When Remus opened his eyes, he immediately shut them once more. The world was too white, too sterile compared to the colors of the forest. For as much as he missed the world of magic that he had known for the past eight years now, he knew then that a part of him would always remain among the trees.
He smelled them long before they arrived, the thick scent of wizarding magic that lingered on each of them, Remus less than them all. His magic was wild in a way that theirs could never hope to be. It always has been, but now so more than ever.
The door was opened up gently, hesitantly as if not to wake the inhabitant inside, but Remus only pushed himself to a sitting position and met the surprised gaze with an even one of his own.
"Remus," the boy said, his voice strong in a way that the wolves so often weren't. The forest may be beautiful, but it did nothing to shield them from the sickness that such conditions wrought. "You're awake."
The wolf almost flinched away at the too bright smile of the other teen, seeing the strains in it. The dishonesty. The pack may have been a lot of things, but dishonest was not one of them, not when everyone knew the other's tells.
"Yes," Remus agreed evenly as James walked into the room, Sirius following right behind him with a strained smile on his lips.
"You look better," the elder Black brother said, though his eyes seemed to tell another story, as if the other boy thought that Remus looked alien. Wild.
He was.
"A good sleep in a clean bed will do that," Remus said, his response neither here nor there as memories from the night before flashed across his mind. Memories that belonged to the wolf that Remus had to sort through.
"Right," Sirius said awkwardly, the long haired boy shuffling his feet against the ground as he looked anywhere but at Remus' too wild eyes.
"Where am I?"
"My old room," James said, his voice slightly off. As if he thought that this was something that Remus should know but then remembered why he didn't. Something that had occurred during the past month, the wolf realized. "Mum changed it into a medical room for the Order. It's safer this way for some members."
"Like me?" Remus asked, his eyes trailing across the scars lining his body, his arms on full display in the short sleeved shirt.
James looked away. "Yes," he answered all the same.
"Remus, what happened?" Sirius suddenly asked, unable to wait any longer. It was an impatience that Remus had once found endearing. Now he just missed Regulus.
"A very good question Mr. Black."
Remus bit back the growl that was building in his throat as the door opened as a third man walked through it, his robes some obscene color that the wolf didn't know and his eyes lacking the signature sparkle that they always held.
"Dumbledore," Remus said in a way of greeting, his voice thick in a way that the other two Marauders had never heard and dit want to again.
"You've been missed, my dear boy," Dumbledore said, his voice light in a way that did not match the look in his eyes.
"The absence wasn't exactly planned," Remus said shortly.
The Headmaster hummed. "I suppose it wasn't."
They both knew that it nearly was.
"You were found covered in blood and scratches. Tests have shown that it wasn't all your own," the older man said, his voice holding a sternness to its usual softness, showing more of the cold man beneath the facade that uses men as chess pieces.
"You're right," Remus says easily, ignoring the sharp intake of breath from the two other boys. "Its wasn't all mine."
"Moony," James said, his voice almost a hiss as if he was attempting to will the wolf to be quiet. Remus didn't listen either way.
"There was a body found next to you," the Headmaster continues, headless of his effect on the other two lions in the room who looked sick at the thought. "A wolf's. I assume that it was one of Greyback's pack."
And Remus almost wanted to laugh at how close the other man was, yet so far away in his assumptions.
"It was Greyback himself," the teen says with a cold voice that pains the other two, that emphasizes just how different he is from them. How strange and inhuman he has always been.
"Fenrir Greyback is dead?" The Hogwarts Headmaster asks bluntly and Remus almost flinches at the words.
"He is," the wolf confirms instead. "I killed him."
And it was sick, but for some reason it hurt to know that he had killed the only person that had ever called him son.
"I see," Dumbledore said slowly, enough so that he almost seemed shocked, but Remus knew that he wasn't. The Headmaster had been hoping for this conclusion for a very long time. "And what of the rest of the pack?"
"Gone," Remus said simply, too much so for the eldest man's liking. "They will take no further role in this war." The wolf's voice was firm, leaving no room for question. A leader protecting his back. A brother protecting his family in what few ways he could.
Dumbledore seemed to see this as well.
"Very well," he said just as softly as he might have when dismissing a student from his office after dealing out the punishment that he found appropriate. "I'll be taking my leave then. Rest well, Mr. Lupin."
Remus said nothing back.
The door closed softly and the wolf immediately pushed himself out of bed and to his feet, ignoring the worried noises of his friends as he dressed in the clothes that Mrs. Potter had left for him. He was eager to be away from such a confining space, a place where his skin itched as the beast within him growled distrustfully at the wizards around him, the ones that no longer thought of him as one of them. Hadn't for a while now.
He wanted to be back in his cottage with Dora's herbs and a library full of books that would be taken away should the Ministry ever lay eyes upon them and woods that almost looked like the ones that he had left, and in the room that he shared with the boy that he missed like a lung.
He wanted to be somewhere where he was allowed to be wild.
He wanted to be home.
"Where are you going?" James asked as Remus started unbuttoning his shirt, the other two teens tried not to stare at the myriad of scars lining Remus' chest, some older than they had known him and others as fresh as last night. They were painful to see.
"To sleep in my own bed," Remus answered shortly as he slid a pair of dark jeans on, muggle ones that James must have bought to blend in when in muggle London for jobs for the Order.
"You can't be serious, Remus," Sirius said, finally finding his voice once more.
"You're right, I'm not. You are. But I'm still going."
"To what? An empty house?" James pressed, his concern eating away at his sudden uneasiness with the other boy. They might not have been as close as they once were before the incident in fifth year, but that didn't mean that he didn't still care about the boy that was almost like a brother. "Stay, let us take care of you."
Remus could see how concerned the other was, and for a moment he wanted to break for old times sake - for the memory of a love that was once there - but he didn't. He wouldn't.
"I really do have to be going," Remus said, softer this time than he had been in years. "I'm sorry." And he meant it.
—
Remus sighed contentedly as he appeared before his cottage, the tall grass brushing gently against his fingertips, kissing at his skin as he walked to the door. Everything was just the same as he had left it, the books and parchment on the table, the dishes in the cabinet, and the sheets on the bed. Everything was the same and yet he felt as if he was discovering it all once more.
The paint on the living walls weren't a pure white, but something mixed with yellow and there were little chips on the legs of the couch from something long before his time. The clock made a ticking noise as the seconds passed, one that rung like bells in his ears and was only silenced once the record player was turned on, much quieter than it had been before but Remus heard it all the same. The false tree in the library, he could feel its want to grow, its frustration at being restrained. His magic reached out to everything, reminding him how much he had changed, but it was worth it when the clasp of a familiar necklace clicked around his neck and he touched his ring once more, reminded of the one that wore its match on his finger.
It was worth it because he had done all of this for his family, the pack that he had made in school. And if he gained a new one in the process, then he would keep it as far away from the fighting as he could, hoping that at least one comes out unscathed.
—
The rest of Autumn passed in a flurry of secret letters sent to those at Hogwarts and less and less Order meetings as Winter dug its harsh claws into the war.
Part of it, Remus knew, was because Dumbledore - and therefore the Order of The Phoenix - did not trust the wolf as much as they once had. Not after the month spent amongst the pack. Some of them were waiting for him to prove ferial and weren't shy with their disapproving gazes. But the other reason was that there were less and less members to invite so such meetings as they suffered losses from attacks waged on them, even less information to give at such meetings.
The only good thing about winter was when Dora was able to sneak away during the winter holidays, bearing letters from the other three as they were unable to do the same. They drank hot chocolate in front of the fire and she told him stories that the boys hadn't thought to write of and of hidden places that none of the Marauders had ever found. They spoke about books and the older teen the younger in the lab down below, brewing more potions for the full moons and dancing around the time that had been missing. They ran through the woods as animals until long after dark, the stars their only companions as the pair thought of the others that should be alongside them. But even that, those precious memories that kept the wolf sane during the long months, were tainted by the all consuming loneliness that set in once more as the Ravenclaw left.
With spring came a swell of magic as the world came to life once more. The sort of wildness that only life could bring. He could feel every flower and vine and the blades of grass returning to life once more after a long winter. The air was full of the sort of magic that only his kind could grasps, and some days weren't spent doing only that, dancing through the gardens and growing the potions ingredients there as the world sung a song that none of those with human ears could ever hope to hear. The feeling of it was breathtaking with the new control that Remus held, but he would have given it all up in an instant for summer not to come, because that was the summer that everything began to change.
It was the summer that Regulus Black died.