𝐞 𝐦 ✶

You had learned how to brew Wolfsbane potion long after graduating Hogwarts and during the first wizarding war. Life outside its walls had offered a fragile kind of privacy, a quieter place where Remus no longer had to vanish in order to transform. 

Yet even that careful structure, built painstakingly between the two of you, had begun to feel increasingly insufficient, as though time itself were eroding whatever small mercy you had managed to construct.

The potion still did its work in the most technical sense. It kept the wolf from fully claiming his mind, from tearing away whatever fragment of recognition remained at the height of it. But it did nothing for the body. 

By morning, there was always blood seeping through his wounds to the point where recovery no longer felt like healing, only preparing himself to endure it all again next month. 

And over the years, that pattern had not lessened. It had only intensified.

It had begun to feel, in a way neither of you spoke aloud, as though the more he endured it, the more it demanded in return. Healing took longer. Recovery left deeper scars. 

Remus understood, that none of this came from a lack of effort on your part. You had been meticulous in your care, learning the potion and refining it until it reached a consistency that could be trusted. 

You prepared for each moon days in advance, arranging everything with precision. You stayed with him through the transformations in your Animagus form, close enough that he would not wake up alone.

Afterward, you remained without needing to be asked. You tended to him through the days that followed with attentiveness. You even made sure his wounds were cleaned and treated, his potions brewed and adjusted as needed, and every small change in his condition was observed with care.

It was not that your efforts fell short. It was that the situation itself had begun to exceed what care alone could contain.

There were moments, when Remus found himself entertaining thoughts he disliked almost immediately. 

The idea that perhaps it would be easier if the Wolfsbane failed entirely, if there were no partial awareness left to endure, no memory of what had happened after each transformation. The thought never lasted long enough to settle into anything resembling desire, because even in its most detached form it carried consequences that were impossible to ignore.

Especially for you.

So he kept it contained, as he did most things that felt heavy to speak of outloud.

Later, after another full moon, the flat carries the faint, lingering scent of iron and crushed herbs that no amount of cleaning removes. You find Remus curled beneath several layers of blankets, his body drawn inward in a way that suggests he’s in pain more than usual. 

The light coming through the window makes his condition easier to read than he would prefer; bruising spreads across his skin in uneven patches, some fading while others remain dark enough to look fresh, and overlapping scars trace older patterns beneath newer damage. 

Even the freckles you once pointed out to him at Hogwarts, tracing them across his shoulders with fondness, have begun to disappear into the accumulation of all his recent scars

You step closer without hesitation. “Remus,” you murmur, voice softened as you crouch beside him. “Are you sure a heating charm won’t help? It might lessen the bone aches, love.”

He exhales through his nose, and shifts slightly beneath the blankets. “I’m alright,” he says.

You spend the rest of the night tending to Remus, cleaning blood from his split skin and binding clawed-open scratches while dark bruises bloom violently across his body beneath your healing charms. 

By the time you manage to feed him a few spoonfuls of soup, exhaustion has already begun dragging him under completely.

He feels a little better, or at least better enough to convince you that sleep will handle the rest. That has always been the hope after transformations. A good night’s sleep. A few days of recovery. Another potion. Another full moon survived.

The night ends with you fluffing the blankets securely around him before climbing into bed beside him yourself, exhaustion pulling you under quickly enough that you fall asleep believing Remus has done the same. 

Remus spends the entire night awake, silently crying in pain.

He knows everything that used to work does not anymore when it comes to easing it. The truth is one cruel, harsh thing: he is getting worse.

And if you do not notice the tear tracks left across his pillow the next morning, well, you remain none the wiser.

─── ⋆⋅ ⏾⋅⋆ ───

During their years at Hogwarts, Remus had gone through every full moon with the help of James, Sirius, and Peter.

Though that had been a lifetime ago now.

Back then, before the war took James and Lily, before Sirius was imprisoned for murdering Peter, things had been simpler. Not easy, but simpler in a way Remus found himself aching for more often lately. 

The full moons had still been painful then. He remembered far too many important moments spent curled up in bed in the boys’ dormitory or recovering beneath the sharp medicinal smell of the Hospital Wing while Madam Pomfrey fussed over injuries that never seemed to shock her anymore. 

The slow splitting of bone beneath his skin, the horrifying stretch of transformation, the knowledge that society viewed creatures like him as dangerous and unworthy; none of that was new.

One thing had been different, though.

The pain had been less.

The irony of it almost made him laugh sometimes, because if someone had told seventeen-year-old Remus Lupin that the transformations would someday become worse, that his body would continue finding newer and more unbearable ways to suffer long after adulthood, he was fairly certain his younger self would not have endured it nearly so long.

Standing at the kitchen counter making tea later that evening, Remus found himself relishing the memory of how much easier it used to be, even when those years had still been filled with pain. 

There was a particular sort of bitterness in realising your old suffering had once been the better option. It left him wondering whether, a decade from now—assuming he survived another decade at all—he would look back at this version of himself and wish for this pain instead.

The thought settled heavily in his chest as his eyes drifted across the small home the two of you had built together.

Everywhere he looked, there was evidence of a good life.

Photographs from Hogwarts lined the shelves, moving portraits of him and his friends grinning after graduation, Lily laughing somewhere in the background while James nearly knocked Sirius over trying to celebrate. 

Another frame held a much younger Remus sitting stiffly beside Lily while she carefully placed newborn Harry into his arms, his expression caught somewhere between terror and awe. 

There were pictures from the years after James and Lily died too, quieter and sadder ones, the first photograph ever taken of you and Remus together where neither of you quite looked like yourselves yet. Then came the later years. Harry growing older. Summer holidays spent in this very house. Scarves abandoned over chairs. His spare glasses left forgotten on tables. A broom leaning carelessly near the back door after Harry had visited last.

Evidence.

Evidence of love. Of survival. Of family.

Your yarn basket sat beside the sofa exactly where you always left it, overflowing with tangled wool and half-finished crochet projects. A collection of horribly misshapen mugs crowded the kitchen shelves because neither of you could ever bring yourselves to throw them out after you made them together one winter.

Remus stared at all of it and suddenly felt sick with guilt.

Because what sort of person looked at a life like this and still thought, I cannot keep doing this anymore?

The thought stayed with him for the rest of the evening, settling heavily beneath his ribs while exhaustion slowly wore down what little patience he still had left.

So when the argument finally happened later that night, it had really only begun with a careless slip of the tongue.

“How are you feeling?” you had asked gently from across the kitchen while Remus sat at the table nursing a cup of tea gone lukewarm in his hands. “Do you want me to make something for the pain, love? Or maybe I could—”

“There’s nothing you can do to help,” Remus had snapped, the words coming out far louder and sharper than he intended.

The silence afterward had been immediate.

You stared at him from across the kitchen, your expression caught somewhere between confusion and hurt, as though the outburst had physically struck you. Remus looked away almost instantly, jaw tightening the moment he realised what he had done.

“Well,” you had said after a moment, your voice noticeably more restrained now, “sorry for trying.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean, Remus?”

He exhaled heavily, dragging a tired hand across his face. “Forget it.”

“No, because you don’t get to bite my head off for asking if you’re alright and then tell me to forget it.”

“I said it came out wrong.”

“And I’m asking you to explain it properly.”

The exhaustion already sitting heavily in his bones made patience difficult to hold onto. Remus pushed his tea aside with more force than necessary before leaning back in his chair, visibly agitated.

“There isn’t anything you can do,” he said again, quieter this time but no less tense. “That’s all I meant.”

You let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “You say that as though I’ve been trying to fix a bloody cold.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Remus said, sharper than intended, the words coming out clipped with exhaustion rather than real anger. “Bloody hell, that’s not what this is.”

“Then what are you saying?” you asked, frustration finally bleeding through properly now, no longer softened by patience. “Because every month you pull further away from me like I’m doing something wrong and I’m trying to understand where I’ve gone wrong here, Remus, I just don’t get it. You won’t let me help you, and if I am doing something wrong then just tell me so I can stop.”

Remus immediately shook his head. “You are not doing anything wrong.”

“You act like I am.”

“I don’t.”

“You do,” you shot back, voice rising slightly. “You barely speak to me after transformations unless I drag answers out of you, and half the time you won’t even tell me where it hurts. You just sit there pretending you’re fine until you can’t anymore, and I’m left trying to figure out what’s changed every single time because you won’t say it out loud.”

His expression hardened slightly. “What exactly do you want me to say?” 

“The truth would be a good start.”

Something bitter flickered across his face at that, quick and involuntary. “The truth?” he repeated more quietly now, almost as if testing whether it was worth saying at all. “Fine. The truth is I’m tired.”

“So am I.”

“I know that.”

“Clearly you don’t,” you snapped before you could stop yourself. “Because I have spent years trying to help you through this, through all of it, and lately it feels like you resent me every time I do. Like I’m making it worse just by being here and trying to help you get through it.” 

“Well, I didn’t fucking ask you to spend years taking care of me!” 

The second the words left his mouth, he regretted them. Your face crumpled for half a heartbeat before anger rushed in to replace it.

“Right,” you said tightly. “Because that’s the problem here, Remus.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Remus said at once, shaking his head slightly as if he could undo it by force. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“No,” you replied. “Apparently I don’t, because you refuse to actually say what you mean. You just say these things and expect me to somehow translate them into something else, and I can’t do that anymore, Remus. I can’t keep guessing what version of you I’m speaking to every time something goes wrong!”

The argument only escalated from there, both of you too exhausted and emotional to pull back once it had begun.

“You shut me out constantly now,” you said, your voice louder than before as you set your mug down against the counter with a sharp clatter. “Every single month I watch you suffer through this and you act like I’m some stranger hovering around you instead of the person who’s been beside you through all of it.”

“You think this is easy for me?!” Remus snapped.

“I think watching you slowly destroy yourself while refusing to talk to me about it isn’t exactly easy for me either!”

“That’s not fair.”

“Neither is this!”

The words rang through the kitchen harshly enough that both of you fell silent for a second.

You looked furious now, but beneath it Remus could still see the hurt sitting there untouched.

“I don’t know what else you want from me,” you admitted, your voice cracking slightly despite your effort to keep it steady. “I’m trying my best, and somehow lately it still feels like I’m failing you.”

“You are not failing me because there’s nothing left to help!”

Your arms folded tightly across yourself as though holding yourself together. “James, Sirius, and Peter could help you through transformations,” you said quietly now. “You always talk about Hogwarts like the four of you got through it together, so clearly they managed something right that I can’t.”

Remus physically flinched at that.

“It isn’t about you not being enough,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Then why does it feel like it?” you demanded. “Because every time I try to help you lately you tense up like I’m doing you more harm than good.”

“That’s not what’s happening.”

“Then what is happening, Remus?” you asked, sharper now, because the uncertainty was starting to feel worse than the argument itself.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Because the truth sounded too horrible once spoken aloud. That his body was getting worse faster than either of you realised. That every transformation hurt more than the last. That no amount of love or care or healing could stop what lycanthropy was slowly doing to him. And perhaps worst of all, that he had started wondering whether there would eventually come a point where surviving it simply was not worth the pain anymore.

Instead of saying any of that, Remus looked away from you and said bitterly, “You cannot keep acting like there’s some solution to this, Y/N.”

Your face fell immediately.

“I never thought there was a solution,” you said quietly. “I just thought I was helping.”

Eventually, the two of you spent nearly an hour apart cooling off in different corners of the house, the earlier shouting leaving behind the sort of silence that felt raw rather than peaceful. Remus remained in the kitchen long after his tea had gone cold, staring blankly at the dim light above the sink while guilt settled heavier and heavier in his chest with every passing minute.

In the end, he was the one who came back first.

You were sitting curled up in bed when he stepped quietly into the room, still looking exhausted, shoulders slumped with defeat that made him seem younger than he was. The anger had long since drained out of him, leaving only regret behind.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly after a moment, his voice rough from exhaustion and shouting alike. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

You looked up at him immediately, hurt still lingering faintly across your face despite how quickly you always tried to hide it from him.

“I just wanted to help.”

“I know.” Remus sat carefully beside you, every movement betraying lingering pain no matter how much he tried to conceal it. “And you are helping. Merlin, you help more than anyone ever has.”

Even if it was becoming less true every month.

You softened almost instantly at that, the tension in your shoulders finally easing as you leaned into him. Remus wrapped an arm around you automatically, holding you close while you settled against his chest, your fingers absentmindedly tracing the old scars scattered across his skin where freckles had once been more visible years ago.

“It scares me when you shut me out,” you whispered quietly.

Remus closed his eyes for a moment. “I know.”

“You’re going to be okay,” you murmured after a while, more to reassure yourself than him. “We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

He felt something inside him twist painfully at the certainty in your voice.

By then, you had already forgotten most of the argument entirely. You believed him when he said your care was helping. You believed the exhaustion would pass the way it always had before. You believed Remus was okay, or at least that he would be.

Somehow, your kindness hurt him more than your anger ever could.

Remus genuinely did not understand why you tolerated him and all the endless complications that came along with loving him, even—especially—the ones you did not know about.

─── ⋆⋅ ⏾⋅⋆ ───

It had been nearly a week and a half since the previous full moon. Usually, this period served as recovery time for Remus, where you helped him slowly settle back into his regular routines and day to day life before the next transformation arrived to tear through it all over again. 

It was always a tumultuous stretch of time for him because although his body would gradually improve; the physical pain easing little by little with each passing day, the mental burden only seemed to worsen in its place.

It was a Friday, which usually meant you and Remus would head out for one of your little dates with Harry and his boyfriend Draco, a pairing Remus still struggled to fully accept despite how many years had passed. 

(He had insisted for ages that Draco was a “weird” fit for Harry, though he had never once stood in the way of Harry’s happiness. At this point, the stubbornness of it had become almost amusing).

Now, however, Remus stood in front of the full length mirror in your shared bedroom, supposedly in the middle of getting dressed, though he had not moved in several minutes. 

Half dressed and exhausted already, he could see every flaw reflected back at him with painful clarity. Every scar. Every faded freckle buried beneath damaged skin. The bruises still linger faintly yellow and purple along his ribs. Loose skin. The slight softness now settled around his stomach from the weight he had gained over the years.

And really, Remus could not help but feel like throwing up.

He looked repulsive; he looked like a monster wearing the shape of a man.

The thought struck him so violently that his breath caught somewhere in his chest, and suddenly he was crying before he even fully realised it had begun, harsh sobs forcing their way out of him as years worth of self loathing finally cracked open all at once. 

There was so much disgust festering inside him that he no longer knew how to contain it. So much bitterness and exhaustion and loneliness that had nowhere to go except inward, rotting quietly beneath his ribs month after month after month.

Because really, his entire life had become nothing more than a series of arithmetic checks designed to ration what little energy he had left: If I leave the laundry until tomorrow, then maybe I will have enough energy to cook dinner tonight. If I visit Harry this weekend, I will probably spend the following day unable to get out of bed. If the temperature drops tomorrow, my joints will ache worse. If it rains, the old injuries in my back will flare again.

If. If. If.

Everything had become a calculation.

It was exhausting constantly trying to predict whether his own body would betray him from one day to the next, and worse still was the humiliating awareness that half the time the calculations failed him anyway.

A few weeks ago, you had caught him sitting far too long at the kitchen table, quietly trying to plan the coming days around a stack of apothecary receipts and potion ingredients, and had teased him for treating something as simple as rest like a timetable. (“Remus, you don’t have to schedule everything like it’s an exam revision plan,” you had said, smiling as you leaned over his shoulder. “Merlin’s tits, do Muggles seriously plan their entire lives like a to-do list?”) 

Remus had laughed along with you at the time, forcing out some amused remark while something ugly twisted sharply in his chest. You would never have to think about these things. You would never understand what it was like to ration your own life in increments because one missed recovery day meant everything else unravelled after it; because agreeing to see someone meant paying for it in pain later, because even rest itself had to be carefully budgeted or it stopped working at all. 

Still, he had memorised every detail listed there anyway. He added all of it into the endless equation running through his head every waking moment now.

How badly will it hurt tomorrow?

It never truly helped, but the illusion of preparation gave him something dangerously close to control, even if that control was entirely fabricated.

The bedroom door suddenly swung open before he could stop crying properly, and you stepped inside still talking before you even looked at him.

“I swear the washing machine has a personal vendetta against me,” you rambled distractedly. “It ruined my dress completely, the threads along the sleeves are all coming apart and now I’ve nothing to wear tonight unless I—”

You stop abruptly once you notice him standing there.

Your eyes flicker from his tear stained face down toward the sweater clenched tightly in his hands, the old knit fabric stretched a little too tightly now across his frame.

“Oh,” you say quietly, immediately gentler. “Love, if it’s too uncomfortable I can charm it a little looser for you.”

And somehow, pathetically, that tiny act of kindness became the final thing that shattered him completely.

Remus broke apart with a noise so wounded it frightened even himself, sobs tearing violently out of his chest as he bent forward, one shaking hand pressed hard against his mouth as though trying to physically force the sound back down.

You were beside him instantly. “Oh, love, hey, hey, what’s wrong?” you murmur frantically, hands cupping his face before moving to steady his shaking shoulders. “Breathe for me, sweetheart. Remus, breathe. What happened?”

He could not answer.

“Remus, listen to me,” you continued gently, clearly trying to piece together what had upset him so badly. “Y’know it’s normal to gain a little weight in your thirties, right? You’re fine, really, the sweater probably just shrunk a little in the wash and—”

That only made him cry harder.

Because he was not crying over the extra weight.

God, he wished it were only that.

He wished this entire breakdown could be explained away by something as ordinary and fixable as weight gain or tiredness or stress from work. He wished he could simply laugh weakly and let you reassure him and move on from it like any normal person would. 

Instead, the tears kept falling harder and harder no matter how much he tried to stop them, humiliation curling painfully in his chest because he knew you still did not understand what he was actually grieving. 

Everything hurt.

It all hurt so much.

Remus had spent his entire life in pain in one form or another, but there had once been spaces between it. Small mercies; periods where recovery felt possible, where he could almost pretend the transformations had not left permanent damage behind each time they tore through him. 

Lately, though, it felt as though those spaces had disappeared entirely. The pain no longer arrived only with the full moon. It threaded itself through ordinary moments until even standing at the kitchen counter making tea could leave his back aching badly enough that he needed to sit down halfway through. 

And the worst part was how normal it had all started becoming. 

Remus could no longer remember the last time he had experienced a day completely untouched by discomfort. There was only manageable pain and unbearable pain now, and lately the line separating the two had begun narrowing in ways that frightened him. 

It was exhausting living like that.

Exhausting having to calculate every outing, every chore, every responsibility against how much pain it would cost him afterward. Exhausting pretending he was coping better than he truly was because the alternative meant watching concern settle into everyone’s faces all over again. Exhausting knowing his condition was getting worse while everyone around him still spoke about it as though recovery remained possible if he simply rested enough or took the right potion or waited for things to improve.

Things were not improving.

That was the part he could no longer force himself to ignore.

The wolf was destroying him slowly, and Remus had become painfully aware of it in ways he could not explain aloud without terrifying both of you.

A selfish part of him wanted everything to simply stop for a little while so he could finally rest, properly rest, without having to calculate and ration and recover endlessly. He wanted to wake up without immediately assessing what hurt that morning. He wanted enough energy to finish the mountain of unfinished work piling up around him. He wanted to be the person everyone around him believed he still was.

And somewhere beneath the panic clawing viciously through him, Remus knew some of this was simply the panic attack dragging him downward into its familiar spiral of despair.

Remus just wanted to be gone, whether that meant dying or disappearing or simply ceasing to exist for a little while. Anything, anything, so long as he no longer had to feel this way anymore. 

Your voice continues drifting toward him through the panic, gentle and grounding and desperately trying to pull him back, though for several horrible moments it does not seem to reach him at all. 

Remus can still barely breathe properly, his chest tightening painfully as tears continue spilling down his face no matter how hard he tries to stop them. The room around him feels distant and warped at the edges, every thought inside his head collapsing into noise until suddenly your hands are cradling his face firmly enough to force his attention back onto you.

“Remus,” you whisper shakily, your thumbs brushing beneath his eyes. “Look at me, love. Please look at me.”

And he does.

The second your arms pull him against your chest, something inside him completely breaks apart.

A sob tears out of him so violently it frightens even himself. The sound is rough and wounded and horribly animalistic in a way that makes humiliation immediately claw through him afterward because it does not sound human anymore. 

He can feel the way his breathing keeps hitching uncontrollably against you while you hold him tighter instead of recoiling, your hand moving shakily through his hair while you whisper soft reassurances against his temple.

“What’s wrong?” you ask quietly. “Remus, talk to me.”

For a few seconds all he can do is cry harder.

Then eventually, brokenly, he whispers, “I can’t do this anymore.”

You pull back just enough to look at him properly, immediate concern flashing across your face as you rush to reassure him.

“It’s okay,” you say quickly. “We don’t have to go see Harry and Draco tomorrow, love, it’s alright. I’m sure they’ll understand if you’re not feeling well enough—”

Remus shakes his head almost desperately before another sob catches painfully in his throat.

“No,” he chokes out. “No, it’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

His hands shake violently where they clutch weakly at your sleeves.

“I just can’t do this anymore,” he cries. “All of this, I can’t—I can’t keep—”

The realisation slowly drains the colour from your face. Remus watches the exact moment you understand what he actually means.

Without a word, you carefully lower both of you onto the floor until you are sitting together against the side of the bed, Remus half collapsed against your chest while he struggles to breathe through the sobs still wracking through him. Your arms remain wrapped tightly around him, one hand gripping his almost desperately now as though you are frightened he might disappear if you let go.

“It’s gotten worse,” he finally admits through broken breaths. “So much worse.”

You stay silent, letting him speak.

“It hurts every day now,” he whispers. “Every second. I wake up hurting and I go to sleep hurting and sometimes it feels like my body never recovers properly anymore.” His breathing stutters unevenly. “The transformations are worse and recovery takes longer and the pain doesn’t leave afterward like it used to. I thought it would pass, I thought maybe I was just exhausted or stressed or getting older but it just keeps getting worse.”

Tears continue slipping down his face faster than he can wipe them away.

“My knees hurt all the time now,” he admits shakily, the confession sounding pathetic enough to make him hate himself for it. “My hips ache after every full moon for days afterward and sometimes my hands shake so badly I can barely hold things properly and I’m so tired all the time.” 

A horrible, humourless laugh breaks weakly through another sob. “I keep trying to adjust to it and then it gets worse again and I have to learn how to live in my body all over again because this keeps becoming my new normal and I don’t know how much worse it’s going to get.”

By the end of it, he can barely get the words out at all.

Your own tears have begun falling quietly somewhere during his rambling, though you continue holding him through all of it, your thumb rubbing shakily across the back of his hand while he cries into your shoulder.

“Love,” you whisper brokenly once he finally falls silent. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Remus squeezes his eyes shut.

“I knew something was wrong,” you continue softly through your own tears. “I’m not a bloody fool, Remus. You’ve been shutting me out for months and refusing to tell me what was happening and I kept thinking maybe I was doing something wrong somehow, but you could’ve told me.” Your voice cracks painfully. “I would’ve been there for you.”

“I didn’t want to burden you,” he mumbles weakly. “Didn’t want to ruin whatever image you still had of me. At least the half decent one.”

You lean forward carefully and press a soft kiss against his damp cheek before resting your forehead against his.

“Remus,” you whisper, “I love you. Not whatever version of your body you think you’re supposed to be.” Your fingers intertwine more tightly with his. “Bodies change, love. Mine has changed too. That doesn’t make you harder to love.”

Remus cries quietly for a long while after that.

When the two of you finally crawl into bed later that night, his hips still ache, his knees still throb painfully beneath the blankets, and every joint in his body still feels bruised and raw from years of damage that no longer heals cleanly.

The pain has not disappeared.

Neither has the fear.

Though for the first time in months, the ache inside his chest feels just a little less unbearable than before.

─── ⋆⋅ ⏾⋅⋆ ───

And as it turns out, the road toward being okay is a tumultuous one, painfully non linear in all the most ordinary ways.

It takes time for Remus to learn how to ask for help when he needs it instead of silently enduring until he reaches a breaking point. It takes time for you to learn not to immediately offer help every time you think he might need it, because sometimes the loss of independence stings worse than the pain itself. 

Most of all, it takes time for the both of you to learn each other all over again, for you to recognise the moments where he does need help even when exhaustion leaves him too tired or ashamed to verbally ask for it.

Eight months later, the two of you have fallen into something that cannot quite be called easier, though it is no longer as unbearable as it once was either. The pain still exists. Remus still has bad days where getting out of bed feels impossible, and the full moons still leave him aching for days afterward in ways neither of you can truly fix. 

There are still moments where frustration gets the better of him, where pain and humiliation twist together until they come out harsher than intended.

(“I can do it myself,” Remus had snapped once while trying to stand from the sofa after a particularly bad full moon, exhaustion making his hands shake with the effort. “I’m not a fucking toddler.”)

Other times, though, there are moments that would have once been unimaginable to him, moments where he finally lets himself ask for help.

(“Can you help me up?” he had whispered one winter morning after his knees locked painfully beneath him halfway down the stairs, his voice thick with embarrassment. “Please. I just… I can’t do it right now.”)

And there are some rare times where Remus had stopped pretending he was fine when he clearly was not, and you had stopped trying to fix every part of his pain, understanding now that sometimes all he needed was someone willing to sit beside him through it. It did not make the lycanthropy easier, nor did it stop him from getting worse, but somehow carrying it together made it easier for Remus to survive.

Slowly, very fucking slowly at that, Remus begins pulling himself out from beneath all the burdens that have haunted him for years. Not perfectly and not all at once, but enough that he starts noticing the difference in small moments before he notices it anywhere else.

He begins accepting what has happened to him and what continues happening to him in this painfully mundane life of his.

Because that is the thing about chronic suffering in the end. Most of it is not a cycle of great torture. It exists in ordinary moments. In aching joints while making tea. In needing help buttoning a shirt after a difficult transformation because his fingers hurt too badly to cooperate. In learning how to build a life around pain without allowing pain to become the only thing life contains.

More often now, Remus finds himself staring at the photographs scattered throughout your shared home, though the feeling they stir in him has changed. Once they had filled him with grief for everything he had lost and guilt for all the times he had wanted to surrender beneath the weight of it. 

Now they bring peace, or something close enough to it.

The memories of everyone he has loved and lost no longer feel solely painful. James and Lily smiling brightly from moving photographs, Sirius finally free and laughing so hard during Sunday tea that he nearly spills his drink across the table, even Peter lingering painfully at the edges of memory despite everything that happened; all of them remind Remus that his life has contained something meaningful enough to grieve in the first place.

It is bittersweet in a way he suspects life often is.

The glass is not entirely full, nor entirely empty either, and for the first time in years Remus finds himself capable of accepting that perhaps it does not need to be one or the other.

He has come a long way from the quiet, scrawny twelve year old boy crying in Madam Pomfrey’s office after full moons because he could not understand why this had happened to him. 

He is no longer the twenty one year old standing shell shocked at James and Lily’s funeral believing he had lost all three of his best friends in a single night. 

He is no longer the twenty five year old convinced he was ruining your life simply by remaining in it. 

He is not that thirty eight year old lying awake wishing he could die just so the pain would stop for a little while.

Now, Remus finds solace in the people who remain.

In meeting Minerva every once in a while and sharing grief neither of them ever fully learned to put down. 

In listening to Luna ramble happily about all her strange adventures across both the wizarding and muggle world with the sort of sincerity only Luna could possess. 

In sharing tea with Tonks while she animatedly complains about work and laughs halfway through her own stories. 

In watching Harry build a bright, beautiful life for himself despite everything that should have destroyed him. 

In accepting Draco slowly and reluctantly at first before eventually recognising the great devotion with which he loves Harry.

Most of all, Remus finds comfort in you.

In your patience. Your stubbornness. Your quiet insistence on loving him through every ugly complicated part of being alive.

And these days, when Remus looks around the home the two of you built together, his chest no longer twists with guilt alone.

Now it twists with gratitude—because somehow, impossibly, he found a group of people so deeply convinced he was lovable and worthy of care that they spoon fed the belief into him for years until eventually, one day, he finally learned how to feed himself.

And it is at that point, almost two years later, that Remus realises this had been the point all along.

Not on some grand life changing day either, nor during one of the dramatic moments he once believed revelations were meant to arrive within. 

The understanding comes to him quietly on an ordinary evening while he lays stretched across the sofa with your legs tangled absentmindedly with his own, watching you knit some sort of ridiculous mug warmer for his tea that he already knows he will treasure for the rest of his life simply because you made it.

You continue rambling softly about his upcoming birthday, asking what sort of gift he might want this year despite Remus insisting repeatedly that he truly does not need anything.

“It doesn’t have to be something big,” you tell him while counting stitches distractedly. “I just want it to be something you’ll actually like.”

“I’ll like whatever you get me.”

“That is not helpful at all.”

A smile tugs faintly at his mouth despite himself.

“You made me that scarf three years ago and I still wear it constantly,” he points out lazily.

“That scarf is falling apart.”

“And yet I continue wearing it.”

You laugh softly at that before finally looking up at him properly, and the expression on your face nearly undoes him where he lays.

Because your eyes are so unbearably full of love that it feels as though the feeling itself might spill over and drown him entirely if he stares too long. 

You look at him with such uncomplicated affection, such complete certainty, that sometimes Remus still struggles understanding how a person like you can exist at all. It is as though you carry some endless bright thing within yourself and insist upon turning it toward every monstrous, complicated, ugly part of him until even he cannot help but stand inside its warmth eventually.

And unexpectedly, his ribs twist painfully around his lungs, though not with the familiar agony of transformation. This ache arrives differently, softer and deeper all at once, and the realisation settles over him so suddenly it nearly steals the breath from his chest.

Just like his ribs twist and split beneath the full moon to form something monstrous, they twist for you too.

Just like his heart clenches in pain, it also clenches whenever he looks at you.

The feeling is not the same, and somehow it is exactly the same.

Because the wolf is made from his flesh and bones no matter how much he despises it, and love is too. The worst parts of him and the best parts of him come from the very same place. They exist within the same body, beneath the same battered ribs that have endured both agony and tenderness so profound it frightens him sometimes.

It reminds him suddenly of Eve being created from Adam’s ribs, of love itself being born from flesh rather than separate from it.

And perhaps that is what finally frees him; the thing he has hated most throughout his entire life is made from the very same parts of him capable of love.

The same ribs.

The same heart.

The same body.

For years Remus believed the wolf had made him fundamentally unworthy of being loved properly, as though suffering and monstrosity somehow cancelled out tenderness. Yet here you are beside him still, years later, knitting ugly little mug warmers and arguing with him over birthday presents and looking at him with enough love to make his chest ache from carrying it.

And so, Remus accepts it.

All of it.

He accepts the wolf even as he continues hating the pain it causes him every month. He accepts the scars carved into his body and the exhaustion that still follows difficult transformations. He accepts the strange fragile joy of being loved so thoroughly despite all the parts of himself he once believed impossible to live beside.

Most importantly of all, he accepts himself.

Remus feels almost foolish for only now stumbling upon something human beings seem to have instinctively known since the beginning of time: that accepting the love you are given requires accepting yourself enough to believe you deserve to receive it in the first place. That fear has a way of blinding people not only from happiness, but from recognising love even when it sits directly before them. That the entire point of loving another person is to allow yourself to be loved in return despite how frightening and vulnerable and immeasurable that exchange truly is.

Slowly, Remus reaches for you.

You pause your knitting immediately when he tilts your chin upward gently before leaning down to press a soft kiss against your lips. The expression you wear afterward is so fond it almost makes him laugh.

“I love you,” he whispers quietly.

You smile instantly, warmly, beautifully, as though hearing those words from him will never become ordinary no matter how many years pass between you.

“I love you too,” you whisper back with such overwhelming sincerity that he feels his chest tighten all over again.

His ribs contract once more beneath the feeling, though this time it is not from pain.

And although Remus knows they will ache again soon enough because of the wolf, knows another full moon will eventually arrive as it always does, he finds himself breathing through the feeling instead of fearing it.

His ribs are constant reminders of every pain he has endured, of every person he has loved, and of every ounce of love somehow returned back into his hands despite everything he once believed made him unworthy of receiving it. They ache with old grief and survival alike, though somewhere within that ache lives the proof that he was loved through all of it anyway. 

Remus Lupin has lived a hard, complicated, painfully ordinary life.

Though for the first time in a very long while, when he looks at it now, he realises it has also been a life filled with love. 

And finally, after all these years, he wants to keep living it.

─── ⋆⋅ ⏾⋅⋆ ───