Secrets

Remus had one very large secret. This secret was an irrevocable part of his life, but this severity lessened the burden of secrecy.

It was the little secrets he felt keenly, the ones he told to no one but himself in the late, dark nights. He hid them, tucking them away inside of himself like string in a bird's nest. You couldn't distinguish them from the whole, but without them he would crumple, hollow.

His first secret, besides the earliest one, was the day he visited his aunt and uncle. He arrived early, to discover his uncle missing. Remus found his aunt weeping in the bathroom, staring blankly into the mirror, trying desperately to cover the blossom of bruising on her cheek. She never saw him watching her, and when she came out, her face was perfect, her smile composed. He never told his mother, keeping that reflected image hidden deep in his mind. It wasn't until he was older that he wondered if his mother had known, whether that was why she always treated her brother-in-law with clipped civility.

There is also the secret of his transformation, kept hidden for many years. His parents never saw him, only heard his screams transform into howls from behind solid doors. The pain, the wrenching, ripping pull of magic through flesh, was his alone, even when his friends change with him. Sirius once explained to him the strangeness of changing as an animagus, the stretching of thought and body. It is swift and painless, but Sirius thinks he has some insight into Remus' curse. He doesn't tell Sirius about the difference between voluntary transformation and the unnatural force that compels him. Instead he lets his friend think of the understanding they now have. It's not a hard secret to keep; friendship is more important than honesty.

There were good secrets, though, the memory of a perfect afternoon. Sitting on the Hogwarts lawn, watching the sunlight play on Lily's hair, as she laughed at James and Sirius' horseplay in the shallows of the lake. She turned to him, smiling, before knocking him over with a ferocious hug, saying, "Those two!" She leaned down over him. "Honestly, Remus, I don't know what I'd do without you!" Remus knew she only meant his relative sanity compared to her boyfriend, and she was that exuberant with everyone. Yet that day he fell just a bit in love with her.

It didn't matter than in six months he was a groomsman in their wedding; it was just one more secret in a tangled knot of secrets. He had a mass of them, coiled around his bones and tangled in his nerves: furtively helping Snape in third year charms; hexing Lucius Malfoy from behind a suit of armor; kissing a Ravenclaw girl after a drunken Quidditch party; catching McGonagall in a clandestine rendezvous with the book buyer from Flourish and Blotts; the sinking, sickening feeling he felt the morning after he almost killed Severus Snape.

Remus Lupin was the best keeper of secrets Hogwarts had ever seen. Why, then, did they not trust him to be their Secret-Keeper?