Is It Over Now?

Chapter sixteen

Remus sighed as the summer heat brushed against his skin, the morning sunlight slipping into the room. He let his hand wander out to where Regulus was supposed to be in bed beside him, brows knitting together in confusion when the other wasn't.

The four Hogwarts students had come to the cottage after graduation, leaving the homes that they had never wanted, but retaining contact with those within them. It had only been a week or two, but Remus thought that he could live the contestant noise, the life that the other four brought. He'd never say it out loud to anyone other than maybe Dora, but having the others living with him, in the rooms that they had designed just the summer before, made it all feel like home in a way that nothing truly had before, like a piece clicking into place on a puzzle that he hadn't known existed.

Remus didn't think much of the absence of the other teen, it was often enough that he would wake up alone, or with only the tapping of Regulus's owl at the window for company. Some mornings when the other woke before him, Regulus would go down to the lab to make sure that Dora had made it to bed at all the night before, more often than not being roped into helping with one of her experiments and failing at his objective along the way.

But most times that this occurred, both Evan and Barty were gone as well, not coming back until late in the morning, skin smelling of dark magic. On days like that, he and Pandora only sat together in the garden and waited, the herbs around Remus growing quickly as anxious filled magic rippled off of the wolf in waves until the other three came back.

He couldn't do that today though.

Ever since coming back from Greyback's pack, the other Marauders had made an effort at reconnecting with Remus. The four would meet at pubs and one another's houses outside of Order meetings every now and then, but mostly wrote to one another about simple things that could be shared without having to worry about the consequences of mail being intercepted. There was no talking of pranks or cramming for tests, and yet it somehow had begun to feel like the early days of their friendship when Remus was still an unlikely addition that they didn't quite know what to do with.

Today was one of the rare days that the four met one another at the flat that James and Sirius shared with one another in muggle London, just like Padfoot had always wanted.

On simple days like these, Remus found that it was easy to be happy for the others for getting the things that they wanted. Easier still when Dora smiled at him on the way out the door, a chipped mug in her hands, as Barty flipped through the records that the five of them had collected, Evan watching the other former Slytherin fondly from the kitchen as golden light filled the room.

It was easy to not be so cold when he had everything that he had wanted as well, even if it wasn't with the people that he'd thought that he would find it.

(Something prickled at the back of the former Gryffindor's mind, a whisper of things that he had forgotten, but couldn't for the life of him remember. Promises of wrongness seeping in through the contentment, but the teen only pushed it aside. The whispers had been there since that day at the Potter's home, his actions always looming over him and haunting him at night. He didn't want to admit that this was different though. That it was something just out of reach, like a willow - o - wisp)

—-

Remus smells the difference in the air long before he knocks on the door of Sirius's and James's flat, before the door opens to reveal a sullen James, before his gut begins to twist in the way that it always did when he reached for the paper in the morning (he hadn't looked at it today, even though he always did. Another peculiarity).

"What happened?" Remus asks, and he wonders how the man even hears him as the wolf could barely hear himself over the thrumming of his own heart. Something so loud that he was sure James must have heard it as well. Remus found that he didn't care if the other did. He just wanted an answer. 'Prongs, what happened ?"