Three years of work and 200,000 words later and I have ONE chapter left to write of my Wolfstar Hogwarts-era fic Only Ever You. I haven't put a word on A03 yet. I wanted it to be finished! The time is coming!
So much angst. So much longing. So much of Remus's life falling apart, and grief and anxiety and hurt/comfort galore ...
A snippet from Chapter 1 for all you lovely people:
It was the second day after the full moon, and as much as he’d insisted to his friends that he was ready to rejoin the land of the living, Remus Lupin had second thoughts after James Potter closed the bathroom door behind him and he bent over to remove his pajamas. A wave of dizziness swept over him and pain erupted in his shoulders and hips. Biting back a cry, he lowered himself gingerly to sit on the small bench beside the sink and remained very still, waiting for the walls to stop spinning. In an effort to help them along, he concentrated on taking slow, deliberate breaths.
He had hoped this month would be better, but maybe it was time to start making peace with the facts. Over the past several months, it had begun to sink in that a day in the hospital wing, followed by a night in his own soft bed in Gryffindor Tower, were no longer enough for him to fully recover from the full moon. Back in second or third year, he would have been up on the second day, a bit stiff and moving slowly, but ready to return to classes with his friends by breakfast time. But now, his body was tired. It had been through so much. Somewhere in a distant part of his mind, he had always known that as the years crept on, his body would begin to slowly break down. But he had thought he had at least a decade or two before he needed to think about that. He was only sixteen.
After a minute, the dizziness passed, and Remus stood back up, slowly, and reached to turn on the shower.
For some reason, he could not bring himself to voice any of these thoughts to James, or Sirius, or Peter. They worried enough, and they already did so much. And, really, it could have been a lot worse. Prongs and Padfoot generally managed to prevent the wolf from hurting himself too badly, so there was usually less blood and fewer new scars than there used to be. As for the rest of it—the pain in his bones, the exhaustion, the aching muscles, the dizzy spells—there was nothing to be done, so what good would it do to dwell? He just needed to push through it as best he could, and get to the other side. For most days out of the month, he was just fine.
Remus let the water get as hot as he could stand while he managed to step out of his pajamas, and then let out a long exhale when he moved under the spray, letting it soothe his muscles and bones. He decided he was being dramatic. This was all he needed, really. He never felt entirely human again until he’d had a real shower. But Godric, he was tired. His legs felt shaky, so he washed quickly, wiping away some flecks of dried blood on his side that Pomfrey’s spells had missed, and scraping the dirt of their midnight wanderings from underneath his fingernails. He bent his head down and let soap and water run over his hair and the back of his neck, washing away the sweaty grime that had dried there during his fitful rest.
For a moment, it felt wonderful. Then he raised his head and realized at once that the bending forward had been a mistake. The dizziness returned, and this time it was joined by a feeling as if his head had floated loose from his body. It didn’t pass. His stomach roiled with nausea. His vision became spotty. He blinked slowly. A quiet ringing began in his ears, and grew louder.
Uh oh…
He had no choice. He tried to call out for his friends. His mouth moved, but no sound emerged. He tried again. “Help?” he managed weakly. Desperate to steady himself, he pressed one hand to the shower’s cool stone wall, fisted the other in the shower curtain, and told himself to breathe. It was fine. He was fine.
*********
A thick, heavy silence hung in the air of the sixth year boys’ dormitory in Gryffindor tower, broken only by the gentle pattering of late winter sleet on the rattling windowpane.
Peter darted wide, worried eyes from James to Sirius and back again, and Sirius tried not to feel a flare of annoyance. Peter always expected them to have a plan, to produce all the ideas, however wild, that might solve their latest problem. Most of the time, Sirius didn’t mind. It was what came naturally to them, and Merlin knew Sirius didn’t want anyone telling him what to do, unless it was James with a brilliant, hare-brained scheme. But today was different.
Sirius was at a loss.
He leaned heavily against the closed bathroom door, twisting his wand between his fingers and feeling completely, uselessly defeated.
“He’s not okay,” he said at last, his voice piercing the tension in the room like the tip of a knife.
“Definitely not,” Peter agreed.
James let out a sigh from where he had reclined on his unmade bed, and flipped closed the latest issue of Quidditch Today. There was a female keeper on the cover, her team robes stretched tightly across her abundant chest as she laid herself out on her broom, blocking a quaffle over and over again with her outstretched toes.
“He always feels better after a shower,” James said, sounding weary. “He’ll be fine.”
Sirius scoffed. Of the three of them, James was usually the best attuned to Remus’s physical condition at any given time, so Sirius didn’t understand whether James just hadn’t been paying attention, or if he was testing out some new type of wishful thinking. But surely he’d noticed Remus looking even paler than usual as they’d helped him to the bathroom, James holding him by one arm and Sirius by the other, while Peter had looked on, frowning.
“We’re not doing enough,” said Sirius. “We need to take out more books. In the restricted section. We’ve missed something, I know it—”
“Padfoot,” James cut him off, sitting up and setting the magazine aside, along with his glasses. He rubbed at his eyes. “We’ve been over this. We’ve read everything. We’re doing everything we can. And he’s told us himself, it’s better than it used to be, before we became Animagi, right?”
“Better?” said Sirius. “It’s not better! Yeah, maybe he’s not as lonely anymore, and the wolf has his fun running around with us, but the wolf isn’t Remus. Did you notice the way he was breathing after he changed back this time? Or that he can barely swallow because he screamed his throat raw?”
“Of course I noticed.”
“Let’s do more research, then. We can’t have read everything—”
“But the books all say the same things, mate,” James countered. “You know that.”
“The restricted section—”
“Been there.”
“Madam Pomfrey—”
“You know we can’t.”
Sirius threw a scowl at James, but fell silent. Peter watched their exchange but said nothing. Instead, he stood and took the water pitcher and glass from Remus’s bedside, wiped the glass with a clean cloth, and refilled the pitcher from the end of his wand, casting a cooling charm and holding it until the sides of the pitcher frosted. James replaced his glasses, and then waved his own wand at Remus’s bed, muttering an incantation that made the sheets and blankets lift up, snap straight, and lay themselves gently down, as the pillows shook themselves and landed neatly on top of the made bed.
Sirius pouted.
“Sorry, Pads,” said James gently. “You know if there was anything else, I’d be first in line—”
First in line for what, however, he never said. His words were cut short by the sound of a sudden, enormous crash from inside the bathroom.
A single beat passed, and then James leapt from his bed. Sirius, however, was closer, and burst into the bathroom first, a cloud of steam engulfing him, to find the shower curtain and the metal rod that held it in a messy pile at the bottom of the shower. Water was flying everywhere, and Remus was a crumpled heap in the middle of it all.
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