Harry Potter 1. Remus

**Baffled**

Remus baffles Sirius.   
  
They're best friends, in spite of the twelve years Sirius has spent in an antiquated hell. They're each other's one grasp on reality, despite the fact that they've both spent almost half their lives unbearably alone.   
  
They've talked more through letters in this last year than Sirius ever recalls them having talked in school. Sirius used to depend on James to make his world right. James was the person who made him feel whole. The person who believed him when everyone else was whispering nasty things about ill gotten talent and inbred psychoticness.   
  
Sirius thinks now that he was more like Jamie's leech than he was like Jamie's friend. And it's not a comfortable feeling.  
  
But Sirius can't be Remus's leech. Remus won't let him. In fact, half the time, Sirius wonders if Remus even cares. And that's not a comfortable thought either, but not many thoughts these days are. He's used to it.   
  
Remus baffles Sirius.   
  
And Sirius wonders if there was ever a time where he understood his werewolf friend, or if he just selfishly imposed his own thoughts and feelings on someone who never felt them. Even now, as Sirius travels up to meet with Remus at the cottage he's been staying at, Sirius can't recall Remus's favorite color. Or what makes him laugh. Or what makes him cry.   
  
And he has to wonder. Did he ever know? Did he ever know what made Remus angry? Did he ever know what frustrated Remus?   
  
He and Remus are best friends, in spite of what's happened in the past, and in spite of old spites.   
  
He knocks on Remus's front door, an elated smile on his face as he prepares to meet up with his long lost childhood buddy. But at the same time, in a tiny corner of Sirius's heart, Sirius can't help but feel that even if Remus opens the door, Remus will never invite him in.


	2. Tonks

**Real**

Nymphadora Tonks stares in the mirror and she wishes that she could take a vacation from herself. 

She's made an art of her own unique abilities. This nose with that hair and this lip shape with those kinds of eyes. She can be just about anyone she chooses to be and she can remodel and remake herself should the image she see not please her. If she so chose, Nymphadora Tonks would never have to have a bad hair day or sagging boobs. Forget crows' feet and the blotchy skin of old age. She can be forever young if she so chooses. 

She's happy with the way she can shape her body and she's happy with the opportunities that it's given her. Really. 

She thinks that if she changes her face just one more time, then no one will notice. She hopes that if she makes a joke out of her own ability to switch noses like she was switching socks then no one will see. If she shocks them long enough with the fast and varied array of colors in her hair then maybe they'll be too otherwise occupied to take a closer look. 

She looks in the mirror now, and her own face stares straight back at her. Not someone else's face, not someone else's nose, not someone else's hair or lips. Just hers and hers alone. She used to think that if she changed them around enough she could make someone else's face her own. She used to think that if she kept the endless stream of masks flitting over her face that she'd find one that finally fit. 

But none of the masks are really hers to call her own, except for this one. This face is the one that she hides behind everyone else's. 

This is the real Nymphadora Tonks. This is the knob-kneed girl who never felt as if she belonged. This is the halfblood who is both a disgrace to the family and a freak of nature. This is the girl who trips over every obstacle, real or imagined, and has to pick herself up each time. 

She's tried on every face under the sun and been a chameleon in her own skin, but this lost and uncertain girl is always the face that comes back to haunt her and that shows up in her mirror. 

The real Nymphadora Tonks is someone she doesn't wish to share with anyone. She wishes she could displace her personality along with her skin, but even she isn't that much of a freak. 

But she is just enough of a freak to know that she doesn't belong. That she never has. That she's always been a part of two very different worlds with very different priorities and that the real Nymphadora Tonks is neither witch nor muggle. She keeps trying on faces with the hopes that one day she'll find a face that will give her that acceptance she's wished for her entire life. She keeps trying on faces, hoping against hope that she'll stumble across one that lets her slide easily into one of the worlds she straddles. 

And each time she thinks she's close, she looks in the mirror and realizes all over again that it's hopeless. 

And each time she wishes that she could take a vacation from being herself and all of the false faces she wears.   


	3. Sirius

**Lost**

"What are you looking for, Remus?" Sirius asked more out of boredom than out of an actual curiosity. Remus, who had been obviously searching for something, was currently halfway under the sofa in the main drawing room that Sirius secretly suspected housed a black hole.   
  
"My watch. You remember the one I used to have back in school?" Remus's voice was mostly muffled by the ostentatious piece of crap his mother had deemed an antique of what Sirius suspected was a step up from the stone ages. Personally, he had lived in fear of the monstrosity eating him alive when he'd been a child.   
  
"Small, gold pocket watch, right?" Sirius cautiously climped off his stoop at the stairs and knelt down gingerly beside the sofa. "The house might have swallowed it whole by now, you know," he tried to point out kindly, even though he was certain it didn't sound to terribly kind.   
  
"No. It _has_ to be around here somewhere." Remus managed. He sounded a bit desperate to Sirius's ears, so he hunkered down beside the man and with a small amount of trepidation, stuck his hand under the sofa.   
  
"Would it really be that big of a loss if you couldn't find it?" Sirius heard himself ask after fifteen minutes of fruitless searching had turned up nothing. He had the decency to wince though as the words left his mouth.   
  
"Sirius, I know you and I haven't been all that terribly close, or even in contact really for the last thirteen or fourteen years, so you'll just have to believe me when I tell you that I'm as poor as a church mouse. Given that, and given that the watch is 24 karat gold, don't you think I would have pawned it off by now if I viewed it as a mere trinket?" Remus shot him a sideways glare, which Sirius returned with a scowl.   
  
"So why _is_ it so important?"   
  
"It's all I have left of my parents. We can't all inherent houses full of possessions, you know." Remus resumed his search again, this time heading for the dilapidated desk in the corner. Sirius had forgotten about the inheritance laws that outlawed the passing of property to non-humans.   
  
Looking around the huge monstrosity that had passed so easily into his own hands, Sirius found himself, for the first time, genuinely envying Remus his position.


	4. Percy

**Expectation**  
  
I am so disappointed in you.   
  
They seem like such simple words taken at face value. Even in conjunction with a parent's stern face in light of something they don't approve of in your behavior, it seems like such a trivial thing. Except it's not. Not for you.   
  
I am so disappointed in you.   
  
You tried to explain, you really did. But they've never heard you before, why would they hear you now? They've never understood what it was like. Where were they when you were five, shoved into a dingy house, waiting in terror to see if you'd become one of the thousands of orphans or if you'd make it through this with a family intact? Where were they when all the friends you played with slowly started disappearing one by one, never to be seen again?   
  
Where were they when you cried yourself to sleep for three years, convinced that if you even sneezed wrong, you'd somehow bring the wrath of hell down on everyone you ever loved? How could they _possibly_ say they were disappointed in _you_?   
  
How could they expect you to cheerfully sign both yours and their death certificates? Did they expect you to do it with a smile on your face? Hadn't you already done everything they'd ever asked of you? Hadn't you studied hard? Hadn't you become prefect? Hadn't you made it to Head Boy? Hadn't they fucking convinced you that they were proud of all you'd accomplished at such a young age?   
  
And now all they could do was look at you and say they were disappointed in you. As if they had the right.   
  
Well, you've taken the blow. You've finally failed to meet one of their expectations, and it's caused a rift so wide you'll never be able to cross it. You've gotten their message loud and clear. It's only all right if you're perfect, and obviously, you're not.   
  
And even if you ever do meet their expectations again, you think to yourself that maybe, just maybe, if you ever talk to them again, your first words will be: I am so disappointed in _you_.


	5. Harry and Sirius

_Hello there, the angel from my nightmare_

--Blink 182

**Angel**

He finds himself standing over the bed again. It's the middle of the night, and he knows everyone else is sleeping soundly in their beds. It's where he should be too, head on the pillow, thoughts asleep and dreams of happier times filling his head.

But it's hard to do that when around every corner is a bad memory come to life and regrets do nothing but stare him in the face.

The boy in the bed turns in his sleep, and Sirius turns himself, unable to take a closer look. The shadows dance against the far wall in the moonlight, and he spends his time looking at them instead, because it doesn't hurt like a blow to stomach to contemplate them. He's not strong enough to be taking this on, and he knows it. He wants someone else to step in. He wishes there were someone else who could take this weight off his chest and he needs the space to breathe away from here and away from the boy in the bed.

Because it's not James that he sees sleeping there, despite everyone's objections to the contrary.

There's symmetry and Sirius doesn't like seeing it. It gets all mixed up in his head. The way the future melts into the past and blends into the present and bleeds into his consciousness. There are plenty of ghosts in the bed with the boy, but Sirius can't tell who they belong to or if there's even a defining moment that sets any of them apart from the group.

James and Lily are the obvious. Friends, parents, lovers, enemies. He wants to ask them what they think now. He wants to ask them if they're disappointed with the way life turned out and he wants to laugh with them when James says, "Hell yes. I'm supposed to live forever." There's old anger at having let them die like that. New anger at them for having left him here alone with this. Old sadness at seeing that no matter what happens, nothing ever gets better, and that in fact, the past is forever doomed to repeat itself.

He hates this loveless house and all the moldy memories it holds. Father, mother, son. Perfect picture of familial bliss. Just cut away the freak, and the picture is perfect. He's seen Petunia in action, and he remembers meeting her pathetic worm of a husband. Conform, conform, conform.

It's easy to act out, because the negative attention is familiar like an old baby blanket. Comforting in its repetition and predictability, in the words that anger gives voice to and the responses that cheek gives rise to. Remus always frowned on it, saying he was too wild and full of himself for his own good. James went along with it, interested in trying new things. Peter never liked calling notice to himself. And Sirius finds himself agreeing with them all, because everything they say is true.

He doesn't want to be known for the things that he has no control over. He doesn't want to be the person they all assume he is, but he fails to see how he can change their minds. They've already decided they know exactly what kind of person he is. Fame and notoriety precede him, and people have no patience for the truth when it contradicts what they would like to believe. Hello the House of Black, pureblooded beyond a shadow of a doubt, and rigidly Slytherin to the core.

Like him, there is no give and take. There is no middle ground, because to give is to give it all, and no one wants that. Right and wrong, good and bad, black and white, Gryffindor and Slytherin, innocent and world weary. There is no place in this house to be standing in the midst of contradictions. Particularly not the contradictions inherent in oneself.

He stands over the boy in the bed, trapped. Boxed in by good intentions. Kenneled by the high hand of righteousness and misunderstanding. For his own good. For the greater good. For the amusement of his enemies. It's hard to tell anymore who it benefits the most.

No, the boy in the bed is not James.

Reaching out with his own fading hand to brush wayward strands of hair off a sleeping face, he sees that with utter clarity. He wonders how anyone who knew them both could not. James knew darkness in adulthood, felt trapped only once out of school, saw evil in death.

The boy in the bed can not say the same.

The boy who is his responsibility now. His burden to care for. His reason for living, and the motivation to keep going on. The boy he wants to cry for, and the one he wants to change the world for. His reality is tied all up in him.

Failure is inevitable. He knows this because he can feel it pulling him down below the surface just like the musty old memories of this decaying house drown him. He can't solve the boy's problems anymore than he can solve his own.

They are the same.


	6. Sirius again

**Inventory**

There's one window to the outside world that Sirius can see from the courtyard of Azkaban when they let the prisoners out for a mandatory exercise walk around the interior pavilion. Like everything else about the prison, the window itself is old, worn and covered in moss. It's tiny too, which is probably why no one ever took the measures to board it up like they have everything else in the compound.   
  
Personally, Sirius doesn't get it really. In a jail where all the inmates are half a step above drooling vegetable, who cares if the outside can be seen from the inside? Everyone's too crazy for it to have much of an impact. On the other hand, though, not all the inmates are loco. And maybe the window in the wall is just their final way of taunting their captives into losing their capacity for rational thought. God only knows that Sirius has spent many an hour in his own cramped cell, contemplating the window and many a walk out in the pavilion trying to resist the urge to go over and stare longingly out of what essentially amounts to a crevice in an impenetrable barrier to the outside world.   
  
Sirius has had a lot of time to contemplate windows. That one in particular. Just outside it, he can see the trees growing and the wildlife that thrives just outside of the reach of the prison walls on this hellish little island. He can see the seasons change, and he can watch the trees grow and the wildlife flourish, and he can literally watch as his own life passes by him.   
  
He kept meticulous time the first four years. There was always the hope, buried somewhere inside, that someone would figure it out. He wasn't guilty. He didn't belong here. He wasn't unredeemable and he didn't deserve to languish here in this place for crimes he'd never committed. He was the victim. They'd wronged him, and he wanted to have an accurate count of every day that they'd forsaken him and that they'd stolen from him.   
  
Somewhere around the fifth year, he gave up caring about counting the days and etching them on the wall of his cell by his bed. One too many encounters with the dementors had disabused him of believing himself the victim. There were too many bad memories.   
  
There were thoughts of not belonging. Because there had never been a place he'd ever truly fit. He wasn't even sure he'd know how if ever presented the opportunity. He was the proverbial black sheep of his own family. They'd rejected him just as surely as he'd rejected them. Sometimes, the lines between who had rejected whom first even blurred, giving him some relief in that at least he could tell himself that he hadn't begged pathetically for affection that they'd been unwilling to offer.   
  
School had been an interesting extension of home. But by that point he'd gotten better at playing the game. Maybe the same stubbornness that kept him hanging onto his sanity here in hell was what had kept him tenaciously attacking things until they worked for him. Why give them the chance to make him feel inferior when he could make them feel rotten first. He couldn't help what he was, or more accurately, what he wasn't. He made a handful of friends who accepted him, and then he made everyone else's life miserable before they could make his miserable first.   
  
It was hard to acknowledge in year five what a vindictive little snot he'd been.   
  
Years six and seven were marked by the seasons changing out through the little hole in the wall that led to the rest of the world. By that point, the dementors had gotten to him, bit by bit, bringing all the unhappiness he'd buried all the way up to the surface. It was funny too, because he'd liked the pus and filth in his soul better when it'd been buried so far down that no one—not even himself—had been able to see it.   
  
And then, it was no hardship to figure out why he'd been left to languish on his own in the first four years. A person couldn't love something that was inherently unlovable. He'd been an obnoxious brat from the moment he'd been born, pushing people's buttons. Making them uncomfortable. Pushing at them, pranking them, making them miserable. It was no small wonder that he found himself in the one person's company that he simply couldn't stand. And really, this place? This prison was just a garbage dump for disposable people.   
  
It took some doing to realize that he was just as disposable as the lunatics he walked with every noon at the pavilion.   
  
Maybe it was the loneliness in realizing how worthless and meaningless his existence was that led him to the what might have beens in years eight and nine. Looking out the window to the world had been painful those years.   
  
Seeing winter on the snow covering the evergreens and realizing that there would be no more lovers in his future to snuggle up with under the blankets on a cold morning.   
  
Falling into spring and realizing that there would be no more puppy love, or falling in love or taking those first steps into something exciting and new in getting to know another person and sharing his world with someone else. There would be no making amends with old foes or reuniting with the people he had carelessly cared about when he'd still had the chance. There will be no apologies at the Potter's grave. No playing with his little godson who probably is no longer so little any more. There is no making up with Moony and making up for the error in his ways.   
  
No summer picnics or barbeques and no boisterous get-togethers with familiar loved ones. And in the fall of his own life, there would be no one to help ease him through it. No family to take care of him, no friends to shoot the breeze with and no one to mourn his passing when he finally shuffled off.   
  
It's not that he ever particularly wanted the things that everyone else wanted. But he wanted to have the choice at least. The chance to have a family. The chance to have children. The chance to help in raising Harry. The chance to see the world. The chance to live a life worth living.   
  
Years eight and nine were about acceptance. And accepting that his innocence didn't matter. That there was no escaping and that his existence was narrowed down to the four stone walls that confined him to just his own company. They were about accepting the solitude as his punishment for simply being who he was. They were about incorporating into him the ironies of his life and resigning himself to this existence. Because in the reality of things, there were no what might have beens to be lived. This was the hand he'd been dealt and all the what ifs in the world were never going to be possible.   
  
Year ten was about struggling to maintain sanity when the reason to keep it had long since left.   
  
And in year eleven, the paper, the rat, and the boy. Once again, he finds himself staring out the window into the rest of the world. He's no longer the person, the Sirius that entered through the gates rebelling against an unfair lifelong incarceration. He's taken his captivity to heart now, and the system has done its job because he knows he'll carry the prison with him no matter where he goes or how far he runs. It's a breathing, living cage that thrives inside him.   
  
He's stared out this old stupid hole in the wall for eleven years, and he's going to escape through it now.   
  
It just seems a pity that once he reaches the other side, it still feels as if he's looking out a window at something that will never be his.


	7. Sirius yet again

**Secrets**

Sirius thinks that he's very good at keeping secrets.  
  
Before now, that's never really been a problem either. He likes keeping secrets. There's a secret for each of the people he's ever loved in his life, and there are secrets for each person he's ever despised.   
  
Sirius likes secrets. He likes the way that in knowing them, he can see all sorts of undercurrents and he can cause all sorts of trouble in stirring them up.   
  
A secret can give him leverage, and can give him power. He's seen the Potions professor corner Snape. And he knows that his little brother's been dabbling in the dark arts. There have been times in his life where he had no power and he likes that by knowing things, he never has to put himself in those positions again. The weak get preyed on. The strong learn how to pick themselves up and get smarter.   
  
Or a secret can bring him closer and create a bond. Remus is a werewolf. James turns into a stag. Peter doubles as a rat. They wouldn't be the Marauders if it weren't for the secrets they kept.   
  
Sirius knows that few people would ever see it, but he has evasiveness down to an art form. He's almost as good as Remus. Almost. It's just that they cover their tracks in different ways.   
  
And really? Sirius admires the way Remus keeps his cards so close to his chest. He does it with the minimum amount of fuss, and Sirius thinks it's cool to watch him simply fade away into the background when confronted with them.   
  
At the same time though, staying quiet is not Sirius' forte. Neither is fading into the background. Blacks are nothing if not flashy. Sirius likes the boisterous arguing. He lives for causing a scene.   
  
And he'll be the first to admit that he enjoys being the center of attention. There's a certain knack to creating chaos where it didn't previously exist, and Sirius likes striving for perpetual states of confusion. He discovered long ago that it just wasn't in his nature to stand on the sidelines.   
  
The sidelines are boring. And silent. And, if he's willing to admit it to himself, just a bit scary.   
  
Because it's in the boring silences that his own thoughts intrude, and he doesn't like the things he thinks. He doesn't like the secrets he keeps then.   
  
Because sometimes they don't seem at all like gems of trust or tools for blackmail.  
  
If he slows down long enough to let them all gather together in his head, they feel dirty. And stifling. They crowd him until he feels cornered in his bedroom at home, trying to get away from them. Because like being at home, all those secrets are a part of a deceptively simple prison.   
  
When he's pranking with James at lunch, scheming with Peter during study hall, or running with Remus on a full moon, the secrets seem like fun. But when those three are gone, when it's just him and there's no one else around, he feels them closing in on him.   
  
Because if all the things he knows are things he can't tell anyone but them, what would be the point of talking to anyone else if they were gone? Because sometimes he thinks the biggest secret that they keep with each other is themselves.


	8. Remus

**Replacement**

Remus knows what everyone wants as he finds himself sitting alone with Harry in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place. The members of the Order have been maneuvering moments like this from the first step Harry took inside the house this summer.

They think young Harry is in need of guidance. He needs a shoulder to cry on. The boy needs a role model and a confidant. And, quite unanimously, they've selected him for the position. He can almost hear the squeaky cogs in their heads as they roll on to that conclusion.

Of course Remus is the perfect candidate. A member of the Marauders. Close to Lily and James. He has the right personal history to endear himself to the family-starved Boy Who Lived. He is a former teacher who was genuinely liked by the children he'd taught. He knows the pain of being singled out for things he has no control over. He knows the fear of being at battle with himself and doubting his own sanity.

In theory, he has all the right credentials. He fits the bill perfectly. Less of a bully then James had been in his younger years. More stable, calm and patient then Sirius had been. Not as caustic or vindictive as Snape. He is the one they'd always wanted Harry to turn to and look to for advice. He can see that now in the way that they continually shoved the boy at him. It's in the cute little comments they make and the knowing looks they exchanged with each other.

Well, Remus decides, looking at the glaring boy across from him at the table, the joke is on them.

Because he's not sure he wants the position that they keep volunteering him for. He's not good on trusting. He doesn't like sharing. And he's loathe to delve into his times with the Marauders because they are _his_ times and _his_ memories and they are better left in the past. Since the past is pain, he doesn't see why he should be the one to bleed himself dry. He can't help the boy through something he hasn't gotten through himself yet.

He's not interested in being Daddy Dearest anymore than Harry is willing to let him play the part. As far as he's concerned, Harry doesn't need a keeper. It's already far too late for that.

"You're not him," Harry warns, obviously not wanting to hear platitudes or indulge in a heart to heart.

"No, I'm not," Remus admits freely. Because he's not James. He's not Sirius. All he can be is himself, and right now that isn't what Harry wants.

He can't replace them, and he refuses to try.


	9. Percy again

Title: Big Brother  
Rating: PG  
Timeline: Pre-Hogwarts!Percy  
Notes: I really do like Ron. Percy's thoughts on the kid are pretty much what I imagine most kid's thoughts are of a younger sibling. (There were a couple of times I would have cheerfully sold my brothers off to whoever would take them. -)  
  
It's very early in the morning when Percy attempts to sneak into Bill's bedroom. He knows how much Bill values his privacy, and really, Percy can't blame him. In a house with a bazillion kids and in the midst of a war that keeps them all cooped up inside, it's easy to understand why Bill spends most of his summer sequestered alone in solitude.  
  
Percy wishes he could do the same. He rooms with Charlie, and under other circumstances, it might not be so bad. But Charlie's chaffing at being second oldest, and really who wants to sleep in the same room as a baby brother who's not old enough to go to Hogwarts? Although, in his own defense, Percy thinks that Charlie could have it a lot worse and be stuck with the capricious, and seldom ever able to keep out of mischief for more than five minutes, twins.  
  
No one sleeps in the same room as Ron, because no one's ear drums are quite that resilient. In fact, it's Ron's fault that Percy's even up now, sneaking into Bill's room and timidly shaking Bill awake. Percy's always been a light sleeper, and ever since Ron was born, he hasn't gotten a good night's sleep. He half wishes that Ron were some kind of changeling that he could leave on the doorstep as a sacrificial offering. If he thought it would actually get rid of He Who Must Not Be Named Because He Makes Mum and Dad Cry, he'd actually seriously contemplate giving Ron up for the greater good.  
  
"Bill?" he calls quietly, jumping as Bill comes awake abruptly, grabbing Percy's wrist.  
  
"What?" It's a sleepy growl, and it makes Percy's heart beat really hard.  
  
"I can't sleep," he whispers, reconsidering just how good of an idea it might have been to intrude on his older brother's domain.  
  
"Then go bug Mum and Dad." Bill rolls over, pulling his covers with him, and leaving Percy standing cold and barefoot beside the bed.  
  
"I can't."  
  
"Percy." Bill's groan sounds annoyed, and Percy's sure he'll spend the rest of the year imitating it as he lectures the twins on the pitfalls of eating mud.  
  
"Mum'll cry," he sniffles, because it's the truth.

Because the truth is, his mum scares him with all her talk of people lurking in the shadows and being a strong little boy and waiting for Dad to come home even though he can tell by looking at her that she's not so sure he will. Percy doesn't go to her when Ron wakes him up or when he's had a bad dream. Whatever mummy comforting abilities she might have once had, the war has stolen it away, too. Just like its stolen away two little boys and one little girl in the school that Percy's mum no longer lets him attend.  
  
"Fine," Bill sighs, very put upon, as he rolls back over and flips the covers open long enough for Percy to crawl in beside him. Curled up beside Bill, Percy feels safe. Because Bill is big, and knows magic and doesn't act scared of the war or worried when Dad's gone for more than a week at a time.  
  
He knows Bill likes his privacy and can't stand it when his little brothers crawl into bed with him, but Percy can't seem to help himself. Bill's his favorite sibling. And if Bill will let him do this every once in a while so that Percy can get a decent night's sleep, then Percy'll forgive Bill for making Percy the big brother during the rest of the year while he and Charlie are away.


	10. Remus Revisited

**Pain**

Remus has had plenty of experience with pain.

He's broken bones and needed stitches and has pulled muscles. He's chewed on his own flesh and has probably left a mountain's worth of bloody bandages behind him over the years. Pain is comforting, and it follows him around like a little lost puppy that always finds its home in him. Remus thinks that he wouldn't go as far as to say that he goes out looking for pain, but he certainly doesn't reject it when it comes sneaking up on him.

He thinks that he's had lot of practice with pain. He's had plenty of opportunity to feel it out and measure his worth against it. He knows how much he can take without breaking, and he's aware of how it can affect him. He's better versed in the subject of pain than he is in any of the classes he took in school or studied on his own.

And maybe that's why it comes as such a surprise that this hurts so much.

Sirius is dead. And the naked emotion that he wants to express is sitting there openly on young Harry's face. And while Remus has been jealous of many things and many people, he never quite thought he'd be jealous of a teenager for being able to let go in ways that Remus has long since forgotten how to.

He tries to trace it back, hoping to find the kid in him who can let this out. But he's done this for so long that it's hard to remember. Shutting out. Shutting down. Pushing away. Pushing back. Distance, distance, distance.

He doesn't want to be a part of the action. He doesn't want to participate. And he doesn't want to play well with others if it means letting others in. Because, to be honest, he's done that and he's tried that, and that was a pain that could break. He doesn't want to be involved in the emotional upheavals of death and destruction and adolescence.

He understands the need, and he sympathizes. Really, he does.

But, at a point, it's just too much to ask. Remus will lend his knowledge. He'll lend his skills, his diplomacy, his contacts. He'll lay down his life if that should be necessary.

His memories, his thoughts, his feelings, his pain? Those are non negotiable. His blood, his sweat, and his body; he'll gladly extend to the cause, to the Order, to the people who for some reason still call him friend. His soul is not up for grabs, however. It is not on the bargaining table, and Remus will walk away should anyone force his hand. It is his to horde and to hide away from the world if he should so choose, and he chooses.

It's taken years to deaden himself to this degree. It's taken a decade to distance himself with the winsome sort of deception that he has. He's numbed. He's spent an entire lifetime inhuman. And he's finally succeeded in feeling as alien on the inside as people view him on the outside.

So, Remus deals with death the best way he knows how. He steals himself, and presents a good face to the world. When Harry rails at the universe, Dumbledore, Voldemort and him; Remus offers distant platitudes and hopes for the best from afar.

Because Remus has had plenty of experience with pain and no matter how well versed in the subject he might be, he only knows one way to deal with painful times.

Alone.


End file.
