The knock came at half-past ten, firm but not hurried. Not a student. Not a colleague either. He had no need to check.
He already knew who it was.
He'd sent the owl at sunrise, the letter penned in the grey light before dawn when the castle was still and even the portraits had yet to stir. There'd been a brief moment of hesitation, after the ink had dried, where he'd stood at the edge of his writing desk, envelope in hand, thumb tapping the wax seal.
He could still throw it in the fire. He could claim it had been a dream, a passing moment of weakness, nothing more.
But he hadn't.
Now here she was.
He opened the door, and Lily Potter stood just outside, her hair twisted into a loose braid, a green cloak wrapped around her shoulders against the brisk wind. She looked at him with the same frown he remembered from school, the one she used to wear whenever James had done something truly idiotic, which was more often than not.
"Hello, Remus," she said quietly. Her voice was gentle, but there was a current of worry beneath it, thinly veiled. "You look terrible."
"I do try to keep up appearances," he said wryly.
She gave him a look. He stood aside, and she stepped in without waiting for the invitation—she never had. That was something about Lily that had never changed, no matter how many years passed: she didn't ask for space. She made it hers.
Her gaze swept the room with that sharp, perceptive stillness he remembered from prefect meetings. The breakfast tray remained untouched. A teacup with the steam long gone sat beside the armchair. A scattering of parchment littered the nearby table—some blank, others covered in scribbles that he hadn't had the strength to reread.
She didn't comment.
He shut the door behind her.
"Tea?" he asked automatically, already halfway to the kettle.
"I've only got half an hour," she said, unfastening her cloak and draping it over the chair. "You said it was important."
Remus hesitated, his hand on the teacup.
Then, silently, he crossed the room and picked up the envelope.
Cream-coloured. Plain. It might have held a ministry form. A letter from a parent. A student essay. But it didn't.
He held it out to her.
She took it, slowly, brows furrowing. "What's this?"
"My funeral photograph," he replied and felt, distantly, how his own voice didn't waver. He had rehearsed the line far too many times for it to shake now.
There was a pause.
Lily blinked. Her fingers stilled against the seal.
"What?"
"I read somewhere that it's sensible to have one prepared," he went on, tone measured. "Avoids the scramble later. Things get complicated after. Best to keep it simple."
She opened the envelope, almost cautiously, and drew out the photograph. The image was static. No smile. No movement. Just Remus, standing still, composed, eyes distant. Tired. As though he already knew the photo would outlive him.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she looked at it. Her jaw tightened.
"Remus," she said, very softly. "Please tell me you're not serious."
"I wouldn't have sent for you otherwise."
"You're not dying."
"I am."
"Not yet—"
"Soon enough."
"Don't do this," she whispered, gripping the photo in both hands. "Please don't. There's still time. There's still something."
He didn't answer.
"I've spoken to healers," she pressed. "Three, actually. There are spells, treatments, procedures—"
"And if it all goes sideways?" He cut in, too sharply. "If I end up half-aware, drooling in some ward with no sense of who I am? What then?"
"You won't," she said firmly. "You don't know that."
"And you do?"
"I know you," she said fiercely. "You don't give up."
He looked at her, eyes tired. Not angry. Not even resigned. Just tired.
"I'm not giving up," he said quietly. "I'm choosing the terms."
"Oh, sod that," Lily said, her voice rising, her fists clenched around the envelope. "You're not choosing anything. You're running. Pushing everyone away so that when you're gone, we don't feel it as badly. But guess what? We're going to feel it anyway."
He looked away, jaw clenched.
"I don't want to be a burden," he muttered.
"You're not," she snapped.
"I will be."
"You're a friend," she said, moving closer. "You're mine, and you always have been. And if this were anyone else—if it were me, or Sirius, or James—what would you be saying right now?"
He didn't answer. Because he knew what he would say.
He would be saying exactly what Lily was saying now.
He crossed to the window. It was overcast outside. The grounds looked damp and cold. He watched a bird land on the windowsill and fly off again in the same breath.
"Does she even know?" Lily pressed.
"She doesn't know," he said eventually.
"Merlin, Remus. That's not your decision to make."
"It's not her problem," Remus said at last, quieter now, though the words didn't come easily. They dragged at his throat, gritty and hollow. He couldn't look at Lily when he said it.
She didn't flinch. Instead, she leaned forward, elbows braced on her knees, green eyes fixed on him—not unkindly, but with that relentless, unwavering honesty of hers that could unpick a person to their seams.
"She's not some girl you've been snogging behind the greenhouses," Lily said flatly. "She's not a mistake or a fling. You love her. I've seen it."
"That's precisely why I can't make it her problem," he snapped before he could catch himself. His voice, usually so measured, came out sharp-edged, brittle with the kind of frustration that had no true target. "She's young, Lily. She's bright and full of—of bloody possibility. She ought to have someone who can give her a real life. Someone who's not counting their remaining days on the calendar. Not someone who has to leave notes about which socks to burn when he's gone."
"She deserves the right to decide that for herself," Lily said calmly, though her hands had curled into fists in her lap.
Remus exhaled, long and low, and sat back with a quiet sound that was half-sigh, half-defeat. He leaned forward, forearms resting heavily on his thighs, staring down at the funeral photograph on the table between them. It looked back up at him with a sort of grim acceptance. A version of himself he didn't quite recognise and yet couldn't deny.
"I'm tired," he murmured, voice thin.
"I know," Lily said. The words were soft but not indulgent. There was a tremor in them. "But you're not done. Not yet."
The fire crackled in the hearth—low now, half-ash—the only sound in the room for several minutes. Neither of them rushed to fill the quiet. Lily, more than most, knew how to sit in silence without making it feel like something needed fixing. It was one of the reasons he'd sent for her.
She rose at last, slowly, with the stiff sort of grace that came from a life of having to carry more than one heart at a time. She reached for her cloak and gathered it round her shoulders but didn't yet fasten the clasp. Instead, she picked up the photograph again, holding it carefully by the edges, as if it might scald her.
Then she looked at him.
"I'm not taking this," she said.
Remus blinked. "What?"
"The photograph," she repeated. "I'm not keeping it. Because you're not going to die, Remus. Not like this. Not quietly. And not in some back corner of the castle where no one can reach you."
He stared at her, startled. Something behind his ribs shifted—not enough to break, but enough to ache.
Lily crossed the room and placed the photo gently on the table. She didn't flip it over. She left it staring up at him, as though daring him to face it.
"I'm coming back tomorrow," she added, already at the door. Her tone had changed. There was steel in it now. "And we're going to talk again. Properly. Until you stop acting like you're an inconvenience to the people who care about you."
He almost smiled.
She paused, one hand on the doorframe. Her voice dropped.
"And for Merlin's sake… tell her. Tell Tonks. She's not going to walk away, you know."
He didn't answer.
The door shut behind her with a soft click. The fire gave a small hiss.
Remus sat there a moment longer, unmoving. Then, very slowly, he reached for the photograph.
And turned it face down.
The classroom was already half-full when Remus stepped inside, a stack of worn books balanced on one arm, a roll of parchment tucked beneath the other. The familiar scent of old ink, candle wax, and the faint, lingering odour of chalk dust met him at the door. For a fleeting second, he found it comforting until he forgot why he was holding the parchment.
He paused by the desk, blinked at it, then set the things down carefully as if nothing were amiss.
It had been a rough morning.
The dull pain behind his right eye had started when Lily had left his quarters, and by the time he'd dressed and made it halfway to the staffroom, he'd realised he'd forgotten the date. Entirely. Not just the number—the day of the week.
He shook it off.
Today, they were covering the Goblin Rebellions—the second major uprising in the 17th century.
He unrolled the parchment and looked at his own handwriting. It was legible, firm, and still recognisably his. But the lines swam. The dates twisted.
He picked up a bit of chalk and turned to the board, forcing calm into his limbs.
"The 1612 Goblin Rebellion—Causes and Legacy" appeared in his tidy script.
"Right," he said to the class of mostly fifth-years. "Let's begin. Who can remind me what set off the rebellion at Hogsmeade?"
A few hands went up. He nodded to a Slytherin boy near the front.
"The goblins were taxed on wand materials, weren't they, sir?"
"Yes… yes, that's right," Remus said, though something tugged at the back of his mind. Was that the first rebellion? Or the third? "It was one of the contributing factors. Wand control, taxation, and territorial restrictions placed by the Ministry at the time."
He turned back to the board, chalk poised.
"The primary leader during the 1612 uprising was—" He stopped.
He knew this. He knew this.
The name, which had always arrived as swiftly as a summoned Patronus, was suddenly gone. Slipped somewhere beyond reach. He could see the sharp features in his mind, the sketch he'd shown last term, and even remembered the scholar who'd published a controversial paper arguing the goblin had never existed at all.
But the name? Vanished.
His hand hovered above the board.
Seconds passed.
A whisper stirred near the back of the classroom. Remus drew a breath through his nose and set the chalk down.
"No matter," he said evenly. "We'll return to that in a moment. Let's speak instead about the role of Gringotts in the rebellion. Who can explain the shift in goblin autonomy between the early and late 1600s?"
Another hand—a Ravenclaw girl this time.
"They started minting their own coins during the uprisings, sir."
"Yes," Remus said, relieved. "They did. And what does that tell us?"
The girl hesitated. "That they were… asserting cultural independence?"
"Precisely," he nodded, catching the thread again. "The goblins had long sought sovereignty over their own wealth. Control over their craftsmanship, their forges, their coins. They saw wizarding law as increasingly invasive…"
He went on, voice steady, hands folded behind his back. But he didn't forget the lapse. Not even as the class continued with quills scratching and questions asked.
Because ten minutes later, he still couldn't recall the name of the goblin general.
His mind—once sharp enough to recite obscure Goblin treaties from the 14th century without a note in sight—had begun to betray him.
And he knew it.
The class ended on time. He dismissed them with a nod, masking the tension in his jaw, the sweat prickling faintly behind his collar.
A few students lingered to pack slowly. One of them, a Hufflepuff girl, hovered near the front.
"Sir?" she asked gently. "Did you want to go over the treaty documents next week, or was it… the goblin minting charters?"
Remus blinked at her.
He didn't remember assigning either.
"Oh. Yes. The charters," he said carefully. "Let's have a look at those first."
She smiled and left.
Once the door had clicked shut, he sank into the chair behind the desk. His hands found the surface automatically, grounding himself on the cold wood.
Ragnuk the Third.
The name hit him suddenly. Unprompted. Infuriatingly late.
He stared ahead at the board, where space had been left beneath the heading for that very name. Mocking him now with its absence.
He pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose.
If it were just once, he could excuse it. A lapse. A missed night's sleep. Even a professor forgets now and again.
But it wasn't just once anymore. This was happening too often. Words lost. Faces were slow to arrive. A creeping dullness at the edge of thought, growing faster than he could hide it.
And next time, it might be worse.
He stood up slowly, pushing back the chair. The classroom felt oddly large when empty—not comforting, but echoing. A space too quiet for forgetting.
He crossed to the window, hands in his pockets, and looked out over the grounds. A pair of owls swooped low over the trees. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear laughter from a group of younger students. And for a moment, he hated them for their youth. Their certainty. Their belief that tomorrow would come as surely as breakfast.
Remus pressed his fingers into the wood of the window frame.
The smell in the Hospital Wing was heavier than usual that evening. Not just the usual antiseptic tang of burn salve and crisp linens, but something more lingering—sharp dittany, the earthy bite of blood-replenishing tinctures, and a faint undertone of iron that clung stubbornly to the air, even though the last emergency must've been hours ago.
Remus sat stiffly on the edge of one of the spare beds near the windows, his sleeves rolled to the elbows, hands loose in his lap. He'd learnt long ago that resistance was useless when Madam Pomfrey had made up her mind about something—and tonight she had cornered him in the corridor outside the Great Hall, her expression brooking no argument. Minerva had been with her, silent but not unaware, her mouth a thin line.
Now, the three of them sat in the dusky stillness, broken only by the occasional wheeze of Madam Pomfrey's drawer charms and the sniffles of a fourth-year boy further down the row—a Gobstones injury, apparently. Something about trying to impress a girl. Remus had offered a thin smile when Poppy told him, but it hadn't quite reached his eyes.
"You've lost weight again," Poppy said, not looking at him as she summoned a patient file with a flick of her wand. "And your eyes are hollowed out again. Worse than they were last term."
"I always look like this," Remus muttered, aiming for levity. "Gaunt is my natural aesthetic. It's very in fashion with the underworld, I hear."
Minerva closed a cabinet drawer with a soft click and turned towards them. She wasn't smiling. "It's not charming, Remus. It's concerning."
Her voice was even—not cold, but not kind either. It was the tone she reserved for serious matters. Not detentions. Not missed staff meetings. Real things. Things she couldn't fix with a signed form and a cup of tea.
Remus rubbed a thumb along the side of his palm, tracing the familiar curve of an old callus. He didn't reply.
Poppy came forward and set the file beside him on the mattress. "You sent for dittany last week. Twice the normal amount. You claimed it was for your N.E.W.T. lesson on battle injuries. And yet, no one else seems to have needed it."
Remus looked away. Through the window, the grounds were darkening. A thin edge of pink still hovered on the horizon.
"You're not just tired, are you?" Minerva asked quietly.
There was a pause. Not long, but long enough to feel it.
He didn't answer.
"Remus…" Poppy lowered herself into the chair opposite him. Her voice was softer now, as though she'd stepped through some unspoken threshold. "I know."
His head lifted slightly. He didn't meet her eyes.
"How long?" he asked, voice low.
"A while," she admitted. "I didn't want to push. But I saw the remnants of a diagnostic charm on your left temple months ago. Faint, but there. And then there are the memory slips. A few of the fifth-years have mentioned them. Nothing unkind. Just… concern."
Minerva moved to sit beside him. She didn't speak immediately, only folded her hands neatly in her lap, the way she always had—a small, familiar gesture that, somehow, made things feel worse.
"We've both noticed," she said eventually. "It's not just fatigue."
He nodded, almost imperceptibly.
"And what exactly would you have us do?" He said after a moment, his voice calm, too calm. "There's no miracle cure for this. I've looked."
"There are options," Poppy said firmly. "Experimental, yes. But they exist. Magical intervention combined with Muggle methods—I know people, Healers in St Mungo's and beyond. I can put you in touch—"
"No."
"Remus—"
"I said no," he repeated, and this time his voice cracked, not with anger, but with finality. The quiet, stubborn kind that had always lived at the heart of him—the sort that couldn't be shouted down.
He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled, steadying himself.
"I won't spend what's left chasing false hope," he said. "It's already progressed. And even if I do survive surgery, what then? A broken mind? A fragmented memory? I don't want to be kept alive just to lose myself piece by piece."
Minerva was silent. But her lips were pressed tightly together, and her brow had furrowed inwards, deepening lines that Remus had seen since he was eleven.
"You're not a burden," she said eventually. "Not to us. Not to anyone."
He shook his head, more weary than defiant.
"You say that now," he murmured. "But what happens when I start calling students by the wrong names? When I forget my lectures? Or during a transformation—what if I forget who I am entirely? What if I hurt someone?"
That silence returned—the one that hovered just outside the bounds of comfort. Poppy stood again and walked to her desk, rummaging for something. When she returned, she pressed a small vial into his palm.
"It won't cure anything," she said. "But it might help you sleep. And it won't interfere with the Wolfsbane."
He turned the vial over in his hand. The potion inside shimmered faintly under the lamplight—pale blue, the colour of snow just before dawn.
"Thank you," he said at last, and meant it.
Minerva straightened, gathering her robes, and paused in the doorway. Her sharp, precise gaze softened ever so slightly. "If you change your mind, Remus… you need only say. You are not alone in this. You never have been."
He gave a tired nod, shoulders sagging, and refused to meet either of their eyes. He knew they meant well. He knew they would not stop caring if he didn't, and that thought—of their attention, their concern—made the ache behind his ribs feel heavier, sharper.
Once the ward quieted again, he remained where he was, seated on the edge of the bed, staring at the small glass vial resting in his hand. The potion inside shimmered faintly in the fading light, innocent and useless against the truth he carried.
He did not see her, hidden just around the corridor, half-shielded by the linen cabinet. But she saw him.
Tonks had stopped cold the instant she heard the word "procedure". Her chest had tightened, and for a moment she'd debated calling out, stepping forward. But some part of her—stubborn, fiercely protective—had stayed her voice long enough to hear the rest.
Burden. Pushing people away. People who care about you.
And now he was moving past her, shoulders hunched, gaze fixed rigidly on the wall ahead, hands shoved deep into his pockets as if they could hold the world at bay.
She didn't think. She followed, her pace quickening.
"Remus," she called softly at first, catching up to him near the stairwell. "Stop."
He didn't.
"Remus!" she pressed, louder now.
Still, he walked on.
Tonks' heart beat faster, a mix of fear and exasperation driving her forward. She stepped deliberately into his path, planting herself in front of him. He halted, his face averted, shoulders tensed.
"I heard everything," she said, voice trembling, barely contained.
His eyes closed briefly, and he exhaled, weary. Of course she had.
"Why didn't you tell me?" Her voice cracked, but she forced it steady again. "All this time I've been wondering. Guessing. Thinking maybe I did something wrong—"
"You haven't," he murmured, low, almost drowned by the tension in the corridor.
"Then what is it?" she demanded, sharper this time. "Is it your health? The headaches, the constant exhaustion… How long have you known?"
"I… I don't want to talk about it," he said quietly, the words defensive but soft.
"That's not good enough, Remus."
He tried to step around her, a silent plea for space, for escape, but she caught his sleeve with a grip that was firmer than his own resolve.
"Don't you dare shut me out," she said, voice rising with raw insistence. "Don't you dare pretend this doesn't affect me too. If you're ill, I have a right to know."
"You have no such right," he snapped, and immediately the sharpness of it bit him. He hated himself for the cruelty in his tone, even as it left a mark on her face.
Tonks flinched but didn't let go. Her voice softened, but not her stance. "Then what are we, Remus? You invite me into your life and then bolt the moment I step close. I'm not trying to fix you. I just… I just want the truth."
He looked at her. The worry in her eyes, the stubborn crease between her brows, the heartbreak she fought to keep from spilling over. It all weighed on him, and he hated himself for letting it. For letting her see even this small crack in the mask he wore for everyone else.
He drew a slow, shaky breath. "There are some truths," he whispered, almost to himself, "that don't deserve to be shared. Some things… that only hurt when you put them into words."
"But I'm already hurting," she murmured back, her voice low but fierce. "You think I don't notice the way you look past me? The way you touch me like I might vanish at any second? You've got one foot out the door, and I don't even know why."
He didn't answer. Words failed him, as they so often had lately.
"I want to help," she continued, voice trembling, quivering just enough to betray the emotion she fought to contain. "Whatever it is. Let me in, Remus. Please. I can't stand—"
But he couldn't. He couldn't show her the whole of it—the numbered wooden block ticking inexorably toward its end, the relentless nausea that had taken up residence in his stomach, the frightening holes in his memory that widened with each passing day. He couldn't offer her anything solid anymore. Just the slow, hollow collapse of a man who had already run out of future.
So he did what he always did.
He said nothing.
Her hand slipped from his sleeve, a soft withdrawal that felt heavier than a shove.
"Remus," she said, voice tight but patient, a tremor barely contained, "why won't you tell me?"
He didn't answer. The corridor stretched ahead—long, quiet, and mercifully empty. He focused on the stone beneath his feet, listening to the echo of his own steps, counting them almost mechanically, as if that could keep him tethered.
"Why won't you say it?" She pressed again, firmer this time. "Don't you—don't you love me?"
His step faltered, just a flicker, a momentary hitch that he prayed she wouldn't notice.
"You should show your feelings," she went on, voice rising, urgency and frustration threading through her words. "Love's meant for that, isn't it? Even if you're scared—even if it's only a half-hearted attempt—say something. Try."
He said nothing. The words were lodged in his throat, raw and unyielding, refusing to travel down to his lips.
She stayed beside him, walking shoulder to shoulder, refusing to give him the distance he thought he needed. She didn't falter. If anything, she drew closer, her determination a quiet, insistent force he could neither escape nor fight.
"I don't need perfection," she whispered, softer now, but no less firm. "I'd take a scrap. A glance. One word that's yours."
He stopped in front of his door, wand still clutched loosely in one hand. For a long moment, he just stood there, the familiar grain of the oak warm beneath his palm. He could hear her breathing, steady and insistent, waiting for him to meet it.
"I'd like to be alone today," he said, his voice low, deliberate, and careful as a broken charm.
Without waiting for her reply, he opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind him, shutting out both her presence and the world.
Then came her voice, clear and unwavering, rising through the oak as if to pierce the walls he'd erected:
"Well, I love you!"
It struck him like a bell tolling in a silent cathedral.
Her words trembled with defiance, not despair. They rose in crescendo, almost daring him to contradict them, and he sank to the floor, back against the door, knees drawn up slightly, chest tightening painfully with each heartbeat.
"I'm not afraid to say it," she continued, her tone fiery, insistent. "I'll scream it if I have to. I'll write it in letters. I'll wear it on my face, in the colour of my nails, in the way I dress—Merlin, I'd write it on the ceiling if it meant you'd believe me."
He let his hands fall limply into his lap, listening. His heart thudded painfully against his ribs, echoing in a rhythm that was almost unbearable.
"I'll express it however I can," she said, quieter now, steadier, as though she had folded her defiance into the cadence of her voice. "Because that's what love does. It stays. Even when you're pushing me away."
Silence followed.
He didn't answer. He couldn't. He stared ahead, eyes unseeing, falling instead to the small wooden block resting neatly atop a stack of old lesson plans by the hearth. The number carved into it was simple. Stark. Unforgiving.
1
A quiet, damning reminder.
One day left—maybe a week, perhaps less—before the cracks he'd been hiding widened too far, before even he could no longer pretend he was the same man he'd always been. It wasn't merely a countdown. It was a farewell in slow motion.
He shut his eyes, throat tight, forcing back the tears that pressed at the edges.
Tonks was right, of course. About everything.
But love wasn't something he could afford—not now. Not when time had already begun unravelling beneath his fingers, dissolving the foundations he had spent decades carefully building.
He wouldn't let her watch him crumble. He wouldn't let her spend months trying to hold together someone who was already, in so many ways, lost.
She deserved laughter, adventure, warmth, and the long, unbroken years of life he could never promise.
All he had left to offer was the silence behind a closed door—and the bitter mercy of letting her walk away before the slow, inevitable collapse caught up with them both.