If Any Calm, a Calm Despair

She's worried about him lately – he hasn't been sleeping.

Nobody's really been sleeping much or well, but Remus hasn't been sleeping at all, and it makes Molly fret for him. He's never been in the best of health, of course, and lately even at the new moon, when he should be strongest, he looks terrible. His eyes and cheeks are sunken. His skin is a pale, ashy grey. His fingernails are probably purplish – it's as if the life of him is retreating as far into his body as it can, shrinking into something compact, easy to hide, and the outside is starting to show it.

"Leave him be, Molly," Arthur says mildly. "He's got the right to grieve in peace."

Well, everyone has the right to do a number of things in peace, haven't they, but peace is in short supply just now. Only Arthur Weasley could calmly drink his tea and read his newspaper every morning and then put on his hat and go out the door and battle the forces of darkness wherever he happens to meet them. Everyone else generally looks apprehensive at breakfast and grim at dinner, but Arthur always manages to find something to be cheerful about. The love of her life, he is, but there are times she just wants to put her hands around his neck and shake him.

I'm not sure I'll be able to stand seeing Harry. It's been eight weeks and three days since – it's been a month since we sent him back home with his family, but tomorrow is his birthday.

He's been owling every second or third day to let us know the Muggles are treating him all right. Molly and Arthur and a couple of the kids are going to get him tonight and take him back again in the morning on the first; he'll have the whole of his birthday away from there, for a change. ("With family," Molly said, and quite firmly, too. Her own children didn't argue with her.)

I'm not at all sure I'll be able to stand seeing him. I'll do it, of course, but it'll be damn near unbearable. Lily's eyes in James' face, with Sirius' temperament –

Sixteen years old, and there's nothing about the boy that doesn't hurt my heart.

Harry and Hermione and Neville and the four youngest Weasleys have gone up to the roof with a case of summer cider. Molly imagines they're leaning against the chimney pots and having the sort of terribly profound conversation teenagers can't have in the presence of adults. She peeks into Harry's room to make sure his things are packed to go back to Surrey in the morning – they're not, of course, but no doubt he'll just throw them in a bag when it's time to leave – and carefully shuts the door again before heading downstairs.

Arthur and Bill have done the washing-up, bless them, and Arthur has already gone to bed. "Early morning tomorrow, he said," Bill tells her as he hands her a spoon for her tea, "and he's knackered as it is."

"Said that with a smile, did he?"

"Doesn't he always?"

They sip their tea quietly for several minutes before Molly speaks again. "Where's Remus, do you know?"

"Mum," Bill says. It sounds like a warning.

It shouldn't have seemed like such a crowd: Harry, Hermione Granger, seven Weasleys, Neville Longbottom, and – saints preserve us – Frank Longbottom's mother, when she dropped Neville off (though she didn't stay for dinner). But it felt like an army, a whole army with repeating guns that instead of ack-ack-ack said and-how-are-you-doing-Remus? I don't know what their investment is in how I'm doing, but they won't let the subject alone.

Young Neville said "You're looking well, Professor, hang in there." His grandmother said "Pull yourself together and snap out of it, Lupin. You've got to get back to bloody living." Various Weasleys urged me to keep my chin up, remember the past but look to the future, and so forth. Hermione told me I needed to be strong for Harry.

Molly glared at her, so I didn't have to bother doing it myself.

They've closed up the Burrow for the duration, Albus having convinced them that Devonshire is too remote. First war in generations that has people moving into the cities for safety.

There's little change from one day to the next. Both sides are regrouping, building up their numbers, so there aren't pitched battles in the streets or anything. Once in a while there's a skirmish and someone is hurt, but mainly there's a lot of spying, a fair amount of mistrust, and a good deal of favour-exchanging. Politics, all of it.

Remus doesn't seem to do much. He reads quite a bit, and drafts correspondence for Albus and sometimes for Arthur. And he stares. He stares at nothing. He'll sit alone and stare at the window for hours, which is one thing; but he'll sit in a group and stare at some spot in the middle distance until someone says "... Remus?" and he remembers he was saying something. He never goes outdoors, now.

Molly doesn't allow the children outdoors, either, although of course the youngest of the children is fifteen years old and they'd probably all of them jolly well go if they wanted to. They stay in, instead, where she can see them, though occasionally she wonders who's keeping an eye on whom. It seems they don't mind – or at least, they don't fuss. They're off to school again soon anyhow.

Outside, the summer is wearing away.

I don't think very young children can see boggarts at all. Before they've learned to fear, I mean – to a person actually free from care, what form would the boggart take?

Boggarts have shown me the full moon since the morning after I was bitten. As a boy, I was afraid of the physical process of the change – it hurt, and I was afraid of the pain. Later, my greatest fear was that my secret would be discovered; I could handle the transformation, but not the horror and disgust of everyone I knew, of total strangers, of all society.

Even after it became generally known that I was what I am, my boggart was still the full moon. The thought that I might hurt others – the moon compels me, and I might harm those who trust me to keep them safe –

The full moon was the cause of all these things I feared. But I don't see it any more.

Molly hadn't known Remus had even left the house until Alastor brings him home one evening. He looks almost sullen, and goes upstairs while Alastor is still telling Arthur about not having let him in to the Department of Mysteries.

Downstairs, the conversation is urgent and unhappy. Arthur's face is troubled, and Alastor looks more determined than usual. Harry insists that Remus could only have been going in for the purpose of bringing Sirius out; nobody else thinks that's even a possibility. Hermione says it's a good sign, a cry for help, but everyone past the age of about seventeen knows that if Remus had been crying out for help, he'd have told someone where he was going. He hadn't even told Alastor – he'd done everything he could to avoid giving anyone a chance to talk him out of it.

Young Tonks is near tears, and Kingsley Shacklebolt is walking a groove into the floor. Only Bill is looking at Molly as she slips out to go upstairs and talk to Remus rather than about him. Bill raises an eyebrow at her; she raises one back and he turns back to the group without a word.

She finds him in the first-floor drawing room where he found her a year ago. He's hunched up on the sofa, staring at nothing. She steps around to stand beside him. "Remus?" He blinks and turns his head.

Suddenly, before Molly's eyes, Ginny appears – bleeding, limp on the floor, her neck broken. Molly gasps, but sets her jaw. Ginny is downstairs with the others. "Riddikulus," she says firmly. The boggart turns into a rag doll with Charlie's broad grin, but the rag doll has a gash in its middle and stuffing hanging from it. Molly takes a shuddering breath.

Remus whistles once, sharply, and flicks his wand – he speaks no incantation, but the boggart disappears.

She doesn't know what he did, but after a moment the boggart has still not rematerialized. She sits down next to him. "Thank you."

"Glad to," he says.

Who knows how long it'll be until I can get out again, now that I'm sure Moody is setting a schedule for everyone to keep an eye on me. Constant vigilance.

Molly is wringing her hands and waiting, I'm sure, for me to speak. She's always been a friend; I almost wish I had something to say. After several minutes, she leans her head on my shoulder and pats my back. Maybe it comforts her.

"I had no idea it was –" she says. "I knew you were – but I didn't realize. I didn't realize it had gone this far."

"No."

She sits up straight and pulls me down to lean on her and be comforted instead. I let her settle my head on her knee and stroke my hair back from my forehead. "I imagine you don't want to talk about it."

"When have I ever wanted to talk about it?"

"You don't know what's back there. If you don't find him, what – do you know what to expect?"

"It doesn't matter." And it doesn't. That's twelve boggarts since June that have vanished at the sight of me. I'm even more convinced I'm right about what this means. "I'm not afraid." I shift slightly, just so her kneecap isn't digging into my cheekbone. "Not any more, Molly."