Hey ! This is my first fanfiction, and I can tell you I did not expect it to be hp. However, I've been on a Remus binge recently, and couldn't find any stories about his parents I liked, or indeed any stories in which they are portrayed as I imagine them. (If you have written one you think I'll like, let me know!) Eventually, I decided to hell with it and started on this little ficcy. Hope you enjoy, or at least don't hate :)

Also, the title is an adaptation of the lyrics of "Monster" by Imagine Dragons, which I find to be the perfect Remus Lupin soundtrack. Go listen :)

"So you're really off, aren't you?"

The girl chewed her lip uncertainly. "No Mam, I just fancied packin' my things up, buying a bloody ticket and standin' on the platform all day. You know, in order to pass the time, like."

"I just mean – it's just…" Elin Howell sighed as she stared into her daughter's eyes. "This is really happenin' innit? You're not goin' to change your mind. You're dead set on this."

Hope broke her mother's gaze. She knew she didn't deserve this. Her Mam knew just how to play her, how to make her feel guilty.

"I mean, it's goin' to be so… so different without you bach. You know how hard it's goin' to be for me, around the house like. With Rhys and Tom up in the mines all day, and you know how your bloody sister is with housework. Would rather run around with that Italian lad all day! And all night, I shouldn't wonder-"

"Mam, stop it." Hope cut her mother off. She was so sick of it. "Look, I'm tired. I have to get out of the village! I've only spent my whole life 'ere. I won't be some bloody housewife, Mam, not whilst I have my education…"

"Education?!" Oh dear. "May the Lord help me Hope, you may have done well in school but that does not put you any higher in this world than any other Valley girl! And you could as well read and write like Shakespeare but that does not mean that you can just… just head off into the sunset, girl! Why, when your father…"

Hope began to drift, her mother's ranting merely background noise. The girl picked at the hem of her favourite yellow dress. This could really do with a good sew, she mused. It's all frayed…

"…so I say fine girl! Do as you bloody well please! After all, if you're so desperate to leave your poor mother, a widow no less, to a broken house whilst you go off havin' parties and fancy meals in the big city, with your fine education to pay for it all, then do as you bloody well please!" Elin threw her hands into the air and stormed off the platform, drawing the gaze of the rest of the platform. Namely, Jones the Butcher and his dog, Betts.

"Diw, someone's royally pissed off, e'nt they?" He muttered.

Hope nibbled some loose skin on her lower lip as she watched her mother go. She had no doubt in her mind that her family would be fine.

Well, maybe a little.

All she really did was clean occasionally. And it wasn't like the family was losing any income – only the boys worked. Her Mam was just waiting for little ol' Hope to find another mining lad to settle down with. Her mother had been somewhat disappointed in that aspect thus far - Hope was well into her twenties had had not yet found a boy she wanted to settle down with. She couldn't imagine sharing a bed with any of the numerous boys she had grown up with, and the others were all just so... mundane. She knew she had no right to be so picky, but her life had just seemed so unbelievably dull up to this point in her life - she needed something new, something exciting. Hope had always loved going to the pictures - the little cinema the next town over was nothing exciting, but the films were always beautiful. She always loved the romances, though - beautiful women swept of their feet by brave, endearing men. Her favourite had to be that one with that beautiful woman, Audrey something, being playing a princess travelling to Rome. She was tired of her sheltered life and went on an adventure into the city, getting lost and falling in love with a dashing American reporter...

Hope knew she couldn't stay in the village her whole life. She had to leave. Hope Howell was going to get to Cardiff, find a proper job, get paid. She was going to have friends, and a wage, and her own flat, maybe. She was going to work, but she was going to have fun. Not carry on losing the men in her life to this gas explosion, or that roof collapse. The Howells had come so close to that – her own brother had been working in the Lewis Merthyr Colliery during the explosion last year. Rhys had never been the same since he'd had to carry the charred remains of his best friend from the pit.

The train arrived, and Hope boarded.

A year later, and Hope was happy. She'd somehow been able to find work pretty easily after arriving in Cardiff – a little insurance office in Canton. Admittedly, she was only a typist, but had soon risen up the ranks to the boss's own secretary. The hours were long, and her fingers were always sore, but she was working! And the pay wasn't bad either.

Hope was sharing a small terraced house with two other girls she had met – Alice and Pam. Initially the girls had not much cared for the Valley Girl, but time had seen the girls grow close, partly due to the shared sufferance under the landlord, Peters. Andrew Peters was a scrawny little man of fifty, never married or had children of his own. He was bitter, and sharp with the girls – he'd give them hell if their rent was a day late, and God forbid they leave a tea stain on the sofa. The presence of a common enemy had ensured that Hope now saw the sort, freckled red-head and clumsy piece of wire known as Pamela as nothing short of family.

Hope was never far from the sea, or from the woods, and the young woman could never decide which she liked better. She hadn't seen much of the sea growing up in the broad Welsh valleys, so she took every opportunity to steal away to the port to watch the comings and goings of the industry, or maybe sneak off to a quieter bit to simply let the water ebb and flow over her naked toes.

The woods were beautiful as well. Here in Leckwith Wood, the noise of the city seemed to simply disappear, or mute at any rate. She loved strolling off the pathways to find her own way, noting the various plants and flowers her father had taught her so long ago, but were lost to her memory.

But now it was a bright Sunday morning, and Hope was feeling crap. A long night of drinking had left the young woman with a blinder of a headache. All she wanted to do was curl up under her blankets and moan, but she knew she had to sober up, unless she fancied spending the day with two more severely hung over girls. And they had drank far more than her.

Hope shuffled out of her room into the tiny wash closet. She splashed water onto her face, then some more. Eventually she sighed and resigned herself to a full-on cold shower. As the girl stood there, shivering under the icy trickle, memories from the night before started to jostle for space in her head. Whiskey. Wine. Various portsmen fighting for her to sit on their laps. One man stood out in her mind.

He had been huge, both in height and girth. He had smelled of fish, rum, shit and tobacco – not the familiar sent of the miners twist back home, but something stronger. Cigars.

He had been staring, leering at the girls most of the night. When none had shown interest, he had tried to forcibly sit Alice onto has knee, his massive hands raking her chest as the girl had struggled and yelled in surprise,

Some other sailor – a skinny black man, if Hope remembered rightly – had managed to fit in a nifty right hook and get the hulk of a man away from her friend, whilst two more men had roughly removed the guy from the pub. But not before he had got a hold of Hope's own arse and muttered a lustful "No 'olding out on me, slut. I'll 'ave you yet…" whilst being dragged away. The girls had taken that as their cue to leave, pulling a pale Hope reluctantly behind them...

Hope turned off the shower and proceeded to dry and dress herself. That man had terrified her, more he should have. His smile, his stench, his threat.

He was just drunk. A drunk man who needed a good slap. Pull yourself together girl.

Hope took a breath. She needed a walk.

Forty minutes later saw Hope slowly making her way through the woods that she now knew so well, breathing in the heady, floral scent and feeling altogether more human. This was just what the doctor ordered, she thought to herself. Birdsong in her head and woodland air in her lungs.

Hearing a rustle a way off, Hope paused, a smile spreading across her face. She had seen plenty of squirrels in the woods over a year, not to mention some rabbits. This sounded bigger though - a badger, maybe?

Hope made her way, silently, to the bush. If she could get a glance, maybe she could-

All thoughts were silenced as air rushed from the girls lungs, a haunting scream finding itself thrown from her mouth.

AN: according to canon, Remus's mum is indeed Welsh, and being a loveable sheepshagger myself, I thought I'd make the most of it. I'm from Swansea myself, so most of my info about Rhondda and Cardiff is either from my Nana, my mum, or from that black hole known as the internet. If anyone finds any inconsistencies, please let me know!

PLEEEEAAASE review!

P.S The Lewis Merthyr Colliery disaster really happened - 9 miners were killed in a gas explosion in Trehafod, where a spark ignited unknown pockets of methane gas in the pit.