Green Notebook

The rain dripped off the eaves outside, soft and subdued onto the azaleas below. The soft noise penetrated through the window and the walls and blankets and pillows to the ears of Remus Lupin, who lay in a tightly curled ball in his bed, trying to block it all out. He didn't want to hear the rain. He didn't care if he went outside ever again.

His eyes burned as he pressed them bleakly against the green leather, soft from all these years. He didn't want to open it, not again. He didn't want to read anything inside there--the jokes, the notes, the doodles, plans. Why bother? It wouldn't do anything for him. Rip his heart out and slash it to pieces methodically while reducing him to a wreck, twisting and turning in his bed, trying not to cry and curling up, howling deep inside his bones. Hating himself.

Unbidden, the thoughts came anyway--it seemed like they usually did. Screaming and howling brokenly, a monster's howl broken by a human scream of pure terror. He could feel the arms around him now as substantial as they had been, mere wraiths of memory still too powerful in his brain. Sirius's weight pressed against his back, arms tightly around him, sometimes dog, sometimes man, changing as Remus did, holding him down. Even now, he could remember Sirius holding him tightly as he screamed, remember the faintest sensation of tears on the back of his neck.

Remus closed his eyes and pulled his feet tighter in. Something like a whimper arose deep in his throat, but if he had let it rise, it would have given way to such howling and screaming and he knew that the rage and sorrow would come forth. His eyelids felt hot and sticky, too dry, and he rubbed his palms against them as if it would help. Opening them, he saw the green notebook again, and his face crumpled before he could help it.

But no tears came. That was years before, trying to hide it from James and Sirius and Peter, his best friends--his only friends. Looking into Sirius's eyes as Sirius told him firmly that they knew he was a werewolf. He could still taste the fear, the overwhelming blackness in the pit of his stomach, salty and horrorifying in the back of his throat, unable to hold back his tears as he put his head in his hands, turning away from his only friends, so ashamed, so scared. But more than that; Sirius's voice as he leaped on Remus, giving him a hug so tight that it seemed like he wanted to block out the world from hurting him. "We don't care," so fervent and hearfelt, so close to tears that they had both started crying, James and Peter joining the spontaneous group hug in the middle of the dorm room.

Remus turned his head restlessly and turned over under the covers, pulling the blankets tighter around him as if to block off the memories, as if they could stop the past from coming back to him. No. The danger there was inside his mind. It had always been inside his mind, the snarling wolf he could feel even when the moon wanted, the part of him that he'd feared, then hated, then finally come to accept. He could never understand how his friends had ever looked past that, once they knew. We don't care, but I do, he shouted at them silently. You were the only ones who didn't care. And guess what? You're gone!

No. Remus bit back the thoughts, tasting blood in his mouth and only then realizing he had bit his lip that hard. He could feel the scream-sob in the back of his throat and pressed his lips together, eyes burning instead of watering. He turned over again and caught sight of the green leather, faded and soft now but still ready to be opened. Unable to stop himself, he opened it.

A picture--there. First page, Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, all of them laughing. Hogwarts Robes, red and gold scarfs worn with patriotic pride--his hanging open, Wormtail's pulled tight, James's twisted round his neck, Padfoot wearing his like a beauty-competition sash across his robes. A turn of the page, and a long written document in Sirius's messy scrawl. Twelve years old, honorary code of the Marauders. A stupid set of rules--everything from 1. Always stick by friends to 63. Never eat ranch dressing with chocolate-chip cookies where Sirius had let silliness get the best of him. Moony read them all, smiling at a few, while others made tears come to his eyes to be blinked back hurriedly.

It was everything. Photos, drawings, graffiti scribbles in Sirius's handwriting, careful plans in James's, even a few snippets of witticism or philosophy in his hand right next to Peter's cartoons. Papers detailing all the secrets of all their pranks, notes on Anamagi, notes on the Marauders' Map. There was empty space in the back where the map was supposed to go--but there was only a note scribbled by Peter about a detention. Pringle had taken it from them.

And in the very back, still new, a note from Padfoot.

Moony--

Keep this. Me and you are the only Marauders left, you have to. I won't even try to explain everything to you now--just know that no matter what, I loved James and Lily. And no matter what, I'll always love you.

-Padfoot

Remus slammed it shut, fury building in him. He loved James and Lily? Then why did you betray them?! he screamed mentally, and realized furiously that drops of water had fallen on the notebook. He saw Sirius's hands resting ontop of it, blessing it and cursing it as he had done with Remus's own body, pale hands over smooth skin, blessing and holding. Somewhere deep inside him, a floodgate opened and he rested his head on the notebook and cried.