favorite thing about tumblr is having a fandom in law. no i haven't watched this show and i'm not planning to. but my moot is having fun!! look how much they love it!!! i'm supportive from the sidelines!
Remus Lupin x Reader
・❥・Love with Remus isn’t rescue, it’s resurrection.
You meet Remus Lupin on a night when Grimmauld Place can’t decide if it’s a home or a problem. The kettle screams like it’s offended, the pipes clank at random, and the drawing room door sticks unless you hip-check it. You’ve been helping the Order. Stocking, labeling, patching people up so you end up in the kitchen a lot when the house is quiet and everyone’s too tired to pretend otherwise.
Remus comes in with rain in his hair and that careful look he wears like a habit. His coat’s older than most of the furniture and he somehow makes that seem intentional.
“Evening,” he says, voice low so the portrait down the hall doesn’t start howling. “I heard a vicious rumor there’s contraband chocolate.”
“Contraband implies it wasn’t meant for you,” you say, digging a bar out of the larder.
“It was meant for morale,” he says. “And I am morale.”
He accepts the chocolate like you’ve just asked him to dance. That ends up being your pattern: late kitchen, quiet voices, mugs that go cold while you talk about nothing and everything. He’s gentle with everything he touches. Books, teacups, your name and when he laughs it’s soft, like he’s borrowing the sound and plans to return it.
You notice things. He always checks the window before he sits, like he’s making sure the moon hasn’t moved without telling him. He warms his hands around tea more than he drinks it. His scars have the look of a map rather than accidents – old routes he can’t avoid.
You don’t ask about any of that. You ask, “Read anything good lately?”
He smiles. “I reread The Wind in the Willows on a mission. I feel an alarming kinship with a very anxious water rat.”
“And the mole?”
“Braver than he thinks,” he says, then admits, “I keep a copy in my case. It’s good company in terrible inns.”
You picture him alone with a battered book and a bad lamp and feel an unfair mix of fondness and stubborn anger at the world. So you bring extra honey for his tea next time. He pretends not to notice. He notices.
One week he limps through the door insisting it’s nothing. You recognize the kind of “nothing” that makes people sit down slowly and breathe through it. You steer him into a chair by the fire and line up what you’ve got: dittany, bruise paste, clean linen. He watches your hands like they’re doing magic.
“You’re good at this,” he says.
“At what? Scolding you into letting me help?”
“At making things feel survivable.”
“It is survivable,” you say, taping down the bandage. “You’re right here.”
He looks into the fire a long time. “I know. I’m not in the habit of believing it.”
You could say a dozen things. You put the kettle back on instead. The house shifts around you—the place has moods of its own—and the two of you settle into a quiet that’s the opposite of awkward. After that, you can measure your evenings by the sound of his feet on the stairs.
It’s not a romance yet. It’s routine: you set a mug in front of him, he sets a smile in front of you; you tuck a jumper into his satchel because the weather’s turning, he returns a book you mentioned in passing, found cheap at a stall. You start to understand that sometimes choosing the same kitchen night after night is how people decide to keep going.
A few days before a full moon, he comes in with a tightness to him, like he’s watching his own hands. He tries to make it casual. It isn’t.
“Bad night?” you ask.
“Difficult week,” he says. “We reached a safehouse right after its occupants fled. Should’ve been a relief. Wasn’t. And Snape’s away. My Wolfsbane is workable, just not… ideal. I can feel the edges.” A beat. “I hate the edges.”
“Tell me what you need.”
He huffs a breath that’s close to a laugh. “To be harmless.”
“Okay,” you say. “Let’s plan for that. We lock the cellar from both sides. Cushioning charms on the stone. I stay upstairs. You leave yourself a note for the morning with tea and chocolate so you wake up to proof you made it through again.”
He stares like you’ve just offered him a new planet. “You negotiate for survival the way other people haggle for rugs.”
“Very unglamorous specialty,” you say. “Unlimited kettle privileges, though.”
He does laugh at that, real and sudden, and for a second the house feels less like a wound.
On the night itself, you keep your promises. He hesitates at the cellar door. You hand him the folded jumper and say, “For later.” Words fail him but gratitude doesn’t. You lock the door, sit with your back against it, and wait. It’s not dramatic fear. It’s holding a thread across the hours and not letting go.
At first light, there’s movement. Three soft knocks – the code you agreed on. You unlock everything, trying not to rush. He’s on the bottom step, human and shaking. The jumper’s over one arm; the other is around his ribs like he’s reminding them they’re allowed to be a ribcage again.
“Tea,” he manages. “Is there—”
“Already on,” you say. You get him to the chair, wrap him in a blanket that smells like clean wool and a little like you, press a mug into his hands, and set the chocolate beside it. His eyes prickle; he looks away like he can outstare his feelings.
“Thank you,” he says. “For treating me like a person and not… whatever else.”
“Who told you you were whatever else?” you ask.
“Experience,” he says. “Very thorough teacher.”
“Fire him,” you say.
He snorts. You grin. It’s ridiculous and exactly right.
After that, things get easier. Not easy, but easier. He eats something with his tea. He stops pretending he doesn’t want the shawl you leave on the back of the sofa. Sometimes he reads aloud when the house is in a decent mood. You tell him about the beach town you grew up in and how the tide has a way of knowing your name. He tells you about using moonlight as a clock and about the first time it lied.
You joke about job titles: you’re the chief negotiator for survival; he’s the director of morale. On paper it’s nothing. In practice it’s how you both start living instead of just lasting.
Winter crowds in. Sirius laughs too loud to fill the gaps that won’t close. Molly feeds everyone like the world can be saved by stew. Meetings pile up like storm clouds. And one evening Remus finds you on the landing with a look you haven’t seen from him before – nervous hope.
“Walk with me?” he asks.
You end up in the small library under the busted chandelier. He checks the window (habit) and turns back with the air of someone about to step into cold water.
“I used to think the solution was outside me,” he says. “A friend who stayed. A potion that worked. A job that didn’t disappear. A moon that wasn’t a punishment. If I behaved, if I kept my head down, if I didn’t ask for anything—maybe I’d be… okay.”
You don’t move. You just listen.
“I thought being loved would be salvation,” he says, quieter now. “Like rescue. But that’s not what this is. Being with you—” He falters, then presses on. “—made something wake up. It’s not that you drag me out of the dark. It’s that with you I want to walk out on my own.” He swallows. “I thought I’d found salvation in you. It turned out to be resurrection in me.”
Something clicks into place. The house goes still, as if even the old wood has decided to listen.
You step close because not stepping close would be dishonest. “I don’t want to fix you,” you say. “I want to be here while you fix yourself. And I want you to be here while I do the same.”
He smiles like you’ve given him a sunrise. He lifts his hand, hesitates, and you answer by meeting him halfway. Foreheads first, then a kiss – soft, sane, not an answer to everything but a very good start. He stops bracing for a disaster that doesn’t arrive. You seal the realization with a second kiss just to be sure.
When you pull back, he laughs under his breath. “I can’t give you safety,” he says. “Not with the world like this. Not with what I am.”
“I’m not asking for safety,” you say. “I’m asking for company. Tea helps.”
“And un-contraband chocolate, if I behave?”
“We’ll negotiate,” you say.
“I’ll never deserve you,” he murmurs.
“Don’t frame it like that,” you tell him. “Just choose me. Repeatedly.”
He does, in ordinary ways that build a life. He tracks the moon and leaves notes on meeting days – Back late. Don’t wait up. Soup in the larder. He still checks the kitchen window before every full moon and you lean your shoulder into his like a reassurance. He charms the jammed door and, somehow, it works. You both decide the house likes him when he smiles.
The morning after another change, you find him at the kitchen table with a book and cold tea. He’s reading because he wants to, not because he needs to vanish. You touch his back; his hand comes up automatically to cover yours. It’s easy, practiced, new every time.
There’s a war on. There will be losses and nights that wring you out. You’ll have to keep negotiating with fear and exhaustion and grief. But there’s also this very ordinary miracle: a man who used to think of himself as a walking disaster learning he’s allowed to be alive. A man who wanted saving learning he can resurrect himself because love lit the match and stayed while he found the way out.
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