FicWad

The first thing I felt was the light.
Not the weight of the day, or the knot in my chest that usually greeted me. Just light. Soft and golden, spilling through the tall windows like it had been waiting for me to wake. It slid across the floorboards in wide, lazy streaks, catching on little dust motes floating through the air. They hung there like tiny suspended spells—glimmering, harmless, peaceful.
For the first time in what felt like ages, I didn’t want to move.
Outside, the world had already begun. I could hear it, faint but steady—someone scraping a chair across a patio, tyres crunching over gravel, a laugh carried on the breeze. The kind of laugh you didn’t question. Light and full and real.
It sounded like another life. Someone else’s life. I sat there, on the edge of the bed, feet brushing the cool floor, trying to remember if I’d ever woken up to a morning like this without a clock ticking in my head.
The room looked different in sunlight. Gentler. The Quidditch posters stirred in the breeze from the open window, the figures inside looping slowly as if they, too, had nowhere to be. Krum was on one of them—legs loose over his broom, arms behind his head, not a care in the world.
I envied that. The ease of it. The freedom of not needing to be anything but himself.
Across the room, my owl shifted on her perch, feathers ruffled like she was unimpressed by my slow start. She gave a small hoot. Not urgent—just a nudge. A quiet complaint from someone who thought I ought to be doing more.
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, though my voice came out rough. Mornings always made me quiet. It felt wrong to speak before the day had properly settled.
I knelt by the trunk at the foot of my bed, half-packed like everything in my life. Shirts wrinkled into corners, books jumbled with bits of parchment and empty wrappers. A few potion vials clinked as I shoved things aside to find something clean. I didn’t look too closely—I just pulled on what was nearest.
It didn’t matter. Not today. Not here.
The stairs creaked beneath my feet as I made my way down, but it didn’t feel like a warning. More like… an acknowledgement. The way old floorboards do when a house remembers you. This place had a memory of its own—scuffed edges and soft corners, like it had been lived in properly, not just passed through.
It wasn’t Hogwarts. But it was something.
And then the smell hit me.
Toast. Something sweet was baking. Tea, strong and herbal, the way Remus liked it. It wrapped around me like a blanket I hadn’t realised I needed. I could’ve floated on it.
Remus stood at the stove already, sleeves rolled up, wand drifting lazily as it stirred the kettle where it hovered above the flame. The scent of rosemary hung in the air. There was a calmness to him this morning. Not forced, not put on. Just… quiet. Like even he had let his guard down a little.
I lingered in the doorway for a moment, watching him in the soft light. He moved with the kind of ease that only comes when you’ve stopped running, at least for a little while.
And for that brief second, standing there barefoot in someone else’s kitchen, sunlight on my back, I let myself believe—just for a moment—that this might be enough.
Not forever. But for now.
“Good afternoon, Harry,” Remus said with a sly smile, not bothering to turn around.
I snorted. “Barely.”
He passed me a mug without looking, like he’d done it a hundred times before. The tea was perfect—sweet, with a trace of chamomile. Calming. He always seemed to know what I needed before I did.
I took a long sip, letting the warmth spread through me, softening the sharp edges. It didn’t make the ache disappear, but it made it quieter. Bearable.
“Toast?” he asked. “Or feeling fancy today—scrambled eggs?”
“Eggs,” I said quickly. It wasn’t about being fancy. It wasn’t even about the food. It was the ritual. The comfort of being asked something simple and being able to answer. Of someone standing at the stove who wasn’t preparing for battle.
I leaned against the counter, eyes drifting to the window. Outside, the village rolled on, untouched. Gardens in bloom. Neighbours chatting. Someone walking a dog past the postbox. All of it oblivious to who we were and what we carried. Blissfully normal.
For a while, we didn’t speak. The soft sounds of cooking filled the space between us—oil crackling in the pan, the quiet scrape of metal on ceramic. It should’ve felt empty. Instead, it felt… still. Like the house was holding its breath with us.
But Remus, always too aware, broke the silence gently.
“You’re quiet today,” he said. Not a question. Just a note.
I hesitated. I didn’t want to lie. But I didn’t want to explain either.
“It’s nothing,” I said too quickly. And I hated how unconvincing it sounded.
Remus didn’t push. He never did.
Still, the words came anyway. Slipped out before I could catch them. “Just… a bad dream.”
He shifted then, almost imperceptibly. Shoulders drawing in, his body turning slightly toward me. His eyes—always so damn kind—narrowed in concern.
“Harry,” he said softly, “that’s not nothing.”
He stepped closer. He reached out and lifted my chin with his fingers, the way he used to when I was younger—like I might look away and lose myself in the quiet again.
And maybe I would have. But not this time.
There was something grounding in his touch. In the way he looked at me, not just as a boy with scars but as someone he saw. Really saw.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it’s not easy. Especially here. Especially now.”
I looked at him. The lines on his face seemed deeper in the morning light. The skin beneath his eyes was darker. He looked like someone who hadn’t just missed sleep—but had given too much of himself away, again and again.
He turned back to the stove and stirred the eggs. The movement felt final. A quiet full stop.
“We’re only here temporarily,” he said, his voice almost lost to the breeze slipping through the window. “You know that.”
I nodded, and something inside me tightened. Of course I knew. We never stayed anywhere long. Safety was always borrowed time. No matter how soft the bed or how good the tea, it was just a pause before the next sprint.
“I just…” I started, then faltered. The rest of it tangled in my throat.
I just want to stay. I just want this to be real. I just want to stop running.
Instead, I gave a small nod. A barely-there dip of the chin. I hoped it said everything I couldn’t.
Remus noticed. He always did.
“There’s no need to worry,” he said, softer now. “We have plenty of time to talk later.”
Later.
The word hung in the air, light and delicate. Like a promise or a spell—something fragile I didn’t dare breathe too hard around.
I repeated it to myself. Let it settle into the quiet ache inside me.
Later meant we were still here. It meant we might be here tomorrow, too. It meant maybe we had a little more time.
I clung to that.
It was all I had.
Staying with Remus had become a necessity. A calculated precaution. I knew that.
But knowing didn’t make it easier.
He said it was for my safety, and maybe it was. But with every passing day, I felt more like a burden—an obligation tethered to a man who had already borne too much. His curse hung over us, always looming, even in silence. The full moon might still be weeks away, but I could feel it—in the tightness of his jaw, in the flashes of pain that flickered across his face when he thought I wasn’t looking.
Morning light spilt through the curtains, falling across his face and casting faint shadows into the hollows beneath his cheekbones. His clothes hung loose—worn brown trousers and a threadbare shirt so faded it was nearly translucent in the sun. He didn’t look like a protector. Not the kind people imagined, anyway. And yet, there was something unshakably dignified in him. A quiet strength in the tired grace of his movements. Battle-worn, yes. But never broken.
And I wondered—not for the first time—how he could protect me when he was barely holding himself together.
I looked away, heat crawling up my neck. In the cracked mirror above the sink, my reflection met me: narrow frame, pale skin, unruly black hair. And the eyes—those cursed eyes—green and too much like hers. The glasses perched askew on my nose made me look like what I already knew I was: fragile. Human.
People said I had my mother’s eyes.
But all I saw in them was expectation.
Remus placed the eggs on a plate and handed it to me and took his half-eaten plate in the sink with a care that looked practiced, almost deliberate. Then he crossed to the window seat and sank down with a quiet sigh, unfolding the Daily Prophet like someone bracing for bad news.
“What’s new?” I asked, though I already knew.
He didn’t answer—just tilted the paper toward me. I didn’t need the headline. The photo said enough.
A ruin smouldered in the frame, smoke curling upward, and above it: the Dark Mark. Pale green and cruel, etched into the sky like a wound on the world.
“Muggles live in fear now,” he said at last, voice frayed and distant.
The guilt twisted sharp and immediate in my chest. I looked around at the kitchen—the warmth still in the air, the scent of toast lingering. How dare we have this peace while others had none?
“What can we do to help them?” I whispered. “While we sit in safety, they’re out there fighting for their lives.”
Remus turned to me slowly, his gaze shadowed, something unreadable moving behind it.
“Your path has already been laid out before you,” he said. “Even if you can’t see it yet.”
The words hit like cold stone. I didn’t want a path. I didn’t want prophecy.
I wanted choice.
But that had never really been mine.
In the silence that followed, fear crept in again—slow, insidious. Not just for me. For all of them. For the people who still looked to me like I might have answers. Like being Harry Potter meant I could save them.
I wasn’t sure I could save anyone.
“They’re scared,” I murmured. “And we can only watch, powerless to help.”
Remus said nothing for a long moment. Just folded the paper, slow and deliberate, and set it aside. His face was unreadable, but his voice, when it came, was soft.
“Fear can paralyse. But it can also move people to act. You’ve seen that. You’ve lived it. And more than that—you’ve inspired it. Hope, I mean. Even in the darkest moments.”
Hope.
The word cracked something open in me.
Too tender. Too raw. Too fragile.
Faces rose unbidden in my mind—people who had believed in me, fought beside me, and died for me. Their memories burnt like old photographs caught in fire.
And still, I was here.
And that, somehow, was the hardest part of all.
“I don’t feel like hope,” I whispered. “I feel like a mistake. A name in a story I don’t know how to finish.”
Remus turned to face me fully now, his gaze steady and quiet.
“There has to be something we can do,” I said, louder this time. Desperation leaked into every syllable. “Anything.”
He smiled, but it was the kind of smile that carried ghosts. “Perhaps. But it starts here.” He tapped his chest lightly. “Changing the world begins with learning to change yourself.”
Outside, the trees bent in the wind, their branches shivering like they’d overheard us.
“Master your magic,” he said, voice softening. “Become the kind of wizard who doesn’t just react—but who leads. The kind of man who can carry what’s coming.”
I bit my lip. “You really think I can do this?”
“Yes,” he said, without pause. “But not all at once. Today, practise the spell I showed you. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about what comes next. One footfall at a time, Harry.”
His voice anchored me. Pulled me back from the edge.
One step.
One breath.
One spell.
I nodded. The knot in my chest loosened a little. Outside, the wind howled. Inside, the warmth held.
The village had a rhythm of its own—slow, unhurried, like a heartbeat keeping steady in a world that wasn’t. And though Remus and I tried to blend into its gentle hum, we were just slightly offbeat. A melody half a note too sharp.
Ottery St Catchpole was lovely in that aching way old places are. Cobblestone streets curved around ivy-covered cottages, and each morning arrived cloaked in birdsong and the scent of jasmine. Neighbours lingered on stoops. Milk bottles waited unguarded by doorsteps. Dogs napped under sun-dappled fences.
But beneath the softness, there was a current. Sideways glances. Polite curiosity that barely disguised suspicion. We were strangers. A boy with watchful eyes and a man who had scratch marks on his face.
If they only knew.
We weren’t guests or distant cousins coming for air and rest.
We were fugitives. Ghosts in plain sight.
Sometimes, when the wind shifted, I could almost hear it—the faint crack of Apparition, the cruel laughter of Death Eaters threading through the trees, the low rumble of a world unravelling. But here, on this little hilltop overlooking windmills and fields, it felt impossibly far away.
I wanted to believe in the peace of it.
Remus’s voice cut gently through the haze of my thoughts.
“Do you agree, Harry?”
I blinked. “Sorry—what?”
His face didn’t shift, but the weariness in his eyes deepened. Not anger, just… exhaustion. A man used to carrying too much and still somehow finding space for one more burden.
“We were talking about Hogwarts,” he said. “About keeping a low profile.”
Right. Hogwarts. The return.
It felt strange—to be going back. Stranger still to pretend I was just another student when everything in me said I wasn’t. But Dumbledore had arranged it. A kind of protection, I supposed. An enchanted fortress wrapped in memory and stone.
Still, the idea of walking those corridors again—of slipping into teenage routine while the world burnt—felt absurd. Like wearing clothes I’d long since outgrown.
“We’ll be students and staff,” Remus continued, cautious. “That gives us opportunity—but it also means scrutiny. Hogwarts is… full of secrets. You’ll need to be vigilant.”
I nodded, the weight of it beginning to settle across my shoulders. “Sounds thrilling,” I muttered, not quite hiding the flicker of anticipation curling in my chest.
Remus raised a brow, his mouth twitching toward a reluctant smile. “Enthusiasm can be… dangerous,” he said. “Attention brings questions. Questions you may not be ready to answer.”
I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. “Alright, I get it. Keep my head down.”
“Self-control,” he corrected gently. “Not silence. Just… awareness.”
I knew he was right.
But that didn’t make it easier.
My name had always preceded me—etched in prophecy, whispered through corridors, splashed across front pages. I didn’t know how to hide. I only knew how to be seen, dissected, and expected.
“It’s just… harder for me than it is for you,” I said quietly. “You’ve always known how to disappear into a room. I’ve never had that luxury.”
He turned to face me then, his gaze unreadable and intense.
“It’s not about luxury,” he said. “Or ease. It’s about necessity.”
There was a softness in his eyes that caught me off guard. That quiet look of someone who saw too much and said too little.
“You’ve done hard things before, Harry,” he said. “Harder than this. And you’ll do more because you have to. But there’s strength in patience, too. In knowing when to wait.”
I wanted to argue. To say I was tired of waiting. Tired of hiding and running and pretending not to care.
But then I saw the lines on his face. The flicker of worry he didn’t quite conceal.
And I swallowed the words.
“If anyone can do it,” he said simply, “it’s you.”
There was no ceremony in it. No bluster or praise. Just a quiet certainty that landed deeper than any speech ever could.
I looked back at the village. The sun spilt across the rooftops like gold poured from a cracked sky.
And for a moment, everything held still.
One breath at a time, I told myself.
One day at a time.
I would find a way to blend in. To become what was needed of me.
Even if everything inside me longed to be something else entirely.
Remus had a rhythm to him—measured, methodical, maddening.
His calm wasn’t ease. It was survival. A discipline carved from years of holding back. Watching him was like watching someone who had made peace with the rules of a cruel game and learnt not to flinch when he lost.
And me?
I was still fumbling to understand the rules.
Remus wore these false lives like old coats—familiar, fitting. No matter the story, no matter the lie, he slipped into it with grace.
That very grace grated on me.
While I chafed under new names and shallow smiles, he settled.
I ached for connection—something unfiltered, unguarded. A laugh that wasn’t rehearsed. A story told without lowering our voices. A hand on my shoulder that meant I see you, not I know who you are.
In those rare, borrowed moments—on stone benches beneath rustling trees, or in tiny cafés steeped in Muggle quiet—I could almost believe I was just a boy with crooked glasses and an ache behind his ribs.
But fantasy was fickle.
The more I reached for it, the more danger crept in behind me. And Remus, always watching, would pull us away again. No argument. No explanation. Just another house. Another lie. Another life left half-lived.
This time, it was supposed to be different.
But Hogwarts didn’t feel like hope. It felt like a memory. One that no longer fits.
Even as Remus spoke of safety, of permanence, something inside me curled in resistance.
How could he be so certain?
A school filled with sharp-eyed students and walls that whispered secrets didn’t feel like a sanctuary.
It felt like a trap—slow, patient, inevitable.
Still, his voice steadied me. That deep calm.
“Hogwarts is the safest place for you,” he said. “The Headmaster has protections you can’t yet imagine. If you stay there… you won’t have to run again.”
I wanted to believe him.
He told me to change into my school uniform. I did.
But the robes didn’t fit like they used to.
Taller now. Leaner. More worn.
They hung off me like relics.
Or maybe I was the relic—an echo of someone who once belonged here.
Downstairs, Remus stood waiting.
Gone was the tattered traveller. In his place stood something more composed—polished robes, neatly fastened cuffs, and those same tired eyes that had seen too much.
He stepped forward and adjusted my tie with deft fingers. In the hallway mirror, I caught my reflection: Hogwarts crest stitched bright against my chest, black hat perched awkwardly atop untameable hair.
I didn’t look like myself.
I looked like a boy pretending. A ghost draped in school colors.
“There,” Remus said with a dry chuckle. “From wandering nomad to prestigious schoolboy.”
I flinched at the words. Wandering nomad.
They stung—not because they weren’t true, but because of how easily he said them. I couldn’t tell if it was meant as fondness or something more bitter. Either way, it landed like a weight I didn’t know how to carry.
“I’m not sure about this,” I murmured, my voice barely holding together. “What if I’m just… not ready?”
He stepped closer, his gaze steady but warm. “You are. I’ve seen it. Every step you’ve taken—every sacrifice, every choice—it’s brought you here. You’re stronger than you know. You will do great things.”
The words were meant to be encouragement. But they echoed inside me like prophecy.
You will do great things.
I hated that phrase. It always felt less like support and more like a debt. A promise I never agreed to make.
“It’s one thing to live on the outside,” I said, “watching the world from a distance. But this… this feels like stepping into the centre of it.”
“It is,” he said simply. “But you deserve more than shadows, Harry. You deserve to belong.”
I looked away, my voice thin. “And what if something goes wrong?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Then Hogwarts will help make it right.”
His faith in that place was almost enviable—like someone who believed the stars would always return to their right positions, no matter how dark the sky had become.
I wanted that kind of faith. Needed it.
“But it still feels dangerous,” I admitted. The words fell heavy with everything I couldn’t say. With everything that had followed me for years.
Remus placed a hand on my shoulder, firm and grounding. “That’s why I’m here. That’s why Dumbledore’s watching. You don’t have to face this alone—not anymore.”
The words settled over me like a protective charm.
They didn’t banish the fear.
But they softened it. Took the edge off.
Maybe he was right.
Maybe there was still a place for me behind those stone walls.
A place where I could rest. Just for a little while.
Remus smiled faintly, the tired lines around his eyes softening.
And for the first time in what felt like years, I let the comfort of his presence be enough.