Remus wasn't drunk, but he would have liked to have been. His house wasn't the spacious luxury abode that Sirius' was, but whoever had built it had done so very carefully. The breeze moved through it wonderfully, and the floors were always cool and smooth, despite grooves left from what he knew were the claws of a large canine. Possibly more than one. It was like a charming tropical version of the shack, in that way, which he probably should have found more off putting.

What little furniture he'd bothered acquiring subsisted of a bed and some chairs and a low bench with thick woven palm fronds in place of hard seats. He hadn't bothered for a coffee table. Single lamp on, casting a warm orange glow over the hut's primary room, Remus sat with one knee drawn up and his back against the sofa's front, turning the pages of a book he wasn't really reading and drinking a beer he'd pilfered from the Winchester. It wasn't cold any longer, but beggars couldn't, he had frequently been told, be choosers.

It ought to have sunk in by now, he figured, but some lessons were harder to take to heart than others.