oh, messiah

remus though, remus had YEARS of doubting, of disdain, of heartache

remus is the one sirius has to convince in the end, remus is the one that he has to sit up with until sun crests into the parlor, promising to be good, remus is the one he has to apologize to, remus is the one that has to forgive sirius if he’s ever going to be human again, because sirius is cocky and headstrong and he’s never once thought before he’s acted

destroy all headcanons that james potter didn't know how to be serious

destroy all headcanons that james potter didn't feel ashamed when things went too far

when james potter is awake he is awake to Do Stuff. he wakes up in the morning and springs out of bed and plans all of his great pranks for the day and is a general pain in the ass to literally everyone before 10 am but BUT if anything keeps him up past his bed time james potter turns into a massive whiny baby 

sirius wakes up in the morning angry and can never go back to sleep once he's up. it's just how he functions. he has a personal vendetta against the sun, noises, friends, breakfast, clothes, stairs, strangers, teachers, house elves, sassy paintings, stairs that move (STAIRS THAT MOVE), basically anything that isn't his bed. if you encounter sirius black any time before lunch he's guaranteed to be a massive huge butt. conversely at night time he's the cuddliest motherfucker known to man sirius black will make it his personal mission to fall asleep on you and you'll like it, god dammit.

remus wakes up very, very, very slowly. it takes a million years to get him out of bed and a hundred more to actually get him into clothes. he has to wake up a full thirty minutes before his friends just because it takes so god damn long to actually wake up. he goes about the first hour or so of his day really bleary-eyed, he bumps into stuff, leans heavily on an irate sirius at the breakfast table like he's going to actually take a nap on him, and his worst marks are consecutively, every year, in his early-morning classes.

Thank you, friend! Welcome to the madness that is tumblr~

the best part about this is I bet nobody ever figured out who it was like

snape? snape probably went nuts? I bet he'd tell all the other teachers that it was that DAMN LUPIN, meanwhile everyone else is like

noooo he's so soft-spoken and nice! it couldn't be lupin!

because even after all the hurt and the betrayal and the fear and the confusion and the mistrust they are so completely on the same page--the entire scene in the shack with scabbers/peter--after not even laying eyes on each other for fifteen years

because think about trusting someone with your deepest darkest secret and then that someone using that secret in a manner that completely disrespects you and trivializes that secret

when I write remus I usually write him as demiromantic okay, okay, so he's invested all of this time and energy in people that he loves without asking anything in return because that's what friends do but lovers take care of each other, lovers say the bad things because they know it's going to get you to the good, and it takes him a long time to figure that out, that sometimes you have to say the bad things to save someone

and I think that moment when he realizes that he's in love, that he really cares about someone, it so important to remus lupin as a character because underneath all of his amused bafflement, remus lupin is scared of people, he's scared of what they'll do if they find out about him, but he's still got to find that trust somewhere inside and if he never finds that then he'll fail and the relationship will crash and he'll just be left with someone else he can't trust but really it's his own fault because he just.. can't... trust people the way he needs to and there's nothing worse in a relationship than a lack of trust

when he learns to trust someone, when he finally figures it out, when remus isn't afraid anymore, he loves quietly. he doesn't say I love you a hundred times a day, he cuts the crust off sandwiches. he brings in the paper and puts the entertainment section on top. he expects nothing.

at first when he gets stuff back though, when the person he loves brings home fresh peaches from the market even though they're allergic, when they offer to trim his unruly hair in the sunny kitchen, it confuses the hell out of him. he doesn't understand ethos so well, he is a man of logic, of gathering the facts, of careful research. he's not used to people being selfless because they love him, and these small moments mean the world to remus lupin.