Tales (Fifth Year: December 7th)
Don’t look at me. Please.
Remus wishes he could slide down into the collar of his pressed shirt and hide. He pulls the pointed hood of his robes over his head and tries to pretend he’s wearing James’s invisibility cloak; the oncoming sea of students part around him and the illusion is broken.
He wishes he could just disappear.
But now people would notice he was gone.
He shouldn’t have let them notice that he had ever been.
He hurries down the corridor as fast as social norms will allow without him drawing any more attention to himself, the burning deep in his bones pleading for him to find a dark classroom and curl up on the floor and just cry. He feels his overgrown toenails getting tugged upward inside his shoes with every step. His body is nothing but a series of never-ending aches and stabbing flashes knitted together with searing scars. His essence is concentrated pain. He is in tatters. He feels finished.
Every stair feels like a mountain. Every hallway like an ocean. Every door is the entrance to a cursed sepulchre with unseen threats lurking behind it. The Common Room is an open tundra dotted with hidden dangers, as students pop up from behind the furniture to call his name and wave at his now-familiar face as if he didn’t want to lunge at them and grab them by the throat and choke them and slash them across the face to hear them scream - but he just smiles and waves back. He hopes they don’t notice his enlarged canines. He prays they can’t see the bloodlust in his eyes.
Pure, unbridled shame. Breath-catching self-horror. A thunderstorm of agony fills his skull but he isn’t sure if it’s physical or psychological pain anymore. Maybe they’re now the same.
He closes the door to their dormitory behind him and stands before the side of his bed.
Alone, he still sees blood at the edges of his vision. He wants to feel it running through his fingers. Part of him doesn’t care whose it is anymore.
He reaches out across the bed with his hands, raking his fingernails deep in the bedspread as he sinks down to his knees. His heavy shoulder bag presses painfully into the side of his right ankle.
His own blood is pounding in his ears.
His eyes burn as he looks up and sees the trails of fuzzy threads his nails have drawn on the shimmery fabric.
He lets his hands fall into his lap and, for once, he allows himself to openly sob. It’s a terrible sound; he hears the tightness in his vocal cords as he represses a blood-curdling scream.
The others should be in Defence by now. Learning about dark beasts like him. How to discover them. How to kill them.
He hopes they don’t notice him missing. He wants James to keep laughing hysterically at his friends’ antics. He wants Peter to eat the Frenzied Fruit Bats he brought for them to share. He wants Sirius to pay attention to his lesson just this once.
It would’ve been better for everyone if he had just stayed at home like Mum wanted. They wouldn’t have to know him. He didn’t deserve their kindness.
He hears footsteps on the stairs outside and curls in on himself to stifle the sounds coming from his mouth as he tries to pull the pieces of himself back together.
He’ll give the school a few more minutes to settle down before he heads back downstairs. He wipes his sleeve across his face and lets the strap of his shoulder bag slide down his arm.
He crawls over on his knees and grabs one of his sets of nail clippers from his dresser drawer, clipping the long white tips of his fingernails shorter and shorter until the nail beds burn. They grow even quicker than usual around the peak of the moon - the better for him to maul his victims with. He tugs his shoes and socks off, then struggles to get the clippers to cut through the thick, rippled keratin of his toenails.
He sheds his armour as he strips off his robes and his cardigan, keeping his tie on lest anyone see the hairy, hideous beast between the buttons in his shirt. He pulls his other uniform out from the side compartment of his trunk: oversized, holey jumper with the ends of the sleeves picked to shreds; too-long Gryffindor Quidditch sweatpants that Sirius had outgrown; bleach-stained House of Usher film t-shirt with the frayed bottom from where he’d pulled out the thread of the seam; boxers stained with his blood from previous moons; cheap sandals from the corner store back home in Killumney. He slips his wand up his sleeve; he hopes he won’t need it.
He listens for footsteps at the door, then creeps his way back down the two flights of stairs to the bathroom, wincing in pain with every step. He silently pads through the series of cavernous stone rooms until he reaches the shower stalls in the back, thankful to have avoided others who might ask questions about his shiny, swollen red eyes. He sets the shower as hot as it can go and pulls the maroon frosted glass stall door shut behind him. He counts to ten as he jiggles the lock back and forth to be sure the door can’t be opened. He needs to be sure.
He wishes that he couldn’t see himself, too.
He unbuttons his khakis and folds them before putting them on the shelf with his wand, hesitating to continue. He takes a deep breath. Desperate fingers loosen his tie and all but popping the buttons out of his shirt as he closes his eyes in case he might see.
He tosses the discarded clothing in the general direction of the shelf and throws himself under the scalding water. He turns his head up toward the stream of water, gulping down the warmth and basking in the burning numbness it provides for his ruined body. Some days, he wants to rip off all of the scars and just be bones. He leans heavily against the shower wall and just lets the heat and the tears overtake him in silence.
He thinks of the mirrors he’ll need to pass to get back to the dorm for his things. The eyes that might see him in the hallways. Madame Pomfrey’s sad smile.
As if he’s simply an ugly, whimpering puppy instead of the bloodthirsty creature of nightmares she knows he is. As if he hadn’t seen himself in other students’ Boggarts in Defence class. As if he was even worth her stinging sympathy.
He feels along the wall and grabs a washcloth from the other shelf. He forgot his toiletries in his hurry, so he has to settle for the gooey school soap. He pushes in the lever on the soap pump and lathers it around, quickly skimming the bubbles over his skin and through his hair and hoping his fingers won’t catch on any of the burning gashes carved into his skin and etched into his soul.
The shiny notch in his nose where it tried to make others see. The dark lines on his face where it tried to make him hurt. The jagged trenches on his arms where it tried to hold him still. The deep toothmarks in his thigh where it dragged him from his bed. The patchwork crater over his stomach where it tried to have a meal. That one still hurts worst of all.
What had four-year-old Remus even been fighting to live for? More bedtime stories? Another mug of hot chocolate? The imaginary students he’d secretly teach magic classes to in the woods?
What was the point of it all?
No matter how long he might live, he’ll never forget the sound of his father’s scream.
He tosses the washcloth to the floor by the door and throws himself back under the life-sustaining warmth of the water. He stands there as long as he dares, knowing he needs to be back in Moony’s bed before classes end and the hallways fill up with both friendly and hostile faces. He doesn’t want to take the risk - of worrying them, scaring them, hurting them.
He turns the handle on the wall and the water stops, leaving him dripping in the dim light and chilly air. His fingers crawl across the wall to find his wand, and he moves it up and down and around his body as he casts a Drying Charm to save himself the trauma of touching the scars or discovering more thick, rough, unwanted hair.
He dresses blindly, skillfully, quickly. He’s done this hundreds of times in the last ten years. He doesn’t dare open his eyes until the comfort of his jumper protects him from himself.
He listens for a moment before he unlocks the stall door, dropping the used washcloth and his dirty clothes in the laundry bin by the door before he rushes back to the dorm to grab his bag and the newest book of fairy tales from his trunk.
The most comforting thing he’s found at Hogwarts is the immense collection of books about anything imaginable in the library. There are shelves and shelves of retellings of fairy tales and folk stories, both old and new, from different cultures in different countries, giving thousands of different worlds for him to escape into. He doesn’t care if he’s read the same tale somewhere before; there’s always hope for a different ending this time. Occasionally, he’ll stumble upon a book of stories written by Muggles, and he delights just as much in the absurd ideas about magic he finds in them. These stories had been his primary ties to magic for most of his childhood. He hadn’t known much before he’d gotten his Hogwarts letter; his parents hadn’t wanted to help him nurture dreams he could never fulfill. Sometimes, and not so rarely, the magic of the Muggle stories is better than that of real life.
His aching feet finally carry him back to the dorm. He snatches his bag from the floor and grabs the book, his cassette player, his headphones, and the bag of sweets from his trunk as fast as he can before someone might see him. He double-checks that he has the correct tape in the player before he locks his trunk, slips on his sandals, and does his best not to limp on his journey back down all the the sets of stairs.
His stomach roars. He’s so incredibly hungry, but no matter how much he eats he won’t be satiated. He knows why. He dares not ask the kitchens for rare meat. He’s too ashamed. What terrible things would they say in their kindness as they try to reassure him? What if someone else overheard or saw the gore on his plate?
He feels his mouth watering despite himself as he thinks of the box of Blood Lollys he found slipped under his pillow again after their last trip to Hogsmeade. He would never, ever buy them for himself. He refuses. But Sirius had known; Padfoot had told him Moony’s secrets.
He rounds the final corner and he can see the enormous, ornate wooden doors to the Hospital Wing at the end of the corridor. He’s almost there. Soon, he can hide. Soon, he can rest. Soon, he’ll feel safe.
As he closes the last few steps between himself and the sterile-smelling air of the ward, he begins to imagine the quiet sanctuary waiting for him. She’ll already know - she’s been expecting him. He said he didn’t want to miss classes today, but here he is, again. He can almost feel the dark den of heavy, layered blankets. He can hear Glass’s familiar score of La Belle et la Bête as he reads under the covers by wand light, dreams of the possibility of better days, dozes and waits for sunset when she’ll usher him through the tunnel to Moony’s house where Padfoot and now Prongs might still be waiting for him.
