The Very Grey Adventures of Remus Lupin

Though the fact went unnoticed, it is nevertheless important to note that the man arrived in the small seaside village of Abercasden a week after the full moon.

His face scarred and tired and older than his years, the man limped slightly as he pushed open the door of Abercasden's only pub. A grizzled old man sat at the bar, and a sullen bartender wiped dusty yellow glasses with a rag. Apart from these two, the pub was empty.

This was not too surprising, since the pub served the tiny village, which in itself was nothing more than a few squat, weather-beaten houses. People didn't come to Abercasden. If any wandered in by accident they left soon after. The weather was always either misty, with a damp that chilled the bones, or stormy and fearsome. If the sun ever did shine (a rare occasion), it was the wild muted light before a storm, with nothing cheery or warming about it.

No, Abercasden, with it's steep cliffs and grey beaches, was most definitely not the tourist attraction that the more cheerful beaches down the coast, ten miles or so, were.

As the man entered the pub, seven nights gone the full moon, the bar tender looked at Dai, his only regular customer, and exchanged a glance of scepticism.

"Car broke down?" asked the bartender gruffly.

"Sorry?" asked the man distractedly, "Oh, no. I've come to stay, for a little while. Do you have any rooms available?"

Dai choked on his whisky and glanced worriedly at the bartender.

"Rooms? You mean you're staying? Here?'

"Uh....yes, please," said the man, looking down at the puddle of rain water collecting on the floor at his feet.

The bartender looked at the man carefully. Underneath his heavy raincoat he wore a grey woollen cardigan over a shirt, and grey trousers that were patched and shabby. Everything about the man seemed to droop. His face was very pale, with three shiny pink scars running diagonally from one cheek to another, and his hair hung in damp strands across his forehead. At his feet was a small leather case, battered and scarred like it's owner. Branded on the side, just visible, was the name 'R. J. Lupin'.

The bartender shrugged his shoulders, evidently unsure what to make of this strange man, turning up from nowhere and wanting to stay. In Abercasden. He took down a key from a board behind the bar, wiped the cobwebs from it, and passed it to the strange man.

"First floor, room 3, end of the corridor."

*

Remus Lupin managed to get the old key in the rusty lock after the third attempt. It proved impossible, however, to turn it and open the door. Glancing around to make the sure the shabby creaking corridor was deserted, he pulled a thin wand from his pocket and pointed it at the lock.

"Alohamora"

The room was cold and damp, the sheets musty, as though the bed had not been slept in for years. Lupin deposited his case on the floor beside the bed and shook the thick layer of dust from the sheets.

To the left of the bed was a window that faced out towards the sea. The sill was covered in impressive mildew, the mould offering the only colour in the place, bright red and green and shockingly out of place.

Lupin smiled ruefully as he caught his reflection in the mirror: he was looking greyer and more threadbare with every passing month. He imagined himself wearing clothes as wild and bright as the colourful mildew, and came to the conclusion that he would still give the impression of greyness.

Lupin returned his gaze to the sea and thick mist that concealed the place that he had come to see.

*

Down at the bar, a short while later, Remus Lupin sat by the fire that did nothing to warm the bleak room, and attempted to read a book. It was rather difficult, seeming as the bartender and the old man were staring at him as though he were about to turn into a frog at any moment.

After a while he put down the book and smiled at them.

"What business do you have here, then?" asked the barman bluntly.

"Not much really, just come to take in the sights," Lupin answered brightly. The two men gaped at him, suspiciously.

"Well," said Dai, swivelling round on his bar stool slowly and awkwardly, so that he faced Lupin, "I can't say that there are any sights around here. Except if you count the island of course.." He trailed off as the bartender shot him an angry glance.

"No good will come of talking of that place, mark my words," stated the barman.

"Oh cai dy geg, Hywel," grumbled Dai, sipping his whiskey, though Lupin of course did not understand a word. "Hywel here has always been on the suspicious side..well, you are, you see, if you live in Abercasden. There's not many that will talk of the place when the wind is in from the sea.'

"Really?" Lupin asked, subconsciously picking at the binding on his book.

"It's the coldest wind you'll ever feel - goes right down to your bones, takes the breath right out of you. And if that weren't enough there's the screams."

"The screams?"

Dai nodded into his glass. "Oh yes. They come on the wind: horrible, ungodly, they are. Some say they're the poor lost souls, trapped beneath the waves in the ships that came to an end on the rocks. They say that the sailors lost their minds, lost the very will to live, wrecked their vessels and all those aboard."

Lupin shuddered slightly. "But you don't think that do you? You don't think they're the sailors calls?"

Hywel scowled and went back to drying his pint glasses with the rag, and Dai ignored him and turned back to Lupin.

"No, no. I don't believe it. I've sailed past it you see, when I was young and more foolish than I am now. I've seen it - unlike some who talk as if they know everything," he said, casting a look at Hywel, "And it's not the rocks you should be afraid of."

"Really?" prompted Lupin, after a pause from the old man.

"No, no. It's the island. It's not right."

"Have you ever been there - set foot on the island, I mean?"

"Nefoedd, no! I wouldn't set foot on that piece of rock if you paid me a thousand pounds!" the man chuckled bitterly. "There's a building on it," he continued after a few more fortifying sips of whiskey. "A castle, or fort, or something. It's deserted, or meant to be. From here, on a good day, you can make out the building from the rock, but no. It's not right. Not a good place."

"It's a government thingamy!" Hywel piped in, "Some sort of research place. For spies and such, and horrible experiments, I don't doubt."

"Well I do, Hywel ap Dafydd! I've been around Abercasden since before you were even born and there is no one alive on that island, and never has been as long as I've known it."

"But on a clear night you can see the lights!" argued the barman. "Clear as day they are, little twinkling lights, like ghosts!"

"No no no, fool!" shouted Dai, swivelling back round in his chair.

The argument continued for some time, the two men bickering over the bar, and Remus Lupin staring into the flames of the fire and trying to stop himself from shivering.

*

The next day did not so much dawn, as seep from the night. Lupin washed and dressed, wrapped his heavy coat - barely dry from the previous night - around himself, and headed outside into the damp salty air.

Slightly clearer today, the island could be seen miles out to sea - a tiny black speck that managed to look ominous despite it's diminutive size. It lay bleak beneath the miserable sky, fat rain clouds with their undersides ragged like a painting run with spilt water.

It was not hard to put the Muggle stories into place, with what he knew about that island. He had come to visit it to...to what?

He asked himself again, the question that had been pulling annoyingly at the corners of his mind since he arrived in Abercasden the previous afternoon.

Why was he putting himself through this? And now of all times.

Lupin stopped his shuffling walk along the cliff tops and sat down; more of a crumpling of limbs and folding in of body than anything else.

It had all happened, of course, on the first night of the full moon. The thought crept into his mind again like something living: what if he had been around that night, and not enslaved to the path the moon cut across the sky? Could he have made a difference? Or would he have gone the same way as Peter?

Lupin rubbed his eyes wearily, feeling tears prickle at the corners, an uncomfortable and unfamiliar feeling. He had not cried in years.

But here he was, the last of the Marauders. But for Sirius of course, but it had been two days since he'd been taken to that rock the Muggles called Abercasden Island.

There had been that awful morning, following the first full moon. The knock on his door, Dumbledore telling him quietly. The sick feelings of shock and guilt and grief and disbelief all tumbling on top of one another until he couldn't make head nor tales of anything anymore. The world had turned upside down overnight.

And then Peter left, gone the same way as Lily and James. The Potter's funeral, in which Lupin sat feeling so out of place, and seeing Sirius Black's face looking back at him from every person there.

He felt, absurdly, that his friend should be there, as he had been at the wedding. And the night they'd sat and watched James pace the room, as Lily struggled next door. And later, welcomed in, looking at each other and feeling like intruders while James crooned, in his own little tone deaf way, to the sleepy Lily and the baby in her arms. They'd wanted more, James had said. Siblings for Harry so that he wouldn't be alone. A little girl next, when the world was a safer place again.

Well, the world was a safer place now, apparently. And James and Lily were buried in the graveyard of the little church they'd been married in, a few years earlier.

After the funeral he'd camped outside the Ministry, demanding to see Sirius Black. But the trial was rushed through, in the new confidence of the Ministry of Magic, and in truth, very few paid attention to the sentencing of the man who had killed the Potters, and left an orphan behind.

Lupin shook in a great sigh, feeling the dank air fill his lungs. It was not a time to brood. It was a time to celebrate, apparently. But he couldn't help feeling a kind of guilty uselessness, as though he'd turned up for a fight and realised he was too late, and everyone had gone home. Everyone had changed and he was here, still the same old Lupin as ever, a few more scars the only evidence of years passed. He'd been cut loose, left to drift somewhere he did not know, alone.

Back at the pub in the little village of Abercasden, the man packed his few belongings in the battered case marked 'R. J. Lupin', and turned his back on the island, just as the wind changed direction. It pivoted round and blew him out of town, like a broken umbrella turned inside out, carrying with it the pleading voices of Azkaban.