Loneliness of the Short Distance Runner

Loneliness of the Short Distance Runner

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 13 hours, 46 minutes

I fell asleep in the bath today. Last I remembered I was going up to have a bath before I went to bed, and I climbed in and just fell asleep. It must've been the warm water, or that I hadn't slept in about seventy-two hours before that. Whatever the case, it was interesting to have Harry poke me awake after four hours and tell me to get out of the bath because someone else may wish to use the room. That I doubt with the unwashed miscreants who live in this house.

Mum suggested I record my attempts at sobriety to encourage my progress. Or something like that. She said she tried it on Dad. I then reminded her of Dad's progress of getting out of the habit, and she looked like she didn't know whether to purse her lips and frown at me or hit me over the back of the head with a copy of Emma. Her WASPishness took over, and she just frowned at me. That woman has the silent disapproving thing down so well one would think she was the Catholic one in the family. She then sent me home with the leftovers from the Manchester Anglican Witches Polo Society luncheon. Ron and Harry set about making pikelet flavoured quiche, only to promptly throw it back up upon tasting their creation.

I feel sick myself too. At this point, it's not hard to knock back anything vaguely alcoholic, simply because my churning stomach is saying 'Remus, you damned dirty ape, poison me one more time with that fulsome fluid and I swear I'll give you an ulcer out of spite'. I'm desperately hungry, though too tired and queasy to go downstairs and fix something. God, send me something utterly fattening and greasy, and I swear I'll go to mass every week. Need sleep--

At this point, the subjectivity of the accounts of this tale switches to objectivity as a light knock on the door stirs the resident werewolf out of his reverie and back into reality. He closes the fresh notebook acquired for such purposes as self-administered therapy and alcohol deprivation, and tucks it under his pillow.

"Come in."

The door opens, and she enters carrying a cup of steaming hot tea and a glass of red wine. She takes a cross-legged seat perpendicular to him, staring up at him and offering him the tea. He accepts it wordlessly, sipping a little off the top and setting it down on the table beside his bed. She offers him the wine, but he shakes his head in agony.

"You right there?"

"Fine. Just fine."

"Harry said you fell asleep in the bath today."

"I had a detached Freudian moment."

"Oh yeah?"

"No. I was really hungover."

"Yeah, same. Not as much as you, obviously, but still. Mum got all cross when she smelled it on my breath."

"Not as much as my mum did," he says, picking up the teacup again and taking a more prolonged sip. "Thinks I'm going to die in a gutter, surrounded by rats and street urchins."

"Well, you're already halfway there, looking at the people we come in contact with every day. You feeling better after this morning?"

Another sip. "A bit better, anyway. I've decided that I'm going to quit the sauce, once and for all. It can't be good for me in the state I'm in anyway."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He looks at her a bit, taking in the fact that tonight her hair is a wholly unnatural shade of emerald green, her eyes a lovely shade of brown. She's greedily swallowing a mouthful of wine, a bit dribbling down her chin. "Harry gone to bed yet?"

"A little while ago. Erm, Remus..." She looks at him in earnest, licking the wine off her bottom lip as if in response to how he normally bites his upper lip. "I think you ought talk to him. About what happened last night, I mean. He's been a bit funny today, or so Ron says."

"Really." It's a statement, not a question.

"Well, more so than usual, I suppose. I think it perturbed him a bit seeing..."

She trails off, looking guiltily toward the bedspread. He nods quietly. "I didn't think about what I was doing, or why I was doing it, more to the point."

"I think I can understand, a bit anyway." She pulls herself parallel to him, crossing her legs at her ankles and reclining back on his bedhead. "But at the same time, I can understand why he would be shocked by it."

"I might go down and talk to him about it in the morning."

"You should."

He leans his head back on the wall, letting it fall to his shoulder. "What happened to me?"

"You're not expected to be happy all the time, you know. Be honest, I think everyone was placing bets on you cracking at some stage or another." She shuffles a bit closer to him, taking another sip of her wine. "Is there anything you want to talk about tonight?"

"Apart from whether or not I said anything stupid to you when I was drunk this morning, no."

"In that case, you didn't say anything too embarrassing. You know, declaring your feelings, admitting you're a Michael Bolton fan. The usual stuff."

"Jesus."

"It's all right. I told myself that you were drunk, and that you didn't mean a word of it."

He looks at her. She's still staring at him over the top of that wine glass, her eyes questioning him. He turns away from her, swallowing a bit of bile at the back of his throat. From his peripheral vision, he can see her still looking at him.

"I'm tired, Tonks."

"You should go to bed then."

He stretches himself out on his back, edging down the bed so he is entirely flat out. He sighs a bit, reaching over for the teacup on his bedside table and drinking the now tepid contents. She takes the empty cup out of his hands and steps down onto the floor.

"You want that light on in the corner?"

He shakes his head, and she pinches the little flame out in the oil lamp on the desk. She pulls the door shut after her, banging her head silently against the door.

He lies there in the dark, hands folded neatly on his stomach. After a minute or two, he picks up the wand sitting on his bedside table and utters Lumos under his breath, pulling out the book under his pillow. Plucking the quill out from inside it, he licks the nib and sets it to the paper one more time.

Addendum to note to self: consider cyanide next time, see Severus with regards to this.

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 16 hours, 10 minutes

He sleeps in a room with a bookshelf, desk, single bed and a mirror that screams 'VIRGIN! VIRGIN! VIRGIN!" at him whenever he passes it. He hopes to rectify this soon in the only manner possible - by taking the damn thing down.

He's wearing part of his inheritance - threadbare blue pyjama pants and a tee-shirt with the motto 'The Ashes: 200 Years of England v. Australia Quidditch Test Matches' emblazoned under a bastardised coat of arms featuring a lion and a kangaroo wielding broomsticks. He wakes to the sound of cupboards being opened and shut down in the kitchen. After an hour or so, he realises that he cannot get back to sleep despite it still being dark, so he slowly climbs out of bed and crosses the room, opening his bedroom door and hobbling silently along the landing until he reaches the stairs, leaning his weight on the railing to avoid placing pressure on his bunged knee. He scratches a scab on his arm as he walks past where Mrs Black's portrait once hung, now without fear of insult or derogatory comments.

Kreacher is sitting outside the kitchen door, peering in at whoever is preparing themselves breakfast. He stares at Lupin as he pushes the door open, utterly ignoring the presence of the malevolent little house elf.

Bent down on his knees, Harry Potter is inspecting the contents of the pantry, his hair even more dishevelled than normal. As the kitchen door closes, he looks up at the intruder.

"Morning. Nothing for breakfast."

"That's all right, I'm not hungry."

Pulling out a half eaten loaf of bread, Harry turns back and takes a seat at the kitchen table, Lupin doing likewise. He tears himself off a hunk of bread, and offers some to the older man, who merely shakes his head. Harry shrugs, and bites into it, making a face.

"Ugh, mouldy." He tosses the remainder of the morsel onto the table.

"It's all right, I'll put some tea on for now." Lupin stands, moving over to the kettle sitting on the countertop. He nudges it with his wand, and steam profuses out the spout. He pulls out two dirty old teacups, pouring hot water in and dropping in a couple of bags.

"Ta," Harry says as he accepts it.

"Harry, are you all right?"

"What?"

"After... well, what I did the other night."

"I'm fine. I mean, you're all right now and everything."

"I suppose I am. I just don't want you to... I don't know, get any ideas, or think that you weren't on my mind when I did it. It's just--"

"It's all right, I get where you're coming from."

"It's just--"

"I mean, it's not like I don't care or anything, because we were all worried, but--"

"Harry, you haven't contemplated it yourself, have you?"

He stares at this older man who has so correctly divined his inner thoughts. He nods weakly. "There was a time after he died when... um..." He buries his head in his hands as they slip under his glasses to rub his eyes. He looks back up after a bit. "I don't feel like it anymore or anything, it was just in that time when I couldn't get to sleep without someone sitting in the room with me. Don't tell Mrs Weasley or Hermione though, they'll fuss over me like you wouldn't believe."

Lupin reaches his good arm across the table, and rests it on Harry's shoulder. "It's why you've been so cheery these last few weeks, isn't it?"

"I don't want people pitying me or looking at me weirdly. I've had enough of that to last a lifetime."

"I know exactly what you mean." He pulls his arm back, and rubs a bit of sleep out of his eyes. "Between the two of us, I reckon we could exhaust the supply of therapists on this damned island."

"Are you glad that you... you know, didn't die?"

"No. But I'm going to have to deal with it. There's obviously a very good karmic reason for why I'm still here."

"Do you want to die now?"

"I think I've rid myself of all desire to kill myself. I can't say that I'd complain much if I weren't to wake up tomorrow morning." Lupin sips his tea, looking thoroughly disgusted. "My god, when did the Blacks last refill their tea supplies, the fall of the British Empire in India?"

"Karma, I reckon."

"Hmm. Possibly. Well, if there's no tea or food, best break out the poison, eh Harry?" He pulls himself up and hobbles over to the cupboard under the sink, from which he pulls out a bottle of Ogden's. Sitting back down, he pours firewhisky into his and Harry's teacups, and raises it in a toast. Harry follows suit.

"What's this for?"

"Let's have a toast. To sticking it out, no matter how shitty our circumstances. And to me giving up alcohol." He takes a sip and looks at the cup very disappointedly.

"This tastes like water."

"It is. Bloody woman."

Time since last consumption of alcohol by one RJ Lupin: 16 hours, 20 minutes

Resolve is never stronger than the morning after the night before it was never weaker.