Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion; the love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes, and I shall become a thing, of whose existence every one will be ignorant.”

—Mary Shelley, from Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus

Life is a mosaic consisting of thousands of different fragments, colorful and black and white and shiny and dull. There are many little pictures within the big one, a mosaic of mosaics, each with their own little story, and together, they create the tale of one’s life. These are just a few little fragments from the mosaic of Remus Lupin’s life.

//

Remus is four years old when his father tells him a monster will come if he isn’t a good boy and doesn’t eat all of his vegetables. Two months after, a monster comes even though Remus likes broccoli now, bites through his hip as if it’s a floret, and Remus never believes his father again.

That’s how Remus turns into the monster from parents’ stories; eat your vegetables or the monster will come, clean your room or the monster will come, do your homework or the monster will come. Nobody cares the monster is a five-year-old boy who taught himself how to read when he was no longer allowed to go outside, and who is still afraid of the dark; monsters are monsters are monsters, no matter what.

Lyall Lupin leaves one night during the full moon, three years after his insults caused a werewolf to hurt his son, and when Remus wakes up in the morning, whimpering in pain, bloody and aching all over, his mother strokes his hair and whispers to him, “He’s gone.” No proper goodbye, no real ending, just a man leaving his mistakes behind and choosing to lead a new life. Or something; Remus has no idea.

Remus grows up in a tiny house that is falling apart, the walls growing mold, and when he wants to have a bath, they have to boil water on the stove and pour it into the bathtub. But his mother loves him, and he loves his mother, and it’s always enough. The monster prowls at night and during the day and at school and at home and he’s reading and when he’s sleeping; it’s always there.

It won’t get a name until ten years after being born.

//

On Remus’s fourteenth birthday, Lily Evans gifts him a book called Frankenstein. It’s a coincidence; must be, surely, because nobody but his roommates know where he goes every month. It just so happens that Frankenstein is one of the most famous British novels of all time, and Lily knows he likes books, so she grabbed it for him. It’s simple and Remus thanks her and doesn’t really think about the book until weeks later when he suddenly realizes he doesn’t have anything to read and it’s already the end of March, which means that Remus’s money has already run out, so he can’t just buy anything new. He could be really nice to Sirius because that would surely grant him a trip to Hogsmeade and the little bookstore that has opened recently and that has become one of Remus’s most favorite places. But Remus feels so bad when Sirius pays for his things, even if Sirius says it really doesn’t matter because it’s his parents’ money anyway and they suck. He only started saying that recently, actually. He never really talked about his parents before. Remus never asked; he doesn’t want to talk about his father either, so he gets it.

So, Remus picks up Frankenstein from where he put it down on his birthday, and begins reading. It starts off decently enough; the story is intriguing, and although he does get a little uncomfortable when Victor Frankenstein’s happy and complete family is mentioned, he barely remembers his father anymore. It’s like remembering something that was never really there, so you can’t get properly sad about it. More than his father, Remus just mourns the idea of a happy family that he never got to truly experience.

And then the creature is created. It’s a coincidence; must be, surely, but it doesn’t change the fact that it feels like being struck by lightning right there in his bed in the middle of the night, a charmed light floating around him. He’s never seen himself transformed but he’s seen the illustrations in the textbooks and books in the Restricted Section. He’s seen enough to know that even if the book isn’t about a werewolf, it’s about him; it’s about monsters and Remus has long known that he is one.

And then Frankenstein leaves, fleeing away from his problems, from the thing he himself created, and it could be his son after all, couldn’t it, and Remus shuts the book with tears in his eyes, his hands trembling. He’s never—never once felt like this when reading. Mostly, he just reads to forget about things, to forget about the real world, to get away. This…

He throws the book in his trunk, determined to just forget about it, forget about everything, but it doesn’t work; of course it doesn’t work. It haunts him, that book, and soon, Remus is left with not just the ghost of his still-alive father, but that of Frankenstein and the creature, too. But where Remus’s father is usually just in the back of his mind, this new one actively hurts. It prods at him like one might at an open wound, unable to resist the satisfying shot of pain. Remus does that when the wolf hurts him; unwraps the bandages and pokes at the scratches with his fingers until they bleed, peels off the scabs to expose the flesh underneath, and just watches the blood drip and ruin things. It’s satisfying, in a way. He never truly heals, always having to get new bandages, always tearing them off and scratching with his human nails again and again.

The wolf likes it so much when he does that. And it’s funny, in that humorless way life so often is, because the full title of the book is Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, and that’s what Remus feels like; he gets punished time and time again, his liver eaten as Moony tries to rip it out of himself, over and over and over until Remus forgets that he can’t be Prometheus because there’s nothing he deserved to be punished for. But oh well, Prometheus didn’t deserve it either. That’s how pain works, it hurts and hurts and gnaws at you until your ribs crack and your mouth fills with blood and bile, and the pain eats you alive until you’d admit just about anything, until you admit to committing crimes, until you believe that you’re the monster from the stories, until you get hungry.

And oh, Remus is hungry. He needs his mind filled, he needs to consume the book in its entirety, needs to know. So, he continues, and it’s right before the full moon, and his body hurts so much already, and he’s letting himself bleed everywhere because it’ll be so much worse by the morning anyway. There are still a few hours left before the moon comes, but Remus is already hidden away in the little house built just for him. It’s almost nicer than the house he remembers growing up in; well, it used to be. There’s no point in decorating if you’re going to turn into a werewolf. Wolves aren’t much for decorations, it turns out.

So it’s just him—just him and the book, and he starts reading where he left off. Like life, it gets worse. It gets so much worse but it’s like the pain; he just can’t get enough. So he reads and reads and the creature kills and Remus thinks that maybe there’s hope, maybe it’s been a misunderstanding, it surely can’t be him, right? But he knows; of course he knows. Monsters are monsters are monsters.

Maybe it’s the wolf inside of him itching to get out or maybe it’s just that bad, but when the creature starts talking about his story, Remus almost throws up. ‘A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt, at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before I learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses.’ He doesn’t know what it’s like as the wolf, he never remembers any of it; he’s never quite figured out if it’s a blessing or a curse. Surely it must be the most horrible thing to be present in your body but have no control over it, right? But waking up covered in blood and not knowing if it’s yours or of maybe you found a four-year-old and bit them is somehow much worse. But there’s an in between, in between Remus and the monster, where he feels like he knows. It’s like having just woken up and trying to remember the dream you were just in, feeling it in your bones, seeing bits of it, not being able to say it aloud, and then it slips away from you completely.

He reads even if it’s making him physically sick and the moon is shining when the creature tells his story. And all hope turns to ash when he admits to killing Frankenstein’s brother and isn’t it oh so funny that it was just a little boy.

Despite this being transformation one hundred and something, it doesn’t get easier. In fact, it’s probably one of the worst full moons he’s ever had.

(He used to count them, the full moons, thinking that maybe if he counted like a good boy and got to ten or twenty or fifty, the monster wouldn’t come, and it would all stop. Remus got to a hundred and then cried himself through it, not counting them after that.)

//

Sirius is singing when he enters the room, and it wakes Remus up. “Shut up,” he growls, rubbing his eyes.

Instead of shutting up, Sirius plops himself down at Remus’s bed, presumably to yell right into his face. “I came to sing just for you!” he complains. “Don’t be so Moon-ey.”

“What?!”

“You know. You always get like this after the moon. So—you’re being Moon-ey.”

“You’re such an idiot.” Sirius pretends to be mortally wounded at this, clutching at his chest, and Remus really wants to shove him off the bed, but he can smell something really nice. “Did you bring food?”

“Course I did, Moon-ey. Hey, I kinda like that. Moooooon-eyyyy. Moony. I’m brilliant, aren’t I?”

“Can I have the food?”

Sirius snatches it away. “Say I’m brilliant first.”

“Stop blackmailing him,” James tells Sirius with a fake frown. Remus knows it’s fake because he’s never once seen James frown for real. It’s concerning, sometimes, but not right now, because his stomach is grumbling.

“I came up with a brilliant nickname for him,” Sirius informs James cheerfully, finally giving Remus the plate. From the looks of it, it’s lunch and not breakfast. He was exhausted this morning and must have slept through breakfast. There are new bandages everywhere and he feels like a mummy. Already, he’s starting to itch with the want of taking them off. “Moony!”

James eyes Sirius, probably trying to make sure he’s not joking. “That’s so stupid, everybody will figure it out!”

“As if ‘his little furry problem’ was any better. People think he has a rabbit, James, that’s so much worse. I like Moony, so back off.”

Unfortunately, it sticks, and although they call him by that stupid nickname all the time, it also somehow becomes the wolf’s name, which is… Remus doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to share it, even if it’s stupid. But he never tells his friends that, of course, because there’s no difference between him and the monster after all. It’s him, it’s his body changing, his body hurting. It’s him bleeding in the shower that same night, having taken all of the bandages off and letting scalding hot water pour all over them. It’s punishment, Prometheus all over again, except he didn’t do it to himself, and Remus doesn’t know he’s fainted until Sirius is yelling and James is cursing as he and Peter haul him out of the shower. That’s how you know it’s bad; James Potter doesn’t curse.

Remus is fourteen years old and although puberty has set in already, he hasn’t really had a sexual awakening yet, so he doesn’t care that they see him naked. There are more pressing matters now, like the deep cuts everywhere that can’t be healed with magic. They heal more quickly than they would otherwise, or at least Remus thinks so, but Madam Pomfrey isn’t able to heal them completely and the pain potions barely work.

His friends are looking at him, each of them completely horrified, and Remus remembers the creature telling his story of being shunned from society over and over again, by his father, by random people, and finally by those he was hoping would be his friends. Tears prickle in his eyes and isn’t it all so fucking ironic?

“Right,” Peter says, and Remus waits for the final blow. He can’t bring himself to get up and leave, his body aching and his head threatening to explode, and also, a tiny bit of him wants to stay and hear them say it, that they hate him, that he’s hideous, that he’s a monster. “Sirius, get him some clothes, please. James, get some clean bandages. Accio mug!” A mug of what Remus assumes is tea flies right into his hand and Peter grins at him. “Finally got the hang of it. Have a cuppa.”

Remus, absolutely astonished, takes it and although it feels like his body is certainly overheated, it does, admittedly, help a bit. Then Sirius is back with underwear and Remus is in such a shock that he’s still not embarrassed. When James sits next to him and carefully wraps every single one of his wounds, he just sits there and wonders what the hell is happening. “There you go,” James says warmly when he’s finished. “Feel better?”

“Yeah,” Remus croaks.

They all eventually go off to their own beds and Remus is left staring at the ceiling, pondering the absolute insanity of what happened. He’s spiraling completely in his thoughts when the curtains move and Sirius peeks inside. He freezes when he sees Remus is still awake. “Oh. Hi.”

“Hi?”

Sirius looks so guilty. “Can I sleep with you?” he asks quietly and Remus blinks in surprise. He usually sleeps with James when he’s having a bad night. Remus has no idea when they started doing that, but it seems like they always have. “Please?”

“Yeah, sure,” Remus says because he doesn’t know what else to say. Sirius finally relaxes and slips into bed beside Remus.

“Why aren’t you sleeping? Are you in pain?” he whispers.

Yes, but that’s not the reason. “It’s fine. I slept all day, I’m not really tired. Are you okay? Having bad dreams?”

“Mmm,” is the only thing Sirius says. “Good night, Moony.”

“Good night.”

//

Remus tries to banish the ghost of Frankenstein, he really does. He tries reading other things and he likes some of them, some less than others and some more. Since picking up that wretched book, he’s probably read more than ever before, but it never helps. Still, he reads and reads until his eyes are tired, hoping that one day, it will help.

“Sirius?” Remus asks, making sure his tone is as nice as he can possibly get it. They’re outside, lying in the grass, and Remus props himself up on his elbows to look at Sirius lying next to him.

“What?”

“If I do your Charms homework, will you take me to the bookstore?”

Sirius grins up at him, squinting, the sun shining right into his face. “We have lots more homework, though.” Remus sighs. “How about this: for every subject, you get one book?”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

//

Life doesn’t always happen linearly, though it seems like a contradiction. And of course, things do happen one after the other, but do they really, though? Sometime between Sirius Black’s fourteenth and fifteenth birthday, he realizes that girls exist. As a result of that, Remus realizes that he should realize it as well. And as a result of that, because life is just dominoes crumbling one after another, he realizes that he doesn’t really like girls. Well, he doesn’t like them like that. He certainly doesn’t like them the same way Sirius does, which becomes clear because for a while, he’s unable to talk about anything other than girls. Peter’s the same, although he’s quieter about it, and James has his Lily obsession, which Remus secretly thinks isn’t ever going to go anywhere, but he’s a lot more occupied with his own problems right now.

Because he’s worried that Moony broke something inside of him.

And that’s where the linearity appears again; because it takes years. It’s not just one moment but so many tiny ones that weren’t important at first. Like in a mosaic, where you can’t see the entire picture at first, so you might discard the first few pieces, and only later, when the picture is close to being finished do you realize that they are very important details. It’s important to remember that, the non-linearity, because it’s all coming together now and Remus is noticing the little details he’s discarded years ago and he really doesn’t want to see the final picture.

It starts with kissing and again, it doesn’t all happen at once, but the pieces need to be put together, so that’s how the story will go as well.

James is the first one to kiss someone, which makes Sirius insanely jealous, and at this point, Remus isn’t too worried about anything yet, so he thinks it’s funny, especially when James tells them it was with a boy and Sirius’s eyes get so huge that they almost fall out of his head.

Then James tells them it was bad, and Remus can tell he’s trying not to think about it too much. “Maybe I just wasn’t good at it,” he says, “or he wasn’t. I don’t know. It was kind of gross, actually.”

They all comfort him, and Remus can tell that it makes James feel better, but it sounds strange to his own ears, even if he’s saying it too. (“It’ll be better with somebody else.” “Maybe he wasn’t the right person.” “You have a lot of time, we’re still young.” “Maybe you can try with a girl instead.”)

After that, Sirius kisses a girl and tells it as if he were Shakespeare recounting the greatest love story of all time. Peter listens intently, James frowns, and Remus wonders. He can’t quite figure out what it is he’s wondering about yet. It’s there somewhere, right beneath the surface, but Remus doesn’t yet grasp it fully.

Things escalate fairly quickly after that, which is something Remus doesn’t like at all; Peter gets his first kiss, too, and he’s excited as well, and James kisses a girl and tells them he didn’t like it either with tears in his eyes.

It’s around this time that Remus realizes he has a body. It seems like a strange thing to realize, but it’s suddenly there. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t even like to think about it, let alone do anything with it, and so he just doesn’t. You’re not supposed to talk about it anyway, or at least that’s what Remus gathers from the general society, not from Sirius and his oversharing, and so Remus doesn’t talk about it or the lack of it. But even then, he’s sharing a room with three other teenage boys, and he suddenly realizes that they also have bodies, and everything turns kind of awkward for a while. Sirius stops sleeping in James’s bed (or Remus’s but that was only sometimes) until the nightmares get really bad, and then he just does it again, but he doesn’t talk about it anymore. It’s different. They’re growing up and Remus mourns the children they used to be. (Not himself. He doesn’t remember what it was like to be a child.)

It’s also around this time that Remus finally finishes Frankenstein. They’ve been haunting him ever since that full moon, Frankenstein and his creature, always there, ready to sink their teeth in, and Remus finally gives in.

Finishing the book hurts, not physically, he’s used to physical pain, but somewhere in his heart. Because the creature, the monster, Moony—he’s a man, isn’t he? He’s a man and he wants a wife, and when he can’t have her, he decides to get his revenge on the entire world. And Remus feels like a stranger inside his own body, doesn’t feel anything at all when he looks at girls, and because reading hurts, it somehow gets all jumbled up in his brain, and he decided it’s Moony’s fault. He’s the worst thing about Remus, he’s the monster, so it must be his fault.

It doesn’t solve the problem, of course. No, it only makes things worse, because Moony’s inside of him forever and nothing but death can free Remus of him.

Frankenstein dies and the creature decides it must die, too. It seems quite clear what the ghost wants Remus to do. (Oh, but it gets worse. The creature says, ‘I shall no longer see the sun or stars, or feel the winds play on my cheeks.’ and Remus is just supposed to live? He’s the moon, according to that stupid nickname; the sun, the stars, and the wind are going to continue on without him. Again, it feels like a cruel joke from the universe.)

It continues to torture him for months and months, during which he tries to fix it. Tries to pull himself together into some semblance of a human, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, since even someone who was made from nothing can feel these things and want to have a mate.

Remus kisses a girl for the first time and it’s fine. He kisses a boy for the first time and it’s better. Kissing is quite good, it turns out, and it seems that things are getting better. He kisses Jan Novák, a Ravenclaw in the year above, what feels like dozens of times. At first, Remus feels strange about the fact that he likes boys, and wants to blame Moony, but if James likes boys, then it can’t be wrong. It’s not that simple, of course, nothing ever is, but at least it’s not Moony’s fault, and Remus really likes Jan.

And then Sirius has sex for the first time and Remus is forced to think about that. He doesn’t want to, not at all, and he doesn’t like to listen to Sirius talking about it for what feels like hours. And for someone who doesn’t want to think about sex, he spends a lot of time thinking about it, because suddenly, he’s scared of what’s going to happen when Jan wants to have sex with him. Because sometimes, Remus thinks maybe he could bear it; but then he realizes he has a body and that he can’t even touch himself without hating it.

He decides to break up with Jan before he can ask. It hurts but that’s okay, Remus isn’t Prometheus and deserves to get punished. Sirius holds him when Remus cries softly about it, letting himself do it just that one time, and doesn’t say it will get better. He doesn’t say anything at all, and Remus slowly makes peace with being alone.

And because Sirius is obsessed with sex and Peter and James always listen intently when he talks about it, Remus decides he can’t talk about it with them. But he needs to talk to somebody, and so he talks to the girls. He feels like an idiot, but they’re really nice about it.

“Was he pressuring you?” Lily asks tentatively. Remus just shakes his head. “Oh, Remus,” she says then and gives him a hug. “Don’t let anybody pressure you, okay? It’s okay not to be ready. He should wait until you’re ready.”

“Yeah,” Mary agrees. “There’s so much time, Remus. I know it seems like everybody’s had sex already, but that’s just because the only people you hear are the ones who talk about it. We’re just fifteen—just because you can have sex doesn’t mean you have to. There’s no time limit, Remus, honestly. And if he can’t wait, he’s an asshole.”

Remus nods and nods, because he knows they mean well. They’re trying to make him feel better, but it feels hollow, just like when he and the others were saying the same sort of things to James about kissing. And that didn’t work either, did it?

He doesn’t tell them that he thinks he never will be ready. Instead, he blames Moony. It’s easy this time; it’s different than liking boys. Sirius has recently admitted he likes boys, too; he told them while crying, and they all assured him they loved him. It became a joke that the only one between them who only liked girls was Peter. It made Remus smile at the time, sharing something so scary with his friends because it stopped being scary then.

But there’s nobody else who feels this way about sex. It’s the opposite, actually, which Remus is more and more aware of. They’re surrounded by a bunch of teenagers, so it makes sense that every single one of them would be obsessed with sex, right? Mary was wrong; it’s everyone but Remus. He stops going to the parties because it always ends with somebody leaving and the others making jokes about what they must be doing. Instead, he shuts himself in their dorm, and reads. When he wants to torture himself, he rereads Frankenstein, underlining the damning passages in pencil, sometimes doing so in such a vigorous manner that he tears through the pages. The book becomes a complete mess and Remus wants to destroy it, burn it, scatter the ashes, but he knows it wouldn’t help. The words live inside of him now. Every time the creator calls his child a daemon, a creature, a devil, a fiend, the words awaken within him and devour him from the inside, cracking open his ribcage and feasting on his liver.

Remus stops hurting himself physically and the scratches heal wonderfully, that’s what Madam Pomfrey says with a warm smile, not knowing that the pain Remus is causing himself is so much greater now.

//

Usually, Remus reads in bed, but sometimes, a miracle happens, and the common room is empty in the evening, and so he sits on the sofa there right in front of the fire, soaking in the warmth and pretending everything’s okay.

“Moony?” Sirius mumbles from the staircase. It’s already late; Sirius must have just woken up from the looks of his hair, and half-shut eyes. “Where’s James?”

“I think he went somewhere with some Hufflepuff.” He’s trying dating without kissing, now, because Lily still doesn’t want anything to do with him. Sirius doesn’t say anything, playing with the hem of his sleeping shirt. “Come here,” Remus tells him.

“I didn’t wanna bother you,” Sirius says quietly. “You’re always angry when I interrupt your reading time.”

Remus sighs. “I’m not angry now. Come here.” And finally, Sirius shuffles over to the sofa and lies down, resting his head in Remus’s lap, snuggling close. It’s almost automatic by now, the way Remus puts his hand in Sirius’s hair and starts playing with it. It’s nice; he likes when Sirius is close.

“What’re you reading?”

“The Picture of Dorian Gray. You got me it, remember?”

“No.”

Remus smiles. “Want me to read to you?”

“Yeah.”

So, Remus turns back to the beginning, and reads again. It’s another ghost book; in a way, they all are by now. Dorian Gray has his own monster and Remus is tired of all the books being about him and Moony. He’s so tired.

//

Once, the others persuade Remus to not hide in his room and go to the party in the Gryffindor common room, so he goes, gets pissed, and ends up kissing some guy. It’s nice until he starts pushing his tongue in Remus’s mouth, which feels weird, and then he slips his hands under Remus’s shirt and Sirius sometimes does that when he’s sleeping beside him and his hands are cold, except Remus really dislikes it now, and then—then he starts undoing Remus’s belt.

For a second, Remus thinks he can do it to convince himself that Moony hasn’t fucked him up that badly.

After the guy—Remus doesn’t even know his name—puts his hand right beneath the band of Remus’s underwear and his skin touches Remus’s, a violent shudder goes through him, and he twists out of the way and leaves the guy standing there like an absolute idiot. He throws up in the bathroom and Sirius calms him down gently. “Had too much to drink,” Remus says and Sirius sleeps in his bed with his hands under Remus’s jumper.

It’s not Sirius. Remus tries to tell himself that maybe that’s it, maybe he’s so hopelessly in love with Sirius Black that even touching other people makes him feel sick, but it’s not true. It’s fine like this, when they’re sleeping, because this isn’t sex. It has nothing to do with sex and if it was the other guy, just sleeping, Remus thinks he’d be fine with it, too.

But sex with Sirius? Absolutely not. Remus can imagine kissing him, would like to kiss him, and that wasn’t even a revelation worth noting. It’s funny, isn’t it, how some fragments of the mosaic are so meaningful now, and this one just isn’t. You’d think it would be. Because it’s a big one—beautiful and shiny, just like Sirius Black himself, the heart of it all. A star. But it’s never been a revelation, it’s as simple as breathing; Remus loves Sirius, of course he does. He’s always loved him and now he also loves him like that, and that’s not the problem.

And sometimes, he thinks that Sirius likes him back, feels him look at Remus kind of strangely, or he makes a joke that lands differently, and Remus could—could kiss him, could sleep next to him, could date this beautiful boy.

But he can never imagine having sex with him and that’s how he knows it’s never going to happen. Because he’s a fiend, a devil, a creature, a daemon. He’s the monster in the story, after all, and Sirius has had enough monsters in his life.

//

In between all these fragments, life moves forwards, of course; that’s what life does. They study for their exams and so, one day, Remus walks into a Defence Against the Dark Arts to see a picture of Moony on the board. It’s not Moony, of course, but it’s a werewolf.

“Shit,” Sirius says behind him and yeah, Remus feels inclined to agree. “We can skip? I’ll tell Repond you’re not feeling well.”

“It’s fine,” Remus says. “Just—don’t say anything, okay?”

“What? You’re worried about me?”

Remus sighs. “Yes, Sirius, I’m worried about you, because he’s gonna say that werewolves are dangerous dark creatures that should be killed and you aren’t going to say anything, okay?”

Sirius is frowning. He doesn’t like it, of course, and Remus loves him for it, but it’s not going to help. Professor Repond probably knows about Remus; he thinks all of them do. There’s nothing he can do anyway, and what if it’s on the OWLs? Wouldn’t that be oh so funny.

He and Sirius sit at the very back and Remus turns his mind off, refusing to listen, and lets Sirius draw all over his arms with a Muggle pen. It’s going well, he thinks, until he hears the Professor say, “In the days before the full moon, the people affected are often very aggressive, quick to anger, and also hypersexual. That’s just one of the reasons—”

“Can it be the opposite?” Remus blurts out. Hypersexual. He’s never once been hypersexual before the full moon. He was a child for most of them, for fuck’s sake.

Professor Repond stops in the middle of the sentence and narrows his eyes. “Excuse me, Mr. Lupin?”

“Well, you said—” This was not a good idea. “I’m sorry. Nothing.”

“See me after class, Mr. Lupin.”

Remus deflates and sits back in his chair. Sirius squeezes his fingers and Remus manages to smile at him. “Want me to go with you?” he asks after class, but Remus shakes his head. It would just make everything even worse.

The professor waits until everybody’s left and then shuts the door. “I would think, Mr. Lupin, that someone with your condition would refrain from drawing attention to himself.”

“I’m sorry, Professor.”

“Did you feel the need to correct my lesson, is that it?” he continues, his tone much sharper now. “I didn’t want you in my class, boy, and if you feel like you know so much, perhaps we should let you teach it. I’m sure your classmates would be very interested as to why a student is teaching them?”

“I’m sorry, Professor,” Remus repeats.

“I want ten-feet essay on werewolves on my desk by Monday, Mr. Lupin, and I might forget about this. But do not ever interrupt me again, do you understand? It would be quite easy to have you removed from the school, no matter how much Dumbledore seems to be on your side. Not many parents would like their children sharing a room with your kind.”

//

Sometime in February, in their fifth year, Remus gets a letter from his mother saying his father is dead. Remus doesn’t remember the exact date he died. It’s been nearly ten years since Remus saw him for the last time; he doesn’t even remember the last time, actually, since there was no goodbye. He was just there and then he wasn’t, and Remus didn’t even like him enough to care. His mom had always been enough.

But it was his father, wasn’t it? Maybe he made mistakes, but he was still the reason Remus was alive.

Even the creature felt sorrow when Frankenstein died.

Instead, Remus cries not because he’s sad but because he’s not. He imagines what it will be like when he dies and nobody even cares because he wasn’t a good person, he was a monster. Maybe his father was Frankenstein, but people only remember the monster, don’t they?

Remus goes to the funeral because it feels like the right thing to do, and he mourns an idea and not a person. He feels cruel, not feeling sad, and thinks that maybe it will come at the funeral, seeing the casket and the picture, but it doesn’t. He has no idea who his father was or what he did. Imagine that, your father being a complete stranger to you. He has no idea when the picture was taken. His father is certainly older than he remembers. There’s a kitten in the picture with him. Who even organized the funeral? Who are all of these people that are going to miss Lyall Lupin? Who was he?

It doesn’t feel like the end of anything, nor the beginning of something new, it feels like a random Wednesday. It’s March already.

Is Remus supposed to die now, then? If he’s the monster and his father is Frankenstein—but maybe that’s wrong. Maybe Greyback is Frankenstein, the werewolf who bit him. That makes more sense, surely. Maybe it was his father’s fault, but he didn’t do the actual biting, did he? What is Greyback doing right now? Is he dead? Are there other people like Remus? Other kids?

Remus feels sick when that thought makes him cry when his father being dead didn’t.

And it seems so wrong to skip over this, but the truth is, life just goes on. Remus barely thought about his father before and so he doesn’t either now. Sure, his father had been a ghost in his life, but not all ghosts are worthy of attention. More than that, it was always a remainder of something that should be; you should love your parents and you should mourn them when they die. But not all parents deserve that love and sometimes when they die, life simply goes on. The mosaic doesn’t change much at all.

//

On full moon number one hundred and something, Moony isn’t alone for the very first time. It’s after Remus’s father dies, after he forgets the exact date, and before they take their OWLs. It took the better part of three years to accomplish the transformation, and right now, Remus is snuggling with Sirius—well, with Padfoot, because of course Sirius insisted they had to have stupid nicknames too. It’s almost time and everything hurts, and he’s scared, more scared than he’s ever been in his life, because what if it doesn’t work? What if he hurts them? What if they realize he’s the monster after all?

Right before the transforms, Remus thinks about Frankenstein’s creature again, and how he revealed himself to the villagers; he thought this moment had already happened to him back when he hurt himself in the shower, but no, no, that was still him; this is all Moony. They’ll see him and flee in terror, they’ll shun him.

The last thing he remembers is tears streaming down his face.

Remus wakes up to Sirius—Padfoot—licking his nose. He has to blink several times, the memories of Moony slipping away from his mind like a dream, and he reaches out to touch the dog’s soft fur, not even thinking about it. Padfoot lets him, nuzzles himself closer. He’s not scared. He’s—he’s not scared of Remus.

For a while, Remus just lets him lick his face. “You have to go before Madam Pomfrey comes,” he says then, his voice hoarse. “Thank you for staying with me.”

Madam Pomfrey comes just a few minutes after and she’s smiling. “Oh, we’ve finally had a good one, haven’t we?”

Shit, does she know somehow? “What?” Remus asks.

She smiles. “No scratches this time.” And Remus finally looks down at his body. She’s right, of course; there are no new scratches anywhere. The old ones haven’t fully healed yet and the scars are everywhere, of course, but there are no new ones. “How are we feeling?”

“Good.”

And it’s true.

Chapter Text

“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”

—Mary Shelley, from Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus

Everybody’s mosaic is going to look different, as we all lead lives that are so very different from each other. But love is so often a part of it; love for your family, not always the one you’re born into; love for your friends, perhaps the most consistent one; love for oneself and maybe that’s the most important one of them all; and, yes, I know you’re waiting for it, romantic love. It’s not a part of everybody’s mosaic and when it is, it never looks the same and that’s okay because it’s the diversity that makes each mosaic beautiful. It is, however, a big part of Remus Lupin’s mosaic.

//

Full moon number four is bad again. (Yes, Remus is counting them again. The first one was the one when he wasn’t alone, and he woke up without any injuries.) It’s summer, which means that Moony is confined to a small room with bolts on the outside of the door. It’s horrible even on normal occasions but Moony—and Remus—have already gotten used to not being alone. He wakes up in pain, with new scratches on his arms and stomach, and he desperately wants to see his friends.

Be careful what you wish for—a week later, Remus gets a letter, which isn’t bad in itself, but as soon as he sees the handwriting, he knows that things are bad. Because the letter is from Sirius and Sirius isn’t allowed to send letters.

Hey Moony, Reggie and I left, and are staying with the Potters. Please come as soon as you can, we’re having a party. The girls are coming too. I hope you’re okay. Sirius

Underneath the writing, there’s a drawing, and Remus has to squint to decipher what it’s supposed to be—there’s definitely a paw, which is cute, and then what Remus assumes is Moony with the full moon. Beside it, something is scratched out, but Remus could swear it was a heart.

His mom isn’t thrilled about it, but she can probably see that Remus really wants to go, needs to go, needs to make sure that Sirius is okay, that his parents haven’t hurt him, haven’t broken him. She makes sure that he knows that he absolutely must be back in time for the next full moon, as if he could ever forget that. In the end, it’s actually quite simple; he packs his stuff, promises to be back at the end of the holidays, and takes a train right to Lily, from where they continue to the Potters’ house.

And then Sirius is clinging to him like he hasn’t seen him in years, and his hair is in Remus’s mouth, and Regulus is nowhere to be seen, and Remus just holds Sirius, not complaining about the pain from the new scratches.

“Hey, Moony!” James says cheerfully.

“Hey.”

“You doing okay? How’s your furry little problem going?”

Remus rolls his eyes. “It’s fine.” He can see James examining him carefully and it makes him uncomfortable, so he frowns at him.

“Do you wanna share a room with Peter?”

“No,” Sirius says, and he sounds so desperate. Remus doesn’t know what else to do other than hold him. “No, we—can we all share? Please?”

And, well, the world would implode if James Potter said no to anything Sirius asked for, so of course he doesn’t, and they end up moving a bed into James’s room, so that the four of them can share. Remus doesn’t mind. He’s gotten so used to sleeping with the others at Hogwarts, even if they all sleep in their own beds—well, not Sirius as much, because he mostly sleeps with James anyway, or with Remus on some occasions—that this is infinitely better, even if he has to share with Peter, who hoards blankets.

Remus feels guilty but he is so jealous. He would never wish anything else for James, of course not, but he can’t help it when he sees his parents, happy and in love and together, and how much they love James and how much he loves them. The Lupin ghost is there with them, every single time Remus sees the happy family, and he feels so guilty.

Thankfully, there are distractions: one, Sirius Black. Two… well, life is never simple, and so it turns out that the reason they’re all here is because James has decided to be stupid once again and break into Sirius’s parents’ house. God, Remus is tired—not just physically from the full moon, but mentally most of all. Because what the actual hell? Who does that?

And then it gets worse. Because James is doing it for Regulus, not for Sirius, and Remus has no idea what’s going on there, except they have been apparently talking to each other for several months now, which Remus hasn’t even noticed.

Lily catches his eye, and they exchange a look, and Remus knows she’s thinking the exact same thing as he is. Because this is exactly the insane kind of plan James has made in the past for Lily; but Remus knows that at the end of the year, Lily told him that it wasn’t going to happen. And if James is moving on, well, that would be good, but moving on to Regulus Black of all people? God save them all.

But Remus loves his friends, and he loves James, so he agrees. He always agrees with these stupid plans in the end. But this time, he’s not helping. James can do this one by himself.

“If I understood this correctly, Sirius can’t know about this, right?” he asks when James is in the middle of manic planning. He nods, thankful that someone’s taking him seriously. If only he knew. “Well, I suppose I could… distract him.”

It makes Marlene laugh. “Yeah, right,” she says with a wink and then she wiggles her eyebrows and sticks her tongue into her cheek. “I’ll bet you can distract him.” Remus frowns and then he rolls his shoulders, trying to just do something to stop the weird feeling in his stomach. It only just reminds him that it can never work out, because of course people assume they’re going to have sex. They’re not even together. He doesn’t understand people.

Thankfully, James tells Marlene to shut up and resumes his planning, but Remus thinks about it anyway.

//

Remus takes his distraction duties very seriously—no pun intended—and they give him a lot of uninterrupted time with Sirius, which is really nice. The distractions are fairly simple, because they mostly consist of chain smoking, but Remus can’t smoke at home because of his mom, so it’s nice. And they talk and then… they start doing this thing, which is kind of strange.

They start going on dates. First, Remus takes him for ice cream because you can’t go wrong with ice cream for breakfast. It’s nice and Sirius lets him have his when Remus doesn’t like the flavor he chose, which seems like the height of romance, and then they walk back to the house in comfortable silence.

It hurts a little, but Remus is used to that by now, of course. It feels like he’s actively standing against fate or something; like if he just wasn’t himself, he and Sirius would just get together already, because that’s just the most logical progression of whatever they’re doing anyway. Because Sirius is getting loud and bold with his hints, and they’re not even hints anymore, he just randomly declares he loves Remus now and wants to be with him. And Remus wants to, but he can’t. He can’t. He’s going to fight fate or whatever it is. It would be so simple if only Remus wasn’t Moony.

Remus fails his distraction duties when Sirius storms right into the garden where everybody else is doing God knows what. Planning something, he assumes. “What’s going to work?” Sirius asks and shit, why is he so fast?

“Well, well, look who finally decided to show up,” Marlene says with a smirk. “Did you two have fun with your ice cream?” she asks and then she just—does it again, except this time it doesn’t just involve her tongue but her hand as well and Remus remembers the guy from that party and it’s like something is crawling underneath his skin.

“Fuck off, McKinnon,” Sirius says, and Remus wants to be grateful but he’s smiling. And Remus likes it when Sirius smiles but not like this.

Thankfully, the others manage to save Remus’s poor attempt at keeping Sirius away, and they come up with a plan to have a party, which is—not something Remus wants to do, but oh well. He can deal with a party because Sirius is currently playing with his fingers in his lap and there are no insinuations of sex anywhere. They’re just holding hands and Remus mourns what he’ll never have.

The next day, before the dreaded party, Sirius takes him on a date. Remus knows it’s a date and Sirius also knows it’s a date, and neither of them are pretending it’s not. Remus isn’t complaining, though, because Sirius’s idea of a date is taking him to a Muggle bookstore and telling him to take anything he wants. “Anything at all, my sweet Moony, because I still have Walburga and Orion’s money, and I’ve decided to spend it aaaaall on the love of my life.” And then he blushes, and Remus forgets how to speak.

But he’s not saying no to books, of course, so they spend hours in the little bookstore. As always, Remus makes a stack of everything he wants, planning to go through it later and pick just one—or maybe two, since Sirius is so adamant about it.

The best thing about it is that Sirius is right there next to him, and he listens when Remus talks about that book or the other one, and he not only listens, but asks questions, too, and that means he’s not just tuning Remus out. He wouldn’t blame him, of course, but Sirius doesn’t do it anyway.

In fact, it turns out that Sirius listens even when Remus is silent, especially when Remus is silent, because suddenly, he pulls a book from the shelf and says, “Hey, it’s that stupid book you’re so obsessed with.”

Ghosts never leave, not really, not even when you’ve been happy and forgot about them for a little while—no, they don’t leave, and so Remus is staring at a brand-new copy of Frankenstein. It has a different cover, the creature. It’s like a mirror.

“I’m not obsessed with it,” Remus croaks.

Sirius laughs, as if this was all a joke. But to him, it probably is; he can’t see the ghost. “It’s falling apart, the one you have! The pages aren’t even in the right order and when I read it, I had to look for two pages and they were under your bed, Remus.”

It feels as if the world stops spinning but also starts spinning much, much faster because Remus is suddenly sick to his stomach. “You read it?” he asks quietly, gripping the shelf next to him, having to support him. It’s Doomsday, it’s the creature standing in the villagers’ cottage and Felix is beating him and chasing him out, trying to protect his father. Sirius is inside his head, inside of his heart, and he’s going to crack him open and eat him alive, bite into his flesh hard and not let go, will hurt him, punish him, and leave.

“Yeah, I thought it was shit,” Sirius says instead because he’s never been one to do what he was supposed to do. “Sit down, Moony, you look like you’re gonna faint.” Remus just plops himself down on the floor, closing his eyes. He’s going to cry or he’s going to explode, one of the two. “Breathe, Remus,” Sirius says softly, wrapping his arms around him. “Come on, breathe with me, it’s okay. In and out, come on.”

So, Remus breathes and breathes and breathes, but only because he would do anything Sirius told him to. He probably knows it, too, arrogant little shit.

“I know what you’re doing,” he says after a while, moving a little but still sitting right next to him, and he grabs Remus’s hand and intertwines their fingers. “With the book, I mean. You think you’re the monster, don’t you?”

“I am,” Remus says, voice broken.

“No, you’re not.”

Remus closes his eyes again. He doesn’t want to have this conversation. “Frankenstein created life and then left when he realized it was a monster. That’s my father, of course. He left, too. And then the creature started hurting people.”

“You’ve never hurt anyone,” Sirius interjects.

“I have to lock myself away,” Remus snaps. “You don’t—you don’t understand.”

“That’s because it doesn’t make any sense, love,” Sirius says gently. “I know that it hurts, but you know what? When I read it, I thought it could be me, too. Isn’t it just about how Frankenstein is a horrible father? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I know a thing or two about horrible fathers. And then, oh, you’re gonna love this—then because he got hurt, he started hurting people too. Don’t you know that’s what I worry about, too? That I’m always hurting people because my parents liked to hurt me?”

Remus doesn’t like this type of pain. He can handle it when it’s his, not when it’s Sirius’s. Sirius never deserves it. “No, that’s not… you don’t get it.”

Sirius hums. “Okay then. Tell me what makes you the same as the monster and I’ll tell you why you’re wrong.” He sounds so very sure about it and Remus wants to let himself love him for it.

“Everybody hates werewolves,” he says instead because it doesn’t matter what Sirius says, he is the monster, and he can’t let Sirius love a monster.

“I don’t hate werewolves. Padfoot doesn’t hate werewolves.”

“That’s not—”

“He loves Moony, you know.”

Remus takes a sharp breath, because what—does Sirius realize what he is saying? Because as much as Remus hates it, Moony is him, and Padfoot surely is Sirius, and if… if Padfoot loves Moony, then that would mean… Sirius watches him realize it, his eyes so soft it hurts. He’s said it before, but it’s different when he talks about Moony, too. Nobody loves monsters. “No,” Remus says. “I can’t ever be around people because I would hurt them. They would chase me out, just like they did with him.”

“But that’s not what happened,” Sirius says. “We didn’t chase you out and we didn’t force you to leave. We weren’t scared of you.”

“You had to change into animals just to be in the same room as me! You had to change yourself completely just to be with me. You became the second creature that Frankenstein was supposed to create just because of me, all of you.”

“So you think Padfoot’s a monster? Or Prongs or Wormtail?”

No. Padfoot has nice and soft fur, and he lets Remus snuggle him. “It’s a fucking metaphor!”

“For what?”

“I don’t fucking know!” Remus yells and promptly bursts into tears.

And Sirius just holds him again, not saying anything else, just being there because he knows Remus needs him. And Remus fucking needs him, and he doesn’t want to, because he doesn’t want this to be Sirius’s life. He deserves so much better.

It doesn’t make any sense, but oh, life isn’t always linear, but the fragments must go together somehow, even if you don’t put them all in the same place at the same time, and so Remus finally says, for the first time in his life, “I hate sex.” That—Remus can see that that’s the thing that surprises Sirius because he can’t see it, but this is the moment it falls into place: it’s like when you’re building a puzzle and you’re not quite done, but your mind fills in the blanks. The picture is almost complete, only a few pieces missing; a mosaic being created and it’s just one of many within the big one, but in that moment, it comes together with a sort of click inside of Remus’s brain, all the little moments playing out in his head, non-linearly, his body and not being able to touch it, everybody talking about sex, Jan and how scared Remus was he was going to ask, the guy at the party and his wandering hands, Marlene and her jokes, and Remus repeats, “I hate sex. And at first, I thought it was because I didn’t like girls, but then I was with a boy, and nothing changed. I hate thinking about it, and I can’t stand touching myself, let alone letting someone else touch me, it makes me feel sick, and I think Moony just fucked me up so profoundly and it hurts, because I want to be with someone, but I know I won’t and I don’t even deserve it, because I’m a monster.”

Somehow, it feels good to say it, even if it won’t help anything. Sirius is silent and Remus can almost see him thinking. “Why…” he starts, and Remus turns away, ready for the questions. “Why do you think you’re never going to be with anyone?”

Remus blinks, surprised, and then he laughs, though it’s not funny. “Because everybody’s obsessed with sex. You’re obsessed with sex. It’s like you woke up one day when you were fourteen years old and all you could talk about was jerking off and snogging and sex and girls and then boys, and I—I thought maybe I was just a little slow, you know. Maybe it would come later. But it’s not coming, and I don’t want it to come because it makes me so uncomfortable, and I think it’s just gross and I never even did it, but I don’t want to. But everybody else does. God, Sirius, I don’t think you even realize it, but people are always talking about sex.”

“Okay, but—” He pauses, trying to find the words. He’s trying not to hurt Remus, he can tell. He read the book, the window into Remus’s soul, and he still doesn’t know how much Remus wants to just hurt. He waits patiently for Sirius to say what he’s said before, what Remus has heard before, has told himself before. (“You just haven’t met the right person.” “You’re still young, it will change.” “Oh, baby, I’ll make you want it, I promise.”) He’s said some of it before, when James didn’t like kissing, and so Remus knows he’ll say it again.

Sirius doesn’t say it.

Instead, he says, “I would.”

“What?” Remus asks and he knows he must sound desperate. He just wants to hurt already.

“I would be with you, even if we didn’t have sex. I would.”

Sometimes, Remus wonders what it must be like inside Sirius’s head. Because he’s—he can be stupid sometimes, and he can be arrogant and rude, and Remus loves them all, but most of all, Sirius just makes Remus feel better. Says things Remus would never expect him to say, shocks him every single time. Buys him books when Remus does his homework, even though he’s smart as hell, but he knows Remus wouldn’t let him otherwise. Sirius Black is an unpredictable force, has been ever since he was eleven years old—well, since he was born, probably, but ever since Remus met him, he’s just wondered what it’s like being him.

“I don’t want you to have to give up something to be with me. I’m not worth it,” Remus whispers.

“Shut up.”

“Sirius—”

“No, shut up,” he says. “Just—shut up, okay? I don’t even know what I’m supposed to say here, because you’re saying a million things all at once and I want to talk about all of them, but you’re not giving me any time. But, Remus, you say all of these things and the only thing you’re actually saying is that you hate yourself. And I know what that’s like, and it hurts that you think like that about yourself, because I love you. I love you and I love all of you, even Moony. You’re not a fucking monster, Remus, and I can guarantee you that every single person would relate to something if they read that fucking book. It’s not some personal vendetta against you, okay, Mary Shelley didn’t foresee your future, she just wrote a random fucking story. And I’m so sorry that it made you feel like shit, but you’re not making any sense. You say that you’re the creature but you’re not—so your father left and fuck, that was pretty shitty, but Peter’s father left too. The creature started killing people because he thought it was his right because his life had been bad, but I know you, and I know you don’t wanna hurt people. Not you. And maybe Moony would eat me if I wasn’t Padfoot, but Remus, you literally have no control over your body. He’s a part of you but he’s also not. And when he’s with us, he’s not hurting anyone, not even you. I used to hate him, you know, for hurting you like that, and then you would hurt yourself more, but then—he’s just… Padfoot loves him, okay, and Moony loves him, too, and I have no idea what that means, but I love all of you.”

Remus is just—staring. There’s nothing else that he can do.

And Sirius is done now and he’s very obviously embarrassed. His cheeks are turning pink, and Remus doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do now. “So… what you’re saying is that you wanna date me?” he asks stupidly.

Sirius laughs. “Yeah, I guess. I went a little overboard, didn’t I?”

Then they get kicked out of the bookshop for making too much noise, because life isn’t a love story, so Remus goes outside and then Sirius comes, too, dragging the entire stack of books that Remus picked out. “You can’t—”

“Shut up, you’re my boyfriend now and I’m gonna spoil you.”

“Sirius—”

“Shut up. I’m serious, Moony. Double.”

Remus just sighs. That’s Sirius Black for you, go figure. “We didn’t talk about the sex thing.”

“Sure we did. I said I don’t care.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Sirius exclaims, dropping the stack of books on a nearby wall. “Fuck, that’s heavy. No wonder you have muscles. Listen, I don’t care. Like, yeah, okay, I like sex, but also, I can just do it to myself and seven times out of ten, it’s better anyway. I would never expect you to have sex with me just because we’re together, okay, you don’t exist for me to have sex with you.” He drops Remus’s stare, looking at his feet instead. “I was an asshole when I started having sex, okay? Like I—I wasn’t nice and then I had a not very pleasant but very much needed talk with Mary about how I see people only as objects to have sex with and how I should fucking stop. And she was right. I mean, of course she was, she’s Mary. My point is, I’m never going to force you to have sex with me, and it’s really not like some grand sacrifice for me, okay? It’s like—I don’t make you uncomfortable when I sleep in your bed, do I?”

Remus shakes his head. “No. I like that.”

“Well, thank Merlin, because to be honest, if you didn’t want to do that, that would be a lot worse for me than the sex thing. Because I can’t do no touching. Like—okay, James says I’m touch starved because of my parents, and I don’t really know what that’s supposed to mean, but I probably couldn’t be with you if touching me would make you uncomfortable.”

“It really doesn’t,” Remus clarifies.

Sirius smiles his beautiful smile. “See? It all works out. You just have to let yourself have things.”

But Remus has never been good at letting himself do anything. He’s good at the hurting part, at torturing himself, the overthinking and overanalyzing books to hurt himself, at cracking himself open with his fingers and ripping with his teeth and not stopping until every single part of his being just hurt.

He sighs. “And what if—what if that changes in the future? What if, in the future, you want to have sex with me? Because I know I’m young and all that bullshit, but I’m pretty sure I’ll never want to.”

For some reason, Sirius smiles very brightly. “I’ve learned something very important from living with Effie and Monty,” he says proudly and Remus’s chest cracks and it’s not his liver this time, it’s his heart, but before the monster can get to it, before Moony can devour it, Sirius reaches out and holds it in his palms as if it were something so very beautiful. “Communication is fucking key.”

Remus smiles, his heart beating—not too fast, not too slow, not anything out of the ordinary. It just beats. “Really?”

“Yeah. Just talk to me, Moony. About everything.”

Remus nods. “Sounds sensible. Who would’ve thought that you would be the sensible one?” he jokes feebly.

“Disgusting.”

“Can I ask you a question? Do you think it’s Moony’s fault? The sex thing?”

Sirius frowns at that. “Why would it be Moony’s fault?”

Remus shrugs. “Do you know anybody else who feels like this? No. Do you know anybody else who’s a werewolf? Also no. Seems like they would be related.”

“I doubt you’re the only one who feels like this, though,” Sirius says. “Honestly. It’s like the James thing, isn’t it? He loves differently than anyone and he doesn’t have a Moony anywhere. Maybe there are other people.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it. Now please be a good boyfriend and carry my books to the Potters’.”

He watches Sirius as he’s walking, constantly complaining that the books are heavy but refusing to let Remus carry any of them. Remus doesn’t believe him. Or, well—he does believe him. He does. There aren’t many people that Remus just trusts instinctively, btu Sirius is definitely one of them, and so Remus really does believe him. It’s not that; it’s that it doesn’t make a difference. He doesn’t stop hating himself, doesn’t stop thinking about Frankenstein and the creature, doesn’t stop believing he’s the monster in the story.

But that’s why it’s important to step back when you’re looking at a mosaic. When you’re standing too close, you can’t see the full picture, you can just see the fragments. And they can be beautiful, just like this moment was; it was beautiful and Remus needed to hear something like that. But it’s not until he can step back and see the picture than he will realize that it actually did make a difference. But it takes time, like everything. Lives don’t change from one second to another. But this fragment will forever shine in the mosaic and in the future, Remus will be able to appreciate it.

//

The party is a disaster, as it always is with the Gryffindors, and Remus ends up in the kitchen cleaning Sirius’s ear after Marlene pierced it with some rusty looking needle. “Am I gonna stop being beautiful?” Sirius whines.

“I’ve literally never looked at your ears before, so I think you’re fine,” Remus remarks dryly. “Stop squirming, it can’t hurt that bad.” Though there is quite a lot of blood. But Remus is used to blood, of course. “There, it’s fine now.”

“Thank you,” Sirius mumbles and drops his head on Remus’s shoulder. Remus pats his head and then scratches him behind his ears to make him laugh. It always works and this time is no exception. Sirius looks up at him, his eyes still crinkled from smiling, and oh, he is so beautiful. “Moony,” he whispers. “We’re boyfriends now, right?”

Remus smiles a very stupid smile. “Yeah.”

“Does that mean I can kiss you? Are you fine with kissing?”

Instead of answering, Remus just kisses him, because yes, he’s very fine with kissing. He’s been fantasizing about it for years, actually. It’s better, of course it is, because Sirius Black is an enigma, and he never does what you expect him to.

That’s not always good, though, because he suddenly slips his tongue inside Remus’s mouth, and Remus feels a shudder go through him. Before he can even process anything, Sirius pulls away, says, “You don’t like tongue? Noted, love.” and then just goes back to kissing him, his tongue very safely inside of his own mouth where tongues should always remain, Remus thinks.

James catches them, but Sirius tells him to leave, so he just grins and goes away, and then Sirius kisses him for the better part of the night. Remus has to leave tomorrow because Moony can’t ever leave him alone, but he decided to not think about that, and so he just lets himself be kissed and kisses Sirius back.

“Do you wanna go to bed?” Sirius asks and Remus just—freezes. Because here it is. A lot fucking sooner than he expected, but of course, of course. “Yeah, that’s not—that’s not what I meant. I’m just getting a cramp in my neck because you’re so freakishly tall. But we can stay here if you’d like that better.”

They go to bed and Remus is worried it’s going to be really weird. He’s never been in bed with someone, except for Sirius and Peter, but not like this. But Sirius takes his hand and when they lie down, they end up on their sides facing each other, which Remus is really grateful for. He doesn’t want Sirius on top of him. And then they kiss some more, and Sirius keeps his hands to himself and never does anything that could be considered sexual, and Remus figures it out, another piece clicking into place. He trusts him. He trusts that Sirius isn’t going to do something Remus doesn’t want, so it doesn’t feel weird or awkward. They just kiss. It’s nice. Remus falls asleep with Sirius behind him and his hands underneath his shirt, even though it’s a thousand degrees outside, but Remus trusts him.

//

Full moon number five is bad, and Remus hates Moony, because not even Sirius can fix years’ worth of damage. Moony hurt him and he’s a monster and he’s Frankenstein and maybe it never did make sense, but Remus has a nasty habit of hurting himself, so it’s going to take a while to stop thinking these thoughts.

He threw the fucking book away, though, at the train station so that he couldn’t come back for it. It doesn’t make much of a difference; he’s read it a thousand times, has it basically memorized, but he convinces himself that it’s the symbolism that’s important. Better than nothing or whatever.

“We won’t be alone at Hogwarts, I promise,” Remus whispers when he wakes up after full moon number five. He doesn’t know if Moony can hear him or even understand. But maybe he’s just lonely.

The summer is cut short by James’s plan backfiring, as was expected, and despite his mom’s protests, Remus just—jumps on a train and waits in front of the Potters’ house until they all come home, hugging James closely and not telling him he’s an idiot because he knows he’s just in love. They spend the whole day together, just the three of them, because that’s apparently the future—no Peter anymore. Remus would have never expected him to betray James and it hurts.

Sometimes, people can be monsters, too. Not Peter, Remus doesn’t want to think about him as a monster, even if he can’t understand, but when James tells him what happened with Sirius’s and Regulus’s mother, he can feel his blood boiling.

James eventually leaves them alone, going on his garden-hot-cocoa date with Regulus, which Sirius makes fun of, but then kisses him as soon as James is out of the door. “Did you get my letter?” he asks excitedly.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Remus asks.

“What? No, not that one—I sent one before. Different owl. Yesterday?”

“I only got the one telling me to come back,” Remus says with a frown. “What did you send?”

Sirius is excited and so Remus calms down a little. He’s probably not breaking up with him. “Okay, in a nutshell, my brother and his friends are insane, but they’re also kind of smart—do not ever tell them I said that. Anyway, they made this book with all of these different words for different sexualities. You know, like I said I was bisexual because I like girls and boys and other people, too.” Remus hums to let him know he understands. “Well, there’s—let me just show you.” He opens a little book that’s just sitting on the table and Remus is confused, and then Sirius is shoving it in front of his face.

Asexual. A person who is asexual (or “ace”) experiences little to no sexual attraction toward others. They may still experience other forms of attraction, such as romantic, for example wanting to be in a relationship. Asexuality is a spectrum of different identities …

Remus looks up and sees Sirius staring at him with his eyes wide and hopeful. “I—I don’t know if the word’s right,” he says. “But there are a lot of others. And the word isn’t the point, okay, but you’re not—you’re not alone, Remus. And it’s not Moony’s fault.”

Asexual.

Asexual.

“Asexual,” Remus says experimentally. “Ace.” He likes it. It’s just a word but Remus has learned over the years that words have power. They can hurt you, they can hurt so much that physical pain is nothing compared to them; he’s never known that words can heal, too. But that’s what it feels like. Healing. “I like it,” he says.

Sirius kisses him with the brightest smile on his face.

//

Never once in his life has Remus wanted Moony to hurt someone, but when he sees Walburga and Orion Black at the train station, he just… wonders. It scares him, it does. But he thinks that in a way, they are much worse than him, and they’re human. Sirius is brave when talking to them, letting them spew hate, and then just shutting them down.

And then they leave to be with their friends. “I’m so proud of you,” Remus tells him.

Sirius smiles a wicked smile. “Kiss me in front of them.” And Remus does, because monsters are monsters, after all, and Sirius is his.

“Come on, you idiot, or the train will leave without us.”

Sirius is very dramatic about it, but he does let himself be hauled across the carriage until they find the right compartment. Marlene’s the first one who notices them. “Oh, speaking of disgusting gays. What took you so long, had a quickie in the bathroom?”

Remus frowns, feeling the very uncomfortable feeling in his stomach again. But Sirius squeezes his hand, and he thinks, oh well, and says, “Actually, I’m asexual.”

“Fuck yeah,” Sirius says with the brightest smile.

“No, the point is actually fuck no.” With a deep breath, he turns to Marlene. “I know you don’t mean to, but it makes me really uncomfortable when you make sex jokes about me.” There it is. Let her do whatever she wants with that, he’s said it.

But Marlene’s Marlene, so of course, she just says, “Shit, yeah. Sorry. How do we feel about homophobic jokes?”

Remus laughs. “Proceed.” He sits down by the window because he likes to watch the scenery, and Sirius just sits in his lap, and Remus plays with his hair while he has a conversation with his brother. They tell everyone what Walburga and Orion said, and everybody agrees they’re monsters, which feels very nice. It doesn’t make his monster go away, of course, but you can’t have everything.

And then, a little mosaic gets finished. One of many and over time, this one will stop being central to everything but it’s okay that for a while, it was one of the most important ones. Sometimes, you have to focus on one little section before you can move onto the bigger picture of what makes your mosaic you. It’s all of them combined, not just one part of it. But it’s okay if you get stuck with one section for what feels like forever.

Marlene is being mean to Regulus’s friends and Remus doesn’t know anything about them and, to be honest, he doesn’t really care, because Sirius is whispering something very important in his ear, but then he hears one of Regulus’s friends say, “I’m asexual and biromantic.”

It’s not like he thought Sirius made that whole book and the story about it up. No, he knows Sirius wouldn’t. But there’s a difference between knowing theoretically that other people feel the same and meeting someone who gets it. He’ll talk to him later, too, because he wants to talk to somebody who understand but oh, it feels like he can breathe.

He’s not alone. He’s not alone. He’s asexual, he’s not alone, and it’s not Moony’s fault.

“Are you happy?” Sirius whispers. He’s heard it, too; he knows how much it means to Remus.

“Yeah.”

//

Evan, that’s his name. Remus doesn’t know anything about him, except that the Rosiers are another one of those scary pureblood families. And that he’s eyeing Remus with a really annoyed look. Remus takes a breath. “Sorry if this is weird,” he starts and Evan rolls his eyes, because, yeah, that’s a horrible start. “It’s just—I’m… ace, too. I think. Well, I didn’t really know that it was a thing until yesterday, but it feels… right.”

It is weird, but Evan seems to relax a little. “I thought you were gonna say some weird shit about it,” he admits. “But yeah, I get you. I thought I was the only person who felt like that, but I’m not. Pandora’s ace, too—well, aroace.”

Remus frowns. “Uhh—I don’t really know what means.”

Evan laughs. “Yeah, not gonna lie, it’s fucking complicated. Point is, you’re really not the only one. I’ve met some other people on the spectrum—demi and gray-ace, and it made me realize that the world is a lot bigger than anybody wants you to know.”

“Would it be weird if we became friends just because we’re both asexual?”

Again, Evan laughs but it’s not mean. “I’m friends with Barty, who’s literally the most hypersexual person you’ll ever meet. I’m always down to having more ace friends.”

And that’s that. It’s the world’s strangest revelation but it turns out that sometimes, things are just that easy.

//

“I got you a present,” Sirius says when they’re alone in their dormitory. Peter’s gone; hasn’t come to Hogwarts that year. They have no idea where he is. James has already snuck away to be with Regulus, much to Sirius’s disdain. Remus secretly thinks he’s just faking it, because he seems to be very happy for them when it’s just him and Remus. But apparently James isn’t allowed to know that, so Remus keeps his mouth shut.

“For what occasion?”

Sirius smiles. “Being my boyfriend.”

“Well, I didn’t get you anything.”

“That’s fine.” He hands Remus a book and it’s upside down and—

Ghosts always come back, don’t they?

“Open it,” Sirius says. “Please, Moony.” You can’t run away from your ghosts. That’s not the lesson Remus thought he was getting but you can’t outrun fate, can you? “Remus, open it.”

Remus opens up his brand-new copy of Frankenstein, the same one Sirius showed him in the bookstore. He must have bought it then. On the title page, The Modern Prometheus is crossed out and Sirius wrote something underneath it, making the title Frankenstein, or, A big old gay story. And then—Remus flips through the book and it’s full of Sirius’s annotations. It seems that every time Frankenstein and Clerval interact, there’s “that was fucking gay” accompanying it. Whenever the moon is mentioned, Sirius drew a little crescent moon and sometimes Moony, too, though Remus only knows because he’s seen that illustration before, not because it looks anything like a wolf. Most of the annotations are silly; “Safie was always gay and happy” followed by “that’s literally James!” or “were it not for the most verdant islands that relieve the eye by their gay appearance” followed by “you relieve my eye by your gay appearance”. But then there are entire passages crossed out and Remus knows what they are; the ones describing the worst of his own thoughts. Sirius stuck sticky notes over them with “I love you” or “Padfoot <3 Moony” written all over them.

“I know it’s a bit stupid but—”

“I love it,” Remus says. “I love you.”

Sirius grins. “Then it’s the most brilliant idea I’ve ever head.”

Remus agrees.

They keep this one and Remus eventually forgets what was there originally, the first one lost somewhere. Gradually, the margins become filled with more of Sirius’s notes and Remus starts writing back, little messages when they don’t have a piece of paper, a palimpsest; the original text long gone and a new one written over it. Years after, Remus flips through it with a smile on his face and realizes that somewhere along the way, the book stopped being a horror story about a little boy and his monster, and turned into a love story instead.

Their own little mosaic, really.