onewizardwolfpack | everything looks different in the morning

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everything looks different in the morning

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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"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."

"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."

"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.

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.

"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.

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.

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."

Not even 'all right' lasts, not for Sirius. The familiar twist in his gut when he sees the dismay on Harry's face feels normal, as if contentment was simply feigned until reality could come crashing in again. Learning to let himself be something even approximating happy has been a struggle for Sirius, but he often wonders why he bothers.

He reacts physically first, on his feet in an instant, mouth pressed in a worried line.

"Who?"

Harry said a silent thank you to fate or God or Merlin or what have you that he had a godfather who got it. Harry could be slow and tactful but it frustrated him.

"Remus," he said, watching for Sirius' reaction with somber, wide eyes. "He's here.. a bit torn up from a full moon. He's in the clinic, sleeping it off."

That hadn't been the name Sirius had expected to hear. He'd thought, in a purely gut instinct sort of fashion, that Harry had come to tell him someone had gone. How long has it been, since his last? He's due.

His brain catches on the name, confusion flashes across his features before giving way to a tenuously restrained ache. When the comprehension hits him, it strikes right at a place still raw and for a moment makes it hard to breathe. His chest constricts, hurts, and his jaw, too; it isn't until he speaks that Sirius realises he'd clamped his teeth down like a vise.

"How old?"

The question stalled him. He had honestly no idea. There were kids younger than him, kids his age, young adults and old adults. Teachers-- which is what Lupin would always be first and foremost in Harry's mind-- had no real age.

But he recovered from the minor slip and shook his head.

"He didn't know me. But he wasn't my age. Sometime between..."

It was only then and there that Harry realized what that meant for Sirius.

A blessing and a curse, that. The first time Remus had been on the island, he'd been older, had been through the trials laid out in Rowling's books and known the truth about Sirius and Peter and everything that followed. He'd also been all but a stranger.

"Let's go, then," Sirius says, feet already moving. Even now, he doesn't know how to do anything with a challenge other than look it in the face. He can't run from this, he won't. After all, doesn't he deserve every look of contempt and disgust Remus will inevitably throw his way? Hasn't he earned it?

Harry fell in with Sirius, walking quickly to keep up with his godfather's longer strides. He considered saying something else to break the silence, prepare Sirius for what he was going to see, but everything he thought of felt stupid and unnecessary. Harry didn't know when and where Remus had come from, aside from the blatantly obvious fact that it was after a transformation. What was the point of telling Sirius to go easy on him when he surely already knew that?

Once they were at the Compound, in the front doors, walking down the hall, turning into the clinic, another bit of information came to Harry.

"I didn't have a chance to explain anything to him yet," he warned Sirius quietly. "About the island. Except there's no magic and he's not.. you know."

Now that they're so close, Moony presumably just in the next room, Sirius finds himself practically humming with anticipation when Harry stops him. He stares blankly back a moment, his mind finding it difficult to shift tacks so abruptly.

"You'll have to explain it," he says after he's blinked and come back to himself. "He'll not listen to me."

He's moving again before Harry has a chance to say anything else, unwilling to stop until he reaches the inner ward of the clinic, beds all in a crisp line and one of them occupied by an all too familiar figure, battered and bloody beneath twisted sheets. Sirius steps inside but doesn't get much further, sliding down into a crouch against the wall by the door. He draws his hands over his face and then stares over his fingertips, still and silent, at the tangle of linen and limbs belonging to Remus Lupin.

Remus shifted in his sleep, one arm freeing itself of the blanket he was under and falling careless to one side. He was comfortable, aside from the dull, throbbing pain were the bites had been the worst, which meant something was off. He was dimly aware of voices. He couldn't hear them properly, but he was aware, and that was enough to pull him the rest of the way into consciousness.

Reluctantly.

He scrubbed a hand with a few bandaged fingers over his face, heaved a sigh, and opened his eyes. Just a little. James and Sirius were over by the door, which was a little odd, but it was nice. He closed his eyes again and started to sink back into the comfort of the unfamiliar mattress when the supreme and pervading wrongness of it all struck him, and he was tense and pushing himself up to sitting, muscles protesting, as the room and recent events came into focus.

He looked from the boy to Sirius Black- Sirius Black- and would have looked back again, but couldn't.

"...I've gone mad," he stated hoarsely.

Edited 2012-01-26 01:28 (UTC)

Harry cast an anxious glance to Sirius, and very quickly realized that he would have to step forward, rather than let everything sort itself out.

"No," he said, moving forward to the side of Remus' bed. "You're not. It's.. like I was saying. If you remember," he muttered under his breath. Remus probably didn't. "Everyone gets brought here from different times and places. It's Sirius. ..And I'm Harry. And this is really happening."

And Harry really felt like an utter pillock, standing there trying to explain things as if this were normal, nothing to get excited over, completely rational, when neither of them looked like they were hearing a word he was saying.

Last time, James had been here. Last time, Sirius had had proof. Remus had still thought him utterly mad and a murderer at first, but he'd had that irrefutable evidence. Now he's just got himself and Harry, whom Remus can't possibly remember as more than a baby.

The worst of it is, he can't even be angry this time. He's just so fucking weary and guilt-ridden and terrified that they're going to go through all of this again only to have Remus disappear.

"It was Peter," he manages, voice rough. "Tell him about Peter," he adds to Harry, although he doesn't look away from Remus. Can't.

"No," Remus barked, voice straining, pointing at Harry without looking away from Sirius.

He could have been a perfectly acceptable hallucination, but then he'd spoken, and it was too real not to be him.

"No," he repeated. His mind spun wildly with different scenarios. At the least, he knew they weren't in Azkaban. No werewolf would have been set up in a clean, comfortable hospital wing at Azkaban, if such a thing even existed thee.

"This isn't... This can't be. You can't be here."

Harry knew it was a difficult, confusing situation for everyone. Harry knew he, more than anyone else in this room, needed to stay calm. But that finger pointed at his chest annoyed him something awful. They were trying to help. They were here because they cared, not to get shouted down without a glance.

He wanted to try and answer Remus' disbelief, to shake reality into his skull, but Sirius was right. The first thing was to establish his innocence-- or at least try-- as there wouldn't be any calming Lupin down before that happened.

"Remus," Harry said, trying to keep his voice calm but insistent. "Remus, listen to me. Sirius didn't kill anyone. He didn't betray anyone. It was Peter. Peter was the secret keeper. Peter betrayed my parents to Voldemort. I heard it from his own mouth."

"Jesus Christ," Sirius mutters under his breath. No measure of preparing himself for this makes it sting any less, that look raking over him, past flesh and muscle into the very heart of him. Maybe he ought to move or argue or say anything else, but all he can do is stay right where he is and just stare back at Remus, chest tight and fingers shaking. Sirius might be crouched across the room, but Remus is well fucked in the head if he genuinely believes Sirius killed anyone, and Sirius will be damned if he looks away like he's guilty of it.

Edited 2012-01-26 02:22 (UTC)

That was categorically impossible. Remus felt something tightening in his chest, a stabbing sort of sensation. It was like an ill formed scar being peeled away. He didn't want it gone. It was all that held him together, most days.

He realized his hand was shaking, barely, and he put it down, and forced himself to look at Harry. He couldn't stand the look in Sirius's eyes any longer.

"Peter died before you were born," he said. It occurred to him that Harry should have been a very little boy and not a young man, but he could only process one, maybe two, impossible things at a time.

"How- Is he here?"

Edited 2012-01-26 02:59 (UTC)

Harry preferred having Lupin looking at him rather than Sirius. He wanted his focus, if only to keep him from considering ways to hurt Sirius or things to shout at him. But the naked emotion and confusion that he saw there hit him square in the chest.

These were the men he depended on. He needed them to be okay, even if it was just for show, playacting for him.

Harry swallowed against a dry throat and shook his head. "He never died," he said, eyes never leaving Lupin's. "He pretended to. He set Sirius up and turned himself into a rat. He stayed that way for years. My friend Ron-- the Weasleys. They took him in thinking he was just a rat. But we forced him back into a human and he admitted it."

There's a fragile, volatile place inside of Sirius reserved for Peter Pettigrew and everything he wrought out of Sirius' naivete. It snaps, clean and sharp and pushing Sirius to his feet in a flurry of adrenaline, and he's suddenly so full up with frustration that he can't contain it. He picks up a chair, throws it halfway across the room with a raucous clatter and then seizes hold of the foot of Remus' slender hospital bed.

"LOOK AT ME!" he demands with a shake of the bed frame, eyes wild but baldly honest and wrapped in tears. "You fucking look me in the eye and tell me you think I would EVER hurt James or Lily. After everything we've been through, you look at me and SAY IT."

He was half out of the bed- though thankfully only half, the sheet staying tangled around his waist and legs because, he realized distantly, he was still naked- hackles raised, heart beating wildly in his chest.

"Do you think I wanted to?" he demanded, the rage undercut by a real desperation that cracked his voice.

"Do you think I could fucking stomach the thought, that I would have believed it for a fucking second if Albus Dumbledore hadn't told me was true?!"

So focused on Remus, Harry hadn't been prepared for the explosion from his godfather and for a few moments he had to stare, mouth agape, seeing the same kind of madness in Sirius' face that he had only seen once before.

This was not the way this should go.

Maybe it had been a bad choice to bring Sirius here so soon.

When Remus started to rise up, Harry sprang into action, positioning himself between the two men, half-leaning over the bed himself. One hand pressed, palm flat and hard, against Sirius' chest and the other rested, much lighter but still firm, on Remus' shoulder. He didn't think they would come to blows, but the intensity of their gazes made Harry as uncomfortable and tense as an outright display of aggression would have.

"Stop it!" he shouted. "Both of you! This isn't helping."

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