Four To The End (prev Shifting Lines) Book Three (Marauders Era)

Chapter One Hundred-Twelve - Fathers

Author's note: Hey y'all, hope you like the new name for this series! I love it and am very happy I decided to change it. But if you still wanna call it Shifting Lines that's fine haha

Also I was made aware that updating y'all on things as its own chapter post is frustrating to some people, so I'm going to try to keep my updates and notices to the author notes here. I'll probably forget sometimes but I'll do my best.

CW: references to child abuse

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To say Remus wanted to find the mirror was an understatement. All day Sunday he had to fight to focus on his schoolwork and studying until he had the idea to associate the mirror with panicky feelings instead: he thought about seeing him and Sirius snuggled close and kissing. It made him embarrassed and ashamed, wrongness squirming through his body until all desire to look in the mirror again faded.

Healthy.

No. James had done the right thing, hiding it.

Sirius was pretty off, too; he spent a lot of his Sunday looking listlessly out windows. At least James and Peter weren't very affected by the mirror, though it make Remus wonder what Sirius saw.

Then, later in the evening, panic set in. Not from the mirror but from the fact that the end-of-term exams were now suddenly right there, and also on Saturday he'd be going home to his parents. Or, rather, his father. He began to feel sick with dread at the thought of being in that house for two weeks with his father; being around his father for the first time since the fallout a couple of months ago. On the bright side, Lyall would be working most of the time but... when he wasn't...

It'll be fine, he told himself. Plus it's only two weeks. It's not like the summer holidays.

But he was still panicking so much that when he tried shuffling his tarot deck to finish an essay for Divination, his hands shook and the slippery cards spilled everywhere. He swore loudly and got down on the floor. His friends abandoned their game to come help him and it took several minutes to hunt the last one down which had gone under his end table.

"Are you okay?" James asked after Remus counted the cards one more time to triple check they were all there. "You seem frazzled."

"Exams," he mumbled, ignoring their teasing as he debated whether to go through and turn them all right-way-round. The urge to make sure they looked orderly overrode his desire to keep them as is for the sake of having some cards remain upside down when pulled, and he sat down, carefully fixing the cards. As he worked, he wondered what would happen if he wrote to his mother and said he wasn't coming home for the holidays.

Then his head snapped up as he heard the word 'mirror' and realized James and Peter were talking about the mirror. The others had returned to the middle of the room where the board game was set up, but only Sirius was looking at it; he had a little frown on his face and it was clear he didn't want to talk about the mirror. James and Peter were talking about the fact James had only seen them and nothing else.

"I still think it's kinda weird, I mean, even though I have loads of things there are still other things I want. Like to be on a professional Quidditch team when I graduate. Maybe it only shows things we want that are in the... foreseeable future? Something soon?"

"It showed me an impossible want," Sirius muttered as he lay down on his belly, resting his chin on his folded arms. "And as much as I want Remy to be healthy, I doubt that's anytime in the foreseeable future. No offense."

"None taken, I fully agree," Remus sniffled, straightening the cards out and putting them on his desk. Suddenly he felt utterly exhausted and he slumped down in the seat, pressing his hand against his eyes. He wanted the week to be over with already, yet did not want the weekend to come. He felt trapped, and miserable.