The first thing I felt was the light. Not the familiar weight of the day or the usual knot of tension in my chest before I'd even opened my eyes. Just light: soft and golden, bleeding through tall windows as though it had been patiently waiting for me. It spilled across the floorboards in slow, lazy bands, catching on the motes of dust suspended in the air. They drifted there, tiny glimmers, silent and still. Like spells, only harmless.
And for the first time in longer than I could name, I didn't want to move a muscle. I wasn't sure I'd ever woken like this before: no plan forming at the back of my mind, no underlying thrum of urgency. No alarms. No orders.
Just light.
But peace, when it came, always felt suspicious.
Outside, the world had already begun turning. I could hear it, faint but steady: someone dragging a deck chair across a patio, tyres crunching over gravel, a laugh carried on the breeze. The kind of laugh with no cause for caution.
It sounded like someone else's life.
I sat on the edge of the bed, bare feet brushing against the wooden floor. Cool beneath my skin. I stared at my hands, flexing them once, then again, as though they might tell me who I was this morning. They didn't.
The room looked different in the morning, gentler, somehow, as though softened overnight. The Quidditch posters on the far wall stirred in the morning breeze. Viktor Krum yawned and stretched over his broomstick, drifting in lazy arcs with his arms behind his head, as if he hadn't a care in the world.
I envied him, that effortless ease where the only thing expected of you was to win your own match. Just to be. That was freedom.
My owl shifted on her perch in the corner, feathers ruffled like she'd been awake for ages and wasn't particularly impressed by my slow start. She gave a low hoot, not urgent, just a nudge. A little reminder that time hadn't stopped, even if I wished it had, just for a morning.
"Yeah, yeah," I muttered, my voice hoarse. I hadn't meant to speak. The quiet felt too sacred, like something not to be disturbed before the day fully settled.
I crouched beside the trunk at the foot of my bed. Still half-packed, like everything else in my life. Half-sorted. Half-settled. T-shirts wrinkled in corners, books piled haphazardly, curled bits of parchment, a few empty Chocolate Frog wrappers. The remnants of a life that never seemed to stay in motion.
I didn't choose carefully. Just grabbed the nearest clean-enough shirt and pulled it on. It didn't matter. Not today.
The stairs creaked underfoot as I padded down, barefoot and quiet. But it wasn't a harsh sound; it wasn't a warning. It felt more like a greeting. A soft, ah, there you are. Like the house had noticed me. Like it remembered.
And then the smell hit me.
Toast. Butter melting into it. Something sweet—was it cinnamon? Or cloves? And tea—strong and earthy, the sort Remus always brewed. The scent wrapped around me as I reached the bottom step.
I didn't speak straight away. Just stood in the doorway, letting it all sink in.
Remus was already by the hob, sleeves rolled up, wand lazily stirring the kettle where it floated over a blue flame. The scent of rosemary had joined the others now; warm, grounding. He looked at ease, but there was a softness to the line of his shoulders. A stillness I rarely saw.
He moved like someone who had finally stopped running. If only for the morning.
I didn't want to interrupt. It felt wrong to break it. So I simply watched, sunlight warming the floor beneath my feet.
"Good afternoon, Harry," Remus said without turning around. There was a small smile in his voice, just enough to let me know he was perfectly aware of how long I'd been lying upstairs.
I gave a short laugh. "It's barely morning."
He turned slightly, one eyebrow raised. "It's nearly midday."
I shrugged, though the corner of my mouth twitched. He handed me a mug with the same fluid, practised movement I remembered from countless mornings, like he'd done it a hundred times before. Like this was routine, not something extraordinary.
The tea was perfect. Slightly sweet, with a trace of chamomile laced beneath the stronger herbs. Calming. Thoughtful. Of course he knew what I needed before I did.
He always had.
We didn't speak straightaway. We simply stood in the quiet hum of the kitchen, sipping tea while the world outside drifted along without us. I could hear birdsong. The low crackle of the fire. And somewhere beyond the trees, someone lazily strumming a tune on a wireless.
"Toast?" Remus asked, his tone light—almost offhand, but not unkind. "Or feeling a bit grand today—scrambled eggs?"
"Eggs," I replied, a little too quickly. It wasn't about being grand. It wasn't even really about the eggs. It was the choice. The ritual. The simple comfort of someone standing at the hob, asking what I wanted, not what I needed to survive.
I leaned against the counter, one hip pressed into the warm wood, and let my eyes wander to the window. Outside, the village carried on as though nothing had ever gone wrong. As though no one had ever vanished in the night or fallen in the woods or been hunted for their name. Gardens bloomed in bright bursts of pink and yellow. A neighbour knelt in hers, trimming a hedge. A dog ambled past the post box, tail wagging. Somewhere in the distance, a bell rang, maybe from a bakery, maybe a clock tower. I didn't know. But it was… normal.
Blissfully, utterly normal.
And none of them had any idea who we were. What we'd seen. What we carried. We were just shadows at the edges of their quiet little lives.
For a while, neither of us spoke. The gentle sounds of cooking filled the silence instead: the faint pop and sizzle of oil heating in the pan and the scrape of a spoon against ceramic. It should have felt hollow. But it didn't. It felt as though the house itself had stilled, listening, waiting, holding its breath alongside us.
Of course, Remus was the one to break it. Always too observant for his own good.
"You're quiet today," he said softly. Not accusing. Just observing, like he always did.
I hesitated, fiddling with the chipped edge of a tea mug Remus had left by the sink. I didn't want to lie. But I didn't want to explain either.
"It's nothing," I said, and winced the moment the words left my mouth. I didn't believe them, and neither did he.
Somehow, that made it worse.
The words slipped out before I could stop them. "Just… a bad dream."
He stilled for half a heartbeat. Not dramatically, just a quiet shift of his shoulders, his head tilting slightly as though tuning in more closely. He didn't speak straightaway. Didn't fill the space with reassurances or platitudes. He simply turned towards me, slowly and carefully, and looked.
"Harry," he said gently, "that's not nothing."
Then he stepped closer, one hand lifting my chin; not roughly, not to demand attention, but with a kind of carefulness that made something in my chest ache. I felt like that boy who flinched at kindness because he didn't know what to do with it.
There was something grounding in his touch. Remus saw me not as a symbol, not as a responsibility. Just… me. Scarred and tired and trying. And that was somehow worse. Because it made me feel present.
"I'm sorry," he murmured, and his thumb brushed just beneath my jaw before he let go. "I know it's not easy."
I looked at him. The lines on his face were deeper than I remembered. The skin beneath his eyes was bruised with shadows that hadn't faded with sleep. He didn't look like someone who'd had a restless night. He looked like someone who had given too much away. Again and again. Like the world had chipped at him in tiny, quiet pieces.
He turned back to the hob and stirred the eggs, and something about the motion felt final. A full stop, softly spoken.
"We're only here for a while," he said, his voice barely louder than the wind slipping through the open window. "You know that."
I nodded, and something inside me twisted.
Of course I knew. We never stayed long. We never could. No matter how safe the walls felt, no matter how many breakfasts we managed without news or fear, it was always borrowed time. Another stopgap. Another maybe. Another almost.
"I just…" I started. But the rest caught in my throat, thick and clumsy.
I just want to stop running. I just want to breathe without checking over my shoulder. I just want this to be real.
Instead, I dipped my head in a tiny nod. Barely there. I hoped it said everything I couldn't quite shape into words.
Remus noticed. He always did.
"There's no need to rush," he said after a moment, softer now. "We've time to talk. Later."
Later.
The word settled in the air between us. Not a promise. Not quite. But something close. Something I wanted to believe in.
Later meant we were still here. Meant there might be a tomorrow. Meant maybe, for once, nothing had to explode or vanish or end.
I clung to that.
It was all I could do.
Living with Remus had begun as a precaution. A strategic measure. Ultimately, it had been Dumbledore's directive: a safe house for a boy who was marked, who couldn't walk down a street without being recognised. But the truth was messier. He'd taken me in because he cared, because no one else had thought to. Because he understood what it meant to be hunted for something you couldn't change.
But knowing that didn't make it any easier.
He said it was for my safety, and perhaps it was. But every day I stayed, every night I took his cot while he fell asleep in the battered old armchair in the drawing room, I felt the guilt prickling. Like I was stealing something from a man who had already lost too much.
And then there was the other truth. The quiet, dreadful one.
The moon was still weeks away, but I could sense it. Hanging over us like a thread drawn taut.
It showed in the way he winced when he thought I wasn't looking. In the stiffness of his shoulders. The way he recoiled from sudden noise.
We didn't speak of it. We didn't have to.
But I saw it. And it terrified me, because I knew he would carry that pain in silence, never asking for help. Just like I did.
And maybe that's why we kept orbiting each other like this: not quite kin, not quite strangers, two wounded things trying not to bleed on each other.
Morning spilled through the curtains in long golden shafts, slicing through the hush of the cottage and landing gently across Remus's face. It cast faint shadows beneath his cheekbones, accentuating the tiredness etched into his features. His shirt hung off him, thin as parchment, washed so many times it had faded from blue to grey to a kind of weathered nothingness. His trousers sagged slightly at the waist, held up more by habit than fit. He didn't resemble anyone's idea of a protector.
He looked… worn. Threadbare, like his clothes.
But dignity clung to him nonetheless; quiet, unshakeable. A kind of strength that didn't need to shout. The sort forged not in glory, but in the long hours after the battle, when the world goes still and the weight returns heavier.
I watched him in silence; the movement of his hands was slow and deliberate as he turned the eggs in the pan. There was a strange grace in it, odd as it sounded. The kind earned through a thousand small defeats and the refusal to fall after any of them.
And I wondered, not for the first time, how someone so worn thin could be the one meant to keep me safe. How he could carry his pain and mine when it was clear he could scarcely stand beneath the weight of his own.
I looked away, guilt and embarrassment rising up the back of my neck. My eyes caught the mirror above the sink; its glass was cracked through the middle, like lightning had struck it once and no one had bothered to repair it. My reflection stared back. Pale. Too thin. Hair sticking out in every direction, more unmanageable than ever. My glasses, askew, perched uselessly on the bridge of my nose.
And the eyes. Always the eyes.
Remus said they were my mother's, said it like it was meant to be a comfort. But all I saw in them was weight. Expectation. A legacy I'd never asked for.
Remus turned from the hob and placed a plate in front of me: scrambled eggs, neat and steaming, like a quiet offering. He rinsed his own half-finished plate at the sink, every motion precise and controlled. As if he needed to keep things in order, lest something deeper start to unravel.
He crossed to the window seat with a slow exhale and sank down, the old bench creaking beneath him. With a flick of his wand, the Daily Prophet flew across the room and unfolded in his lap. He didn't open it like someone seeking news; he opened it like someone bracing for a blow.
"What's new?" I asked, though I already knew what would be staring back from the front page.
He didn't reply straight away. Just tilted the paper so I could see.
The headline didn't matter. The photograph told the story.
Ash and ruin stretched across the frame; walls collapsed inward like broken ribs. Black smoke rose from what had once been a home, or maybe a school or a Muggle café. It was hard to tell. And above it all, hanging in the sky like rot in an open wound, the Dark Mark.
Green. Twisting. Cruel.
I stared at it until the image blurred, and still I couldn't look away.
"Muggles live in fear now," Remus said at last, his voice low and fraying at the edges. "Even in the smallest villages. Nowhere's safe anymore."
The guilt surged, sharp and immediate. I glanced around the kitchen; the scent of rosemary toast still lingered in the air, the sun warmed my skin, and the wooden floor felt soft beneath my bare feet. All of it felt wrong.
How dare we have peace, even this sliver of it, when others had none?
"What can we do for them?" I asked quietly, almost to myself. "While we sit here, safe and hidden, they're out there… dying."
Remus turned his head slowly, eyes unreadable, shadowed, and guarded. Not unkind, but distant. Like something in him had gone to ground and didn't want to be coaxed out.
"Your path has already been laid before you," he said at last. "Even if you cannot see it yet."
The words landed cold and heavy. They were meant to reassure, I think. But they didn't.
I didn't want a path. I didn't want prophecy or pre-written endings. I wanted freedom. Choice. The right to be ordinary. To decide for myself who I'd be, not who the world had decided I was meant to become.
But that had never really been mine, had it?
I looked back at the paper; that image of smoke and green light—and the fear crawled in again, slow and invasive.
I didn't feel safe.
And I wasn't sure I could save anyone.
"They're scared," I murmured. "All of them. And all we do is sit here. We're just watching."
For a long moment, Remus didn't speak. He folded the paper in his lap with deliberate care, pressing the crease flat before setting it aside. His expression was unreadable; blank, almost—but his voice, when it came, was gentler than I'd expected.
"Fear can freeze people," he said. "Stop them from acting. But it can also push them to do things they never thought themselves capable of. You've seen that. You've lived it."
I swallowed. The lump in my throat was sudden and stupid and made of too many things.
"And you've done more than just act, Harry," he added. "You've given me something to believe in. You've given me hope."
Hope.
The word struck something raw in me. Too delicate. Too dangerous.
Images rose, unbidden; faces I couldn't stop seeing, even with my eyes shut. People who had followed me. Believed in me. Fought beside me.
Died for me.
And still, I was here.
And that, more than anything, was what made it so hard to breathe some days.
"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 fully then, watching me with that quiet intensity of his. Not judging. Not pitying. Just seeing. Seeing too much.
"There has to be something we can do," I said again, this time my voice rising. The words spilt out, messy and desperate. "Anything. I can't just sit here. I can't wait. Not while people are—while they're—"
My voice cracked. I didn't care.
He smiled, but it wasn't the sort that reached the eyes. It lingered faintly at the corners of his mouth, tugged by some old memory that never quite let go.
"Perhaps, Harry," Remus said softly. "But the change begins here."
He tapped his chest; two fingers against his heart.
"Changing the world starts with learning to change yourself."
Outside, the wind pushed through the trees, their bare branches scraping against the windowpane. They seemed to shiver, almost, as though they'd overheard him and weren't quite sure what to make of it.
"Master your craft," he continued, voice quiet but steady now. "Not just the incantations—that's the easy part. Learn restraint. Precision. Learn to lead, not merely react. Become the kind of wizard who can carry what's coming and endure it."
I hesitated. My throat tightened.
"Do you really think I can?" I asked. I hated how small my voice sounded.
"Yes," he said, without the faintest pause. No hesitation. No doubt. Just yes.
"But not all at once," he added gently. "Today, practise the spell I showed you. Tomorrow, we'll talk about what comes next. Just put one foot in front of the other, Harry."
There was something in his tone—firm, certain—that pulled me back from the edge. Not away from the war or the fear, exactly, but back to something solid.
One footfall.
One breath.
One spell.
I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat. The tightness in my chest eased slightly, like a knot beginning to loosen.
Outside, the wind still whipped through the trees.
But inside the cottage, the warmth held fast.
The village moved at its own pace: slow, deliberate, like the ticking of an old clock that refused to be hurried. Ottery St Catchpole had a rhythm born of ancient memories and older stone. Stone cottages pressed close together, ivy climbing lazily up their chimneys. Smoke curled from hearths. Mornings arrived cloaked in birdsong and the scent of jasmine or damp earth, depending on the weather.
People waved as you passed. They paused to exchange pleasantries, to ask after the weather, the price of eggs, and whether the baker's daughter had finally married the smith's apprentice. Milk bottles sat unattended on doorsteps. Dogs dozed in sun-dappled patches, unbothered by the comings and goings of the world.
But even here, you could feel it, that quiet buzz beneath the calm. The sidelong glances. The questions that never quite made it past polite smiles. They didn't know who we were, at least, not exactly, but they knew we weren't locals. Knew we didn't belong.
A boy who looked too closely at everything.
A man with scars on his face and shadows in his eyes.
We weren't guests or cousins come to visit.
We were ghosts in borrowed clothes, haunting the edges of their peace.
Sometimes, when the wind blew in from the east, I swore I could hear it: the faint crack of Apparition, the cruel laughter of Death Eaters threaded through the trees, and the distant murmur of a world fraying at its seams. But up here, on this quiet rise looking down at the windmills and wheat fields, it all felt like it belonged to someone else's story.
I wanted to believe it could be ours. That peace could last longer than a moment.
Remus's voice broke softly through my thoughts.
"Do you agree, Harry?"
I blinked. "Sorry—what?"
He was watching me, not with frustration, but with that quiet weariness that had become part of him. The look of someone who'd long since learnt that most answers aren't found in books or spells, but in surviving.
"We were speaking about Hogwarts," he said evenly. "About keeping a low profile."
Right. Hogwarts.
It felt wrong, somehow. I couldn't imagine myself roaming those corridors, falling into House routines and timetables, pretending I was just another student.
But Dumbledore had arranged it. Said it would keep us safe, for now. Said there were things we needed to learn and others we'd need to find.
The castle was protection, yes, but also a prison of sorts. A fortress built of stone and history, where every step echoed with what had come before.
Remus cleared his throat.
"You and I will be there in different capacities—student and staff. That gives us access, yes, but also scrutiny. Hogwarts is full of secrets, Harry. You'll need to keep your eyes open."
I nodded slowly. The weight of it settled over me like a cloak pulled tight around my shoulders.
"Sounds absolutely marvellous," I muttered, though a dangerous part of me meant it.
Somewhere deep down, the thought of going to Hogwarts, despite everything, sparked something dangerously close to hope.
Remus caught it. Of course he did.
"Enthusiasm," he said wryly, "can be useful. But dangerous, too. Attention brings questions. Questions you may not be ready, or safe enough, to answer."
I exhaled, rubbing the back of my neck.
"Alright. I'll keep my head down."
"Self-control," he corrected gently. "Not silence. Not hiding. Just… awareness."
I knew he was right. He always was, damn him.
But that didn't make it easy.
"It's just… harder for me than it is for you," I said quietly, not meeting his eyes. "You've always known how to disappear into a room. I'll never have that luxury once I use my real name."
For a moment, he didn't answer. Then he turned to face me fully, and when he spoke, his voice was lower and steadier.
"It's not about luxury, Harry," he said. "Or ease. It's about sheer necessity. But you don't have to worry about that because no one will remember who you truly are."
He paused. The silence between us was heavy, not awkward, just full. Laden with everything we weren't quite saying.
"Sometimes," he added, "the only way to survive is to become smaller than the danger that hunts you. Not forever. Just long enough to outlast it."
His words sank in slowly. I didn't respond. I simply stood there, feeling the weight of yet another truth settle next to all the others.
There was a softness in Remus's eyes that caught me off guard. Not the softness of comfort or kindness. No, it was quieter than that. More knowing. The kind of look worn only by someone who'd witnessed too much and said far too little. A gaze shaped by restraint. And loss.
"You've done hard things before, Harry," he said, his voice low and measured. "Harder than this. And you'll do more because you must. But don't forget… there's strength in patience, too. In knowing when to hold back."
I opened my mouth to say something—sharp, maybe. Something tired. I wanted to shout that I was done with waiting. That I was sick of hiding in shadows, pretending I didn't care that the world was tearing at the seams. Sick of watching others fight and fall while I remained tucked behind curtains and spells and plans I didn't understand.
But then I saw it, the faint tension around his mouth. The new lines etched above his brows. The flicker of worry he hadn't quite managed to mask.
And the words died in my throat.
"If anyone can do it," he said simply, and that was all.
No speech. No fuss. Just quiet certainty.
The kind that settles somewhere deep.
I turned back towards the window. The village outside basked beneath the morning sun, rooftops bathed in that soft, golden light that only ever seemed to appear just after dawn. It spilled through the clouds like something precious leaking from the sky.
And for a single, weightless moment, everything held.
One breath at a time, I told myself. One day at a time.
I would blend in. I would play the part. I would become whatever the world needed of me, even if I no longer knew who that was. Even if every part of me ached to be someone else entirely. Someone unburdened. Unmarked.
Remus moved through life with a rhythm: measured, deliberate, maddeningly serene. His composure had nothing to do with ease. It was learned. Rehearsed. A survival instinct, honed sharp like the tip of a duelling wand. Watching him sometimes felt like watching someone who had memorised the rules of a game designed to break people and had mastered it without blinking.
And me?
I was still fumbling for the instructions.
He wore his disguises like second skins: names that weren't his, posts that weren't real. He slipped into false lives as easily as donning an old coat: familiar, well-worn, and made to fit. He knew how to vanish properly, how to occupy space without drawing attention.
It grated on me, that grace.
While I struggled under new names and borrowed smiles, he settled. He made it look effortless—this life on the run. But I didn't want effortless. I didn't want practised smiles or half-truths spoken through clenched teeth. I wanted connection. Something raw and real.
A laugh unfiltered by fear.
A touch that didn't flinch.
A story shared in the open without glancing over our shoulders.
Sometimes, on long walks through Muggle parks, or seated across from one another in little cafés that smelled of coffee and dust, I let myself pretend. I'd sit there, fingers curled round a mug, and think, Maybe this is what being normal feels like.
Just a boy with a scar and a headache.
No prophecy. No war.
But fantasy has a way of cutting back. The more I reached for it, the more danger slithered in behind me.
And always, always, Remus would notice.
He'd give me that look, that silent warning, and then we'd leave. No argument. No explanation.
Just another door closed behind us.
Another house abandoned.
Another not-quite-life left behind.
This time, he'd promised, was different.
But Hogwarts didn't feel different.
The thought of going to those halls, those staircases, those endless, echoing rooms, didn't comfort me.
It filled me with something that felt too much like grief.
Even as Remus spoke of protection, of permanence, something deep inside me recoiled.
Because I didn't believe in safety.
Not really.
And a school full of sharp-eyed students and portraits that never slept didn't feel like a sanctuary.
It felt like a trap.
Still, his voice, always calm, always so maddeningly certain, anchored me.
"Hogwarts is the safest place for you," he said. "The Headmaster has protections you can't yet imagine. If you stay within its walls… you won't have to keep running."
I wanted to believe him. Honestly, I did.
"Time to get changed," he told me.
I nodded.
I went upstairs. Opened the trunk at the foot of my bed. The hinges squeaked the same way they always had. Familiar. Almost comforting.
Inside, my robes waited, folded, neat, undisturbed.
I shrugged them on. The sleeves were too short now, the hem hanging awkwardly. I'd grown taller and leaner. More angles than softness. The fabric hung off me like something meant for someone else.
Or maybe it wasn't the robes that no longer fit.
Perhaps I was the one who had changed.
I stared at myself in the mirror.
The boy looking back wasn't quite the one I remembered.
There was something in the eyes.
Something that hadn't been there before.
A wariness.
A weight.
Maybe that's what war did to you.
Not all at once, but slowly.
Until one day, you couldn't quite remember what it had felt like not to be afraid.
I smoothed the front of my robes and turned away from the mirror.
It was time to go.
Even if part of me still wasn't sure where I was going back to.
Downstairs, Remus was already waiting.
Gone was the tattered traveller who had drifted through too many half-lives. In his place stood someone altogether more composed; robes crisp and dark, cuffs neatly buttoned, collar pressed. Yet the wear still clung to him, subtle but unmistakable, stitched into the slope of his shoulders and the grey threaded through his hair. His eyes, watchful and world-weary, hadn't changed. Eyes that had seen too much and forgotten none of it.
He stepped forward wordlessly and straightened my tie with hands far steadier than mine had been. His fingers moved deftly, practised, like someone who had done this before, for someone else, long ago.
In the hall mirror beside us, I caught a glimpse of myself.
The reflection startled me.
There was the Hogwarts crest, stitched bright against black robes. A school hat perched awkwardly atop hair that refused to be tamed. It looked… wrong, somehow. Too neat. Too formal. Like a costume meant for someone else.
I didn't look like myself.
I looked like a boy pretending to be someone. A ghost dressed in school colours.
"There," Remus said at last, with a faint huff of amusement. "From wandering nomad to certified schoolboy."
I flinched, just slightly, at the words.
Wandering nomad.
The phrase struck harder than it should have. Not because it wasn't true—it was—but because of how casually he'd said it. As if it were a badge or a nickname. I couldn't tell whether he meant it kindly or if it was simply a truth too worn to sting anymore. Either way, it sat on my chest like another weight I didn't know how to carry.
"I'm not sure about this," I said, my voice low and uneven. "What if I'm not ready?"
He paused, the faint trace of humour fading from his expression. Then he stepped closer, close enough that I could see the slight tremble in his jaw and the quiet strain at the corner of his mouth.
"You are," he said gently. "I've watched you, Harry. I've seen every step you've taken, every choice, every burden. You're stronger than you believe. And ready or not… this is the next step. You'll do great things."
It was meant as encouragement—I knew that. But it echoed in my ears like something heavier.
You're stronger than you believe.
You'll do great things.
People said things like that to me often. I never knew how to respond. It always felt less like a compliment and more like a sentence. A prophecy handed down.
"I don't want to be someone who's supposed to do great things," I muttered. "I just… I want to feel like I belong somewhere again."
Remus didn't reply at once. He simply looked at me, and there was something in his gaze—steadying. Something that didn't ask anything of me.
"You do belong," he said. "And you won't be hiding in the shadows anymore, Harry."
My throat tightened. I looked away.
"What if something goes wrong?" I asked, more quietly now. "What if I can't hold it together in there? What if I bring danger with me?"
He answered immediately. "Then we'll face it. Hogwarts isn't just a school; it's a stronghold. It's where hope has always begun again. And it's where you'll have space to simply be, not just survive."
His faith in that place, that it could hold me or heal me, was difficult to comprehend. It was the kind of belief I hadn't been able to reach for in a long time. Not after everything. Not after what I'd seen.
Still… I wanted to believe it. I needed to.
"But it still feels dangerous," I admitted. "Like I'm stepping into the centre of something I'm not ready to carry."
He placed a hand on my shoulder; firm, but not heavy.
"That's why I'm here," he said simply. "And that's why the Headmaster is watching. You're not alone this time, Harry. You don't have to be. You'll be safe."
"What if Hogwarts isn't safe?" I asked.
Remus's hand found my shoulder; firm, steady. "Then we'll learn to make it so."
He meant it kindly. But as we stepped outside and the wards shimmered to life behind us, a thought slipped through before I could stop it.
If safety can be made, it can also be broken.
And I wasn't sure which of us would be the one to do it.