Is It Over Now?

Chapter Seven

He thought that this was what a family was supposed to be like.

—-

The only time that Remus had ever received mail from St. Edmund's during the school year was the obligatory Christmas present that Matorn sent each year and perhaps something small on his birthday as well if she remembered the boy at all. The letters never came in the middle of December.

This one did.

The letter was short, simple, and impersonal, just like the woman that had sent it and the place that it had come from. It was only three paragraphs long, eight sentences in total telling the boy that since wizarding law considered him to be an adult at the age of seventeen, he would not be allowed to return to St Edmund's after his birthday in early March.

Remus thought that he should feel like screaming, like crying, or filled with some sort of blinding panic at the news that he would never be able to go home again, that he wasn't wanted there, but he didn't. A particular feeling of numbness gripped at the teen, holding him down and drowning him within its depths.

St Edmund's wasn't home, it never had been one to the boy no matter how long he had spent there. Hogwarts, Remus found, wasn't quite one either, not with the tensions steadily rising and the way that a fourth of the castle acted in public as if he didn't have a right to exist among them, to practice magic at all because of his blood status, but feared him within the confines of the Slytherin common room as they were constantly reminded of just what his magic - stronger, quicker, and more natural in its destruction since getting the new wand - could do. And of what Remus could do with his fist alone.

That aside, Hogwarts could never truly be home again with the fact that all but a few wanted those like him locked away. Caged like an animal. The fact that sometimes, when the wolf tore at his skin and Remus wondered what would happen if it were to tear just a bit deeper as his bones ached, Remus wondered if they might be right.

The numbness came mostly from a feeling of hopelessness as Remus knew that once the train pulled into the station at King's Cross, he would have nowhere to go after getting off of it. Remus had always been dangerously independent, but the thought of being so completely on his own made the teen want to shut down and pretend that the letter didn't exist at all for as long as he could.

A week later, the Gryffindor boy thought that he was doing well at just that. Clearly he wasn't hiding it as well as he had thought.

Pandora found him in the library one day, her hair was done up in an intricate braid with small trinkets dangling from it at seemingly random spots, a look that garnered more than one inquiring look, all of which went steadfastly ignored as the younger girl sat down at Remus's side without saying a thing or grabbing books of her own. She let the older boy finish the thought that he was for his Transfiguration essay before gently pulling the quill from the Gryffindor's hand and setting it out of reach.

"You missed lunch," the Ravenclaw said softly, but was only met with a hum. "And dinner," the younger of the pair added.

"Sorry," the boy mumbled, but Dora didn't think that he sounded very sorry at all.

"Come on, Moons. What is it?" Pandora smiled as the boy looked up with a confused face at the use of the nickname that the Gryffindors had given him. "Got your attention," the Ravencalw added with a hint of mischief.

Remus sighed and leaned down towards his bag, flipping it open and grabbing the potions book that he had stashed the letter in knowing just how likely the other boys in his dorm would be to delve into anything from the subject during their free time. The Gryffindor handed over the letter without saying anything on the matter and the Ravencalw took it just the same.