Marauders - Always - Part One

Gliding Along the Road

Lily returned home by floo to find the living room empty. She'd expected at least her husband to have been there, but the telly was on playing to no one but a half eaten box of chocolate digestives and a discarded copy of the morning Daily Prophet.

Clicking off the telly, Lily caught sight of the car in the drive way lurching and stopping and sighed, putting her hands on her hips, and raising an eyebrow. She shook her head after watching it crawl forward for a couple moments, though it seemed not to actually be going anywhere, and headed upstairs.
"I swear to Merlin, if Sirius Black gets a single ding on that car - or on James - he'll have another thing coming," she muttered as she climbed the steps, passing the photo frames filled with Sirius's silly Polaroids, all waving at her with bright eyes and big gestures.

At the top of the stairs, she was about to head left to her own room when she heard a weepy gasp and turned about to see Remus Lupin, sitting on the floor in the hall, looking forlorn and frumpled. "Oh honey, why aren't you in bed? You should be resting..."

Dora had gone to Minnie's under the guise of making a special breakfast, giving Remus her room for the morning's recovery so he could stay near to Spencer, but Remus had abandoned the comforts to the hall. He looked miserable, and his back hurt from sitting on the floor in his own melancholia.

"I talked to him," Remus murmured, "I was awful at it. I didn't know how to do it and I could feel my - my patience was thin and I just wanted to get it over with and I probably scared him more than I did anything else and --"

Lily could feel Remus's upset, though faded because of the still lingering wolf so soon after the full moon. She frowned and came over and slid down to the floor beside him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders as he dropped sideways into her.

"Oh Lily, I'm a very bad person."

"No you're a very good person," Lily said, then, remembering a story that Newt Scamander had once told them about the very first time he'd met Ned Veigler, she added, "You're a very bad werewolf, but you're a very good person."

Remus appreciated the quote and he hugged onto her tightly. "I wish I was even half as gentle as you are."

Lily stroked the curls that hung over his forehead.

"I don't know how to speak to people when their nerves are shot like that, I think it's why Sirius and I tend to fight when he's keyed up, rather than me comforting him as he needs." Remus's eyes travelled to a small run in Lily's tights, tracing the pattern of it as it ran over her ankle, and he thought about imperfections and how they make each one of us different - sometimes in good ways. Sometimes, imperfections were rather beautiful - like the way the fibers of her nylons created a spider-web like pattern, like thin lines of gossamer, almost shimmery in their brokenness, letting her skin show through. Letting humanity show through.

"You simply put yourself in their place for a moment and say the things you'd like to hear in a moment such as theirs," Lily replied.

"I'm afraid I'm far too selfish for such a thing as that," Remus said. "I can only ever think about how much I'd rather be anywhere else, any time else."

Lily said, "And you think they don't wish that very thing?" She kissed Remus's forehead. "I'm willing to bet that Spencer very much would've given anything to be anywhere else," she teased.

Remus groaned and covered his eyes. "I'm sure, especially when I levicorpused him to the ceiling to prove I am a wizard."

"You did what now?" Lily tilted her head to look at Remus with a raised eyebrow.

Remus looked up at her, cheeks flushing. "Oh Lily, I really am horrid. I told him with no gentle words that he was a werewolf and that I bit him, he argued werewolves weren't real or there would be laws, and I told him that he wouldn't know about those laws since they wouldn't be under parliament but rather under the Ministry for Magic, which led to me telling him I'm a wizard and then trying to prove magic is real and I got short tempered with his excuses rather fast and I --" Remus's eyes floated to the ceiling. "Not upside down or anything. Just... floated him up."