Remus Lupin and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Chapter 24: Coward

The decision lay heavy in his gut. He trudged back to his rooms, brushing the snow from his hair and cloak before seating himself in front of the fire to thaw, hands red-tipped from the cold. Telling about their animagus alter egos would reveal a secret that no one else in the world, save him and Sirius knew. It did not feel like his own. In a twisted way, it felt like a betrayal. It would tarnish James' name, Peter's name and...while it was a crime that Sirius was indeed guilty of, they had done it for Remus. Maybe that's where his hesitance came from. He leaned his elbows on his knees, watched the fire shift within the glowing logs like water, watched the flames lick over their blackened skins patiently, using them up, bit by bit. His fingers started to ache as feeling slowly returned.

Everything inside him quailed at the thought of telling Dumbledore that he had willfully deceived him after he had fought so hard to allow Remus to attend school, that he just abused his trust and goodwill so easily. If telling him that Remus had known all along and had participated in this betrayal, leaving the Shack, roaming the grounds. That Dumbledore had made a mistake in inviting him back, in trusting that he was a good person. That he was not only dangerous because of what he was, but who; a man who was too selfish and too scared of being alone to do the right thing.

He scrubbed his hands over his face and left them there. He would be sent away. And as painful as coming here had been, the weak, base part of him knew it would hurt far worse to lose the man that Dumbledore saw in him. It was a man that existed nowhere else but in the eyes of others. He knew that if anyone knew everything, how deep the wolf went, how far they had taken this secret, how truly self serving he was.... Well, there had been. There had been 4 people that had known. And he had ceased to be the person he was to them when they had died. All that was left was the person made a Professor by the belief of others and he wasn't sure he could survive another piece of him dying. Remus took his hands away from his face and looked at them. There was a scar that sliced over the base of his palm and curled down around his wrist that shone, raised and white, against the pink of his thawing skin.

The Sirius he had known was dead, just as surely as Lily or James or Peter or his parents. The fire popped loudly. This piece of information lay in his mind, cold and inert and immutable. Anything they had shared and any bond they might have had, it had become moot the moment that Sirius had chosen Voldemort over his own friends. His own family.

Unbidden, a memory swam up.

"I'm out," Sirius had announced with a bleak and brittle smile. His eyes were overbright.

"You're--what?" Peter stopped sticking his Quidditch poster up beside his bed as they all turned to look at him.

"You asked why I have 3 bags. Because I'm out. For good. This--" he gestured with fake grandeur down at the pile of suitcases he'd flung at his feet shortly before sitting on his bed. "Is all that is officially mine. Most of it's clothes." He stared down at them, gaze seeming far away. "School books...Stole the blanket I liked. Some of the crap that'll annoy them. Don't even want it...."

There was a stunned silence that had fallen on the room as the other 3 traded speechless looks. They straightened, slowly, from their various stages of unpacking to fill their dormitory, looking back to Sirius. "Are you...are you serious, Padfoot?" James asked, tentatively.

"Oh, very." He looked up at them again and his mouth stretched in that same, ghastly smile. The fact that he hadn't risen to the accidental bait of his favorite name-pun showed exactly the gravity of the situation.

"Oh..." Peter trailed off, weakly.

"I'm a free man, now. Don't have to...keep quiet during Pureblood rants anymore...hear about how much better things were during 'the Dark Lord's reign'...any of it." Sirius' smile had become fixed and wooden, his eyes even brighter as he stared in the spaces between them, not at any of their faces.