James's home life during the summer was sybaritic. Remus had never seen anything like it. All he had ever known was a modest two-room house in a secluded area too small to even name. The Hogwarts castle itself had not prepared him for this. Not to belittle the school, of course.

The Potters lived in a mansion that rivaled the size of the Prime Minister's. It had a full-sized professional Quidditch pitch, a lovely garden, and a small lake with grindylows. Inside the manor, there was a library, many bedrooms, lavatories, sitting rooms and a few rooms that seemed to have no purpose whatsoever. They had a house elf, three (or more) full meals a day, and not a minute passed without someone roaring of laughter.

Remus abhorred it. It was much too comforting, too luxurious, too safe, too... happy.

It didn't seem like there was a war brewing in the world. It was too easy to forget the murders and disappearances that were printed in the harsh black and white print of the Daily Prophet. It was frighteningly simple to forget that Regulus, at age 15, was a Death Eater, that Lily was a target only because of her blood status, that he himself would be expelled from Hogwarts if the wrong person connected his missing nights to the full moon, or that his father was unemployed and that his parents were struggling to make ends meet. In this (very large) bubble of contentment, Remus could forget every problem that he had worried his whole life about.

He laughed with his friends. He ate the food prepared for by Honey, the house elf. He played Quidditch with his friends, and read books by the fireplace. They had picnics, tried to bake cookies, and played wizard chess.

It was unhealthy. It was complicated. It was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

September 1st loomed over them. Remus still had not done any of his homework. For the first time, he was letting himself pass the days without any worries.

They returned at night, when he was alone in a room larger than his whole house. As the eerie moonlight came into the window, the snores of his mates echoing through the hallways, the worries that he had banished into the far corners of his mind made themselves known. At night, Remus worried.