FIC: Remus Lupin and the Revolt of the Creatures, Chapter 14 / 21 (PG-13), part two
Title: Remus Lupin and the Revolt of the Creatures, Chapter Fourteen: Walls of Cover and Confinement, part two
Author: PaulaMcG
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: (subtly, eventually) Remus/Sirius
Chapter summary: Some images of the more distant past evoke more recent and painful ones.
Word count: around 5,800
Disclaimer: Remus won't help me make any money.
Notes: Any comments will be treasured.
Chapter One can be found here, Chapter Two here, Chapter Three here and here, Chapter Four here, Chapter Five here and here, Chapter Six here and here, Chapter Seven here, Chapter Eight here and here, Chapter Nine here, here and here, Chapter Ten here and here, the first part of Chapter Eleven here, the second part of Chapter Eleven here, the third part of Chapter Eleven here., the first part of Chapter Twelve here, the second part of Chapter Twelve here, the first part of Chapter Thirteen here, the second part of Chapter Thirteen here and the first part of Chapter Fourteen is here.
Remus Lupin and the Revolt of the Creatures
(Chapter Fourteen continues.)
Harry,
I’ve just talked to Neville about his parents. His company summoned back the luminous image of young Alice, and now the grace of all the Gryffindor girls is persistently blooming in my mind like a bunch of flowers. Or perhaps rather shining like the circle of trees around the Hogwarts lake, in the autumnal chorus of colours.
In my mind your mother, despite her name and her white skin, doesn’t resemble so much a delicate flower, but rather the fire of the rowans up in the north after a sharp frost in October. Among the dazzling golden light of the birches she alone glows in blood-red, secures the warmth.
She alone guided us to reconciliation, surprising all four of us, when we were devastated by the disaster James had hardly managed to prevent from happening. She didn’t know much of anything, only what Dumbledore had, in a foolhardy gesture, told everyone in the Great Hall: James had saved Snape and me as well. Or perhaps she knew more than she let us understand she did.
In the same way she was wise and caring also when we were all supposed to build up our lives outside school. I felt at times that I couldn’t possibly accept help from the other Marauders, particularly not from Sirius. Without claiming to know anything about my humiliating neediness, she would offer me support in ways which made it easy not to reject it.
Lily was the beauty who joined the beast and the three Animagi, perhaps almost fully aware of what they were. Am I conceited when suspecting that she was fascinated by us, and that she eventually could not resist, when she saw that James and Sirius had an opportunity to learn a lesson? She wanted to have her role in taming particularly the boy who had for years insisted on courting her. Still, she did not want us to become too tame. She, too, craved adventure as well as fun and affection, and she saw we had some to share.
She’d had her ambitious projects outside schoolwork before, too. She’d tried to pull Snape away from supporting the pureblood ideology. Having finally admitted her failure, by the age of sixteen she felt it was time for her to have more fun, a more satisfying project - to accept the romance and what came with it: membership in our intimate circle. This is how I remember her explaining to me, years later, why she had said yes to James just at a time when something so serious occupied him that he, for once, had forgotten to ask her to a date.
“Perhaps I wanted to brag about a boyfriend who’d been declared a hero,” she said, grinning and lifting her wand to summon more roast beef to my plate.
I had to hurry to object to her statement, so there was no time for me to consider whether I should have tried to stop the charm. “No, you came to his support when he needed it. You had loved him… for a long time, hadn’t you?”
I kept staring at her serene face under the crown of bright auburn hair, while she turned her gaze back to you. Yes, you were there at her breasts, and it took an effort for her to talk about anything but you, if she cared to use verbal language at all.
And I felt she lived mainly in denial of Dumbledore’s dire news concerning what she wanted to believe was her blessed little family. He had not told us about the prophecy, but he had said that there were reasons to believe that you as well as Neville were in particular danger.
“Yes, I loved your dad, that insufferable brat,” she said, perhaps forgetting that she had been talking to me. “I had admitted it to myself quite a while before, and I thought it was time to let him know, too, finally.”
Perhaps she had chosen a topic which belonged to such distant past partly in order to escape the reality of the dark times, although she preferred regarding you as her only reality. But she had also learnt that I felt unwelcome too easily, so she did her best to talk about something, in order to make me stay and agree to be fed. And she knew I wouldn’t have liked to talk about my current situation. I had nothing much to talk about: no job, no money, no heating in my room.
For some reason on these coldest nights at the beginning of 1981 James was often supposed to stay so late at work that Lily begged me to come and keep company to her and you. We both knew what she actually meant: to help her protect you in case something should happen. And that was not the only motive of hers we both pretended not to know.
She closed her robes and turned your beaming face as well as hers towards me. Two pairs of greenest eyes.
Having rejected the high chair James had bought, she kept you on her knees when reaching for the little spoon on a plate of potato purée. “I wonder why you’re not so eager to eat potato,” she said, and I needed a double-take to realise she was still talking to you. “I don’t think it’s because of the breast milk. You need to suck some first to feel good and safe… It must be because carrot and banana were the first kinds of purée I offered to you, so you don’t find this stuff sweet enough. But you open your mouth beautifully when you watch Uncle Remus eat, don’t you? Please, Remus, you must take some more potatoes, too, to show a good example to Harry.”
And so I kept eating, and a bit later I dozed off in the blissful warmth of her fire, with you in my lap. I was hardly in the state to defend anyone against any attack, and when, having taken you to your crib, she stirred me awake enough to ask me to get under the thick blankets in her guest room, she neglected to mention that James had already come home.
Before you were born and before I lost my parents there were more carefree times, when Lily got to share fun and adventure with us, and I hope our story won’t be told all in chronological order. Did I narrate this memory first for a purpose, for any benefit of yours? It’s simply too dear and familiar for me to refrain from writing it down now. I’ve relived it so many times, while settling down to sleep alone, or trying to stay awake, when it’s been too cold for sleeping.
I don’t think I needed to lose so much in order to truly appreciate what I used to have. By 1981 at the latest I thought I knew enough about love, and it’s hard to believe that the price we paid to learn more was not too high.
But I admit that only afterwards was I able to fully value the shelter Hogwarts had offered. I was not always happy to live surrounded by the stone walls. At times I was impatiently looking forward to freedom - longing to step out to the world where I could be myself. Burning with ambition, I dreamed of achieving… well, everything. Until the day I turned seventeen I stubbornly believed that the way I’d be treated out there would depend exclusively on my talents and efforts.
Perhaps partly because of my monthly confinement, I didn’t easily feel completely comfortable in such concrete situations, either, when I was expected to stay inside for a long time. What made it not only bearable but a joy for me to breathe within those halls and corridors were the young faces I kept treasuring in my mind in every new nuance of expression.
Until our sixth year, when Lily agreed to join us, it was almost exclusively the three boys in the centre of my new world. As I had to admit to Neville, I hardly knew Alice or anyone else. I must have already told you that Amelia was my closest friend among the girls. If I managed to give you the idea that the two of us were conscientious students, you may have assumed that we shared a lot of time together at the library.
However, the library was never my favourite place. I preferred studying outside, whenever possible, and sometimes, when the weather was pleasant enough for her, too, Amelia joined me to write essays, unrolling her parchment beside mine on the ledge by the south wall of the castle or on that flat stone, near the end of the lake.
It was not hard for me to concentrate on reading, not to mention building up stories or processing images to paint, while walking, too, and I enjoyed escaping to this world of my own. On the other hand, I was never irritated when interrupted by a friend on these strolls either, even though I felt that it was impossible to share more than a fragment of what I sensed around me and of what I had playing in my mind.
I’ve never been very sensitive to cold, at least not outside when I keep moving. That’s quite fortunate, as otherwise my years of homelessness would have been still a lot harder. Of course, nobody who spends even a part of the winter without a shelter or proper warm clothes either, here or even as far south as Greece, can avoid suffering from cold. After returning to Britain I’ve been determined to always have a roof over my head, no matter what else I’ve needed to give up. But during my drifting years I noticed that, with the exception of times when I was very famished or ill, or recovering from a transformation, the cold hit others harder than me. I was inclined to almost carelessly give away pieces of clothing, or to trade them for food, if possible.
As a child I got used to spending a lot of time outside, and ignoring all advice to dress warm. Walking barefoot since early spring until late autumn was nothing extraordinary among the poor members of the theatre group, including part-humans, some of whom never wore shoes. Perhaps I also trained myself to habits like these partly because I was irritated by my parents’ fussing about my health.
Even though I’m now back at home, this rain makes me long for October in the north. I did enjoy walking in the rain at Hogwarts, too, but the setting of some of my most special memories is a clear crisp morning.
Twice, I think, I managed to drag Peter out with me before breakfast to witness the miracle prepared by the first frost. Almost throughout the last two school years I had Padfoot as my willing companion to romp along the shores of the lake regardless of the weather. But in that October when I was thirteen I slipped out by myself.
During the previous few days the landscape had kept acquiring, on the quiet, some new internal light and warmth. But when I woke up in the sensation that the almost full moon had set, and to see the lacework of frost on the windowpane, I knew it was the morning I didn’t want to miss.
After pulling only some robes on, I ran down the corridors and staircases. By the time I stepped to the yard I was breathing deep enough to feel the sharpness of the frost in the air I inhaled. The first light of the sun was setting the treetops on fire, and the grass and the fallen leaves would remain white and stiff under my bare feet, until the rays would reach the ground and the warmth would turn it all drenched instead.
Stopping for a brief moment, I let the cold pierce me as it had pierced the trees. They had changed, and it was the most natural, necessary and beautiful thing that could ever happen. And then again I knew that in this burst of glory they had simply revealed their secret colours. This was what they had always truly been like, behind the disguise of the reasonable, productive green.
I started walking briskly, and I’d almost reached the lake when I heard the stomping of heavy shoes behind me. Glancing back, I was so surprised to see that it wasn’t one of my three friends that I stopped again.
Amelia was not particularly pretty according to any conventional standards, and she still both looked and sounded completely reasonable despite the miracle of the morning.
“Silly boy,” she said, “you’ll catch a cold.” There was a reproachful frown on her square face, but it turned into a smile, and I realised that the shyness in her smile had subsided after the previous school year.
For some reason I didn’t feel irritated in the same way as when my father said the same thing. “I won’t, unless I stand here still, talking to you.”
I grinned before turning my back on her and moving away, sliding in the frosty grass closer to the water’s edge. While continuing my way along the shore I kept my eyes on the spreading glow of the opposite woods and on its perfect reflection offered by the still water. Thanks to the complete lack of wind I hardly perceived the cold, until - when slowing down by the most glorious maple - I noticed her by my side again and saw that she was shivering despite her thick cloak and the hood, which he had lifted over her mousy hair.
I felt compelled to speak. “So you wanted to see this, too? Even though you don’t feel quite comfortable in the frost.”
But while talking I realised that the experience couldn’t possibly be the same for her, if she didn’t take it in as a blessing through all her senses. Besides, I doubted she perceived it through her eyes either.
She was gazing at me, and her reply was, “See what? I thought I could exercise a bit before breakfast, as it’s not raining… No, to be honest, I saw you from our dormitory window when I got up to complete an essay. And I thought you were running away from your friends… feeling upset or something… as you were not dressed properly, and I got worried. You get ill often enough. But I can see in your face that you’re doing this for fun. I just thought… I’ve got such an impression that you have some secrets, and…”
“Don’t worry. You won’t have to bother about my secrets. There’s at least one right here, and you can’t see it anyway.”
To my surprise I felt as elated as before and, on top of it, amused. I hoped she heard in my voice that I didn’t mean to offend her, but to make sure I added, “You’re a mighty quick runner.”
“Race me back to the castle? So you… I can get warm?”
I ventured to turn away for a moment, so as to take a deep breath and to focus once more on the light and colour as well as on my now almost numb feet. As I couldn’t make myself hurt her feelings by insisting on greeting the sunrise on my own, I was suddenly determined to make the most out of her company.
Seeing her still watch me intently, I did something I had never dared do to anyone at Hogwarts. I reached for her hand. She had folded her arms, and the hand I caught a hold of was gloved and reasonable. But it squeezed my freezing fingers eagerly, conveying happy surprise.
“No, let’s run like this, together,” I said, pulling her with me to follow our footprints back.
When we were climbing up the staircases, my body finally agreed to show how much warmth it had lost. Trembling, I allowed her to wrap her arm around my shoulders, under her cloak. After two days, while waiting for the rise of the full moon, I summoned the memory of her touch to comfort me.
There was more and more for me and Amelia to share since our studies got increasingly demanding during our third year. I had chosen Ancient Runes and, as homage to Uncle Francis, Divination, while she maintained that Arithmancy and Muggle Studies were more useful choices. However, we were both genuinely interested in each other’s subjects, too, and we spent a lot of time discussing and learning what we were not required to.
Besides, Amelia didn’t refuse to touch me. She hesitated, though, and she never initiated anything. Indeed, she never asked me to touch her in return, beyond the unavoidable reciprocity in holding hands, which soon became our regular but secret habit for two full years, and in occasional hugs. Instead, when securely hidden from everyone else’s eyes, usually outside, and as fully dressed as I agreed to get, I would guide her hand to caress me, even to wander under the robes, onto my skin, which craved for this service particularly when full moon was near.
To my relief, in fact, she wasn’t that kind of a girl who would expect a boyfriend to actually kiss her before her OWLs or even before her NEWTs. Her outlook of love was more idealistic than that. That’s the kind of romantic she was, and that’s another thing we had in common. But perhaps partly because of that our relationship remained fragile.
The deepest our bond ever got was due to my suffering. Her emotions grew as close to love as… well, as love in an average teenage romance can ever be - when she realised that I was incurably ill. I never mentioned pain to her, or allowed her to see the scars, but her fingers must have traced some of them and she may have connected my most urgent requests for caresses to my recurring absences from classes. And in her touch I felt that she truly loved my weak body, as we loved each other’s minds, with the difference that she never - until after twenty years - found out what my body really was.
I just couldn’t let her know. I kept telling myself I wasn’t allowed to. And even after we left school I couldn’t force myself to do it. By that time I had already ended up distancing myself from her in any case. I think she must have actually figured out what I was. But she was there for me throughout my Hogwarts years, and she never demanded me to discuss my secrets.
Soon after the beginning of our fifth year my relationship with Amelia got less intimate, giving way to something else. Since my three best friends had become something beyond the boys they had been, and the Marauders had another major secret to share, I needed less consolation from anyone else. Only later did I realise how much this must have hurt Amelia. I had been close to her only as long as I needed her. As far as I know, she never had a proper boyfriend.
Maybe the guilt I felt for that was one reason why I mainly avoided seeing her after we had lost all the others. I should have thought she needed me after the loss of those two who had been her closest friends among the girls at Hogwarts. But she had a splendid career at the ministry, while the loss of my friends, two years after the loss of my parents, had left me completely destitute. At the tender age of twenty-three I foolishly regarded that as more important than what we had in common.
I felt Amelia would cope with the losses and start prospering along the whole of the wizard community, whereas I… Two years of deepening depression and the final almost unbearable blow had led me to the point where I could keep my sanity only by forcing myself to pursue studies for a couple of years more. At times I found some menial work, which saved me from starving to death. I was not able to contact anybody, the least of all someone like her. She might have been able to comfort me, but I was afraid I wouldn’t have been able to do the same to her. I thought there was nothing left in me, except the desperate ambition, or rather a struggle for survival, which I wasn’t sure I wanted to win.
How wrong I was. I was the fortunate one. But I didn’t know how Sirius as an innocent man was being tortured in Azkaban. I doubt I would have been able to bear these bitter thoughts I’m tempted to dwell on now. That as a teenager he had been made to practise for the cruel confinement, and he was to experience it for the third time, in the same place as the first time. And the second time it lasted for twelve years, and in an extreme form. My mind refuses to comprehend how he was able to survive it. Maybe he suffered the most during those first couple of years, when his body and mind were still fighting against the deprivation. I can’t… I don’t know. He never wanted to say much about it. He said there was nothing to say. Why should I resurrect the suffering which probably his mind as well as his mouth rejected?
But after I lost him again, I’ve had these images of him haunting me. I try to remember our youth, and us living together at Grimmauld Place, but in my mind I see him alone, huddled in an ice-cold cell, covered with rags - and with his gorgeous mane. It’s actually a ridiculous image, because his hair is always perfectly beautiful, as if I had washed and brushed it for him, and wrapped it around him to make him warm. I stare at his face to find out how he is feeling. But his eyes are hidden behind his hair, and there’s no expression of any emotion around his mouth. His lips are parted, and he isn’t moving at all. I’m afraid he is dead, and only the vague mist of his breath tells me he’s still alive. But he feels nothing, not the urge to freedom or to revenge, not even the hunger any more, hardly even the cold. The mist around his face disappears, and he is gone.
I’m left to cry on my own. I hardly saw him shed a tear during the last year. After that, of course, it was obvious I needed someone else to weep with.
Amelia would have even held me in her arms. But I left England on the mission for the Order without seeing her. Even though a year earlier we had started meeting each other every now and then again.
When Sirius had come back to me, and I was better off in every respect, I contacted her at the ministry. That’s when she told me that six years earlier, when I had - at the age of thirty-one - applied for another ten-year wand license for half-humans, she had happened to see my file and learned the truth about my condition. She never told me that she had guessed it before, but I suppose she just used the opportunity to make our relationship more open. We talked about Lily and James. And about Alice and Frank. And we even persuaded Mrs Longbottom to join forces with us and to make another application for the research on the long-term effects of the Cruciatus Curse to be disrupted, so her son and daughter-in-law could be moved to live in more favourable conditions.
During that year I felt we could all rise from the ruins in which the first so-called war had left us, regardless of the fact that Voldemort had regained his body. I didn’t worry about Voldemort. On the contrary, the new threat seemed to take us back in time and paradoxically return to us something of the good we had lost.
The Order of the Phoenix was my family again. Even though I lived in Sirius’s house without paying him rent, I was able to consider myself a respectable member of a community. I worked hard for the Order, so I would rarely have had even time for a paid job. I refused to take money from Sirius, but the gifts he offered to me at any acceptable opportunity were often something basically useful like warm clothes.
He was ridiculously rich. Yes, he laughed at it, but I know that here he was - barely - hiding some of his bitterest thoughts. His own property was his new prison - while it had been his first. With a member of the Order as a mediator he was able to use his vault at Gringotts. His rights to the gold were secured, while he had no right to his soul. That was another proof that the whole wizard community was rotten, as he kept telling me. I couldn’t blame him for being clearly less optimistic than I was. Perhaps he wasn’t, after all. He simply believed in the need for a more fundamental change, just as he had always done.
At the same time, I hope the gloom of that house was lifted at least for brief blessed moments in his eyes, too. When he saw you… Remember Christmas, and how you talked to him about James through the floo? For quite a while after such events the spirit in Sirius, as I had known it twenty and fifteen years earlier, was shining brighter again. But in my eyes it was always there. And I wanted to believe that the house welcomed me, as my home, where I hurried to return whenever Dumbledore allowed me a break from all those missions we considered so important at that time.
Here Remus finally dared stop, dropping the quill next to the cold blue flames he had moved onto his desk after conjuring them on his palm. Here there was a chance to focus on the dilemma of truly purposeful missions. How could a leader or a follower ever know whether it was worthwhile to sacrifice something? Perhaps one or more issues in Remus’s opposition would have now demanded more concentration, and he should have sacrificed narrating these memories.
What was the point in any case, and could it be harmful that he allowed himself to stray from the topic of the Gryffindor ladies? When catching himself describing the most haunting image he had been afraid to put his quill down, but had done his best to find a path back to writing about Amelia.
He had certainly not planned to tell Harry more about the previous year yet. Not about Sirius or about himself - how he should have refused to sacrifice so much of their time together, even though he had not been able to know how little time they had left. Despite the pleasure of belonging he should not have fallen back to the young man’s almost unconditional loyalty to the leader of the Order, after Sirius’s needs had been ignored and while the mental torture still continued.
He had expressed clearly his objection to only one mission Dumbledore had suggested, and he still doubted the suggestion had been serious. How could Dumbledore have expected Remus to give up not only the home and the family he had finally got back, but also everything he had achieved in his struggle for his humanity since his childhood? Or was it possible that the all-knowing wizard had already been aware of what Remus himself was now starting to suspect? No, as far as Dumbledore had even given a thought to what the suggested mission would have meant to Remus, he must have understood the terrible risk - almost the certainty of its implications. And those implications would have undone any purpose that the mission could have had in the first place.
Perhaps by suggesting that his own ward - the werewolf he had helped become cultured and more integrated in the wizard community than anyone else of his kind - go to live among the werewolves as a spy, Dumbledore had merely tested his priorities. According to the - admittedly vague - knowledge Remus had possessed, such a spy, after pretending to be willing to become a member of a pack, would have been forced to participate in the rituals and would have lost his soul and humanity - therefore also his ability to serve the Order. Remus still did not know if, by refusing, he had passed the test in Dumbledore’s eyes.
In any case, Dumbledore had not insisted. In the following summer he had not mentioned the possibility of sending Remus to tour the foreign packs in any other role than openly as an envoy. Probably taking the inevitability of a conflict for granted, he had not suggested such a visit to any British werewolf communities, among which the Cotswolds pack was clearly the most prominent. In this form, too, a mission related to the werewolves had been acceptable to Remus only in his despair, in his urge to risk the little he had left after the repeated loss, when once again his survival had felt like a burden.
Now, however, despite Hermione’s fear, Remus was not planning to agree to do something foolhardy out of despair. Without following any leader, he was preparing himself for a mission which he considered purposeful, while he could not know the scope of the sacrifice involved in it beforehand.
Or rather he should have spent his time on preparing himself, sacrificing at least some of the pleasure of describing every detail of his dearest memories, or the sweet torment of wording what had kept haunting him. He had to remember to focus on what served a purpose of informing Harry of his parents’ and his godfather’s lives.
Standing up, Remus was about to press his palm over the flames. He had always preferred not only to sleep but also to undress in darkness. But throughout the year after Sirius had come back to him he had left a dim flame to illuminate the room. He had done it when Sirius had come for his brief visit during the winter before that, too.
As an uncharacteristic revelation in one of his first short notes brought by exotic birds Sirius had written: Yes, it’s warm here, but under the starry sky of the desert the heat disappears. What’s worse is the pitch-black night of the jungle… waking up in the complete darkness… and I wake up in suffocating entry of memories in my dreams, curious to see exactly what is returning of my past, but more often than not it’s only the worst and the most familiar distortion of the past - the same nightmares I lived through again and again in there. And when I can perceive no light, it takes me a while to realise it’s not the same darkness as it was then. As if the black night were mocking me, whispering in my ear that I’m still not free, I shan’t be free.
After returning to Britain so as to be closer to Harry, Sirius had given brief reassuring answers to Remus’s questions about his chances for food and shelter - while to Remus’s relief not asking anything in turn. He had refused to follow Dumbledore’s advice to hide in caves all through the winter. Only afterwards and only gradually had Remus found out that he had defied all warnings and actually sought refuge among muggles, and not only in his dog form.
“I’m not sure I believed I could be a man again,” Sirius had mumbled one summer night on the steps of the backyard of number twelve, Grimmauld Place, after emptying a bottle of firewhiskey. “But I had to try and practise, for Harry… so I could act sane and say something useful to him. Practise by talking to those ladies, or rather listening to them… What could I have said to them? Kathy… and then Barbara, remember? I managed to find two of those we met at the muggle places where you used to drag me to dance, embarrassing me… I wonder how I could remember them, when there are such voids in my mind. They must have molested me. And I must have truly made an impression back then, as they were still charmed by me… with this damaged body. Or I just pushed myself for them to take care of all through the coldest months, as this body craved for a proper bed and proper food… some kind of compensation, you know. Even though any bearably warm place and anything I could digest would have been better than what I’d had for twelve years. But what I needed more than anything was light… Light. I’ve seen it only in that ridiculous room of yours - at night, too… And here. I don’t know how it’s possible here - with all this breath of evil will still around. But I think I can see it here. When I’m not left alone…”
Even on his better days Sirius had seldom talked much. But Remus had caught him gazing at his face, and wondered whether the flames were all that the words about light had referred to. Still, even though Sirius himself had, for several months, been careful not to show as much as his skinny arms to anyone, Remus had sacrificed the rest of his privacy and exposed himself. He had actually been surprised by the pleasure in allowing the light of his flames to dance on his own damaged, scarred and emaciated body.
Now, taking off his robes in this illumination again, he noticed that he had put on some weight just like during that one year - and actually every time in the distant past, too - when he had lived with Sirius. He had always secretly disliked it when anyone, when caressing him, had traced his scars. But now, sitting on the edge of his old, inherited bed, he let his finger brush the jagged bite mark on his shoulder and the lines which the werewolf’s claws had left on the little boy’s chest to widen as he grew up.
Suddenly shivering, despite the warmth that had risen from the fireplace up to his loft, he wrapped the blanket tight around himself, and lay down, turning towards the wall and his favourite tapestry. The cold flames painted the hero king’s banners and the sky beyond in more ominous shades than candlelight or the noon sun turned up to the loft by Gumby had done.
Tonight Remus was not certain he could believe in any reassurances. Not so confident that he could escape feeling lonely despite the promises of companions. Perhaps this king - if he was ever worthy of being compared to such a leader - was to have his lonesome path, after preparing his army.
Chapter Fifteen is here.
Author: PaulaMcG
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: (subtly, eventually) Remus/Sirius
Chapter summary: Some images of the more distant past evoke more recent and painful ones.
Word count: around 5,800
Disclaimer: Remus won't help me make any money.
Notes: Any comments will be treasured.
Chapter One can be found here, Chapter Two here, Chapter Three here and here, Chapter Four here, Chapter Five here and here, Chapter Six here and here, Chapter Seven here, Chapter Eight here and here, Chapter Nine here, here and here, Chapter Ten here and here, the first part of Chapter Eleven here, the second part of Chapter Eleven here, the third part of Chapter Eleven here., the first part of Chapter Twelve here, the second part of Chapter Twelve here, the first part of Chapter Thirteen here, the second part of Chapter Thirteen here and the first part of Chapter Fourteen is here.
Remus Lupin and the Revolt of the Creatures
(Chapter Fourteen continues.)
Harry,
I’ve just talked to Neville about his parents. His company summoned back the luminous image of young Alice, and now the grace of all the Gryffindor girls is persistently blooming in my mind like a bunch of flowers. Or perhaps rather shining like the circle of trees around the Hogwarts lake, in the autumnal chorus of colours.
In my mind your mother, despite her name and her white skin, doesn’t resemble so much a delicate flower, but rather the fire of the rowans up in the north after a sharp frost in October. Among the dazzling golden light of the birches she alone glows in blood-red, secures the warmth.
She alone guided us to reconciliation, surprising all four of us, when we were devastated by the disaster James had hardly managed to prevent from happening. She didn’t know much of anything, only what Dumbledore had, in a foolhardy gesture, told everyone in the Great Hall: James had saved Snape and me as well. Or perhaps she knew more than she let us understand she did.
In the same way she was wise and caring also when we were all supposed to build up our lives outside school. I felt at times that I couldn’t possibly accept help from the other Marauders, particularly not from Sirius. Without claiming to know anything about my humiliating neediness, she would offer me support in ways which made it easy not to reject it.
Lily was the beauty who joined the beast and the three Animagi, perhaps almost fully aware of what they were. Am I conceited when suspecting that she was fascinated by us, and that she eventually could not resist, when she saw that James and Sirius had an opportunity to learn a lesson? She wanted to have her role in taming particularly the boy who had for years insisted on courting her. Still, she did not want us to become too tame. She, too, craved adventure as well as fun and affection, and she saw we had some to share.
She’d had her ambitious projects outside schoolwork before, too. She’d tried to pull Snape away from supporting the pureblood ideology. Having finally admitted her failure, by the age of sixteen she felt it was time for her to have more fun, a more satisfying project - to accept the romance and what came with it: membership in our intimate circle. This is how I remember her explaining to me, years later, why she had said yes to James just at a time when something so serious occupied him that he, for once, had forgotten to ask her to a date.
“Perhaps I wanted to brag about a boyfriend who’d been declared a hero,” she said, grinning and lifting her wand to summon more roast beef to my plate.
I had to hurry to object to her statement, so there was no time for me to consider whether I should have tried to stop the charm. “No, you came to his support when he needed it. You had loved him… for a long time, hadn’t you?”
I kept staring at her serene face under the crown of bright auburn hair, while she turned her gaze back to you. Yes, you were there at her breasts, and it took an effort for her to talk about anything but you, if she cared to use verbal language at all.
And I felt she lived mainly in denial of Dumbledore’s dire news concerning what she wanted to believe was her blessed little family. He had not told us about the prophecy, but he had said that there were reasons to believe that you as well as Neville were in particular danger.
“Yes, I loved your dad, that insufferable brat,” she said, perhaps forgetting that she had been talking to me. “I had admitted it to myself quite a while before, and I thought it was time to let him know, too, finally.”
Perhaps she had chosen a topic which belonged to such distant past partly in order to escape the reality of the dark times, although she preferred regarding you as her only reality. But she had also learnt that I felt unwelcome too easily, so she did her best to talk about something, in order to make me stay and agree to be fed. And she knew I wouldn’t have liked to talk about my current situation. I had nothing much to talk about: no job, no money, no heating in my room.
For some reason on these coldest nights at the beginning of 1981 James was often supposed to stay so late at work that Lily begged me to come and keep company to her and you. We both knew what she actually meant: to help her protect you in case something should happen. And that was not the only motive of hers we both pretended not to know.
She closed her robes and turned your beaming face as well as hers towards me. Two pairs of greenest eyes.
Having rejected the high chair James had bought, she kept you on her knees when reaching for the little spoon on a plate of potato purée. “I wonder why you’re not so eager to eat potato,” she said, and I needed a double-take to realise she was still talking to you. “I don’t think it’s because of the breast milk. You need to suck some first to feel good and safe… It must be because carrot and banana were the first kinds of purée I offered to you, so you don’t find this stuff sweet enough. But you open your mouth beautifully when you watch Uncle Remus eat, don’t you? Please, Remus, you must take some more potatoes, too, to show a good example to Harry.”
And so I kept eating, and a bit later I dozed off in the blissful warmth of her fire, with you in my lap. I was hardly in the state to defend anyone against any attack, and when, having taken you to your crib, she stirred me awake enough to ask me to get under the thick blankets in her guest room, she neglected to mention that James had already come home.
Before you were born and before I lost my parents there were more carefree times, when Lily got to share fun and adventure with us, and I hope our story won’t be told all in chronological order. Did I narrate this memory first for a purpose, for any benefit of yours? It’s simply too dear and familiar for me to refrain from writing it down now. I’ve relived it so many times, while settling down to sleep alone, or trying to stay awake, when it’s been too cold for sleeping.
I don’t think I needed to lose so much in order to truly appreciate what I used to have. By 1981 at the latest I thought I knew enough about love, and it’s hard to believe that the price we paid to learn more was not too high.
But I admit that only afterwards was I able to fully value the shelter Hogwarts had offered. I was not always happy to live surrounded by the stone walls. At times I was impatiently looking forward to freedom - longing to step out to the world where I could be myself. Burning with ambition, I dreamed of achieving… well, everything. Until the day I turned seventeen I stubbornly believed that the way I’d be treated out there would depend exclusively on my talents and efforts.
Perhaps partly because of my monthly confinement, I didn’t easily feel completely comfortable in such concrete situations, either, when I was expected to stay inside for a long time. What made it not only bearable but a joy for me to breathe within those halls and corridors were the young faces I kept treasuring in my mind in every new nuance of expression.
Until our sixth year, when Lily agreed to join us, it was almost exclusively the three boys in the centre of my new world. As I had to admit to Neville, I hardly knew Alice or anyone else. I must have already told you that Amelia was my closest friend among the girls. If I managed to give you the idea that the two of us were conscientious students, you may have assumed that we shared a lot of time together at the library.
However, the library was never my favourite place. I preferred studying outside, whenever possible, and sometimes, when the weather was pleasant enough for her, too, Amelia joined me to write essays, unrolling her parchment beside mine on the ledge by the south wall of the castle or on that flat stone, near the end of the lake.
It was not hard for me to concentrate on reading, not to mention building up stories or processing images to paint, while walking, too, and I enjoyed escaping to this world of my own. On the other hand, I was never irritated when interrupted by a friend on these strolls either, even though I felt that it was impossible to share more than a fragment of what I sensed around me and of what I had playing in my mind.
I’ve never been very sensitive to cold, at least not outside when I keep moving. That’s quite fortunate, as otherwise my years of homelessness would have been still a lot harder. Of course, nobody who spends even a part of the winter without a shelter or proper warm clothes either, here or even as far south as Greece, can avoid suffering from cold. After returning to Britain I’ve been determined to always have a roof over my head, no matter what else I’ve needed to give up. But during my drifting years I noticed that, with the exception of times when I was very famished or ill, or recovering from a transformation, the cold hit others harder than me. I was inclined to almost carelessly give away pieces of clothing, or to trade them for food, if possible.
As a child I got used to spending a lot of time outside, and ignoring all advice to dress warm. Walking barefoot since early spring until late autumn was nothing extraordinary among the poor members of the theatre group, including part-humans, some of whom never wore shoes. Perhaps I also trained myself to habits like these partly because I was irritated by my parents’ fussing about my health.
Even though I’m now back at home, this rain makes me long for October in the north. I did enjoy walking in the rain at Hogwarts, too, but the setting of some of my most special memories is a clear crisp morning.
Twice, I think, I managed to drag Peter out with me before breakfast to witness the miracle prepared by the first frost. Almost throughout the last two school years I had Padfoot as my willing companion to romp along the shores of the lake regardless of the weather. But in that October when I was thirteen I slipped out by myself.
During the previous few days the landscape had kept acquiring, on the quiet, some new internal light and warmth. But when I woke up in the sensation that the almost full moon had set, and to see the lacework of frost on the windowpane, I knew it was the morning I didn’t want to miss.
After pulling only some robes on, I ran down the corridors and staircases. By the time I stepped to the yard I was breathing deep enough to feel the sharpness of the frost in the air I inhaled. The first light of the sun was setting the treetops on fire, and the grass and the fallen leaves would remain white and stiff under my bare feet, until the rays would reach the ground and the warmth would turn it all drenched instead.
Stopping for a brief moment, I let the cold pierce me as it had pierced the trees. They had changed, and it was the most natural, necessary and beautiful thing that could ever happen. And then again I knew that in this burst of glory they had simply revealed their secret colours. This was what they had always truly been like, behind the disguise of the reasonable, productive green.
I started walking briskly, and I’d almost reached the lake when I heard the stomping of heavy shoes behind me. Glancing back, I was so surprised to see that it wasn’t one of my three friends that I stopped again.
Amelia was not particularly pretty according to any conventional standards, and she still both looked and sounded completely reasonable despite the miracle of the morning.
“Silly boy,” she said, “you’ll catch a cold.” There was a reproachful frown on her square face, but it turned into a smile, and I realised that the shyness in her smile had subsided after the previous school year.
For some reason I didn’t feel irritated in the same way as when my father said the same thing. “I won’t, unless I stand here still, talking to you.”
I grinned before turning my back on her and moving away, sliding in the frosty grass closer to the water’s edge. While continuing my way along the shore I kept my eyes on the spreading glow of the opposite woods and on its perfect reflection offered by the still water. Thanks to the complete lack of wind I hardly perceived the cold, until - when slowing down by the most glorious maple - I noticed her by my side again and saw that she was shivering despite her thick cloak and the hood, which he had lifted over her mousy hair.
I felt compelled to speak. “So you wanted to see this, too? Even though you don’t feel quite comfortable in the frost.”
But while talking I realised that the experience couldn’t possibly be the same for her, if she didn’t take it in as a blessing through all her senses. Besides, I doubted she perceived it through her eyes either.
She was gazing at me, and her reply was, “See what? I thought I could exercise a bit before breakfast, as it’s not raining… No, to be honest, I saw you from our dormitory window when I got up to complete an essay. And I thought you were running away from your friends… feeling upset or something… as you were not dressed properly, and I got worried. You get ill often enough. But I can see in your face that you’re doing this for fun. I just thought… I’ve got such an impression that you have some secrets, and…”
“Don’t worry. You won’t have to bother about my secrets. There’s at least one right here, and you can’t see it anyway.”
To my surprise I felt as elated as before and, on top of it, amused. I hoped she heard in my voice that I didn’t mean to offend her, but to make sure I added, “You’re a mighty quick runner.”
“Race me back to the castle? So you… I can get warm?”
I ventured to turn away for a moment, so as to take a deep breath and to focus once more on the light and colour as well as on my now almost numb feet. As I couldn’t make myself hurt her feelings by insisting on greeting the sunrise on my own, I was suddenly determined to make the most out of her company.
Seeing her still watch me intently, I did something I had never dared do to anyone at Hogwarts. I reached for her hand. She had folded her arms, and the hand I caught a hold of was gloved and reasonable. But it squeezed my freezing fingers eagerly, conveying happy surprise.
“No, let’s run like this, together,” I said, pulling her with me to follow our footprints back.
When we were climbing up the staircases, my body finally agreed to show how much warmth it had lost. Trembling, I allowed her to wrap her arm around my shoulders, under her cloak. After two days, while waiting for the rise of the full moon, I summoned the memory of her touch to comfort me.
There was more and more for me and Amelia to share since our studies got increasingly demanding during our third year. I had chosen Ancient Runes and, as homage to Uncle Francis, Divination, while she maintained that Arithmancy and Muggle Studies were more useful choices. However, we were both genuinely interested in each other’s subjects, too, and we spent a lot of time discussing and learning what we were not required to.
Besides, Amelia didn’t refuse to touch me. She hesitated, though, and she never initiated anything. Indeed, she never asked me to touch her in return, beyond the unavoidable reciprocity in holding hands, which soon became our regular but secret habit for two full years, and in occasional hugs. Instead, when securely hidden from everyone else’s eyes, usually outside, and as fully dressed as I agreed to get, I would guide her hand to caress me, even to wander under the robes, onto my skin, which craved for this service particularly when full moon was near.
To my relief, in fact, she wasn’t that kind of a girl who would expect a boyfriend to actually kiss her before her OWLs or even before her NEWTs. Her outlook of love was more idealistic than that. That’s the kind of romantic she was, and that’s another thing we had in common. But perhaps partly because of that our relationship remained fragile.
The deepest our bond ever got was due to my suffering. Her emotions grew as close to love as… well, as love in an average teenage romance can ever be - when she realised that I was incurably ill. I never mentioned pain to her, or allowed her to see the scars, but her fingers must have traced some of them and she may have connected my most urgent requests for caresses to my recurring absences from classes. And in her touch I felt that she truly loved my weak body, as we loved each other’s minds, with the difference that she never - until after twenty years - found out what my body really was.
I just couldn’t let her know. I kept telling myself I wasn’t allowed to. And even after we left school I couldn’t force myself to do it. By that time I had already ended up distancing myself from her in any case. I think she must have actually figured out what I was. But she was there for me throughout my Hogwarts years, and she never demanded me to discuss my secrets.
Soon after the beginning of our fifth year my relationship with Amelia got less intimate, giving way to something else. Since my three best friends had become something beyond the boys they had been, and the Marauders had another major secret to share, I needed less consolation from anyone else. Only later did I realise how much this must have hurt Amelia. I had been close to her only as long as I needed her. As far as I know, she never had a proper boyfriend.
Maybe the guilt I felt for that was one reason why I mainly avoided seeing her after we had lost all the others. I should have thought she needed me after the loss of those two who had been her closest friends among the girls at Hogwarts. But she had a splendid career at the ministry, while the loss of my friends, two years after the loss of my parents, had left me completely destitute. At the tender age of twenty-three I foolishly regarded that as more important than what we had in common.
I felt Amelia would cope with the losses and start prospering along the whole of the wizard community, whereas I… Two years of deepening depression and the final almost unbearable blow had led me to the point where I could keep my sanity only by forcing myself to pursue studies for a couple of years more. At times I found some menial work, which saved me from starving to death. I was not able to contact anybody, the least of all someone like her. She might have been able to comfort me, but I was afraid I wouldn’t have been able to do the same to her. I thought there was nothing left in me, except the desperate ambition, or rather a struggle for survival, which I wasn’t sure I wanted to win.
How wrong I was. I was the fortunate one. But I didn’t know how Sirius as an innocent man was being tortured in Azkaban. I doubt I would have been able to bear these bitter thoughts I’m tempted to dwell on now. That as a teenager he had been made to practise for the cruel confinement, and he was to experience it for the third time, in the same place as the first time. And the second time it lasted for twelve years, and in an extreme form. My mind refuses to comprehend how he was able to survive it. Maybe he suffered the most during those first couple of years, when his body and mind were still fighting against the deprivation. I can’t… I don’t know. He never wanted to say much about it. He said there was nothing to say. Why should I resurrect the suffering which probably his mind as well as his mouth rejected?
But after I lost him again, I’ve had these images of him haunting me. I try to remember our youth, and us living together at Grimmauld Place, but in my mind I see him alone, huddled in an ice-cold cell, covered with rags - and with his gorgeous mane. It’s actually a ridiculous image, because his hair is always perfectly beautiful, as if I had washed and brushed it for him, and wrapped it around him to make him warm. I stare at his face to find out how he is feeling. But his eyes are hidden behind his hair, and there’s no expression of any emotion around his mouth. His lips are parted, and he isn’t moving at all. I’m afraid he is dead, and only the vague mist of his breath tells me he’s still alive. But he feels nothing, not the urge to freedom or to revenge, not even the hunger any more, hardly even the cold. The mist around his face disappears, and he is gone.
I’m left to cry on my own. I hardly saw him shed a tear during the last year. After that, of course, it was obvious I needed someone else to weep with.
Amelia would have even held me in her arms. But I left England on the mission for the Order without seeing her. Even though a year earlier we had started meeting each other every now and then again.
When Sirius had come back to me, and I was better off in every respect, I contacted her at the ministry. That’s when she told me that six years earlier, when I had - at the age of thirty-one - applied for another ten-year wand license for half-humans, she had happened to see my file and learned the truth about my condition. She never told me that she had guessed it before, but I suppose she just used the opportunity to make our relationship more open. We talked about Lily and James. And about Alice and Frank. And we even persuaded Mrs Longbottom to join forces with us and to make another application for the research on the long-term effects of the Cruciatus Curse to be disrupted, so her son and daughter-in-law could be moved to live in more favourable conditions.
During that year I felt we could all rise from the ruins in which the first so-called war had left us, regardless of the fact that Voldemort had regained his body. I didn’t worry about Voldemort. On the contrary, the new threat seemed to take us back in time and paradoxically return to us something of the good we had lost.
The Order of the Phoenix was my family again. Even though I lived in Sirius’s house without paying him rent, I was able to consider myself a respectable member of a community. I worked hard for the Order, so I would rarely have had even time for a paid job. I refused to take money from Sirius, but the gifts he offered to me at any acceptable opportunity were often something basically useful like warm clothes.
He was ridiculously rich. Yes, he laughed at it, but I know that here he was - barely - hiding some of his bitterest thoughts. His own property was his new prison - while it had been his first. With a member of the Order as a mediator he was able to use his vault at Gringotts. His rights to the gold were secured, while he had no right to his soul. That was another proof that the whole wizard community was rotten, as he kept telling me. I couldn’t blame him for being clearly less optimistic than I was. Perhaps he wasn’t, after all. He simply believed in the need for a more fundamental change, just as he had always done.
At the same time, I hope the gloom of that house was lifted at least for brief blessed moments in his eyes, too. When he saw you… Remember Christmas, and how you talked to him about James through the floo? For quite a while after such events the spirit in Sirius, as I had known it twenty and fifteen years earlier, was shining brighter again. But in my eyes it was always there. And I wanted to believe that the house welcomed me, as my home, where I hurried to return whenever Dumbledore allowed me a break from all those missions we considered so important at that time.
Here Remus finally dared stop, dropping the quill next to the cold blue flames he had moved onto his desk after conjuring them on his palm. Here there was a chance to focus on the dilemma of truly purposeful missions. How could a leader or a follower ever know whether it was worthwhile to sacrifice something? Perhaps one or more issues in Remus’s opposition would have now demanded more concentration, and he should have sacrificed narrating these memories.
What was the point in any case, and could it be harmful that he allowed himself to stray from the topic of the Gryffindor ladies? When catching himself describing the most haunting image he had been afraid to put his quill down, but had done his best to find a path back to writing about Amelia.
He had certainly not planned to tell Harry more about the previous year yet. Not about Sirius or about himself - how he should have refused to sacrifice so much of their time together, even though he had not been able to know how little time they had left. Despite the pleasure of belonging he should not have fallen back to the young man’s almost unconditional loyalty to the leader of the Order, after Sirius’s needs had been ignored and while the mental torture still continued.
He had expressed clearly his objection to only one mission Dumbledore had suggested, and he still doubted the suggestion had been serious. How could Dumbledore have expected Remus to give up not only the home and the family he had finally got back, but also everything he had achieved in his struggle for his humanity since his childhood? Or was it possible that the all-knowing wizard had already been aware of what Remus himself was now starting to suspect? No, as far as Dumbledore had even given a thought to what the suggested mission would have meant to Remus, he must have understood the terrible risk - almost the certainty of its implications. And those implications would have undone any purpose that the mission could have had in the first place.
Perhaps by suggesting that his own ward - the werewolf he had helped become cultured and more integrated in the wizard community than anyone else of his kind - go to live among the werewolves as a spy, Dumbledore had merely tested his priorities. According to the - admittedly vague - knowledge Remus had possessed, such a spy, after pretending to be willing to become a member of a pack, would have been forced to participate in the rituals and would have lost his soul and humanity - therefore also his ability to serve the Order. Remus still did not know if, by refusing, he had passed the test in Dumbledore’s eyes.
In any case, Dumbledore had not insisted. In the following summer he had not mentioned the possibility of sending Remus to tour the foreign packs in any other role than openly as an envoy. Probably taking the inevitability of a conflict for granted, he had not suggested such a visit to any British werewolf communities, among which the Cotswolds pack was clearly the most prominent. In this form, too, a mission related to the werewolves had been acceptable to Remus only in his despair, in his urge to risk the little he had left after the repeated loss, when once again his survival had felt like a burden.
Now, however, despite Hermione’s fear, Remus was not planning to agree to do something foolhardy out of despair. Without following any leader, he was preparing himself for a mission which he considered purposeful, while he could not know the scope of the sacrifice involved in it beforehand.
Or rather he should have spent his time on preparing himself, sacrificing at least some of the pleasure of describing every detail of his dearest memories, or the sweet torment of wording what had kept haunting him. He had to remember to focus on what served a purpose of informing Harry of his parents’ and his godfather’s lives.
Standing up, Remus was about to press his palm over the flames. He had always preferred not only to sleep but also to undress in darkness. But throughout the year after Sirius had come back to him he had left a dim flame to illuminate the room. He had done it when Sirius had come for his brief visit during the winter before that, too.
As an uncharacteristic revelation in one of his first short notes brought by exotic birds Sirius had written: Yes, it’s warm here, but under the starry sky of the desert the heat disappears. What’s worse is the pitch-black night of the jungle… waking up in the complete darkness… and I wake up in suffocating entry of memories in my dreams, curious to see exactly what is returning of my past, but more often than not it’s only the worst and the most familiar distortion of the past - the same nightmares I lived through again and again in there. And when I can perceive no light, it takes me a while to realise it’s not the same darkness as it was then. As if the black night were mocking me, whispering in my ear that I’m still not free, I shan’t be free.
After returning to Britain so as to be closer to Harry, Sirius had given brief reassuring answers to Remus’s questions about his chances for food and shelter - while to Remus’s relief not asking anything in turn. He had refused to follow Dumbledore’s advice to hide in caves all through the winter. Only afterwards and only gradually had Remus found out that he had defied all warnings and actually sought refuge among muggles, and not only in his dog form.
“I’m not sure I believed I could be a man again,” Sirius had mumbled one summer night on the steps of the backyard of number twelve, Grimmauld Place, after emptying a bottle of firewhiskey. “But I had to try and practise, for Harry… so I could act sane and say something useful to him. Practise by talking to those ladies, or rather listening to them… What could I have said to them? Kathy… and then Barbara, remember? I managed to find two of those we met at the muggle places where you used to drag me to dance, embarrassing me… I wonder how I could remember them, when there are such voids in my mind. They must have molested me. And I must have truly made an impression back then, as they were still charmed by me… with this damaged body. Or I just pushed myself for them to take care of all through the coldest months, as this body craved for a proper bed and proper food… some kind of compensation, you know. Even though any bearably warm place and anything I could digest would have been better than what I’d had for twelve years. But what I needed more than anything was light… Light. I’ve seen it only in that ridiculous room of yours - at night, too… And here. I don’t know how it’s possible here - with all this breath of evil will still around. But I think I can see it here. When I’m not left alone…”
Even on his better days Sirius had seldom talked much. But Remus had caught him gazing at his face, and wondered whether the flames were all that the words about light had referred to. Still, even though Sirius himself had, for several months, been careful not to show as much as his skinny arms to anyone, Remus had sacrificed the rest of his privacy and exposed himself. He had actually been surprised by the pleasure in allowing the light of his flames to dance on his own damaged, scarred and emaciated body.
Now, taking off his robes in this illumination again, he noticed that he had put on some weight just like during that one year - and actually every time in the distant past, too - when he had lived with Sirius. He had always secretly disliked it when anyone, when caressing him, had traced his scars. But now, sitting on the edge of his old, inherited bed, he let his finger brush the jagged bite mark on his shoulder and the lines which the werewolf’s claws had left on the little boy’s chest to widen as he grew up.
Suddenly shivering, despite the warmth that had risen from the fireplace up to his loft, he wrapped the blanket tight around himself, and lay down, turning towards the wall and his favourite tapestry. The cold flames painted the hero king’s banners and the sky beyond in more ominous shades than candlelight or the noon sun turned up to the loft by Gumby had done.
Tonight Remus was not certain he could believe in any reassurances. Not so confident that he could escape feeling lonely despite the promises of companions. Perhaps this king - if he was ever worthy of being compared to such a leader - was to have his lonesome path, after preparing his army.
Chapter Fifteen is here.