Chapter Text
'And your previous experience?'
'On the Continent,' Remus said. 'A French private academy for gifted children.'
Headmaster Jones was not the sort to admit to being impressed, and so went out of his way to tear down what might have tempted him. 'French,' he sniffed. 'I've heard they follow some very unorthodox methods.'
'Quite beyond whatever you imagine, sir.' Remus folded his hands in his lap, laying the right over the left, his thumb curling under his wrist to touch the tip of his wand, currently holstered beneath his sleeve. He had some talent, developed of necessity, in wordless spellcasting, but there wasn't much point to hiding what he was planning.
'We'll have to phone your references, of course.' Jones flipped to that page of Remus' application, lip curling a bit as he read the roll-call of names largely made up whole-cloth. Jones wouldn't be ringing them up, after all. 'But in the interest of not wasting your time, Mr Lupin--'
'Doctor, or Professor if you like,' Remus corrected. 'I have a doctorate in esotericism in application, with post-graduate work in geometrical design. From the Alma Aleron University in America.'
'America.' That tone left little question that Jones held the United States in even greater contempt than France. 'Mr-- Doctor-- Lupin, in the interest of not wasting your time or, more importantly, mine, let me be blunt. Your qualifications, your over-qualification for this post merely begs the question: what's wrong with you that you'd settle for minimal salary at an institution of no reputation designed solely to prevent a selection of unwanted youths from graduating to hooliganism?'
To it, then. 'I'm a werewolf,' Remus said. 'Naturally I'll need a week off around the full moon. All of them.'
Jones blinked at him, his thin grey moustache quivering. 'Even if I were inclined towards jokes, Doctor, that wouldn't be a funny one.'
'I apologise. Not about the joke, it wasn't a-- well. More for this, but you can consider it all-inclusive.' He pointed at Jones' sparsely haired head. 'Imperio.'
**
'Your room,' Jones said, unlocking the door and giving it a little shove to get the warped wood over the jamb. A swirl of dust whiffed away, highlighted by the flickering overhead light. 'The connecting door there is your office. All the staff put in ten pounds a week for the cleaning service-- I'll have Martha in here this Thursday to give you a sprucing up. There's a deposit on the linens, or you can bring your own.'
'That's fine.' Remus swung his carpet bag onto the narrow bed. The springs whinged. 'I'll have my lesson plans to you as soon as possible.'
'Lesson plans?' Jones huffed. 'You'll teach the same maths we teach every year. The textbook hasn't been updated since they invented algebra.'
'Yes, well.'
'You're new,' Jones told him gruffly. 'You'll be full of zeal for a few months, a year if you're committed. You'll want to connect to the students-- you'll have ideas, you'll want to try new things, you'll think you're the first to buck the system and you'll lead the revolution. I've heard all of it over the years, Professor. You're welcome to try, but kindly leave me out of your enthusiasm. I give the same two pieces of advice to all my new instructors. First: don't get attached. These boys are in and out of care, prison, rehab, and back again to us if they're especially unlucky, but you won't save them no matter how hard you try, and the trying will burn you out and break you. Get some distance, and get it fast.'
There was no pretending he didn't find that disturbing, not least for the hard cast of Jones' face as the Headmaster delivered it. 'I'll consider that carefully,' Remus settled for replying. 'The, um, your second piece of advice?'
Jones pointed to a yellowed sheet tacked to the wall. 'The cafeteria menu. I'd advise you to avoid the brisket-- they haven't updated that since they invented alegbra, either.' With that said, the Headmaster turned on a heel and left, dust swirling in his wake.
It didn't take long to explore the grounds. Crowhill Boys Home occupied a turn-of-the-century boarding house, with a small ring of unkempt yard surrounding it on all sides, a barricade against the greater world of Berkshire beyond the fence. To the west was a factory, abandoned at least a decade judging by the number of windows with shattered glass; to the east was an overgrown roundabout branching to nowhere, roads long disused this far out of town. The bleak edge of urban decay was everywhere from the unrelenting grey of the horizon to the sloppily white-washed brick rendering everything in unrelieved chalky blandness. Here and there a car whizzed past, a radio blared pre-recorded laughter. It was the kind of Muggle environment Remus had come to know altogether too closely the last few years. He'd been searching a long time, but that search was about to come to an end. He walked the yard slowly, weighted down by the fluttery feeling in his chest, the bitter taste of adrenaline and anticipation flooding his tongue. He'd been searching for so long. He rubbed sweating palms on his shirt, clenched trembling hands into fists.
The boy played beneath a sagging old elm, in the bough of shade created by a half-severed branch falling into the fence. The boy was not terribly remarkable on first glance, small and light-boned, dressed in the modern Muggle uniform of shorts and a faded tee, a shock of messy black hair tossed by the listless breeze. Only his eyes identified him as Wizarding, a brilliant gem-stone green visible even at a distance, even behind the frames of ill-fitting Muggle eyeglasses. Harry Potter played some solitary game involving stones and a figure made of sticks and grass, sending it on a flight about his head as he chirped to himself, kruuuuck, kruuuuuck. The ravens lining the branch over his head tilted dark heads together, watching over him with beady dark eyes.
'Hullo,' Remus said, though no sound emerged. He drew a deep breath, lungs stretching, and forced himself to smile. 'Hullo there,' he said again. 'I wondered if you'd mind me playing with you.'
Harry hid his little doll immediately, his face wary and closed even as he smiled a thin-lipped smile of his own. 'Linus'll play with you, if you like.'
Remus invited himself into a tailor's seat in the dirt, facing the same direction Harry did, overlooking the rusting set of swings and the sand lot where the older boys played a limping game of football. 'Who's Linus?'
Harry pointed. 'The little one with the blocks. He's new. He's only three.'
'Ah. I'm sure Linus is very nice. Maybe you could introduce us, later.'
'He's the youngest.'
'Is he? How old are you?'
'Six.' This was spoken almost as if the word left a bad taste in the boy's mouth. He forgot to hide his toy, lifting it to his lap to pick at it. A crude man-like figure, with a large acorn for a head, latched on with a tatty shoestring.
'Well, I'm twenty-eight. I wonder if that makes me the oldest.'
Harry canted a look at him, nose scrunching. Lily had done that. The hair was all James, but in manner he was Lily's child, and it caught at Remus' withered heart and breathed something like hope into it.
'You're going to live at Crowhill?' Harry asked him dubiously.
Remus smiled. 'I am. I'm to be your new teacher. For Maths.'
'Oh.' Abruptly Harry relaxed. 'I thought you were a parent,' he said, as if that explained everything. Oh, child, Remus thought.
He cleared his throat. 'No. Did you make that? Your little man there.'
'It's not very good. Benjy trod on him yesterday.'
'Ah, that's why he's all bandaged up.' Remus put out a hand, and Harry reluctantly passed his toy. The shoestring was only barely wrapping the sticks together, and wouldn't have, if not for the tingle of magic Remus could feel in it. The wish and the belief of a magical boy who probably didn't know what he'd created. Remus curled his fingers about it, nudging his elbow against his knee til his wand poked just the slightest bit out of his shirt cuff to touch it. 'Reparo,' he whispered, and a few broken twigs straightened themselves, the grass blades stuffing the torso going green and strong, a bit of brittle rot flaking away. 'You did a very good job with this, Harry.'
Harry was well-mannered enough not to snatch, though he retrieved his toy with relief. He didn't question Remus knowing his name, and didn't question, either, the renewed condition of his golem, though the slight widening of those vibrant green eyes said he'd noticed. Like a child, even one raised a Muggle, he seemed to accept it merely as a thing to celebrate, and he smiled, tentatively, at Remus. 'Look,' he said then, and lifted the figure into the air for the approval of his guardians aloft on the branch.
Remus craned his neck to look at the birds. Ravens could be omens of good or ill, depending on your choice in myth. Canny birds, too intelligent, with their cry of tomorrow, tomorrow. Beckoning the battlefield fallen to the beyond. Before the domestication of owls, they'd been Wizarding companions, and those who remembered the old traditions knew to watch the raven still, to lead them to the lost children, the forgotten places, the abandoned and shunned who loitered at the edges of magic. Remus wondered how long they'd been at Crowhill Boys Home, drawn to this boy like a jewel in a rubbish bin.
'They talk, sometimes,' Harry confided, kneeling up on scuffed knees to dig in a pocket. He produced the crusts of breakfast toast, and three of the ravens hopped off their perch to flutter to the grass. They pecked the crumbs right from Harry's palm, and leant in to his gentle caresses, crooning in their coarse way. 'They tell me all about where they've been, and about their nests and their eggs, and what they've had to eat today. They think about food a lot.'
'How fascinating. What else do they tell you?'
Abruptly Harry clammed up tight, though Remus had been at his most encouraging. 'I know they don't really talk,' Harry mumbled. 'It's only a silly bit of pretend.'
Evidence of his magical heritage, leaking out the edges of his dull Muggle existence. Perhaps they'd punished him for it. It made Remus ache, that thought, and he knew, suddenly, just how hard it was going to be, this task he'd set himself. All the hardship of his long search had led him not to victory, but to a challenge even greater. This beautiful boy was already bursting with talents he couldn't comprehend, talents that would take some thinking on. Not for the first time and most definitely not for the last, Remus cursed Albus Dumbledore and in the same breath thanked him for abandoning this most important duty. It was a crime to hide the truth from a boy who ought to have tutors guiding his first tentative steps in control, who ought to have adoring parents buying him toy wands to channel his nascent magic-- ought to have somewhere to direct that growing power away from accidental outbursts to something safer and more useful. But Harry was only six. Too young to be burdened with a secret he'd have to keep from everyone he met, Remus knew that life all too intimately. It was why he'd resolved himself against exactly this yearning to blurt it all out. It took every ounce of will not to let it out, the word trembling on the tip of his tongue. One word and Harry would know he wasn't alone, one word and Harry would have two worlds in his grasp, one word and Harry would--
Would know he was in danger, would know Remus wasn't the only man to hunt the Boy Who Lived, would know he still had no escape from his Muggle exile. Would grow bitter and lonely, denied the life he'd know he could have, if only. If only. Remus knew that all too intimately, as well.
The Headmaster would be disappointed in him. Distance, hell. He was damn near in tears, and he'd only been sat with Harry five minutes.
Remus breathed deep. He offered a knuckle to the nearest bird, which tipped its head side to side and accepted a stroke along its feathered breast, tamed by Harry's innocent affections. 'I like a bit of pretend, myself,' Remus said. 'Pretending is good for you-- like exercising for the mind. I think you've got a lovely imagination, Harry.'
The receipt of an evidently all too rare compliment earned him wide green eyes, and a smile that seemed to glow the bigger it got. It grew and grew until Remus thought if his world got no wider than Harry Potter's smile, he could be a man content with that one wonder to occupy him.
But the bell rang, and Harry got to his feet as the birds scattered and the students began to head inside. 'I'll see you later,' Harry said shyly, grabbing a bag to hang on his shoulder, but then he hesitated. 'Er, I don't know your name. Sir.'
'Lupin.' He coughed around the unexpected lump in his throat. 'I'll see you later, Mr Potter.'
**
He went back to the yard again that night, to lay wards at Crowhill's perimetres. Too much and the magic would draw curious wizards and witches to investigate, too little and he invited disaster should anyone else follow the same path he'd taken to Harry's side. The constable of ravens was the same problem; how long before someone noticed a boy who could talk to birds, before a tale went out and reached the wrong ears? If there were ravens there would be other signs-- magic gathered unto magic, and not all of it would be so benign as this.
He laid a salt circle in the dark, marked with sigils etched in the air with the flame of a blackwick candle, and cast the Summons. He was not at all surprised the Summons identified a grimoire hidden in the crook of the old elm, a fairy circle growing by the fence, thirteen clustered domes of white-fleshed fungus, and, worse than the ravens, a one-eyed black cat that hissed when Remus removed the rotting egg it brooded in its little sett beneath the edge of the patio. Muggleborn witches and wizards might find one or the other, the edges of the Wizarding World encroaching on the Muggle, like drawn to like, but so many in one place? They were drawn to Harry Potter same as Remus was, and there would be more to tempt him the longer Harry went on ignorant of his true nature. He'd have to be constantly vigilant.
The ravens watched him, muttering and hostile, from the branches of the elm tree. One cawed and croaked at him as he climbed up to fetch the grimoire. The rest stayed to glower at him, but did nothing to stop him as he laid the grimoire within the salt circle and levelled his wand at it.
'Reducto,' Remus whispered, and followed it with a swift 'Silencio' to mute the grimoire's furious scream. A wordless Incendio completed the destruction, reducing the spellbook to ash. The ravens watched as he mixed the ashes with wine and his own spit and watched him as well as he buried the remains between the roots of the old elm. It would poison the tree, and in turn the ravens would leave it. Harry was young enough he might not remember them, in time. It would keep his secret that much longer. That much safer.
He cast Notice-Me-Nots on every window of Crowhill, that would turn away scrying, and he pricked his thumb to bleed and marked every doorway with safe passage runes. Werewolf blood had the added benefit of guarding against Dark creatures, and in lean times Remus had donated a pint or two to hedgewitches in Knockturn Alley in return for a few galleons, but there was always the risk of sympathetic magic going awry. If Crowhill ever burnt down he'd be in for it. A bit of cautiously conducted urination on a few posts of the fence would keep away black cats and their ilk, kneazles, crups, and anything that wouldn't like to risk a predator's turf just to get a whiff of a magical child. He set a rosequartz crystal at the East, onyx for the North, hematite for the South, and beryl for the West, he paced a circle backwards gusting a burning sage bundle around the whole of Crowhill chanting a cleansing charm, and, as the faintest limn of dawn lit the sky a fragile periwinkle, he Engorged a slate pebble into a slab the size of a dinner plate, arranged a lock of his hair, a stem of grapes stolen from the dinner table, and the bone begged from the kitchen, still with shreds of meat clinging to it. He bent his head over his offering and prayed to any of the Old Spirits who lingered in the Crossroads, who sometimes granted a boon to those who remembered them, if they asked nicely.
'I found him, James, Lily,' he breathed. 'And I swear to you I'll protect him with my own life.'
He thought he had an answer in a bit of breeze, or maybe a drop of rain from the cloudless summer skies, but it might have been his imagination. He stayed to watch the sun rise, not for any spellwork, but for the cool solitary contemplation of it, alone with his fears, with his worries, with his tentative, unpractised presentiment of... joy. For so long he'd thought only of moving, thought only of the search, the urgency of every lost day weighing on him. But to the very moment of sitting there beside Harry beneath the old elm, he hadn't thought what it would feel like.
It felt-- pretty damn good, actually. How was that for a new start?
He greeted the sun with a smile, and didn't lose it til the first bell of his new life.