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How Did You Know


“Master Remus is to be careful with the sewing needle!” Tizzy said worriedly, watching Remus push the needle through a cranberry he was making a garland with. “I is not wanting to be fixing Master Remus’s bleeding fingers!” She looked nervously on as he strung up a bit of popcorn next.

“I’ll be careful Tizzy, I promise,” Remus replied, smiling as the teeny-tiny elf stood on the table, clutching a dust cloth to her heart.

Lyall was working on getting a Christmas tree set up in the corner, whistling to himself as he struggled with the old muggle tree stand, getting sap from the branches stuck in his hair. Remus looked over, watching as his father fought with the screws that drove into the trunk of the tree to secure it standing up. The tree kept trying to loll to one side or the other. Remus had already suggested he magic the thing together, but Lyall was stubborn. Hope had always insisted they set the tree up the muggle way, like her family had always done. ”Christmas is magic enough as it is,” she’d always said, ”There’s no need in adding more to it.” It was one of the few times she’d insisted on doing things what she called the old fashioned way.

Remus smiled to himself, thinking of how she’d always said that stuff at this time of year, ever since he was a little boy. He pushed another couple bits of popcorn onto the string, then ate two or three himself. Tizzy had gone back out to the kitchen to check on the supper she’d been preparing.

Remus was glad he’d come home. He felt much better about it this time. The place was clean and void of the pub chicken wrappers that he’d found everywhere on his last visit. It had smelled of delicious food and warm cookies and pies and Tizzy had met him at the door with thick potholders on her hands, nearly as large as she was, and a little apron tied about herself. Lyall had given it to her, and Tizzy had whispered in Remus’s ear, “Technically that is be making Tizzy a free elf, but Tizzy is not saying anything to Master Lyall because Tizzy loves her job so, so much!”

Which was good because it was clear that Tizzy was the best thing to happen to the Lupin family in quite a long time. Lyall had not smiled so wide in nearly two years - since before Hope had been murdered.

Remus looked across the room at a photo on a small table by the couch of his mother and father on their wedding day. He put down the needle and thread and went over to sit beside it, taking up the frame and staring down at the glowing joy in their faces. Lyall was grunting, still struggling with the tree, his legs all that Remus could see as they extended out from beneath the low hanging boughs. He studied the photo for a long moment, looking at the way the lines curved around Hope’s lips and the joyous expression in Lyall’s eyes as he held onto his bride-in-white. Remus ran his fingers across her cheek in the picture.

“Dad?” he asked.

“Yeaahh?” Lyall’s voice warbled as he fought with the stand.

“How did you meet Mum?”

Lyall crawled out from under the tree, having finally succeeded at his job, and wiped his sap-covered fingers across his knees. “I literally walked right into her,” he answered.

“Yeah, but… c’mon, tell me the whole story.”

Lyall stood up and went over to the chair where they’d put the box of decorations and he sifted through it a moment until he came up with the string lights with the big colored bulbs. He plugged the lights in so that they glowed all blue and red and green and he turned to the tree and started draping them on. “I was a junior assistant at the Ministry for Magic, fresh out of Hogwarts and eager to become the Minister for Magic. I was just pompous enough to believe it would happen within a few years. Really, I was a bit of an arse. Very, very snooty.” He studied the tree a moment, artfully putting the lights on with a strategy that he’d learned over years of doing this with Hope watching and telling him ”you missed a spot” every now and then.

“And they sent you to Canada,” Remus prodded. He’d heard the story a billion times before, always from Hope, though, never from Lyall.

“Yes, they sent me to Canada. The ministry and MACUSA and the Canadian Wizarding Council were having a summit to discuss issues to do with the classification of magical beings and being in that department of the ministry, I was chosen to go along with several other wizards, including Mr. Newt Scamander.” Lyall tilted his head and squinted at the tree, then launched himself forward, placing a few more strands. “They sent us to a funny place called Saskatchewan.”

Remus smiled.

“The town was very, very small, even smaller than Hogsmeade, and very, very boring. There were a lot of moose. One of the moose was really a wizard, though, I knew this man - his name was Harold Minchum, his animagus form was a Moose. He played a great many pranks that weekend. There was this one night, at the pub when --”

“Dad,” Remus said, “Off topic.”

“Yes, right.” Lyall cleared his throat and finished with the lights. “Your mother was in Saskatchewan for a film she was supposed to be in.”

“The script was awful, absolute rubbish,” Remus filled in with a smirk.

“Absolute rubbish,” Lyall nodded, laughing, remembering the face that Hope had always made when she said those words. They’d sounded funny coming out in her American accent - it had been one of the phrases he said often that she had said she loved about the British and had taken it up in her own vocabulary. He shook his head. “And there was a night when she had a fight with her director and she was leaving the set, all a flutter of tears and anger, and I was walking home from that very pub I was about to tell you about before -- I probably was rank of moose,” he chuckled. “And I was walking along and suddenly --” he clapped his palms together, “I’ve walked right into her. Knocked her down and everything. She landed in a puddle and her dress was ruined, she said, and I just felt so awful for it… I tried to magic it clean without her noticing but --”

“But she thought you were being in appropriate,” Remus snickered.

“Yes, because the stain was on her bottom, you see, so when I reached around to clear it off with my wand, she thought I was getting handsy and --

“She slapped your hand just as hard as could be,” Remus said.

“Yes, yes exactly. I thought it would leave a mark,” Lyall nodded, laughing. “And I dropped my wand and it clattered to the ground and she picked it up and stared at it and asked what it was.” Lyall sighed, “I knew I should have lied, should have brought her to the other wizards that I was travelling with to have somebody modify her memory of the moment altogether, but the thought of that beautiful creature forgetting about me… I just couldn’t do it.”

“So you told her about magic.”

“I did. A junior assistant in the Ministry for Magic, with a dream of becoming the Minister, and there I am, standing in the street, telling this bewitching muggle about magic.”

“She didn’t believe you.”

“Not a lick!” Lyall said, nodding, “Not a lick.”

“But you proved it.”

“Yes I did. I proved it. I fixed her dress first - a quick siphoning charm and the mud came right out of that pretty frock.”

Remus smiled, “She still has it.”

“In the closet, yes,” Lyall nodded. “I couldn’t bear to throw it away.”

“That yellow one.”

Lyall nodded again, picking up a tin star from the box - the tree topper.

“Then you showed her again,” Remus pressed on.

“I did.” Lyall said, “I showed her many, many magic tricks - real ones, mind, nothing like those fools in Vegas she always talked about with their goofy playing cards and all that hogwash.”

Remus smiled, “But she always said the most magical thing about you was your smile.”

Lyall looked down at the star in his hand, turning it over. “Yes, she did,” he said quietly, sadly. He turned back to the tree and stared up at the top that was so far up, it nearly touched the ceiling. This was the only part that Hope ever allowed him to use magic for. Lyall drew his wand and waved it and guided the star up to the very top, making sure it was straight. Then he took a step back, staring at it with admiring eyes.

“Dad?” Remus said after a long pause.

“Hmm?” Lyall turned away from the tree and lifted the box of ornaments up, pouring the little drums and dolls and animal shaped pieces across the coffee table before Remus.

“How did you know that you loved her? How did you know mum was the one?”

“I knew I loved her the moment I set eyes upon her,” Lyall said.

“Sure you knew you liked her then, but… how did you know it was love and not just… you know, a friendship?” Remus pressed.

Lyall considered a moment, then he said, “Because I knew in my heart I couldn’t breathe without her. I suppose you’re right, that wasn’t at first sight. It took a bit for me to realize that. She took care of me, you know? And I needed taking care of. I needed her like scorched earth needs rain.” He picked up a little glass owl and hung it on a branch carefully. “Every time I was broken, your mother fixed it. Every time. When she held my hand, I felt invincible. When she told me things would be alright, I believed it like never before.”

Remus got up and lifted a stuffed lion from the table, going over to hang it on the tree. He watched it spin from the string that held it to the branch after he let it go, considering the craftmanship of it. He looked up at Lyall. “But friends can do that, too, for you, can’t they? So how did you know it was love and not just… just a really good friend?”

Lyall said, “No friend could ever make me feel like she did.”

“But --”

Lyall said, “Rey… sometimes, when you know… you just know. You know?”

Remus’s eyes stayed very much trained on the lion.

“I know.”

Lyall smiled. “Is there a girl back at Hogwarts?”

Remus shook his head, “No, dad. There’s not girl.” And he turned and quickly grabbed another ornament, hanging it up on the tree. Then, before his father could ask any more questions, he said, “So what’s the story about that moose?”

“Oh yes! So Harold Minchum and I were roommates at the inn we were staying at for the summit, and he wakes up one night, three o’clock in the morning and he says, Lyall, let’s have an adventure… You ever known a guy like that? Just wakes up ready to get up to no good?”

“Oh do I ever,” Remus replied.

“Well that is Henry Diggle! And so we snuck out of our room…”

Remus was only half listening.