Chapter Text
Click to show cover art by muddycrows
PART ONE:
REMAINDER
He’d been dreaming about his mother when the owl woke him up. They had been sitting together in the grass on the banks of the River Dee, and she’d opened her mouth to tell him something, but what came out instead of her voice was a sharp tap-tap-tap.
Remus woke with a jolt. In his immediate line of vision, snoring and undisturbed, Julio slept with his arm thrown over his face and his mouth hanging open. Remus squinted against the thin morning light streaming in through the windows and rolled onto his back, grimly acknowledging the hangover that was simmering just behind his eyes. He breathed deeply in and out, feeling the dream lose its shape, allowing it to slip away.
Tap-tap-tap.
He frowned, turned his head towards the window, and started. What was at first glance a massive cloud of soot, and at second glance a great grey owl, was perched on the window sill just outside, eyes yellow and angry-looking in its huge round face. The two of them stared at each other for a moment. Then the bird reared its head back as though to peck impatiently at the glass again, pausing only when Remus made a desperate flapping gesture at it and rolled quickly out of bed.
He found his discarded boxers and t-shirt on the floor and pulled them on, then took out his wand from the bedside table drawer. He glanced at the owl and jerked his head in the direction of the next room, hoping it would get the message. Checking over his shoulder to make sure Julio was still snoring softly, he stepped carefully across the cool tile floor into the living room and shut the door quietly behind him.
The bird was waiting for him on the other side of the sliding door to the balcony. A large, flat, and square parcel was tied to one of its taloned feet. An uneasy prickle ran up the back of Remus’s neck as he made his way across the living room, his stomach churning slightly. He hoped but somehow doubted that this was due to the hangover.
He pressed a palm to the glass, slid the door open, and stepped out into the morning air that was already thickening with heat. Brightness was gathering just under the edge of the horizon, which from Remus’s vantage point was where the pale sky met the sea of pitched tin and terracotta roofs of the surrounding barrio. The enormous owl eyed him impassively from its perch on the balcony railing, looking a bit weary and very out of place. The owls Remus was used to seeing this close to the Mediterranean were smaller, tawnies and long-eareds; most of his colleagues at Al-Ashqilula used nightjars to carry their correspondence. He was sure great greys had a wide-ranging habitat, but the truth was that he hadn’t seen one since he left Britain five years ago. That fact alone was enough to dry out his mouth.
He unscrewed the jar of bird treats he kept on the tiny patio table, hoping to stave off the bite the owl looked like it was itching to give him. It eyed his outstretched palm with interest before snapping up all three treats at once. Then it stuck its leg out obligingly, and Remus began to untie the twine with unsteady fingers.
The parcel was wrapped in brown paper, and affixed to it with more twine was a thin white envelope bearing his name. Jaw set, he tossed a few more treats onto the patio table. The owl lumbered after them eagerly, seeming relieved to have a place to rest after its journey. Remus cast a quick disillusionment charm over it and watched for a moment as the treats disappeared into thin air one by one. Then he stepped back inside and slid the door shut.
Through the silence the battered clock on the wall stuttered out of time, a loud, syncopated ticking that grated against his eardrums. Remus stared down at the parcel in his clammy hands, running his tongue over his teeth. The handwriting inscribing his name on the envelope was unfamiliar. Inhaling deeply, he tore it open and pulled out the letter.
6 May 1987
Dear Remus,
Albus tells me you are no longer living in the country, so I do hope this letter reaches you, wherever you are. I can’t blame you for wanting to get away. For similar reasons, I would also understand if a letter from me is not particularly welcome. However, I thought it was my duty to share this with you.
He told me at the time that the two of you were no longer on speaking terms, so I suppose you may not know that Sirius stayed in our guest bedroom for a couple of weeks, towards the end of October 1981. Then, after what he did upon leaving… well, let’s just say I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve stepped foot into that bedroom in the past five and a half years. It’s the Black superstition I’m sure, but it’s like the whole room is cursed by association. We’re moving to Nottingham soon, though, to be closer to Ted’s mother, so the other day we went in to pack up and take apart the bed.
This record sleeve full of letters was stashed under the mattress. I don’t know why he left them here, and I don’t know what they are about — as soon as I saw they were addressed to you I read no further. I can’t imagine they would be of use to the Aurors or MLE at this point, so I figured the only thing I could do was send them to you. You may very well decide to throw them out without reading them, but I thought that should be your decision to make.
I do hope you’re doing all right these days, Remus, or that you’ve at least managed to find peace. If you ever find yourself back in the UK, please don’t hesitate to send me an owl. You are always welcome here.
Yours,
Andromeda
At some point while he’d scanned the page Remus’s knees had buckled. He was sitting now on the futon, his elbows digging into his thighs and his shoulders hunched in on himself as he stared at the letter. His heart was pounding, his breath coming in quick, shallow gasps. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he glanced at the flat square package still on the coffee table. He reached for it slowly, mechanically, and ripped the brown paper wrapping at the corner.
One long tear was all it took for the paper to fall away, revealing a tattered copy of Led Zeppelin IV, the edges peeling and frayed. Remus’s stomach lurched. In a desperate attempt to staunch the sudden deluge of memories he hastily tipped the album cover onto its side.
A collection of paper tumbled onto the coffee table. Parchment of varying quality, scraps torn from lined notebooks; some folded into pocket-sized squares, others rolled into tight scrolls. Remus’s hands shook as he sifted through them.
11 May 1979. 1 August 1980. 20 November 1977. The spiky, percussive handwriting he knew better than his own. Remus became aware, suddenly, of a low repetitive sound coming from somewhere, and in the next moment realised it was his own voice.
“No, no, no no no no—”
“Remus?”
Something in Remus’s neck cracked as he whipped his head around. For a brief, sickening moment, he stared at Julio and did not recognise him. This wary-eyed Muggle; this bright, tiled flat. Blinking hard, Remus gripped the cool edge of the tin coffee table in front of him until his fingertips turned white.
“Remus,” Julio repeated, an anxious note creeping into his voice. He was still standing in the bedroom doorway, naked but for his boxer briefs, and seemed unsure about whether to come any closer. “¿Qué te pasa?”
Remus exhaled slowly, finally regaining enough sense to tuck his wand furtively under the afghan lying in a heap to his left.
“Sorry. Er.” He cleared his throat. “Listen—you need to leave.”
Julio frowned as he tucked a lock of dark hair behind his ear. “What are those?” he asked, indicating the pile of letters.
“Nothing.”
“You received bad news?”
“No.”
“Remus—”
“Jesus, Julio—I just need you to fucking leave, all right? Fuck.”
Julio stared at him, eyes wide, and then laughed once in disbelief. “Fine,” he spat. “Fuck you.”
He kicked open the bedroom door, and Remus listened to him banging around unnecessarily as he got dressed. He emerged scowling, tying his hair up into a disheveled knot.
“Don’t bother to call, okay?”
“Why would I,” Remus muttered. He was slumped back on the futon, staring up at the ceiling and trying to will away the nausea that was washing over him in waves. “I’m not your fucking boyfriend.”
Julio gave a sharp retort that Remus didn’t understand before wrenching the front door open.
“Your little puta callejera is out here again,” he snapped. The door slammed.
Remus blinked slowly and turned his head. Sitting quietly by the door and staring at him was the skinny calico cat he’d often seen wandering around his street. Remus had long suspected he was one of the only residents who obliged her with the occasional food scraps and scratch behind the ear, and as such she’d taken to loitering on his doorstep in the open-air hallway of his complex.
She blinked her huge yellow eyes at him and meowed. Remus got shakily to his feet. Calmly and deliberately, he walked to the bathroom, knelt in front of the toilet, and threw up.
+
By the time he peeled himself off the floor and stuck his head into the kitchen to glance at the clock, an hour had passed and he was late for work. He could accept, in a kind of abstract way that didn’t quite ring true, that this sort of thing still mattered.
Remus shuffled to the sink and gripped the porcelain edges tightly for a moment before reaching for the flattened tube of toothpaste, managing with some effort to extract a smear onto the bristles of his abused plastic toothbrush. Brush, spit, rinse. He avoided his own reflection in the spotted and discoloured mirror, and he kept his mind blank.
Five minutes later he was dressed and headed for the front door with a piece of toast in his mouth when he spotted the cat, curled into a tight ball on the living room floor. She woke with an inquisitive sound when he gingerly picked her up, and then began purring mightily in his arms.
“Nothing personal,” Remus muttered through his mouthful of toast. “Can’t have you pissing in my flat is all.”
He did not allow himself to look at the letters strewn across the coffee table, though his jaw clenched with the effort. Cat under one arm and rucksack under the other, he strode across the flat and slipped out the door.
The cat stared up at him when he set her down in the hallway, looking minorly affronted.
“Go on.” Remus gestured over the railing to the dilapidated courtyard down below. “It’s a big wide world out there.”
She sat down on his doormat and continued to stare at him. Shrugging, Remus took another bite of toast and started down the terracotta stairs, ducking under a neighbour’s dripping clothesline as he went.
The Albaicín was still waking up. He generally took the longer and quieter route, meandering his way to the school through the network of crumbling alleys and steep stone stairways, but in that moment the idea of peace and quiet was intolerable. He trudged instead down the narrow, uneven steps of his street and emerged on the noisy road below, where the whizzing of Vespas and the shouting of street peddlers could almost drown out the buzzing in his head.
The morning was heating up fast. He could feel beads of sweat forming at his hairline as he crossed the bustling plaza at the bottom of the hill and started hiking up the Cuesta de Gomérez. The shops lining the street became more touristy the higher he climbed, t-shirts and painted ceramics crowding the windows. More and more people he passed were wearing cameras around their necks and clutching Alhambra brochures in their fists.
One final bend in the road before the Gate of the Pomegranates slipped into view. It loomed forty feet above him, a towering mass of pale, intricately carved stone that spanned the width of the street. Tourists gawked as they shuffled through the massive centre archway, most ignoring the smaller twin entrances on either side of it, but Remus approached the wide column separating the centre arch from the smaller one on the left. No one spared him a second glance as he walked straight into the stone façade and disappeared from view.
Most magic schools in Europe situated themselves far from Muggle society, nestling into mountain peaks or steep valleys, but thanks to both a historic schism between the magic and non-magic sects of the Nasrid dynasty and the relatively relaxed local Statute of Secrecy laws, Academia Al-Ashqilula hid in plain sight on the same plot of land as a heavily-trafficked Muggle tourist site. There were no tourists around when Remus emerged from the blackness on the other side of the stone archway, however. Instead the road through the Alhambra Forest was full of students in dust-red linen robes, chatting in groups beneath the Aleppo pines and pedaling bronze-framed bicycles up towards the school. One or two of them waved at Remus as he passed, and he nodded back with what he hoped was a smile and not a grimace.
The fortress sat at the top of the winding uphill road, smaller yet otherwise remarkably similar to its colocated sister palace. The same towering, conical cypress trees lined the perimeter, the same sun-dried red bricks seemed to radiate heat in the bright morning light. The main entrance lay beyond the row of stilted arches that spanned the front of the palace, but Remus circled around the southwest corner and entered through a tall keyhole-shaped side door of thick oak.
It opened on a vaulted corridor, walls carved with intricate arabesques and inlaid with tessellations of onyx and lapis lazuli. Remus nodded again as he hurriedly passed Professor Farooq, the elderly wizard who taught astronomy, and ducked into a spiral stone staircase set into an alcove in the wall. At the top of the stairs he took a left down another corridor, narrowly avoiding collision with a frantic-looking first year as he did so. He was nearly out of breath by the time he reached the door to his shared office and pushed it open.
Ximena was sitting at her desk behind a towering stack of books and papers that Remus knew was standing upright only with the help of magic. She leaned around it as Remus came in, narrowing her eyes at him behind her black horn-rimmed glasses.
“Morning,” she said pointedly, though the corner of her mouth was turned up.
“Sorry I’m late,” Remus grunted, dropping his rucksack on his own cluttered desk with a thump. He sat down heavily in his chair and exhaled.
“You look like shit,” Ximena noted, frowning as she glanced at the lunar calendar she kept tacked to the wall.
“Yeah, no,” Remus said, following her gaze. He scrubbed a hand roughly through his hair. “What can I tell you. Just, er—bad morning.”
A thick beam of sunlight was streaming in through the window behind his desk, illuminating the swirling dust motes he’d stirred up with his entrance. It was a moment before he realised Ximena was saying his name.
“Sorry, what?”
“I asked if you had a chance to grade those fourth-year papers?”
“Oh—yeah. Yes.” He reached into his rucksack and fished around until he found a fistful of tattered parchment marked up sparingly in red ink. After a semi-successful attempt to flatten the pages against the edge of his desk, he reached across the divide and handed them over.
“Thanks,” Ximena said, though she was looking thoughtfully at him instead of at the papers. “Are you okay, Remus?” she asked carefully.
His breath caught in his throat as he met her gaze. Despite the fact that she was technically his boss, she was the closest thing he had to a friend anymore. Though in a way, this was all the more reason to keep his mouth shut. The moment passed. He attempted a self-deprecating grin.
“I’m fine,” he assured her. “Just—had a late one, I suppose.” He sat up straighter and peered into a desk drawer, pretending to look for something. “I’m doing a demo for the third years later—kappas—have you seen that Serenity Solution anywhere?”
“Isn’t that it?” Ximena nodded towards the far end of Remus’s desk. The cork-stoppered beaker was in plain sight, right where he’d left it after brewing the potion the day before. Its label bore his own ungainly handwriting: KAPPA TRANQS DO NOT DRINK ¡NO BEBAS!!
“Ah,” he said cheerily. “You found it.”
He didn’t need to look at Ximena to know she was pursing her lips. She spun around in her chair, grabbed a ceramic mug from her bookcase, and filled it with steaming black coffee from the half-full cafetière on her desk.
“Thanks,” Remus murmured appreciatively as she reached over to place it on the corner of his desk.
Ximena stood up, dusting off her robes. “Okay,” she sighed, “I gotta go teach. I’ve left out some notes from our interview with whatshisname from the Hippogriff Conservancy, if you wanted to get any writing done.”
“Tidy, thanks.”
Ximena hesitated, looking like she wanted to say something more, but in the end she just put a hand on Remus’s shoulder and squeezed. Remus closed his eyes, listening to the swish of her robes as she crossed the room, and when he opened them again he was alone.
+
“You’ve got to be joking.”
Sitting where he’d left her on his doorstep, the calico cat blinked up at him with her round yellow eyes. A bloody and partially disemboweled rat was curled at her feet.
“What am I meant to do with that?” Remus shifted his rucksack higher on his shoulder, his keys dangling helplessly in his hand.
The cat meowed at him.
“No,” Remus said emphatically, “no, I’m sorry, thank you, but I can’t do anything with that. Really.” He unlocked his door and opened it just wide enough to squeeze inside. “You should just—go ahead and have that,” he said, addressing the cat now through the crack in the door. “Okay? I’m sure it’s good. For you, I mean. Bye-bye.”
The cat blinked at him. He shut the door and locked it, realising as he did so that he’d just said bye-bye to a cat.
He dropped his rucksack to the floor and rubbed his eyes wearily. Despite numerous washings his hands still smelled like algae from the demonstration, which had anyway been a bust because he’d absentmindedly given the kappa too much of the Serenity Solution and it had slept soundly through the entire class. After ten minutes spent on what amounted to an extremely boring anatomy lesson he’d allowed the students a study hall. He halfheartedly chastised himself now for not thinking to bring what remained of the potion home for his own use.
In search of the next best thing, he stood rummaging through the kitchen cabinet he’d filled with liquor until he settled on a bottle of mezcal near the back. Ximena had given it to him for his twenty-seventh birthday a couple of months ago, and there was still about a third left. Remus yanked the stopper out and raised the bottle to his lips, and got three large swallows in before he was forced to put it down with a grimace.
The letters were on his coffee table. He could see them from the kitchenette, tattered and pale in the yellowy overhead light. For what had to be the hundredth time that day he reminded himself that he didn’t have to read them, but the words sounded comically insincere in his head, like they were being read by a terrible actor in a radio drama.
Remus brought the bottle of mezcal with him to the living room and sat down carefully on the edge of the futon. He was on his way to buzzed already, warmth radiating from his middle until he could feel it in his face and ears. The cover of Led Zeppelin IV was lying on the floor. Remus picked it up and ran his fingers over the waxy surface, the hunched man in the picture frame looking out at him almost expectantly.
It had been the first record Sirius ever bought, on their first trip to Hogsmeade in third year. While Remus, James, and Peter bumbled around the streets with wide, hungry eyes, Sirius had marched past Honeydukes and Zonko’s with single-minded determination, straight into Bezoar Records to make what he’d called “a rebellious purchase of great personal significance”—his parents never having allowed such Muggle paraphernalia in the house. Given the title of the first track and the form his Animagus would take two years later, the choice had been an eerily prescient one. Though the physical record was not in the sleeve now, it may as well have been playing at full volume for the way it filled Remus’s head. Hey hey mama said the way you move…
He took another drink, wondering what had become of the missing vinyl, and where Sirius had managed to hide the album cover for the three years they’d lived together after graduation. They had shared a record collection for almost all of that time, and Remus had never remarked its absence.
He dragged his hand down his face and set the cover back on the tile floor. Then he took another swig from the bottle for good measure and turned his attention, at last, to the scraps of paper in front of him.
He unfolded and unrolled them until they were all more or less flat and face-up on the table. There were nine in total, ranging in length from a few sentences to several long paragraphs of handwriting that varied in legibility, with the exception of one heavily creased piece of parchment that was curiously blank. Remus zeroed in on the dates at the top of the other eight letters, not allowing his eyes to scan any further, though he couldn’t help catching a few glimpses of scattered emphasis: WRACKED with — You don’t even like — ENTIRE MONTH???
Finally he had the letters arranged in a chronologically ordered stack, with the blank one arbitrarily at the bottom. At the top was a long sheaf of Hogwarts parchment dated to September of 1975. The start of fifth year.
Remus put his face in his shaking hands, breathing shallowly between the gaps in his fingers. “This is such fucking bullshit,” he muttered, though there was no heat to it. Only resignation.
He reached for the bottle of mezcal and took another large gulp. Then, before he could spend too much time trying to determine if he might be sick, he snatched up the parchment, sat back on the futon with his knees drawn up to his chest, and began to read.
29 September 1975
Moony!!!
I’ve got to say it feels weird to be writing you a letter when you’re about 6 feet away in the next bed. But the whole point is that I can’t say this to your face, so really I’m left with few options at my disposal!
The problem is that I want to tell you quite badly what we’ve been up to lately but James told me if I did he’d call the whole thing off and dungbomb my bed for good measure. So as per his suggestion here I am, curtains drawn, writing out my feelings by candlelight like a fucking Jane Austen character. Why I bring this fate upon myself I’ll never know!!
So here it is: James and Pete and I are trying to become Animagi.
OK — maybe James had a point. It does feel good to write it down! Not as good as it will feel in a couple of months (?) when we break the news by transforming for you in the dormitory, but hopefully it’s enough to tide me over. Although maybe you’ll have already guessed by then — some of this shit is hard to be subtle about. Do you know how hard mental it is trying to keep a fucking mandrake leaf in your mouth for an ENTIRE MONTH??? We’re 3 weeks in now and I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve almost swallowed it or spat it out with my toothpaste. At breakfast this morning when Pete nearly hacked up a lung — let’s just say that wasn’t a bit of banger going down the wrong pipe, har har. And don’t get me started on the other illegal and/or dangerous and/or annoying to procure ingredients for this godforsaken potion, which might I add can only be drunk during a lightning storm. Not exactly a walk in the park, this!
It’s OK though — it was my stupid idea and it will be well worth it. After the moon last May that left you looking like a mummy that escaped the tomb I got to thinking — because suddenly it was like I could no longer abide with letting you chew yourself to pieces month after month. Sorry — I know if you ever read this you’d yell at me for making it all about myself but it’s true. There was a limit and I ran into it like a brick wall. Luckily I was able to find the brilliant solution in one of the less sadistic grimoires in my family’s library last summer. And now here we are!
OK I think this “letter” is veering dangerously close to diary entry territory now so I will end it here. I won’t concede this to James but I do believe this exercise has proved fruitful. Off the chest and onto the parchment as it were. The secret lives to see another day!!!
— Sirius
A dull pain throbbed in Remus’s temple as he stared at the signature, and only when he reached up to rub the spot with his fingertips did he realise how tightly his jaw was clenched. With some effort he relaxed, moved his jaw tenderly to the left and right until it cracked. He turned the parchment over. On the other side was a fragment of Potions notes: TRANSITIVE PROPERTY EQUATION: t = μ + 2n3 where μ = weight of mutable object & n = weight of combined vector ingredients!
Remus flicked his wrist and sent the parchment spinning back onto the coffee table. He swallowed, but his mouth was so dry that his throat only seemed to stick to itself. He picked up the bottle of mezcal from off the floor but it was empty.
“Fuck,” he bit out, and stood up, hearing his knees crack, his fists clenching and unclenching around nothing. The floor spun out lazily from under him as he stumbled to the kitchenette and reached for the telephone on the wall. The whirling of the rotary dial made him so dizzy he had to lean against the wall for support, and with each ring the roaring in his ears grew louder until finally, after the fifth one, he heard a click.
“¿Diga?”
“Julio—hi.”
A crackle in Remus’s ear as Julio exhaled. “I told you not to call, Remus.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry, er, about this morning.” Remus screwed his eyes shut, his forehead pressed to the wall. “Listen—can I come round?”
“You are kidding.”
“No, listen—please. I really—”
“Are you drunk?”
Remus swallowed thickly. “Er—”
“This is pathetic,” Julio hissed, enunciating each syllable. “Even for you. I am hanging up the telephone now.”
“Wait—”
The line went dead.
“Fuck.”
Remus slammed the receiver back onto its hook and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, allowing muddled splotches of colour to take over his vision. He sank to the floor, clutching his knees to his chest, and stayed there until his spine began to ache from being pressed against the wooden cabinets. By then his breathing, at least, had evened out somewhat.
Just then a thought occurred to him, and with some difficulty he hauled himself to his feet, staggered to his front door, and wrenched it open. He’d expected to see the calico cat curled up just outside. But both she and the dead rat were gone, the bloodstain on the doormat the only evidence they had been there at all.