We Don't Live Here Anymore

(A/N: Title from Pablo Neruda's The Question.)

What you know is the texture of places. They took the rest, or tried to, but as long as there are nerves in the body, texture cannot be taken. It is intrinsic, inherent, visceral, primal. It is the one thing you didn't have to fight to keep. As such, it is precious. As such, it is worthless. It is both of these things, it is neither. It is simply what you know.

The irony is as exquisite as it is aching- the texture of Hogwarts is that of Azkaban. Once, maybe, had you then been attuned to the pads of your feet and the tips of your fingers, you would have thought it was the other way around and the cell would have been just a bit less awful. But after fourteen years, the rough text of stone walls can only be the symbiote of slick metal bars to you, and Hogwarts is another prison. You have been an animal too long now to resist the animal's instinct to rend and bite and tear and destroy, to fight your way out. It is the Fat Lady, she who let you in with barely a murmur after hundreds of midnight excursions which you can no longer quite remember, who pays the price. When you find your way back to your humanity, you are sorry for it, but there's no way to say so. She wouldn't believe you if you did. ( None of them would. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so, so sorry, but apologies don't raise the dead.)

Later, much later, only after you've heard the children talking about it with thrilled fear in their voices, it occurs to you that maybe you weren't trying to fight your way out at all. Maybe you were trying to get in.

Maybe you were trying to go back in.

You wander. When they're sleeping, when they're gone, that's when you haunt these halls. You do it as a dog, and you tell yourself that it's because black fur lets you blend into the shadows, though really you have seen the man you have become in still water and mirrors and you know that he too would fade, ghostlike, transparent. Really this dog's body is all that feels safe. What can be taken from an animal? Less, you know, than can be taken from a ghost.

This is what they managed to take from you:

The glory of James on the Quidditch pitch. You watch the first match from a Dementor-dictated distance, see the tiny figures in red and gold soaring briefly above the boundaries of the stadium, and you know that you've seen this all before. You know that James flew those same lines, those same thermals. You know, oh Merlin, how much it mattered to win, how many prayers you all wasted on these games. You know the cheers that went up were filled with the same uninhibited joy. You know it all. You can't remember it. It's almost there, you can almost see James's glorying expressions of triumph, almost hear your own exultation, but they're just out of reach, a maddening itch, an ancient veil which crumbles when you try to touch. You almost think that they're not there at all, that the knowledge that they took something away from you has allowed you to make up what you've lost. But you can feel the breeze on your face. You look up, and the trees are unmoving around you, but in your mind you can feel the wind of a stadium crowd breathing out in a unified gasp as your best friend made a spectacular shot, and you know that once it was real.

Lily's hair in the sunlight. You never realized that the image was stored in your mind until you were desperately searching for things to shove at the Dementors, things to give them so that they would stop taking. There it was, gilded and golden and maybe in that moment you knew why James loved her so, maybe you understood him and that made you happy, to be that much closer to your best mate. Maybe that's why the Dementors took the picture, leaving you with nothing but the warm feeling of sunlight on your skin.

Evenings spent curled in front of the fire in the Common Room. You preferred the forgiving softness of the carpet to the chairs, you know that from the familiar way your body sinks into it now. If you close your eyes, the flickering warmth of the flames brings you back, though you can't remember a single word spoken or any prank plotted those nights. There is nothing left but the feel of it, the memory ingrained in skin. You know you were happy those nights, though; if you hadn't been, you'd still have them now.

Regulus when you both were little, before either of you got Sorted, before you learned to hate each other. His hiccupy laughter. The way he cheated at chess every single time, no matter how often you caught him at it. The way you always caught him at it, no matter how often you tried to show him more clever ways of cheating. Regulus grinning gap-toothed as you congratulated him on the loss of his first molar. You've lost Regulus loving you, you've lost that for a second time. The muscle memory of chubby baby arms squeezing you is the only reason you know he ever loved you at all.

Nights spent curled next to Remus. The sound of his breathing, fluttery and nasal in sleep. The way his fringe fell into his eyes because he, unlike you and James, didn't care how it looked- oh, so casually beautiful. The smell of him, ink and old parchment and cheap shampoo and, when you got as close as you couldn't stop yourself from getting night after night, something animal underneath, like old blood and unwashed fur. The salty tang of his flesh under your tongue. What you've kept of that is warmth, that's all, burning heat, skin and too many blankets and slick contact and happiness. Happiness was warmth. You're sure of that now.

There is a Weasley sleeping in your bed. You know which bed was yours, then- your feet have worn a trail to it from the door, a trail that they remember. Besides, not every night in that bed was a happy one. You remember the very first one, a night you had expected to spend in the dungeons with the purebloods. You can still feel the confusion and horror and injured pride that roiled in your chest that night as you stared at the curtains closed around you and listened to your dorm-mates talk outside; perhaps more to the point, you can feel the ache that was just underneath, the desperate desire to open the curtains and talk too, become one of them, be with them. You cried yourself to sleep that night behind the curtains. You must have started to change, the next morning. You must have made James yours, and Remus too, maybe even Peter though you'd like to deny it. You must have made them laugh. You wish that you knew how you'd done it. That you could do it again.

There is a Weasley in your bed and though you brought the knife for Wormtail, for a moment you want to plunge it into this child in your place, this child sleeping near a boy who looks like James, this child with his loving family and his flaming hair and his innocence. But he wakes up, and besides, you are not a murderer.

This is what they let you keep. The night after Regulus got the letter telling him that he was now the Heir, a letter which he waved in your face, somehow thinking it would hurt you. He'd been right, though you've never known why.

The night when you told Snivellus about Remus and the bloody wretch believed you, tried to get himself killed. You crept back to bed in the wee hours of the morning after your talk with Dumbledore. James awake in the next bed over, though he wouldn't look at you. Your knowledge that Remus would never speak to you again now, and worse that he had a good reason, that you had done the worst thing and betrayed somebody you loved. That night you cried, not cried yourself to sleep because you didn't sleep but simply cried, and you didn't close the curtains on it because for the only time in your life you didn't care how badly you broke your pride.

The last night you ever spent in this bed, Remus asleep with his head on your chest, you dreading the loss of home that was coming (and oh, Merlin, if you had known, how you would have clung.)

The crypt of Godric's Hollow, the crypt it suddenly had become. Lily's blank empty desperate stare. James's pale corpse in the moonlight. The baby howling without making a sound. The rumble of your motorbike sounding suddenly like a growl. The sickening knowledge of betrayal. Godric's Hollow, what could be more aptly named? Hollow.

These are the things they did not take away.

The Shack feels right. The Shack, with its splintered wood and old blankets and lingering predator smell, has the texture of happiness. Oh, you know the pain he went though here, but for you this was always a haven. A chance for pack. This was you, the four of you, your home and your symbol and your unity. You came here for Remus, you molded yourselves for Remus, and here you became a family. The memory of that shining moment when you first transformed in front of him, the utter essential shock and joy and gratefulness that made him truly beautiful, that's long gone from your mind. That's what the Dementors took first, that moment when you stopped having a narcissistic crush on Remus and fell in love with him instead. They took that. But here, you feel it. This is home. This is where you stay.

When you see Peter, you strike. You grab the boy, and you don't care if he gets hurt as long as you get Peter. You drag. You run through the tunnel and although you have a child in your mouth you never falter because your body knows this place. It is rote memory that they can never take.

Or maybe it's simply the adrenaline of revenge.

This is what revenge feels like: hot blood in your veins, in your brain, hot enough that your skin steams and simmers with it. Gnashing teeth. It feels like things are exploding in you. It makes you want to cry. You don't know what would be worse- losing this chance to commit the crime you were imprisoned for, or taking it.

In the end, you are not a murderer. You're never sure afterward whether you're not a murderer through no fault of your own, or because you made the choice to let him go. And if you made the choice, because of Remus? Or because of yourself?

It doesn't matter. Say what they will about you, this has never changed- you are not a murderer. They will not take that away.

Yes, you embrace him. Him. Remus. Sirius. Moony. Padfoot. Whatever he is, whatever you are, whatever you've become. You embrace him and oh, you remember this. The heaviness of bodies pressed together, the way the arms clap and tighten and hold, what it is to be close. You remember this, and in this you remember everything. In this moment Remus is Lily's hair gilded by sunlight, he is James's litany of triumph. He is lazy evenings in front of a fire and he is a too-hot shared bed. He is your brother with baby-fat arms. He is alive. He is Remus. He is all of them. Everything given and taken away. He is where you used to live. Yes. You have all lived here.