InsaneJournal

the morning after
Who: Remus Lupin + Gwen Cooper + Baby Anwen
When: Morning of 1964 July 25
Where: A diner near the Center
What: Awake and hungry (and embarrassed; sorry, Millie), Remus goes on to live like a normal human.
Rating/status: ~PG/finished.

Remus awoke with a great hunger.

It came with a most disgusting groan from the depths of his stomach and he moaned when he dragged his right hand over to it, shaking as he placed it flat on his cold skin. When he felt his tummy move with his breath, he opened his dreary eyes and found the shadowed foot of his bed just half a hand away from his nose. Where had the wolf taken him?

He closed his eyes and breathed slowly. Then moving his palm to the surface of the floor he grunted and pushed himself up, sending the back of his head straight to the metallic frame of his bed so that he yelped and plummeted back to the floor. “Ow, god damn it!”

He spent the next sixteen minutes attached to the floor with his head against the edge of his mattress and at the seventeenth minute he finally pulled himself up, having regained strength to be human again. Stars exploded in his eyes the moment he was on his feet and though he paused to rest them, he stumbled the first few steps he took towards the washroom.

To count, he had eleven lacerations; four were on his left arm, three on his side, the rest on his right forearm. He also had a couple of bite marks that hurt more than the scratches themselves but they were to be expected. Checking his face, he noted that save for a graze he must have acquired for when he fought with his dresser, there was no other outstanding injury. And that was the best news of the day.

He washed up after applying Dittany to his wounds and dressed in a long summer polo top and a pair of brown slacks and his shoes. By then, he was already feeling much better although that didn’t mean much to his stomach. Wand at hand as soon as he was dressed, he began repairing the numerous objects he had damaged during his onslaught and those he couldn’t he simply...decided to position artfully until he could actually fix it.

Remus left his room vowing to do something about it and when he thought that he was finally about to leave last night’s mess behind, Millie’s note on his door would catch his eyes and he would read it with wide ones. He made an unhappy noise of sorts; his charms hadn’t been as effective as he’d hoped they would be. Three-thousand miles and 17 years away, he still needed his friends to clean up after him. On top of that, he was now being asked for a list of items...he couldn’t repair properly (this is how he read it). He wanted to wince at the thought of it. The prospect of chicken soup, however, had only let out an embarrassing noise from his stomach and he found himself in wanting. He couldn’t wait for an hour, though, so he decided that he would go out for breakfast and come back for soup.

On his way out of the Center, he made straight for Millie, depositing a list of the lost items (he decided to give into it), all the while looking at his feet like a schoolboy in detention; he was embarrassed for what he’d done and what she knew. He was moving so fast that he didn’t quite march out of the building, he more like swooped away from it. Interactions, after all, unless it came from his friends, were not anything he enjoyed after a full moon’s night. Outside the Center, he made straight for a diner place (the one thing that excited him about being in America) two corners away and occupied the first seat he could find; he was ravenous. He ordered for a plate of “chips” (“...you mean fries, Sir?” the cute waitress confirmed with him.), a sausage skillet and a cup of coffee, a luxurious meal for him but after having gone on days without proper food, he felt that this was only right. Whether he could afford it or not, he didn’t know, but the money he got for selling off a magically duplicated gold galleon coin, he felt, was more money than he had ever gotten in his entire life. It was illegal, he knew, but he didn’t know how to remove the protective charm on it and hadn’t quite found an American goblin bank yet and Selina’s five dollars only lasted him for so long. The gold seemed real, anyway...if not...a cheap fake...

Still, it only meant one thing: he needed a job. But when didn’t he? And other than a job, he needed a house before the next full moon. His own Shrieking Shack, so to say. Where he was going to find one, he didn’t know.

Remus sighed as he carried his head with his right on his face. Then when the cute waitress returned, he shot up and found her standing beside him with his plate of...fries, cup of coffee, and the morning newspaper.

“Is everything okay, Sir? Should I call an ambulance?”

“No, there is no need,” Remus said to her as she placed his orders on the tabletop as well as the newspapers. “Thank you.” He could barely wait for her to go away when he captured four strips from the plate and sent them straight into his mouth. It was hot enough to set his tongue on fire but he yearned for it. Still, he washed it down with a sip of coffee, ate another three strips before he finally tore open his newspaper.

And for a moment there, he was tempted to shake it until he remembered that he wasn’t reading the Daily Prophet and Muggle newspapers didn’t move. Remus groaned inwardly. This whole living like an American New Yorker Muggle is not going to be easy, he realized for the fifth time...