I saw your priest kink Remus tag and now my mind is spinning. Remus who hopes that faith will help him balance out the darkness of the lycanthropy. Remus who attends church hoping that the mere fact that he can walk in to the building without feeling ill is A Sign. Remus faintly hoping that if he just has enough faith that he'll be saved from this curse that magic (used by wizards, used by humans and mortals and surely it must be inferior to whatever this omnipotent being wields) has yet to find any sort of solution for. Remus who wonders if the lycanthrope is his penance for something, if it's a permanent and ever present hair shirt designed to remind him that he must be humble...
Ooh yes, I can see Remus turning to religion in the hopes of getting cured! His mum used to take him to church before the bite, but because she stopped after it, Remus assumed that he could no longer go there. He keeps praying, though, thinking that surely if he prays enough, god will hear him and heal him. As he grows older, he stops. What’s the point when it doesn't help? God can’t hear him.
Then, years later, Halloween 1981 happens, and Remus is left drifting. Everything good from his life is gone. He desperately needs something to hold him together, but he doesn’t know what it is, until one day, he's passing by a church and something makes him stop. He suddenly remembers what if was like to go to church as a little kid, how he had looked at the building in awe and how he had been reassured that god loves him.
Remus knows he won't be able to go in, but he tries anyway. And he succeeds.
It's a sign. The church has allowed someone as dark and damned as him to enter, so it has to be a sign. He remembers praying in vain, but what if he had been wrong about that, too? What if he just hadn't known how to do it right?
He doesn’t want to get his hopes up only to have them crushed again, but he starts going to church regularly, attending mass every week. He doesn’t go to communion for the first few months because he's worried that he will be turned away, and that’s okay because he still feels like he now has something to hold onto.
Every week it bothers him more, however, because everyone else goes to communion, and it’s such an important part of it all, and he doesn’t want to feel like he’s being left out, he desperately needs a connection, so one day, he decides to try. He walks up front, and nothing bad happens. He receives his communion from the priest, who has an aura of serenity to him, and to take part in that is a powerful experience for Remus. He feels blessed. He feels like a part of something big that will save him, and in a way he's already saved, because even though most things in his life are bad, he now has this good thing that will keep him going one week at a time.
He also feels like he has opened his heart in the right way, and if he just keeps going to church, he will find a cure. If he's only devout enough, he will be healed because god loves everyone, and why would you not want to heal someone you love? The fact that he hasn’t been healed yet is a sign that he hasn’t done it right yet, but he will get it right if he just keeps trying. It becomes an obsession for him.
Anyway, thanks for making me think about this!
