You hadn’t planned on living with Remus Lupin.

If you’re being honest, you’d planned most of your adult life around not running into people like him again, people who remembered you too clearly, who saw through you in ways that were inconvenient, who made you feel sharp-edged and restless in the same breath.

And yet.

The flat above the secondhand bookshop smells like dust, rain, and cheap coffee, and Remus Lupin has been there for weeks before you fully accept it.

He moves quietly, like he’s apologizing to the air. Tall, hunched, always wrapped in threadbare jumpers that look like they’ve survived things he won’t talk about. Sometimes there’s a cane. Sometimes there isn’t. He never explains the difference.

You notice anyway.

You always did.

At Hogwarts, you’d circled each other like rival planets, too similar in all the wrong ways. You’d argued over theory, over ethics, over who had the right interpretation of a spell or a text. Never raised voices. Never kindness either. Just sharp looks, clipped words, and the kind of academic tension that left scorch marks.

Now you share a kitchen.

Sirius Black calls it “character-building.”

Sirius Black is the reason this is happening at all.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he says one evening, sprawled across the arm of the sofa like a provocation. “You needed a place. Moony needed a place. I’m simply a facilitator of destiny.”

Remus doesn’t look up from his mug. His hands are wrapped around it like it’s the only warm thing in the room.

“It’s not destiny,” he says quietly. “It’s poor planning.”

You watch the way his jaw tightens when Sirius grins wider.

James, seated on the floor with his back against the couch, glances between you and Remus with far too much interest. He’s always been like that, noticing things people don’t mean to show.

“So,” James says lightly, “have you two killed each other yet, or are you saving that for later?”

“No,” you say at the same time Remus says, “Not exactly.”

Your eyes meet.

It’s brief. Electric. Uncomfortable.

Remus looks away first.

He always does.

Living together becomes a series of almosts.

Almost touching hands in the kitchen late at night. Almost conversations that veer too close to honesty. Almost moments where you catch him watching you like he’s trying to memorize something he’s afraid of losing.

He’s different from the boy you knew, softer in some ways, harder in others. More careful. More withdrawn. And when you push, even gently, he withdraws further, like closeness is something that has to be rationed.

One night, long after Sirius and James have left, the flat is quiet except for rain tapping against the windows.