Chapter Text
Every school year has an Incident: a defining moment, scandal, or tragedy that endures long after schooldays fade into a nostalgic haze of memories. It pops up reliably at reunions and over pints between old classmates, and everyone enjoys repeating the juicy details and speculating about what they were never reliably told.
It’s no different for schools of witchcraft and wizardry. For all the bizarre, impossible things that happened daily within the walls of Hogwarts, a stand-out Incident always cut through the chaos. For the Hogwarts class of 1978, the Incident occurred in March of their sixth year when the young and popular Defence professor got sacked and sent home three months early for improper conduct.
‘Improper conduct’ was the only explanation the headmaster gave over his short announcement speech at dinner, but the Hogwarts rumour mill was already miles ahead of him. Cool, interesting, ex-auror Professor Dearborn had been conducting a secret relationship with an underage student for months before someone had ratted them out.
The identities of the student and the whistle blower were better protected than Professor Dearborn’s reputation, however. Typically strict professors like McGonagall and Flitwick didn’t seem too bothered by their pupils dragging his name through the dirt (‘Dearhorn’ echoed rudely through the halls for days), but they swiftly shut down all crude jokes and speculations about who the exiled professor might have been carrying on with.
Eventually, from amidst the noise and baseless rumours, a grain of truth emerged. Bertha Jorkins swore to anyone who would listen that she’d seen Lily Evans leaving the headmaster’s office the evening before Dearborn’s hasty departure through the South Hall, his dark blonde head stooped low against greetings and questions. Students swarmed Bertha for information she didn’t have but was happy to invent.
Was Evans the informant, or was she the student who’d been seeing their professor in secret? Had she gotten cold feet? Better yet, maybe Dearborn had dumped her and she’d gone to Dumbledore as revenge. Or was she protecting one of her friends? Was MacDonald the real victim? Vance? McKinnon? McKinnon was top of their year in Defence. Had she been earning her marks outside of class hours? Bertha had several fun theories going.
Lily, on her part, held her own against the questioning. She was used to being pestered by tactless gossips, and the onslaught of peer pressure was nothing compared to the persistence of James Potter’s flirtations. Still, she was distinctly uncomfortable being the sole keeper of this particular secret besides faculty.
“You need to tell your friends,” she said softly in the privacy of the vacant Defence room. Dumbledore hadn’t been able to find a stand-in professor at short notice, so they simply hadn’t had lessons in the two weeks since the Incident had happened.
“I don’t see why I should.”
“Don’t you want their support? They love you. You shouldn’t have to carry this alone.”
“You know what they’re like.”
“Yes, I do,” Lily said, frowning. “They’re horrible, generally. But you care about each other more than anything—even I can see that. They should know. It’s wrong that I know and they don't.”
“Lily… I’m so sorry you found out the way you did. And I’m even more sorry for the way I reacted. Thank you for doing what you did. And thank you for caring so much about someone you hardly know, but—”
“Of course I care! We’ve been prefects together for nearly two years now.”
“That doesn’t make me your responsibility. I really appreciate your concern, but I’ll be fine. This is hardly the worst mess I’ve gotten myself into.”
“Don’t say that. It wasn’t your fault. None of it was.”
“Even so.”
Lily exhaled forcefully, frustration building in her chest. Stubborn. “Listen. I will be here for you for as long and as much as you need. I truly mean that, and I’m happy to help however I can. But I also know that I’m not enough. Please tell them. Tell them, or… or I will. I swear, Remus Lupin, I’ll—”
Remus’s head snapped up from its careful examination of the worn edge of the desk he was perched on. “You don't mean that,” he said cautiously, like he was talking down a lunatic wielding a loaded gun.
“Of course I don’t,” Lily snapped back. “But I’d be doing you a favour if I did. Dearborn’s already done enough to you. Don’t let him ruin your last year here by letting the shame of it push your best friends away.”
“I’m not ashamed.”
“Tell your body language.”
Remus sat up straighter, uncrossing his tightly folded arms, then returned to his slouching with a scowl. “I just don’t see what good it’ll do, telling them. It happened, and now it’s over. What’s the point? It’ll only hurt them.”
“I can’t say, exactly,” Lily said, softening. She wasn’t upset with him, really; she was just upset, full stop. “But I know the harm that keeping it locked up will do, to you and to them. They love you, Remus. They’ll understand. What they won’t understand is you shutting them out when they’ve done nothing wrong. I see you pulling away. They don’t deserve that.”
Remus’s hazel eyes, when they finally looked up to meet hers, were scared and wet looking, just like they had been when she’d found him in Professor Dearborn’s office.
-
All four Marauders were sat on their own beds, facing the centre of the room. Sirius had made to sit on Remus’s with him, but he’d cringed away in a tense, visceral way that sent Sirius hurrying six steps backwards to land on his own.
“I need to tell you—” was all Remus had said in the common room, his voice trailing off to nothing at the end, but it was enough to evaporate the laughter from the other three’s faces as they followed him up the stairs to their dormitory. Remus rarely asked for the limelight in their little group, so when he did, they had a habit of listening closely.
Now, he was ankles deep into a story that had Peter clutching his knees and James looking like he might be ill, and he was wading further out into waters that Sirius feared might wash away what remained of their childhoods, right there in their shared room.
“It started over Christmas break,” Remus had said into the expectant quiet after staring blankly at the rug for nearly a full minute. Even though Sirius hadn’t had any way of knowing where Remus was going yet, his stomach had already begun to sink like a stone.
“I took the train with the rest of you when term ended, but floo’ed back early for the full moon on Boxing Day. My dad was away for work, and Mum can’t do anything to put me back together if I hurt myself when I transform. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want any of you cutting your holidays short to run the moon with me; not when Madam Pomfrey was already going to be here to patch me up. It went fine, James, don’t make that face. I was back on my feet after a couple of days. The castle was practically empty, so it’s not like there was much to do anyways. I mostly revised and worked on the map while I recovered.
“Professor Dearborn invited me to—Peter, just—please just wait until I’m done, all right? I don’t—this isn’t fun for me.
“Professor Dearborn invited me to have tea with him after we bumped into each other in the library a few times. I had mentioned in class that I was interested in learning more about dark creatures, and he said he had some books that might suit me. So I went with him, and… it was nice.
“We ended up talking for hours. He was so interesting. He has so many stories about being an auror and fighting dark creatures around the world. I told him a bit about my grandfather’s research with urban vampires in Bavaria. When he asked what I thought about the classification system for non-human magical beings, he really listened. He told me he thought I was too clever for the regular sixth year Defence curriculum, and suggested I start an independent study under him. I said yes.”
Remus had gone on to talk about more one-on-one meetings in Dearborn’s private office. About shared teas and dinners and blankets. About Dearborn lending Remus his coat so they could hike through the frozen heather to study grindylows down in the icy lake, and brushing snowflakes from his hair. About new spells that required tricky little wand movements and how they’d practised them in his empty classroom: shoulder to shoulder, hand over wrist.
On New Year’s Eve, he’d spent the evening sipping flutes of gillywater on Dearborn’s small sofa. It would have been a waste, Dearborn had said, for Remus to ring in the new year alone in his empty common room. They’d stayed talking for hours past midnight, and Dearborn had poured Remus his first ever glass of firewhiskey.
“He asked if I’d considered becoming an auror,” Remus was saying now. “He said I’d be brilliant; that I was exactly the kind of partner he’d have wanted on the force. When I told him that wasn’t an option for me, he said he already knew why. I didn’t think Dumbledore had told the whole faculty about my lycanthropy, so I didn’t say anything more. I didn’t want to give my secret away, if that wasn’t what he meant. So we just sat there for a while, and then he touched my scar.”
Remus raised his hand to the scar that ran across his jaw, pressing it with his thumb. Sirius wondered if that was how Dearborn had touched it.
“He called them battle scars, and said I was brave,” Remus continued, his voice sounding slightly choked. “He said he’d met other werewolves on his travels and that they weren’t any different from the rest of us. He said I shouldn’t let lycanthropy stop me from doing anything I wanted to do.
“I asked if he’d ever had to fight a werewolf. He said he had, once, and that it had clawed him down his back. He said he had his own share of battle scars, too. He said he’d show me his if I showed him mine.”
Remus paused, fiddling with the hem of his jumper, and Sirius didn’t want him to go on. They all knew how this was ending.
“He made me feel… legitimate,” Remus said eventually. “He always told me I was more mature than my age. He listened, and understood, and even thought I was worth—” his voice caught, and Sirius filled in the end of the sentence a dozen times over.
Worth touching. Worth invading. Worth throwing his career away for. Worth marring an already damaged youth. Worth destroying years of slow-built trust. Worth taking, taking, taking.
“I knew it was against the rules. He didn’t force me to do anything. He never compelled me, or threatened me, or anything like that. But he was handsome and intelligent and mature, and always so certain that there was nothing wrong with what we were doing.
“Sometimes I got nervous, but he was patient. Focused. Encouraging. He said he felt privileged to be my teacher, and that he could teach me about love, if I wasn’t afraid to learn. When he told me I couldn’t let my fears rule me, it reminded me a bit of you lot. It made me feel safe. Bold. I wanted to impress him. To show him that he was right about me. That I was mature, and that I wasn’t going to let my lycanthropy hold me back. Not from big things, like becoming an auror or an academic, and not from little things, like taking off my shirt.”
Remus put his head in his hands, elbows rested on his knees, and laughed miserably. “He did teach me a lot,” he said to the floorboards. “Bet I know more than you three combined. These past four months were a ride. It’s half a wonder I can walk straight. Any time I told you I was in the library, or on prefect rounds, or doing recon for the map, I was in his office. And if Lily hadn’t walked in on me on my knees, I’d probably be there right now.”
There was an unbearable stretch of silence, the brass clock on the wall preternaturally loud.
“Are you upset that it’s over?” Peter asked finally, always the first to break under tension. “Do you wish he hadn’t gotten found out?”
Remus shook his head slowly, his forehead still cradled in his palms. “I was so mad at Lily at first,” he said hoarsely, “when she said she was going to tell Dumbledore. She told me I was being abused, and I told her she was being puerile and naive.
“But then Caradoc—Professor Dearborn—asked me to deny the whole thing. He said he had a bogart in a suitcase, and that he’d tell Dumbledore it had gotten loose and shown Lily a scene designed to upset her. He was going to say that Lily was confused and jealous, and that her greatest fear was being overlooked by men.
“I said I wasn’t sure that would work, and he told me I was only a foolish boy who would always be afraid of my own shadow. I reminded him that Dumbledore is a legilimens with a pensieve he could use to watch Lily’s memories for himself. That seemed to make the situation sink in for him, finally, and I asked him to take back what he’d said. He just kissed me and asked me to bend over the desk one last time—and I left.”
Remus held up his left wrist and his sleeve fell away to reveal greenish, half-healed bruises in the shape and pattern of fingertips. Sirius let out an involuntary noise that sounded like a wounded dog, but Remus didn’t seem to notice him.
“It only took me a day to realise how stupid I’d been the whole time. How utterly naive. What a foolish, pliant child I must seem to him and to every adult who knows about it now. Merlin knows I’ll never be able to look Dumbledore or McGonagall in the eye again. Or Pomfrey, or my parents. They called my parents, and they haven’t said anything yet, but…”
He was crying. Remus was crying, and Remus never cried. Not when the wolf did its worst, not when his friends let him down. Remus was crying into his own lap, and Sirius just sat there, horrified by the tears as much as by anything he’d just heard.
James was up in an instant, crossing the space between their beds and wrapping a firm arm around Remus’s shoulders. Remus turned his head into his neck as if on instinct, hiding his face in the fabric of James’s robes.
“It’s okay, Moony,” James said softly. “It’s over now. Your parents will be glad of that. We’re all just glad you’re okay.”
“He’s not okay,” Sirius croaked, finally unfreezing. “He’s not okay.”
“Sirius!” Peter hissed, looking between them with huge eyes.
Remus laughed his unhappy laugh again. “I’ve never been okay. Not since I was five and unbitten. So that’s all right.”
“Yeah, that’s all right,” James said consolingly, and Sirius was certain James didn’t know what he was agreeing with. He just nodded slowly, rubbed Remus’s back and said, “That’s all right. We’re here with you.”
“Yeah,” Peter squeaked, and joined them on Remus’s mattress. After a moment’s hesitation, Sirius followed suit. He tried not to crowd Remus too much.
“Thanks,” Remus said quietly, untangling himself from James and shifting subtly away. “Thank you for listening. I didn’t want to hide it from you any longer. I’ve been a liar and a shite friend, and I already don’t deserve you, but I… I think I need to deal with this on my own for a while.”
“What do you mean?” Sirius asked, frowning.
“Just that I… Lily’s been amazing, James. You’re right about her. She really is a special girl. But she keeps telling me I need to talk it through and lean on my friends—whatever that even means—and all I want to do is disappear. To just… not. For a while. Until it doesn’t feel so real.”
“You can’t disappear, though,” James said softly, as if speaking to a child. He reached to brush the hair from Remus’s eyes and Remus stood up suddenly, staggering a little, and shook his head.
“I’m sorry. Lily said I owed it to you to tell you, and I think she was right about that. You’re my best mates, and I’m so sorry for hiding things from you. Again. But as much as I love you, I just need some space to figure myself out.”
“All right, Moony,” James said, clearly trying not to look hurt. “Let’s all just focus on getting through exams, then you’ll have a whole summer’s worth of space.”
Peter muttered an agreement, but Sirius didn’t say anything. He watched the tears trickle down Remus’s chin as he gathered his bag and left the room.
-
The other three Marauders did their best to respect Remus’s space for the remainder of the school year. He still slept in their dorm, but spent the rest of his free time off on his own, buried in textbooks or wandering the halls like a ghost. They lurked around the edges of his periphery, half in case Remus decided he needed them and half so that they could make sure he wasn’t disappearing off to anywhere he shouldn’t.
How had they not noticed what he’d been doing? They had an enchanted map that showed the location of every bloody person in the school. How could they have missed one of their four returning to the same office every evening, two dots far too close together? How could they not have noticed the changes in their friend?
James racked his memories for any signs he might have missed—unusual behaviour, physical marks, emotional shifts, anything out of the ordinary. But Remus was always so even tempered, so mature—no, not mature; he was sixteen, only sixteen—and James couldn’t pin down any red flags he’d turned a blind eye to.
“You have questions,” Remus said from across the table at dinner one evening in early June. He spoke so softly that James barely heard the words leave his mouth, but he did because there was little else he listened for these days.
Remus was eating alone, as was his new custom, and James was sitting on the far side of the opposite bench, picking idly at what remained of a flaky steak and mushroom pie. Sirius was serving detention for snapping at their Arithmancy professor and Peter was finishing with his remedial Charms group, which meant James was on Remus duty.
James glanced across the table at him and shrugged, aiming for nonchalance. “There’s a lot we still don’t understand, but that doesn’t mean you owe us explanations.”
Remus grinned a little at that, shrugging back. “Go on,” he said, and nodded at the empty space opposite him. James slid his plate down the table and followed suit, settling in front of Remus’s gaze cautiously.
“How’ve you been?”
“Ah. I don’t know if I have an answer to that one. You can try another, though.”
“I don’t know where to start,” James said honestly.
“There’s no right or wrong place to start when everything’s wrong to start with, right?”
That made James crack a smile. Typical Remus, defusing the tension with his clever way with words. He was always surprising. James hadn’t fully realised how much he had missed that.
“I didn’t even know you fancied blokes,” he blurted out. Horrible. That definitely wasn’t where he’d meant to begin. Hopefully Remus’s catchy little witticism was also a truism.
“Neither did I,” Remus replied quietly after a moment, and he wasn’t grinning anymore. “Maybe I won’t anymore, after this. I don’t know.”
James toyed with the crumbs on his plate. He didn’t think sexuality worked like that, but if anything could change it, it was likely something like this.
“Does it bother you?” Remus asked, his eyes fixed on the enchanted ceiling. “If I’m bent.”
James’s vision went white behind his glasses. “Don’t you dare,” was all he could manage at that. “Don’t you dare, when you know how much we love you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t—”
“Right.” Remus sipped his tea, looking like he regretted starting this conversation, ready to disappear again.
“How did we not see you on the map?” There, that was a decent question to keep him talking. Straightforward, practical. He sat up straighter and leaned in toward Remus. Come back, he willed him.
“Ah,” Remus set down his tea with a guilty grimace. “I tampered with it over Christmas break. I didn’t want you to see, so I taught it how to lie. If anyone can teach lying to an inanimate object, it’s me,” he added dryly.
“Okay. That’s… okay. But we need to fix it,” James said with more intensity than he’d meant to.
“I will,” Remus promised. “Or we can do it together, if you want to make sure. You can watch me.”
“I will,” James said. He was oddly incensed, but tried to school the feeling. He didn’t want to be mad at Moony. It was just—the map was theirs. It was—not sacred, but—it was the Marauders Map, and it felt wrong that a Marauder had gone and tampered with it like that. Like it was that easy to rewrite their shared reality.
“I know,” Remus said with a sad little smile. “I’m an arse. I’m sorry.”
“Enough,” James snapped. “You need to stop saying you’re sorry.”
“But I am. As I should be. I know better.”
“He knew better!” James wanted to shout, but kept his voice restrained to their table.
“Well,” Remus said neutrally, face blank. “Anyways. I’ll work out how to make it so the map never lies. Completely unfoolable. Deal?”
James deflated, running a hand through his hair. Everything he’d once cared about felt so pointless, suddenly. “Sounds good, Moony. Whenever you’re ready.”
“Thank you. Was there anything else you wanted to know? Or you can go back to side-eyeing me over the roast potatoes, if you’d rather.”
Of course there was. But he couldn’t ask; but he couldn’t go on not knowing. He held his breath and bit his tongue, then forced himself to look at Remus straight on again. It was hard, maintaining eye contact with Remus now, like staring into the heart of a dying star.
“Did he hurt you? When he…?”
“Of course he did.”
“Why did you let him?”
“Everyone I’ve loved has hurt me, one way or another. It wasn’t so different.”
James swallowed down a sob. It stuck in his throat like a pumice stone.
“Did you love him, then?”
“No. I thought I might, at the time. But no. That's not what it was.”
“No,” James agreed. “It couldn’t have been.”
“Yeah. Well. We’ll fix the map, James. When the new school year starts?”
“Sure. I’ll tell the others.”
He didn’t push it, but James suspected that might have been Remus’s way of saying he missed them. Maybe he was nearly ready to come back to them, from wherever he’d gone inside.
As he exited the Great Hall, James slipped the two-way mirror out of his pocket and whispered Sirius’s name to it. Sirius appeared to be serving his detention alone in the trophy room, his hair damp with sweat from manual scrubbing. It was only after James repeated Remus’s words and saw the same pain etched in Sirius’s face that he allowed himself a few discrete, frustrated tears, pocketing the mirror again before they fell from his bottom lashes.
School was nearly out for summer, and the cleverest students in Hogwarts hadn’t been able to think up a single thing they could do to help their friend. No mandrake leaves or spells cast beneath the crackling magic of a thunderstorm could make things better this time.
They could only wait, hope, and trust—and Sirius had never been any good at waiting.