Disabled Remus Lupin - Blog Posts

Remus who can’t swim because of his physical disabilities which mostly affect his legs and hips and back. Remus who, despite being a little scared of it, loves the ocean and water. Remus who feels bad every time he sees somebody swimming or a pool.

Sirius who is a very strong swimmer and puts Remus on his chest to just exist in the water with his feet off the bottom for once. Sirius who invests in pool floaties so Remus can swim on his own. Sirius who teaches Remus how to float on his back so he can be in the water without floaties.

sunday someday snippet 👀

bc i am super late to this and it is wednesday now oops. thanks @barkingatthemooninsteadofwriting and @madefortherain for the tag! loved your snippets <3

here is a third snippet from lotf ch 4 because yes, i am still working on that same chapter 😭 in my defense i’m working on another fic (with a deadline!) at the same time!!

Remus chooses to believe that he is simply growing as a person and learning to challenge his anxiety instead of letting it hold him back, rather than it having anything to do with how intense his feelings for Sirius are. Because they aren't. Intense. They're just...feelings. Regular feelings. The exact normal amount of feelings that should be expected on the way to a second date.

open tag bc i’ve tagged so many people in so many things recently. would love to see anyone’s snippets! <3

disabled remus and reformed dickhead sirius.

sirius who has to LEARN to take care of remus, to not rush off, to not assume he can physically keep up. remus who uses a cane and sirius who at first is kind of embarrassed to be seen with him in public (because of his “never show weakness” upbringing), but who also immediately glares at anyone who looks funny at remus. sirius whose boundless energy both enchants and exhausts remus, who has to learn how to take care of his boyfriend when fatigue catches up with him. sirius who is forced to learn to be comfortable with the quiet (which is actually good for him). sirius who researches remus’ conditions (chronic fatigue, arthritis, problems that the doctors still can’t diagnose) to better learn how to help him. sirius who comes with remus to his appointments, or drops him off with a kiss, depending on how he feels.

remus who can sense sirius’ embarrassment, who snaps at him for it more than once. remus who softens when he finds sirius asleep as his laptop, fifty tabs open to different medical websites and forums. remus who can see how much his boyfriend is unlearning his own prejudice, and working to take care of him. remus who has never been taken care of so fiercely and purposefully, and who loves sirius for it.

nonsexual wolfstarbucks headcanons! (because i’m tired of them always being oversexualized)

this accidentally got really long so everything’s below the cut!

Sirius is Always the middle spoon. he WILL NOT let anyone else be the middle spoon!!! the only exception is if Remus is flaring or James is really upset, aka if they Need it. if they just want it too bad

relatedly any of the 3 of them will whine and complain and be a bit grumpy if they wake up to one or both of their boyfriends out of bed. they all find it cute about each other lol

Sirius and James coddle the shit out of Remus when he’s flaring. at first he pushes back on it bc he doesn’t want to be infantilized or treated like he can’t take care of himself but he grows to realize they’re not doing it for those reasons but because they love him and why should he suffer if they can make it better? one of them is cuddling him At All Times unless he doesn’t want them. they bring him food in bed, they fix his pillows and blankets, they set the thermostat to whatever he needs to be comfortable.

Sirius and James like flustering Remus. it’s sooo so easy and they almost make a game/competition out of it, seeing how red they can make him before he gets away, how quickly they can fluster him by doing the littlest thing. strategies include: kissing all over his face, sitting on his lap, whispering Really sappy things in his ear, both of them kissing his cheeks at once, telling him how pretty he is, slapping his ass when he’s bent over doing laundry or something

honestly generally Remus gets pretty princess treatment. he’s their Baby he’s their princess he’s perfect he gets everythingggg he’s so pampered

James’ love language is..acts of service? and Sirius’ is words of affirmation, but Remus’ is quality time, so he struggles a lot with showing them he loves them in the way that feels most important to them. S & J adjust a lot quicker, they have a primary one for receiving but can slip into any for giving pretty naturally. but Rem struggles and has to consciously plan out ways to give them what they need. for a bit it’s a lot of really awkward “Sirius. you know, ummmm. i love you right?” at the randomest times, whispering really quietly into his ear that he missed him bc he’s too embarrassed to say it loud, etc. and a lot of awkward “do you need help with that?” to J and the strangest little acts of service like, hmm. R tidies up after him and sees that as an act of service; James obviously doesn’t. he offers to do what he thinks is a menial task once but doesn’t know J loooves doing it. he blurts out an offer to drive him to work once but J finds it more inconvenient because then he has to wait for a pickup. in canonverse he offers to chop his potions ingredients but then J is just standing around waiting for him to finish. makes the bed for them every morning but J doesn’t even care about a made bed? idk it’s just Really Awkward attempts but S & J find it really sweet and they don’t mind, they don’t feel like they Need it from him anyways. they’re happy with his love in any form. but they melt every time he tries even if it’s awkward and they can’t say it’s not really really nice once he figures it out.

when one of them is cooking the other 2 (or whoever’s home) are sitting on the counter watching and giving little forehead/cheek/nose kisses when they pass by and yapping and passing over utensils/ingredients.

they have 3 different toothpastes bc they all have Very Strong Opinions and cannot will not compromise. (S like standard colgate bc it’s sweeter/less strongly minty. R likes standard crest for the opposite reason. J likes…crest kids sparkle fun or something insane like that.)

Rem walks around the house in big shirt tiny boxers. S walks around shirtless & tiny boxers. J walks around shirtless & thick oversized sweatpants.

canonverse hc: over time their wands and magic all slowly meld and get used to each other til they can all cast comfortably with each other’s wands. it’s not the same as their own but extremely comfy + natural.

S & J love stealing R’s sweaters, R loves stealing S and J’s tees, socks and boxers are grab a random pair don’t know don’t care whose it is, S likes putting Rem in his clothes bc he looks so cuteeee. eventually they don’t even really have separate clothes tbh it’s just one giant shared collection.

S and J are pretty into PDA, nothing insane but like holding hands an arm around their waist cuddling up to each other a hand in a back pocket cheek kisses forehead kisses chaste mouth kisses, and R is very much Not. won’t even hold their hands sometimes. even their PDA makes him blush. so when they’re in public it often appears as if S and J are disgusting sappy boyfriends and R is the awkward uncomfortable third wheel. their friends think it’s hilarious

they have separate bedrooms! they don’t use them often, they spend 99% of their nights together huddled in one of their beds (all of them have a bed large enough for three) but they like having their own private space for times when they need it. R’s having an especially bad flare and being touched hurts, S is having a bad mental health day and needs to be alone for the reminder that he has his own private safe space now, J’s having a bad body image day and can’t handle being touched, etc. and not just for sleeping, sometimes they’ll hang out in their own room during the day if it’s that kind of day. sometimes they just want or need some space and it makes sense to have that option.

they also use it for one of them’s sick because they don’t wanna get each other sick, even though the other two insist they don’t mind and they’ll almost certainly get sick anyways. and then all three of them sleep in their separate beds bc the sick one will complain that it’s not fair the other two get to sleep together, even if it’s their own choice that all three of them aren’t sleeping together.

sunday snippetttttt

@madefortherain thanks for the tag love!

here’s a bit of lotf ch 4! getting a bit more into remus’s disability this chapter (:

It’s a bit embarrassing how well she knows him and his flare-ups by now—the kind of knowledge that only comes from seeing him at his lowest time and time again, helping him through it time and time again. But stronger than the shame is the warm glow of being loved, the reminder of how many times he’s crashed serving equally as a reminder that she’s stayed every single time. That through the passing phases of boyfriends and girlfriends and platonic friends, Lily is the one person who has never left his side.

cannot for the life of me remember who has already joined so apologies if any of you have already! but np tagging @1ftinreality @languagelessonswolfstar @brandileigh2003

omg what’s this? a new chapter of love on the fly???

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63646900/chapters/165362197

this chapter fought me every single step of the way and i’m very proud/relieved it’s finished HAHA

Pull - 298 words

second chronic illness themed @wolfstarmicrofic! this one featuring Remus with endometriosis for Endometriosis Awareness Month! CW for endo symptoms and mention of blood.

“C’mon, pull your shirt up.”

Remus drags his eyes away from the mindless comfort show on the TV screen. “What?”

Sirius sits down on the couch near his legs, curled tightly to his chest. “You heard me. Pull your shirt up.”

“Sirius,” Remus whines. He looks back at the television and curls his arms tighter around his lower abdomen, trying to absorb the warmth of the heating pad cradled there. “Leave me alone, it hurts.” An understatement if there ever was one. It’s like his uterus is a towel being wrung out until he cries, until he almost throws up, until he’s lost so much blood he’s dizzy with it.

A chilly hand cards gently through the curls falling over his forehead and Remus leans into the touch. “I know, baby, but I want to try something. Maybe it’ll help,” Sirius says.

And, well. He has Remus’s attention, but he’s still skeptical. “What is it?”

Sirius holds up a familiar brown tub of cream, one that Remus had bought for his joints and discarded months ago when it gave him no relief. “You haven’t tried it for this, have you?” Sirius asks.

Remus tilts his head, considering. No, he hasn’t. He doubts it will help, what with the big nothing it did everywhere else, but what does he have to lose by trying?

“Alright,” he agrees, and struggles to sit.

“No, no, hey, stay there. Just lift your shirt a bit for me,” Sirius says.

Remus does. Sirius insists on rubbing the cream into his pelvis for him, knowing how Remus hates the scent on his fingers.

Afterwards, Sirius settles into the opposite corner of the sofa, far enough to give Remus’s overheated body space, but close enough that he doesn’t feel alone. And Remus waits, and hopes.

Water - 364 words

This month’s @wolfstarmicrofic prompts are exercise themed and sooo many of them scream chronic illness to me so here is the first of several chronic illness microfics! This one featuring dysautonomia (: CW for implied internalized ableism.

All Remus can think is that he needs water. He’s overheated, sweat leaking from every pore. He’s dizzy, lightheaded, can barely think straight. All he can think is he needs to sit. He needs to cool off, needs to breathe, he can’t breathe.

But he and Sirius need food. He convinces himself he can handle paying for the groceries. Remus slumps forward, forearms resting heavily on the handlebar of the cart, head ducked, steps slowing to a snail’s pace.

He’s fine. He can do this.

The fog is already permeating his brain, replacing healthy gray matter with empty gray mist. It’s hot in here. He needs to pay. He can’t think.

Remus is clumsy in his scanning and bagging. He’s dizzy. He places the bags into the cart, ignoring the way his heart and lungs and shoulders scream, and heads straight for the door.

The chilly air hits Remus’s skin. It makes him sweat more. He hasn’t put his coat back on, carrying it instead.

When he reaches his car, he tosses the groceries inside carelessly. Despite how unsteady he feels he forces himself to walk to the cart corral and put his cart away.

Finally Remus folds himself into the driver’s seat, head falling against the steering wheel as he tries to breathe.

Five minutes pass, then ten; Remus only feels worse.

He hates himself for even considering it–hates himself more for doing it–but there aren’t many other options.

He reaches for his phone with shaky hands.

“Hey baby, what’s up? On the way home yet?” Sirius’s voice is energetic, excited, loving.

All Remus can manage is a little whimper.

Sirius’s tone changes instantly to worry, concern, still love. “Baby? Are you alright?”

“Feel sick,” mutters Remus.

“Should I come get you?”

Remus hasn’t even begun to consider answering when he hears the jingle of keys through the phone.

He sighs, then whimpers again. Sirius takes it as the yes it (reluctantly) is.

“Be there in ten, Moons. Deep breaths, okay? Remember, you have water in the glovebox.”

Remus manages some pathetic sound and the line goes quiet.

He pulls out the water he had forgotten about.

Sirius is coming.

He’ll be okay.

💌 how do you feel about comments/ feedback? Or whats kind of comment would make you happy?

ooh this is a fun one. i LOVE getting comments and positive feedback!! ao3 comments truly make my day, whether they’re short or long, as do excited replies/reblogs on here.

constructive/negative feedback i don’t enjoy unsolicited, which i think is true for most people haha, but when it’s coming from beta readers, friends i’ve asked etc im usually alright with handling it. depends on how personal the writing is and stuff though! sometimes it’s hard!

probably the kinds of comments that mean the most to me are ones from people who are disabled, or trans, or asexual, and relate to the representation i write in my fics. the rep is authentic to my own experience but it’s really comforting to hear that other people from the community also feel that it’s authentic, plus it’s nice to know i’m not alone when sharing certain things. like with brtc, i was super nervous about the trans rep because that remus doesn’t really align with a more common or normalized trans experience. he does align with mine, though, so it’s really lovely to hear from other trans people who also relate to that. i also get super excited when people point out little details or specific lines they enjoyed and stuff like that, but truly i get unbelievably excited at every single comment

ahhh thank you so much!!

Chapter 2 is actually up now in honor of Remus’s birthday 👀 so waiting worked in your favor, really.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63646900/chapters/163390432

First chapter of my new fic is up now!!

Featuring Remus who is…

Extremely pathetic

A university student

Asexual

Chronically ill

And Sirius who is…

Really quite gorgeous

A Businessman™️

An artist

Way too sweet and way too good at flirting (at least, if you ask Remus)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63646900

First chapter of my new fic is up now!!

Featuring Remus who is…

Extremely pathetic

A university student

Asexual

Chronically ill

And Sirius who is…

Really quite gorgeous

A Businessman™️

An artist

Way too sweet and way too good at flirting (at least, if you ask Remus)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/63646900

Oooh. Pain au please 💙

ooh yes i was a bit nervous about this one.

this is very much still in the planning stages, i’ve written a little 150 word snippet but the rest is just brainstorming. basically the premise is remus has a fantasy version of fibromyalgia/tactile allodynia and anyone he touches experiences that pain too. i’ve done a lot of Thinking about this one—mapping my own pain onto remus, aligning his backstory in the fic with his canon backstory—and i am definitely going to write it. i’m not 100% sure if it will ever see the light of day though. it’s by far the most personal thing i’ve ever even considered writing, drawing really heavily from my own experience of those illnesses, so i’ll have to wait and see if i feel alright with sharing it publicly.

(and yes it will have wolfstar too haha it’s just a lot less fluffy than my others)

this is an interesting discussion to have tbh and i like getting to hear other chronically ill people’s thoughts on it! same thing applies for my rambles here, not saying this to invalidate your experiences or your perspective, just want to share my own thoughts on it since i didn’t rly add anything to it before haha

i think a lot of this honestly just depends on the person and the chronic illness. different illnesses obviously have different symptoms and different people experience things to different levels of severity. so i’m def not by any means saying no chronically ill person can or does have good grades, bc that would be factually false and ableist.

i’ve had almost perfect grades up until this point in my college degree, to the detriment of my own health like remus may have, but this academic year is honestly a lot harder on me for reasons im unsure of—i think some of it is a cumulative effect though, and im only doing a 4-year degree compared to the 7 years of Hogwarts. plus, this is not mentioning my high school career, in which i got Ds in most of my classes and missed so many days of school i nearly didn’t pass high school at all just based on attendance. we don’t even know if there’s an attendance requirement at hogwarts! but in a modern day college or high school au there might be.

there’s also the fact that hogwarts is huge, and has a ton of stairs with, canonically at least, no elevators or ramps, meaning he’d have to use more energy on a daily basis than a lot of us in the modern real world have to with ADA (this is not to say all campuses are accessible, but a lot are at least partially so). there’s the fact that some of the classes, like DADA, are a lot more physically involved than the classes many college students are taking in the real modern world. and going back to the attendance itself, we don’t know if hogwarts grades on attendance but a lot of modern day public schools require attendance and if you miss too many days you cannot move on regardless of grades. as for college, a lot of professors at smaller universities grade on attendance and hogwarts seems to have relatively small class sizes. so if professors aren’t willing to be flexible on that? his grades would be shit just from sheer number of absences.

then there’s the fact that remus may not be old but he has been ill for a very long time, having been bitten so young. if we think of lycanthropy as a progressive illness, which seems likely based on various canonical descriptions, it will have had a lot of time already despite his young age.

also what makes lycanthropy different from a lot of real illnesses is the routine nature of the flares. he will have at least one flare every single month. with a lot of real illnesses people can go months without flares when they’re on proper treatment. they’re unpredictable and randomized, you might have twelve one semester and two the next. lycanthropy guarantees he will be sick for at least a day every single month, but likely more (because i don’t think there’s a lot of detail on this in canon but i find it immensely hard to believe that the full moon would only affect him the night of).

and lastly for many chronically ill people success in academia depends quite strongly on how accommodating and flexible professors are. we don’t know much about the marauders era professors iirc, so we don’t know if they’re decent people who would allow him flexible deadlines when he’s ill or not. we don’t know if they’re prejudiced against werewolves and refuse to accommodate one. i might be forgetting some details bc i haven’t read the canon series in many years but even if we meet some of them i know for sure we don’t know them all. plus just because someone seems nice from a 2-minute flashback doesn’t mean they aren’t ableist etc. and depending on the illness, the severity, etc pushing through just is not always physically possible! yes there is a certain extent to which you can ignore your needs and overuse energy you don’t have but it’s not always possible. my brain fog has been really bad this semester. i can force myself to do all the readings for my classes, but i physically cannot force the information to stick in my brain, so going through the motions does shit for my grades. we don’t really know what kinds of symptoms he has but if remus is injured and physically cannot, say, go gather plants from the forest for herbology, or he gets dizzy/lightheaded and cannot brew a potion bc the steam/heat will actually make him pass out, or whatever else, it won’t really matter how hard he tries or wants to push through. to be completely candid about something i’ve not even said out loud yet, i’ve had to give up on my dreams of going to law school because i am physically unable to maintain the grades necessary to get into a decent school, or to do the amount of reading law school entails, despite my best desperate attempts at pushing through even when it’s destroying me mentally and physically.

anyways, as i said this isn’t to negate anything anyone else said, it’s just my own interpretation of things! ultimately we’re working off of very little canon information about this and i’m not here to tell anyone their experiences are wrong. i think it’s a really interesting conversation to have though.

people who think rjl would have really good grades have never been chronically ill and had to miss school consistently because of it. I'm sure he was smart! I'm sure he did really well on tests! but there has never been a character I'm more sure struggled to achieve the academic success that he was capable of.

i want to write a chronic illness remus fic so badly but every time i try it starts to feel like a diary entry and i have a stop

I also just want to say that BRTC reached 1k hits the other day, and is only a few kudos off from 100, and i’m absolutely mind-blown that my little trans disabled Remus fic has been looked at that many times and paid a little compliment by that many individual people. I really had no expectations for this fic when I posted it. I had hopes, of course, but I didn’t expect anything to come from it, so having it get this much love is absolutely incredible. Thank you so much to everyone who’s shown interest, checked it out, given it kudos, and commented 💛💛💛

the eighth and final chapter of BRTC is up! a huge thank you to everyone who has been so enthusiastic and encouraging on tumblr and on ao3 :)

it’s so bittersweet to be saying goodbye to this version of Remus and this little universe but i’m really happy with where it ends and i’m very proud of it. and i have more fics in the works! i have several ideas planned out and have already begun drafting the next one

this is also why yes, Remus Lupin is canonically disabled (i don’t give a fuck if he only uses a cane in the movies, someone not using a mobility aid doesn’t make them nondisabled?? that’s such a ridiculous argument, plus just because harry didn’t mention him using a cane in the small amount of time he saw remus doesn’t mean he literally never touched a mobility aid. not to mention the movies are part of canon) and yes, it is ableist and really shitty to erase that and write him as able bodied. and this is why he will always always always be queer AND disabled in anything i write or draw.

I think some of y’all missed several days in queer history class so I’m just gonna put this as simply as I can:

If we accept the fact that lycanthropy is an AIDS metaphor (JKR has said she intended it as such so idk what to tell you), then it’s actually NOT queerphobic to extrapolate from that that Remus should be read as queer. I would argue that it’s more of an issue to read him any other way.

I know some of y’all like to make a big fuss about how it’s problematic because AIDS isn’t a gay disease. Babes, idk how to tell you this, but in the historical context in which Harry Potter was written, in the real fucking world during the AIDS crisis, for all intents and purposes, yes it was.

The powers that be in the US and UK governments knowingly and intentionally let the AIDS crisis get as bad as it did because of their belief that it was a gay disease. Were they correct? Did it ONLY kill gay men? No. But did it disproportionately affect gay men? Yes. Did we lose MASSIVE numbers of gay men during the 80’s and 90’s because the government was letting them die on fucking purpose? Baby, yes we did.

And to erase that from a text which is ostensibly a metaphor for that disease is to erase the violence enacted upon that specific population. They died quietly, and without fanfare, and so you have been allowed to forget that their deaths were targeted. They were targeted with inaction on a deadly disease and they were targeted because they were gay. It doesn’t matter if you like it. In the 80’s and 90’s, when the lycanthropy metaphor was written, when the books take place, AIDS was a gay disease.

Further, in that context, it only makes sense to read Remus as queer. The “one good werewolf” in this lycanthropy=AIDS=queerness simply cannot be read as straight.

Chapter 7 of BRTC is up!

In which Remus removes chest tape and Sirius learns about it.

The next chapter of BRTC will be the final chapter, which is so surreal to say!

What’s this? A new chapter of BRTC???

Remus finally gets his haircut!

chapter five of BRTC is here!

Remus’s body aches; Sirius takes care of him.

chapter 4 of Becoming Remus this Christmas is up now!

In which Remus opens many presents and Sirius opens a few.

It will probably be a few days now before the next chapter’s out. I was cranking it out trying to make sure this particular chapter was up on Christmas day, and now that it is I’m going to take a tiny break :)

chapter 3 of Becoming Remus this Christmas is here!!

Remus accompanies Sirius to a party; mistletoe is involved.

Chapter 2 of Becoming Remus this Christmas, my trans and disabled Remus-centric fic, is up now! And it’s almost twice as long as the previous one

https://archiveofourown.org/works/61501231/chapters/157454947#workskin

honestly floored by the response to this post omg 🥺🥺

anyways i’m here to say the first chapter is up!! i hope you enjoy :)

@moonandstarshangoutinbars it has been posted!!

hiii here’s a little peek at my christmas fic featuring trans remus! (he’s disabled as well but it’s not mentioned in this bit)

i’m aiming to have it all posted by christmas :)

ok i’m gonna go hide and not check tumblr for a while now