ft. @pctterprongs @morallyblack @rattypeter @bloomingevans @wixenprince
Remusâ parentsâ house hasnât felt like home in a long time and he knows he would struggle more to lie about the Order if he was living with them, especially in light of his father making a statement against him in January 1978. He moves into Godricâs Hollow with James and Lily for some time while he figures out how to afford a place of his own to give the couple their own space.
True to his predictions, he struggles to get and hold down any jobs and after a couple of attempts at mundane muggle jobs which fired him soon after him taking sick leave while still in his probationary period he resigns himself to working full-time for the Order and living off the charity of his friends.
Almost immediately after leaving Hogwarts, Remus starts his work with the werewolves. Having spent the summer before seventh year searching for packs, he is now being thrown into the middle by Dumbledoreâs orders and by the knowledge that Greyback is looking for him now that he has finished school.
Dumbledore tells him not to tell anybody else which Remus is mostly happy to do, as he has still not told anybody else in the Order that he is a werewolf but he makes it very easily guessable for the Marauders.
To begin with, itâs only occasionally and in between he is doing other work for the Order, particularly using his skills as a fighter, but as the months go on it becomes more vital that he spend Full Moons with the packs he is trying to talk to. The occasional month turns into extended periods. Having to transform with the packs, watch and even partake in the violence of wolf packs left to follow instinct, and being away from his friends for such a long time all take a massive toll on him, both emotionally and in terms of his self-esteem.
Whenever one of the other Marauders brings up the fact that spending time with the packs is affecting him so negatively, he argues that he is the only person who can do this.
Remus is one of the first, besides Dumbledore, to find out that Snape has changed sides and he keeps such a fact a secret from everybody, knowing the importance of Snape staying under the radar. His experience with the werewolves has made him aware of where he might have been if it werenât for Dumbledore, his sorting into Gryffindor and his friendship with the Marauders so he feels sympathetic towards Snape, especially once they have got some stilted apologies about their teenage years out of the way.
Harry being born is, to Remus, the light in all the dark. He doesnât believe the prophecy is reason to be hasty, because all of them have been in danger and he knows his classical literature well enough to know the concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It upsets him a lot to think of the Potters going into hiding, but he supports them in doing whatever they feel they have to to keep Harry safe.
In 1981, he spends more time with werewolf packs than he does away from them. It feels like he is only grabbing the odd day around the New Moon to escape and give or get updates from the Order and each time he does things feel more awkward, more stilted, more like he has missed too much. Even when he is back, he finds himself on other secret missions for Dumbledore or having clandestine meetings with Snape, to compare notes spy to spy, and he gets very frustrated, just wanting to go and see his friends.
The combination of Dumbledore enforcing his secrecy surrounding what he is doing, the prolonged absences, and the occasional time he is spotted by an Order member talking to Snape combine to make the rest of the Order suspicious of him. They know there is a traitor. Remus, rarely at meetings these days, has only heard whispers of it and doesnât believe it. He thinks the war is simply making everybody paranoid and he doesnât hesitate to express such an opinion, unaware that he is only reinforcing the belief that it is him selling them out.
Hope dies of emphysema 18th April 1981. It was the night of a Full Moon and Remus was with a pack in the Peak district so doesnât find out until three days later when he gets home. He isnât sure if his father is really blaming him for her death or if his own guilt is making him feel that way, but the funeral is the last time he sees Lyall before the end of the war all the same.
He ends up joining Greybackâs pack for the August, September and October Full Moons of 1981, as well as all the time in between, when he is kept captive & tortured by the werewolf who bit him, too suspicious of him for all the time he had grown around wizards, despite the months with other packs.
ft. @pctterprongsâ @morallyblackâ @bloomingevansâ
Despite being in with Greybackâs pack, Remus doesnât mind that his position is compromised by the patronus message that the Potters need help. Heâs felt more and more distant from his friends over the past few months, after tensions within the Order and Dumbledoreâs insistence on his wolfpack missions but he would always put his friends first so he apparates before the wolves have a chance to react to the message.
Realising that the war is over, that Voldemort is gone and it doesnât matter that the wolves now viewed him as a traitor because he never has to go back to them is like the first breath of freedom in years.
Itâs slow work, but his friends all still being there and the war fresh in all their minds helps Remus to start to talk about his trauma sustained over the course of his months with the werewolves.Â
Rebuilding of the trust that was damaged in those last few months of distance from his friends && learning to love himself -- all of this is so much easier now that there is no war and heâs able to spend as much time as he wants with his friends, which he needs because his struggles to find work havenât improved.
James buys him a flat in London and loads of food which Remus is getting better at accepting.
Full moons are spent at McKinnon manor with James and Sirius. Mornings after, he lets Lily heal and fuss over him.
Encouragement from his friends means he does try some freelance work, dealing with, writing about and studying various magical creatures (particularly dark creatures). He also offers up his services babysitting and tutoring the children of his friends.
He eventually opens himself up to love and finds a man who cares for him and with whom thereâs mutual trust. They marry and Remus takes his husbandâs last name, happy to be done with the Lupin name which he has never liked. As Lyall has, by this point, passed away, this means the end of the surname.
When they hear of a 3 year old girl who has been bitten by a werewolf and abandoned by her family, Remus and hubby want to do everything they can for her. Sheâs in St Mungoâs as a Jane Doe and doesnât remember anything before her attack. They adopt her and give her the new name of Carys Hope. While they donât have her christened, James and Lily are all but named as godparents and Remus rewrites his will to ensure they are named as Carysâ guardians if anything were to happen.
About a year later, the Wolfsbane potion is invented. Remus is reluctant to use it, arguing the costs and difficulty of getting many of the ingredients. If it were just him, he wouldnât care about the risks of taking a potion containing aconite but with Carys to consider as well, he expresses concerns about how it is poisonous though he does eventually give in, as it has passed the testing stages, and lets Lily brew a batch just for him. Heâs reluctant to accept charity but canât deny that the transformation is so much better with the potion and so both of them start taking it on a monthly basis.
When Carys is five, Remus wants her to go to primary school, both to honour his muggle upbringing and because he doesnât want her to be as lonely and friendless as he had been by the time she starts Hogwarts. Though she has friends in the form of âcousinsâ and family friends, he knows befriending people while keeping the secret of her lycanthropy from them will be more difficult but he wants her to get used to the idea before she develops the same fears and anxieties Remus did. She starts school, considering her being a werewolf as much a thing to not talk to her muggle companions about as magic. They tell the school she has a chronic illness that will cause her to miss some schooling.
Remus starts a BEd course with a view to get into teaching. He completes it the summer before Harry starts school and spends two years teaching at Carysâ school. Having been on Wolfsbane for so long now, Remus has got very good at not having to miss a day of school after a Full Moon, though heâll happily use Carys as an excuse to miss on the worse months.
Since being on Wolfsbane and having his teaching qualification, the main reason Remus hadnât gone to Dumbledore for a job was because he didnât want to get himself wrapped up in the curse of the DADA post. (that and he quite enjoyed working with little ones). When Kettleburn retires, however, he applies for the job. Dumbledore offers him the DADA position instead and Remus decides to take it, knowing that Harryâs first two teachers were crap and he might be able to do some good.
He is still forced to resign at the end of the year when news spreads that he is a werewolf and Umbridge writes her anti-werewolf legislation which makes it impossible for him to work in the wizarding world so he goes back to primary school teaching, just as Carys starts Hogwarts, this time under an alias and with forged papers to keep the Ministry off his back.
If the war were to rekindle again, Remus would play a much smaller part in it this second time around. He would still want to be there for his friends and fight to keep them alive and to keep the life he has, but he doesnât have the same self-destructive tendencies that he does in the other verse, or that he did during the first war. Heâs come too far to not want to live. He doesnât go back to the werewolf packs, under any circumstances, and he is open and honest with his best friends, his husband and his daughter through every mission he does go on.
If the Death Eaters were to take over Hogwarts after Dumbledoreâs death still, Carys would not attend the school for that year, for her own safety. The family would go into hiding and though Remus would still respond to the call for the Battle of Hogwarts, he wouldnât take unnecessary risks because this time itâs not just Harry heâs fighting for.
