The Other Wolf

The Other Wolf

He never traveled under his own name. Not anymore.

After all, it wasn't as though he was well-known. Not like Harry, poor marked lad. Remus could blend in anywhere he liked. He'd often wondered if he shouldn't do just that; walk away from 12 Grimmauld Place, as if he were going off on another mission, catch a train, blend in, and never look back.

Of course he had ties. There was Wolfsbane potion, for one thing, he needed that like an addict needs a fix. Snape knew it, too, never gave him more than a month's worth at a time. But he could brew it himself, had done so in the past, though the results were never as regular and reliable as Snape's.

There was Harry, too. The lad needed someone to look to, now that his parents and his godfather were gone and Dumbledore, once his hero, was --

Slightly fallen?

Oh hell, but anyone would look out for Harry, Arthur or Kingsley or Tonks...

Sometimes he was tempted. Sometimes he got as far as packing his bag. And then, usually, he remembered why he stayed. Because there was nowhere he could go that he wouldn't be found, sooner or later. By Dumbledore, the bastard, or more likely by Snape, who would revel in being cleverer than Remus Lupin.

So he traveled whenever he could, on Order business, because it was almost as good. And of course not under his own name, because the Death Eaters knew who he was, and everyone else in the Wizarding world knew what he was.

"Sandwich, love?" someone asked him, and he looked up from his contemplation of his orders, into the smiling face of a Muggle, who was pushing a snack cart. He took the closest sandwich, gave her a few of the crumpled handful of bills that Dumbledore had pressed into his hand for travel expenses, and ate the thing absently.

"You'll make yourself ill, eating egg salad from that cart," someone said. He looked up again, and was surprised to see a stranger standing at the edge of the train bench.

"Haven't died yet," he replied, willing the man to go away.

"Mind if I sit?"

Remus' eyes followed the gesture to the bench across the table from him. "No....no, of course not," he said.

"Name's Carver. And you are?"

"Richard. Richard Lucas," Remus said. He began clearing his books off the table, making room for Carver's (first or last? did it matter?) briefcase.

"You're a professor?" the man asked, picking up one of the books -- Roman Magic: Fiction or Faith? -- and examining it.

"Yes," Remus replied vaguely. Carver grinned at him.

"Who do you get to cover your classes on full moons?"

Remus stared.

"Come now, you must have smelled it," Carver said blandly. "I smelled you."

"You...smelled...?"

"Oh, you're not wolfborn, I suppose. Then you wouldn't have."

Thoroughly bewildered, Remus took the book from him, setting it on a pile that he straightened with fussy neatness.

"I just thought we could talk," Carver said. "Truth is I've been following you every time you take the train, but..." he spread his hands. "Something always stopped me before. I don't often meet other -- "

"Mind!" Remus hissed.

"It's a Muggle train, nobody cares. Nobody's listening. 'Richard'," Carver said with a laugh. "I suppose that's not your real name."

"Remus Lupin," he murmured.

"Closer," Carver nodded. Remus drew his eyebrows together.

"That's my name," he said.

"No it's not." The other man's nostrils flared, and his eyes glinted yellow. "What's your real name? The one you feel in your blood when the moon's waxing full?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes you do," the werewolf said, chuckling. "You know that humanity's just an alias. Wolf's our real form. The truest thing you can be. Pure instinct."

"I've had about enough instinct in my life, if it's all the same to you."

"Everything but the wolf is a sham."

"I prefer to look at it the other way round."

Carver narrowed his eyes. "They've tamed you."

Remus closed the last of his books, and looked up. "I've tamed myself," he growled softly.

"Is that any better?"

"My name is Remus Lupin. My real name."

"Then why," asked Carver delicately, "Do you travel under another? If you're so proud to be tamed?"

Remus let a small growl out, and the other werewolf grinned.

"How tame are you?" he asked, in Remus' ear, as he stood. "Ask yourself that. Every day. How tame is the wolf?"

When he was gone, Remus felt his shoulders relax, the tightness in his stomach fade away.

He would never run out on the Order, on Harry, on Dumbledore, on the Weasleys. Because he wasn't an animal.

He was Remus Lupin.

END