friends turned acquaintances || Hestia & Remus
The years hadn't been kind to Remus. Time had never been to him. Since he was fourteen, he'd been finding the occasional strand of grey nestled amongst his naturally brown hair. Now, at the age of twenty-two, it was beyond his control. The obvious silvery streaks were just a permanent part of his appearance, along with the network of scars across his body. He'd figured that he would go bald soon enough if he tried to pluck every grey hair from his head. It had been a long time since he'd taken a good look at himself in the mirror, though he was sure that his countenance reflected how haggard and broken he felt.
Only a year ago, the war had still been raging on. At the height of the struggle, Remus' world had fallen apart. Two of his closest friends dead, most of the people he knew missing, or gone into hiding, and one Sirius Black, a man who'd been entrusted with lives, branded a traitor and a murderer. He'd been at the headquarters on guard duty when the news arrived, brought by Mundungus Fletcher, of all people. Some nights, Remus still felt a strong twinge of indignance that such grave news had been delivered to him by someone who wasn't above pilfering from a crime scene. He certainly hoped that Dung hadn't personally been at Godric's Hollow, though he could not bring himself to question the shady man about anything concerning that day.
However, Dumbledore had trusted Dung, and so Remus did too, if grudgingly. In fact, he was indebted to the dealer of contraband goods. Mundungus had found him a place to stay, and supplied him with enough odd jobs and errands to pay the rent. Remus was no stranger to living in poverty; as a child, he'd nearly driven his own parents to bankruptcy as they spent almost every galleon trying to find a cure for him. For this reason, Remus had been making regular, anonymous deposits to their vault in Gringotts.
He rarely hung around Diagon Alley after his visits to the bank, but Dung had had a windfall of sorts lately and Remus had been given his share of it for playing errand boy. He decided to pop by an apothecary for a bit to replenish his supply of ingredients for pain-easing potions, and soon lost himself in the narrow aisles of the shop, amongst a myriad of preserved parts of who knew what. Perhaps it was the wolf in him, but he always enjoyed the barrage of unfamiliar smells. Though some of them were unpleasant, and a few downright vile, the shock to his senses, had him feeling more alert and alive than he'd felt in months.