Dark Side of the Moon

Chapter Eight: Now it's time to begin

Remus Lupin awoke with a start, panting and sweaty. At first, he didn't recognize his surroundings, and began to panic when the room around him swirled in and out of view - but as his eyes unblurred from sleep, it started to come back to him. This was his new home, at least until it became clear to McGonagall that he was not the person she was looking for to teach DADA this year. It was a small but cozy cabin, comprised of one large room with a sitting area, large wooden bed, kitchenette, and a separate bathroom. A little trapdoor in the floor opened to a basement stairwell, which he figured was an area probably intended to be used by him during the full moons, if the Shrieking Shack wasn't necessary. The fire in the wide stone hearth had burned down to embers sometime in the night, and the sun was now streaming through the front windows on either side of the door.

Remus hadn't unpacked his things yet, having curled up into his exhaustion on the bed late the evening before, but he figured he could do it after the school day ended. Unfortunately, his rest wasn't quite restful, and as he reached into his mind for the reason why, a flood of memory invaded his senses.

He couldn't remember anything after laying down to sleep before a strange pulling sensation tugged into his unconsciousness, which carried him to the exterior of the Great Hall, where he had been even more confused than he was when he'd woken up this morning. It appeared he was back in the Battle, but he got a strange sense this wasn't one of his recurring nightmares - it felt so real. Unlike the fogginess of a dream, everything felt so sharp and clear. He could feel the chill of the stones under his bare feet; could smell the acrid stench of blood and smoke pervading the air. But it wasn't as if he'd been sent back in time. It was so barren in this hall, compared to what it had been like during the Battle...barren, of course, except for a few corpses and the very alive Hermione Granger, cowering against a wall in a green nightgown.

None of it made any sense.

Whether it was a nightmare or somehow real, it was clear that Hermione needed to be taken from this place, and he'd stolen her away into the Herbology stores so she didn't have to stare at the carnage any longer. But it seemed that it had stained her mind just as clearly as the blood she'd stepped in had stained her skin, and her wide-eyed semi-catatonic stare was worrying him.

Get rid of the blood first. Then maybe she'll snap out of it.

It was improper, of course, to wash the feet of a teenage girl he'd mostly ever known as a student. He felt an almost dizzy sort of hilarity about the whole thing - who did he think he was, the Muggle Pope? But then again, what exactly was proper or normal in the context of what appeared to be a shared dream? It wasn't real...or was it?

The whole thing was mind-boggling. All he knew to do was to remedy the issue at hand, and that was to remove the physical evidence of the Battle from Hermione so she could no longer linger on it in traumatized horror. So he did, and it seemed to help.

Then, it was over.

He raised a hand to his face to rub his eyes in the morning light and was struck by what he saw: under the fingernails of his right hand was some sort of rust-colored deposit, as if he'd scraped them along something. Lupin stared at his fingers for a long while, trying to figure out what it could be, and then it hit him - this was the hand he'd wrapped in the rag to wash the blood off of Hermione's skin. That blood had stained him, just as he'd attempted to remove the stain from her.

That's impossible. It wasn't real.

Remus pulled himself out of bed and began to ready himself for the day, washing up in the bathroom's basin and pulling a comb through his floppy, bed-headed hair. He studied himself in the mirror as he did so. The grey at his temples was more persistent now than ever, and fine threads of silver shot through his close-trimmed beard as well. He hadn't yet crested forty, and yet lately he'd been feeling more aged than he remembered feeling since before the Second War. He was initially unsure why that was, but an ache in the pit of his stomach pointed to his growing friendship with a certain young and brilliant witch. Before this particular context, it hadn't seemed to matter as much. The scar that cleft his face in two also shouted at him for attention, a constant and mocking reminder: Look at what you've done! Look at what you are CAPABLE of doing! You're a monster, Remus Lupin - not even safe from yourself.