sam_storyteller (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-08 04:03 pm
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-08 04:03 pm
Entry tags:
Sweet Home 4 of 7
Two weeks later, Remus Lupin was back in Great Britain.
They couldn't keep him at his job, of course. Deepest regrets, Lupin; sad to see you go; sorry about the pension, but we can't pension non-citizens. Anson had said all the right things. Dark Creatures weren't allowed in government jobs, after all, and while Karls alone had been able to keep the secret, Karls plus Anson, Hobson, and a handful of junior Aurors...well, that was a different story.
Karls had always told him he'd have to take a fall if he was caught. It was a very graceful way to fall, Remus reflected. The outside world was told he was suffering lingering injury, and returning to Great Britain for treatment; the inner circle who'd seen him get bitten thought he'd only just been infected, and were more sympathetic than they might have been had he revealed himself to be not only a werewolf but a liar as well.
They hadn't owled his father; no-one had thought he had any family at all. When the news of the attack reached England, it was a back-page column in "News of the World", and he wasn't mentioned by name. He sat down to try to write a carefully-worded explanation of what had gone on, but nothing came.
He'd have to leave anyway. He might as well go in person.
He didn't want a goodbye party and didn't have enough close friends to warrant it; he didn't even tell his colleagues he was leaving. He picked up his last paycheck and his discharge paperwork, left his badge on his desk, and vanished. It was just a place, after all, and just a job to pay the bills, as he'd told Professor McGonagall.
He'd liked Sydney, but no more than he'd liked Alabama. Nice places; easy to stay, and not too difficult to leave. He left his books behind again, as a gift to whoever next rented the poky little boarding-house room with the claw-marks gouged into its closet walls. He'd spent one last full moon, this one under a doctor's care at the hospital; they'd tried to send him through the counseling program, but he simply stopped showing up for it.
He paid the exorbitant rate for a floo portal back to England, gripped his luggage tightly -- without all but his most beloved books it was just a satchel full of paperwork and his rucksack full of clothing -- and found himself stumbling out of a fireplace in the pub that bordered on Diagon Alley. The Leaky Somethingorother. Flagon?
England. This was England. His home. This was Diagon Alley, where he'd visited and bought school things as a child.
He'd changed his money before leaving. He was unused to handling Galleons and Sickles, unsure of the exchange rate, but he plunked two Galleons down for a room over the pub, and the barkeep tossed him a key. His coat still had the Australian flag on one shoulder, above the Auror's insignia, and he had a few odd looks as he passed through the dim room and climbed the stairs. Perhaps they were staring also at the chunk missing from his neck -- he'd have to buy some high-collared shirts -- or the two parallel lines across his face.
He'd felt that one. He'd been changing back, this past time, and had felt claws rake down his face, even as they became fingers. He hadn't bothered to dress them carefully. What did it matter? Why bother to hide them anymore?
His room overlooked Diagon Alley and he leaned on the windowsill for a while, gazing down on the evening crowds. It was eight o'clock at night in London, England; six in the morning in Sydney, New South Wales.
I've been living a day ahead of myself, he thought, almost whimsically. He found a handful of coins in his coat pocket and descended again, into Diagon Alley itself. It was pleasant here in the late summer; in Australia it was wintertime. With his coat left behind in his room, he was just a man in black trousers and a red shirt; not an Auror, not a werewolf. He'd felt this way in Sydney at first, as well. Perhaps the trick was to never get to know anyone, ever, and then you never were noticed, and then you would be left alone. And then you would be happy.
He didn't intend to stay long, just to sleep and recover from the time-difference before he moved on from here, too. Still, it was good to dawdle up the sidewalk, having no responsibility. Hogwarts was starting soon; even if he hadn't known it always began on the first of September, the hordes of children in new robes, followed by parents carrying books, would have told him. Perhaps he should just pass through the barrier to platform 9 3/4, climb onto the train, and ride to Hogwarts with the children. Dumbledore would be surprised.
Dumbledore would probably be disappointed. He nearly always had been, when it came to Remus. Endangering the students by blatantly being a werewolf in their presence.
He saw that dragon-mad boy, Charlie Weasley, passing with his parents and a gaggle of likewise redheaded youngsters. Charlie was busy talking to one of the younger ones and didn't notice Remus, who hurried away just in case there was the chance he might.
It was difficult to sleep, but he managed it at last, and when he woke in the morning the sun was already well up in the sky.
He bought a train ticket, one-way, and prayed that when he reached the right train stop, he'd remember the way home.
***
Rufus Lupin -- so named because all the males in the Lupin line took ones beginning with the letter R -- was doing the dishes when someone knocked on the back door. Probably a salesman; out here even the men who went door-to-door hawking encyclopedias or what-have-you knew to come to the back door instead of the front. None of the farmhands would knock; none of them had any reason to come to the farmhouse once dinner was done with at any rate.
He left the pot he was washing to soak and ducked into the cool, dim hallway. He could hear the thump of a package hitting the wooden porch that the back door let onto, then just expectant silence.
He opened the door with a smile and a pre-prepared speech about how he couldn't afford anything anyone cared to be selling, but if they wanted a cup of tea he'd be happy to --
A tall, painfully thin man stood on the porch. He had lines in his face that shouldn't be there, and two mostly-healed scars stretching from his left eyebrow across to his right cheek. His hair was threaded with a few fine hints of grey, and he wore what looked almost like a uniform, with the collar secured tightly at his throat.
"Hi, Dad," the man said, and Rufus blinked.
"Remus?" he asked softly. The stranger nodded.
He hadn't seen his son in nearly nine years. Remus was never much one for sending photographs.
"I'm sorry I didn't owl first," the stranger said. "I just wanted to come home."
Rufus looked him up and down once more, and then at the rucksack resting on the porch, the satchel clutched in his hand.
"Your things?" he asked. Remus -- yes, he could see the shape of his son's face in the gaunt cheeks -- nodded again. "Best bring them in, then."
He turned and led the way into the house, catching a hint of a relieved smile as his son gathered up his two pathetic items of luggage and carried them inside. Remus hated silly soppy hellos and goodbyes.
"Dinner's done, but I'll heat something," Rufus said. "Your room's probably dusty, but it'll sleep well."
"I can clean it," Remus answered, continuing up the stairs.
Rufus had eggs and bacon, ham, fried bread, and tea waiting for him when he came back down. He smiled as the man who was not-quite-yet-his-son-again wolfed down the food with obvious pleasure.
"Not feeding you right down at that Australian town of yours," he said, as Remus scooped up the fried egg with his bread.
"Haven't eaten all day," Remus replied indistinctly. "Train from London, wanted to hitch from the station but nobody drives anymore, I guess, so I walked."
"Everyone's out working. Harvest in soon," Rufus replied.
"Merlin, that's right -- I'd forgotten."
"You eat up," Rufus ordered, as Remus put his bread down in shock. The boy -- man -- hurriedly picked it up again, and sipped his tea into the bargain.
"Good crop?" Remus asked.
"Middling. Sheep and goats'll bring in something. Turn a profit, I think, when all's said and done, which is more than some will this year."
"I can help with the harvest."
Rufus cocked his head. "Staying a while?"
Remus looked stricken. "Oh -- if I can -- I didn't even ask, I just -- "
"It's all right, lad, I wasn't saying you couldn't stay," Rufus assured him. "Just wanting to know if you plan to leave as suddenly, that's all. On leave from the Aurors?"
Remus looked down at his plate. "Sacked, actually."
"Oh yes? Caught you nicking the petty cash, did they?"
That brought a slight smile to his lips. "Not quite. Found out I was a werewolf. Sort of. Long story."
"Time to tell it, whenever you please. Come back for good, then?"
"Maybe," Remus allowed. "They said I needed rest, somewhere away from cities, and I...wanted to come home."
"Rest? Have you been ill?"
"I was hurt." Remus flipped the top button of his collar open nervously, and pulled it to one side. Rufus sucked in his breath. On a stranger it would have been saddening; on his son, the deep, hollow scar was terrifying.
"What did it?" he asked softly.
Remus looked away. "Another werewolf."
"Another one attacked you?"
"Yeah," said his son, with a hint of an Australian accent creeping in.
"What happened?"
"I killed it. Him. I killed him." Remus pushed the egg around on his plate with his fork. "He was about to attack a...friend of mine. So I shot him."
"Lad..." Rufus fumbled for something to say, and satisfied himself with refilling Remus' tea. "You're welcome for as long as you'd like. You know that. Rest if you need it. Feeding-up. Can't promise you much excitement after America and Australia and all that -- "
"I could do with a bit less," Remus said wryly. "I won't be in the way."
It was a statement, not a question, and Rufus smiled.
"I don't reckon you will," he answered. They sat in silence for a while, as Remus slowly ate small bites of the remaining food, more for show than because he was still hungry. Rufus drank in the sight of his son, however weary and hurt he was, wanting to memorise his face before it vanished again.
"I did wonder when I didn't hear from you for a while," he said finally. "No one owled me to say you were hurt."
"I know. They hadn't your address, and after I woke up..." Remus shrugged. "I hope you didn't worry."
"Not more than I ever do, considering I raised you to care for yourself," Rufus said offhand. "Looks as though you have, more or less."
Remus gave him that same tired smile, old in a way that was frightening to his father, and laid his fork across his plate.
"Leave it," Rufus ordered. "You look exhausted, lad. Sleep a bit."
Remus seemed too tired to do more than obey, moving as if he were in a slight haze. Rufus watched him climb the stairs, turn instinctively to his old room at the top, and fumble only a second before remembering the knob, unlike most others in the house, turned counter-clockwise.
He heard shoes drop to the floor and the creak of bedsprings, as he gathered up the plate and tea things, putting them in the sink.
His boy was home. Sickly and hurt, but home. Rufus had seen Remus ill before, and had tended his cuts and bruises from the Change for the five years and six Hogwarts summer holidays of his post-attack childhood. Sick could be treated, hurt healed. He knew a witch in town who'd have a good salve for that scar on his neck.
He sank down into his chair at the kitchen table again, and closed his eyes.
His boy was home.
***
Remus was still on Australian time, though the day of train travel had helped him towards resetting his internal clock; he woke early, far too early, and lay in his bed, in the room he'd tidied up into a guestroom years before. From here he could see the open closet, with a few boxes of his toys and books in, his old Hogwarts uniforms still hanging there, smelling of mothballs.
The sun was barely up, and soon enough everyone else would be awake, doing all the sunrise-dictated activities of a working farm. It wasn't a large one, or a very profitable one, but his father loved the land, and his father's magic had always been tied to it. He and his mother had understood that, and anyway Remus had never minded being poor, since it was all he'd ever known. He hadn't thought there was any other way to live, until Hogwarts -- until Sirius and James, who were wealthy, and Peter, who was the utter picture of middle-class suburban England.
There's no shame in earning honest living with your hands, his father had told him, and while he hadn't -- preferring books, which his parents didn't understand but didn't argue with -- he'd known it was true. He wouldn't have traded the shabby old farmhouse for all Sirius' wealth, if Sirius' family came with it.
He had no clothes but his one good suit and his Auror uniforms, plus a few threadbare and long-unworn Academy shirts. He didn't want to wear either; he contemplated putting on an old Hogwarts shirt, but that seemed slightly absurd. Just because he'd come home didn't mean he was seventeen again.
He was twenty-eight years old, and all he had to show for it was a deep scar on his neck, a handful of red shirts, and a set of discharge papers from the Sydney branch of the Australian Aurors.
He put on his uniform trousers and stepped out into the hallway, crossing it to knock on his father's bedroom door.
"Aye!" his father called.
"It's Remus," he said, through the door. "Can I borrow a shirt?"
His father opened the door after a moment, still buckling his belt. "Take your pick," he said, waving towards the bureau. Remus opened the third drawer down, automatically, remembering fetching clothing for his father as a child, and took a pale blue one off the top.
"Should fit you," his father said critically. "You've broadened in the shoulder a bit, I think. Need some meat on your bones," he added, ignoring the new and old scars that criscrossed his son's torso. Remus was grateful for this; his father -- and mother, when she'd been alive -- had never scolded him for the scars, or commented on them. They were a part of him.
He decided, as he settled the shirt across his shoulders, that if he had to be a werewolf, at least he'd had decent parents who understood the condition, even if they didn't like it.
He wondered what sort of parents Lacon Chaney'd had. Perhaps Lacon hadn't become a werewolf until he was grown.
"Feels all right," he said, buttoning the shirt in front, smoothing it slightly. "I'll hitch into town tomorrow and buy some of my own."
"Do as you please," his father grunted. "Got a truck now. Wait two days and I'll take you in when I go for food. Got the hands living here, out in the old barn -- they take less pay if you feed 'em, and cooking for myself seemed foolish."
"You bought a truck?" Remus raised his eyebrows. "And you can drive it, and all?"
"Isn't so hard. I'll teach you, if you like. Mad Muggle contraption, but a few charms here and there..." his father tapped the side of his nose. "Long as the anti-muggle-device folks at the Ministry don't catch on, it does no one any harm."
Remus turned to the mirror that stood in the corner, dusty and slightly shabby, and examined himself. He'd taken after Rufus to begin with, and the shirt might have been his own. What a peculiar thing.
His father stood behind him and straightened the collar a little. "Suits you," he said.
"As much as anything does," Remus murmured, and his father clapped him on the shoulder, leaving him there in front of the mirror, staring at himself. He couldn't remember the last time he'd actually looked at his own reflection, unless it was to shave or brush his hair -- which hardly needed it, cut as short as it was.
No uniform regulation anymore, he thought. I could grow my hair out again. Don't have to shave if I don't want to. I can pick my own colours to wear.
He smiled, slightly grimly, and the reflection smiled back at him.
How terrifying.
***
For a few weeks Remus withdrew from the prospect of a life without structure, joining his father silently in the rounds of chores the farm required, meeting the temporary workers who were helping to get the harvest in, discovering things that had changed and the things that hadn't. He re-learned the ancient familiar geography of the family grounds, and no-one disturbed him in his rambles. His father plotted charms to be cast, now that there was another fully-qualified wizard about; the farm was shielded from certain Muggles, mainly the ones interested in levying property tax on it, but the shielding needed renewal every fifteen years or so. Not a difficult task, but one requiring more than a single wizard to complete. He spent almost a week de-stoning one of the unused fields, making the usual tired jokes about growing a rock farm and how the stones bred in the ground, otherwise how would a field de-stoned two years ago need it again already?
Nothing seemed very difficult or very tedious, or very anything; this late in the summer, the world was washed in browns and yellows, and it seemed to Remus as if that was the way his life had gone. Things grew successively less real as time passed; if it continued, perhaps one day he would vanish entirely. In the meantime, he waited out his existence tending sheep and chickens, or repairing the old dry-stone walls with the rocks taken from the empty field. He didn't ride in with his father on the trips in to town, and Rufus didn't ask him to. Rufus, who had spent nearly fifteen years searching for a cure for his son, had ended by becoming resigned to allowing things -- people -- to patch themselves over.
He used to go through the Change in the old barn, at home, but now the farmhands were living there; instead he climbed down into the basement, unused for years, and had his father lock him in. The next dawn Rufus bandaged his wounds and then went about his chores, returning to bring him breakfast before seeing to the rest of the day's business.
There was, after all, one structure Remus could never escape, and that was the marking-of-time by the phases of the moon. Remus didn't live in weeks or months, but in precise twenty-eight-day cycles.
He was well enough, three days after the full moon, to feel restless at being confined, and finally agreed when his father suggested another trip in to town to buy him some shirts of his own, as he was stealing and stretching the shoulders on Rufus'. His father had shown him the truck, a battered second-hand model that ran more on charms than on petrol.
"Got somethin' to tell you," Rufus said, as they passed the main gate of the farm, bumping down the dusty track towards the main, paved road.
"Oh?" Remus asked, gazing out the windscreen.
"To do with town."
"All right."
Rufus took a breath, and Remus glanced at his father. Rufus Lupin was never anxious, and yet...
"Been going into town pretty regular," he said. "Friday nights and all. And Sundays."
"Hadn't noticed," Remus answered indifferently. He had, but he hadn't particularly felt anything one way or the other about it; it was just that he was trained to notice these things, as an Auror. In the back of his mind a footnote had been made: Dad's in town on Monday mornings, Friday nights, and Sundays.
"There's a shop, see," Rufus continued, as they rolled at a leisurely pace towards town. "Sells maps and old books and things. Paper shop. Mostly books, really," he said, almost to himself. "Trinkets now 'n again. But mostly books."
"I'd like to see it," Remus answered, idly wondering where this was going.
"You're in a fair way to; it's our first stop," Rufus replied. He was silent, almost expectant for a while, but Remus was in no mood to fish for the reason his father was uncomfortable. Finally, he cleared his throat. "Run by a woman, name of Derwent."
Remus glanced at him. Derwent was one of the larger old Wizarding families; he'd known one or two at school. "Witch, then?"
"Aye. Trades in magical texts, when they're needed. Not much Wizarding business out this way." Rufus cleared his throat again. "Been courtin' her, a bit."
Remus wondered if his father expected him to be angry, or perhaps curious. All he felt was a detached sort of amusement.
"Don't want you to think I'm not faithful to your mum's memory," Rufus continued. "It's just a man gets lonely and it's been -- "
"Eighteen years," Remus murmured. "It's fine, dad."
Rufus risked a glance at him before turning back to the road. "Thought you ought to know."
"You never wrote about her."
"Never could find the right way to say," Rufus admitted. Remus watched as they began passing houses again, the suburbs of the small town.
"How long?" Remus asked, voice neutral.
"Goin' on eight years," Rufus admitted. Remus blinked.
"You've been courting this woman eight years, dad?" he asked, surprised. "Taking things slow, are you?"
His father blushed. "Asked her to marry me twice," he murmured. "Wouldn't have me. Didn't want to live out on a farm, she said. It works for us. She has her shop and I've got the lands. Comes out to dinner on Sundays."
"Where've I been?" Remus asked, smiling.
"Didn't have her come out, did I? Wanted to ease you into it, like."
"I didn't mean to be any kind of -- "
"You aren't," his father said sharply, almost angrily. Remus watched him carefully. "You aren't any kind of. You're my boy. Been sick. Told her that. Family's more important. Only family I got left. Told her so."
"I'm sure she was thrilled," Remus murmured.
"It's no matter," Rufus said firmly. "Shop's on the high street, you're not obliged to meet her if you'd rather not. Thought we might have her for dinner this Sunday, though, if you're agreeable."
Remus scratched at the scar crossing the bridge of his nose. "I don't mind. She know what I am?"
"Not her business."
"Reckon not. Hardly matters, if she's not likely to be at the farm much."
He saw his father risk another glance, this time more concerned. He'd heard him talking with the crew foreman; he knew Rufus was worried about him, wondering when he'd take an interest in anything outside the farm, when he'd go back to reading from the shelf of books in his bedroom, when he'd try writing to any of his acquaintances in Australia or America.
"Told her you were back," he said softly. "Told her you were a great one for books. She's been putting some aside for you."
Remus nodded. "I don't mind meeting her."
"Hoped you'd say that," Rufus answered. "And...well, there's one other thing..."
***
Remus was incredibly glad Rufus had prepared him for this, even if it was only a few minutes beforehand; otherwise his heart might have stopped in shock at seeing two young children run out of the dusty-windowed shop to leap on his father.
"Tykes," Rufus said calmly, as a pale-haired boy tried to swing from his shoulders and a slightly older girl hugged his neck. "Down, child," he cried, swatting irritably at the boy. Close up, they were certainly too old to be Rufus' children, if he'd only been seeing Alice Derwent eight years; the boy looked to be about ten, the girl nearly thirteen.
"Did you bring us a chicken, Papa Rufus?" the girl asked, and Rufus held up a brown-wrapped package, a chicken Remus had seen him plucking earlier that morning. The girl took it from him, kissed his cheek, and ran inside. Rufus gave his son a slightly embarrassed look before he shrugged the blond boy off his back.
"Run on," he said, and the boy dashed inside after his sister, somewhat more slowly; he had a limp in one leg. Remus covered his grin with his hand.
"Always bring 'em something nice to eat," Rufus grumbled. "Town food's not so fresh."
"That's very good of you," Remus said gravely. "They seem fond of you."
"Father ran out on 'em two years before I met her properly," Rufus answered. "Just after the lad was born. Rascal of a chap. Nearly ran the business into the ground."
"They look as though they're doing all right now," Remus observed, as two pale heads popped out of the doorway.
"Aye, so they are," Rufus answered gruffly, stepping inside.
The shop was dim but neat, well-kept; rows of wooden bookshelves were filled with gently-used second-hand books, and a case in the corner displayed some maps and other ephemera. Behind the counter, a woman was bent over a ledger, but she looked up and smiled as their shadows filled the doorway. Neither children bore a particularly strong resemblance to her; she had much darker hair, and finer features. She looked too young, Remus reflected, to have children as old as thirteen.
"Rufus," she said warmly, and hugged him while Remus lagged shyly near the door. He didn't remember his own mum all that well, but a sudden image of his father and mother standing in the kitchen, hugging -- mum still, he recalled, with a potato-peeler in one hand -- rose up out of somewhere.
It's a good thing, he told himself. He oughtn't be alone so much, out on that farm. He should have someone --
He's probably thinking the same thing about you.
"And you must be the famous Auror son," Alice said, coming forward and holding out a hand. Remus took it, feeling a firm grip, dry palm, cool fingers. "It's a pleasure to finally see you in the flesh. Good lord, Rufus, aren't you feeding him?"
"He's been ill," Rufus grunted.
"Pleasure to meet you, ma'am," Remus answered, putting on Smile 2.1 in the Auror Handbook: Genuine Pleasure (Informal).
"This is Hadrian and that's Augusta," Alice said, indicating the children, who were now staring outright at the scarred, sun-tanned man still lingering near the door. Remus couldn't help raising a curious eyebrow. "Well, Alice is such a dull name, don't you think?"
"Not at all," Remus murmured politely. Hadrian poked him.
"You really an Auror?" he demanded.
"Hadrian!" Alice scolded. "Run along, make trouble somewhere else."
Hadrian scuttled off, but Augusta remained, peering around a bookshelf at him. Alice didn't seem to notice her daughter; she gently took Remus by the arm and pulled him fully inside, closing the door and turning the sign to "Closed".
"We'll have a bit of lunch, then," she said firmly, leading the two men back behind the counter and up a flight of narrow stairs. Above the bookshop was a better-lit, airy sort of flat, including a tidy kitchen, where she waved them into chairs at a fair-sized table covered in books.
"Hadrian's a great one for reading," she said, excusing the mess deftly. Remus lifted on of the nearby volumes; a Muggle novel of some kind. "Rufus tells me you were as well, as a child," she continued, taking out a loaf of bread and setting some sandwich-making charms to work. Augusta continued to peek around corners, hiding behind the stairway banister.
"Er...." Remus glanced at his father. "Yes. I suppose I was."
She shot them a smile as she poured five glasses of lemonade, and Rufus rose to collect two of them. She kissed him on the cheek as he did so. Remus took one glass from his father, studying it idly. Augusta slunk around the banister and grabbed one, standing nearly-behind a cupboard. Alice orchestrated the sandwich-making like a conductor, sipping her lemonade.
"How do you take your sandwiches, Remus?" she inquired.
"Oh, I -- cheese, and er..." he watched the food flying through the air, "Turkey, please, and lettuce. No mustard."
"Tomatoes?"
"No, thank you."
"Just like your father," Alice smiled. "It is strange. I imagine you must look how Rufus looked when he was your age."
Remus glanced away, self-conscious of the scars on his face and the still-visible mark on his neck. "Sort of."
"How'd you get those marks?" Augusta blurted. Alice swatted her.
"Rude!" she exclaimed. "You apologise to Remus right now."
"It's all right," Remus said quickly.
"It is not," Alice said.
"I just wanted to know," Augusta protested.
"Say you're sorry, Augusta," Rufus rumbled. Augusta bowed her head and muttered "M'sorry," rebelliously, stomping off.
"No manners," Alice sighed.
"It -- really, I'm not offended," Remus said. "I was attacked when I was in Australia, that's all."
"Well, they're marks of courage then, I'm sure," Alice said. "Augusta, come back here," she called. "Lunch is ready. Fetch Hadrian."
Augusta sulked her way through the kitchen and stood at the top of the stairs. "HADRIAN!" she yelled. Alice put her face in her hands.
"WHAT?" came a yell up the stairs.
"LUNCH!"
"I'd have liked to have made a good impression on you, Remus, but I'm afraid my children had other ideas."
Remus smiled. "I taught thirteen-year-olds, I understand entirely. Augusta, come sit by me," he called, and the girl flounced down in the chair next to him as Hadrian clattered noisily up the stairs, taking two of the plates and tossing one carelessly in front of Augusta while his mother set another two in front of the Lupins, and one for herself.
"When I was in Australia," he said to Augusta, and glanced at Hadrian as a tacit invitation to listen, "I was out on patrol when a load of Muggles decided they were going to pick a fight with us."
"Remus, don't be filling their heads with nonsense," Rufus warned, and Remus met his father's eyes for a moment. Don't bring up werewolves, the look said.
"Honest truth," Remus replied. "And one of them had a knife, and he got hold of me while I was fighting another one, who had a chain."
"Did you win?" Hadrian asked.
"We did, in fact," Remus answered. "I used the Auror Elbow."
"The what?"
"It's where you bring your arm up like this," Remus demonstrated, "and you just give a little jab -- "
He caught Alice's eye, and paused.
"And if either of you try it on the other I'm sure your mum wouldn't mind me knocking both your heads together," he finished. Alice grinned at him, and Rufus smiled approvingly.
***
"That went well," Rufus observed that afternoon, as they drove back towards the farm. Remus, packages of shirts and trousers sitting by his feet, nodded as he watched the scenery pass. He'd gone to buy clothes while Rufus spent the afternoon downstairs with Alice; when he'd returned, Rufus was giving Augusta a Talk about manners and familial duty. It struck him that perhaps these children now knew his father better than he did.
"Good you got on all right during lunch," Rufus added.
"Nervous, dad?" Remus asked. Rufus shrugged, eloquently. "She's nice enough. Bit young for you."
"Often thought so myself. Dunno why she puts up with me," he answered.
"Her put up with you?" Remus grinned. "I don't know how you put up with those terrors she calls children."
"Hadrian's a good boy," Rufus replied. "Augusta's..."
"Hitting an awkward stage?" Remus suggested.
"Never had any trouble with you at that age," Rufus admitted.
"Well, I am an abnormal -- "
"Don't say that."
Remus sat back on the seat, letting his head drift back, staring at the roof of the truck. "I didn't mean it like that, dad."
They rode in silence for a while, until Rufus spoke again. "She thinks you're a fine young man."
"She clearly hasn't got to know me."
"All right having them to dinner on Sunday, then?"
"Sure. I can just imagine how much Augusta likes the chicken yard."
Rufus chuckled. "City girl. Hadrian's no better. Nearly had to take a switch to him for chasing chickens."
"You never would. Never did with me and I did far worse than chase chickens."
"No, you left that to that great black Newf you got after school -- what was his name?"
Remus felt something clench in his throat. "Padfoot," he said.
"That's the one. Used to bring him down here of weekends with James and that Pettigrew boy. Whatever happened to that dog?"
"Had to be put down. Rabid."
"Shame. Hell of a creature."
Remus didn't reply.
"Didn't mean to mention Potter," Rufus said quietly.
"It's fine."
"Got those books Alice put aside for you. They're behind the seat."
They bumped off the road and onto the dirt track leading down to the farmhouse; Remus pled exhaustion, and took the parcel of books and clothing up to his room, setting them on his desk before dropping onto the bed.
So his father had a girlfriend, a strange thing to think of, and she had two children who called him Papa Rufus, children his father was allowed to discipline as if they were his own. Hadrian had probably never known any other father. Children who were his, Remus Lupin's, siblings -- more or less.
He reached out for the neat package on the desk, picking it up by the twine that bound it and tugging at the knot until it came loose, before pulling the books out of the paper wrapping. A book about advanced Transfiguration, one about magical Defence, and two Muggle novels with adventursome-looking covers; The Sea Wolf by Jack London, and one by a fellow named Hemingway, whom he'd heard of somewhere before.
He hoped The Sea Wolf was merely a happy coincidence.
He opened the book on Defence, pushing himself up so that he sat against the headboard, and began to read. Ten minutes later his head drooped backwards, and the book slipped to the blanket.
He only woke when Rufus called him down to dinner, and the clattering of the farmhands into the big dining room became too much for him to ignore.
***
"Remus!"
"Yes dad?"
"Have you stolen my razor blades?"
Remus leaned out of his bedroom, and narrowed his eyes at his father. "I don't use razor blades, dad, you know that."
"Well, someone has," Rufus said dourly.
"You're probably misplaced them. Why don't you just use a shaving charm?" Remus called, moving back to his bed, where he was knotting a tie on the bedpost.
His father's voice drifted in. "Because I'm wretched at them. Always have been."
"You should get a Shearsides."
"What's that then?"
"This is Yorkshire, dad, not Bora Bora," Remus replied, hanging the tie around his neck. "Shearsides! Automatic Wizarding razors! You hold still and they do all the work for you."
"Don't trust them," Rufus muttered, as Remus presented himself for inspection. "Straighten your collar."
Remus fiddled with it while his father rummaged in an enormous leather toiletries kit. "For crying out loud, dad, here," he said, pointing his wand at his father's chin. "Depilo!" he said, and flicked it. Rufus twitched, but his five o'clock shadow vanished. "There. Now -- "
There was a crash from downstairs, and an enraged shriek. "Hadrian!"
"The terror is here," Remus said grimly.
"Be polite," Rufus ordered. "She's a good woman."
"I wasn't talking about her," Remus answered from the stairwell, before descending. Alice apparently had permission to come and go as she pleased; when he walked into the kitchen she was already unpacking two bottles of wine from a basket, while Augusta toyed with the lacy ends of her sleeves and Hadrian forlornly collected up bits of a terracotta flower pot, which had formerly been growing chives on the windowsill.
"Remus -- I'm so sorry, Hadrian's just discovered the wonders of the slingshot," she said apologetically. "We'll get you a new flowerpot."
"Easy enough to fix it," Remus answered. "Got all the bits?" he asked. Hadrian nodded. "Right then, put the chives on the bottom...reparo!" he said, and the pot began to reassemble itself. "Dad'll be down in a minute, he's finishing dressing."
"Thank you for having us to dinner," Alice said with a warm smile.
"Not really my decision," Remus answered, then realised how it sounded. "Er. I mean to say, I don't mind. Been a bit of a habit, I understand."
"Sort of," Alice replied, taking a large, sealed bowl out of the basket. "It's -- Hadrian!"
Hadrian had been watching the Reparo spell rebuild the chives-pot, and now had grabbed hold of the last piece, seeing how long he could keep it from attaching to the rest of the reassembled planter. The shard was slowly dragging him forward, and his trainers squeaked on the floor. She rapped her wand lightly across his knuckles, and he let go. The chip flew into its proper place, and Hadrian rubbed his knuckles regretfully. Remus reached out and plucked the slingshot out of his back pocket as he headed for the kitchen back-door.
"It's a phase," Alice sighed, uncovering the bowl and setting a slow-heating charm on the soup inside. "I hope it's a phase."
"It usually is," Remus answered absently, as he began to set the table.
"Augusta, help Remus, there's a good girl," Alice ordered, and Augusta accepted the silverware, placing it wrong-way-round. Remus corrected her on the third setting, and she sighed, going back to re-do the other two while Remus re-entered the kitchen.
"They're very...active," he said tactfully. Alice rolled her eyes. "Could be worse."
"It's so good to have Rufus around, he knows exactly how to handle them. Comes of raising a child himself, I suppose. It's been good for Hadrian, especially, to have a...a father, of sorts. I imagine that doesn't make you very comfortable," she added. Remus shrugged, and picked up the slingshot.
"That thing again?" Rufus asked, as he entered the kitchen. Remus offered the toy to his father, who took it and shoved it in his own pocket. Alice kissed him hello, while Remus looked away, awkwardly. Augusta wandered back into the kitchen and made a distinctly disgusted noise.
"Behave yourself," Rufus told her, and she flounced into the living room, leaning on one of the wide windows that looked out on the front garden. "Soup?" Rufus continued, peering over Alice's shoulder. Remus felt that twinge again, as another memory rose of another woman in this kitchen, and his father making that very gesture, one hand on the counter as his left arm encircled her waist. He turned and went back into the dining room to make sure the table was arranged properly. Outside, he could see Hadrian flicking pebbles into the sheepyard idly, the sheep entirely undisturbed by this activity. He rapped on the window and gestured the boy inside.
Dinner was peaceful enough, though Remus didn't speak much; Alice made conversation, and Hadrian seemed eager enough to tell Rufus about the first week of school which was fast impending. The soup was good, as were the chops and rolls his father had cooked, and Remus took a sort of pleasure in listening and watching. He wondered idly if Alice had been a Hogwarts girl; he reckoned at the outside she couldn't be more than five years older than he was, despite having a thirteen-year-old daughter.
He kept his curiousity to himself, however, and merely smiled when he ought, answered a question or two from Hadrian and Augusta, and tried not to seem as though he was sulking. He'd had enough training and spent enough time alone in his life that he could look at himself as others saw him and get a fair estimation of how he must seem; a slightly dour, injured young man, hardened into a regimental structure, well-mannered, with the stiff politeness of a military recruit. Dangerous, perhaps; not to be left with the children, lest he teach them something violent, or worse, commit some sort of violence.
And yet, in balancing the scales, he was a shy and bookish son of a solid, well-raised farmer, a veteran of service whose injuries had clearly cost him his livelihood, healing up as best he could with the only family he had.
He must confuse her greatly, he thought, and was surprised to find a slight pang of vindictive pleasure in this. Let her be confused; he was his father's son, and he had been here first.
He was glad when they left. Unused to entertaining company and exhausted by it, he crept up the stairs to his room and sat on his bed, reading his way into sleep as he often did, because otherwise it was difficult to sleep at all. He didn't have nightmares, precisely, but through all his dreams flitted the shadowy, ethereal image of Lacon Chaney, his malformed face -- pale human skin over pushed-forward wolfish cheekbones and jaw -- peering out at him from unlikely places. Through windows, past distant tree lines, over the tops of racks of books; in memories of the crowded Plucked Emu, in the darkened doorways of the Academy's student quarters, over the barrel of Michael Owens' rifle.
Sometimes he had Sirius Black's eyes.
It was difficult to sleep, knowing what would come, like wondering if someone was going to reach over just as you drifted off and grab your wrist. Perhaps he was a frightening man after all, the culmination of a mother's fears.
After all, normal young men of twenty-nine didn't need to be locked in the cellar every four weeks.
***
Augusta left a week later -- not for Hogwarts, as Remus has expected, but Beauxbatons -- and Hadrian returned to the village school, where apparently he thrived. Remus heard stories of Hadrian's misadventures and Augusta's various trials and tribulations through his father, or through the Sunday dinners he became gradually more accustomed to. Augusta, it was quite clear, was not actually that fond of Papa Rufus' grown son, but she was away at school, and he reached an accord of sorts with Hadrian in the meantime. It did involve some debate over the slingshot, but in the end Remus won out and the chickens in the yard were more or less safe from short-range projectiles.
His father took the truck into town rather more often than was necessary, but Remus knew how to run the farm in his absence, and sometimes didn't notice, except when he came back to the house to find a note on the kitchen counter. Sunday dinners were soon joined by Thursday dinners, and once in a while, by Friday morning breakfasts, when Hadrian was staying at a friends' house for the night. Remus tended to make himself scarce on Thursday nights and sometimes Sundays too, finding excuses to bed down with the hired help, or prowling the fences and sleeping under the stars, something he'd done during Alabama summers but found a bit inhospitable in Yorkshire autumn.
If his father noticed his absences, he paid them no mind, neither to reprimand Remus for distancing himself nor to thank him for the privacy it afforded. Remus didn't really want either.
As September passed into October and the harvest was finished, he found he enjoyed ranging out away from the house, whether in escape or merely out of restlessness. He liked their wide farmlands and had run wild here as a child, even after his bite. He found things he'd carved in fences, places he'd discovered as a boy -- a grove of trees that kept out the rain, a tangle of underbrush that he'd once been small enough to crawl through into a secret open space, a gully where the neighbours dumped all sorts of trash to fascinate a nine-year-old. He learned how to drive the truck, too, so that if he wished he could get into town on his own power, or run errands for his father. He didn't like the big Muggle contraption -- it lacked grace, and he worried about the fact that it was a large, fast-moving object which was only vaguely controlled by its driver. He still went in, though, when his father asked or when need dictated.
There were people in town who knew him, or at any rate remembered him as a child, and recognised the Lupin features on his scarred face. They said hello in passing, asked after his father and himself, or reminisced briefly about when he'd been hip-high and a troublemaker. They all, to a one, told him how well and healthy he was looking -- no doubt his father or Alice had mentioned he was recuperating from injuries, and the townspeople wanted one of their own to feel welcome again.
He considered it all while studying his lunch in the pub, early one Sunday when he'd been sent to fetch Alice and Hadrian (as well as some food) for dinner. He had some time to kill before he had to fetch them, and had gravitated to the pub, from which came the delicious smells of food frying. He wasn't drinking -- the truck was frightening enough sober -- but the temptation to bring a few pints home to blur the evening a bit was a strong one.
"As I live, it's Lupin the Younger," said a voice behind him, and a hand descended to clap him on the shoulder. He turned, a smile at the ready (Auror Handbook Smile #4: Off-duty Amiable) to see the aged but still-familiar face of Cole Greyson beaming down at him.
"Mr. Greyson," he said, keeping the smile in place and holding out his hand. "How are you, sir?"
"Not dead yet, rumours to the contrary," the man replied, shaking his hand firmly and sliding into the chair next to him. "A pint for me, and young master Lupin," he ordered, and Lupin shook his head.
"Driving home," he said. "Best not indulge."
"Right then, a pint for me, and a pint and a driver for him," Greyson corrected, and the barman served him his beer, giving Remus only a grin and a wink. Greyson was one of the town elders, inasmuch as such a thing existed -- when Remus was a boy he'd been a venerable old Muggle farming gentleman, native stock, who'd retired to town to let his tenants work his plot. Back then he'd been stocky, grey-haired, with skin tanned to rawhide and amiable country manners; now, ten years on, he still looked strong, though his perpetual sunburn had faded and his hair was pale white, much thinner than it had been. His voice was the same, and his craggy face, even if there were new wrinkles. Remus had liked him quite a lot, as a child.
"I'd heard you'd come home to roost, young cock," Greyson continued, and Remus ducked his head, still grinning. "You look bloody awful, you know," he added, sipping the pint.
"Face I was born with," Remus replied, around a mouthful of potatoes.
"With a few additions. True you were a copper down south?"
Only Greyson would refer to an entirely separate subcontinent as down south. "All the stories are true," Remus agreed. He'd been sixteen the last time he'd encountered Greyson, and was making quick adjustments to the fact that not only was he a grown man now, but Greyson was treating him like one.
"I hope not all of them, that'd leave me with precious little left to ask," the older man said, turning to face him. "Doing all right then?"
"Yes, sir. Wounds are all healed," Remus answered.
"Life out there in the wilds with your father suit you?"
"For now."
Greyson grinned. "Lad like you, gone out to see the world, must be a bit dull to come home here."
"I like the peace," Remus murmured.
"Clearly you've not been caught up on town gossip, if you think we're a peaceful lot," Greyson laughed. "There never were more contentious people than small-towners. The scandal over your dad and that woman of his would have singed your hair at the time. Mostly on account of her husband ran off, really."
"Seems the scandal's settled down now," Remus murmured.
"Aye, so it has. Any road, he's no less well-liked for taking those children of hers under his wing. The lad's a page at the Masques this year, did you know?"
Remus cast back in his mind for what Greyson was referring to, and then wondered how he ever could have forgotten it.
"Bloody hell," he said, and then covered his mouth with one hand, but Greyson merely laughed again.
"Forgot those, did you?" he asked. "Surprised you could. Guess you don't get into town all that often?"
"And don't speak to many when I do," Remus agreed. "Lord, the Masques, I had forgotten about that. It must be fairly soon?"
"Week after Hallowe'en this year," Greyson said. "Surprised you've not been suggested for King of the Green, you're about of age. Maybe a bit old, but we've had older. Proper welcome home for you."
"Doubt I'd remember what's done anymore," Remus said, though the memories of Masques from years past were flooding back. He'd been Page when he was a bit younger than Hadrian...
"Oh, you're told all over again," Greyson said airily. "Last year's king always has a bit of advice for the new lad. I'll put your name down."
"You needn't do that -- I'm sure there are much better candidates -- "
"Thin crop this year, actually," Greyson replied. "Between generations a bit, like. You'd do well. You look more the part than the others."
Remus shook his head. "Really, you shouldn't. I'm hardly a part of the town anymore -- "
"Reclaim you then, won't we?" Greyson said. "I'll arrange everything."
Remus knew he was doomed as soon as Cole Greyson said those three words. When he arranged things, they stayed arranged.
He brushed it off lightly, though, and they went on to talk of other matters -- town gossip Greyson thought he ought to know, how the harvest had gone for Lupin the Elder, whether or not Remus was taking to Alice at all. By the time Remus had finished his meal and Greyson his pint, it was time for him to meet Alice and Hadrian, and the older man waved him off with the injunction to meet him next Saturday so that they could discuss matters of political import. Remus found himself smiling, and meaning it for the first time in ages, as he walked up the High Street towards Alice's shop.
Chapter 5
They couldn't keep him at his job, of course. Deepest regrets, Lupin; sad to see you go; sorry about the pension, but we can't pension non-citizens. Anson had said all the right things. Dark Creatures weren't allowed in government jobs, after all, and while Karls alone had been able to keep the secret, Karls plus Anson, Hobson, and a handful of junior Aurors...well, that was a different story.
Karls had always told him he'd have to take a fall if he was caught. It was a very graceful way to fall, Remus reflected. The outside world was told he was suffering lingering injury, and returning to Great Britain for treatment; the inner circle who'd seen him get bitten thought he'd only just been infected, and were more sympathetic than they might have been had he revealed himself to be not only a werewolf but a liar as well.
They hadn't owled his father; no-one had thought he had any family at all. When the news of the attack reached England, it was a back-page column in "News of the World", and he wasn't mentioned by name. He sat down to try to write a carefully-worded explanation of what had gone on, but nothing came.
He'd have to leave anyway. He might as well go in person.
He didn't want a goodbye party and didn't have enough close friends to warrant it; he didn't even tell his colleagues he was leaving. He picked up his last paycheck and his discharge paperwork, left his badge on his desk, and vanished. It was just a place, after all, and just a job to pay the bills, as he'd told Professor McGonagall.
He'd liked Sydney, but no more than he'd liked Alabama. Nice places; easy to stay, and not too difficult to leave. He left his books behind again, as a gift to whoever next rented the poky little boarding-house room with the claw-marks gouged into its closet walls. He'd spent one last full moon, this one under a doctor's care at the hospital; they'd tried to send him through the counseling program, but he simply stopped showing up for it.
He paid the exorbitant rate for a floo portal back to England, gripped his luggage tightly -- without all but his most beloved books it was just a satchel full of paperwork and his rucksack full of clothing -- and found himself stumbling out of a fireplace in the pub that bordered on Diagon Alley. The Leaky Somethingorother. Flagon?
England. This was England. His home. This was Diagon Alley, where he'd visited and bought school things as a child.
He'd changed his money before leaving. He was unused to handling Galleons and Sickles, unsure of the exchange rate, but he plunked two Galleons down for a room over the pub, and the barkeep tossed him a key. His coat still had the Australian flag on one shoulder, above the Auror's insignia, and he had a few odd looks as he passed through the dim room and climbed the stairs. Perhaps they were staring also at the chunk missing from his neck -- he'd have to buy some high-collared shirts -- or the two parallel lines across his face.
He'd felt that one. He'd been changing back, this past time, and had felt claws rake down his face, even as they became fingers. He hadn't bothered to dress them carefully. What did it matter? Why bother to hide them anymore?
His room overlooked Diagon Alley and he leaned on the windowsill for a while, gazing down on the evening crowds. It was eight o'clock at night in London, England; six in the morning in Sydney, New South Wales.
I've been living a day ahead of myself, he thought, almost whimsically. He found a handful of coins in his coat pocket and descended again, into Diagon Alley itself. It was pleasant here in the late summer; in Australia it was wintertime. With his coat left behind in his room, he was just a man in black trousers and a red shirt; not an Auror, not a werewolf. He'd felt this way in Sydney at first, as well. Perhaps the trick was to never get to know anyone, ever, and then you never were noticed, and then you would be left alone. And then you would be happy.
He didn't intend to stay long, just to sleep and recover from the time-difference before he moved on from here, too. Still, it was good to dawdle up the sidewalk, having no responsibility. Hogwarts was starting soon; even if he hadn't known it always began on the first of September, the hordes of children in new robes, followed by parents carrying books, would have told him. Perhaps he should just pass through the barrier to platform 9 3/4, climb onto the train, and ride to Hogwarts with the children. Dumbledore would be surprised.
Dumbledore would probably be disappointed. He nearly always had been, when it came to Remus. Endangering the students by blatantly being a werewolf in their presence.
He saw that dragon-mad boy, Charlie Weasley, passing with his parents and a gaggle of likewise redheaded youngsters. Charlie was busy talking to one of the younger ones and didn't notice Remus, who hurried away just in case there was the chance he might.
It was difficult to sleep, but he managed it at last, and when he woke in the morning the sun was already well up in the sky.
He bought a train ticket, one-way, and prayed that when he reached the right train stop, he'd remember the way home.
***
Rufus Lupin -- so named because all the males in the Lupin line took ones beginning with the letter R -- was doing the dishes when someone knocked on the back door. Probably a salesman; out here even the men who went door-to-door hawking encyclopedias or what-have-you knew to come to the back door instead of the front. None of the farmhands would knock; none of them had any reason to come to the farmhouse once dinner was done with at any rate.
He left the pot he was washing to soak and ducked into the cool, dim hallway. He could hear the thump of a package hitting the wooden porch that the back door let onto, then just expectant silence.
He opened the door with a smile and a pre-prepared speech about how he couldn't afford anything anyone cared to be selling, but if they wanted a cup of tea he'd be happy to --
A tall, painfully thin man stood on the porch. He had lines in his face that shouldn't be there, and two mostly-healed scars stretching from his left eyebrow across to his right cheek. His hair was threaded with a few fine hints of grey, and he wore what looked almost like a uniform, with the collar secured tightly at his throat.
"Hi, Dad," the man said, and Rufus blinked.
"Remus?" he asked softly. The stranger nodded.
He hadn't seen his son in nearly nine years. Remus was never much one for sending photographs.
"I'm sorry I didn't owl first," the stranger said. "I just wanted to come home."
Rufus looked him up and down once more, and then at the rucksack resting on the porch, the satchel clutched in his hand.
"Your things?" he asked. Remus -- yes, he could see the shape of his son's face in the gaunt cheeks -- nodded again. "Best bring them in, then."
He turned and led the way into the house, catching a hint of a relieved smile as his son gathered up his two pathetic items of luggage and carried them inside. Remus hated silly soppy hellos and goodbyes.
"Dinner's done, but I'll heat something," Rufus said. "Your room's probably dusty, but it'll sleep well."
"I can clean it," Remus answered, continuing up the stairs.
Rufus had eggs and bacon, ham, fried bread, and tea waiting for him when he came back down. He smiled as the man who was not-quite-yet-his-son-again wolfed down the food with obvious pleasure.
"Not feeding you right down at that Australian town of yours," he said, as Remus scooped up the fried egg with his bread.
"Haven't eaten all day," Remus replied indistinctly. "Train from London, wanted to hitch from the station but nobody drives anymore, I guess, so I walked."
"Everyone's out working. Harvest in soon," Rufus replied.
"Merlin, that's right -- I'd forgotten."
"You eat up," Rufus ordered, as Remus put his bread down in shock. The boy -- man -- hurriedly picked it up again, and sipped his tea into the bargain.
"Good crop?" Remus asked.
"Middling. Sheep and goats'll bring in something. Turn a profit, I think, when all's said and done, which is more than some will this year."
"I can help with the harvest."
Rufus cocked his head. "Staying a while?"
Remus looked stricken. "Oh -- if I can -- I didn't even ask, I just -- "
"It's all right, lad, I wasn't saying you couldn't stay," Rufus assured him. "Just wanting to know if you plan to leave as suddenly, that's all. On leave from the Aurors?"
Remus looked down at his plate. "Sacked, actually."
"Oh yes? Caught you nicking the petty cash, did they?"
That brought a slight smile to his lips. "Not quite. Found out I was a werewolf. Sort of. Long story."
"Time to tell it, whenever you please. Come back for good, then?"
"Maybe," Remus allowed. "They said I needed rest, somewhere away from cities, and I...wanted to come home."
"Rest? Have you been ill?"
"I was hurt." Remus flipped the top button of his collar open nervously, and pulled it to one side. Rufus sucked in his breath. On a stranger it would have been saddening; on his son, the deep, hollow scar was terrifying.
"What did it?" he asked softly.
Remus looked away. "Another werewolf."
"Another one attacked you?"
"Yeah," said his son, with a hint of an Australian accent creeping in.
"What happened?"
"I killed it. Him. I killed him." Remus pushed the egg around on his plate with his fork. "He was about to attack a...friend of mine. So I shot him."
"Lad..." Rufus fumbled for something to say, and satisfied himself with refilling Remus' tea. "You're welcome for as long as you'd like. You know that. Rest if you need it. Feeding-up. Can't promise you much excitement after America and Australia and all that -- "
"I could do with a bit less," Remus said wryly. "I won't be in the way."
It was a statement, not a question, and Rufus smiled.
"I don't reckon you will," he answered. They sat in silence for a while, as Remus slowly ate small bites of the remaining food, more for show than because he was still hungry. Rufus drank in the sight of his son, however weary and hurt he was, wanting to memorise his face before it vanished again.
"I did wonder when I didn't hear from you for a while," he said finally. "No one owled me to say you were hurt."
"I know. They hadn't your address, and after I woke up..." Remus shrugged. "I hope you didn't worry."
"Not more than I ever do, considering I raised you to care for yourself," Rufus said offhand. "Looks as though you have, more or less."
Remus gave him that same tired smile, old in a way that was frightening to his father, and laid his fork across his plate.
"Leave it," Rufus ordered. "You look exhausted, lad. Sleep a bit."
Remus seemed too tired to do more than obey, moving as if he were in a slight haze. Rufus watched him climb the stairs, turn instinctively to his old room at the top, and fumble only a second before remembering the knob, unlike most others in the house, turned counter-clockwise.
He heard shoes drop to the floor and the creak of bedsprings, as he gathered up the plate and tea things, putting them in the sink.
His boy was home. Sickly and hurt, but home. Rufus had seen Remus ill before, and had tended his cuts and bruises from the Change for the five years and six Hogwarts summer holidays of his post-attack childhood. Sick could be treated, hurt healed. He knew a witch in town who'd have a good salve for that scar on his neck.
He sank down into his chair at the kitchen table again, and closed his eyes.
His boy was home.
***
Remus was still on Australian time, though the day of train travel had helped him towards resetting his internal clock; he woke early, far too early, and lay in his bed, in the room he'd tidied up into a guestroom years before. From here he could see the open closet, with a few boxes of his toys and books in, his old Hogwarts uniforms still hanging there, smelling of mothballs.
The sun was barely up, and soon enough everyone else would be awake, doing all the sunrise-dictated activities of a working farm. It wasn't a large one, or a very profitable one, but his father loved the land, and his father's magic had always been tied to it. He and his mother had understood that, and anyway Remus had never minded being poor, since it was all he'd ever known. He hadn't thought there was any other way to live, until Hogwarts -- until Sirius and James, who were wealthy, and Peter, who was the utter picture of middle-class suburban England.
There's no shame in earning honest living with your hands, his father had told him, and while he hadn't -- preferring books, which his parents didn't understand but didn't argue with -- he'd known it was true. He wouldn't have traded the shabby old farmhouse for all Sirius' wealth, if Sirius' family came with it.
He had no clothes but his one good suit and his Auror uniforms, plus a few threadbare and long-unworn Academy shirts. He didn't want to wear either; he contemplated putting on an old Hogwarts shirt, but that seemed slightly absurd. Just because he'd come home didn't mean he was seventeen again.
He was twenty-eight years old, and all he had to show for it was a deep scar on his neck, a handful of red shirts, and a set of discharge papers from the Sydney branch of the Australian Aurors.
He put on his uniform trousers and stepped out into the hallway, crossing it to knock on his father's bedroom door.
"Aye!" his father called.
"It's Remus," he said, through the door. "Can I borrow a shirt?"
His father opened the door after a moment, still buckling his belt. "Take your pick," he said, waving towards the bureau. Remus opened the third drawer down, automatically, remembering fetching clothing for his father as a child, and took a pale blue one off the top.
"Should fit you," his father said critically. "You've broadened in the shoulder a bit, I think. Need some meat on your bones," he added, ignoring the new and old scars that criscrossed his son's torso. Remus was grateful for this; his father -- and mother, when she'd been alive -- had never scolded him for the scars, or commented on them. They were a part of him.
He decided, as he settled the shirt across his shoulders, that if he had to be a werewolf, at least he'd had decent parents who understood the condition, even if they didn't like it.
He wondered what sort of parents Lacon Chaney'd had. Perhaps Lacon hadn't become a werewolf until he was grown.
"Feels all right," he said, buttoning the shirt in front, smoothing it slightly. "I'll hitch into town tomorrow and buy some of my own."
"Do as you please," his father grunted. "Got a truck now. Wait two days and I'll take you in when I go for food. Got the hands living here, out in the old barn -- they take less pay if you feed 'em, and cooking for myself seemed foolish."
"You bought a truck?" Remus raised his eyebrows. "And you can drive it, and all?"
"Isn't so hard. I'll teach you, if you like. Mad Muggle contraption, but a few charms here and there..." his father tapped the side of his nose. "Long as the anti-muggle-device folks at the Ministry don't catch on, it does no one any harm."
Remus turned to the mirror that stood in the corner, dusty and slightly shabby, and examined himself. He'd taken after Rufus to begin with, and the shirt might have been his own. What a peculiar thing.
His father stood behind him and straightened the collar a little. "Suits you," he said.
"As much as anything does," Remus murmured, and his father clapped him on the shoulder, leaving him there in front of the mirror, staring at himself. He couldn't remember the last time he'd actually looked at his own reflection, unless it was to shave or brush his hair -- which hardly needed it, cut as short as it was.
No uniform regulation anymore, he thought. I could grow my hair out again. Don't have to shave if I don't want to. I can pick my own colours to wear.
He smiled, slightly grimly, and the reflection smiled back at him.
How terrifying.
***
For a few weeks Remus withdrew from the prospect of a life without structure, joining his father silently in the rounds of chores the farm required, meeting the temporary workers who were helping to get the harvest in, discovering things that had changed and the things that hadn't. He re-learned the ancient familiar geography of the family grounds, and no-one disturbed him in his rambles. His father plotted charms to be cast, now that there was another fully-qualified wizard about; the farm was shielded from certain Muggles, mainly the ones interested in levying property tax on it, but the shielding needed renewal every fifteen years or so. Not a difficult task, but one requiring more than a single wizard to complete. He spent almost a week de-stoning one of the unused fields, making the usual tired jokes about growing a rock farm and how the stones bred in the ground, otherwise how would a field de-stoned two years ago need it again already?
Nothing seemed very difficult or very tedious, or very anything; this late in the summer, the world was washed in browns and yellows, and it seemed to Remus as if that was the way his life had gone. Things grew successively less real as time passed; if it continued, perhaps one day he would vanish entirely. In the meantime, he waited out his existence tending sheep and chickens, or repairing the old dry-stone walls with the rocks taken from the empty field. He didn't ride in with his father on the trips in to town, and Rufus didn't ask him to. Rufus, who had spent nearly fifteen years searching for a cure for his son, had ended by becoming resigned to allowing things -- people -- to patch themselves over.
He used to go through the Change in the old barn, at home, but now the farmhands were living there; instead he climbed down into the basement, unused for years, and had his father lock him in. The next dawn Rufus bandaged his wounds and then went about his chores, returning to bring him breakfast before seeing to the rest of the day's business.
There was, after all, one structure Remus could never escape, and that was the marking-of-time by the phases of the moon. Remus didn't live in weeks or months, but in precise twenty-eight-day cycles.
He was well enough, three days after the full moon, to feel restless at being confined, and finally agreed when his father suggested another trip in to town to buy him some shirts of his own, as he was stealing and stretching the shoulders on Rufus'. His father had shown him the truck, a battered second-hand model that ran more on charms than on petrol.
"Got somethin' to tell you," Rufus said, as they passed the main gate of the farm, bumping down the dusty track towards the main, paved road.
"Oh?" Remus asked, gazing out the windscreen.
"To do with town."
"All right."
Rufus took a breath, and Remus glanced at his father. Rufus Lupin was never anxious, and yet...
"Been going into town pretty regular," he said. "Friday nights and all. And Sundays."
"Hadn't noticed," Remus answered indifferently. He had, but he hadn't particularly felt anything one way or the other about it; it was just that he was trained to notice these things, as an Auror. In the back of his mind a footnote had been made: Dad's in town on Monday mornings, Friday nights, and Sundays.
"There's a shop, see," Rufus continued, as they rolled at a leisurely pace towards town. "Sells maps and old books and things. Paper shop. Mostly books, really," he said, almost to himself. "Trinkets now 'n again. But mostly books."
"I'd like to see it," Remus answered, idly wondering where this was going.
"You're in a fair way to; it's our first stop," Rufus replied. He was silent, almost expectant for a while, but Remus was in no mood to fish for the reason his father was uncomfortable. Finally, he cleared his throat. "Run by a woman, name of Derwent."
Remus glanced at him. Derwent was one of the larger old Wizarding families; he'd known one or two at school. "Witch, then?"
"Aye. Trades in magical texts, when they're needed. Not much Wizarding business out this way." Rufus cleared his throat again. "Been courtin' her, a bit."
Remus wondered if his father expected him to be angry, or perhaps curious. All he felt was a detached sort of amusement.
"Don't want you to think I'm not faithful to your mum's memory," Rufus continued. "It's just a man gets lonely and it's been -- "
"Eighteen years," Remus murmured. "It's fine, dad."
Rufus risked a glance at him before turning back to the road. "Thought you ought to know."
"You never wrote about her."
"Never could find the right way to say," Rufus admitted. Remus watched as they began passing houses again, the suburbs of the small town.
"How long?" Remus asked, voice neutral.
"Goin' on eight years," Rufus admitted. Remus blinked.
"You've been courting this woman eight years, dad?" he asked, surprised. "Taking things slow, are you?"
His father blushed. "Asked her to marry me twice," he murmured. "Wouldn't have me. Didn't want to live out on a farm, she said. It works for us. She has her shop and I've got the lands. Comes out to dinner on Sundays."
"Where've I been?" Remus asked, smiling.
"Didn't have her come out, did I? Wanted to ease you into it, like."
"I didn't mean to be any kind of -- "
"You aren't," his father said sharply, almost angrily. Remus watched him carefully. "You aren't any kind of. You're my boy. Been sick. Told her that. Family's more important. Only family I got left. Told her so."
"I'm sure she was thrilled," Remus murmured.
"It's no matter," Rufus said firmly. "Shop's on the high street, you're not obliged to meet her if you'd rather not. Thought we might have her for dinner this Sunday, though, if you're agreeable."
Remus scratched at the scar crossing the bridge of his nose. "I don't mind. She know what I am?"
"Not her business."
"Reckon not. Hardly matters, if she's not likely to be at the farm much."
He saw his father risk another glance, this time more concerned. He'd heard him talking with the crew foreman; he knew Rufus was worried about him, wondering when he'd take an interest in anything outside the farm, when he'd go back to reading from the shelf of books in his bedroom, when he'd try writing to any of his acquaintances in Australia or America.
"Told her you were back," he said softly. "Told her you were a great one for books. She's been putting some aside for you."
Remus nodded. "I don't mind meeting her."
"Hoped you'd say that," Rufus answered. "And...well, there's one other thing..."
***
Remus was incredibly glad Rufus had prepared him for this, even if it was only a few minutes beforehand; otherwise his heart might have stopped in shock at seeing two young children run out of the dusty-windowed shop to leap on his father.
"Tykes," Rufus said calmly, as a pale-haired boy tried to swing from his shoulders and a slightly older girl hugged his neck. "Down, child," he cried, swatting irritably at the boy. Close up, they were certainly too old to be Rufus' children, if he'd only been seeing Alice Derwent eight years; the boy looked to be about ten, the girl nearly thirteen.
"Did you bring us a chicken, Papa Rufus?" the girl asked, and Rufus held up a brown-wrapped package, a chicken Remus had seen him plucking earlier that morning. The girl took it from him, kissed his cheek, and ran inside. Rufus gave his son a slightly embarrassed look before he shrugged the blond boy off his back.
"Run on," he said, and the boy dashed inside after his sister, somewhat more slowly; he had a limp in one leg. Remus covered his grin with his hand.
"Always bring 'em something nice to eat," Rufus grumbled. "Town food's not so fresh."
"That's very good of you," Remus said gravely. "They seem fond of you."
"Father ran out on 'em two years before I met her properly," Rufus answered. "Just after the lad was born. Rascal of a chap. Nearly ran the business into the ground."
"They look as though they're doing all right now," Remus observed, as two pale heads popped out of the doorway.
"Aye, so they are," Rufus answered gruffly, stepping inside.
The shop was dim but neat, well-kept; rows of wooden bookshelves were filled with gently-used second-hand books, and a case in the corner displayed some maps and other ephemera. Behind the counter, a woman was bent over a ledger, but she looked up and smiled as their shadows filled the doorway. Neither children bore a particularly strong resemblance to her; she had much darker hair, and finer features. She looked too young, Remus reflected, to have children as old as thirteen.
"Rufus," she said warmly, and hugged him while Remus lagged shyly near the door. He didn't remember his own mum all that well, but a sudden image of his father and mother standing in the kitchen, hugging -- mum still, he recalled, with a potato-peeler in one hand -- rose up out of somewhere.
It's a good thing, he told himself. He oughtn't be alone so much, out on that farm. He should have someone --
He's probably thinking the same thing about you.
"And you must be the famous Auror son," Alice said, coming forward and holding out a hand. Remus took it, feeling a firm grip, dry palm, cool fingers. "It's a pleasure to finally see you in the flesh. Good lord, Rufus, aren't you feeding him?"
"He's been ill," Rufus grunted.
"Pleasure to meet you, ma'am," Remus answered, putting on Smile 2.1 in the Auror Handbook: Genuine Pleasure (Informal).
"This is Hadrian and that's Augusta," Alice said, indicating the children, who were now staring outright at the scarred, sun-tanned man still lingering near the door. Remus couldn't help raising a curious eyebrow. "Well, Alice is such a dull name, don't you think?"
"Not at all," Remus murmured politely. Hadrian poked him.
"You really an Auror?" he demanded.
"Hadrian!" Alice scolded. "Run along, make trouble somewhere else."
Hadrian scuttled off, but Augusta remained, peering around a bookshelf at him. Alice didn't seem to notice her daughter; she gently took Remus by the arm and pulled him fully inside, closing the door and turning the sign to "Closed".
"We'll have a bit of lunch, then," she said firmly, leading the two men back behind the counter and up a flight of narrow stairs. Above the bookshop was a better-lit, airy sort of flat, including a tidy kitchen, where she waved them into chairs at a fair-sized table covered in books.
"Hadrian's a great one for reading," she said, excusing the mess deftly. Remus lifted on of the nearby volumes; a Muggle novel of some kind. "Rufus tells me you were as well, as a child," she continued, taking out a loaf of bread and setting some sandwich-making charms to work. Augusta continued to peek around corners, hiding behind the stairway banister.
"Er...." Remus glanced at his father. "Yes. I suppose I was."
She shot them a smile as she poured five glasses of lemonade, and Rufus rose to collect two of them. She kissed him on the cheek as he did so. Remus took one glass from his father, studying it idly. Augusta slunk around the banister and grabbed one, standing nearly-behind a cupboard. Alice orchestrated the sandwich-making like a conductor, sipping her lemonade.
"How do you take your sandwiches, Remus?" she inquired.
"Oh, I -- cheese, and er..." he watched the food flying through the air, "Turkey, please, and lettuce. No mustard."
"Tomatoes?"
"No, thank you."
"Just like your father," Alice smiled. "It is strange. I imagine you must look how Rufus looked when he was your age."
Remus glanced away, self-conscious of the scars on his face and the still-visible mark on his neck. "Sort of."
"How'd you get those marks?" Augusta blurted. Alice swatted her.
"Rude!" she exclaimed. "You apologise to Remus right now."
"It's all right," Remus said quickly.
"It is not," Alice said.
"I just wanted to know," Augusta protested.
"Say you're sorry, Augusta," Rufus rumbled. Augusta bowed her head and muttered "M'sorry," rebelliously, stomping off.
"No manners," Alice sighed.
"It -- really, I'm not offended," Remus said. "I was attacked when I was in Australia, that's all."
"Well, they're marks of courage then, I'm sure," Alice said. "Augusta, come back here," she called. "Lunch is ready. Fetch Hadrian."
Augusta sulked her way through the kitchen and stood at the top of the stairs. "HADRIAN!" she yelled. Alice put her face in her hands.
"WHAT?" came a yell up the stairs.
"LUNCH!"
"I'd have liked to have made a good impression on you, Remus, but I'm afraid my children had other ideas."
Remus smiled. "I taught thirteen-year-olds, I understand entirely. Augusta, come sit by me," he called, and the girl flounced down in the chair next to him as Hadrian clattered noisily up the stairs, taking two of the plates and tossing one carelessly in front of Augusta while his mother set another two in front of the Lupins, and one for herself.
"When I was in Australia," he said to Augusta, and glanced at Hadrian as a tacit invitation to listen, "I was out on patrol when a load of Muggles decided they were going to pick a fight with us."
"Remus, don't be filling their heads with nonsense," Rufus warned, and Remus met his father's eyes for a moment. Don't bring up werewolves, the look said.
"Honest truth," Remus replied. "And one of them had a knife, and he got hold of me while I was fighting another one, who had a chain."
"Did you win?" Hadrian asked.
"We did, in fact," Remus answered. "I used the Auror Elbow."
"The what?"
"It's where you bring your arm up like this," Remus demonstrated, "and you just give a little jab -- "
He caught Alice's eye, and paused.
"And if either of you try it on the other I'm sure your mum wouldn't mind me knocking both your heads together," he finished. Alice grinned at him, and Rufus smiled approvingly.
***
"That went well," Rufus observed that afternoon, as they drove back towards the farm. Remus, packages of shirts and trousers sitting by his feet, nodded as he watched the scenery pass. He'd gone to buy clothes while Rufus spent the afternoon downstairs with Alice; when he'd returned, Rufus was giving Augusta a Talk about manners and familial duty. It struck him that perhaps these children now knew his father better than he did.
"Good you got on all right during lunch," Rufus added.
"Nervous, dad?" Remus asked. Rufus shrugged, eloquently. "She's nice enough. Bit young for you."
"Often thought so myself. Dunno why she puts up with me," he answered.
"Her put up with you?" Remus grinned. "I don't know how you put up with those terrors she calls children."
"Hadrian's a good boy," Rufus replied. "Augusta's..."
"Hitting an awkward stage?" Remus suggested.
"Never had any trouble with you at that age," Rufus admitted.
"Well, I am an abnormal -- "
"Don't say that."
Remus sat back on the seat, letting his head drift back, staring at the roof of the truck. "I didn't mean it like that, dad."
They rode in silence for a while, until Rufus spoke again. "She thinks you're a fine young man."
"She clearly hasn't got to know me."
"All right having them to dinner on Sunday, then?"
"Sure. I can just imagine how much Augusta likes the chicken yard."
Rufus chuckled. "City girl. Hadrian's no better. Nearly had to take a switch to him for chasing chickens."
"You never would. Never did with me and I did far worse than chase chickens."
"No, you left that to that great black Newf you got after school -- what was his name?"
Remus felt something clench in his throat. "Padfoot," he said.
"That's the one. Used to bring him down here of weekends with James and that Pettigrew boy. Whatever happened to that dog?"
"Had to be put down. Rabid."
"Shame. Hell of a creature."
Remus didn't reply.
"Didn't mean to mention Potter," Rufus said quietly.
"It's fine."
"Got those books Alice put aside for you. They're behind the seat."
They bumped off the road and onto the dirt track leading down to the farmhouse; Remus pled exhaustion, and took the parcel of books and clothing up to his room, setting them on his desk before dropping onto the bed.
So his father had a girlfriend, a strange thing to think of, and she had two children who called him Papa Rufus, children his father was allowed to discipline as if they were his own. Hadrian had probably never known any other father. Children who were his, Remus Lupin's, siblings -- more or less.
He reached out for the neat package on the desk, picking it up by the twine that bound it and tugging at the knot until it came loose, before pulling the books out of the paper wrapping. A book about advanced Transfiguration, one about magical Defence, and two Muggle novels with adventursome-looking covers; The Sea Wolf by Jack London, and one by a fellow named Hemingway, whom he'd heard of somewhere before.
He hoped The Sea Wolf was merely a happy coincidence.
He opened the book on Defence, pushing himself up so that he sat against the headboard, and began to read. Ten minutes later his head drooped backwards, and the book slipped to the blanket.
He only woke when Rufus called him down to dinner, and the clattering of the farmhands into the big dining room became too much for him to ignore.
***
"Remus!"
"Yes dad?"
"Have you stolen my razor blades?"
Remus leaned out of his bedroom, and narrowed his eyes at his father. "I don't use razor blades, dad, you know that."
"Well, someone has," Rufus said dourly.
"You're probably misplaced them. Why don't you just use a shaving charm?" Remus called, moving back to his bed, where he was knotting a tie on the bedpost.
His father's voice drifted in. "Because I'm wretched at them. Always have been."
"You should get a Shearsides."
"What's that then?"
"This is Yorkshire, dad, not Bora Bora," Remus replied, hanging the tie around his neck. "Shearsides! Automatic Wizarding razors! You hold still and they do all the work for you."
"Don't trust them," Rufus muttered, as Remus presented himself for inspection. "Straighten your collar."
Remus fiddled with it while his father rummaged in an enormous leather toiletries kit. "For crying out loud, dad, here," he said, pointing his wand at his father's chin. "Depilo!" he said, and flicked it. Rufus twitched, but his five o'clock shadow vanished. "There. Now -- "
There was a crash from downstairs, and an enraged shriek. "Hadrian!"
"The terror is here," Remus said grimly.
"Be polite," Rufus ordered. "She's a good woman."
"I wasn't talking about her," Remus answered from the stairwell, before descending. Alice apparently had permission to come and go as she pleased; when he walked into the kitchen she was already unpacking two bottles of wine from a basket, while Augusta toyed with the lacy ends of her sleeves and Hadrian forlornly collected up bits of a terracotta flower pot, which had formerly been growing chives on the windowsill.
"Remus -- I'm so sorry, Hadrian's just discovered the wonders of the slingshot," she said apologetically. "We'll get you a new flowerpot."
"Easy enough to fix it," Remus answered. "Got all the bits?" he asked. Hadrian nodded. "Right then, put the chives on the bottom...reparo!" he said, and the pot began to reassemble itself. "Dad'll be down in a minute, he's finishing dressing."
"Thank you for having us to dinner," Alice said with a warm smile.
"Not really my decision," Remus answered, then realised how it sounded. "Er. I mean to say, I don't mind. Been a bit of a habit, I understand."
"Sort of," Alice replied, taking a large, sealed bowl out of the basket. "It's -- Hadrian!"
Hadrian had been watching the Reparo spell rebuild the chives-pot, and now had grabbed hold of the last piece, seeing how long he could keep it from attaching to the rest of the reassembled planter. The shard was slowly dragging him forward, and his trainers squeaked on the floor. She rapped her wand lightly across his knuckles, and he let go. The chip flew into its proper place, and Hadrian rubbed his knuckles regretfully. Remus reached out and plucked the slingshot out of his back pocket as he headed for the kitchen back-door.
"It's a phase," Alice sighed, uncovering the bowl and setting a slow-heating charm on the soup inside. "I hope it's a phase."
"It usually is," Remus answered absently, as he began to set the table.
"Augusta, help Remus, there's a good girl," Alice ordered, and Augusta accepted the silverware, placing it wrong-way-round. Remus corrected her on the third setting, and she sighed, going back to re-do the other two while Remus re-entered the kitchen.
"They're very...active," he said tactfully. Alice rolled her eyes. "Could be worse."
"It's so good to have Rufus around, he knows exactly how to handle them. Comes of raising a child himself, I suppose. It's been good for Hadrian, especially, to have a...a father, of sorts. I imagine that doesn't make you very comfortable," she added. Remus shrugged, and picked up the slingshot.
"That thing again?" Rufus asked, as he entered the kitchen. Remus offered the toy to his father, who took it and shoved it in his own pocket. Alice kissed him hello, while Remus looked away, awkwardly. Augusta wandered back into the kitchen and made a distinctly disgusted noise.
"Behave yourself," Rufus told her, and she flounced into the living room, leaning on one of the wide windows that looked out on the front garden. "Soup?" Rufus continued, peering over Alice's shoulder. Remus felt that twinge again, as another memory rose of another woman in this kitchen, and his father making that very gesture, one hand on the counter as his left arm encircled her waist. He turned and went back into the dining room to make sure the table was arranged properly. Outside, he could see Hadrian flicking pebbles into the sheepyard idly, the sheep entirely undisturbed by this activity. He rapped on the window and gestured the boy inside.
Dinner was peaceful enough, though Remus didn't speak much; Alice made conversation, and Hadrian seemed eager enough to tell Rufus about the first week of school which was fast impending. The soup was good, as were the chops and rolls his father had cooked, and Remus took a sort of pleasure in listening and watching. He wondered idly if Alice had been a Hogwarts girl; he reckoned at the outside she couldn't be more than five years older than he was, despite having a thirteen-year-old daughter.
He kept his curiousity to himself, however, and merely smiled when he ought, answered a question or two from Hadrian and Augusta, and tried not to seem as though he was sulking. He'd had enough training and spent enough time alone in his life that he could look at himself as others saw him and get a fair estimation of how he must seem; a slightly dour, injured young man, hardened into a regimental structure, well-mannered, with the stiff politeness of a military recruit. Dangerous, perhaps; not to be left with the children, lest he teach them something violent, or worse, commit some sort of violence.
And yet, in balancing the scales, he was a shy and bookish son of a solid, well-raised farmer, a veteran of service whose injuries had clearly cost him his livelihood, healing up as best he could with the only family he had.
He must confuse her greatly, he thought, and was surprised to find a slight pang of vindictive pleasure in this. Let her be confused; he was his father's son, and he had been here first.
He was glad when they left. Unused to entertaining company and exhausted by it, he crept up the stairs to his room and sat on his bed, reading his way into sleep as he often did, because otherwise it was difficult to sleep at all. He didn't have nightmares, precisely, but through all his dreams flitted the shadowy, ethereal image of Lacon Chaney, his malformed face -- pale human skin over pushed-forward wolfish cheekbones and jaw -- peering out at him from unlikely places. Through windows, past distant tree lines, over the tops of racks of books; in memories of the crowded Plucked Emu, in the darkened doorways of the Academy's student quarters, over the barrel of Michael Owens' rifle.
Sometimes he had Sirius Black's eyes.
It was difficult to sleep, knowing what would come, like wondering if someone was going to reach over just as you drifted off and grab your wrist. Perhaps he was a frightening man after all, the culmination of a mother's fears.
After all, normal young men of twenty-nine didn't need to be locked in the cellar every four weeks.
***
Augusta left a week later -- not for Hogwarts, as Remus has expected, but Beauxbatons -- and Hadrian returned to the village school, where apparently he thrived. Remus heard stories of Hadrian's misadventures and Augusta's various trials and tribulations through his father, or through the Sunday dinners he became gradually more accustomed to. Augusta, it was quite clear, was not actually that fond of Papa Rufus' grown son, but she was away at school, and he reached an accord of sorts with Hadrian in the meantime. It did involve some debate over the slingshot, but in the end Remus won out and the chickens in the yard were more or less safe from short-range projectiles.
His father took the truck into town rather more often than was necessary, but Remus knew how to run the farm in his absence, and sometimes didn't notice, except when he came back to the house to find a note on the kitchen counter. Sunday dinners were soon joined by Thursday dinners, and once in a while, by Friday morning breakfasts, when Hadrian was staying at a friends' house for the night. Remus tended to make himself scarce on Thursday nights and sometimes Sundays too, finding excuses to bed down with the hired help, or prowling the fences and sleeping under the stars, something he'd done during Alabama summers but found a bit inhospitable in Yorkshire autumn.
If his father noticed his absences, he paid them no mind, neither to reprimand Remus for distancing himself nor to thank him for the privacy it afforded. Remus didn't really want either.
As September passed into October and the harvest was finished, he found he enjoyed ranging out away from the house, whether in escape or merely out of restlessness. He liked their wide farmlands and had run wild here as a child, even after his bite. He found things he'd carved in fences, places he'd discovered as a boy -- a grove of trees that kept out the rain, a tangle of underbrush that he'd once been small enough to crawl through into a secret open space, a gully where the neighbours dumped all sorts of trash to fascinate a nine-year-old. He learned how to drive the truck, too, so that if he wished he could get into town on his own power, or run errands for his father. He didn't like the big Muggle contraption -- it lacked grace, and he worried about the fact that it was a large, fast-moving object which was only vaguely controlled by its driver. He still went in, though, when his father asked or when need dictated.
There were people in town who knew him, or at any rate remembered him as a child, and recognised the Lupin features on his scarred face. They said hello in passing, asked after his father and himself, or reminisced briefly about when he'd been hip-high and a troublemaker. They all, to a one, told him how well and healthy he was looking -- no doubt his father or Alice had mentioned he was recuperating from injuries, and the townspeople wanted one of their own to feel welcome again.
He considered it all while studying his lunch in the pub, early one Sunday when he'd been sent to fetch Alice and Hadrian (as well as some food) for dinner. He had some time to kill before he had to fetch them, and had gravitated to the pub, from which came the delicious smells of food frying. He wasn't drinking -- the truck was frightening enough sober -- but the temptation to bring a few pints home to blur the evening a bit was a strong one.
"As I live, it's Lupin the Younger," said a voice behind him, and a hand descended to clap him on the shoulder. He turned, a smile at the ready (Auror Handbook Smile #4: Off-duty Amiable) to see the aged but still-familiar face of Cole Greyson beaming down at him.
"Mr. Greyson," he said, keeping the smile in place and holding out his hand. "How are you, sir?"
"Not dead yet, rumours to the contrary," the man replied, shaking his hand firmly and sliding into the chair next to him. "A pint for me, and young master Lupin," he ordered, and Lupin shook his head.
"Driving home," he said. "Best not indulge."
"Right then, a pint for me, and a pint and a driver for him," Greyson corrected, and the barman served him his beer, giving Remus only a grin and a wink. Greyson was one of the town elders, inasmuch as such a thing existed -- when Remus was a boy he'd been a venerable old Muggle farming gentleman, native stock, who'd retired to town to let his tenants work his plot. Back then he'd been stocky, grey-haired, with skin tanned to rawhide and amiable country manners; now, ten years on, he still looked strong, though his perpetual sunburn had faded and his hair was pale white, much thinner than it had been. His voice was the same, and his craggy face, even if there were new wrinkles. Remus had liked him quite a lot, as a child.
"I'd heard you'd come home to roost, young cock," Greyson continued, and Remus ducked his head, still grinning. "You look bloody awful, you know," he added, sipping the pint.
"Face I was born with," Remus replied, around a mouthful of potatoes.
"With a few additions. True you were a copper down south?"
Only Greyson would refer to an entirely separate subcontinent as down south. "All the stories are true," Remus agreed. He'd been sixteen the last time he'd encountered Greyson, and was making quick adjustments to the fact that not only was he a grown man now, but Greyson was treating him like one.
"I hope not all of them, that'd leave me with precious little left to ask," the older man said, turning to face him. "Doing all right then?"
"Yes, sir. Wounds are all healed," Remus answered.
"Life out there in the wilds with your father suit you?"
"For now."
Greyson grinned. "Lad like you, gone out to see the world, must be a bit dull to come home here."
"I like the peace," Remus murmured.
"Clearly you've not been caught up on town gossip, if you think we're a peaceful lot," Greyson laughed. "There never were more contentious people than small-towners. The scandal over your dad and that woman of his would have singed your hair at the time. Mostly on account of her husband ran off, really."
"Seems the scandal's settled down now," Remus murmured.
"Aye, so it has. Any road, he's no less well-liked for taking those children of hers under his wing. The lad's a page at the Masques this year, did you know?"
Remus cast back in his mind for what Greyson was referring to, and then wondered how he ever could have forgotten it.
"Bloody hell," he said, and then covered his mouth with one hand, but Greyson merely laughed again.
"Forgot those, did you?" he asked. "Surprised you could. Guess you don't get into town all that often?"
"And don't speak to many when I do," Remus agreed. "Lord, the Masques, I had forgotten about that. It must be fairly soon?"
"Week after Hallowe'en this year," Greyson said. "Surprised you've not been suggested for King of the Green, you're about of age. Maybe a bit old, but we've had older. Proper welcome home for you."
"Doubt I'd remember what's done anymore," Remus said, though the memories of Masques from years past were flooding back. He'd been Page when he was a bit younger than Hadrian...
"Oh, you're told all over again," Greyson said airily. "Last year's king always has a bit of advice for the new lad. I'll put your name down."
"You needn't do that -- I'm sure there are much better candidates -- "
"Thin crop this year, actually," Greyson replied. "Between generations a bit, like. You'd do well. You look more the part than the others."
Remus shook his head. "Really, you shouldn't. I'm hardly a part of the town anymore -- "
"Reclaim you then, won't we?" Greyson said. "I'll arrange everything."
Remus knew he was doomed as soon as Cole Greyson said those three words. When he arranged things, they stayed arranged.
He brushed it off lightly, though, and they went on to talk of other matters -- town gossip Greyson thought he ought to know, how the harvest had gone for Lupin the Elder, whether or not Remus was taking to Alice at all. By the time Remus had finished his meal and Greyson his pint, it was time for him to meet Alice and Hadrian, and the older man waved him off with the injunction to meet him next Saturday so that they could discuss matters of political import. Remus found himself smiling, and meaning it for the first time in ages, as he walked up the High Street towards Alice's shop.
Chapter 5
Wow.
Damnit, man. Now I have THREE fics to keep checking back here for!
May I herewith proffer my undying devotion to thee on a silver platter. *proffers*
Re: Wow.
no subject
"Any road", like "anyway"? Meep! That's on one of my Beatles mp3s, but I didn't know what he was saying, so I've been saying "anywort" for months! And annoying people who didn't know either, but thought that sounded stupid (I'm rather fond of it). Now at least I can annoy them with the right expression.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
no subject
And now I miss my grampa. :(
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
(no subject)
no subject