Jaded

JADED

For Summery, warnings, spoilers and disclaimers see chapter one.
..oo00oo..

Chapter Twenty-Seven: A wolf's tale

..o0o.. ..o0o.. ..o0o..

Remus took a deep breath, sitting down on the sofa, while Harry dropped himself onto the seat opposite him. Remus refused to look at Harry, almost refused to acknowledge the presence of the other man.

"When Jaime left I was broken. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, letting him go," He started in a hollow voice and Harry pulled his knees to his chest, feeling his heart breaking all over again because Remus slipped back into separating him and Jaime. "I was angry, so angry that he left like that, without a word, without an address or anything. I never thought I'd fall in love, but with Jaime I wanted to build a life, after Hogwarts. After he was gone I didn't know what to do and the anger drove me to do the one thing he hated most,"

"You hooked up with your old tricks." Harry whispered and Remus nodded in assent, a sad and faraway smile on his face,

"Yes. Part of it was a strange backwards revenge, but most of it was trying to forget Jaime, to try and lessen the pain he left behind. It was a month of hell," He mused, "But then it got worse."

"What happened?" Harry asked, concerned,

"I graduated." Remus said simply and let out a dry laughter at Harry's puzzled face, "I never appreciated how good I had it in here, how safe. When I graduated it finally dawned on me, like a bloody ton of bricks, that there will be no more bacon sandwiches after the full moon, no shrieking shack to transform in, and no friends that take you as you are."

"What did you do?"

"What else could I do? I shacked up with Sirius, got ourselves a little pad in London, his money of course and went wild. This was the craziest time ever! We partied every night, both of us completely lost and clueless, we drank, shagged, snorted up and smoked pretty much everything we could get our hands on…"

"You did drugs?" Harry asked disgusted. He was very much against drugs, especially after Dudley and his stupid friends started smoking weed, which didn’t make them any less violent or stupid.

"Why not? You weren’t there to stop me, and Lily and James were far too absorbed in their little affair, so Sirius and I were just left to our own devices." Sometimes Remus wished he could look back on that time and remember it at least somewhat fondly, but he couldn't. He actually hated every second of that period, using the alcohol and drugs to dull his senses and forget, just forget and escape the reality he found himself in.

"What happened then?" As painful as it was for Harry to hear this, he couldn’t stop himself from being enthralled by the tale,

"You were born." Harry flushed a little at that, it was weird to think that Remus was there from his birth, hell the man knew him longer than he knew himself! "Lily and James were so happy… Lily always joked that if she didn’t have to nurse you she would never see you because James just took you wherever he went. I guess in a way your birth kind of brought Sirius and I back to earth. Sirius applied for Auror training and decided to clean up his act. Me, I was still lost, I did some odd jobs for the order but there aren’t many things a werewolf could do in the wizarding world. Not then and not now." Remus hated feeling like an outcast for something he had no control over, he had skills, he would have made a great Auror or a Healer or just about anything he wanted but he was never given a chance to see how he could have turned out. The wizarding world had labelled him as a monstrosity and a dangerous creature and there was nothing he could do against it.

"That night my whole world crushed around me. If before I just lost a lover now I lost everything," with a wave of a wand he was left all alone in the world.

"I lost everything that night too." Harry said quietly. For a long moment the two sat in silence, lamenting what could have been,

"In the space of a week three of my friends were dead and the other one in jail. The only link I had left was you, and Dumbledore refused to let me have you."

"You wanted to raise me?" Harry asked incredulously, gods how things would have different if Remus had taken him in…

"Of course I did. I owed Lily and James that much. But Dumbledore decided you'd be safer with your relatives."

"Safe? With people who hated me for something I was? something I had no control over? People that lied to me for years about how my parents died and made me live in a fucking cupboard under the stairs…" How cruel can one person be?

"I know, I hated Dumbledore for that, but in a way he had no choice, I mean who would give a baby to a junky werewolf who was practically a whore?" Well, Dumbledore phrased it much more subtly at the time but that didn’t diminish any of the hurt his words caused.

"So what did you do?" Please tell me you stopped with the drugs and the tricks… Harry prayed inwardly.

"I left. I didn't want anything to do with the wizarding world anymore; I didn’t care about the order, even though Dumbledore tried to lure me back in, saying we had to prepare for Voldemort's return since he wasn’t technically dead, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I felt completely useless and alone so I left London and wandered west."

"You left England?"

"Yes, but I didn’t get very far, I moved to Wales." Remus said with a smile, "I found myself in Swansea, in a small inn called 'The Lucky Dog'. The woman who owned the pub, Mrs. Derringer was a sweet old lady, at first she let me stay in exchange for some cleaning I did, but then she hired me to work down in the bar."

"So that's where you spent the thirteen years before you came here?" Well, that wasn’t so bad… Harry mused, at least there wasn't much of a gay population for Remus to choose from, or at least he hoped there wasn’t.

"Yup, pretty much. I used to go to Cardiff on the weekends, there was a brilliant club there that I could just forget myself in," So much for no gay population… "It wasn’t a bad life, I actually liked staying there. Mrs. Derringer was the only one who knew my secret, and the fact that I was a wizard. Turned out she was a squib and so she didn’t mind I was a werewolf as long as I kept myself safe on the full moon and didn’t eat any of her costumers." Ah, good old Mrs. Derringer… a woman that would have made Arabella Figg seem normal.

"So why did you came back here?" Harry hoped the answer would be along the lines of 'For you' but he knew better than to put real faith behind it.

"Mrs. Derringer died; she had a heart attack and was gone. The inn was left to her son and he didn’t want anything to do with it, so he sold the place to some contractor or other and I was out of a job and out of a home. I decided to go back to London, but two weeks into the process I was left without any money, so I had no choice but accept Dumbledore's offer to come here. He used to send me an owl every August, trying to get me to come and teach here. I think in a way he felt bad about what he said to me then, and he most definitely felt sorry for me for losing all my friends. Anyway, like I said I didn’t have much choice, so I came here, falling right back on Dumbledore's grace and feeling like a total failure."

"You're not a failure!" Harry intoned firmly, determined to turn a blind eye to his love's faults. Remus shrugged and sighed,

"That's what it felt like." The two sat in silence for a while, Harry was picking at a loose strand in the knee of his trousers and Remus tapped his fingers on the armrest of his seat.

"So… Was it Sirius who got you to join the order again?" Harry asked after a while, desperately trying to blow the dying amber of the conversation back to life,

"I'm not sure, I think it was mutual. He wanted revenge on Wormtail; I just wanted to be useful. And we both wanted to protect you."

"And then Sirius fell through the veil and it was all my fault."

"No! It wasn’t your fault, never your fault Harry, you mustn’t believe that!" Remus cried, falling back to his mentor role. "Don't think that, if your parents or Sirius could have heard you they'd be really mad at you for saying such a thing!" Harry felt the prickling of tears and took a deep breath to get rid of them, "It's ok, Harry." Remus said softly, sinking to his knees and placing his hand on Harry's in a parental comforting gesture that made Harry even tearier than before. He pulled his hand from under Remus' and stood up shakily.

"Thank you for telling me this, professor. I… shall be on my way now, with your permission, I am sorry for taking up so much of your time." He said in a strained voice, his eyes fixed on a spot just above Remus' shoulder,

"Harry…" Remus sighed but didn’t move from his spot on the floor and didn’t try to stop the teenager as he opened the door. He simply looked after him, feeling like an old bastard for causing so much pain to the one he had sworn to protect. Harry walked to the door, feeling Remus' eyes on his back, but he forced himself to hold his head high. Up until the second the door clicked shut behind him he was expecting Remus to call him back, to say he was sorry and they could work on things, to say anything really. He leaned his back against the door, all his strength gone.

"Harry, are you alright? What did he say?" Harry blinked and looked up, quite surprised to see both Hermione and Draco standing before him; apparently they've been waiting around to hear the news.

"Nothing."

"What do you mean nothing? You were there for over an hour." Draco complained loudly, hell if he had to endure an hour with Hermione Granger for the sake of Harry he deserved a bit more than a bloody 'nothing'!

"He said I don't know him, that he's too old for me." Harry said flatly, suddenly devoid of all emotions. He just wanted to get to his bed and bury himself in the sheets and never leave it at least until he would graduate and leave this castle and Remus behind. Not being with Remus seemed like a death sentence to him, but not being with Remus while still being around Remus… Well, that was worse than death in Harry's eyes. "It doesn’t matter, I've given up. You were right, Draco, love isn’t worth it." Harry said heavily and pushed himself away from the door and forced his heavy feet to move. Hermione and Draco watched him leave. When Harry rounded the corner and vanished from their view Hermione turned on Draco with a fierce look,

"What the hell did you tell him?" Draco did his best to look offended, which wasn’t too hard considering he was pretty hurt,

"I never said anything about love not being worth it!" He cried. This was quite a shock for Draco, because even before he got to know Harry and like him for the person he was he always envied his ability to pursue his goal to the bitter end (or the happy end, depends on what said goal was…), seeing Harry that defeated wasn’t right. Hermione looked between the door of Professor's Lupin's quarters and the corner around which Harry disappeared and her face grew grim. Suddenly she reached a decision and turned to march over to the professor's quarters. Draco had just seen the determined Gryffindor about to charge and did the only thing he could, he jumped and grabbed Hermione bodily, wrapping his arms around her to prevent her from doing anything foolish.

"Let me go, Malfoy!" Hermione cried out furiously, "I'm going to show professor Lupin exactly what happens when he messes up with Harry's head!"

"Yeah I know!" He snapped, doing his best to get hold of the struggling girl without getting a hold of certain bits of a struggling girl, "That's why I'm stopping you! You can't just barge in there and accuse professor Lupin for not loving Harry, he's got every right not to!" Hermione stilled but Draco still held tight to her, just in case she was bluffing.

"You're right." Hermione said with amazement. She sagged in Draco's arms, all her fighting spirit gone. It took them both a couple more seconds to realized what position they were in, but once they did they sprang apart as hastily as they could, standing embarrassed on the opposite sides of the door and refusing to look at each other, gods this was awkward, Hermione thought and felt her face flushing bright red. Not only did she made a complete fool of herself nearly charging into professor Lupin's rooms and hexing him, she ended up in Draco Malfoy arms of all people… "You're right." She said again once she got hold of her voice again, "But I'll tell you that, professor Lupin can consider himself a bloody lucky man that Harry loves him so much." She tossed her head back and marched down the corridor, every bit of her pose screaming righteousness. Draco shrugged and shook his head. Gryffindors.
--HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR--

"Here's the fire protection potion and the burn-healing paste you requested, though I do not see why you would actually go out of your way to heal and protect pests that were daft enough to get burned in the first place," Remus rolled his eyes, you could never get a potion from Snape without a side of a creative criticism.

"Thank you, Severus." He said pleasantly and took the two vials from the potions master's hands,

"And I would appreciate it if you stop portraying me in drag during your Bogart training; it diminished my authority with the pests."

"They are called students, you know. And besides, I think that last one, with the red cabaret dress was quite fetching." Remus smirked and Snape snorted at him,

"You would think it, you poof!" Severus snarled and turned to leave, but Remus' voice stopped him at the door,

"Severus, what's Draco Malfoy's middle name?" Severus turned to fix the DADA professor with one of his best scorching gazes, the ones he saved for students like Harry Potter and professors like Quirrell.

"What's it to you?"

"Humour me."

"I believe Draco Malfoy's middle name is Alexander." Severus answered with a haughty voice. Remus felt cold all of a sudden, he sat down heavily and felt his whole body shaking. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Harry, after all what reason did the boy need to lie, but it still felt strange. "If I knew that a mere name would unsettle you so I would have told you Draco's middle name years ago." Remus lifted his eyes to Severus, if only he knew…

"Do you remember a couple of blokes on our last year; one was in Slytherin while the other was in Gryffindor. They were transfer students from Drumstrang."

"You mean Alex?" Despite himself Severus was fascinated, Remus nodded, "What of him?"

"Alex, Alex Draconis… Draco Alexander Malfoy…" Come on, Snape, it's not that big of a brain teaser, Remus thought furiously,

"Your point being?" Remus sighed and rubbed his forehead,

"Draco and Harry fell through a time alcove and ended up in our last year of school." He said simply, and Severus stared at him as if he's grown another head.

"You mean… Harry James Potter, Jaime…"

"Harrison, yes." Remus confirmed with a tired nod,

"Weren't you involved with him?" Again Remus nodded, feeling too drained to say anything. Severus on the other hand looked as if Christmas had come early just for him.

"Well, I'll be damned." He mused softly, "You're buggering a student."

"No, I'm not. I wasn’t a teacher than! Besides, you're the one to talk, Mr. Arithmancy…" Remus tossed back, irked at being stung like that,

"I was not in love with Professor Black!" Severus cried and Remus gave him a sceptical look,

"Having a lover whose best friends with a Slytherin has its advantages…" Severus pursed his lips, pushing back the thought of horrible ways to get back at Draco and Harry for spilling out his secret, but for now he would have to settle with taunting Remus.

"Speaking of said lover, you have a bit of a situation on your hands I'll wager." He said with a huge smirk, and Remus seemed to have collapsed into himself. Well, this was no fun if the werewolf won't cooperate. "What's wrong?" He asked with a sigh,

"Harry said he still loves me." Remus said quietly, knowing that telling Severus would probably bring on good advice, even if the way there would leave Remus feeling rather foolish.

"So?"

"What do you mean, 'so?' He's too young, he's Lily and James' son for Merlin's sake. He's my student!" Remus cried, repeating out loud all the reasons he gave himself to justify hurting Harry.

"Of all the reasons you mentioned, there's only one you can do something about and that's going to change in less than a month." Severus answered levelly, "If I remembered correctly you were quite taken with him when he was back in our time." Which was probably the understatement of the century, Severus thought, in all the years he knew Remus Lupin never had he seen him this infatuated with another person, things couldn’t have changed that much over the years, especially if the rumours about his reckless life were true, classic compensation and self distraction route.

"Yes, I was. I loved him, more than anything. But that was then, things have changed."

"He hasn’t changed," Unfortunately, Severus added inwardly,

"What are you saying?" Remus asked suspiciously, and Severus frowned, what was he saying, really?

"You've spent twenty years trying to forget Jaime only to have him back. Are you going to bugger up your second chance for happiness?" He said with a quirked eyebrow. His lips curled in a small smirk at the baffled and gob-smacked expression on Remus' face. Severus slithered his way to the door, slipping quietly though it, leaving Remus to his thoughts.
--HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR-HR--

A/N: Just in case it didn't come out strongly enough, Remus and Severus are friends, not the kind of friends that go to drink together but the kind that has bonded over the fact that they've known each other for ages as teens and now find themselves together in Hogwarts. Besides, it's a good opportunity to get out all my sarcasm in a healthy way… Ok, fine, not all of it but at least a little bit. Long live the Snape!