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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[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."

[blackedout]

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?"

[theboywholived]

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."

[blackedout]

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?"

[theboywholived]

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.

[blackedout]

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?

[theboywholived]

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."

[blackedout]

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.

[onewizardwolfpack]

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.

[theboywholived]

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.

[blackedout]

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.

[onewizardwolfpack]

"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."