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Remus


Lyall Lupin was at St. Mungo’s within seconds of hearing the news. Tizzy the house elf spared no time in grabbing hold of his wrist and clicking her fingers and apparating them to the entrance to the hospital, squeaking and running through, shouting for her Master Remus, frantic. When Lyall, ashen-faced, followed Tizzy through the door of Remus’s room, it was to find Albus Dumbledore seated next to the boy’s bed in a chair, one hand holding onto Remus’s as he slept and the other turning the pages of a levitating book. He looked up in surprize as Tizzy the house elf used Dumbledore’s legs to climb up onto Remus’s bed.

“Master Remus! Master Remus!” she sobbed, seeing the condition the boy was in, “You is hurting! Tizzy doesn’t like it when you is hurting… Oh Master Remus, you poor, poor boy!” She wrapped herself around Remus’s torso.

Dumbledore looked from the elf to Lyall in the doorway and the book dropped onto his lap neatly with a wave of his palm. Lyall’s pale face was horrorstruck. “Dumbledore,” he said, voice thick with shock, “What happened?”

Dumbledore answered, “It was a particularly potent moon cycle, it appears.”

Lyall shook as he walked closer, setting himself down in a second chair that stood beside the bed, closer to the foot of it. Dumbledore started to move so that the father could be closer to his son and Lyall shook his head and stayed, stunned, further away. “He… he did this to himself?” Lyall asked thickly, looking at the thick, fresh scars where Fawkes’s tears had mended the boy’s skin as much as possible, including one scar that bridged Remus’s nose.

Dumbledore nodded, “You know the nature of his condition. I’ve seen even worse attacks on oneself as a wolf… though it is rare. Only the strongest werewolves are able to resist a feeding frenzy on such a terrible moon cycle. Your boy is a strong boy, Lyall, that is what those scars represent.”

Lyall’s throat was tight with emotion.

A slight groan from Remus brought their eyes to his face. He was stirring a little - probably from the squeaky cries of the house elf on his chest - and his eyes slowly opened, heavily. Dumbledore squeezed Remus’s hand reassuringly.

“Master Remus, oh Master Remus, Tizzy is here!” the little elf squeaked to him.

“So am I, Remus,” Lyall announced, and now he shuffled with Dumbledore to have the closer position, rushing to grab hold on his son’s hand the moment Dumbledore released it as he moved to the foot of the bed. “Daddy’s here, Rey.”

“Dad,” Remus murmured thickly, his eyes finally focusing on the familiar face. He tried to move himself but the newly relocated shoulder was still stiff and one of his legs had been set into a thick white cast, like a muggle might have. He winced at the pain that shot up his spine from the movement. “What happened?”

“It was a bad moon rising,” whispered Lyall.

Remus looked down at his chest at the sobbing little house elf. “Tizzy,” he said thickly.

Tizzy heard her name and quickly sat up, crawling up to sit on the pillow beside Remus’s head, her little hands on his cheek. “You should have called to Tizzy, Tizzy would have come!” she sobbed, “Tizzy would have helped her master!”

“I didn’t think of that,” Remus murmured, realizing that should’ve been the first name he called out when he had come to in the shack. Tizzy was the only one who would have heard him, and she was the only one whose name he hadn’t thought of to cry out.

“Is you be thinking Tizzy could not help? Tizzy could help! Tizzy is a good elf, Master Remus, she is able to help you! From now on, if Master Remus is be needing Tizzy, he is be calling for Tizzy!” she exclaimed.

“Remus was in a very good deal of stress, Miss. Tizzy,” Dumbledore said, his voice rumbling from the end of the bed. Tizzy looked back at him in a bit of surprise at the address, “I would not be taking it personally that his options had slipped his mind.”

Tizzy hugged Remus’s cheek.

Remus’s eyes had met Dumbledore’s when he had spoken and he asked croakily, “Sir.. Am I expelled?”

“No, Mr. Lupin, you are not expelled,” Dumbledore replied. “You’ll be back at the school in no time!”

Lyall looked at Dumbledore with a horror-struck expression.

Dumbledore continued on, “We have made special arrangements for you before, and we shall do it again to help you in anyway that is necessary.”

“But Dumbledore, surely the other children are --” Lyall glanced at Remus, ashamed of what he was about to suggest, but then turned back to Dumbledore, “ -- are in danger,” he finished shakily.

“None are in danger,” Dumbledore said.

Remus had looked away, tears burning his eyes.

“You must be mad!” Lyall said, “The boy belongs at home, where he can be properly taken care of to keep further… incidents… like this occurring! What if this had been another child?”

Dumbledore shook his head, “It was not, though. I would never put any of my students into harm’s way. The bravery and strength exhibited by your son --”

“Bravery and strength! Dumbledore, he is a werewolf! He has torn his own body to pieces! What is to stop him from ripping apart any one of the students at your school?” Lyall stood up.

Tizzy put a hand over Remus’s ear that was closest to her, “Don’t be listening to them, Master Remus, they is be saying terrible things.”

“He tore his own body in lieu of going after another’s!” Dumbledore said passionately, “A weaker man would have smelled the blood of a hundred villagers outside the door.”

Werewolf,” Lyall said sharply, “He is no man, he is a werewolf and the sooner you accept that, instead of trying to make him into something he is not --”

Remus’s voice was as strong as he could make it be - which was not very, but it was enough to get the attention of the two men at the foot of his bed. “I’m not a werewolf!” he said, “I mean, I am, but that’s not all that I am. I’m a boy. I’m a boy with friends and homework and one day I’ll be a man with a family and a job. And that’s thanks to Dumbledore and Hogwarts. If I’d never gone to school, I’d never have met Sirius and James and Peter and Lily and they’re my friends. They’re my friends and they don’t look at me and see a werewolf, they look at me and see Remus.”

Lyall looked abashed, “I know you’re a boy… I know you’re more than a werewolf… you’re my son. But we must think about what’s safest --”

“I didn’t bite anyone, dad.”

“But you don’t want to, either.”

“No, I don’t want to, you’re right, but I don’t want to go back to how life used to be, either.”




Lily was waiting in the common room by the fire with Peter when Sirius and James returned from McGonagall’s office. Peter had fallen asleep across the couch, but Lily was still awake and reading a textbook, which she put aside the moment the portrait hole had opened. She nudged Peter’s foot, rousing him, and he sat up, blinking awake as the other two came over. “Where is he?” Lily asked. They’d told her their concerns when they’d come up and waited for McGonagall before, and it was her idea that they should go to McGonagall’s office, despite the hour had come when they ought not to leave the common room.

“St. Mungo’s,” said Sirius.

Peter’s eyes widened. “St. Mungo’s? What for?”

“What is St. Mungo’s?” Lily asked.

“It’s a hospital for wizards,” James replied. “He’s broken some bones.”

“But Madam Pomfrey can heal broken bones! Why would they send him to --” Lily interrupted herself, frightened. Then, in low, trembling voice, “Except they’re werewolf bites, aren’t they? He’s done it to himself in his mooniness?”

James nodded.

Tears fell across Lily’s face, “Can the doctors at St. Mungo’s fix it?”

“They’re healers, not doctors,” Peter said.

“McGonagall said they’ll need to use supplemental muggle medicine to completely heal him, but he should be alright…” Sirius replied sadly.

Lily wiped tears from her eyes. “Poor Remus.”

“Poor Remus indeed,” murmured Peter, nodding.

They sat up together for some time in the common room, none of them really talking much, all of them quite tired and really wanting to go to their warm, comfortable beds, but none of them wanting to miss it if McGonagall came to tell them something about their friend… So they all sat about in the cluster of chairs, waiting and nodding off until morning.

“What are you lot doing down here?” Frank Longbottom’s voice broke the morning silence as he nudged James, whose glasses had slipped down his nose, his chin against his collarbone. “Surely you lot didn’t spend the whole night out here?”

James nodded, “Yeah, we did.”

“Whatever for? what’s going on?” Frank looked around at them, noticing Lily’s red eyes from crying.

“Remus is ill,” Lily replied thickly. “He’s gone to St. Mungo’s.”

Concern flashed across Frank’s face, “St. Mungo’s? It must be really bad, then, what’s happened?”

“He’s broken some bones,” replied James.

“But Madam Pomfrey can mend broken bones!” said Frank.

Sirius shrugged, “Dunno the details, mate, only what we’ve been told.” He made a mental note that he would need to let Remus know the other students at Hogwarts would have a great many questions and therefore they would all need to put together a much more compelling response to get them off the topic of why Remus hadn’t been simply treated by Pomfrey in the hospital wing.

“When’s he coming back?” Frank asked.

“Soon,” Lily answered. “Yeah?” she looked to James and Sirius, who both shrugged. “Soon,” Lily repeated, deciding that was the answer whether anyone knew it yet or not.