Remus Lupin and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Chapter 23: Doubts and Dementors

The end of term picked up a certain amount of momentum as the wet in the air turned to an edge of frost and the holidays grew ever closer. His schedule became more comfortable again, more practiced; the feeling of being an imposter lessened, but lingered, darkly. However, he hardly had any time for it any more, what with grading and teaching and rearranging his curriculum to account for his own missed days. The secret restlessness, for its part, seemed momentarily under control. Things were manageable. Life was actually...good. Brighter. Christmas decorations were beginning to pop up around the halls, banishing any lingering gloom that clung to the shadows from Halloween and its misadventure. Shiny baubles were clustered above doorways and garlands were strewn about with cheery abandon; he even heard Peeves carolling, albeit very lewd and rude versions of the songs. The corridors wafted with cooking meat, woodsmoke, and the sharp scent of pine, and the torches and lanterns that lit them seemed to glow brighter and merrier with some sort of natural magic as the dark descended ever earlier around the school. The days grew downright cold.

Though he usually felt lonely around the winter holidays, being surrounded so by people and the castle of his youth made that nearly impossible. Instead, it manifested as a nostalgic ache as echoes of memories would return to him; in his 3rd year, James had begun the tradition of giving Remus horrid Muggle Christmas sweaters each year along with his regular gift. 6th year, Remus had charmed a sprig of mistletoe to follow Sirius around everywhere he went and stolidly refused to tell him the counterspell, citing that Sirius would know it if he hadn't been so busy trying to transfigure Peter's shoes into lumps of coal during that class. It had taken him at least 3 days to figure it out, not to mention many awkward conversations. One winter full moon, they had convinced him to show up early to the Shrieking Shack and James had stepped majestically into the room as Prongs with ornaments and tinsel on every antler and his nose a sparkling red. If he recalled right, Remus laughed until he threw up. The other 3 had been very pleased with themselves. The memories...hurt, but if he isolated them and just watched, viewed them and did not relive them, it was manageable. If he the Remus that was there with them as they were was somewhere else in the castle, a ghostly presence enacting past hijinx in another room...he could do it. They were students. Like his own. Together.

His next Change at the beginning of December hurt more--the cold always made the ache preceding it deeper, more wearing, his joint pain sharper, despite the medicine for it--but darkened him less. It did not dim him as much as last month's full moon; for that, he was grateful. He could still function, still be of use. Every so often, Poppy would shoot him a sharp, questioning look and he would return an easy nod and small smile. He was taking his potions and they were helping, for the most part. The Cheering Elixir seemed to keep him afloat; he could still feel sorrow and all it's close cousins, but he no longer found it so easy to sink down and drown. It kept his head above water. With all the resources he was using, he figured a little joint pain was something he could do without complaining about.

One bitterly cold day, weeks later, he was strolling down the hill toward Hagrid's hut for tea when something at the edge of the forest caught his attention with a flash of color. He stopped, breath pluming out like smoke in the air. Shading his eyes, he saw the orange cat that had visited him all those weeks ago, slowly winding its way through the edge of the Forbidden Forest, a ways down the hill. Suddenly, there was a movement behind it, and his stomach lurch in unpleasant surprise. A tall, cloaked Dementor glided out of the murk within feet of the cat. It was too far away to affect him but he took a step forward, prepared to intervene if it bothered the cat; however, was heading away, down the length of the trees, silent, ominous, oppressive. He stared at the cat. He stared at the Dementor. They...ignored each other. The cat wandered on, unperturbed, and the Dementor showed absolutely no notice that any living creature was nearby. It wasn't even that it didn't seem interested, for Dementors always were, when there was any positive emotion to be fed on in the vicinity; it just seemed to not even register the cat. An animal.

A shiver ran up and down the length of him that had nothing to do with the cold. Animals. Dementors...couldn't suck the happiness of animals. They couldn't sense animals the same way they could people. No...

Automatically, he scanned the treeline, then strode quickly down the rise, approaching the cat, who looked up when it heard him and blinked, slowly. Remus stood above it, staring down at it and then around himself, hard. The cat seemed to be alone, but he drew his wand anyway, took a few steps into the woods. The smell of crushed loam and dead leaves drifted from his feet richly as the icy top layer cracked and memories tickled at the back of his head. This was a place of mischief and adventure, of roaming where you ought not and revelling in that fact.

But now, something else was stirring deep inside him; a deep feeling of unease, of a sour premonition, of a slowly dawning, unpleasant realization. Slowly, he stepped through the trees, peering around in the sepia gloom that grew the deeper he went. There were a few chirps and strange, far off animals noises that sounded out intermittently, but near him, only the few dead leaves that managed to cling to the branches rattled. He stood very still. The sense that there were things just beyond his view that had fastened their gazes on him was acute, but nothing stirred beyond the dim ring of his field of view. A breeze drifted in from deeper in the woods, bringing with it the scent of frost and pine. Fat flurries of snowflakes began to drift down around him, sticking to his shoulders and hair, the spidery limbs of the trees and the leaf litter.

Surely...surely if Sirius were in Padfoot form...it would not give him an advantage in hiding. A bear sized dog with pale eyes was not inconspicuous on school grounds. And certainly not within the castle. His palms prickled uncomfortably. It was undoubtedly irrelevant that Sirius could transform; it gave him no advantage when trying to infiltrate a school full of people. It must be some other sort of Dark magic that he had learned from Voldemort, something else that hid him and helped him sneak in. Right? An animagus wasn't an animal, not completely, he reasoned. They still had human thoughts, they had told him, or else they would not be able to control his wolf on full moons. Surely that made a difference, a difference that Dementors could sense, a difference that did not mean that Remus had endangered the whole school--endangered Harry--by failing to confess....

Something behind him snapped. He whirled, wand whipping out in a rush of adrenaline that for a lopsided, dizzying moment threw him back 12 years and he was in a different forest, hunting a different Death Eater, heart pounding and stomach lurching as James shouted out a warning---

But it was Hagrid, holding up his hands in surprise, bushy eyebrows raised. "'Ey!"

Hurriedly, Remus lowered his wand, tried to control his breathing. "Hagrid..." he said weakly. "Sorry." His stomach roiled and he could see his breath billowing out between the snowflakes, too fast, and he closed his eyes. Control. "Sorry," He repeated, stronger this time. "I was...somewhere else."

Hagrid nodded slowly, lowering his hands. "Saw ye comin' down, then come in here. Forgot I was goin' to Hogsmeade today and wanted to replan tea, so, figured I'd wait, but ye didn't come right back out. Thought I'd check." He peered at Remus closely, brows beetling in concern. "Ye alright, Lupin? Yer awful pale."

Remus paused, still trying to pull his shivering body out of the memory of the First War, and looked within. Nothing seemed to be...spiralling. So. "I...I believe so, yes."

"What'd ye come in here for?"

Remus turned back to scan the trees once more, but was offered nothing more revealing than before. Snow was thickening quickly on the trees, brightening farther into the Forest to no avail. His hand tightened on his wand. "I...had a thought," he said, quietly.

"Did it run away?" Hagrid's black eyes crinkled, obviously trying to prompt him into levity.

"I hope not," Remus murmured. "I really do."

He followed Hagrid back out of the Forest and when they emerged, both the cat and the Dementor were nowhere to be seen. Nothing stirred on the grounds.

Surely....