remus lupin is militantly against pornography (howler) wrote in throwingstones, @ 2010-04-21 18:18:00 |
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This couldn't be happening. It was the thought that kept racing over and over through Remus' mind as he stared down at the journal in his lap. He knew, deep down, that he would not have been able to keep up the charade forever. It wasn't the easiest secret in the world to keep, especially with the other werewolves becoming so active lately; the focus on the full moons had him scrambling to find reasonable excuses for why he would be alone on those nights. He supposed he wouldn't have to worry about that anymore. Either because everyone knew now, or... there wouldn't be anyone around him left to tell, except for Sirius, James, and Peter. Even his parents weren't around for him now, and suddenly he missed them desperately. He didn't know what was going to happen next. He was meant to be discharged from St Mungo's today -- would he be allowed back into the safe house? Would he be allowed to continue on as a member of the Order of the Phoenix? Remus could not help but doubt that the majority of its members would be okay with someone like him working so closely with them. Perhaps he would just go back to his old home, despite the lingering memories there of his parents that were still too painful. What other choice could he possibly have? He was lying. Fenrir Greyback was lying, he had to be. It wouldn't have been the first time that the murdering bastard had stirred up drama just to fuck with people's heads, and there was no reason for Marlene to believe that there was anything even close to truth in this. They'd know. Remus would have told them. But there was something horribly confident in the way that Greyback was making his claims, and it was sending an uneasy twisting feeling through Marlene's stomach. She'd find out for sure, though, and prove him wrong, and everything would be fine. Besides, Marlene knew that if she didn't go see Remus immediately, her siblings would probably read the journals and make sure she never got over there. Apparating over to St Mungo's, Marlene headed straight towards Remus's room, not bothering to look up at any of the passing Healers as she stormed down the hallway. They'd seen her there enough in the last few weeks anyway, they knew her by now. Not bothering to knock first, Marlene walked into Remus's room, shutting the door behind her. She stared at Remus expectantly for a few moments, not sure of what to say, and then without saying a word grabbed for the chart on the end of Remus's bed, scanning down the list of things written for it. And then her eyes glanced over the one word that she did not want to see on there whatsoever. He hadn't been lying. Greyback had been telling the truth. Hot, angry tears burned behind Marlene's eyes as she lowered the chart, tossing it onto the foot of Remus's bed and finally looked up at him, hugging her arms around herself without the slightest clue of what to say. Remus nearly jumped straight out of his skin when he heard the door to his room open; and as soon as he saw who it was, he felt his rapidly beating heart drop straight down to his stomach. He wasn't ready to deal with this. He had almost hoped that everyone would stick to asking him questions over the journal, either because they were now afraid of him or it was just plain faster and easier. "Marlene --" he started, but then realised he didn't know what he could possibly say, falling silent again when she grabbed the chart at the end of the bed, a sick feeling washing over him as he knew any doubts she may have had were now confirmed. The look on her face said it all, and he couldn't even bring himself to look at her anymore, too embarrassed and, even more than that, ashamed. He dropped his eyes to the floor and turned his head to look away from her, waiting for the angry, hateful words, for her to scream, to say something, but she didn't say a word. The silenced stretched thin and uncomfortable between them, until he finally forced himself to glance at her, but he quickly averted his eyes once more. "I'm... sorry," he murmured timidly, feeling as though nothing he could say would adequately make up for what he had done or what she must be feeling. "I didn't mean to..." To what? Trick her? Lie to her? But he had; that was the entire point. He had purposefully lied to her, to Lily, and to the entire Order all to hide his condition. "I'm sorry." And with Remus's feeble apology, any lingering hope that maybe the paper had been wrong, maybe the death eaters who worked at St Mungo's had some sort of a plot with the werewolves to set Remus up were dashed out. "You're sorry?" she finally spat out, some mix of anger and hurt and confusion leaving her voice shaking as she willed herself not to start crying. Part of her felt horrible for exploding at him when he obviously felt bad, but all she could focus on were her own emotions bubbling up. "For what? That your secret's out now? That everyone knows you've been lying to them? Were you ever going to TELL ME?" she demanded, knowing that it was a horribly selfish question but for Merlin's sake, they were supposed to be dating. "Or were you going to keep covering it up if it hadn't been blown for you? Did you WANT us all to find out like that?" The Gryffindor in Remus wanted to retort that he hadn't been lying, he just omitted certain facts about himself -- after all, it wasn't as if anyone had asked him if he was a werewolf and he said no. But he kept his mouth shut, knowing this was far from the time to act so immaturely, and he especially didn't want to do that to someone he actually cared about. "No, of course not. I just -- it's not the easiest subject in the world to bring up. Most people don't react well to being around... someone like me. I didn't mean for everyone to find out like this. I guess I hoped everyone would get to know me for who I am, and not just..." he trailed off, shrugging helplessly. He didn't know what else he could say. He always knew he would have to tell her eventually -- and probably the rest of the Order, too -- but if Remus were honest with himself, his thoughts never went beyond that. He never considered when would be the right time or if he was letting things continue on too far with this secret. Oh yes, she definitely understood that it probably wouldn't be the easiest topic in the world to bring up, considering he never had. Greyback and Pryce and their little group of insane cannibals probably didn't make it all that easy either. "What about all those times when you were like "don't talk to werewolves, Marlene, they're bad news. You could've brought it up then and then at least I wouldn't've had to find out from Fenrir fucking Greyback." "We do know you. I've known you for like eight years now, I wouldn't start thinking about you differently because-- what else have you lied about?" she demanded, feeling sick to her stomach. "Fucking CHRIST, Remus! I went out looking for you guys on the full moon because I thought that you were in trouble. I- this doesn't even make sense!" "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," Remus said, trying to hide his panic, starting to feel trapped and cornered. He glanced at the door, desperately hoping one of the Healers would walk in on them and interrupt the conversation or kick Marlene out of the room. But no relief came; Marlene was still there waiting for answers, and Remus didn't think he had any that could possibly make the situation any better. No; he suspected it was only going to get much worse from here. "I didn't know anyone was going to come looking for me. I didn't know any of this was going to happen. I just... I wanted --" He'd wanted to be treated like a normal person. He didn't want anything to suddenly change once he left Hogwarts -- even though the war they had entered into had already guaranteed that it would. He enjoyed everyone liking him -- he enjoyed actually having friends -- and was terrified that was going to change, especially after his first attempts on finding his own flat or finding his own job, which had proved only to be one disappointment after the next. The world outside of Hogwarts was much harsher. "I haven't lied about anything else," he said, but then immediately corrected himself. "I mean... not when it didn't have to do with my, um, condition. I used the Shrieking Shack for my... transformations," he continued on, feeling extremely uncomfortable to be talking about this. "I was never visiting my aunt. I just -- I had to make up excuses, during school. Professor Dumbledore took a risk allowing me to have an education. If any of the parents found out what I am..." he shook his head, thoughts drifting to the Incident with Severus and feeling suddenly sick. He couldn't tell her about that. He couldn't tell anyone. But keeping secrets it what caused this entire situation in the first place. Marlene kept waiting for James and Sirius to jump out from underneath Remus's hospital bed yelling "APRIL FOOL" nearly a month late. This wasn't funny, though, not in the slightest, and too many people were involved way too publicly. And Remus wasn't this good of an actor. Marlene's arms fell to her side, not sure if she should leave or move closer or if she needed to throw up. Instead she finally reached to grab the clipboard she'd tossed on the foot of the bed and hooked it back into its regular position. "How long have you been... you've been a werewolf since school? All during school?" He was a Prefect. How the hell hadn't anyone known about this? "You don't... you've never... they eat people. Pryce ate the pizza boy, and-" she trailed off, only spitting out disjointed thoughts, not able to finish the sentence. Remus couldn't be like that. They'd been out to eat before. Firsties never went missing from the Great Hall to make up special meals for Remus. Remus had barely given Marlene a chance to trail off before he was already answering. "No! No, I'm not like them. I would never hurt anyone. Not on purpose. There was almost an... accident, once, at school, but -- no one was hurt." There. That was enough, wasn't it? All she had to know was that no one got hurt; he just hoped she wouldn't ask him to elaborate on what happened. "I keep myself locked up every full moon so I can't hurt anyone but myself. I just... I like my steaks rare, that's all." Or nearly raw, a fact of which Remus frequently felt shamed over and every now and then he would force himself into bouts of attempting to become a vegetarian -- which never work out for very long. He took a deep breath, leaning back against his pillows, which were propped up so he was still sitting up enough to look at her. Not that he was able to bring himself to meet her eyes yet. "Yeah. It's been all during school... Greyback bit me when I was six. Back when my father worked on the Werewolf Capture Unit --" and when he was still alive "-- he insulted Greyback, once. Biting me was his revenge." Marlene was still too wrapped up in the fact that this had even happened in the first place, that Remus was a werewolf, to ask him what the accident at school had been, or to go more in depth regarding how in the hell they'd managed to use the Shrieking Shack for him to go all wolfy in without the potential of him getting out and going crazy in Hogsmeade. Part of her didn't want to know. Her hands were shaking as Remus spoke, she could feel it, and once she realised she slipped them both into her pockets, hoping that Remus hadn't noticed. Her stomach felt like it flipped over again as he explained that Greyback had done it just because Remus's dad had insulted him -- she'd done that and more to him and some of the other werewolves over the journals. It was different than with the Death Eaters. Sure, both of them could potentially kill her, and probably wanted to, but the fact that they'd threatened to turn her into one of them before scared her more than the threat of getting Crucioed to death did. "Does-- does it hurt?" He nodded slowly -- reluctantly. It was another subject that Remus didn't enjoy speaking about. But then, there really wasn't any part of the curse that he liked to talk about. "Yes. It's -- it's very painful. Because I don't let the wolf... do what it wants to do... it bites and scratches itself instead, all night. It hurts itself trying to escape." He was speaking about the wolf as if it were a completely separate identity, and to Remus that's exactly what it was; he couldn't bring himself that the bloodthirsty, savage thing he turned into every month was actually a part of himself. "It takes a few days to recover. The injuries are all influenced by dark magic, so... well. It's just like we learned in Defence Against the Dark Arts. It takes a while to heal and leaves behind scars," he explained. "This is why I keep warning you about talking to werewolves. It's -- I wouldn't even wish the curse on Roderick Gamp." "I would," Marlene muttered, moving slowly to pop up onto the edge of the bed, sitting on the foot of it to face Remus. If anyone deserved that shit, it was Roderick Gamp. Then again, given how absolutely INSANE the werewolves tended to be, and how crazy ol' Rowboat already was, Marlene wasn't sure if that would just make things even worse. "The one that attacked Des, she said that..." Marlene stopped talking again, her voice growing quiet. She didn't want to think about the fact that they'd threatened to come after her on the full moon, to bite her and turn her into one of them. If she didn't say it out loud, it didn't seem as real. "Well. She says a lot of things. All of them do. I'm sorry," she apologised, not sure if it was for yelling at him or that he'd been bit in the first place. Probably the latter more than anything. Remus moved his feet over a little to give Marlene more room so she could sit comfortably. "It's okay. And I'm sorry, too. I wasn't keeping this from you or anyone else for malicious reasons. I didn't," he paused a moment, feeling embarrassed. "I didn't have any friends before Hogwarts. After all of us left school and I started to try and find a job... I guess it just reminded me that I'm lucky to have the ones that I do now, and I was afraid to lose that. I'm really sorry for hiding this." In a way it felt as though a great, heavy weight had been lifted off his shoulders -- that Marlene was still here, talking to him, was already far more than he could have ever asked for. There was still the rest of the Order to deal with, and he didn't know what was going to happen next, but he was relieved that she hadn't run for the hills like he had expected. He couldn't exactly blame her for being angry at him for not telling her, or for the way she ended up finding out. "You've sort of saved my life before when there've been fights and stuff, and when I had to blow up my portkey so that Lestrange couldn't get it. You were still a... still a werewolf then and you did that, so like, obviously you're still YOU, the you that I went to school with and such, there's just... other things too," Marlene tried to make sense of how everything was working out in her head, although she couldn't help the way that her tone lowered slightly every time she referred to him actually being a werewolf. "But I'm still fucking mad at you," she added, although she smiled slightly as she said it. "Seriously though, is there like, anything else that I could potentially find out in a really unpleasant way, because like, if so? Just tell me now. Rip the bandage off all at once; I don't want to get any more gossip from Greyback." Remus' smile didn't last very long; he knew he had to tell her about the Incident now, before she found out from Severus Snape. "... the accident I mentioned," he started, clearly hesitant to bring it up again, but now that Greyback had announced Remus was a werewolf to all the world he wasn't so sure how long this would remain a secret, either. "It wasn't entirely an accident. At least, it was on my part," he added quickly, to reassure her again that he wasn't at all like Greyback or Pryce. "You must remember the time that Sirius and I weren't talking for several months during school. He -- Severus had noticed I was going missing once a month, and he was suspicious about it. So... Sirius took it upon himself to tell him exactly where I went every month, but he didn't tell Severus why. He told him exactly when to go..." he trailed off, cringing at the memory of what could have happened. "Severus showed up at the Shack, and I nearly... it was lucky that James showed up and saved him." Speaking about it, bringing up old memories was just bringing back the strong feelings of betrayal and anger he'd felt when he learned what happened the next morning. He would never understand why Sirius did what he had. "I know you don't like him. I'm not fond of him, either, but what Sirius did --" Remus stopped there, not wanting to talk about it anymore. "That's it. I don't have anymore secrets." He paused, and then added as an afterthought: "That are mine to tell." Remus was right -- she did not like Snape. And especially now that they knew for sure that he was a Death Eater, and that he probably had something to do with Lily's sister getting killed, Marlene almost thought that maybe things would've been better if James hadn't gotten there in time. But then things probably would have turned out worse for all of them -- Remus might have gotten in really bad trouble, and Sirius probably would have too for sending Snape his way... it really wasn't anything that Marlene wanted to think about. "Why do Sirius and James and Pete go with you on the full?" she asked, thinking back to Lily's watch and the night that it had said they were all in danger. "Do they keep watch outside of the Shrieking Shack?" Remus smiled slightly, apologetically. "That's the secret that isn't mine to tell. I'm sorry. I think that they will be willing to tell you, though, if you ask them... now that this is out." All of the pieces to the puzzle were there, just not put together; he supposed the guys wouldn't mind if he did tell her, but they had done it all for him. He respected the hard work they had done and the loyalty of their friendship that it felt wrong to betray that, even if this was Marlene he was talking to, someone they had encouraged him to tell the truth to before. He did feel guilt that James was likely going to end up being forced to sleep on a couch again, though, because of all this. "Okay," Marlene nodded, curling her knees up and wrapping her arms around her legs as she tried to think of anything else that she wanted to know, or figure out how things were going to be with the Order now that this was out. And oh god, her family was going to freak. "I can't think of anything else to ask. I... do you know when you get to check out of here?" she asked instead, wondering if it was possible for her to just forget that this had happened, and that there was anything different now, and that she had been wrong on the journals when she had told Greyback that she would obviously know if she was dating a werewolf. "I'm sure the rest of the Order will think of many more questions to ask," Remus muttered, not looking forward to the inevitable interrogation. "But if you think of anything else, you can ask me later. I was meant to check out sometime today. I suppose I could just ask to leave now, but -- I don't know. Everyone knows now. I... was thinking about just going back to my house, where no one could find me, instead of the safehouse. If I stayed here someone may just storm in and grab my chart," he said, attempting to joke, but it was half-hearted at best and his lips only twitched into a brief smile. Marlene felt her face go a bit pink at the comment, but tried to play the comment off casually, reaching again for the chart on the foot of the bed. Pulling it around in front of her and laying it in her lap, she took out her wand and cast a quick transfiguration spell at the chart, changing it instead into a pillow. "Here. Put this behind your head, nobody needs to know." She slid off the bed, glancing at the door before turning back to Remus. "If you think they'd let you leave now, we should go get a drink or two." Or six, Marlene added silently, because she really bloody needed one. Remus watched her, feeling immensely grateful as he took the pillow and placed it behind his head as she had instructed. "They might. I suppose it can't hurt to ask," he replied, sitting up and carefully sliding out of bed. "I could certainly use a drink... I suppose now you know why I can hold my liqueur so well." He grinned, trying his hardest to fall back into acting normal, as if nothing had changed at all. It wasn't easy. He spotted his clothing folded up on a visitor's chair (that he suspected went unused for the duration of his stay) in the corner of the room, but hesitated a moment, wanting to hug Marlene and thank her again for trying to be understanding... But he decided against it, still worried about scaring her off -- he wasn't sure where they stood now, and he definitely didn't want to push her for answers right away. She seemed to, at least, still want to be friends, and that was enough; he valued that before they had become something more, and he still valued her friendship now. "Well. I ought to change into my clothes first." Marlene hovered by the door, waiting for Remus to gather up his things, and nodded when he said that he needed to change. "Nah, just go in the hospital gown," she laughed, leaning back against the wall watching. And then she paused, and immediately turned to face in the other direction. "Oh. Yes. Right, change. Yes." Remus grinned at the joke, but he still waited -- and almost when it seemed like she was just going to stand there he raised an eyebrow at her just as she turned around to face the door. That wasn't quite what he had been expecting, either. Was she just going to stay in the room? He grabbed his clothing off the chair, attempting to figure out how to switch clothes as quickly as possible -- because, obviously, getting caught half-naked was so much worse than being outed as a werewolf. He rolled his eyes at himself as he pulled the hospital garment off over his head, and despite how foolish he felt over his embarrassment of changing while Marlene was still in the room, he tried to pull on his clothes as quickly as possible, wincing as he strained his sore muscles. "Uh. Okay, I'm changed now," he announced, running a hand through his hair in an attempt to brush it out a little, wondering if it was a complete mess. He tossed the hospital gown onto the bed, grabbing his wand and his journal and sliding them both into the pockets of his robes before he approached Marlene at the door. "Ready?" Marlene nodded, glancing back. His hair looked a bit silly, but she supposed that would probably end up being the very least of his problems that day. Maybe they should've looked into getting him some sort of a disguise for the rest of the day, but it was a little late for that now. "Ready." |