Remus Lupin and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Chapter 29: Boggart Blues

The evening found him pawing through the old textbooks, goblets, stain spotted silk scarves, small bundles of purple sticks that smelled of some sort of spice, boxes upon boxes of feathers of all kinds of the Charms closet, sneezing and unsuccessful. No boggarts to be found. Still, he rallied himself, the castle is huge--there's bound to be one somewhere.

Remus continued searching through empty classrooms and their supply closets by the light of his wand and slowly waning moon peeking in through the dusty windows; for all that Filch seemed to be inexplicably more active the last few days, many of the room's disuse was evident. More than once, he hadn't had much to search in a room stripped bare of everything but the curtains. Somewhere around 9 o'clock and the 4th little stash of rodent carcasses in various states of disintegration he had accidentally put his hand in--obviously, a little trophy collection for Mrs. Norris--his searching took a somewhat grim caste. Yet, he pressed on. He truly scoured every room; he opened desks, drawers, rustled disused and musty cloaks on their racks.

Puffing, he drew himself out from underneath a wardrobe in the Transfiguration classroom and sat back on his heels, wiping his forehead with the back of his dusty hand. 18 years ago and he would have slithered in and out of every nook and cranny of this whole castle without hardly breaking a sweat; indeed he had, on countless occasions. He might be only 33, but life and repeated monthly bone twisting transformations had not been kind to his body and he felt an aching fatigue settling into his muscles. It would be infinitely earlier to just float it out of the way, but if there were a boggart hiding beneath something, revealing it completely would only make it flee to a new hiding spot and he'd have to start all over again. Which, not only was he extremely reluctant to do, he wasn't at all sure that he could.

He had never been prone to more vigorous bouts of activity than the average person, even in his youth, but he had always seemed to tire easier and recover slower than his friends. As he grew older--(though, granted, the feeling of relative age had skewed in his favor, spending so much time with professors at least 20 to 50 years his senior)--he'd found that that had only worsened over time. By the time his silver hair and premature lines had come in, he'd accepted that lycanthropy was just not conducive to living a long, healthy life. Too much stress, too much pain, too many Changes and injuries. While he had recognized this fact, it still didn't make him happy.

Standing with a stifled groan, he levered himself to his feet scanned the room one last time, holding his wand high to cast light about the whole room. All at once, the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. Looking behind himself, he spotted Filch, not truly on the doorway, but lurking near enough in the shadows, looking at him. There was a brief moment of silence where both of them stared at each other in the pale wand light while Remus ran through a number of possible responses and settled on offering, "... Hello, Argus."

The caretaker screwed up his face in a grimace and scoffed indignantly before stomping off down the hall, face red. Remus stared after him. What on Earth? His refusal to treat him with the most basic of courtesies was neither new nor particularly troubling--when he did something to ingratiate himself to Filch, then he would worry. But the look in his face had been almost embarrassed. And for him to be actively...spying, he supposed was an accurate enough term, was just odd.

Come to think of it, Remus thought back as he stifled a sneeze and fumbled in his robe pockets for a handkerchief, Filch had been hovering around much more often, the past few days. He'd seen him practically everywhere he went. As he blew his nose and stared in dismay at the grey smear his face had left on the cloth, he decided that anything nefarious that Argus was planning, short of murder, was probably something that future Remus would have the energy to deal with, seeing how he was beginning to have doubts about making it back to his room with all his limbs still operating. In the end, he managed--barely--and just kicked off his shoes and thickly dusted robes before crawling into bed and falling asleep immediately.