Harry Potter was in the hospital wing for several days, regrowing his bones and recovering from the nasty fall on the pitch. Remus hadn't dared to go back up to the hospital wing, despite McGonagall's persistence that he ought to go and have a talk with Harry.

She told him so over tea and biscuits in her office.

"I think you would both benefit from knowing one another quite a lot, Mr. Lupin," she advised.

But Remus didn't go. He just couldn't bring himself to.

The moment he was around Harry he felt like he was eleven years old and trying to keep his furry little secret from his new room mates. There was an anxiety that stirred in him. One wrong move... one second of being a git... and he'd be rejected for sure. Remus Lupin so wanted Harry to approve of him...

"Very good, Neville! Your spell work is improving quite a lot, I'm very proud of you." Remus Lupin applauded as he passed by Neville Longbottom, who had doused the hinkypunk's lantern with an aquamenti spell.

Neville grinned with pleasure, despite his soaked-through robes, turning as Dean Thomas clapped his hands as Neville bowed.

"Oh and very clever, Miss. Granger!" Remus paused to watch as Hermione held up a handful of bluebell flames that were so brilliantly blue they looked like chunks of ice set aglow. "That may be the most beautiful bluebell flame I've ever set eyes upon." He looked at her with amused pride, nodding, "You really are a very clever witch!"

Hermione smiled shyly, and he saw something in her eyes that he couldn't quite place the meaning of before she said, "Thank you, Professor. You're a very good teacher." Her voice was firm confident.

"Why thank you very much," Remus said. He continued walking along the row, passing by Ron and Harry. Ron had managed to allow his hinkypunk to grab hold of his hair and Harry was fighting it off. With a flick of his wand, Remus set the hinkypunk back into the glass box from which the ghastly sprite had come.

"We're just about done here, so please remember your four paragraphs on why - or why not - your strategy to defend against the hinkypunk today worked." He glanced meaningfully at Ron, who flushed, and said, "And have a good weekend, the lot of you..."

The bell rang and everyone was set to gathering their things, hurrying out the door. 

Remus felt his palms go to a cold sweat. "Um... wait a moment, Harry." The boy had been about to go out the door. "I'd like a word."

Hermione looked concerned but Ron said, "See you at lunch, Harry," and dragged her off as Harry doubled back into the room.

Remus nervously started focusing on anything but Harry.

God, why was this so hard? It should be the easiest thing in the world!

Harry stood there, watching as Remus covered the hinkypunk's box, his mouth pressed into a line, as though holding back the urge to ask what Remus wanted... Surely the boy was eager to go and eat with his friends. Talking to some old ragamuffin professor had to be lowest on his totem pole of desires...

"I... heard... about the match," Remus said. He hadn't told anyone he had actually been there in the stands. If he told, he would have felt obligated to tell about Sirius Black being there and Remus couldn't - he just couldn't.

Remus's finger moved over the engraving on his briefcase handle.

Professor R. J. Lupin.

Give me strength, James.

James - no, Harry - wore an expression of uncertainty.

"I'm very sorry about your broomstick. Is there any hope of fixing it?" He stacked books to keep his nervous hands busy.

"No," Harry said, his voice rather flat. "The tree smashed it to bits."

Remus sighed. If Harry had any idea about that tree - he might blame Lupin for the demise of his Nimbus, he thought.

"They planted the Whomping Willow the same year that I arrived at Hogwarts," Remus confessed. Part of him dared Harry to press for details, but he didn't. "People used to play a game, trying to get near enough to touch the trunk."

James had played this exactly thrice, and mainly just to watch the amazement on younger students faces when he, the all powerful Potter, made the Willow obey his command. Little did any of them know James had less power and more a connection with the rat that stood at the base pressing the secret knot that stilled the wild branches.

"In the end, a boy named Davey Gudgeon nearly lost an eye," (and James had lost an entire weekend to detention), "And we were forbidden to go near it." (Except on full moon nights. Or anynight, really, since nobody ever really enforced that rule anyway.) Remus sighed, "No broomstick would have a chance."

Harry was lost in thought, his eyes trained on the covered hinkypunk box. Remus looked down at the briefcase.

"Did-you-hear-about-the-dementors-too?" Harry asked, his words all blending together as he spat them quickly, as though he, too, had been building up bravery to ask a question.

Remus felt his hear churn.

"Yes, I did." Remus wanted to tell Harry how bleeding scared he had felt seeing him fall that way, how he'd been one of the ones trying at fending them off for him. "I don't think any of us have seen Professor Dumbledore that angry." Remus forgot for a moment to keep up the facade that he hadn't been present. "They've been growing restless for some time..." Remus murmured. He knew when, and he knew why.

They'd started pressing to come in the grounds of the castle the very day Sirius had shown up in the Shrieking Shack after the full moon.

"They're furious Dumblefore won't let them inside..." Remus said. He hesitated, remembering the train car back in September. "I suppose they were reason you fell?"

"Yes," said Harry.

There was a long pause. Long enough that Remus looked up from the stack of books and his eyes met Harry's.

"Why? Why do they affect me like that? Am I just--?"

"Am I weak, Rey?" James asked. He was sitting on the end of his bed, his Transfiguration textbook open on his lap.

Remus sat at his desk. They'd been studying in silence for the past hour, alone and in silence while Sirius and Peter were down in the common room. There had been many times like this, times when they both just needed a break from the commotion. Especially in the later years.

Remus had turned about. "Weak? You? No."

James had looked up at Remus, his eyes pleading - just exactly the expression which Harry wore now, Remus thought - and explained, "It's just that... there were moments... moments when I wake up from a bad dream of everything and I feel so... afraid..."

"You're not weak, James." Remus's voice was firm. "You're the strongest wizard I know." He'd paused, then aded, "Besides myself of course."

James had let out a guffaw at that. "Always humble, you are."

"It has nothing to do with weakness, Harry." Remus's voice carried that same firmness he'd used upon James. And then, the sad truth. "The dementors affect you worse than the others because there are horrors in your past that the others don't have."

It's why they affect me, too, kid, he thought, as a ray of wintery sunlight fell across the classroom, illuminating the tear stains on Harry's cheeks.

He wanted to hug the poor boy.

But he didn't dare to.

"Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth," Remus said.

"Walk this earth, Moonshine? Innit more like they GLIDE?"

Remus continued, "They infest the darkest, filthiest places --"

"It's no wonder that Achyls is here then, is it? With how filthy-dirty I am, isn't that right, Moon-moon?"

"They glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope and happiness out of the air around them. Even muggles can feel their presence, though they can't see them. Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory, will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself - soulless and evil. You'll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life."

"I fought the law and the law won, I fought the law and the law won..."

He rocked and rocked and rocked...

"...and the worst that has happened to you, Harry, is enough to make anyone fall off their broom."

Harry stared transfixed by Remus's words.

"You have nothing to be ashamed of."

"When they get near me -" Harry now looked away, unable to meet Remus's eyes, "I - I can hear Voldemort... murdering my mum."

Remus staggered.

"I could feel it, Remus," Lily said, eyes full of tears. "I could feel it. Physically feel it."

He started to reach for Harry, but his hand trembled and fell shy and there they stood, facing each other.

A million words to say.

But not a word would escape his mouth.

"Why did they have to come to the match," Harry said bitterly, shaking his head.

Because Sirius Black was there.

Remus felt sick, truly shaken to the very core. He snapped his briefcase closed, as though shutting it would allow him privacy to break the way his heart felt it ought to be allowed to.

"They're getting hungry. Dumbledore won't let them into the school, so their supply of human prey has
dried up... I don't think they could resist the large crowd around the Quidditch Pitch." Then Remus fumbled, thinking of the look on Sirius's face in that top box. "...All that.. excitement.. emotions running high..." His throat tightened up.

The lunge toward him...

What might have happened? What might have been said?

But the madness.

Oh the madness...

The rocking and the yelling, the wandless magic and the muttering, the chaos.

"It was their idea of a feast."

"Azkaban must be terrible," Harry muttered.

Remus looked at him. It was like Harry could see inside Remus, straigjt through to the thoughts of ghosty cells and ghostly men.

Terrible indeed, Remus thought. Terrible enough to take the life and mind right out of the most alive and overactive minded people he had ever known.

"The fortress is on a tiny island," Remus said.

A flash of it in his mind.

It had been a silhouette on the horizon in a flash of lightning.

"...way out to sea," Remus added.

He could still feel the boat rocking.

"But they don't need walls and water to keep the prisoners in. Not when they're all trapped inside their own heads, incapable of a single cheerful thought."

His footsteps echoed in the dark corridor, long and inescapable; it seemed to go on forever, despite the true narrowness of the tower.

And there he had been, laying slouched in the corner, staring into nothingness, his mouth moving but no words coming out...

"Most of them go mad within weeks."

It had only been days.

"But Sirius Black escaped from them," Harry said. "He got away."

Remus almost dropped his briefcase. He caught it before it could slam into the floor and the handle could snap off again. He wasn't sure what it was Tonks had done that day on Platform 9 3/4 to fix it, but whatever it was the mending of that old briefcase was more solid than he ever expected it could be after all those years.

"Black must have found a way to fight them," Remus said. He thought of that form, that staring, lifeless, murmuring form he'd seen that day in the cell... that he'd seen last night in the Shack... "I wouldn't have believed it possible."

He glanced at his hand. It was whole now, but it had been bandaged that first night.

"Dementors are supposed to drain a wizard of his powers if he is left alone with them too long..."

"You made that Dementor on the train back off." Harry interrupted Remus, and his voice was full of vigor and intent.

Remus blinked in surprise of the tone in Harry's voice. Awe. Reverence. Respect.

"There are - certain devices one can use," Remus said. Harry's face was bright with awe. Remus flushed with modesty. "But there was only one on the train," he said, "The more there are, the more difficult it becomes to resist - and at Azkaban there are thous--"

"What defenses? Can you teach me?" Harry was eager. He stared up at Remus, pleading.

"I - I don't pretend to be an expert at fighting dementors, Harry -" Remus said, and he felt that flush climbing through him, suddenly full of panic. He thought of how mad they had driven him, that day in Azkaban when he's gone to see Sirius, and how horrid the things he had seen when they descended on the pitch after Sirius had run. "Quite the contrary; I --"

Harry's eyes were begging him. They looked so much like Lily's. "But if the Dementors come to another Quidditch Match..."

Or if Sirius does, Remus thought.

"... I need to be able to fight them," Harry continued.

The look of determination in Harry's eyes.

It was the determination that had levitated the giant squid...

It was the determination that had changed an ordinary boy into an animagus, magic far advanced over his grade level...

It was the determination that had set up a shield charm so strong that it was still in place twelve years later.

"I love him so much, Remus."

Remus drew a deep breath.

"I'll try to help."