Archive of Our Own

One of the few useful things Binns shares with him – and that includes everything he had taught Remus as a student himself – is that there are certain student archetypes to look out for.

There are the students whose passion fans about them like an aura, who ooze enthusiasm for even the dullest of topics: the Hermione Grangers, if you will. Then there are those whose enthusiasm is sorely lacking, but who’ll breeze through an OWL practice paper or know the answer to a question they definitely weren’t paying attention to: the (incredibly infuriating) Draco Malfoys (and James Potters) of this world. Somewhere in the middle are the students who are muddling through, simply doing their best to keep up with this constant stream of information and expectation, a broad category that Remus is quickly learning houses Harry Potter and Ron Weasley. And of course, there are the (often-privileged-enough-to-not-have-to-care, Remus inserts) ones who just do not give a single shit, à la Gregory Goyle. Finally, the students who try ever so hard, but just can’t quite get it right – including the one Snape calls a hopeless case but the rest of the staff know as Neville Longbottom.

(Remus despises Severus for many reasons but this one might just top the list).

Remus thinks Binns is missing a category in his classification, confusing does not give a shit for desperate to be done with this at last – the ones who are yearning for something more, to get on with what their heart truly pumps for. It’s these ones that Remus has a soft spot for like an old bruise, for whom he feels a twinge of nostalgia every time a student pokes at it, because in every one he thinks of Sirius – of how longing for something more can sometimes simply be an escape from who you are now, from what you know, a promise of endless possibilities to come.

Oliver Wood is one such student.

Fred and George Weasley are others. But where the Weasley twins fuck around in class to the point of disruption, and draw attention to themselves with loud, borderline obnoxious commentaries, Oliver is most frequently found gazing out of the classroom window towards the Quidditch pitch, doodling new formations on his parchment, and generally giving off a vibe of ‘I have one more year here, and then I’m free.’

Of course, what to do with all of this information is entirely individual – Binns, for example, simply knows it, and then splashes all students with the same paintbrush of ‘endless, monotone lecture’, regardless of learning style.

Remus is determined to do better by his students, however challenging they make it, cursed lycanthropic exhaustion and chronic fatigue syndrome be damned.

The first time he meets Oliver Wood is after the whirlwind of his first week as the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, and he is, understandably, completely overwhelmed by it all. In a surreal turn of events, Professor McGonagall – Minerva, he reminds himself sternly, has… summoned him? invited him? strongly implied that he should come to her office for a debrief on how his week has been.

And so, with a strange sense of unease that he is once again in trouble for some devious and brilliant prank, he makes his way to the first-floor office on autopilot. Perhaps this has all been some nasty prank, some ruse to build him up before firing him and watching him sink back into deep depression.

(He’s only eighty five percent sure that thought process is catastrophising).

He raises a hand to knock, as he must have done a thousand times before, but it swings open before he can make contact, and a harried-looking seventh year is backing towards it, talking rapidly.

“-I just think it’s really unfair, Professor – he’s only doing it because he knows we have the better team, and if you could just make him change it –“

“As I have already said, Wood,” McGonagall’s voice, though stern and crisp, carries the familiar undertones of fondness Remus remembers all too well. “I will speak to Professor Snape, but I cannot guarantee-”

“But Professor. You know if it was for me, I wouldn’t even care, but Alicia and Angelina-”

“I am not thrilled by the first part of that statement, Wood-” McGonagall interjects.

“-Are really stressing, and it’s going to throw them off their game, and this is our chance to break the losing streak, and I really think we can-”

“Oliver.”

The sudden coolness of McGonagall’s voice finally causes Oliver’s impassioned speech to falter.

“As you can see, I have a meeting with Professor Lupin right now.” Remus starts a little, still momentarily discombobulated by the title and how quickly it has upturned his entire life. “But I will talk to Professor Snape, and I will let you know what we decide.”

There’s a small pause, and Oliver glances at Remus, as though aware of him for the first time, before ducking his head. “I just want us to win this year.”

“As do I, Wood,” McGonagall says, her voice suggesting the very edges of softness once more. “And I have every faith in your captaincy.”

The words, which Remus had expected to puff Oliver up with self-assurance, only seem to tighten the tension in his shoulders as he nods, turning to leave. “Good night, Professor.” He nods at Remus, polite but thoroughly uninterested.

“Get some dinner, Oliver,” McGonagall calls after his retreating back, and Remus catches… something in her gaze, before she turns her bright eyes on Remus.

“Remus,” she says, with all the warmth of her crackling log fire. “Come on in, it’s good to see you, take a seat.”

Remus moves into the office, glancing around at the largely unchanged room, with its large desk, soft armchairs set crooked to the hearth, and sweeping windows, through which the half moon is conspicuously lurking. “Good evening… Minerva.”

(The words still feel so foreign on his tongue but the smile he receives in return sends a rush of warmth into his chest).

McGonagall stands with the grace of a woman a third her age, and moves to pour them tea, steam curling from the cups in delicate spirals. “Milk and sugar?”

“Yes, please, one sugar.”

“You always did have a sweet tooth,” McGonagall’s tone is unexpectedly fond, and Remus’ own lips curl up in response. “I’ll have you know I’m cutting down, and it’s only slightly torturous.”

McGonagall smiles, and the silence that follows is softer still. Remus studies her carefully, then clears his throat. “Was everything alright with... that student?”

McGonagall purses her lips. “I take it you hadn’t come across Oliver Wood yet?” She passes the teacup across to him, and he accepts with a murmur of thanks. “He’s the captain of Gryffindor’s Quidditch team, a team which haven’t won the Quidditch cup in seven years now. To say that he’s taking it as a personal failing would be an understatement.”

“That’s… a lot of pressure for him to take on.”

McGonagall hums in agreement. “To complicate matters, Severus has an …unpleasant habit of setting a lengthy essay as homework due the night before Gryffindor’s Quidditch matches.” She pauses, then continues more haughtily. “He seems to have identified that not all of the team are as unconcerned with their classes as Wood is, but a few choice words will put him back in his place.”
Remus hides his smile behind his teacup, though he meets McGonagall’s eyes over the rim, surprised at the humour in them. “I don’t doubt that for a second,” he says, enjoying how it makes her eyes glint.

“Has he been causing any problems so far with brewing your potion?” McGonagall says, and the directness of the question sends him reeling. It’s such a foreign concept to have someone refer to it as if it isn’t a huge inconvenience upon all their lives, as if he isn’t a dangerous monster and a threat to them all.

(Though, of course, McGonagall has seen the broken mess of bones and flesh the transformations leave him with more times than most. It can be hard to remember the monster lurking inside him in the face of so much pain).

“Not so far,” he manages, taking a gulp of tea to cover the surge of self-loathing discomfort in his chest. He forces himself to meet her eyes once more, and –

McGonagall would fight for him, he realises suddenly: the glint turned to steel, the smile a grim line, the care a thick cloak around his shoulders. “He’s been fine so far.”

There’s not a lot of point in telling her otherwise, as much as her concern means to him – no need to mention the derogatory sneers each time their paths cross in the corridors, the pointed remarks about monsters and curses and girls-who-think-they-get-to-be-men, the remnants of bitter teenage hurts rearing their heads once more.

(He’s not innocent in this, he knows. If he’d had a sixteen-year-old James Potter beside him in those moments, he wouldn’t have stopped him from retaliating. He might even have laughed. He knows he’s not better than Severus).

Remus can fight his own battles; he’s just a little too tired to fight this one right now.

“Will you tell me if things change?” She’s watching him carefully, in the way that makes him feel flimsy as parchment.

He nods, though it’s a lie. He knows better than most that snitches get stitches; childhood bullies had first beaten this into him, before what had happened to the people who he loved most embedded it into his core.

“Are you being honest with me?”

Dammit.

“I will tell you if he does anything to jeopardise the potion,” he offers.

It’s not the response McGonagall wanted, and again, he has a nostalgic pang of fear that he’s disappointed his professor before he manages to shake it off. Eventually, McGonagall nods and takes a sip of her tea.

“I suppose that’s all I can ask.”

There’s a comfortable pause, silence only broken by the spitting of the flames and the sharp crackle of burning wood.

“How do you rate Gryffindor’s chances this year then?” Remus returns to safer ground (because he’s a coward, he knows).

McGonagall leans back in her seat, glancing towards the Quidditch pitch – not visible through the dark save the silvery skeletons of the hoops. “It’s certainly the strongest team we’ve had in years. The Weasley twins are talented, if disruptive, as I’ve no doubt you’re discovering for yourself. Bell, Spinnet, and Johnson are superb – so in sync that Severus keeps implying they are using a charm to communicate telepathically.”

“Git,” Remus mutters under his breath, but McGonagall of course catches it and smirks back.

“Indeed. And of course, Potter, he –“ She pauses, catching herself, looking at Remus carefully. “Well. He’s even better than his father was.”

Remus swallows, opens his mouth, closes it again as something wretched threatens to launch itself out.

He hadn’t been prepared for how hard it would feel to return to his home, but without the three people who made it such.

McGonagall continues, though her hand reaches for Remus’ and briefly squeezes, even as she speaks. The care in that small gesture only intensifies the lump in his throat. “And Wood, though he doesn’t see it in himself, is an excellent coach and Keeper. Of course, you’ll see for yourself in just a few weeks’ time. So, if not this year, then when?”

Remus scrambles for something intelligent with which he can respond; it’s been a long time since he’s followed Quidditch and whilst he had taken an interest in James’ involvement in it, that wound is a little too ragged around the edges to explore right now.

McGonagall seems to take pity on him. “But we digress. I didn’t invite you here to talk Quidditch, as pleasant as this is. I wanted to see how your first week has been.”

“It’s been… a lot,” Remus admits, but it’s not long before she has pried out of him the sheer panic he had felt standing before his first class – convinced they would see straight through him, utterly unqualified for this role, desperate to do right by these young people for whom he dearly hopes Defence Against the Dark Arts can remain a theoretical concept (though he of all people knows better) – followed by the absolute exhilaration of seeing them leave the class in an excited buzz of chatter.

McGonagall listens, interjects every time his sentences carry the weight of too much self-deprecation, reminds him he needs to ensure he gets plenty of rest for both of his conditions’ sakes.

(They carefully avoid the topic of Sirius Black and the fact that his ex-lover is at large, because Remus hasn’t even begun to process the utter shitshow that’s going to be for his heart and mind. He can’t. He won’t. It stays sealed in a little box in his brain, and no matter how much it rattles, Remus keeps the lid firmly closed).

By the time he leaves her office, Remus has a renewed sense of confidence in his own abilities, inspiration for how to best teach a particularly challenging set of defensive spells, and an even greater sense of awe for his former professor. McGonagall may no longer be his teacher, but hell, if Remus can be half as good a teacher as McGonagall is, he thinks he could be proud of himself for that.

After his first brief encounter with Oliver Wood, it’s a name that sticks in his head in relation to the stocky, serious seventh year with the lilting Glaswegian accent. He catches the moment of recognition as he calls Oliver’s name in class, but Oliver quickly returns his gaze to the windows, eyes tracking invisible players and flight patterns.

To be perfectly honest, with all the names he’s scrabbling to learn, all the homework he’s trying to stay on top of marking, and the excitement he’s endeavouring to insert into his lesson plans, for a while it’s all he can do to keep his head above water. He battles through pre- and post-transformation exhaustion out of sheer spite and plays a dangerous game of catch me if you can with his chronic fatigue.

(It catches him – of course – and he spends a frustrated few days feeling as though he’s moving through honey, complete with aching throat and pounding head).

McGonagall finds him, two days into his miserable flare up, staggering down the corridor towards his classroom with such heavy limbs he can barely lift them from the floor. “Absolutely not,” she snaps, taking his shoulders and turning him straight back around towards his quarters. He probably ought to be able to put up a slightly stronger defence than mumbled protests, but she silences him with a severe stare. “You are lucky I’m not sending you straight to Poppy, Remus. Get some rest, you ridiculous man.”

And maybe it is ridiculous. But Remus has spent his whole life being told what he is and isn’t capable of, because of his lycanthropy, because of his gender, because of his mental health, because of his CFS, and for once, he wants to be the one to dictate his own body and his own choices.

Admittedly, today is perhaps not the day, given that he near collapses into his bed with a groan when he reaches it and doesn’t wake up for fifteen hours.

And so this, coupled with the sheer brain fuckery moving back to Hogwarts is wreaking on his already tentative mental stability (who knew it would be so hard to stay grounded in the present when he keeps rounding each corner expecting to hear Peter’s heavy footfalls? Or when a student’s laugh carried the exact tenor James’ did? Or even when the full moon approaches and he can’t even bring himself to look at the Whomping Willow for the tremors it sends through his fingers?), Remus feels like a spider’s web stretched taught in a windowpane. Any minute, someone could come along with a Scourgify! and wipe him away.

All of this to say, out of all the students he’s mentally noting to check in with, or who he thinks may need some additional support, Oliver Wood is a fairly middling student who slips through the net, a Cornish Pixie unlocking its own cage.

Which is why it takes Remus a frankly unforgivable amount of time to realise that Oliver Wood really is Not Okay.

A good effort, Oliver – a little light on detail around Unforgivable Curses and you seem to have left out the Imperius Curse entirely, but well done for your first post-break essay!

RJ Lupin, Sep.

Once the weather breaks into a heavy and grey creature – and more importantly, once Quidditch training season is underway – something shifts, and suddenly Oliver comes alive. Where he had previously slumped in his seat near the back of the room, no matter how much Remus tried to get him involved, he now vibrates with a near frantic energy.

Remus knows that Oliver has his team up at ridiculous o’clock because he’s sympathetically listened to Harry complain about it (he’s not sure he’ll ever be over what an utter gift this is – to know his best friends’ son), but from the deepening dark circles around Oliver’s eyes, he would hazard a guess that Oliver is getting up earlier still, running solo drills on the damp grass.

After a particularly enjoyable class – because despite all his aches and anxieties, he does love this – Oliver remains seated at his desk, slumped awkwardly to one side. His desk mate, Percy Weasley, who Oliver is so often paired with because of their surnames rather than any actual friendship, hurries away without so much as a backwards glance, and Remus wastes precious energy on resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

He waits for the stragglers to leave the classroom, sure that their chatter will trigger something in Oliver, but the boy doesn’t move. And Remus watches his shoulders rise and fall slowly –

He’s actually fallen asleep.

(He’s not going to have a spiral about how boring his lesson must have been, he’s not... at least not right now).

(Not when concern is fast overriding the mild annoyance, because he knows the Hogwarts staff work their students hard, but it should never be this hard, no child – because for all intents and purposes, Oliver is just barely of age – should have so much on their plate that they can’t stay awake in class).

“Oliver?” he calls as he approaches.

Nothing.

Remus hesitates, reaches out a hand and gently touches Oliver’s shoulder. “Oliver, wake up.”

Oliver jerks upright so fast his flailing arms catch Remus in the side, and Remus stumbles at the unexpected power in them.

“Shit – shit, sorry, Professor.” Oliver is scrambling, cramming his almost blank parchment and quill into his backpack, face creased with sleep where he’s leant against his hand.

“Oliver, wait – slow down. I want to talk to you.”

 Oliver is eyeing him with an exhausted kind of dread, the sleep in the corner of his left eye trembling with his slow blinks. He lowers himself back into his seat, carefully rearranges his features into something expectant and polite, and looks up at Remus.

Remus says the only thing he can think of – the only thing he cares about in that moment. “Are you alright?”

Oliver frowns. “Yes, of course.”

Remus sighs internally, fights to keep his face gentle. “You just fell asleep in class, Oliver. You understand why I’m concerned?”

“And I’m really sorry for that, Professor. I’m just scunn- I'm just tired.”

“I don’t - that’s not – it's fine. I just want to make sure you’re alright?”

“Like I said, all fine.” Oliver stands and swings his bag over his shoulder. “Thanks, Professor.” He’s leaving but the worry in Remus’ stomach has morphed into a writhing thing, and he’s missed something, he’s sure of it.

“Will I see you at dinner?” he calls after Oliver, hating himself for the odd sort of desperation in his voice, as if, Oliver turning up to eat after a long day and gruelling Quidditch practice will be the answer to his worries.

But Oliver half turns, expression unreadable. “Yes,” he says slowly, carefully, as if there’s a ‘but’ coming.

(Remus doesn’t see him at dinner).

It’s not that he thinks Oliver is avoiding him, because Hogwarts is vast and full of tricks and turns that he barely remembers himself, but he’d sort of like the Marauder’s Map back, just to be sure. Every time he makes eye contact with Oliver in class, he looks away so quickly it’s as though he’s avoiding Petrification. Each time he tries to approach, Oliver scurries out of class with murmured excuses of Quidditch or homework or getting some rest – even though, looking at him, Remus would hazard he’s doing exactly one of those things.

He doesn’t fall asleep again, although Remus mentioned it in passing in the staff room, and received a few surprised ‘oh, me too’ comments from his colleagues. But the utter lack of concern in their voices makes his limbs tight with tension, because why not?

It’s well into October before he next has an actual conversation with Oliver. Outside, the wind is beginning to bite, the trees are dressed in their finest crimson-golds, the nights sweep in ever earlier, but inside he’s delivering a – pretty decent, if he says so himself – interactive class on water-dwelling creatures, and everyone is, for once, engaged and on task -

Except Oliver.

Oliver has a strangely blank expression, his eyes unfocused, head tilted to the side as if he’s trying to listen to something the rest of the class can’t hear. At first, Remus considers leaving him be, because the last thing he wants is to make Oliver uncomfortable – more than he already has, at least.

But then he catches the deep, dark circles under his eyes, the incessant drumming against his leg.

He briefly kneels next to Oliver’s desk, cursing his joints as they let out squawks of protest, and waits for Oliver to look at him. It takes longer than it should, Oliver’s eyes widening as he finally seems to reattach himself to reality, and Remus speaks quickly, low enough that Percy won’t hear over his obnoxious monologue to Penelope Clearwater.

“You’re fine, it’s okay. But can you stay after class? I need to talk to you. Five minutes, I promise.”

He leans heavily on the desk to stand, blinking through the light-headed spray of white dots that momentarily cloud his vision. The rest of the class, he steals furtive glances at Oliver, who seems to be struggling to stay present, but is giving it a valiant effort – like a look dad, I can do it! that's come a little too late.

Surprisingly, Oliver does stay seated as the others leave, and Remus gives him a minute before he makes his way over.

“Mind if I sit?” he asks, gesturing at the chair for the desk in front of Oliver’s. His near-constant exhaustion is crowding his senses a little, but he needs to focus on this conversation – this matters too much for his brain fog to mess things up.

Oliver shrugs, and Remus sinks into it, turning to face him.

“Can you tell me what’s going on?” he asks, not bothering with preamble, and definitely not in the mood for Oliver to tell him he’s ‘fine’ when he’s quite clearly not.

Oliver shrugs again, eyes darting to meet Remus’ eyes before looking away quickly, but not before Remus catches the vulnerability in them. The tapping on his thigh speeds up.

“Do you know what’s going on?” His tone is soft, and he smiles reassuringly as Oliver tips his head in a sort of motion. “That’s okay. Are you feeling anxious?”

Oliver nods minutely, staring down at the hand that’s twisting the hem of his robes. He clears his throat, and Remus holds his breath.

“Muggles call it attention deficient something...”

Remus’ heart does a funny little clench in his chest, only it’s not actually funny at all. “Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder?” he offers quietly.

“Yes!” Oliver looks up sharply, the first sign of something returning to his eyes. “How did you know?”

Remus smiles, a sad, fragile thing. “My b-”

(How was he going to finish that sentence? Boyfriend? Best friend? Neither of which are true anymore, which has him aching in such different ways: one like crushing beetles to powder beneath a pestle, one like the cold spread of poison through his body).

“Someone I was good friends with once had the same disorder. Though he was older when it was diagnosed.”

Oliver absorbs this slowly. “I didn’t... I didn’t know that there were other wizards like this.”

Remus frowns. “Of course there are. Being wizards doesn’t mean we’re not susceptible to the same illnesses and disorders as muggles, even if we treat them slightly differently.”

(In both senses of the word, he thinks sourly, because Oliver’s eyes are wide and slightly disbelieving at the fact that he’s not alone in this. Remus felt the same way when he received his CFS diagnosis, even with Sirius arm tightening around his waist and his friends being the most supportive and loving, it helped more than he could express to not be the only one dealing with this).

“I... didn’t know that,” Oliver says at last, and Remus leaves silence, sensing the overwhelm this has thrust on him.

Eventually, Oliver speaks, clearly choosing his words carefully. “Sometimes, it’s like my brain is all over the place and there’re all these... these little fires and they’re contained, and I can manage them and concentrate on them all if I run between.” He shifts in his seat. “And Quidditch is the one that’s best. I find that one most... I don’t know. It’s my favourite. But then sometimes, some of them get a bit... big, and I can’t - I sort of lose myself in them for a bit. And it’s worse when I’m anxious. Did that make any sense?” He trails off, chewing his lip and not meeting Remus’ eyes.

“That makes a lot of sense,” Remus says honestly, because it’s eerily similar to the way Sirius had described the swing between multi-focused hyperactivity and overwhelmed detachment. “Thank you for explaining it to me.”

Oliver nods, still not meeting Remus’ eyes, and Remus flails a little.

“Do you... do you know what’s making you more anxious?”

Oliver lets out a sharp bark of laughter and it’s jarring enough that they both start at it. “What isn’t? Got classes and homework and assessments and I hate all of it – no offence – but it’s not my thing and it’s so hard and I can’t concentrate on any of it. And my ex is asking if I want to get back together, and Gryffindor’s first match is in less than a month and we have to win and it’s on me to make that happen, and I – I’m losing cont–” He pauses, forces himself to take a deep breath. “Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologise, Oliver.”

He says nothing, but his shoulders loosen a fraction.

“I can’t do anything to help with Quidditch, I’m afraid,” Remus starts carefully, keeping his tone light and gentle. “And it’s probably best I don’t get involved with your ex. But what can I do to help with your classes?”

“What?” Oliver’s gaze snaps back to him again.

“How... Is there anything I can do differently that would help you learn or make things easier for you?”

Oliver mouths the word ‘help’ for a second. “I don’t... I don’t understand.”

“You deserve help, Oliver. With – with all of it. I want to be able to help.”

(With whatever else you’re not telling me, he doesn’t say. With whatever you stopped yourself from sharing).

“I... I don’t know. No teachers have asked me that before.” Oliver’s voice is very quiet, a little crackly even, and the tone of it makes something in Remus’ own chest ache.

“I’m sorry,” he says, even though it doesn’t feel like anywhere near enough.

“Thank you for asking me.” Even quieter now.

Remus swallows. “Do you think maybe you could go away and think about what might be helpful and we can talk about it next lesson?”

(And I can do some of my own research, he adds mentally, because this is on him as a teacher, just as much as it’s Oliver’s to deal with. And you can bet he’ll be sharing resources with his colleagues).

Oliver is nodding before he’s even finished talking, and there’s a hint of something light in his eyes that makes Remus hopeful they can figure this out together.

Review of Practical Assessment – November:

You showed good aptitude with a range of defensive spells, Oliver, particularly your use of Protego and Aqua Eructo.

Keep working on your non-verbal casting – let me know if you’d like to discuss further or arrange some 1-to-1 tuition. You’re doing well!

Remus and Oliver have several discussions over the next few weeks, haltingly at first as Oliver awkwardly explains what Remus is doing “not wrong, Professor, just – not how I need it, you know?”, and gradually more honest as they trial and error a few different techniques.

Remus switches up the seating plan, moving Oliver nearer the front of the class, and away from Percy Weasley (not because Oliver mentioned him being an issue, but because he’s not sure he could cope with Percy’s superciliousness that close to him when he’s teaching). He sets tasks one at a time, repeats instructions as many times as needed, and begins testing students with short quizzes as opposed to the traditional long form essay. His curriculum becomes even more hands-on and visual, as exhausting as it is to come up with and deliver. He doesn’t complain or knock marks off when Oliver submits homework two or three days late or inches below the minimum suggestion. He supports Oliver and other students in making notes and checks in as frequently as he is able.

It’s not perfect, of course. There are limits to what Remus can do with his own limited reserves of energy, a full class to teach, and colleagues of varying supportiveness. But it’s helping, at least a little, and that’s something, Remus thinks. In fact, most students respond well to it, which also helps his arguments with the more... traditional members of staff about why it’s important to accommodate to student needs.

But it doesn’t make things magically better – at least not in the way Remus was desperately (foolishly) hoping it might. There’s still something definitely and unavoidably wrong.

It’s not until mid-November that he learns just how wrong.

The weather is completely fucking vile, and the Dumbledore is criminally insane for allowing the Quidditch match to go ahead in those conditions, Remus thinks bitterly. Fuck House spirit – when the rain is actually horizontal, and the wind is slapping every inch of your face, it’s completely ludicrous to expect a bunch of teenagers to be able to stay upright on their broomsticks, let alone see what they’re supposed to be playing with.

(The James Potter that lives rent-free in his brain gives a fond eyeroll, and Remus quickly darts away from him).

He’s not at the actual game, thanks to another CFS flare-up that’s had him more or less bed-bound for a day or two, and therefore he only learns what happened when McGonagall bursts in to inform him, uncharacteristically harried and seething. 

Chest tight with anxiety and misplaced guilt that he wasn’t there to help Harry (guilt McGonagall is only too quick to absolve him of - “don’t be foolish, Remus, it’s those – fucking – Dementors” – he will never get over the way fuck spat itself from her lips), he stumbles out of his chambers and down to the Hospital Wing. The anxiety has knotted itself into something bulging and ugly, heart pounding an irregular jig by the time Poppy emerges from Harry’s curtained-off bed and assures them that, “yes, Potter will be absolutely fine. He’s resting.”

Harry’s mud-splattered teammates and rain-streaked friends are cheering, sagging with relief, celebrating, but in the midst of the good news, Remus watches how Oliver’s lips can barely manage an upward twitch.

How he excuses himself shortly after, scurrying from the Hospital Wing with such a numb, empty look on his face that Remus feels the weight of it on his own shoulders.

Deciding he can visit Harry later, once he’s had a chance to spend time with his friends, he turns to follow Oliver. Harry and the team will probably want to commiserate Gryffindor’s fucking terrible loss togeth-

Oh.

Shit.

He quickens his pace, despite the way his body struggles to keep up with what he’s asking of it, and just about catches Oliver disappearing into the boys’ bathrooms. A wave of dizzy exhaustion strikes, and he presses against the wall for support as he rides it out, gritting his teeth against the nausea.

He reaches the door to the boys’ bathroom, hesitates, and that’s when he hears it.

A pained, gasping, retching.

He knows that sound.

Remus grips the bathroom door hard, fingers clenching tightly around the present-day.

Merlin, he so badly wants to be wrong about this. Please, let him be wrong.

He's not wrong.

It’s probably nothing - Remus is probably just overreacting and being stupid, and Sirius and James will laugh at him when it turns out to be absolutely nothing -

Except.

The look in James’ eyes hadn’t been nothing.

In fact, entirely the opposite was true; they had been overflowing with a desperate, wild emotion for which Remus doesn’t quite have the name. But he knows the weight of anxiety that landed in his gut at the sight of it like an old friend (foe), and it’s this that drives him forward.

(Because it’s not just tonight’s slip of a carefully careless mask. It’s the way the smell of mint humbugs lingers around him, just barely over-laying something altogether more troubling. It’s the way he loses them between the Great Hall and Gryffindor Common Room, arriving late and tight-limbed. It’s the way he’s stopped preening into every fucking reflective surface he can lay his hands on, barely giving himself a cursory glance at all).

This isn’t nothing.

“Prongs?”

He knocks his head against the door, ears straining for something he desperately doesn't want to hear.

And then of course, he hears the miserable retch of someone desperately trying to be quiet about it. The noise cleaves his heart clean in two, and he flings the door open without even knowing what he’s going to do and –

His best friend is curled around the toilet bowl, one hand bracing himself against the seat, the other cradling his stomach protectively, face pale and pained, and Remus –

There’s a split second where he freezes – and he may never forgive himself for this hesitation, because within it, James looks up and there’s so much hurt there, so much fear, and Remus is just-

Standing

There.

Not this time.

This time, he hurtles straight towards the what came next – the moments after when he managed to snap out of the overwhelming panic about what he was witnessing.

Oliver has locked the cubicle door, which was to be expected, but Remus moves opposite it, kneels on the floor, calls Oliver’s name in as steady a voice as he can manage.

The sounds stop abruptly.

They were so awful – so pained – that Remus is almost grateful for such a heavy silence.

“Oliver? I know it’s you.”

There’s a sound that’s suspiciously like a sob. “What are you doing here, Professor?” There’s something angry in Oliver’s voice, but Remus doesn’t think it’s directed at him. More at Oliver himself, or the fact he’s been caught, or the fact that Gryffindor lost so disastrously “and it’s all on Oliver” to make sure that didn’t happen.

“I’m here to help you,” Remus says softly.

Oliver laughs, but it’s all twisted and wrong, a little raw from the retching. “There’s nothing you can do. This is nothing. I’m - it’s all fine.”

Remus leans against the sinks and sighs. “We both know that’s not true.”

There’s a silence so long that Remus is convinced he’s fucked it up, that Oliver is just going to wait him out and then never speak to him again, but just as he’s scrambling for something else to say, Oliver speaks:

“It’s not fine. But I don’t know how to stop. And there’s still nothing you can do.” His voice crumbles at the end, falling apart like breadcrumbs.

“You don’t know how to stop what?”

Last chance for Remus to be wrong, and he’s desperate to be wrong on this.

Another long pause, so heavy that Remus’ chest aches against it. For an insane moment, he considers Alohomora-ing the lock, but immediately gives himself a mental slap for such a stupid, invasive thought process.

“I... it’s going to sound so fucking stupid,” Oliver says quietly.

“I’m not going to think that.”

“You will.”

Remus sighs. “Try me?”

“Sometimes, I... fuck. I have this - when I get stressed, I sometimes eat and then try and chuck it up again. And it - it helps... For a bit, at least... It’s like... I eat and sometimes it’s just too much and I have to get rid of it... and the after is... I don’t know, better?” Oliver trails off, and Remus leaves space for him to continue, but after a moment or two, Oliver says quietly, “you think I’m batshit, don’t you?”

“No,” Remus says, as firmly as he can with the memory of James admitting to the same thing pressing against his brain. “You’re not batshit at all.”

“I feel batshit.”

“You know how I said there were other people with ADHD?” Remus asks. He pauses, but Oliver says nothing. “There are other people dealing with... this, too.” He flounders for a second, not wanting to give a label to something Oliver has barely begun to voice just yet. “You’re not alone in it. In any of it.”

“Other people make themselves sick when they get anxious?”

“Yeah. Anxious. Sad. Angry. All sorts. It can become a kind of coping thing. A control thing. Is that how it feels for you?”

“... Yeah.”

“How long have things been like this?” He’s hoping it’s not a long time, that this hasn’t become an ingrained way of coping, but the heaviness in Oliver’s voice suggests otherwise.

“Um. I first did it in third year, I think. I... I didn’t do it often back then. I didn’t need to, I mean. But recently... it’s become a lot.” Remus opens his mouth, but Oliver continues quickly, like he needs to get the words out before they’re locked away once more. “I'm not – I'm not an idiot. I know it’s really bad for me. Like. My throat always hurts, and my stomach, and I’m tired all the time, and it’s – it makes it harder to concentrate and you know that’s already hard for me... But I don’t - I don’t know how to stop.”

Remus closes his eyes, presses a hand against his chest as though that will soothe the way his heart is breaking for Oliver. “I - I can try and help you figure that out, Oliver. You’re not on your own.”

“Thank you.” His voice is shaking.

“Am I – have you told anyone about this before?”

Oliver lets out a shaky breath. “Uh. My ex knew bits, but I don’t think he knew how bad it had gotten. You – you can’t tell anyone. Please don’t tell anyone.” The latter is frantic and desperate, the former ever so tired.

Remus lets the enormity of it sink in, responsibility settling into his bones beside the exhaustion. “Thank you for trusting me with this.” He doesn’t make any promises about who he can tell – because he can’t promise not to tell someone if Oliver is in danger. (And Remus knows better than most that the greatest danger of all often comes from yourself). He hears Oliver shift on the other side of the door and knows he’s picked up on this too. “How are you feeling now?”

“Tired.” Oliver’s voice cracks again, and Remus’ heart clenches.

“Can you open the door?”

“No.”

“That’s okay,” Remus says (though it’s not, not really, because he’s desperate to just see Oliver, as if getting a glimpse of him will change any of the tragedy of things he’s learning about him).

“Sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry.”

“Why are you being so nice to me? I’ve – I’ve fucked it all up, don’t be nice to me, I-”

Why wouldn’t I be nice to you? Remus wants to cry, but he goes for familiar ground instead.

“Because you deserve it,” he says as firmly as he can manage. “Because you deserve help, and I care, and-”

“I don’t understand.” It comes out a whisper, the furthest thing yet that Remus has seen from the confident, focused young man Oliver presents to the world.

He doesn’t know what to say. He’s so fucking tired. His limbs are aching no matter how he folds them.

But he’s not leaving.

“You might not understand right now. And that’s okay. I didn’t either when I was in a dark place. But the people who stayed – they didn’t give me a choice about that. They loved me anyway. And it made all the difference in the world.”

There’s another long pause, and then slowly the lock slides across and the cubicle opens. Oliver is crouched there, still in his muddy Quidditch robes, arms protectively folded over himself and eyes damp. His face crumples when he sees Remus, and he ducks his head, embarrassed or overwhelmed or something else entirely, Remus is unsure.

But suddenly, he knows what to do – for the next thirty seconds at least, and momentarily, that’s enough.

“Have you eaten today?” he asks as gently as possible, but Oliver still flinches from it.

Despite that, he answers honestly, and Remus feels a rush of pride for him. “No. I – I felt too nervous at breakfast and then – well. Things turned out -” He swallows hard. Remus takes over.

“How about we do this? You go to your dormitory, take a hot shower and get out of those muddy clothes. Come to my office, I’ll get something simple from the kitchens, and then we can talk about next steps. How does that sound?

Oliver licks his lips nervously, fingers tapping out a familiar rhythm. “Sounds okay.”

Remus tries to smile reassuringly, like he knows what the fuck he’s doing and is a pillar of strength for Oliver. “I’ll see you at my office in a bit then?”

Oliver nods, making his way slowly from the bathroom. Remus watches him go.

Fuck, he prays Oliver made the right decision trusting him with this.

Oliver does turn up (over an hour later, just at the point when Remus has convinced himself Oliver has just Run Away, and is starting to panic), scrubbed clean but still pale and withdrawn.

Remus has charmed the teapot to stay warm, and gently encourages Oliver to eat some crackers as they try and piece together where they can go from here.

It’s a painful, delicate thing; like Remus is picking up pieces of broken pottery, trying desperately not to slice himself open on their razor edges.

“Can you tell me about... Well.” He gestures vaguely, uselessly. By the time James had gotten to this point, he had researched his own eating disorder enough to name it, give a frighteningly mechanical description of its symptoms, list off his triggers like marking attendance in class. That was entirely James, though – astonishingly clever, able to comprehend how much damage he was doing to himself, and yet utterly unable to stop. A brilliant mind caught in a web of his own making, until... Until he tugged on one strand and watched it shake him to his core, until that rebellious vibration became the snapping of threads, until he was finally able to rip great fistfuls of it out. Trails of cobwebs still lurked in the corners, Remus knew, had still haunted him and threatened to rebuild, but James was brave – the bravest, most Gryffindor of all their ragtag gang.

Oliver is not James.

(And Remus needs to stop living in his memories if he’s going to be of any use at all).

But he is plenty brave. Gryffindor to his very core, instead of perhaps to his mantle like Remus.

And it’s this courage that gives Remus the hope that Oliver will Overcome. Especially now, as he struggles to find the words to describe his ‘bullshit.’

“It’s... it’s partly that it helps with the anxious thoughts, you know? But it’s also just. Something I can control. There’s... there’s so much about myself I fucking hate and my body is just – I hate it – but this makes me feel like I’m in control of it.”

And Remus -

He gets it, in a sense. Because Merlin knows puberty had been a horror show, because he's had his own complicated relationship with his too-wide hips, too-soft jawline, too-curved chest. That’s without even considering that his body reconstitutes itself into a monster each month – body dysmorphia galore.

(And even though it's very much his body now, and he adores it for being such, he'll never forget the constant itching, aching wrongness he carried within it for so many years, the things he needed to do to make it feel like his).

But he also doesn't get it, and he knows he never will, because for all the poisonous thoughts his own brain conjures up, they were entirely different to the venom James had described.

(This is another thing that Remus – cowardly, pathetic Remus – cannot and will not ever bring himself to tell Harry about his dad. Not in the face of such kind, anxious eyes, so much like Lily’s he can barely breathe sometimes. It’s not your story, he tells himself sometimes, but at others, he thinks that perhaps it would help the Chosen One if he knew that not even his own father was invincible. That it’s okay to need people).

And James’ venom is different still from the control Oliver is laying before him with such courage.
“So. Today, the match was the trigger for... feeling like you needed to make yourself sick?”

Oliver’s face twists into something painful but he nods. “I - I know it was an accident – there's nothing Harry could have done, it’s not anyone’s fault. But all I could think about was how we’d lost, and it was on me, and that was all I could think about when Harry was – could have been hurt, and... how fucked up is that? I’m supposed to be his Captain, I’m-”

“You’re doing your best, Oliver. Merlin that’s-” Remus presses a hand to his own chest, feeling the second-hand weight of so much pressure bearing down on him. “That’s so much to put on yourself, even hearing you say that is-” He blows out a slow breath, watching Oliver’s face take a resolute sheen.

“It’s just what being a Captain means. But I’ve failed. I failed Harry.”

“Harry knows you care about him,” Remus says, voice soft but full of conviction.

To an extent, Remus can scarcely believe himself when he tells Oliver this, in part because he can’t believe someone who has suffered as much trauma as Harry has can be so good and trusting. But he also knows it in his bones. Because for all that Harry groans about early morning practices and gruelling drills during their catch-up chats, there’s a fondness in his voice when he talks about Oliver that cannot be anything but respect and trust. Each time he takes to the skies, it’s with the knowledge that his teammates are doing their parts, and that Oliver is overseeing them all.

Oliver looks sceptical, but also utterly drained, like he can’t bring himself to fight Remus on this, too.

(Remus can relate to that at least).

“What happened today, then?” he says instead, pouring himself a fresh cup of tea.

Oliver watches the motion, shakes his head slowly. “I just. Started spiralling about how we’re never going to win the Cup, and I fucked up the only thing I’m good at, and it’s all – I just felt so sick and anxious and needed this even though I don’t have anything to bring up, I just-”

He bites down hard on another cracker, silencing himself with aggressive chews.

Remus scrabbles for something to say – he knows there are things he should ask to understand what exactly they’re working with, to see what kind of support they can get for Oliver’s eating disorder (even though those aren’t the words he’s ready for yet). And he needs to figure out who he’s going to tell about this – and –

One thing at a time, Remus. This time it’s the Lily in his brain who’s watching him kindly and he takes a deep breath in her embrace, as he did so many times before.

“I’m going to ask a bunch of questions, and I know it’s going to feel intrusive and like Too Much, and you can take as long as you need, but I do need you to be honest with me, alright?”

Oliver nods slowly, eyebrows knitting and fingers drumming, and says nothing.

Remus falls back on his hasty research like flopping into warm bedsheets. “Do you have periods where you don’t eat for a long time?”

“No – I – I’ve skipped dinner sometimes but usually because I’ve... like eaten a lot at lunch and then thrown up, or I’m trying not to throw up.”

“Alright,” Remus says, though it’s not, not really, and fuck, why is this just as hard this time around? “When you say you’ve eaten a lot, what does that mean?”

Oliver shifts uncomfortably. “Um. I don’t know? Like. More than other people.” He pulls a face, “sorry, I don’t - I don’t talk about this, it’s not – it feels weird to be telling you this shit – this stuff.”

“You’re doing really well, Oliver.” Remus means it – he really does, because he can see the discomfort in every tense line of Oliver’s limbs and the way he’s pulling each word out of his brain like Remus is ripping out his teeth instead.

Oliver pauses, looks into the fire, and Remus can see him making a bargain with himself. All at once, the words spill from his lips, almost tumbling over one another, “I eat whatever, until I’m completely full, more than full, I don’t – I don’t think about it. I’m just eating, and everything goes like – quiet, maybe. Like I’m a bit numb. And then when I’m done, I just feel... fucking disgusting.” The self-loathing in his voice is strong and oh-so-familiar.

“And then?”

“I have to... I get rid of it. I make myself chuck it up again. And then it feels... slightly less terrible, maybe?”

“Slightly less terrible, but still bad?”

Oliver hums, screws up his face. “It’s just a different kind of bad, I think? Instead of shame, it’s just empty and tired.”

The words land heavy – for them both – and Remus leaves space before he forces himself to continue.

“Are you... when you make yourself sick, do you take anything to make that happen?”

Oliver frowns. “No? I – I just... use my fingers,” his voice is so quiet by the end of that sentence, cheeks flushing a splotchy pink. But Remus sort of wants to beam in fucked-up gratitude because thank fuck; it was one of the worst days of their lives when James admitted he’d been taking potions to make himself throw up, not least for the potential additional damage those had done to his system.

He’s been quiet too long, and Oliver is swallowing hard, twisting his hands. Remus reaches out, squeezes his forearm, and releases it. “Hey, I’m sorry. I know this is really hard. And I appreciate you being so brave.”

Oliver blinks hard, tips his head back, bites his lip. “This - doesn’t feel very brave.” His voice cracks, and Remus’ heart breaks.

“Oliver.”

Tears track down Oliver’s cheeks, and he throws his hands to his face. “I’m - sorry – fuck – I never cry and now twice in one fucking day, fuck.”

“It’s okay, Oliver-”

“No, it’s not – it's not alright – I know exactly what it’s doing to me, and it’s not alright but I can’t - I can’t stop-” His breath hitches and Remus sees the moment he tips into the panic attack just a second too late.

The rasping breaths forcing their way in and out of Oliver’s chest are coming thick and fast, and Remus flings himself down in front of Oliver. “Oliver - I need you to breathe, okay?”

Oliver shakes his head frantically, eyes wide and hands clawing desperately at his chest. “I - can’t-”

“You can – breathe with me, okay, you can do it.” Remus takes an exaggerated breath in, and sees Oliver valiantly try and copy. “That’s it, you’re doing it, now out.” He blows the breath out slowly. “We’re going to keep doing that, you’ve got this.”

Remus doesn’t remember his own first panic attack – in fact he doesn’t remember many of them at all – but he recognises the tears in Oliver’s eyes because it fucking hurts and the tense shoulders.

It takes an agonising few minutes before Oliver’s breaths in and out are more than jagged gasps, a few minutes more until he’s breathing regularly enough to return to himself.

There’s a long silence afterwards, Oliver’s chest rising and falling heavily, Remus easing himself back into his chair, neither wanting to be the one to break it.

“I’m sorry,” Oliver says at last. “I don’t know what that was.”

“Has that happened before?”

“Sort of. Not usually that bad – I... I usually just have to wait it out.”
“That was a panic attack,” Remus says gently, and Oliver’s eyes widen. “It’s okay – I get them too. And they’re shit. They really suck. But they don’t last forever, and you can breathe.”

“Fucking hell,” Oliver whispers, dropping his head into his hands. “I’ve - what do I do, Professor?”

“We can get you someone to talk to,” Remus says slowly. “Like a Healer? And we can talk to McGonagall, or your parents, to try and -”

“No, please no.”

“Oliver-”

“Please, Professor.”

Remus looks at him for a long time, his mind racing. He can’t agree to this – he shouldn’t. He has a duty of care to look after his students, and keeping this secret isn’t looking after Oliver.

But the desperation in Oliver’s eyes makes him realise how little he knows about Oliver’s background. He has no idea whether speaking to his parents will help or hinder the current situation. Whether he can even find someone at St Mungo’s or another wizarding hospital to help with eating disorders – there certainly hadn’t been anything like that for men when James was suffering. Whether Oliver realises the enormity of what recovering from this will involve.

But maybe he doesn’t need to persuade him of this right now.

It’s already been so much tonight, and Oliver has been so fucking brave, Remus longs to give him a hug and tell him how proud he is.

He takes a breath, makes a decision, hates himself a little for it.

“I won’t tell anyone yet. But Oliver, this can’t go on. I need you to come and talk to me when you feel like making yourself sick. Or when you’re getting stressed. It doesn’t even have to be me – but I need you to talk to someone about it. And if things aren’t any better by Christmas, then we rethink. How does that sound?”

“Professor - I can’t - I don’t want you to -”

“Oliver, I can’t not tell someone if you don’t talk to me.”

Oliver blows out a frustrated breath. “That doesn’t feel like much of a choice at all.”

“It’s the best I can do. This is how we try and sort this.”

“I... I don’t want to be – you’re busy, and I’m-”

“I’m never too busy for this, not for you.”

There’s a pause, and Remus watches Oliver struggle to process this.

“I’ll try?” Oliver says eventually, looking down at his hands.

“That’s all I’m asking for,” Remus says softly.

He should have told someone. He still can tell someone.

The guilt sits heavy in his stomach. There’s always a lump of it in there, ever since Hogwarts and hiding his terrible secret from his friends. It only grew when he burdened them with his monstrous secret, when they broke the law for him, when he could have killed Severus, when he lied about his mental health, when he lied to Sirius about his work for the Order, when his best friends were murdered thanks to his lover, when he had a complete fucking breakdown: his entire life has been a rolling ball of guilt and he’s picked up enough of it that it’s swollen to fill his entire body, squeezing out everything Remus and leaving nothing but worthlessness.

So, what’s one more thing?

Still, he knows he should have told someone.

But he also knows Oliver is trying.

He can see it in the determined set of his shoulders and the tight smiles he gives him each afternoon. He hears it in his voice in their rushed conversations (“how are you?” - “I haven’t done it if that’s what you’re asking” - “no, I’m asking how you are” - “oh”) snatched between classes. He wants to trust that Oliver’s telling him the truth.

But he also knows that eating disorders thrive on shame and secrecy – both of which Oliver has been carrying on his shoulders for so long now.

He promised he’d give him a chance.

But fuck, the guilt of this may eat him alive.

Remus fully intends to catch up with Oliver for their agreed check-in before the Christmas holidays; he schedules it carefully into his calendar and asks Oliver to come to his office for a catch-up.

But he obviously has some kind of serious miscommunication with his body and mind, because a few days before the meeting, with only a few days of term left, he claws his way to consciousness with the foggiest brain he’s had in months, limbs so heavy and trembling that even the thought of trying to stand exhausts him back into unconsciousness.

The second Hanukkah ends, it’s like his body just gives up and he succumbs to a disaster combination of CFS-flu-depression that has him in bed for well over a week, unable to fathom getting up and hating himself for every single moment of it.

He has so much to do. So much. And instead, he’s lying here with swollen glands and a temperature, a pounding head, spleen-deep exhaustion, swimming through honey to form even the most basic of thoughts. He thinks he hallucinates a little at one point, because Sirius is there, but not the Sirius as he now must be, in ragged Azkaban uniform and wild-eyed, but Sirius as he was, eyes full of warmth and love. Remus has missed having someone look at him like that so much that he doesn’t even care it’s not real, that it hurts, that he’s terrible for wanting it so badly. That his precious compartmentalisation clearly isn’t working as well as he’d hoped.

It’s far from the first time this particular cocktail of illnesses has struck him down, but it’s he doesn’t know if it ever gets easier to think of how much better his life would be if he didn’t have to be like this. If he could manage a full-time job and its extra-curricular responsibilities, and take care of himself, and maybe even – just maybe – get a social life, without having to worry about his energy levels crashing out on him or his brain reminding him he’s worthless.

He’s lost entire days in the grips of his illness, and by the time he figures out it’s 22^nd December, and that the students have long-since gone home, he has a panicked, furious debate with himself over what to do about Oliver.

Remus considers sending Oliver an owl even, but he doesn’t want to make things Difficult for him – a letter could easily be intercepted by a family member, or perhaps Oliver doesn’t struggle like this when he’s home and a letter would be a painful reminder of everything he’s going to be returning to in January.

Or perhaps Remus is just making pathetic excuses for his own incompetence.

Either way, he doesn’t send Oliver anything, nor does he receive anything from him.

It’s a very long few weeks – he's barely recovered from his illness before he’s being squeezed and melded into a wolf, and he’s barely recovered from that before term starts again, and the students return in a buzz of post-Christmas cheer.

He spends most of his days in some kind of pain by this point of his life, and he’s ever so tired of that fact. Hope, too, is a concept he’s long-since bid farewell too.

But if what remains of that hope is but a wax-shrunk, almost-burned-out candle in his chest, teaching has lit a tiny flame in its remnants. No matter how flickering its light, he adores this.

Perhaps this is where he’s meant to be – where he should have been all along.

Remus gives it two whole days before he checks in with Oliver, and it’s enough that he immediately berates himself for not sending a fucking letter, for not pushing through his illness enough to meet with him before the break.

Oliver’s eyes are sunken with exhaustion, his smile a worn, practiced thing. He doesn’t meet Remus’ eyes as he walks into the office and sinks into the armchair, and Remus knows it was bad.

“How are you?” he asks anyway, and Oliver swallows hard, looking away.

“Fine,” he says, and it comes out in a raspy, hoarse whisper that sinks Remus’ heart even further.

“How are you, really?”

Oliver has fixed his gaze at a spot on the wall that’s still got the faint marks of a (thankfully poorly applied) Permanent Sticking Charm Lockhart had apparently used on his portraits last year. “Christmas was kind of rough,” he says eventually.

“Can you tell me more?”

Something in Oliver’s face flickers for the briefest of seconds, and Remus watches a shield fall across him. His tone becomes horribly matter-of-fact, his narrative distanced, despite the pain his words imply: “There was a lot of over-eating and vomiting and feeling awful about it all. That’s basically all I did the whole time.”

It lays a month’s worth of guilt at Remus’ feet and the weight of it is So Much he cannot bear it right now.

“Were you – did you feel able to talk to anyone? Your parents, maybe?”

Oliver’s eyes dart to him briefly, he nervously licks his lips. “I – hm. No, not them. They’re busy and they need me to be fine and so I’m fine, I can’t – I don’t want them to worry about me.”

“Your friends?”

A shake of his head so sharp and yet so weary Remus flinches from it. There was a period where he, too, couldn’t have imagined having the kind of people around him who loved him like the Marauders did, and the period that followed, in which he couldn’t bring himself to let them know how fucked up and burdensome he was.

Except then – when they did eventually find out, when it got too much to carry on his own, they didn’t leave. They stayed, they loved him, they shone a light into the well of his self-loathing that was bright enough that he could start to make out its murky depths too. Enough that he could see a ragged ladder out of it.

Remus wants so badly for Oliver to have people like that too.

But he knows he sort of hit the jackpot with James and Sirius and Peter.

“I nearly wrote you,” Oliver says, and it’s the same suddenness with which everything had rushed out before – like he’s racing to catch the dying rays of a sunny day. “I started a letter to you, and then… I just couldn’t send it.”

“Why not?”

Oliver shrugs, and the motion seems to release something in him, his fingers beginning to tap against his thigh, which begins to jiggle in unison. “I don’t know.”

Remus arches an eyebrow, and Oliver relents.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said. About how I… deserve help or whatever. And I thought I could – I don’t know. When I wrote it and read it back, it just seemed so stupid.”

“I wouldn’t have thought it was stupid,” Remus says quietly.

“I know,” Oliver says just as quietly.

And maybe that’s the problem.

Remus wouldn’t treat this as something silly and light, but that would make it ever so real and consequential.

“Okay. Look.” Remus tips his head back, gazes at the ceiling as though it can drop on him the courage to have this awful, difficult conversation. “Before Christmas, we talked about -”

“You know you can say before Hanukkah, right?”

Remus blinks. “Sorry?”

“It’s just – I know that’s what you actually celebrate – and it was before Hanukkah, really.”

“I – thank you?” It shouldn’t be a big deal, except that Remus is so used to rearranging his life around Christian holidays so heavily secularised that they’re ‘normal,’ that he sometimes forgets what it’s like to be seen in such a simple, meaningful way. “Uh. As I said, before Hanukkah, we talked about seeing how things were and figuring out some next steps.”

Oliver’s expression grows a little guarded, like Wizard chess knights preparing to sweep aside an unsuspecting pawn. “Yeah.”

“What do you want to happen, Oliver?”

“What do you mean?” His face splits open, confusion knocking down his defences in an instant.

“This has to be about you,” Remus says slowly. “I don’t want to tell you how we deal with this.”

“I don’t – I don’t know how to deal with this though.” He sounds panicked and Remus raises quick, placatory hands.

“I know, I’m sorry. I just meant. Did you have a think about some of the things we talked about?”

Oliver screws his face up – it’s a very Peter-expression, and something in Remus gives, like a gut-punch as he fights to keep his face still. “Like… talking to a Healer and stuff?”

“Yes.”

There’s a long pause, and Oliver’s gaze drifts across the office, taking in Remus’ comfortable clutter, the tanks of creatures, the threadbare formal robes. “Maybe,” he says.

“Maybe?”

(He daren’t hope – he knows better than to do something as brave and foolhardy as hope).

“If you think they might be able to help… I – I think the holidays showed me that I can’t do it on my own anymore. And you said maybe I don’t have to. So, if they can help… someone like me. Then I might be open to that.”

(Hope is truly the most blessed sensation, even when it’s been buried beneath so much ash, he scarcely feels it stirring).

“I will look into it for you,” Remus promises, even though what he wants most is to give Oliver a shake and tell him he couldn’t be prouder.

“Thanks, Professor.”

“I still want you to come and tell me if you’re struggling though. Do you think you can do that?”

Oliver sighs, resigned and tired but slightly less hopeless than the forlorn figure who’d staggered in here an hour before. “I’ll try?”

Oliver seems more Quidditch-focused than ever over the rest of the month, despite being more subdued than ever.

Remus, too, hurls himself back into his work with a near self-destructive abandon. By day, he’s teaching and attending staff meetings and catching up on cursed, never-ending marking. By evening, he’s working on teaching Harry the Patronus charm – and being utterly bowled over by the nostalgia of being around someone who looks so much like James, coupled with the complete heartbreak that inspires. By night, he sends owls to the mental health ward of St Mungo’s, requesting information and contact details for the list of Healers they send back to him.

It’s a lot – too much, if he’s being honest, and he knows it.

Sure enough, his CFS flares towards the end of the month, like warning sparks from the tip of a wand, and he grudgingly slows down slightly – but only enough to stop his limbs from aching every waking second. There’s so much to do – there are people that need him.

He sort of thinks that’s always been his downfall – he needs to be needed, will set the ground beneath his feet aflame if it means someone else can walk away unscathed, but his complete lack of self-regard “is not a good thing, Remus!” Lily’s voice cries.

But when someone needs him, when he’s convinced himself that he can help them – the terribly lonely, aching part of his soul that’s just fucking exhausted hurts slightly less.

And that’s all he’s asking for right now.

Don’t worry about the lateness, this is good work, Oliver! I would love to hear more from you in class on this topic, you make some strong points on manticores and their classification. Bullet point your thoughts if that’s easier than these paragraphs, but I appreciate the effort all the same.

RJ Lupin, Jan.

There isn’t a linear path in recovering from this – Merlin, he’d had that exact conversation with James more times than he can count, with Lily too, when she’d come to him terrified that she’d done some irreparable damage in not knowing how to help.

That doesn’t make it any easier though, each time Oliver turns up to his office with a half-afraid, half-guilty expression.

At first, his visits are few and far between, and he comes wringing his hands, bags under his eyes, voice a little croaky from his efforts. Remus loses count of the number of times he says, “I’m glad you came here tonight” and “I’m proud of you for reaching out” and “you’re not bothering me at all,” before Oliver finally stops apologising the second he walks in.

He still can’t seem to shake off the shame of it, no matter how Remus fights to keep his face neutral, to not display a fraction of the anguish he feels when Oliver says “I fucked up” in that terrible, quiet, uncharacteristic voice.

Each time he comes, they sit for a while, drink tea (Oliver has admitted he likes peppermint, Remus is partial to Earl Grey), and talk.

They plan, with Remus drawing on everything he can remember about James’ coping mechanisms and recovery plans.

And each time, Oliver leaves with squared shoulders – a new plan of attack in place, like he’s plotting out new Quidditch strategies instead of trying to puzzle out his own deteriorating mental health.

(Remus is trying really hard not to be too concerned by the way Oliver’s weight fluctuates what feels like every time he sees him. He knows this isn’t about weight, knows that it’s not a measure of the severity of Oliver’s mental state, but he can’t shake off the protective urge to keep him safe from himself).

By the middle of February, they’ve found a brief moment of stabilisation, and Remus takes the opportunity to ask Oliver about the list of Healers he’d curated for him.

“Have you had a chance to send any of them an owl yet?”

“Not yet,” Oliver says, but he doesn’t meet Remus’ eye, and Remus can’t help but wonder if he just can’t bring himself to. “But the one you highlighted sounds good. I… I’m going to try and write her soon.”

He said that last two times they met too, but Remus doesn’t push it; that hadn’t gone over well last time, and he’s not confident enough to risk this fragile alliance.

“How are you feeling in general?”

Oliver tilts his head, a motion Remus has come to understand means not good, but I can’t tell you that. “I’m fine. I just – is there a way to stop stomach pain? It’s making Quidditch practice feel really awful when I’m flinging myself all over the goals with that pain.”

“What kind of pain?” Remus says, trying not to sound too sharp (and likely failing).

“The kind you get when you make yourself sick,” Oliver says, and it’s the closest thing to deadpan he’s done yet. Remus hates it. “Like… like cramps. I’m not sure if it’s the vomiting or anxiousness or… I don’t know. I’m throwing up less now, so I thought it would hurt less, but…” Oliver shrugs.

“Have you gone to Madam Pomfrey?”

Oliver pulls a face. “I don’t want to have to… explain it to her.”

Remus sighs. “I used to go to her a lot for – for period pain,” he surprises himself with his openness, and Oliver blinks, too, but without any animosity, only surprise. “She has potions for stomach-ache. And she’s a lot more empathetic than you realise. She won’t judge you for this.”

Oliver looks unconvinced but nods anyway.

Remus turns to pour them both another cup of tea, wondering if a ginger tea might soothe Oliver’s stomach. “You know, it’s likely to be a combination of your eating disorder and anxiety, those are both -”

It’s not until he’s turned back around that he spots how Oliver stiffened.

“My what?”

Shit. So much for not labelling what Oliver was barely ready to name.

“I’m – I’m sorry, it’s just. That’s what this is, you know?”

He watches Oliver mouth the words eating disorder a few times, before looking at Remus.

“Thank you. I – I like knowing that’s what it is.”

The rest of their conversation is distracted and one-sided, and Oliver leaves shortly after, undoubtedly, to fling himself all over a Quidditch pitch.

Remus sinks gratefully back into his armchair, staring unseeingly into the unlit fireplace, the ash that’s gathered in the corners.

Fuck, he misses his friends more than anything.

The pain of it surges suddenly, bursting the sides of the little box he’s locked it in, and he knows it’s because of how much he’s been remembering James lately. The memories have been seeping out for months, and no matter how hard he tries to pretend he’s fine, it’s a bold-faced lie – how could he be fine after everything that’s happened? Everything he’s lost?

The tears spill over just as a ragged pain explodes in his chest, and suddenly he’s bawling his goddamn eyes out, choking and gasping around the hurt, a disgustingly damp and snotty mess of tears and grief and suffering.

And always so very, very alone.

Remus knows he hasn’t won over all of the students, and he’s fine with that – really. Not everybody has to like him, contrary to what his nasty brain whispers (because it’s actually a lot better if they do though), but there’s something about hearing adolescents murmur nicknames he’s had hurled his way his entire life that shakes the foundations of his stoic expression.

He’s in the library because he knows there’s a book he needs to reference in his fifth-year class next week. Oliver is at a table with a group of friends behind this shelf, but he doesn’t want Oliver to clock that he's there; the poor kid probably needs a break from the person he must be fast associating his anxieties and horrible experiences with.    

He’s not listening in, because that would be invasive and also quite dull, since they’re working on what appears to be Astronomy homework (so he eavesdropped a little...).

“I’ve got Loony Lupin next,” one of Oliver’s friends says, and suddenly he’s paying attention, though he deliberately doesn’t look to see who it is.

“As long as he’s not ill again,” someone else adds.

“My dad says he was like this when they were at Hogwarts too. Always off with some sickness or another.”

“My dad says he hasn’t got a dick,” and there’s a low laugh that doesn’t take away even an ounce of the cruelty in his tone.

“Fuck off,” Oliver says suddenly, and the group stops snickering at once. “He’s a decent teacher and a bloody stoater.” His accent thickens around his friends, a slight lowering of the defences he wears so rigidly in class. “Your dad try to suck him off, Garland?” There’s a pause. “That’s what I thought. Don’t be such a cunt.”

Oliver gets up and leaves, but the group don’t immediately resume the conversation, and Remus doesn’t stick around to hear them eventually do so. His chest feels strangely tight but for once it’s not unpleasant, and there’s a blooming warmth in his stomach that he thinks might be gratitude.

He doesn’t need all of them to like him – not even the ones he's trying desperately to support – but it sure as hell helps when they do.

Oliver bursts into his office so violently that Remus half leaps up, thwacking his knee into the table leg, the impact knocking the defensive spell from his mind with a grunt of pain. When he realises that he’s not, in fact, under attack, and that Oliver is staring at him, wide-eyed and gasping for breath, the adrenaline quickly reroutes itself.

“Breathe, Oliver,” he says by way of greeting, already reaching for their familiar pattern of over-exaggerated breathing.

“Trying,” Oliver manages, even as he fails to match Remus’ breaths. His shoulders heave, hands twisting anxiously and cheeks too pale and clammy.

“You’re doing great, Oliver.”

“Liar,” Oliver says, squeezing his eyes shut, but there’s the barest hint of a smile on his lips; a bizarre thing to see when he’s struggling so hard to do something as simple as breathing. “My – it’s two weeks –“

“I know.” They’ve been talking about the Ravenclaw-Gryffindor match for weeks now, and Remus has been watching Oliver’s ADHD symptoms, and his mental state, slowly decline as time has gone on, despite all of the work Oliver is doing to prevent that.

“If we don’t – we have to win-”

“I know, Oliver. Breathe in, and hold – hold – and out, that’s it.”

Oliver does his best to obey, noisy rattling breaths forcing their way through his chest, rapid at first before slowing to heavy pants.

“You doing alright?” Remus murmurs, standing from where he’s found himself in a half-crouch with a loud groan of popping joints.

Oliver lets his eyes shut for a moment, and Remus just sees his exhaustion, laid bare on his cheeks like war paint.

“Sorry-” Oliver starts, and Remus rolls his eyes.

“Nope!”

“But I-”

“No, Oliver. You don’t need to apologise for needing help.”

Oliver grunts, glares at him through eyelids heavy with fatigue. “Thank you.” It’s the most grudging gratitude Remus has ever received, and yet, it means the world.

“So. Next week?”

Oliver groans, buries his face in his hands. “I haven’t slept in days, I can’t – I can’t-”

“Hey, hey, keep breathing.”

Oliver does so, looking miserable and Remus is… lost.

He’s so far past his abilities here that he longs for a Marauder’s Map to give away all of Oliver’s secrets so that at least he’d have some fucking clue of where Oliver is at. All this time, he’s been so afraid of pushing for fear Oliver will shut down and run away, but what if that’s a Remus problem, not an Oliver one? Oliver has proven, time and again, that he’s braver than Remus could ever dream of being in all of this. Perhaps he won’t break, like Remus would – like he did.

“I’ve got to be honest with you, Oliver,” he begins, and he’s aware the tone of his voice has shifted into something placatory, like Oliver’s some wounded animal. He loathes himself for it but can’t seem to stop himself. “I don’t – I don’t know what to do anymore. This isn’t getting better –”

“That’s not fair,” Oliver snaps, and the hurt in his voice snaps something cold in his chest. “I didn’t do it – I came here – I’ve been coming here like you asked, I’ve done everything you asked, and I’m trying, Professor-”

“I know!”

Remus doesn’t mean to shout.

He doesn’t – he just – something gives in him, and he wants to curl up, away from the pain of realising that he’s not enough again – he’s failing the people he cares about most again.

(Somewhere even deeper inside, there’s a tiny shred of selfish hurt that scoffs at him for the only people in that category being his students, but right now, he spits a fuck you at that stupid fucking voice).

Oliver flinches minutely from it, and Remus doesn’t think he’s ever despised himself more.

Not when Snape had stared with such wide eyes at the creature of his worst nightmares through that awful tunnel.

Not when Sirius had looked at him with such devastation, at the tattered shreds of a person Remus was doing his best to destroy.

Not when he turned out to be the only one of his friends to survive (he can’t think about Sirius in that right now, not now, please not now) – him, of all of them.

“I’m sorry,” Remus says, not even bothering to hide how his voice shakes. “I’m so sorry, Oliver. I didn’t mean – fuck.”

Oliver’s eyes widen, but Remus doesn’t take back the swear. Let Oliver see how much this costs him, how much he cares.

“I know you’re trying. I’m sorry I implied you weren’t – I know you’re trying.” His voice crackles again, and Oliver’s staring at him with such wide, concerned eyes, as though he can’t figure Remus out at all, but he cares enough to want to try. Like Remus is doing. “I just meant – you’re doing such an incredible job of managing to come and see me, but it doesn’t stop the fact that you’re still feeling that way. Your anxiety is still as bad, you’re not sleeping, your ADHD is harder to manage because you’re so tired. It’s not that you’re doing anything wrong, it’s just that I don’t know how to help you. And I’m sorry for that.”

“But you have helped,” Oliver says quietly, still looking bewildered. “I don’t – I know I don’t seem better, but – I don’t think you realise how bad things were, Professor. I wanted to – I didn’t – I didn’t care about what I was doing to myself, I-” It’s Oliver’s turn for his voice to wobble.

“You need more, though, Oliver. And that’s okay. I promise it is.”

“Do you mean the Healers? The therapy you talked about?”

Remus nods, and Oliver sighs. It’s so heavy. So tired. So much older than a seventeen-year-old has any right to sound.

“Please don’t make me give you an ultimatum, Oliver. I’m not a Healer – I’m not – you deserve someone who can help you like you deserve. I can’t do that, I’m trying but I can’t-”

It’s the closest he’s come to losing his shit in front of Oliver, and he fights to get himself under control once more, even as there’s a lump in his throat that’s reminding him of all the ways he’s already failed.

“I didn’t…” Oliver clears his throat. “I didn’t realise you cared so much.”

“Of course I do.”
There’s a long pause, Oliver watching the floor, Remus watching him.

“I’m going to write to Healer Chinen tonight,” Oliver says at last, very quietly.

Remus wants to cry in relief. He settles for the warmest smile he can muster. “I’m proud of you.”

“I know,” Oliver says, managing to sound both exasperated and pleased at once. “Um. But first, I’m going to go and run some drills.” He glances out at the rust-streaked skies.

“How many practices is that this week, Oliver?”

“I don’t know – a few?” Oliver avoids eye contact, straightening his robes and making to leave, and Remus catches his arm.

“Six?”

“Something like that.”

Oliver is a lot stronger than he is – Remus knows this, can feel the muscle beneath his palm, but the fact that Oliver doesn’t jerk away as he’s fully capable of doing gives him hope.

“You know, over-exercising is a symptom of eating disorders,” he says conversationally.

Oliver rolls his eyes, but he still doesn’t pull away. “Yeah, but it’s also all I can focus on at the moment.” He barks a laugh. “Probably going to fail all my exams. Besides. We have to beat Ravenclaw.”

He sweeps out of the room, leaving Remus feeling like he’s run a cursed Muggle marathon (although his CFS would laugh in his face and then declare war on him if he ever attempted such foolhardiness).

He’s not sure what to make of everything that just happened, but he’s exhausted and no longer trembling with helplessness. He badly wants to believe that this is a turning point, Oliver’s proverbial rock bottom, but of course, he’s only ever working with a fraction of the full picture when it comes to Oliver Wood.

Remus sighs, leaning heavily on his desk. He rubs at his eyes, presses two fingers against where a headache is firmly brewing. Harry will be here soon, and Remus needs to prepare for their session, both mentally and physically, but he gives himself just a minute more to be.

His thoughts flit to James, as they so often do when Oliver is involved, but Lily’s is the voice that fills his brain.

“You foolish man,” she tells him. “You need to take better care of yourself.”

In his memory, he watches himself wave a dismissive hand, only for her to catch it, pressing it between her own, raising it to her lips with a tenderness he’s still convinced he never deserved.

“If not for yourself, then for everyone you’re so desperate to save. You can’t pour from an empty cup.”

“How about a broken one?” he had teased, because he could back then. He’d thought they’d had all the time in the world for teasing and joy and laughter and light.

“There’s nothing broken about you, Remus,” she says.

He wishes he’d believed her then.

He wishes he believes her now.

With a week to go before the Ravenclaw match, Oliver has a pretty significant relapse, the kind that has him wheezing with the effort of breathing, holding his stomach like it’s on fire, murmuring vaguely about blood in his fucking vomit, and all of Remus’ hopes about turning points and rock bottoms are dashed faster than he can say Quidditch.

He insists on a trip to Madam Pomfrey, who eyes them sharply, takes Remus aside and hisses “I hope you know what you’re doing, Remus” before letting Oliver go with instruction to rest, for God’s sake, boy.

Her words reignite the panic in his gut, but this is also slightly dampened by the fact that Oliver had finally arranged to speak with Healer Chinen, the very evening after the match that Oliver is pinning so much on.

Five days to go, he watches Oliver blatantly disregard Madam Pomfrey’s instructions, driving the team harder than ever in a practice that makes his bones ache just thinking about it.

Four days to go, watching Oliver wolf down the evening meal in the Great Hall before sloping off early, he thinks the appointment can’t come soon enough.

Spending so much time worrying about Oliver – and all of his student, to be honest, because Sirius’ continued at-largeness looms over them all like the omen they believe him to be – takes its toll soon enough, and Remus finds his own anxiety symptoms worsening. He’s almost constantly on the verge of an anxiety attack, and not far behind, he can feel the claws of everything he’s been suppressing for the last seven months taking shape in the form of a truly monstrous depression.

He feels like a set of Exploding Snap – something has to give at some point; he just keeps dealing the cards in a blind hope that today is not that day.

Not when there are only three days to go, and Oliver is a ghost of his former self in class –

Or two days – and he looks consumed by his own exhaustion –

Or one day, just one day more, just one day –

They win.

If he’s being honest, Harry wins the match pretty much single-handedly, swooping onto the Snitch just moments after delivering a fully-fledged Patronus.

(Remus is so proud of him that he could burst; if only James could see his boy now, with James’ own Patronus racing at those awful boys in all its silvery, stag-shaped glory).

It’s probably just as well, given that Oliver is so pale on his broom, hands clutching it so tightly, and eyes so pink from exhaustion that even Lee doesn’t rib him like he usually does in his commentary.

In the sheer pandemonium of post-match celebration, just as Harry is swept away from him and scooped onto his House’s shoulders, Remus meets Oliver’s eyes and is blown away by the sheer relief in them. Oliver’s lips twitch and he looks away – Remus can’t help but wonder at what point his brain will begin punishing him with thoughts of the next match they have to win, or if it will allow him this tiny reprieve.

Something of Oliver returns over the weeks that follow.

Despite the fucking nightmare of Sirius breaking into the castle and attacking Ron Weasley (and what in the actual fuck, Padfoot? Remus cannot even begin to process that), the bags under his eyes turn from a bruised purple to a cloudy grey, softening around the edges. His work in class becomes less frenetic, his assignments less frantic and (mostly) on-time.

Remus can’t tell how much of it is because of the victory and the fact that the Quidditch practices are now spent in sunshine as the days lighten, and how much is due to the fact that Oliver is now seeing Healer Chinen twice a week, at special permission from McGonagall, who (reluctantly) has been clued into the bare bones of what Oliver is going through.

(Remus doesn’t know what goes on in the therapy sessions, and he doesn’t press Oliver to tell him, but he does know that Oliver hasn’t been to see him in a panicked state in almost two weeks, and that he was laughing and flirting with the Hufflepuff boy Merriweather over dinner in a way he hasn’t had energy for in weeks).

Informing McGonagall had of course involved telling her Remus’ part in all of this, and she had worn an unreadable expression as she asked him to “please come to my office after class on Friday, Lupin.”

Which is where he now stands – once more outside McGonagall’s office like a naughty schoolboy.

(The ‘Lupin’ scares him most of all, he thinks. He’s never been Lupin to McGonagall – because of his transformations, he had quickly become Remus to her, and he’s been that way ever since. Lupin is… cold and unfamiliar and troubling).

McGonagall opens the door, ushering him inside and not even bothering to check before pouring him a cup of tea with one sugar. She fixes him with a beady stare over the rim of her own teacup, and Remus swallows hard, barely feeling the liquid burn his throat.

“How are you, Remus?” she says suddenly, and Remus tries not to jump.

“Fine, thank you,” he says, trying not to betray the wince of boiling tea on his palm. “How are you?”

“Remus. How long have I known you?”

“A long time,” Remus admits. Her tone has turned a little softer, and he relaxes in response.

“Indeed. So, please be honest with me. How are you?”

Remus takes a deep breath. Lying to McGonagall never came easy to him, and he doesn’t want to lie to her now either. “Tired,” he says quietly.

“And?”

“A bit anxious. A bit overwhelmed.” He shifts uncomfortably. “Mostly just tired.”

McGonagall nods, purses her lips. Remus braces himself for – he’s not even sure what. He feels like he’s in trouble, but there’s also so much concern in her eyes that she surely can’t be about to shout at him for keeping things from her.

She lets the silence stretch out taut before speaking, ever so quiet:

“Why didn’t you tell me about Oliver Wood?”

Remus bites his lips nervously. There’s not a trace of anger in her voice. Only something sad and perhaps a little hurt. “I – Oliver asked me not to tell anyone. And I didn’t want to jeopardise that trust – and I know I should have, I know that was wrong, but –”

“It wasn’t necessarily wrong.”

“But I was worried he wouldn’t – wait. What?”

“I trust your judgement, Remus. If you felt that Oliver was at risk, I believe you would have reached out. You clearly did something right for him to trust you so much.”

(He would have, she’s not wrong, but still-).

“I suppose what I’m really asking is why didn’t you tell me that everything was taking such a strain on you?”

“… It’s – I’m fine.”

“You’re one of the most empathetic people I know,” McGonagall says very firmly. “Supporting someone who is struggling a great deal – not to mention that he’s struggling with the same illness James did – is… Well. You’re not fine.”

Remus closes his eyes, inhales sharply. He’s so used to keeping James and his friends inside his head that to hear her mention them is ever so jarring.

“Remus, I –” McGonagall sighs. “I can’t even begin to imagine how it must have been for you. Losing everything and everyone you cared about like that. In the cruellest way possible. I can understand why you might think you need to cope with things on your own. But that’s not – that’s not how I want it to be for you here. I don’t ever want you to think you can’t come to me for support.”

Remus can’t speak – if he tries, he thinks he’ll spill out the fountain of emotions that has been building in his chest over the last few months, beginning with the firecrackers of grief lapping at the edges of his consciousness at all times. He nods instead, blinking furiously.

“I hope you know that Oliver believes you saved his life.”

Well, shit.

The river bursts its bank, and Remus finds his tears falling thick and fast – and shit, it feels good to actually tell someone how hard it is to keep living when his friends are long-gone and only getting further away by the minute. To support someone doing everything they can to destroy themselves, when they may as well be holding up a mirror to Remus himself. To be so helpless but caring, overwhelmed but never enough.

By the time he’s finished, McGonagall’s eyes are damp too, emerald shining an odd turquoise in the firelight. But it feels good to have set some of it free, at least.

There is still plenty trapped inside there; Remus can feel it all fluttering against his ribcage, and there are many wounds that will never scab over.

But as far as sunny spells go, it’s a pretty beautiful one.

I know you did this over breakfast before class because a). I watched you do it and b). the parchment smells like sausage, but if you could leave off the ketchup stains next time, that would be marvellous. Great introduction and first three points though – a strong start!

RJ Lupin, April.

Which of course means that it can’t last.

Pressure mounts as the summer term begins in earnest, the deadly combination of exams season and the Quidditch final exhausting and exhilarating the students in equal measure.

Remus finds himself called upon to do more and more revision sessions for all years: a challenge he gladly rises to, bringing practice papers, pumpkin pasties, and positivity in equal measure.

The downside is, of course, that this eats into his already limited rest time, but he reasons with himself that he’ll have the whole summer to rest once this term is over – if only he can get his ailing body on board with that timeline.

Towards the end of April, Oliver stops by his office with a grim expression for the first time in weeks.

“Are you-?” Remus starts.

“I haven’t. But I want to, so bad.” Oliver looks utterly miserable, arm tight around his stomach, skin a little clammy beneath the tan that must be the result of spending so much time training.

“You did the right thing coming here,” Remus says, the words feeling alien after several weeks of not needing to say them at all.

“I’m really fucking sick of doing the right thing and still feeling like this,” Oliver snaps, his voice hardening faster than Duro. He looks immediately appalled with himself, “Professor, I’m – sorry, that was-”

“Hey. Guess what I’m going to say?”

“… That I don’t need to apologise?”

“Bingo.”

Oliver rolls his eyes. “I’m still sorry.”

“What brought on the uh…” Remus gestures awkwardly, horribly out of practice and overly-tired.

Oliver winces, “Chinen calls them ‘binges.’” He pulls a face. “She’s been working with me to understand the feelings, not just the situations that make me do… that.”

“How has that been?” Remus doesn’t want to pry – he only wants to know what Oliver is comfortable with sharing, and most importantly, that he’s benefitting from attending these sessions.

 He sighs heavily. “Good. A bit messy. I have… all this stuff about control and not being in control when I was a bairn, and it’s all…” He waves his hand. “A mess.”

“And today specifically? About the Quidditch final?”

Remus has been Doing His Best to follow the tournament, but even he could figure out that Slytherin’s absolute flattening of Hufflepuff the previous week spelled nothing but stress for Gryffindor. Needing to win by such an overwhelming amount in just a fortnight’s time was bound to be fucking with Oliver’s head.

But Oliver surprises him –

“Actually no. I – it’s my classes. I’m… I know I keep saying I’m going to fail everything, but I’m actually going to fail everything because I can’t think about anything but Quidditch, and I wouldn’t usually care, but… It’s my last year, and I don’t want to leave with nothing to show for it.”

“I can promise you that you aren’t going to fail Defence Against the Dark Arts, Oliver,” Remus tries to smile reassuringly, but Oliver’s eyes just look bleakly back at him. “You’re not going to fail any of your classes – I can – we can do some revision, you know? It doesn’t just have to be my content, I can try and help with the other subjects too.”

“Why would you-”

“You know why.”

Oliver chews his lip, nodding seriously. “I do.”

“You’re also not going to leave Hogwarts without anything to show for it, Oliver. Grades aside, you’ll have led the Gryffindor squad to be the best team they’ve had in year. You have a group of friends and a maybe-boyfriend and prospects to try out for a great team. And you’ll have survived an incredibly tough year and have worked really hard to make yourself stronger. That’s not nothing.”

Oliver smiles, almost shyly. “Well, when you put it like that…”

“Is there… is there anything I can do to help with how you’re feeling right now?”

He shakes his head. “This helps. Just. Distracting me from it. Making me feel less stupid for it.”

“You’re not –”

“I know. Chinen is really big on that too. It’s just hard to actually know that.”

“I can understand that,” Remus murmurs. For all that his friends told him they loved him and that he deserved nice things, for all the compassion they showered on him, and the patience they treated him to – even though he knew all of that meant that they did love him, there was always a not-so-small part of him that didn’t know that. The difference between knowing something and knowing something is impossibly huge.

“I’m just so tired, Professor.” The words come small and muffled, like Oliver has stuffed them behind a wall that they’re only now seeping out of. “I thought it would get easier with Chinen, but it all just hurts, and this used to stop it hurting so much, but now…”

Remus swallows. “These things take time. But you’re doing an amazing job already.

“The next two weeks are going to be really shit.” Oliver acts like he didn’t hear Remus’ last words, which may be just as well for all the empty hope contained within them. “So I just wanted to give you a heads-up, I guess.”

“What makes you say they’ll definitely be shit?”

“I can feel it. Here.” Oliver presses a hand to his chest – which matches the spot on Remus’ own chest where his anxieties flutter and steal all the air, where his candle of hope flickers in their draft.

“I’m here for you, Oliver. So’s Chinen. You’re not on your own.”

Oliver smiles at last – a real, bright smile, and for a moment, Oliver shines through – the true Oliver, as he must have once been and will be again, as though his mind isn’t whispering the cruellest things to him.

“I don’t feel so alone these days, Professor. Even though it’s hard and stuff. I didn’t – I wish I had been able to –” He seems unable to finish that sentence, eyes darting away.

Remus squeezes Oliver’s forearm in a practiced, grounding motion. “I’m really glad to hear that.”

Except, Oliver is independent to the point of self-destruction (literally), even after all this time, and so it doesn’t exactly come as a surprise when Remus finds himself talking him down from a panic attack three days in a row. Nor when one is because of the sheer challenge of defeating Slytherin by the right margin, another due to the weight of a binge resting heavy in his stomach and his inability to get it out, and another because of what comes after the Quidditch match.

But it still jabs at something raw and aching in his chest.

Especially when Remus has his own panic attack at seeing the words Peter Pettigrew on Harry’s confiscated Marauder’s Map and rides it out solo, clutching the legs of his office desk as he scrabbles for air.

Because, and he means this from the bottom of his long-splintered heart: what the actual fuck?

(The box he’s cramming all of his pain and hurt into is becoming awfully over-stuffed. He can hear it creaking at all times of the day and night, threatening to spill all over the carefully crafted yet unstable structure he’s made of his life).

He liaises with Chinen briefly; whilst she cannot tell him about Oliver’s mental state, she gives him enough to work with that he makes sure he has a stock of Pomfrey’s potions for stomach pain and time in his diary for impromptu revision sessions.

It’s not enough – it will never be enough, and he ought to be used to that by now – but Chinen is kind as she tells him what it means to Oliver that Remus has been there for him, and Remus is light-headed with both exhaustion and gratitude.

It’s almost a relief to go into a transformation right at the end of April (words he never thought he would be saying), because for a few days, he gets to escape from it all, to give into something primal and monstrous and wrong inside him. A creature that doesn’t have to stress about marking and exam papers and over-wrought students. Or ensuring that particular students don’t completely fall apart.

Or thinking about the fact that their supposed-dead best friend is in fact… alive.

Remus hasn’t counted himself as the kind of person who gave a shit about when Quidditch fixtures take place, not since his soulmates had been murdered and had taken everything he was once passionate about with them.

And yet, here he is in mid-May with a burning desire in his chest that says Gryffindor has to crush Slytherin or else. He feels it for the first time, that semi-wonder with which Harry had said the first time I rode a broom all those months ago.

The sun is one giant golden snitch in the sky, which itself is painted the blue of Ravenclaw’s house colours. The stadium stands are packed with students and staff sporting mainly crimson-golds, with the occasional dappling of emerald-silvers, as the respective teams make their way onto the pitch to screams of exuberance.

Oliver himself looks awful. He’s too pale, face the kind of puffy of someone overeating on a near daily basis of late, eyes circled with dark bags and painful anxiety. He sways a little on his broomstick, though it’s hard to know how much of this is because of nerves and how much is because he’s not eaten today.

It’s a difficult match to watch; Remus wants to wrap Oliver in a hug and keep him safe from the world – but most of all, from himself. One way or another, a huge part of Oliver’s anxieties about his self-expectations will be resolved tonight, and Remus can only pray it goes the way they’re hoping.

It’s also a filthy match – Angelina being shunted into so hard she almost slips off her broom, Katie having her head yanked sideways, Alicia being smacked with a club. Remus winces audibly as Wood takes a double-winding from both Bludgers, and again as he lets two goals slide through the hoops.

He knows Oliver will want to punish himself for those ‘failings.’

Except then it’s suddenly over in a tumbling mess of boys-and-broomsticks as Harry takes a spinning dive at the miniscule speck of gold, rising triumphantly above Draco Malfoy with it clutched in his hand.

Remus’ chest explodes with a warmth so all-encompassing he cannot breathe. The pride that courses through his veins only intensifies as Harry stares in disbelief at his own brilliant catch, then up at the stands in an overjoyed shout of “we won?!” Remus is on his feet, aching body for once an afterthought as he yells and whoops with the rest of the crowd – all around him is the picture of joy, and the golden light inside of him spreads and spreads, sweeping the darkness away, banishing his lingering anxieties and self-doubt.

This is hope, he realises.

It’s hope, and Merlin’s beard, he’s missed it.

He looks at Oliver and wonders what now?

Oliver isn’t looking back at him, but he is grinning broadly, brandishing the Trophy that’s been the source of so much grief with a smile so wide it must ache.

A different kind of aching to the one he’s been feeling recently though, and that alone is enough to temporarily put those kinds of future worries on hold for the time being.

Fuck, it’s time to celebrate.

He’s not sure he’s ever been this exhausted in his life. The end of term is a painful flurry of activity and exams, and he’s been flat-out for far too long now. His body is very much protesting its abuse, and he doesn’t blame it. He’s tired of his bullshit too.

Next year, he’ll have to pace himself better.

Next year.

Now, isn’t that a thought? If only the Remus who was convinced that he wouldn’t make it through losing James and Lily and Peter and Sirius all at once could see him now. If only the Remus who didn’t believe he deserved to live out his teens could believe his eyes.

The sun is a soft blaze above them, the air thick with wild garlic and lilac. The path winds leisurely through the trees to the lake, and though Remus is moving slowly to accommodate his pre-transformation aching and post-flare weakness, he’s at peace.

Oliver keeps pace with him, though it must be taking an inordinate amount of patience to walk so slowly when he has so much inside of him, bursting to be free.

They arrive at the lake, settle in the grass, and stare out across the rippling water. The breeze is a soft caress against their cheeks, and, even though there are plenty of other students scattered in mushroom-like clusters around the lake’s edge, their chatter doesn’t invade their little pocket of quiet.

“How are you feeling?” Remus asks eventually, trailing his fingers in the lapping water’s edge.

“Mixed,” Oliver hums. “Excited to be done. Nervous about what that means for... you know.”
Remus nods. “That’s understandable – both of those, I mean.”

“I know this isn’t just something that’s going to go away, just because we won, you know?” Oliver says suddenly, eyes fixed on the lake. His fingers dance an anxious tune against his thigh. “Like, I can feel it in there, even now.” He touches a hand to his chest and grimaces. “It’s just... quieter right now.”

“You’ve done an incredible job of making it that way, I hope you know that.” Remus turns to look at him, allowing the pride in his voice to shine through.

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” Oliver says quietly, and Remus shakes his head.

“You could have. And you will. You’re stronger than you know.”

“But without you, I wouldn’t have been able to ask for help. You’re the one that told me that was okay.”

The pride has curled up into a little ball of emotion that’s now making its way into Remus’ throat, but there’s no fucking way he’s going to cry.

“Yes... well. Remember that.” Remus clears his throat, trying to dislodge the lump but only knocking it further into place.

“I’m going to keep seeing the therapist. I think I need her. And Puddlemere, who I’m trying out with... they’re really big on men’s mental health. If I can get a place there, I think I’ll have people who’ll look out for me, you know?” Oliver pulls up a tuft of grass and begins shredding it.

“I’ll have my fingers crossed for you, you deserve it. And -” Remus hesitates, unsure if Oliver will laugh in his face for suggesting this, “I’m only ever an owl away if you need anything.”

Oliver smiles: surprised, warm, pleased all at once. “Thank you, Professor, that’s... that means a lot.”

After another short but not uncomfortable silence, Oliver excuses himself to go and revise for his final few exams. He hesitates, and it suddenly strikes Remus that this may well be the last time he sees this awkward, passionate, brilliant young man. He stands, silhouetted against the sun, and looks at Remus for a long moment. “I hope you have people who can help you like you helped me, Professor.”

Remus forgets to breathe at the sincerity in his voice. At the way this young man has fought through a hellish year and survived it. At the pride he feels for him.

“I do, Oliver. Thank you, I do.”

(It’s a lie. He has no-one, not since Sirius went and mauled his heart, set it aflame, and scattered the ashes so far apart they are in – literally – different dimensions. Even this tentative safe haven at Hogwarts, where he has McGonagall and his students, where he gets to watch Harry thrive, it cannot last forever).

(But Oliver doesn’t need to know that).

“Take care of yourself, Oliver.”

“You too, Professor.”