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Remus was tired.
Tired from spending the night outside as Moony.
Tired from the toll being a werewolf took on his body.
Tired from just being a werewolf in general, especially in a society as unaccepting as magical Britain.
Ultimately, tired of being alone.
He’d had a few good years at Hogwarts, with his friends and the lengths they’d gone to to ensure that he wouldn’t have to spend the full moons alone, but that hadn’t lasted. They’d graduated and the war had consumed them, each one taking a different path to do their part and to try and survive.
And now Remus was the only one left. James and Peter were dead, Sirius was in Azkaban.
The full moon was touching the horizon by the time rational thought started to invade his mind again. Remus limped along, trying to reach the spot where he’d left a change of spare clothes, some potions, and his wand before it left the sky completely and the change back into human form ripped his muscles and snapped his bones. He would heal—he always did—but it was always an excruciating experience.
Thankfully, there was a small cave in this particular forest that would afford him some privacy while that healing took place and he wouldn’t run the risk of Muggles discovering him until he had gathered enough strength to apparate to the small flat he’d been renting.
Renting in the Muggle part of London, because no one reputable would rent to him in magical London. Even a good portion of disreputable persons refused to rent to werewolves.
It was probably better this way. There was nothing keeping him in the magical world anymore. If he wanted to, he could easily slip into the Muggle world and make a life for himself there. He already had a place to live and it would be easier to find employment there as well, even if it was only making minimum wage.
But that wouldn’t solve his problem of being alone.
The Statute of Secrecy would make it difficult to date a Muggle in general and being a werewolf would make it even harder, especially if his partner ever wanted children. He couldn’t in good conscious have a child biologically and risk passing down his curse to them and his general lack of records in the Muggle world would make adoption a highly unlikely possibility.
A small whimper drifted through the air.
At first, Remus didn’t think too much about it, assuming that the sound was unintentionally coming from him. The end of the night was always hard and painful, after all. He was lucky to be walking at all, right now.
But then the sound grew louder, and then softer as he moved.
Grew louder as he got closer, and grew softer when he passed by a certain place.
Not him, then.
His ears twisted to pinpoint where the whimpering was coming from. It wasn’t very far, thankfully, a large brambled bush several meters away.
There was a puppy lying under it, barely visible through the thick brambles.
Later, Remus would wonder how it even got into such a predicament, but for now, instinct compelled him to free the puppy from its hiding spot and the sharp thorns of the brambles. Compelled him to take the puppy back to his own hiding spot, where it would be much safer.
He’d been alone for so long that he instantly considered the puppy as part of his pack. It didn’t even matter if the puppy was werewolf like him, or just a wolf. They were pack and he would care for them from now on, since there was no sign of another wolf or werewolf in the area. No any indication of family, human or otherwise.
The puppy was alone, just like him.
That was no sort of life for a youngster.
Once freed of the brambles, Remus picked the puppy up by the scruff of its neck, gentler than he could ever remember being as Moony.
The puppy whined, but for the most part, it just seemed relieved to be getting any sort of attention, rather than injured or upset that it was in the company of a much larger, adult wolf.
It unnerved Remus, how close the puppy was to the cave that he had claimed as his. Was that on purpose or was that just coincidence?
He was fairly sure that there hadn’t been any puppy or wolves or humans in the forest before transforming that night. He’d made sure, because he hated dealing with the territorial battles surrounding ordinary wolves and because he didn’t want to be responsible for the murders of any humans. There had only been prey animals in the forest, according to his spells.
Curious, and definitely a problem to figure out in a few days, when he was human and fully recovered from his latest transformation.
Once back in the cave, he set the puppy carefully down on the softest surface he could find—the spare change of clothes he had stashed before transforming. Set the puppy carefully down, because at some point, it had fallen asleep on their slow journey.
Well, that was one less thing to be concerned about.
Just in time too, as he felt the transformation rip through his body almost as soon as the pair of them were wedged in the small, dark den, shortly followed by blissful unconsciousness.
“Experts” theorized that the older a werewolf got, the more accustomed they got to the pain of their transformations and eventually, they would stop noticing it.
Remus had always scoffed at that theory, because it was evident that such experts had never even talked to a werewolf. There was no getting used to the pain and he definitely always noticed it, because half the time, he ended up blacking out in the process.
Waking up on the cold, hard ground, covered by who-knew-what, was never a pleasant experience.
Waking up to the sight of a toddler sleeping on his change of clothes was an equally unpleasant experience.
Though his head was pounding, Remus vaguely remembered finding a puppy at the end of the night. That there was now a toddler sleeping where he had set down the puppy answered the question of whether it had been an ordinary wolf or a werewolf.
Definitely a werewolf then.
His heart ached at the thought of such a young child being a werewolf. He’d had a hard enough time when he’d first been bitten, and he had only been a few years older.
And he’d been relatively lucky, with his parents. At least they hadn’t abandoned him, like this toddler’s parents likely had.
Abandoned and left to die.
Thankfully, that hadn’t happened.
And it wouldn’t happen again, as long as he had something to say about it.
It was probably highly illegal, but he was so tired of being alone and so ready to have some semblance of pack again.
It wasn’t like there was any other options, either. The toddler couldn’t be placed with Muggles, who would be unaware of his werewolf status and at risk of being bitten at the next full moon, and no magical family would take in a known werewolf.
Remus was really the only option.
At least with his magic, it would be easy to forge the necessary paperwork.
They could live together in the Muggle world, away from the magical world and all of its prejudices. It would be a bit unconventional, but he could give the toddler as close to a normal childhood as possible. The boy—Remus quickly checked—wouldn’t grow up with the same self-esteem and self-loathing issues that Remus had dealt with, hopefully.
A bit rash, but Remus was a Gryffindor. It was practically expected of him.
And then the boy started to wake up, opening his eyes—eyes that Remus immediately recognized.
Lily’s eyes.
At the sight of a familiar shade of green, Remus knew that he would do anything for this child—his child.