written for: the houses competition

house: slytherin

category: short

prompts: remus lupin [character]

word count: 2433

warnings: death mention (sibling death); war mentions (canonical)

notes: i've never written a remus-centric piece, and i didn't really expect the first one i wrote to be thinking about him during the war, but there you have it.

disclaimer: disclaimed.

Remus sits in the dark of the night, holding his knees tight against his chest. It's one of those nights.

He's on the roof. People tend to think the presence of the moon should feel oppressing—to be fair to them, the full moon is literally his boggart—but it's not. He feels oddly calm with moonlight on his skin, provided it's any phase of the moon other than full. It's sort of liberating, seeing the silver of the moon dance across his skin and staying in complete control of himself. It's almost like a reminder: hey, you're not wholly lost.

The moon isn't his problem tonight. The war is.

There was a skirmish earlier in the night. He thinks that's the right word. It wasn't quite as large as a battle, but it was more than a clash in the streets. There had been a distress call—Caradoc had been on a surveillance mission, and something had gone wrong. Remus still isn't sure what happened. Everything had moved too quickly, and he'd forgotten to ask.

He, Benjy and Marlene had been the only ones available to respond. They're both okay, he's pretty sure. Last time he saw Benjy, Dorcas was yelling at him in the infirmary as Lily fixed him up, and Marlene has a standing tradition with Sirius: after any battle either are involved in, they find a bar and drink until they can't see their opponents' eyes anymore, or they throw up. Whichever happens first.

Sirius. The very reason Remus is up on the roof, or sort of, anyway.

It's not Sirius' eyes who haunt Remus right now, but they're scarily similar.

Remus doesn't know who Marlene duelled. He's pretty sure Benjy was facing off against Nott, or maybe Mulciber, and he thinks he remembers hearing Dolohov taunting Caradoc, but it's all a bit of a blur. The one thing which he remembers vividly, in a way he's not sure he'll ever forget, is duelling Bellatrix Lestrange.

He doesn't like to think about it, but she's also known as Bellatrix Black.

Sirius' face floats into his head, unbidden, and Remus squeezes his eyes shut. He didn't duel Bellatrix for too long—the Death Eaters Disapparated after fifteen minutes or so, and Remus got the very distinct impression that they were toying with the Order—but it was long enough that the family resemblance was unmistakeable.

He remembers Bellatrix's laugh, and he flinches. It's crueller than Sirius', he tells himself, and darker too, but.

But.

The 'but' haunts him, because it feels like paranoia, but he knows it's not entirely. Sirius is different now, during the war.

At least, he hopes it's a 'now'. It's more frightening to think that Sirius has always been this way, and they never noticed until now.

He's not sure the others have noticed, actually. Well, he thinks Peter may have, from the wary looks the shorter man sends Sirius sometimes, but he doubts James has, though whether that's because there's nothing to see or because James refuses to see it is another matter entirely.

Remus remembers a debate in the Order headquarters once, about the use of dark magic. Someone—Moody, maybe—pointed out that as long as the Death Eaters were willing to use Unforgivables and the Order weren't, the Order would always be stuck on the defence.

"We signed up to defend people who couldn't defend themselves," Benjy had pointed out.

"They've got worse things than Unforgivables," Sirius had said at the same time.

He hadn't said anything else, and the debate had continued in the vein of Benjy's response, not Sirius', but Remus had kept his eye on Sirius the whole time. There was something in his expression that Remus couldn't put a finger on, but had chilled him to his very bones all the same.

He's always been aware of who Sirius' family is. It's one of those things that's impossible to escape. It's just been a while since he's thought about how much that has informed who Sirius is.

It was more obvious when Sirius arrived at Hogwarts. He was a mess of contradictions, wanting to prove how different he was from his family but also not knowing how—all he knew was his family.

He had to unlearn prejudices, some more successfully than others.

Remus pauses. That's a rabbit hole he doesn't want to go down. Fifth Year was a long time ago, and some wounds only heal if you leave them alone. It's much easier to dismiss his concerns if he thinks about how vehemently Sirius hates blood supremacy than if he thinks about how Sirius thought of him as a werewolf, as a weapon to be used, before he thought of him as Remus, as his friend. Sirius was sixteen, and maybe it was only for a moment—he's not sure he believes that, but he can't afford to follow that train of thought right now—but it was enough to count.

Remus shakes his head, as if he can rattle that memory out of his mind, with all the connotations and thoughts that accompany it.

He breathes in the night air again, holding it in his lungs, to see if that helps ground him in the present. It does, a little.

He opens his eyes. He doesn't remember closing them, but he's glad he did, because when he opens them, it's like the night is new again, even as it feels impossibly old.

The moonlight looks starker against the rooftop, and something about the bare tree in the yard feels crisp. It's easier to breathe in the night, and leave the past behind him, where it's safest.

Instead, his mind strays to a different aspect of the night: not Bellatrix, but why she was there in the first place.

There is a traitor in the Order.

It's something which everyone knows, and nobody wants to address, because that means admitting that one of your friends, your comrades, one of the people you run into a warzone with every day and trust with your life, with your friends' lives… that means admitting one of those people you love is not only capable of betraying you, but has done so already.

There is a traitor in the Order, and it's constantly in the back of Remus' head, like two dots he doesn't want to connect.

He breathes in the night air, letting the cold settle into his chest. He closes his eyes.

A moment later, he opens them, attention caught by a sound to his left. He turns to see Marlene clambering out of his bedroom window, and smiles despite himself.

"Last I checked, delinquent, that wasn't your room," he teases as she shuffles over to him. She pulls a face at him, but there's a smile playing at her lips as she nudges his shoulder with her own.

"Nobody else was here when I got home, but I could feel the draught from your window when I got upstairs," Marlene explains. "I wanted to come see you, especially after a night like ours."

Remus nods, his smile fading into the memory of the skirmish.

"Who'd you duel?" he asks, glancing at her.

She doesn't flinch, but something pained crosses her face. "Rod," she says, jaw tight, eyes huge.

Remus nods, translating that to Rodolphus Lestrange. Like Sirius, Marlene grew up with most of the people they have to fight, though less involvedly. A Slytherin mother and socialite paternal grandparents meant she existed within the borders of that crowd, but that was a far cry from The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. She was close enough that she knew all of the children in those families, and her presence was as important as James' in Sirius' transition to Gryffindor, but her world was easier to escape. Her parents were never active blood supremacists, though her grandparents were, so she didn't have to run away from home to escape the trappings of that life—she just had to estrange herself from her grandparents.

No wonder Marlene and Sirius drink to forget after every fight, he thinks. He might too, if he could see childhood friends in the eyes of every opponent.

"You had Bellatrix, right?" Marlene asks, and Remus nods. She tucks her knees in under her chin, pulling her legs into her chest.

He doesn't know what he expects her to say, but it isn't what she says next.

"It's hard, isn't it?" she says quietly. "Seeing him in them, and them in him."

Remus sort of feels like she's pulled his heart out of his chest and the words out of his head, and he looks at her in shock.

She smiles, but there's no amusement in it. It's resigned, and sad, like something she's held close to her chest.

"Remember last week, at the Hogsmeade raid?" she asks. He nods, and she looks down at her knees. "Regulus was there."

Remus pauses. He shouldn't be surprised by this. He's known for a long time that Regulus bore the mark—they all have. He doesn't think any of them are likely to forget the day Sirius found out. There's a big difference, though, between knowing something in a distant sort of way, and actually being made aware of it in a real and visceral way.

"Did you—" he begins, but he doesn't know what he's going to ask.

"No," Marlene says, even though he doesn't think she has any more idea what he was going to ask than he does. "He's—fuck, Re, he's always been younger than me. He's always been Matty's age."

Remus stills. Matty was Marlene's brother—is Marlene's brother. He's never been sure about the tenses. Do you stop being a brother when you die?

He remembers Marlene crying in the corridor in Seventh Year. It was the first week of their final year, and Marlene's brother had been murdered a fortnight beforehand. Nothing had felt real, but at the same time, it had felt all too real. This was war in action, and it didn't look like a battleground or a blaze of glory: it looked like a crying girl and a boy who died too young.

"Am I still a sister if he's not here anymore?" Marlene had asked, tears streaming, and he hadn't known how to answer. He's still not sure, but he thinks yes. Just because he's not there anymore doesn't mean he wasn't ever there, and it doesn't mean he doesn't matter.

Remus thinks about all of this as he digests what Marlene said. Regulus and Matty were the same age, the same way that Marlene and Sirius were—the only difference was, Matty ended up in Ravenclaw to Regulus' Slytherin, and started dating a muggleborn around the same time Regulus officially joined up with the Death Eaters.

Matty is forever sixteen, and it doesn't surprise Remus that Regulus still occupies the same space in Marlene's head. They were always the same age; he doesn't blame her for not being able to deal with the fact that Regulus grew up when Matthew never could.

"Oh, Mar," Remus whispers, carefully slinging an arm around her and offering her what comfort he can. He's never been big on physical affection—not because he's inherently opposed, but because he's always felt so othered by his lycanthropy. His friends have been instrumental in trying to normalise it for him, though, and it feels overwhelmingly right to try hold Marlene together in this way, just in case she needs to feel like she can break apart.

"And he's—you know, he's Sirius' little brother, and Sirius—he's bad at dealing with his feelings, he always has been, so I don't believe his nonchalance about Reg for a moment," Marlene says, and Remus thinks she's right, but his thoughts about believing Sirius in general are complicated right now, so he says nothing.

"I would do anything to be able to protect Matty," Marlene says quietly, and her voice absolutely breaks Remus' heart. "And maybe I can't save my little brother, but—"

"But you can at least not hurt his," Remus finishes quietly. Marlene nods.

Remus gets it, he does. It's just that his thoughts on Sirius are complicated enough at the moment without throwing in the fact that his kid brother is fighting for the other side.

"Do you see Sirius in his eyes?" Remus asks suddenly.

Marlene looks sad. "I see Sirius in every inch of him," she says softly. "The only difference is I think that Sirius didn't expect war to be something better than it was."

Remus nods slightly, and Marlene's eyes turn to him, gaze sharp.

"Do you see Sirius in Bellatrix?" she asks. Remus almost doesn't tell her, except… well, except she doesn't sound appalled at the idea that he might be able to. She sounds calm, and curious, and maybe even the slightest bit expectant.

He's not sure how to say it out loud, though, so he just nods slowly. "I don't want to," he adds, "but…"

"But that doesn't mean it isn't there," she finishes, nodding slightly.

Remus looks at her, really looks at her. "But you still trust him, don't you?" he asks in wonder.

"Yeah," she says. "But that's because I know all of them—Sirius, and his family too—well enough to know all the ways that they're not like each other. And they're not different in every way, but—I think they're different in the ways that count." Marlene looks thoughtfully at him. "I understand if you don't, though," she says quietly, and she squeezes his hand, and something blooms in his chest—something like comfort, like the warmth of being understood when you're scared that you're not worth understanding.

"If I don't see the differences, or if I don't trust him?" Remus asks, and it's almost joking, but it isn't, not really.

Marlene shrugs, though. "Both," she says simply. "Trust has to be earned, and he hasn't always done a good job of that with you."

Remus has always thought that, after the gigantic fight and subsequent making-up after the Willow incident, none of his friends would ever acknowledge the situation again. It's a shock when Marlene does, but not an entirely unpleasant one. It sort of feels like being recognised, like mattering.

"I'm glad you were with me tonight," Remus says. "Benjy too. And that Caradoc's okay."

Marlene smiles at him, a real smile, one which he can tell she means to her core. "Me too," she says sincerely.

They stay sitting there, waiting for the dawn.

a/n. please don't favourite without reviewing, and please review if you've read it the whole way through! i've been pretty behind on replying to reviews recently—life is very hectic—but i read every review and treasure them greatly. they're all starred in my email inbox so that i can find them all and reply to them as soon as i get a chance.