Title: Hours Advance (the Slow Dying Remix)
Author: Am-Chau Yarkona (amchau@popullus.net)
Summary: Remus is still grieving.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Remus/Sirius implied.
Warnings: um… canon character deaths dealt with.
Author you were assigned: thedeadparrot
Notes: Betaed by Raven. The title references a poem, Nothing To Be Said by Philip Larkin.
Winter came, far too quickly, with wind and long nights and rain.
It was, Remus knew, inevitable; but that didn't mean he had to like it. When Molly asked him what the matter was, and whether he planned to be part of their Christmas festivities, he told her as much.
He thinks he may have shouted a little—perhaps even a lot—because she cried, and later Arthur soothed her, saying (in earshot, though Remus isn't sure Arthur knows that), "It wasn't about you, dear. He's still… grieving."
Arthur is probably right. He's probably still grieving, though this numbness seems more like an absence than an emotion. He's aware that he moves through his day without concentrating on anything properly.
Over breakfast—toast, without any of the mouldy jam that's still sitting in the cupboard—he reads the paper, without relating it to people whose names he knows, even when the stories are about You-Know-Who and The Boy Who Lived.
* * *
"Say his name," Dumbledore tells his classes, but the children can't take much notice when their parents and peers and, indeed, the rest of their world refuses to listen. Remus' father taught him not to say the name; in his first year, Remus taught a Muggle-born Hufflepuff boy never to write it, let alone utter it.
* * *
His pictures from the time before Then are hidden or gone. He had a fit of rage back in the summer—around August or so—and tore several up. The stained wallpaper over his bed, where water trickles through the cheap repair charms, is spreading with each rainfall into two channels and starting to resemble a stag's arching horns, but it doesn't remind him of anyone.
The snow arrives, another full moon passes, the fat bastard who orders huge meals and leaves the plates covered in sauce makes another complaint about Remus, and Moody comes by to ask how he is.
Remus says he's fine, mentioning an invented appointment. Moody doesn't know him that well, and is persuaded to leave.
* * *
"You're lying," Sirius said. Remus shook his head, but Sirius is clever and can read a textbook if he wants to. "You disappear at the full moon, every month." Sirius was always the vigilant one, and perhaps Remus rested too much on that. After all, he didn't spot the clues—there must have been clues. Nothing can be undectable if you know how to find it.
* * *
Muggle food is cheaper than wizarding food, perhaps because there's more demand, or because it's not so good for you. Down to his last pound, he buys fatty noodles, starts on the chair-legs, and wonders how well his wand will burn.
Molly doesn't say anything further about Yule. He only knows it's the twenty-fifth because he wakes up one morning to find a brightly-wrapped package in front of his fireplace. The paper has pictures of hippogriffs and robins, flapping about in a most unrealistic manner. It contains a hand-knitted sweater.
At work, people call out Happy Christmas, and the customers are obnoxious and drunk but some of them tip better so he grits his teeth and carries on working.
That evening, he begins ripping pages out of his copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, to feed the fire he started with the wrapping-paper. Cold overcomes both scholarliness and pride, and he huddles in the new jumper as a defining text of his schooldays burns.
* * *
"I know where to find a beast," Severus spat. "Right in front of me." Remus tensed with worry, but it was all right—Severus was talking to Padfoot. Two days later, he would know the truth.
* * *
Remus shivers, and lets the motion push the images—so very vivid!—to the other side of the glass that divides his mind. They are Then; he has no use for them now.
He climbs into bed with the sweater still on. The snow is melting above, and water is lengthening the branching stains on the wall.
The opposite wall is blank, though; he stares at that in preference, and lets the disgusting beige wallpaper colour his thoughts of the next day as some kindly goddess allows him to slide into sleep.
End.
Original drabble:
Remus wakes up in the morning and doesn't think about James, Lily, Peter
or Sirius over morning tea. He reads the /Prophet/ instead.
He goes to work and doesn't think about becoming a teacher at Hogwarts (or
Harry, who is still too young for this). He thinks about the spills he
needs to mop up off the restaurant floor.
He doesn't hunger for a full meal when he gets home for dinner. He
contemplates how many ramen noodles he can buy for £1.
When he falls asleep, Remus doesn't think about innocent times and
youthful pranks as his mind goes blank. He thinks about getting up in the
morning and doing it all over again.