never seen it before. His brain struggled toward alertness, but sheer disbelief was making that difficult.

For the first time in a long time, Remus felt something like real, cold fear. He was injured, significantly, bleeding quite a lot. Wandless magic wasn't working and his wand was nowhere to be seen. He had no idea where he was.

Which meant he'd gotten out. How had he gotten out? How could the charms have failed? What if some of the blood on the floor- on him- wasn't his own?

“Ngh- no,” he said to himself, though it came out a rough, broken whisper. He turned, looking for an exit, and saw stairs leading up to a door. Unfamiliar stairs, and an unfamiliar door.

“Oh, please, no,” he whispered fervently, and lurched toward them, blood running to ice in his veins. He stumbled once, cracking his knee against the corner of a step, but pushed himself onward, and when he clumsily shouldered the door open, he fell onto a cold, plain floor. Not wood. Not his flat. Not even his building.

What had he done?

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[theboywholived]

Now that everything was back to normal, Harry visited the Compound more often. When there was a whole city to explore, he would zoom around on his broom, looking at all the alleys and shops and people. Now it was back to jungle, which was fun to fly around too, but he had all the time in the world to explore it.

Head full of thoughts of Kate and Quidditch (as it usually was), Harry headed down the hall to check on the state of his laundry. He heard the doors to the stairs open, the sound of someone falling, and his head jerked up in alarm.

...There was a naked man sprawled on the floor.

That stopped Harry in his tracks for a long moment. He wasn't sure what to do with that.

Then a helping instinct kicked in and he sprinted to the man's side. Harry did not know what to do, but that didn't matter. The man was obviously hurt and exhausted, and where he wasn't bleeding, he was covered in scars.

"It's alright," he said, dropping to his knees beside the man. "You're okay. I'm-- Remus?"

Harry's eyes went wide behind thin wire frames and he rocked back on his heels. His entire body froze as he nearly forgot how to breathe.

Remus was back.

[onewizardwolfpack]

His name was being said, but he struggled to lift his head up to see by whom.

"Nhm- where-" He didn't want to know. He had to get his thoughts in order to ask vital questions that he absolutely did not want the answers to.

"Where am I?" he managed, pushing himself up onto his elbows. He looked up at whoever had been trying to reassure him and seemed to still. He was groggy and wincing with pain but not blind.

"...how...?"

[theboywholived]

Oh, Merlin. The confusing scene suddenly organized itself into something that made sense with the blink of an eye. It was Remus, after a transformation-- a bad morning after-- and he had appeared, without clothes, without wand, in the basement of the Compound somewhere.

And once again he had no idea who Harry was. That wasn't a look of recognition. Or, to be more exact, it wasn't Harry that Remus recognized.

"You're safe," Harry said firmly. "It's too much to explain right now, Remus, but I'm going to get you to the clinic. It's alright. I'm..."

It wasn't a life-or-death urgent situation. Remus didn't need help in the next ten seconds or he would die. But Harry didn't want to waste time with his former professor demanding answers he wasn't ready to understand.

"I'm Harry Potter. I'm their son. You can trust me."

Please, please trust me. And don't ask any more questions just yet.

[onewizardwolfpack]

That made about as much sense as waking up in an underground laundromat, Remus supposed, which was to say not very fucking much at all.

"No," he began, "that's not... possible, that... can't..." He bit back a low, pained noise, head falling forward again.

He was hallucinating, possibly, but it seemed an odd sort of thing to envision, no matter how fevered the brain. Anyway, the young man had a point- Remus was admittedly naked and bleeding in what seemed to be a public place. If nothing else, he could hope there would be something at said clinic he could cover up with.

If only he weren't so damned tired.

"I trust you," he lied, and started the painful process of pushing himself to his feet.

[theboywholived]

It obviously made things even more confusing, but at least Remus knew Harry knew-- knew he was a wizard, a werewolf. He didn't need to hide anything actively from him.

However there were some things Harry was okay with him hiding.

"Just... hold on," he muttered, dashing off down the hall. He came back all of two seconds later, having stripped a sheet off of one of the clinic beds, no doubt to the utter bewilderment of the man on duty. Harry did not think to give him a heads up.

Harry placed Remus' arm around his shoulders, then wrapped the sheet about his waist like a skirt.

"The clinic's not far," he said. "Just through that door. And we can get you into a bed."

[onewizardwolfpack]

He grimaced as he took the first few steps, leaning not at all unconsciously away from, as opposed to on, the spitting image of his dead friend. He gripped the sheet in a rapidly reddening bunch at his hip and stumbled along, frowning.

"Where are we."

[theboywholived]

Harry's brow twitched in a frown as he noticed the distinct lack of weight behind shifted onto him. He threw an arm around Remus' waist, helping at least with the sheet as they walked.

"Island called Tabula Rasa. Time's messed up and magic doesn't work. There's no way off except disappearing, kind of like you just appeared."

Harry winced slightly at his own words, then tried to give him a smile. "Good news is, you don't have to worry about the full moon anymore?"

[onewizardwolfpack]

It was difficult to shy away from an arm about the waist, but even Remus's deeply ingrained discomfort at being touched was superseded by the words coming out of Harry's- if he was truly Harry- mouth.

Time and magic he could wrap his head around later, but that last bit was a lot to take in. Too much, actually. His gaze snapped to Harry's face as he stumbled, slightly, reaching a bloodied hand out to catch himself against the wall.

"What," he said, the word more breath than not. He could get a hold of his voice.

He also felt spectacularly light headed.

[theboywholived]

Right. That didn't go over as well as Harry had thought it would. Apparently it didn't matter how good news was if the shock outweighed it.

He tightened his hold around Remus' waist out of reflex, his hand going to hold the arm around his shoulders.

"Sorry," Harry mumbled. "Everything magic's gone. Everything. Even that."

[onewizardwolfpack]

The clear bewilderment in his wide eyes was chased away by a desperate, stunned sort of hope, and he knew it, knew it was scrawled across his face as visibly the scars across his body, and he looked away.

He dropped his hand from the wall to rub it almost fitfully across his face and shove it into his hair.

"This can't be real," he murmured.

[theboywholived]

"I know," Harry said. "But it is."

He was smart enough to hold his tongue then, though his first instinct was to tell Remus how Harry himself had arrived here, thinking he was dead. While there were several adults back home who had earned his trust, Harry did not tell his secrets to most of them. But with Remus, with Sirius, he was inclined to tell them everything he thought he could.

But that kind of openness wouldn't help right now. He recognized that.

Harry pulled him closer, away from the wall, and started to guide him toward the clinic again. "Come on. Clinic."

[onewizardwolfpack]

Remus let himself be led. He was weary, and in pain, and nothing was making any sense. He couldn't make sense of what was happening and he knew well enough not to try in that moment.

He wished he had his wand, though. It would have felt like something real.

[theboywholived]

Harry moved carefully but quickly, strong enough carry most of Remus' weight if the older man did what he could to help himself along as well. When they made it to the doorway of the clinic, the skinny looking man on duty jumped to assist them, coming to Remus' other side.

"He just arrived," Harry tried to explain, without garnering more questions. "I know him from home. He got, um, beat up."

[onewizardwolfpack]

"Mauled, more like," Remus murmured with a quiet, black kind of humor in his tone.

[theboywholived]

Had Harry not heard Remus joke like that about his condition before, he would have been mildly horrified. But having seen it, in Snape's memories no less, Harry had to duck his head to hide his faint smirk.

"By an animal?" the man was asking. "Let's get you sitting down and I'll clean you up."

[onewizardwolfpack]

"They're not-" Remus started, breath hitching as the pair pulled him farther into the room and sat him down.

"It's not that bad." He was dizzy, and the exhaustion was pulling on him, making his limbs feel heavy and his head feel thick.

[boy_who_waited]

Harry frowned deeply at that, but Rory knelt at the side of the bed as he carefully examined the slashes and bruises.

"Relatively speaking..." Rory began in an agreeing tone and shrugged. "Only about two of these really worry me. It could all be taken care of with nanobots, if you'd be comfortable with that."

Rory paused, brows arched questioningly at the man. "If you.. have any idea what that means?"

[onewizardwolfpack]

Remus squinted at the healer- medic, more like- for a moment.

"...the fuck did you say, sorry?"

[boy_who_waited]

"Nanobots," Rory repeated. He glanced back at the boy (Harry fucking Potter, yes, we're playing it cool), but he only shrugged and looked equally clueless if less physically dazed.

"Advanced technology," he explained, looking back to the patient. "Tiny little machines that heal you on a molecular level. Completely safe and it'll save you from scarring."

..From more extensive scarring.

"Or we can do regular old-fashioned stitches."

[onewizardwolfpack]

"Seems a bit late for that," Remus said.

"But no stiches." He'd never had them before. His injuries had always been healed with magic, save the one, and stitches hadn't worked on that, either. They'd simply had to wait for it to scar over in its own time.

"Nano... bots," he said, looking as skeptical as he did close to unconsciousness, which was very, "will suffice."

[boy_who_waited]

"Right," Rory confirmed with a short nod. "Go ahead and lay back and I'll have you patched up in minutes."

He hovered long enough, with Harry, to see to it that the man lay back without falling over. Then he took Harry by the shoulder and guided him out into the main clinic, out of the room holding the small collection of patient beds.

"I'm going to let him sleep and have you help me fill out his patient form. The parts you don't know, I can ask him later. But, erm.."

He paused, glancing back at the open door, then leaned closer to Harry, pitching his voice low.

How to phrase this delicately?

"Do I need to be medically concerned by the fact that he was apparently assaulted while naked?"

Harry stared at him, a bit of color draining from his face, and shook his head.

"Alright," Rory said, though he made a mental note to keep his eyes open regardless. "Get back to your friend. I'll be in in a minute."

Still looking a little shaken, Harry made his way back to sit in a chair by Remus' bed.

[onewizardwolfpack]

Remus was used to spending more of his post-transformation morning on a cold, stone floor. Finding himself in a bed was a novelty, and one he couldn't make much complaint about, although in reality he probably was unconscious on a cold, stone floor dreaming the fever dream of the truly unbalanced.

Harry, who was so much his parents it was physically painful to look at him, was back. Remus looked anyway. The pain sort of all bled together, anyhow.

Blood loss and bone weariness combined to make his gaze, if no kinder, a bit softer, at least.

"Are you all right, Harry?" he asked in an offhanded kind of way, mostly because the answer didn't matter. Lily's eyes looked worried in a face that was pure Prongs. It was deeply strange.

"This is a strange dream," he stated softly without waiting to hear the answer, as his lashes drifted lower, filtering out the light and the world.

[theboywholived]

"Yeah, fine," Harry answered weakly, but it didn't matter. Remus was already passed out by the time he said it.

The nanobots did their work without waking him, and Rory took notes for the new medical record on Remus J. Lupin. Once Harry had his assurance that Rory wasn't going anywhere, he headed out to find the only person he could think of.

Sirius.

[blackedout]

Once upon a time, you would have been hard pressed to get Sirius Black to stay in one place for long. Home had been an utterly foreign concept to him outside of Hogwarts, and he'd had little affinity for wherever he happened to be bedding down. When he could, he spent nights in beds other than his own, and returned to his flat only to sleep off particularly bad hangovers or to collect the post.

When he thinks back on that now, it doesn't just seem like some other lifetime, but some other person altogether.

Here he is, on his porch of all bloody things, kicked back with his feet up as he whistles idly to the fluffed up little Snidget perched contentedly inside a nearby cage. He doesn't mistake himself for happy, isn't certain that emotion is truly possible for him anymore, but he's all right, and that's as close as he reckons he's likely to get.

[theboywholived]

It was a bit of a walk from the Compound to the Green Arrow Estates. Not a long walk, but long enough that Harry had plenty of time to stew over what he was going to say.

The problem was he still had no idea what to say. It had been a long walk dwelling on nothing but the fact that Remus had been here and left and been here and left and that there was only so much Sirius could take. He had to take this news. He had to deal with this information and take his friend back. In Harry's mind there was no other option, but he did not expect things to go smoothly. He didn't know how they wouldn't, but he had the sinking feeling as he gave Sirius a weak wave and headed up to his porch that they wouldn't.

"I've got to tell you something," he said, walking up the steps and wasting no time. "Important."