Disclaimer: I don't own them, JKR does.

Warnings: Eventual RL/SB romance, excessive swearing, Angryattheworld!Remus.

One Last Regret

*****

"Remus? Oh my baby, Remmie..."

"Mama?"

"You're too young to understand this, and I know you don't want to..."

"Mama, they're just my friends from school. I haven't told them."

"Sweetie, I know you mean well. But your kind...It's just not a good idea. This isn't going to end well."

"No, you're wrong. They're different."

*****

6th year, Late Spring

They weren't different. His mother had been right all along.

For a split second in time, he just wanted to bury himself there in the dirt floor of the shack and forget about getting up, about going up to have Pomfrey put him back together, about going to classes...He just wanted to forget about it all. How was he supposed to get up and move on? What was he supposed to do? Pretend it had never happened? Would that even be possible?


He seriously contemplated giving into tears and just crying himself sick. He'd done it once...His first full moon here at school, in fact, but he'd grown a lot since those wretched first days. And breaking out in tears was just too inconceivable, too demeaning, just all around too fucking pathetic for an almost fully-grown werewolf to be considering.

So he laughed instead. Laughed so hard that his sides were aching and the scratches lining his chest were burning from where he'd ground dirt into the wounds. He could hear the hysterical qualities of it bouncing off the walls, and it only made him laugh that much more.

Oh gods, he'd been such an idiot. Such an incredibly naïve, innocent, stupid idiot.

When the laughter finally died, he stretched. Popping his dislocated shoulder back into place, he almost welcomed the sharp pain that this last change had left him. If anything, he could use the pain to distract him from what he knew was coming.

"Remus?" James' voice was tentative, nervous. Taking the warning for what it was, Remus reached up to the shredded couch in the room and threw a piece of the blanket on it over himself to cover his nakedness.

"In here, Prongs." He almost laughed again that the sound of the nickname on his lips. Nicknames were something shared between friends. A sign of affection, of trust. They were an extended inside joke. Only now he was left wondering if maybe those wonderful nicknames they'd all come up with weren't just some huge joke on him.

Jamie walked in looking like guilt personified. Which didn't bode at all well for the small, faint hope that he'd been harboring in his heart of it all just having been an accident. That somehow Snape had just followed one of them, or that the Slytherin had just managed to somehow figure it out all on his own. But the look on Jamie's voice spoke volumes, and confirmed what he already suspected.

"What happened?" His voice was low, tired. He managed to contain the hysterics though. It wouldn't do to lose his cool, to leave himself exposed. They'd just proven, after all, that they had no compunction against going for his proverbial jugular.

"Moony, I'm sure he didn't mean to..." And with those words, Remus' world shattered.

There was only one person to whom Jamie could be referring to in this case. It wasn't as if Peter would ever have the balls to talk to Snape, let alone set the guy up and risk the wrath of the entire Slytherin house. No, the whole thing had a certain Sirius flare to it. He could see that right away.

Sirius never was afraid of going too far, of pushing someone past their limits.

In fact, it was one of the things that had originally drawn Remus to the taller boy all those years ago. Sirius just had an exuberance about him that Remus hadn't been able to resist. He'd started off his first few days way back as a first year with every intention of keeping his distance from all the other kids. It was too much of a risk, the worry that they'd find out about him.

But Sirius hadn't taken no for an answer. And Remus really hadn't wanted to tell him no. For the first time in his entire life, someone wanted to be his friend. Someone wanted to include him in on the fun. Someone wanted him around.

And the marauders? God, they'd looked past everything that he was, and still saw something that was worthwhile. Or…At least that was what he'd thought. He'd thought he and Sirius were close.

He'd shared everything…everything he had to give with his best friend. His partner in crime. The beautiful gypsy boy who seemed to be able to charm anyone he wanted, and yet had still chosen to pal around with the shy werewolf. Sirius knew him better than anyone, he'd told Sirius things that he hadn't told his parents, or Dumbledore, or even the rest of the marauders. He'd trusted Sirius. Gorgeous, imp eyed, best-thing-that-had-ever-happened-to-him Sirius...

...who had betrayed him.

In one of the worst ways possible.

Numbly, he leaned his head back on the edge of the sofa.

"I'm sure he didn't, but I'm still fuzzy on exactly what it was he did…" The words came out, but it almost sounded as if someone else was saying them. He knew James was watching him, but he couldn't make himself match the gaze. So instead he focused on his hands, noticing as he did so that his pinky finger had popped out of place with the change. It didn't hurt, not now anyway since he was sure it had pinched a nerve when it dislocated. That was the problem with changes, things never went wholly back into the places they were meant to be. With a vicious twist he snapped the bone back into its original socket.

"Jesus, Moony," James looked a bit green, but then, he never had reacted well to seeing Remus have to put things back into place. "Um…well, you know what things are like between Snape and Sirius. It's gotten worse since you started getting paired with the slimy git in potions. And well…God, there's no good way to say this Remus. Snape was taunting Sirius, you know what it's like, and Sirius told him that if he was so interested in you he oughta come here. So he did..."

"Last night." Remus finished as Jamie flashed him a pained look.

"Sirius feels horrible about it all. We spent all night in Dumbledore's office with Snape. I don't know how the old man did it, but he convinced Snape not to tell anyone about you. Your secret's still safe."

Remus imagined that the awful expression on Jamie's face was meant to look apologetic, understanding even.

But all he could see was the three of them—the three other marauders—laughing at him. Like he'd been laughing moments before Jamie had even come in. Oh god, he'd been so stupid. To think that someone as great as Sirius or as wonderful as Jamie, or even that someone like Peter who happened to be a lot like him, could see past the werewolf...

How could he have thought that they'd be okay with something like that? How could he have ever thought that they understood?

"Why didn't I..." He could only gesture vaguely, because if he actually said the words out loud he most likely would lose what little was left in his stomach. No one had to tell him how close things had been. The wolf had smelled them both, wanted them both, hungered for them both. Even now, so close after the change, he could feel himself salivating over the memory of their scents.

"Sirius confessed in time, and I ran out here to stop Snape. He'd already gotten past the willow though. God, Remus, it was a close thing."

"Thanks, Jamie." He whispered, because he couldn't make his voice come out any louder. In a way, he owed what remaining sanity he had to James. "I'm...I think I'm just going to stay here for the rest of the day." He must have sounded as exhausted as he felt, because Jamie only nodded.

"We'll all be waiting for you up in the tower when you're feeling better." And with that, Prongs left the little hellhole Remus had become so intimately familiar with.

It was nice for Prongs or Padfoot or even Wormtail. They could walk out of here, they could leave with a clear conscience. They could just go about their merry little lives, and do whatever shenanigans came to mind with little to no real fear of reprisal.

The difference between them and him, he decided, was that when they left this room, they could forget all about this. It didn't weigh heavily on their minds. He knew for a fact that they barely thought of it except for those few days surrounding the full moon. And when they did think of his lycanthropy, it was with an air of mischief. As if it were some grand joke, some huge adventure.

Except it wasn't a joke to him.

This wasn't just a joke to him.

His mother was right. He was cursed. And with that thought foaming at the forefront of his mind, he ripped at the shack in unrepressed fury, destroying what little remained of the already shredded sofa before moving on to the end table and the chairs.

He hadn't started out life as a werewolf.

He didn't want to live with the responsibility of his affliction month in and month out. He didn't want to have to live through the pain each change inflicted. He hadn't asked for any of this. He hadn't chosen any of this.

How many nights in his life had he sat up, looking at the moon, wishing more than anything that this disease wasn't a part of who he was? And how many days had he sat at home by himself wondering why it was that no one else could see that his lycanthropy was just a part of who he was and not the whole?

The sheer unfairness of it all hung at his heart like a weighted hook, tearing at him. He'd thought he could overcome, he thought he could make it different. But obviously he had been wrong. There was a certain path that he was meant to walk, and it looked to him now, that it had never been a matter of him choosing it. It had been laid out before him from the moment he'd been bitten. He'd been the only one who hadn't seen it, who hadn't realized it. He wasn't meant to have friends, because part of the curse meant walking the world alone.

But that didn't mean he had to like it, he decided as he howled at the room in rage. Mourning, in his own way, the friends that he now knew he'd never had in the first place.

*****

"Forgive me, Remus."

"Not at all, Padfoot, my old friend."

The words rang in his head sometimes, often times really, in the last two years. He was still trying to figure out if he meant it entirely, or not at all. In parts, he had meant that he'd forgiven Sirius for thinking him the spy. That hadn't been a very big point to concede.

As for other incidents...Well, it seemed a bit silly to carry a grudge for that long. Somewhere in the years that Sirius had spent in Azkaban, Remus had come to terms with the betrayal...Or as he had believed at the time, betrayals.

It wasn't that he'd woken up one morning, condoning the actions, or even understanding them. It was just that the anger, the energy that he'd put into hating Sirius, hating the marauders, hating the fucking world and his fucking affliction…Life was much too short to waste himself over something like that. So, he'd forgiven them all and moved on, because that was all that was left for him to do.

Oh, but of course things couldn't be as simple as all that. Sirius had escaped, his world had flip-flopped once again, and Dumbledore and the Cause had recruited him once more.

Because, in the most strategic of senses, he'd been told, it never hurt to have a dark creature on their side.

He'd long since come to terms with people using him for his curse. It almost failed to come as a surprise any more. He'd gotten through his youth with the belief that he could be just like everyone else if he just tried hard enough. He knew the futility of that logic now. The world was much more clearer for him these days than it had been in the idealistic past.

He was simply everyone's rag to be used to try and wipe away the ugliness.

Dumbledore had commented to him in the year he'd masqueraded as a DADA professor about how cynical he'd become. He hardly saw how one could take a different perspective, and he'd said as much. That at least, he and Severus had in common. Not that it had ever mattered.

Not that Remus had ever cared.

He'd made a life in the last decade and a half of not caring. He'd retreated into himself because that was the only thing he could do. It wasn't a matter of choice; it was a matter of self-preservation. It was a matter of keeping his dignity and his sanity. It was a matter of knowing that his lot in life was a pittance in comparison and that he would do well to just accept it. He'd gone through the obligatory period of balking at the notion like a headstrong idiot. But destiny wasn't really something you could fight and win against.

"Do you think he's going to be okay?" He hadn't even heard Sirius sneak up behind him, but he supposed it was a sign of the times. Somewhere in Azkaban, Sirius had learned to move soundlessly. He'd freaked out more than a few members of the Order that way.

"Do you want the truth?" He asked quietly, a counterpoint to Sirius' own silence as they both stared out off the porch and towards the knoll where Harry was sitting, his back to them both. He'd be a seventh year when he went back to school at the end of the summer, but to Remus' eyes, it was obvious that in some respects Harry was already older than most adults the teen probably knew.

"Yes."

"No, no I don't think he's going to be okay. I think that's why Dumbledore arranged this. If Harry were going to be 'just fine', then I think that he would've ended up spending the summer with those muggle relatives of his." Having said his piece, Remus gave Harry's lonely figure one last glance.

He understood what it was that Dumbledore was trying to do, why it was that he'd been dragged into this whole scenario. The trick, however, would be living up to his part. He doubted that the Headmaster quite realized the depths of the problems he'd created within Harry's heart and head. Or maybe he did…

He supposed it didn't matter. Either way, it was a broken soul that sat isolated up on the knoll, head bent back, gazing motionless at the stars in the sky.

"Moony, I don't know what to do..." The desperation was almost enough for Remus to forgive him the use of that particular nickname. Almost.

"Sirius, please don't call me that." He said softly, and when Sirius looked properly rebuked, Remus sighed. "Take a close look at him and it ought to come to you."

"It's not that easy."

Of course it wasn't. Nothing lasting, nothing good ever was. He gave Sirius a sharp look, trying to size up just how serious the other man was about helping out. Sirius had already proven himself different from the carefree teen he'd once remembered, but there were thousands of directions in which a person could change, and a part of him still doubted...

"He just needs you to be there, Sirius." Like you weren't there for me. "You read the same reports I did on that muggle family of his, you've seen the way he acts. I imagine that the Weasleys were a sort of surrogate family for him for a while…and with what happened to the youngest..."

"But what do I do, what the hell am I supposed to say?" The plaintive note in Sirius voice infuriated him. Of course Sirius had never been in the places that Harry's mind wandered to, how the hell was the man supposed to know? Oh, but the werewolf…Of course the werewolf knew all about this. Knew what to do, what to say. Knew it deep down in his soul because he fucking lived it every goddamn day.

"Oh for fuck's sake, Sirius." He spat the words out, startling Sirius in the process. "He needs reassurance. He needs to know that it's not his fault and that the fucking destiny of the world really doesn't rest in the palms of his hands. He needs your acceptance, and your affection. And goddamn it, he needs your love. If you can't give him that, if that's asking too much of you, then I suggest you leave now."

"Look, I don't know what your problem is, but I am not leaving that kid to face his demons alone."

Of course he wouldn't. Remus chocked back a humorless laugh. Godsons were completely different from boyhood friends turned partners in crime. God, but he was a bitter old man. Or maybe it was just that he knew how fair weather Sirius' affections could be...

"Fine. Harry needs you. If you want a plan of action, go romp on out there as Padfoot. At this point, he'll probably be more receptive and more calmed by your canine presence than your human one. A dog makes a less accusatory, a less demanding, and a far less judgmental confidant than humans do." And it would keep Sirius from shoving his foot squarely in his mouth and creating the need for more damage control. "I'll see you both in the morning."

Tiredly, he made his way up to his bedroom, carefully shutting the door behind him as he could feel the change starting. Despite their differences, Severus had agreed upon a trade. The Wolfsbane potion on the appropriate intervals in return for werewolf hairs, whiskers, blood...whatever he could spare for the myriads of potions Severus enjoyed tinkering with.

Dark creature indeed. He snorted. More like he was the demon in his own personal hell.

*****