Chapter Text
Remus Lupin was eight years old when he was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis – basically entailing that his lungs didn’t work like other kids did. It basically causes his lungs to have mucus in them, making everyday living very difficult.
It makes it hard to breath at times so he can’t be overly active without it causing pain.
Being an only child and every other kid thinking you were a weirdo – well it didn’t exactly make Remus’s life any easier. His mother, Hope, was always a very bright, and sunny girl, someone he’s very fond of, but Remus’s father was quite the opposite. While Hope had optimism when it came to Remus’s disease and treatments – Lyall Lupin didn’t.
“We spend all this money on you, for you to not even get better.”
Remus was thirteen years old when he almost died.
He had gotten into a big argument with his family, wanting so desperately to join the other kids playing, while his father demanded against it.
Remus didn’t particularly like the games the neighbours’ kids played; but what other choice did he have? Be all alone stuck inside and isolated just like every other sick kid.
So, when his mother was busy with cooking, and his father off at work, young Remus snuck out to join the other kids. They already knew he was sick, everyone did. Barely glancing at Remus and anyone could tell he was sick.
He had scars in his stomach from all the operations, and not even his dark complexation could hide the paleness.
He didn’t like the neighbours’ kids either. Mulciber, Avery – worst of all Snape. There was one lovely girl who always smiled at Remus whenever she’d catch him staring out of his window. Lily Evans, who seemed sweet at first, clearly wasn’t all that great if she was friends with the likes of Snape.
Remus first is scared to interact – but Lily quickly had spotted him and ushered him over to where the other boys were.
Snape snickered and muttered to one of his greasy friends, “Be careful, if you touch him, you might catch his disease.”
Remus, a right nutter of a thirteen-year-old, was ready to throw hands before Lily went off at him.
“Sev! You can’t say nasty stuff like that!” Her freckled face had grown hot with rage.
“He’s right Evan’s, I don’t want to play with a walking zombie.” Avery says, nudging a chortling Mulciber.
That’s when Remus snapped and clocked Avery right in the nose.
Of course, it only got worse from there.
The other boys held Remus down while Avery punched him twice, square in the face. It got his nose and with all the blood – Remus couldn’t breathe. As much as he gasped for air out of his mouth, nothing came through.
His eyes started to cloud over, blinking slowly with ringing in his ears. He swears he heard an angel singing right before he passed out and then woke up in the hospital.
His mother had rosy cheeks, puffy from crying and she was holding one of his hands. She had a tight smile and next to her was Remus’s disappointed looking father.
He heard a sniffle and turned his head to see a snotty nosed Lily Evans by his other side, cradling his other hand in hers.
That was the day Remus Lupin swear he grazed death with the tips of his fingers, and the day him and Lily became best friends.
Now, Remus is seventeen years old and he’s staying in the hospital. About a year ago he was put into a medical trial, trying to find a cure for his illness, or at least slow down the inevitable.
“And she had the absolute nerve—”
“Lily, you’ve been rambling on about this Mary chick for like twenty minutes. I know she embarrassed you in class, shamelessly flirted with you while you were with your boyfriend, but I feel like you’re getting way too worked up about this.” Remus sighs, placing down his book that he’s been trying to read for the last twenty minutes while Lily’s been rambling.
This new girl in her class, Mary Macdonald, is apparently a shameless flirt who embarrasses people (Lily) for no apparent reason.
Remus, not that he would admit it to Lily, is starting to like this Mary Macdonald.
He genuinely tried not to laugh at Lily trying to impersonate her British accent, sounding so funny coming from a Welsh-accented Lily, and only accepting pressing a smile to his fist.
Remus and Lily are both Welsh, and growing up in London did absolutely no favours for them.
Remus has mixed feelings about Lily’s boyfriend – he’s never met the guy, but apparently him and Lily are ‘taking it slow’. Now, generally, that’s okay, but considering they’ve been dating for almost a year, tends to make Remus question his true intentions, and even come to question hers.
“How is your boyfriend?” Remus ventures.
Lily talks about him a lot. She used to hate him, always coming home after a long day of school to the Lupin family to complain about how much it sucks without Remus. Her boyfriend before he was her boyfriend, was supposedly an arrogant knob, who thought he was gods’ gift.
She ranted on about him and his friend group that consisted of an equally as overly confident black-haired boy that Lily had named ‘Padfoot’ because of his weird obsession with dogs, her boyfriend, she named ‘Prongs’ because of a stick and poke tattoo he did when he was younger of antlers, and a smaller kid ‘Wormtail’ because he had a pet rat.
Remus does find it strange how he knows a lot about Lily’s boyfriend and his annoying friends without actually knowing their names. Remus decides not to question it.
“Prongs is… well.” She murmurs.
Remus is currently sitting on his hospital bed, while Lily sits at his desk, fiddling with a pen.
Remus narrows his eyes, “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Lily sighs and looks over to him, “It’s just… he’s been really busy lately. With Padfoot and all that stuff… it just feels like he never has time for me anymore, you know?”
Before Remus can question anything, she continues, “I mean – he’s great. Literally the best boyfriend. But… I dunno. Maybe it’s me? Maybe there’s something up with me?”
Remus thinks back on their past conversations, nothing seems too out of the ordinary. She hasn’t mentioned of anything bad o things not going too great.
Remus can feel himself getting woozy, he went to the gym at the hospital today and it took a lot out of him, as much as he loves Lily, he really just wants to sleep this off so he can sort of Lily’s relationship problems tomorrow.
While he’s thinking of a reply, his hero comes to save the day.
“Okay Miss Evans, visiting times over. Time for Mr Lupin to take is medication.” Mrs Pomfrey comes through the room with a new cart of pills.
Lily sighs and walks over to Remus to give his forehead a kiss before leaving, waving a quick bye.
Mrs Pomfrey has been Remus’s doctor for a few years now, basically family.
“Thanks Poppy.”
She simply nods, hint of mischief in her eyes.
He takes the pills he needs and before bed he uses his high frequency chest wall oscillation vest (AKA HFCWO). Remus tries to make the uncomfortable ordeal somewhat fun by hanging upside down and humming along with the device.
The next morning is the same routine, meds, vest, text Lily, and eat. Rinse and repeat. However today, Remus wants to do a little wandering as he does sometimes. Knowing the hospital floor like the back of his hand.
He goes into the hospitals downstairs lobby to sit in a nice corner with a comfortable seat to read, when he finds his self-appointed spot claimed by another.
The other boy sitting there was also reading and he had short curly black hair and a very pale complexion.
Remus has the nerve to just ask the kid to move but he made a promise to himself that he’s never going to be rude to a fellow sick kid. Not that he feels bad for them or anything, just because he’s felt so detached from everyone else his entire life, he’s not going to treat other sick kids the way others treated him.
Instead, Remus sits on the part of the couch that the other boy is sitting and takes his seat. Remus slightly glances at the boys’ book, Crime and Punishment, a very good book Remus read twice. However, Remus grabs out his own book which is his very first read of the perks of being a wallflower.
Remus likes this boy already by the fact he isn’t even acknowledging Remus’s existence and by his style – wearing a black hoodie and black converse.
Remus has on one of his sweaters Lily graciously knitted for him. It’s brown and his beige designs weaved into them. He, like the other boy, is wearing converse, except his are in brown.
After Remus is down analysing the boy, he grabs out his headphones, chucking on a playlist. First song to play is Killer Queen, and he begins his book.
He doesn’t know how many hours passed before he realizes the other boy is gone, probably due to him finishing his book considering he was halfway through.
Lily tries to visit every day, as one does, but she texted earlier that she’s been so swamped with her studies, she won’t be able to for a little while.
The hospital is in the city while home isn’t, so the trips to get there take well over an hour.
Sometimes when he’s up for it and Poppy lets him, he’s allowed to leave the hospital for the day or at least a couple of hours. Usually that’s spent at home with Hope or exploring the city.
Tomorrow is one of those days he gets to go out.
He facetimes Lily just because of how excited he is, “It’s been a month since I’ve been allowed out, Lil!” He boasts over the phone.
She has bags under her eyes, yet she pulls a weak smile, “Yeah? You gonna come home for the day or what?”
“Nah. Was gonna go to that book shop ‘round the corner.”
And that’s what he does.
He puts on his nicest outfit, (sweater Lily knitted him and corduroy pants) and heads off to that bookstore.
He knows the looks he gets, it’s sort of hard to not notice, the slim tubes sticking out of his nose and his constant wearing a mask isn’t the most natural thing in the world apparently.
He only wears the mask outside, but when he reaches the bookstore, he feels comfortable enough to take it off. He’s not supposed to, chances of picking up bacteria, but it feels just a little easier to breathe that way ironically enough.
He browses section by section, picking out what seems interesting or what Lily’s recommended, when he spots a very confused looking guy at one of the bookshelves.
Coincidentally enough that’s the last bookshelf Remus wants to look at before buying what he’s got and heading back to the hospital to begin reading.
“Sorry,” The guy begins, “Umm you clearly seem like an expert on books, can you help me find one?”
Remus decides to be a cocky little shit because why not? “Why don’t you ask one of the workers, you know, the ones who get paid for this sort of thing?”
It’s a little rude, well extremely rude, but the guy only laughs in response and has a wide grin he’s wearing afterwards.
“Yeah, but they aren’t nearly experienced as you are, clearly. Seems like you’re buying for a whole library.”
Remus narrows his eyes and inspects the man – he has long, wavy black hair and blue eyes bordering on silver. He has on a cropped black top with a long, leather jacket and jeans. Many piercings and a few not entirely professional looking tattoos yet he looks very young, like he’s Remus’s age.
Remus himself only has one tattoo he did to himself after hearing about how Prongs got his name, and he got ink and a pin and indented a crescent moon on the inside of his wrist that remains to this day.
Remus wants to ignore this entire exchange happens, so he decides he’ll look in that aisle another day, so he walks over to the somewhat long line of customers, and the guy follows behind.
“What’re you, following me?” Remus grunts, struggling to keep the book upright. Remus has on fingerless; cotton gloves Lily also knitted him because anyone not touching him is crucial. However, it’s hard to turn a page with gloves so he cut the fingers off of it.
Remus plants the book pile on the ground for a moment the take the gloves off as they’re making the books slippery.
When he lifts up the books; his sleeve rides up and catches the guy’s attention, “Nice tattoo.” He says, suppressing a smile.
Remus glares and just looks ahead, wanting to go back to the hospital now.
Remus gets distracted for a second, looking over to see how many people are in front of him, when the guy takes half of Remus’s stack to hold.
Remus’s eyebrows furrow, offended, like his best friend, Remus always had a bit of a fiery streak, just his was a lot angrier than Lily’s ever was.
“So, because I’m sick it means I can’t carry my own books?! Now who do you think you are?” It isn’t until after his outburst, Remus realises his mistake. The look on the guy’s face is clearly panicked and eyes widened. He clearly didn’t even realise Remus was sick or at least that wasn’t the reason he helped him with his books.
“I—sorry I wasn’t insinuating anything… just—looked like you were struggling so I thought I’d…” The guy is clearly still panicked, an embarrassed blush washing over his face.
Remus sighs, feeling that familiar guilt wash over him, and he walks over to the bookshelf the guy was lingering at before, leaving behind his spot in line and the guy.
He eventually catches up, “What book were you looking for?” Remus asks.
The man’s eyes light up, “Uhm…” He drawls on, “It was like – Something, something, flower something.”
Remus represses another sigh, “How can you not know the name of the book you want?”
“Well, it’s not for me. I was just asked to pick it up.”
Despite it probably not being the book, the most recent book Remus can think of is the one he read yesterday, “Was it, The Perks of being a Wallflower?”
The man’s eyes light up, “Yes! That’s the one.”
Remus looks all over for the book, accepting defeat by asking one of the stocker’s if they have the book, they said that they don’t, but they have other one’s just like it.
The man seems so sad as they get back into line, still carrying half of Remus’s books.
“Hello, how are you?” The cashier asks politely.
Remus nods, “Alright, you?” The woman hums in affirmation.
Remus glances at the nametag, Dorcas, Remus raises an eyebrow, unique name, he ponders.
The man places the rest of the books on the counter, the woman only reacting with her eyes widening slightly.
There’s a reason Remus is buying so many books, one, physical copies are better, and two there’s a sale on, on this particular bookstore.
“And that brings your total to… 79.99 pounds.” It might seem like a lot if he didn’t have a gift card for this exact use.
It’s all bagged which makes it easier to carry, and Remus puts on his gloves and mask before leaving the bookstore. When he walks out, the man walks out behind him, and Remus reaches into his bag passing him his now freshly annotated copy of The Perks of being a Wallflower.
The man’s eyes light up and a grin grows on his face, making funny things happen to Remus’s stomach.
“I—” The man begins before Remus waves him off, “I just hope your friend doesn’t mind messy annotations.”
“Well, actually, it’s for my brother, and thank you. Considering I can barely read any of his books with the amount of writing his has on them – I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
Remus only smiles in return but can’t be seen behind his mask.
“You heading that way?” The man asks, pointing towards the opposite direction Remus is going.
“Nah.” He shakes his head and points the direction he’s going to. He wants to get some takeaway for dinner to sneak into the hospital because to be honest, food there sucks.
The man looks oddly sad at this and just clicks his tongue, “Well then. See you around I suppose.”
Remus, despite it all, really, actually, hopes he does.