Bitter and Sweet and Something Else

How does one describe him? What words could I possibly use to convey to you who he is, truly, underneath everything, underneath all the tangles of his unfortunate circumstances? What is he like, really, behind all those doors? On the other side of all of his walls? Why does he do those things that he does; where do all those idiosyncrasies so utterly unique to him come from?

I used to think about these questions until my mind gave up out of sheer frustration; Paintings have fewer layers. I'd start with the obvious ones, usually something like:

Intelligent. Reliable. Articulate. Loyal. And fair would always find its way in there; I have so many vivid memories of him being more just and impartial at the age of twelve than most of the people I've met in my adult life.

Kind. Generous. Delightfully, wickedly, sarcastically funny.

Brave, like nothing I've ever seen. I don't mean the kind of courage it takes to go plunging into an abyss of bodily danger and turmoil. I mean the kind of guts you need to take responsibility for everything you do, for everything you are.

Not bravery, he'd say, Fortitude. Be more imaginative with your synonyms.

It makes me snicker, even now. Even as a grown man, he had the balls to correct my grammar and spelling. He was the only one who will ever be able to scold me and actually make me feel ashamed of myself.

But despite all the times he's made me realize what an utter arse I am, he's always right. He has a clarity of judgement that never ceases to astonish me. Even as a boy, he always knew the answers to every question asked of him, and knew exactly where to start looking in the rare event that he didn't. Gifts that I was more than a little jealous of at first, more so because of the one quality that he possesses to more extent than any other:

Modesty.

For a man with so much insight, he has one blind spot; one thing in the whole, vast world that he always misjudges, underestimates, and belittles, and that is himself.

Remus Lupin only knows a tiny fraction of his own worth.

Gods and Merlin above, but I have never heard him so much as utter a word of self-praise, of self-congratulations or self satisfaction that wasn't laced with tinges of sarcasm and self deprecation. If someone compliments him, he gets quiet and smiles sadly, as if he pities them for their mistake.

It nearly drives me mad, that part of him. I've tried so many times to convince him otherwise, tried to show him how much good I see in him; those brilliant, wonderful, and charming aspects of himself that we all find so endearing and so striking.

He's resisted all my attempts to date, as Remus is nothing if not resolute. There were moments when I thought I had him, where I thought that I finally had him convinced of his own merit, but they would vanish as quickly as they had come.

It always hurt me when I saw it slip from his face, saw it drown in doubt. I think he truly did try for all of us, but in the end, I think it's a part of who he is. I think it's as deep as the wolf in him, as much a part of his nature. I hate that fact, that he wouldn't be Remus if it weren't for that sense of unworthiness, but it's true.

He's so... resigned. So prepared to just accept himself as this half-monster that doesn't deserve the life he wants. He does everything in his power to be as useful as possible, as functional and practical and constructive as a human being can be, just so he'll be allowed to stay. I've told him that it's not true; he would never need to pay his way with any of us, especially me, but there's nothing I can say or do that can convince him otherwise.

He's so afraid. He'd never let you see it, but he's constantly terrified. I can't comprehend what it must be like to live every day with the dread of being abandoned, turned away, persecuted, betrayed. To never know if you'll be deserted when you need it most because of what you are through no fault of your own. To never know if you'll survive yourself to see the next month.

I know he understands now, at least a little, that we would never have abandoned him. The four of us together; we were more than just a group of very disobedient boys. The Marauders were an ideal; the model of perfect fun, perfect trust, and perfect friendship, and we were his first real taste of any of those things.

I'll never forget how it made me feel to see that look on his face, that emotion that surfaced for just a moment when he first realized that we knew what he was and didn't care. That flicker of hope that nearly made me reach out right then and there and take him in my arms. The urge to comfort him, to protect him and make him happy almost overwhelmed me then, and it still does to this day.

I suppose that's when I realized it. Call it profound friendship, call it love of a brother, but seeing him content and unafraid became a personal charge from that moment on. My own quest for my own personal grail-- a genuine laugh from him, or a smile that wasn't strained with exhaustion and pain.

No one deserves happiness more than Remus. The things I've seen him shoulder with nothing but a small sigh and a darkly humorous comment defy comprehension. My own loss, my wasted twelve years in Azkaban can never compare to his. It's the greatest regret of my life, after James and Lily's deaths, that he had to be the one left behind, utterly alone and convinced that his closest friend had betrayed him.

I was so afraid that it would crush him. That it would finally be the thing to break him, and that it would be entirely my fault. The first time I spoke to him after I'd gone into hiding, I realized that it nearly had. That ache of betrayal-- though proven false when we met again that night at Hogwarts with Harry-- was still there, and it was still hurting him.

I knew he had wanted so badly to completely forgive me, but that intimate trust that we had once shared had been broken, and we had to build it back up from the very beginning; piece it back together from the fragments until it was almost whole again. It could never be the same as what it used to be between us, but we both tried. We both rewound ourselves back to how it was when we first met. We tried to start over completely.

God, even now it makes me think of those days at school, those wondrous times when we were truly free. I remember the day that I met James and Peter, bold and timid standing awkwardly next to each other; and the moment I first saw Remus, thin and frail looking, and how I thought that he would surely be crushed by the weight of the air on his little body. I watched him, expecting the worst; that he would weep with the pressure of having the eyes of the rest of the school on him; that he would collapse under the load of the sorting hat as he put it on his head; but he startled me with his dignity and composure.

Maybe it's a benefit of being a werewolf, but Remus is damned graceful. Always has been, always will be. Even as an eleven-year-old boy who looked as if he'd been half starved. He looks like a librarian, you know. Looks like someone whose joy of reading is second only to his love of knowledge and researching things. This is entirely true, but what you can't see is the iron of his grip, the strength of those slender arms, and the hard resolve in his eyes when he decides to do something. You would never suspect how feral he can be, how passionate and fierce he can get. I'm one of the select few who have seen that side of him; that wild refinement that possesses his whole body when he moves.

It was the first time I saw those honey brown eyes of his flash with that fire. It was then that I glimpsed some of what was under those layers of his. It took me a long time to realize how little anyone really knew about him, how much people just didn't realize there was behind that shyness and calm.

Shy isn't really the right word though. He was never bashful or embarrassed; he was just... reserved. Demure. Retiring. Introverted. Reticent. Taciturn. Unforthcoming...

How many more words would he have been able to come up with than me?

Hesitant. Even slightly coy, but never shy. His insecurities were kept silent and locked away, where no one could even glimpse at them. It's hard enough to figure out how he really feels about anything, much less how he feels about himself. It was a long time before he started being honest with us and began to speak his mind. It was even longer before he started to open up and share himself with us, especially me.

He was so quiet around me during our first two years at Hogwarts. I think that he was startled by how brash and incredibly tactless I was. I know he would argue now that I still am, but I'm sure that I was much worse back then.

See, it was like this: Peter had a transparent, yet sincere desire to please that was endearing, and James had an approachable straightforwardness about him that was reassuring, but I was just a little too aggressive for gentle little Moony. I kept demanding answers from him, kept pushing him to speak up, but got nothing but silence and a few stiff smiles for my trouble for the longest time.

It wasn't until I realized that Remus is fundamentally subtle by nature. Not until then did I stop asking questions and start having conversations. Then, and only then, did I learn anything. It was Remus that taught me that a person's answer doesn't matter; it's how they answer that tells you everything.

So I started to talk with him, and the more I talked, the more amazed I became; this flimsy person, this ill-looking boy, was more complicated than I could imagine. He had more depth to him than I could comprehend, more facets of personality than any of those supposedly compelling characters of literature that he enjoys reading about so much. Remus was like no one I had ever met, or could even imagine.

Quite against my will, I became completely fascinated.

I could never have dreamed of how close we would become in the years that followed. By sixth year my friendship with him was beyond anything I thought possible.

What was I? A brawler with poor manners and a temper. Rough. Undignified. I have coarse qualities, and I know it, and yet... here next to me was Remus, gracious and mild, showing me more patience than I realized a person could possess, more attention than I rightly deserved.

He knew me. He knew me and he still liked me. Despite how I am, he still wanted to be around me and breath the same air. That's the kind of friendship I wouldn't trade for a limb or a tail, and I had it from the last person I would expect.

We're completely different people, he and I. Like Quidditch and cleaning: They just don't seem to go together, do they?

Of course, when I told him that he just blinked at me over the top of his book like I was being moronically thick and said 'Sirius, they both have brooms' and went back to reading.

He always saw what the rest of us couldn't. Whenever he opened his mouth it was to voice something that none of us would ever have even thought of. Bullocks if he and I are anything alike mentally, but we found a deep connection anyway. That link between us never wavered, never changed, despite the strain of broken trust, betrayal, and separation.

It's damn intimidating, that kind of resilience. I was frightened nearly out of my wits when I looked at him after everything, after all that he had been forced by circumstances to assume and believe about me, to see it all still there behind his eyes, and to feel it still in my chest, pulling in answer; Inexplicably and unaccountably still heavy in the air between us, despite the differences that we've always had and always will.

I can barely describe how it feels to know that something that profound can exist between two people; to know that he will always be my friend in the very deepest sense of the word; that he will always know me all the way to my bones, and I him.

I know it sounds like I'm disregarding James completely, but it was just different with him and me. James was my brother, my other half; He was family and home and comfort and we understood each other utterly. He was my counterpart, my partner in everything. James is so deep in me that air is less important than what of him stayed with me after he died. But Remus...

Remus was-- is-- baffling. Puzzling. Mystifying. Perplexing. Bewildering. Maddening? It's not a synonym, but it still applies. He was all these things and more, but above all he was a challenge unlike anything I'd ever had the audacity to tackle, and I became gripped by everything I didn't understand about him.

He intrigued me. Engaged me. Beguiled me, but it was my own fault. I was the one running after something as elusive as the Secret of Remus Lupin, and I paid for it with my own exasperation. Every time I gave up-- and there were many-- he would do something else to rile up my interest again. His eyebrows would raise at a different angle, he would sigh another way, he would get that thoughtful look about something new; and I would have to know why.

The hardest thing of all was learning how to read him. He has the kind of control of his expressions that would make a piece of stone jealous. He has an entire set of skills devoted entirely to making sure that no one has a clue what he's really thinking; the unfortunate result of living as a werewolf, but damned useful sometimes.

Of necessity, he's also a fabulous liar. It's something he's always detested doing, but he only ever did it for us. As a prefect, his word saved us from a lot of trouble, though he always made us exchange it for something; Usually he'd make us write our essays without any of his help, which was always pitifully difficult.

I'll never cease to be stunned by how much knowledge he has, how much he can remember about the most obscure things. He has a nearly perfect memory, which was always very good for homework but very bad for recalling each and every time we teased him or took advantage of his good nature.

He has this expression, this look that he only gives when he knows he's been had but won't do anything about it except make you feel guilty. It never mattered how hard I tried, I always felt like a wanker when he looked at me like that. The worst was after full moon nights when Remus would wake up and realize that we'd just done something incredibly stupid and incredibly dangerous.

Not that we didn't plan our evenings gallivanting about the grounds; quite the contrary. The problem was that more often than not, once we were out in the night air under the moonlight, the plan would be thrown to the wind. Remus might have fabulous judgement, but a werewolf does not. Neither does a stag, a rat, or a dog.

It wasn't until later in life that we realized how devastating it would have been for Remus if something had gone wrong. I can't imagine what it would have done to him if he had bitten one of us, and I can't believe we'd had the beef-headedness to throw that responsibility in his lap. With everything else that he had to live with, everything that he had to endure, we had to add that to the pile.

Remus always felt guilty about our little adventures. He hated lying to Dumbledore after everything the man had done for him, and he always felt horrid about the fact that of all the dangers we ever faced, he was the worst and the most real of them all.

It took me until fifth year and that incident with Snape to truly grasp how much I was hurting him by ignoring the risks of what we did; only when he refused to speak to me did I understand the cost. In those miserable months when he was no longer my friend, I grew up. I became an adult, and I realized how much he meant to me; how badly I craved his companionship, how much I needed him there as my challenge and charge.

Remus had been mad at James and Peter of course, for letting it happen at all, but it was nothing compared to the condescension, near contempt and sheer anger he had had for me. It makes me uncomfortable and slightly nauseous just thinking about how he had looked at me, how his eyes had flared with it and his mouth would draw into that tight, hard line.

I've never seen him look at anyone like that before or since, and the fact that it was me under that terrible gaze makes me feel ill, right at the bottom of my gut.

As soon as he would let me, I apologized to him. I tried to convey how worthless I felt, how much I loathed myself. I had no sympathy whatsoever for Snape, but what I had done to Remus was inexcusable; I had failed. My grail was gone because I was incapable of protecting him from my own idiocy.

There I was, babbling my remorse, and he just listened until I lapsed into silence under his intense scrutiny, ashamed like I've never been. There was a long, tense moment, then he spoke, slowly and forcefully in a tone I never want to hear from him again:

I accept your apology Sirius, and I might even be able to forgive you, but remember this: If you ever put a living, breathing thing in my path while I'm Changed again, I will never speak to you or look you in the face.

I'll never forget how he looked at me then, his jaw set, his eyes searing into mine.

Do you understand me?

I remember how I nodded, entirely convinced that he would never speak to me again either way. I also vividly recall thinking that life without his friendship was the worst torture devisable. Oddly enough, despite the wretchedness of my existence from that moment on, the whole situation gave rise to the fourth most wonderful, fantastic, and brilliant moment of my whole life: That would be, of course, when he forgave me.

It took him almost half a year, but when he did, when he finally smiled at me, I thought I might die of happiness. It was like a whole piece of my life had been missing and it just slid back into place at those words. I remember how it was a Saturday, and that we spent that whole day afterward just talking, catching up, and having all the conversations that we hadn't had in the last six months. He let me tell my stupid jokes, and I let him talk about how fascinating the development of some Runic alphabet was. In the end, it didn't matter because he was speaking to me, and that meant everything in the world.

James and Peter were nearly ecstatic. It must have been terribly awkward for them to be in classes with us, strung between Remus' anger and my dejection. I felt bad about that, but when all four of us were one again, it was forgotten.

After that, there was nothing but bliss. Quidditch and exploring the grounds; running about after hours and learning new hexes; harassing the Slytherins and practicing the aforementioned hexes upon them...

Oh, we still got in trouble-- make no mistake-- but the difference was that we weren't putting anyone in mortal peril. We were no less rambunctious or eager to break rules; we just weren't being as rash, stupid, or utterly obtuse as we went about it.

Collectively, I mean. Remus was never any of those things on his own.

Full moon nights were conducted with more care; Remus gradually came to trust that we wouldn't let him hurt anyone or anything, and he took great comfort in that. It helped his transformations, I think; Anxiety makes everything worse for him. It makes it longer and more painful and it makes him wilder and more aggressive as a wolf.

I've seen him Change so many times. It's terrible to watch him suffer through that, helpless against the agony of it. There's no real relief for it, for being a werewolf. There's no comfort but having someone there with you, and we tried as hard as we could. We alternated; made sure that there was at least one of us with him every time, made sure that he wasn't alone when the morning came.

After is always the very worst. He's beyond exhausted; almost delirious sometimes, and damned disoriented. There's always the terrible pain of bones broken and grown and changed and healed again. There's the ache of muscles stretched and strained, taxed from running and hunting. He shakes sometimes, like you wouldn't believe. Sometimes it's so bad that he can't even stand and we have to help him walk.

It always makes me sad to see him sleep like the dead after a full moon, to count how many days have been robbed from his life just recovering from what will only happen again. It's relentless for him. It never ends, and it never will, and I think that troubles me the most. I've never found a way to save him from that; I don't think a way exists, and I just don't know how he can muster the strength to not give up.

I like to think that I may have saved him from doing just that, from losing all hope. That one time...

It only happened once, but I desperately wish that it will never happen again. I don't know what was different about that one full moon, but there was something that made it hell for him, made it different from all the others. I don't know if he hadn't been sleeping, or if the stress of school was finally getting to him; I'll never know, but the fact was that he went completely berserk.

I was left alone with him; neither James or Peter were there to help me when the scent of all the sleeping students of Hogwarts came by him on the breeze. It is a fact that if a werewolf smells people, he will seek them out, and there was only me between him and a castle full of easy food. I knew what would happen if I let him get by me, could imagine the chaos of a fully grown and bloodthirsty wolf running through the corridors of the school. I couldn't bear to see Remus hurt from unintentionally causing that kind of harm, so I fought him with everything I had and more.

Endless hours of struggling with him, holding him back, keeping him at bay. I had to throw all of my weight into him just to push him back at all, had to drag him inch by inch away from the castle. I goaded him, taunted him; nipped, clawed and bit him; tormented him until he came after me and away from Hogwarts with all the rage of a true beast.

I'll never forget how he looked that night. In the darkness, all I could see was the gold of his eyes; his teeth gleaming, bared at me in fury, the steam of his breath seeping from between them; the moonlight on his bristling fur, his raised hackles, his tail held high, his ears flattened back. All I could hear were the sounds that came from him, that roaring, guttural snarl, that unnatural part human howl that you can't mistake for any other animal.

He's huge as a wolf; far bigger than me even as that heavy bear of a dog. He nearly crushed me with his weight alone; I was almost caught under him when I managed to over balance him, managed to tumble us both into a knot of brush. I had to keep his focus, keep all of his attention on me, whatever the cost.

The number of times I was almost bitten are innumerable. I've never told him how close a call it was; he can't remember everything about that night, and want it to stay that way. If he had any idea how rabid he had been, how savage and ferocious, how brutally and violently wild he had become under that one moon...

I've never seen him like that, and I don't want him to know. I could never bring myself to add to the distress he still holds over that night.

I remember battling with him until neither of us could move. I remember how we fell next to each other, dog and wolf, mere feet apart but unable to lash out for our exhaustion.

I remember waking up first, seeing him next to me, finally human, and almost crying for him.

God, the sight of him. It was the worst I've ever seen him. He looked... tormented. Broken. Even in his sleep he was trembling, his features smeared with blood that was as much his as it was mine. I could do little else other than roll over and wait for him to stir.

Torture couldn't make me forget the expression on his face when he finally opened his eyes. I knew immediately that he hadn't seen me, was looking upward at the sky and not sideways, but I didn't have the energy to make even the slightest sound, couldn't make my voice work to call out to him as he lay an arms length away. I could only watch as his expression flooded first with physical pain, then with an emotional anguish so deep it hurt me equally to see it.

He couldn't move, could only tremble, and I was just as helpless as tears began to stream noiselessly down his face. I watched him cry silently until I couldn't stand it. My body felt like it had sunk completely into the ground, like it was made of rock and aching pain, but I lifted my arm anyway, and touched my hand awkwardly to his. He jerked, labouring to turn his head so that he could see me fully. His eyes were full of startled shock, and it took me a moment to realize what that meant.

He had expected to be alone. He hadn't expected me to be there with him, to wake up beside me in the forbidden forest. He had expected to be abandoned, like he always thought he would be.

A myriad of emotions crossed his face, raw and basic; confusion, disbelief and discomfort, hurt and regret. I wanted to see relief there, wanted to see some comfort at my presence, but I couldn't find either. His face twisted with pain and more tears slid down his face as he winced; I don't think he even noticed them. He turned his face back to the sky, and I could hear him just trying to breath. He spoke after a moment, and his voice sounded terrible; that eerie howl of his always tears up his throat.

I don't want to do this any more he said, and the concealed hopelessness I heard there frightened me. Then he sighed, a small sound for the heaviness it held.

It hurts. I want it to stop.

For him to say that, for him to even utter those words meant that he was on the very edge of his endurance. He had that look on his face, the one he gets when he knows that he-- and he alone-- must do what has to be done.

The fear I felt grew tenfold; everything he had said, everything that I could see in his face, all of it was pointing to something I didn't want to imagine, wanted to prevent but didn't know how to stop.

And then he just said it. The words I knew were coming but didn't want to hear.

I'm leaving. I can't be here at Hogwarts. I don't know what Dumbledore was thinking when he brought me here...

Remus was giving up on me. He wanted to disappear, wanted to go somewhere where I couldn't follow him, couldn't watch over him. It was unbearable to me, and made me inexplicably angry with him. I sat up against the objections of my body; groaned, felt my voice finally start to work, and said exactly what I was thinking.

I'm not going to let you, and you're a selfish bastard if you ever thought I would.

He stared at me from the forest floor for a moment, then tried to sit. I had to help him; I could feel his hand shaking in mine when I pulled him up to face me. His eyes met mine, ringed almost blue with streaks of clean running down from them; His tears had stopped, but they had washed trails in the blood and dirt on his pale face.

How can you do this? Every time?

He asked it with a kind of exasperation that bordered on anger. I was the one who sighed.

It's not about how, I just do.

Why? I don't understand.

Remus is so brilliant in so many ways, but he just can't comprehend why we have the faith in him that we do. I sighed again.

Because you're my friend, you moron. I'd do anything for you.

He didn't say anything after that, and neither did I. I moved to sit back to back with him, and we stayed like that for a long time. The sun was in the sky and sifting idly through the trees before we went back to the castle and explained ourselves to several panicking teachers.

I'll never be sure exactly how it happened, but after that day, something about our friendship changed. It deepened somehow, in a way that I couldn't put my finger on. It was just... different... like it had shifted towards something new and we couldn't help it.

I never found out what he really thought of what I'd said, whether he really thought I would stop him if he tried to leave, but of course, he never said anything about it. It made me damned anxious. My instinct was to push him, try to force him to see all the reasons why he should stay, but I didn't. I knew I had to let him make up his own mind.

Even then, I couldn't just leave him alone. I'm not like that. I can't help but force myself upon people, and I know that Remus knows that about me. I think that's why he accepted my offer of staying with us that summer; if he didn't, he knew he would never be able to get me to bugger off.

James had managed to convince his parents the previous year to give us the guesthouse until we found a place of our own after we graduated. It was easy enough to make it fit for three people, and we had a shed where Remus could Change. I knew he had misgivings at first, but when he finally settled into the idea, after he'd spent a few days, I could tell that he didn't regret it.

It was a bloody brilliant summer. Warm and lazy like a good holiday should be, and I didn't do anything but lounge about, play Quidditch in the yard with Prongs-- Moony refused to get on a broom-- and talk for hours. Without school in the way, our conversations sometimes lasted for days, interrupted only by meals and sleep.

I'll always remember how much more I learned about Remus during that time, how I came to peel back a few more of his layers. He taught me the simple pleasures of a leisurely walk or a good book, a puzzle for the mind or a moment of stillness; we spent the entirety of one evening just sitting and listening to the rain.

In return, I taught him all about the joys of a heaping bowl of ice cream for breakfast and the virtues of several drinking games. I also taught him how to draw interesting works of art on his waffles with syrup and how to terrify ducks by pelting them with whole slices of bread.

I'm perfectly aware of how juvenile my amusements are, thank you very much. What's important was that he joined me and appreciated my sense of fun for what it was.

I went with him sometimes when he strolled about James' neighbourhood, and he read out loud to us sometimes at night, before we fell asleep. I've always loved the way his voice sounds when he reads. I didn't realize it then, but that wonderful quality of speech was part of what made him such a good teacher.

I know how much being a professor at Hogwarts meant to him, and I'm sorry I had to be a part of what led to his resignation. I regret so much of that night, and yet, there are parts of it that I wouldn't change for the world.

Seeing Harry; that's one of them. It's number two on my list of the fantastic moments of my life, tied with seeing Remus again for the first time in twelve years the same night. It was a little slice of peace for me, knowing that both he and Harry finally knew the truth, knowing that I finally had the chance to fulfil my obligations.

I could say this a thousand times, but I'll say it again; God, but Harry looks like James. As he got older I could see more of Lily coming out in the colour of his eyes, the arch of his eyebrows and in the shape of his jaw-- but the way he moves, the way he speaks, the build of his body; it's all James. It's almost wonderfully painful to look at him, to see so much of my best friend. I know I've been accused of being blind to the fact that Harry and his father are separate people, but I know it through and through, despite what they say. I'm far from being in denial, whatever they may think otherwise.

More than anything, I'm aware of the gravity of responsibility that I have towards him; the vows I made to James and Lily to protect him and keep him healthy and whole. Harry's my godson, and whatever hovering I do over him is for his own and his parent's sake, not for my own selfish wishes or regrets or guilt.

I was always grateful for how well Remus understood that, for how he reminded me that what anyone else thought about it didn't matter. After all those rows in Grimmauld place with Mrs. Weasley, just his sturdy presence would help me remember that it was about what was between me and Harry, and he and I alone.

I'll never forget those times when I'd get into a spat at school and I'd face off with some Slytherin twit ready to duel. Without exception, regardless of whether I was in the right, Remus was there, silently backing me. No matter where he was in the room, I always felt his support; invisible, unapparent, but as tangible to me as the wood of a wand in my hand.

His loyalty is downright unwavering. His devotion to the people he cares about is humbling to see, phenomenal in its depth and strength and subtlety.

It also means that betrayal hits him hardest of all. It means that treachery can slice into him like no other knife. Peter's ill-conceived attempt at self-preservation was more successful at hurting him than any other scheme devised.

I think of all those times where he stood by me in every way, believed in me and trusted every word that came from my mouth. I try to think of how it must have felt to have every one of those memories stained by what he thought I had done, the lives he thought I had taken. I try, but my imagination mercifully refuses.

I can see it in him, though. I can glimpse that wound in his eyes, and every time I do, I curse my inability to punish the man we'd thought was our friend. I'm not a patient person, but I know that someday he'll get exactly what he deserves, and I'll wait as long as I have to -as many years or decades as it takes-- to watch him suffer.

There's a part of me, a terrible vehemence and wrath that only wakes when someone I love is being hurt. Every single time I think of that rat bastard Peter and what he did to James and Lily, to Remus and to Harry, I can feel it roiling in my gut. It's something I felt every day for the twelve years I spent in that horrid place, and every day since. I won't let it go until retribution finds its mark.

The Peter that we had known in school-- the Peter that was our mate and a fellow Marauder-- was not the same person that had blown off his own finger to frame me. He would not even be able to conceive of the backstabbing he became fluent in later in life. The person we knew as Wormtail was simple, good natured, and sincere. He was weak as well, but that incurable flaw didn't become crippling until fear made it so.

When Voldemort first came to his full power, we were all fighting blind. It was bloody chaos and sometimes the dread was overwhelming; even people of the toughest fibre were tested and broken as easily as dolls and you watched them falling all around you, every day.

He was as terrified and as strained as the rest of us, but he couldn't endure it, couldn't bear it. That's when he failed; when he crumpled and gave in. When he refused to suffer for the sake of the rest of us; when he forgot that all of us suffered and fought together for a cause, for our freedom and for our lives. That's when he changed. The boy we had known, and the man who had been our friend; both ceased to exist the moment he considered the options that Voldemort was laying before him.

All his worst qualities became his only virtues, and our Peter was as good as dead.

I'll always hate him for what he did; I'll always despise that fault in him. No matter how clearly I can see the reasons, that hate will never change. Harry won't ever have his parents, I won't ever have my best friend back, and none of us will ever have those twelve years of lies magically transfigured into happy times.

I hate what those years did to Remus. I hate how much of the boy I'd known was gone from him, how much loss and life have taken from him. I hate to see how weary he is, how ragged and how alone; I feel a deep pang when I see how he can't even afford to buy robes that aren't patched and fraying, when I see the marks of how he's been treated by dogmatist people who fear his condition and refuse to see him as more than just a dangerously afflicted inconvenience.

I keep remembering how he used to be, before his hair was streaked with grey and before the lines of exhaustion were etched permanently into his face. I keep remembering school and the guiltless, untroubled times we had there.

We used to charm the suits of armour to sing filthy Christmas carols a week before the end of year exams in June. We would put a carnivora spell on the carpet right at the bottom of the girl's staircase and listen to them scream when their slippers got eaten right off their feet. We used to have ink fights in the common room until we were all smeared and dripping and black from head to foot, and all the furniture in sight was in about the same state. We would go under James' invisibility cloak, take an open kipper can on a string and lead Mrs. Norris into a cupboard and lock her in there to listen to her yowl. Sometimes we threw a bucket of hot honey on an unsuspecting Slytherin first year, doused them with feathers, put a scarf over their eyes and then sent them back to their dungeon from the highest tower possible. We used to jam Filibuster fireworks down the toilets and light them so that everyone in the entire school who was trying to take a leak got an exploding catherine wheel up the arse.

I remember a time when you could look over and see Remus smiling just because he was content. I remember when Peter didn't have an ounce of guile or deceit in his whole body. I remember when James was simply there, alive and ready to talk or scheme, eager to joke or laugh.

And I remember our last year at Hogwarts like I was still there, the scent of the dorm beds fresh in my nose and the exact colour of the bed curtains burned into the back of my eyelids.

It was the year that James finally won the heart of his pretty vixen; when I finally stopped thinking of her as Evans the Red Haired Man Eater and started thinking of her as Lily, the love of my best mate.

It was also the year that Remus finally pulled off the impossible and got Outstanding or Exceeds Expectations on every last one of his NEWTS. We celebrated by thoroughly mortifying him in front of the whole Gryffindor house. James and I came up with a dramatic narrative of his academic exploits, his intellectual toil, and his epic final battle on the field of the examining room against time, the Forces of Forgetfulness, and a leaky quill.

I remember how embarrassed he'd been, hiding in a corner of the common room while we stood on the tables and enacted every moment of it in very loud voices and sweeping gesticulations. He'd picked the farthest point away from us that he could, resolutely turning his chair-back to us, ignoring us, as pink-faced as I've ever seen him, for the entire two hours. He'd tried to escape to the dormitories, politely excusing himself of course, but we'd planned for that and glued the door shut earlier that day.

We certainly could have charmed it closed, but Remus is damned good with a wand, and besides: It doesn't matter how resourceful you are with spells because epoxy will open for no man.

That said, I guess it's a given that we slept in the hall that night. Couldn't get the door open, you see. Remus nearly had a conniption laughing at us when we found that out, and gleefully cited a few choice quotes about foresight and karma.

It was the year of our collective seventeenth birthday; the age at which you are allowed to do the many things that you've done for many years but weren't technically supposed to. It wasn't the first time we'd ever been drunk, but the parties we had scattered over those particular months of school were certainly the most memorably intoxicated. I don't actually remember most of mine, other than the vague image of some tarts dressed in nothing but floss, but I take great pleasure in recalling the others.

Peter's birthday involved the largest amount of alcohol overall, and he spent most of it giggling hysterically at the idea that his glass became easiest to see through when it was emptied by drinking whatever was in it. On his birthday, James decided that he would be the bartender, and we spent the evening and much of the morning pulling faces at the disgusting concoctions that came from his imagination and trying not to laugh and wretch at the same time. Naturally Remus didn't want a party, but we plied him with a great deal of liquor disguised as inconspicuous soft drinks and invented new and exciting and inevitably drunken forms of poetry until we all passed out around the time we would normally be getting up to go to history of magic. He was the only one of us that went to class at all that day, and I'm amazed at the will power it must have taken to listen to Binns for two hours with a raging hangover.

When we woke up several hours later and boggled at him rather unkindly at what he'd endured for the sake of school, he just looked at us and said, perfectly seriously, You said you wanted me to take notes for you as if it was all the justification he needed.

Makes me think of that one birthday party we had for Moony-- his fourteenth-- when we dragged him to Honeydukes and forced him to pick something, anything, so we could spend our money on his whim. As expected, he picked the absolute cheapest thing in the store, but we were ready for that too. To thwart his efforts to be thrifty, we bought the whole lot of it and demanded that he eat it all. We were half joking, but he did it anyway. No other human being would have been able to eat an entire crate of Jelly Slugs in three days, but he did, and he did it because we asked him to.

That's one thing that takes you a while to notice about Remus, the one quality of his that makes itself most apparent by its absence; He never complains. Ever. Whining and self pity simply aren't in his vocabulary.

Even when just looking at a Jelly Slug would cause a reaction that can only be described as deeply allergic. Even when we teased him into doing our homework and he had to stay up late to finish it all. Even when he was lying on the forest floor in untold amounts of pain after that horrific full moon night in our sixth year.

Even and especially when that slimy son of a harlot Snape put wolfsbane in Moony's food; when he started throwing up blood and we had to carry him to the hospital wing. The bastard smiled and Remus just shook his head and said to leave it.

I've never seen anyone that sick; It was like he'd swallowed silver, but even that would have been better. Silver burns, but as soon as it isn't touching him any more it's fine. Pure wolfsbane will seep into the blood of a werewolf and stay there while it disintegrates his insides for hours or even days. Remus was seriously ill for almost a week, and it was everything I could do not to break Snape's neck for it.

I settled instead for haunting the hospital wing and terrorizing anyone who had the nerve to bother my friend, even Madame Pomfrey. When she threw me out I stalked around outside the doors instead until the wee hours of the morning, at which point I snuck back in to make sure Remus was sleeping well enough. There were many nights when I fell asleep at his side, stealing a corner of his bed as my pillow.

I don't know how a measly six square inches of mattress could have let me sleep as well as I did those nights, but the sound of his steady breathing was enough to make me forget about my uncomfortable chair and the stiffness in my neck every morning when I woke up with blanket wrinkles on my cheek.

As appalling as it was, it was the only really nasty thing that happened to us for the whole of the year. Despite Snape's little prank, I'll always look back on those times as the best of my life for so many reasons, and the memories I have of those days are irreplaceable to me.

I remember all the different kinds of days we had; There were the busy ones, the ones full of classes, homework hastily done and studying half as hard as we really should have; There were the lazy ones, of which I fondly recall slanting sunlight and a number of comfy, overstuffed chairs pulled together so that we could lounge properly; The Quidditch days of adrenaline and glory; The days of mischief and calculating when the Marauders came to create their most ingenious plans; The various holidays that included a number of vigorous ink fights and wonderfully long and uninterrupted conversations... and the one day that I don't really remember anything about at all except for this:

It was dinner, something like the third week of term all the way back in September. Fellow Gryffindors surrounded me, and sitting across from me was Remus.

He was bantering animatedly with Lily about some complicated theoretical point of transfiguration, and he was gesturing and drawing on napkins as they argued about it, looking as happy as I'd ever seen him, as content as if he belonged there, cheerfully disagreeing with another mind not unlike his own. I was just watching him when realization struck me like thunder; drowned me like a tidal wave. I was suddenly blind and deaf to everything except the sight of that tiny smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, that hidden flicker in his honey eyes.

I was in love with him.

No crisis of sexuality, no emotional vertigo, just... Remus.

I think I laughed. That would certainly explain why everyone was suddenly staring at me, bewildered at the grin that was coming over my face of it's own accord. I couldn't breath, felt like I would split at the seams, but I was beaming. I was vaguely aware that James was watching me very closely, looking supremely confused, but I didn't care because Remus had turned his gaze to me, and those eyes met mine.

He lifted an eyebrow and tilted his head in that way that I know means Have you gone properly mad, or is this just another false alarm?

Struck dumb by the lovely familiarity of that gesture, of that expression, I just shook my head, still smiling as wide as the English channel. I could have stared at him for the rest of the evening, basking in the incredible feeling that had come over me, but some instinctual part of me still knew that would be far more than just suspiciously odd. I had to get away from him before I burst, or worse, burst into song.

The urge to flee was so overwhelming that I just got up and walked off. A great deal of confused noise followed me, a great mush of sound that didn't register in my mind at all as words, but I just didn't care; there was something heavy inside of me, so intense and so tranquil and so wonderful and so completely and utterly terrifying in its serenity that I had to get it out of me.

So I went flying. I grabbed my broom, the pitch was free, and I flew; as high and as fast and as hard as I could. Until the wind was singing in my ears and burning my eyes dry. Until up and down were barely distinguishable and I was dizzy with speed and height. Tumbling through the sky could almost compare to the thing threatening to erupt from my chest... almost, but never.

I was in love with him; with Remus, one of my best friends.

I was in love with him, and I wanted to spend the rest of my life at his side.

I knew that then, as surely as snitches and galleons are gold. I didn't care how; I would do it. I would be there to give him a friendly and violent shove towards true love when he found a girl he liked. I would get him drunk at the bachelor party that he would never organize himself and make wonderful speeches at his wedding. I would happily change his children's diapers and do his laundry so his pretty wife would never have to.

As long as I could be near him. As long as he didn't turn me away.

Hope never even occurred to me. There was no question that he would never, ever feel the same thing in return because he isn't--simply isn't-- gay. I've often seen him looking at women with an appreciation that's more than just plutonic. I knew that, but it didn't matter to me. I could handle unrequited love; I could deal with him never looking at me in that way, could use my infinite respect for him and my own dogged determination to keep him out of my head on long sleepless nights.

I would say that I was more than happy just to be his friend, but 'just' is such a pathetic word. I've said it before, but it bears to be repeated: Remus is a fascinating person. I can't imagine anyone else having such wonderfully infuriating qualities, such intriguing and paradoxical tendencies. Being his friend is downright bloody fucking brilliant, and to say that I was happy 'just' with that is like staring at a mountain of bullion and saying it's only metal.

He never noticed how I felt; I made sure of it. I knew when to look away so he wouldn't catch me staring, how to change my smile from amorous to amused in a moment so he would never see. As observant as he his, I managed to hide from him everything I secretly wished to shout from the highest tower.