Archive of Our Own

At 5 years old, Remus Lupin learned what being lonely meant for the first time.

Spending day and night in his room, in his bed with no visitor apart from his parents to save him from whatever a stranger would do if they saw the bitemark on his side, he understood the difference between being alone and being lonely. Being alone he liked, he could just make up stories in his mind, or he had his books to keep him company, but being lonely, even if his Ma fussed over him and his Da kept checking on him, he learned he hated with a passion.

By the time he turned 16, his life had changed in a way he never could have foreseen. He now had friends, friends that accepted him with all his imperfections, he even had a boyfriend, and his Ma had long gotten used to the idea that Remus was a werewolf and considered it just another fact of his life—her son had tawny hair, towered over all his friends, dated the freshly-disowned former Black heir, and turned into a wolf once a month.

He also just had his father walk out of his life.

Ever since starting Hogwarts over five years ago, Remus hadn’t felt truly lonely, not with Sirius and James and Pete around, and even if the two of them hadn’t got along since that fateful night almost eleven years prior, having a father that would rather forget the existence of his own son hit different. Remus knew it was for the best for everyone involved, he still couldn’t help but feel the loneliness wash over him as Lyall stormed out and apparated away.

Two years later the feeling came back with a vengeance, when, seemingly out of nowhere, his Ma was diagnosed with stage IV cancer just when he thought his life, even with the war raging in the country, finally found a direction for the future. He had finished Hogwarts a few months before, he and Sirius moved in together and had that little ceremony with their closest friends and family, and he was working for the Order.

Sirius and Lily both tried their best looking up possible remedies, but the ugly thing about trying to heal Muggles with magic is that it doesn’t work. You can give them any potion, use whatever spell you stumble upon in a century-old book, you don’t have the power to change the fact that magical remedies need an inner magical core to latch onto, to draw power from.

Hope stood no chance against the cancer that was diagnosed way too late and she was gone before Remus and Sirius could celebrate their half-year anniversary.

It only took another year for him to lose any other parental figure he still had in his life – Effie and Monty, who were basically his parents-in-law, fell ill with dragonpox and their already somewhat compromised immune systems couldn’t fight it off, then not long after Lily’s parents passed away in a train-crash. He was 19 and instead of the grief and anger and sorrow one feels at the passing of a loved one, he could only feel the endless numbness.

He barely turned 20 when the war became much more prominent, much closer.

Caradoc was the first to go, disappearing during a mission, his body never turning up for his family and friends to bury.

Next came Benjy, and, shortly after, Fabian and Gideon, ambushed and slaughtered.

Then the McKinnons, the whole family found among the rumbles of the parental home.

That was the last straw for Mary, who finally went through with the decision she’d been toying with for months and left the country for good.

Remus heard about Dorcas the next time he managed to spend a few days at home between missions, Dorcas, whom the death of Marlene broke so much they threw caution to the wind and sought out the group of Death Eaters that killed her and took almost all of them with them to the grave.

The next month and a half, Remus had barely any news about the goings-on of the war as he was stuck on a mission, yet he never imagined coming back to an empty flat, three dead best friends, and his partner in Azkaban for murder.

The next eleven and a half years he spent surviving instead of living, not even able to feel lonely anymore, just tired and numb. He had no-one, only the ghosts of his past, memories that offered more torture than comfort.

At first, he tried to get some answers, sent letter after letter to demand a trial only for them to be returned unopened, then went as far as begging the clerks at the DMLE to let him visit Sirius but was turned away each and every time.

But he couldn’t believe either of his best friends, his family, to betray the others, and mourning them, who they were as kids, who they could have become in a different world, felt too overwhelming, something that would have broken him, so instead he learnt to live with the numbness.

He was 35 when he realized he had never before felt the real and utter loneliness of being completely left alone. Even when he’d gone on autopilot for years, he’d had the reassurance of Sirius’ presence, however far away they had been from each other, but now, lying on top of the covers of the bed he had shared with Sirius on the rare occasion during the past few months that they could both think of sleep, still wearing the clothes he had fought in at the Ministry, he felt empty and alone, as if the sun had gone out and he was left, half-blind, to survive in the dark, entirely on his own.

It didn’t matter that Harry was still alive, that the Order members had become somewhat more that acquaintances in the past year or two, he couldn’t even think of them, curled up in the fading scent of Sirius, Walburga Black’s screamed insults a faint background noise. He should go downstairs and shut her up, he could grab a bottle of Ogden’s from the drawing room, eat something…

If he closed his eyes, he could pretend Sirius had just popped out to the bathroom and would be back in a moment, wrapping him up in a tight hug and snuggling as close as physically possible until they fell asleep, as he had most night at Hogwarts. He made himself as small as he could, lying on his side, not caring that he had forgotten to kick off his shoes and they would get dirt on the covers. He buried his face in Sirius’ pillow, breathing in the barely-there scent that would disappear in a day or two, ready to spend the whole night awake.