What Is This? Canon Divergence? Fix-it? Alternate Universe? - Tumblr Posts

Never at All

Remus sets his shoulders, staring forward at the cabinet. He can hear the faint rattling from inside, and he can feel his students’ eyes on his back. With a flick of his wand and a wordless incantation, the door swings open and a bang rings throughout the room. 

“Alright, Neville,” he says, just loud enough for the boy in question to hear. “Remember what I told you.” 

Neville nods, wincing as the boggart takes its form. Severus Snape stands before them, tall and foreboding with his oily hair and oilier smile. 

“Riddikulus.” 

A pause. Remus holds his breath as he waits—

Slightly louder this time. “Riddikulus!” 

The crack of magic. The smell of mothballs and the almost comical sight of his childhood enemy in an old woman’s clothes. 

“Next!” 

A snake. 

“Next!”

A mummy.

“Next!”

A corpse, fresh and bloodied. 

“Next!” 

A spider as tall as Remus himself. 

“Next—”

And he can picture what is to come: a frigid, pale, expressionless face; the billow of midnight-black robes; a quiet, rasping, wicked voice that Remus’s heart goes cold with fear even thinking about. 

He steps in front of the boy with the lightning scar, and he watches as the boggart flickers. He knows what is to come. He knows what he fears most—the daunting glow of the full moon and the loss of control that, inescapably, comes with it. 

How wrong he is. 

For Remus Lupin has not faced a boggart in almost thirteen years. A man changes a lot in thirteen years, and with him, his nightmares change, too. 

“Hullo, Moony,” says the haunted shell of Sirius Black. 

Remus freezes. He is caught, for a second—or maybe more; a minute; an hour—between love and hatred, between justice and mercy, between forgiveness and denial. He is trapped inside every emotion he has ever felt and some he never has and never will. 

His mouth opens slightly. Words, he needs words, but they will not come to him. He needs answers, he needs explanations. He needs revenge, he needs to leave, he needs—

“I killed them, ” 

Anything that his mind had conjured up abandons him. He cannot speak; he can only stare at the man in front of him, the man with the sunken eyes and the frail, gaunt hands, and the tattoo of the brilliant, almost-full moon on his wrist. He realizes, far too late, that there are tears beginning to pool in his eyes. 

“I killed them. I killed the Potters. I betrayed them and you and little Peter who never knew what was good for him. I never cared about you, not once.” 

Somewhere inside him, Remus knows it’s true. He knows he’s not worth love or compassion or anything else Sirius pretended to show him. 

Not-Sirius’s face twists itself into a sneer. “I never loved you. And you can lie all you want; you can tell yourself all you want that the war changed me, but the truth of it is that I never changed at all because I never had to. I’ve alway been this—I’ve always been like them, and you fell for a boy who lied and schemed and never ever existed at all.

“Poor, sorry Remus Lupin. In love with a murderer, even after all these years, because the only people who could ever love murderers are filthy, half-breed—”

Remus raises his arm, wand held out, ready to banish the man who stole his heart in one breath and shattered it into a hundred thousand pieces in the next. But he never gets the chance, never gets the oppurtunity, because Sirius—because the boggart—because Not-Sirius has his head tilted to one side and he’s studying Remus with a curious expression on his face. 

“No.

“No, I’ve got it all wrong, haven’t I? You don’t care if I say that I never cared, because you believe it’s true. If I’m going to hurt you, I have to dig a little… deeper.”

Riddikulus, everything in Remus’s body shouts. Say it. Save yourself from his poison and his lies and his mouth that gives forth the killing curse as easily as it used to give kisses. 

But the worst part—the sick, twisted reason that has let him get this far in the first place—is that somewhere, hidden inside him, Remus cares what Sirius has to say. 

“Forgotten about me so soon, have you?” says Not-Sirius, and the last of Remus’s courage is gone, because now that he thinks about it, it was Sirius that gave him every ounce of that courage in the first place and Sirius is gone and locked away and a loveless killer—

And he’s standing now, in front of him, asking him for something he cannot give. 

“Because I haven’t forgotten about you. I’ve been sitting there, in that godforsaken cell, wondering when you’re going to come and get me.” 

Remus takes a shaky breath. Or maybe it’s the boggart that’s breathing in uneven, panicked increments, because the boggart is Sirius and Remus never has been good at separating Sirius from himself. 

“But you’re not going to come and get me, are you? You never will. You knew, didn’t you? You knew all along I was innocent. But you didn’t care—you even welcomed it, glad for the excuse to leave me behind. Leave us behind. 

“Because you never cared at all.” 

It’s like an arrow to Remus’s heart. 

“Riddikulus,” Remus says far too late, and Not-Sirius seems to fold into himself until the last fragmented pieces of the boy Remus loved—loves, if he deigns to be honest with himself at all—is gone and gone and gone again. 

He’s somewhere out there. 

He’s asking to be found. 

If only Remus cared enough to find him.