Is It Over Now?

Chapter fifteen

When Remus opened his eyes, he immediately shut them once more. The world was too white, too sterile compared to the colors of the forest. For as much as he missed the world of magic that he had known for the past eight years now, he knew then that a part of him would always remain among the trees.

He smelled them long before they arrived, the thick scent of wizarding magic that lingered on each of them, Remus less than them all. His magic was wild in a way that theirs could never hope to be. It always has been, but now so more than ever.

The door was opened up gently, hesitantly as if not to wake the inhabitant inside, but Remus only pushed himself to a sitting position and met the surprised gaze with an even one of his own.

"Remus," the boy said, his voice strong in a way that the wolves so often weren't. The forest may be beautiful, but it did nothing to shield them from the sickness that such conditions wrought. "You're awake."

The wolf almost flinched away at the too bright smile of the other teen, seeing the strains in it. The dishonesty. The pack may have been a lot of things, but dishonest was not one of them, not when everyone knew the other's tells.

"Yes," Remus agreed evenly as James walked into the room, Sirius following right behind him with a strained smile on his lips.

"You look better," the elder Black brother said, though his eyes seemed to tell another story, as if the other boy thought that Remus looked alien. Wild.

He was.

"A good sleep in a clean bed will do that," Remus said, his response neither here nor there as memories from the night before flashed across his mind. Memories that belonged to the wolf that Remus had to sort through.

"Right," Sirius said awkwardly, the long haired boy shuffling his feet against the ground as he looked anywhere but at Remus' too wild eyes.

"Where am I?"

"My old room," James said, his voice slightly off. As if he thought that this was something that Remus should know but then remembered why he didn't. Something that had occurred during the past month, the wolf realized. "Mum changed it into a medical room for the Order. It's safer this way for some members."

"Like me?" Remus asked, his eyes trailing across the scars lining his body, his arms on full display in the short sleeved shirt.

James looked away. "Yes," he answered all the same.

"Remus, what happened?" Sirius suddenly asked, unable to wait any longer. It was an impatience that Remus had once found endearing. Now he just missed Regulus.

"A very good question Mr. Black."

Remus bit back the growl that was building in his throat as the door opened as a third man walked through it, his robes some obscene color that the wolf didn't know and his eyes lacking the signature sparkle that they always held.

"Dumbledore," Remus said in a way of greeting, his voice thick in a way that the other two Marauders had never heard and dit want to again.

"You've been missed, my dear boy," Dumbledore said, his voice light in a way that did not match the look in his eyes.

"The absence wasn't exactly planned," Remus said shortly.

The Headmaster hummed. "I suppose it wasn't."

They both knew that it nearly was.

"You were found covered in blood and scratches. Tests have shown that it wasn't all your own," the older man said, his voice holding a sternness to its usual softness, showing more of the cold man beneath the facade that uses men as chess pieces.