A/N: For Rish, as a GGE gift. Sorry it's so long, Rishy. You didn't specify what you wanted (what? what was that? you trusted me to give you something decent? LOL SORRY) so you got this. Ily.
This is not a very plotty fic. It's my attempt at writing again. Writing for no reason, that is. It's a kind of rambling of Hope's feelings for her son as he grows up, her views on his life (and her own) and a(n admittedly sad) attempt to fill the gaps in canon in re What Happened To Hope And Lyall Lupin. Also it accepts Remus/Sirius as canon, which you should do too. Because it is. Forever and ever amen.
Lastly, it's good to be back up and running. Thank you to Liza, who published my last, like, million fics while I was laptopless. You're a star, bby.
"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all.
Emily Dickinson
There is nothing anyone can say to prepare you for watching your only son turn animal. Hope Lupin knows this, though she wishes with all of her heart that she didn't.
Her little boy; so quiet, so sweet.
They tell her she can't be with him when he changes. There's nothing anyone can do, Mrs. Lupin, he's dangerous. They don't understand though. If they did, they couldn't possibly expect her to sit outside and listen to the growls, the whimpers, the howls.
She imagines, the first few times, Remus-the-boy is caught inside. She tells herself that the banging against the shed door is her son, her little boy trying to claw his way out, trying desperately to get away from the monster inside. And she knows, in a way, that's the truth.
Lyall tries to tell her that waiting by the door does nothing but drag the night on. If only she went to bed, they could wake in the morning to their Remus again. He never looks at the shed, pretends, for most of the month, that it doesn't exist.
"You think I can leave my son in there with that monster?"
He doesn't say your son is that monster, but she hears it nonetheless.
"You think I could sleep while Remus cries for me out here? He's my little boy, Lyall. He's scared in there, I know it."
Lyall turns away and begins to walk back to the house.
Hope waits there until morning, a ratty old blanket pulled tight around her shoulders. When the howling turns to the muffled cries she knows all too well, she will open the door and pull her bleeding, bruised, broken little boy from his nightmare, wrap him in the blanket, and put him to bed.
She will dress his wounds and kiss his forehead and wait with him until he falls into fitful slumber. She will wish, all the while, that he was normal.
When Albus Dumbledore comes to visit, something in Hope's chest swells with pride. Her little boy is a wizard - she had known he might be, had suspected he would be, but with a condition like his... She hadn't held out a lot of hope.
Albus speaks to Remus with his kindly blue eyes smiling, as if he does not know what he is. But he does, he has to, and he still treats Remus like a normal boy. Hope decides right then that she likes Albus Dumbledore, that she is sending Remus to Hogwarts no matter what Lyall says, that her son is not worth less than any other child and she will not have him give up his life because of a bite some many moons ago. Her hands tremble as she tries her best to sit still, keep her composure.
"We have devised a plan to keep you safe during your transformations, Mr. Lupin," Albus says. "A very clever one, if I do say so myself."
He tells them about a tunnel and a tree and an abandoned shack and -
"Professor?" Remus pipes up, his big eyes scared and nervous. "Isn't it - wouldn't that be dangerous? For the other students? What if I..."
Albus smiles. He surveys Remus over the top of his glasses, little half-moon things perched on a crooked nose. "I would not suggest such a thing if it did not keep every student at Hogwarts, of which you are now one, perfectly safe and sound. I promise you, Mr. Lupin, that no harm shall come to anyone at all during your time at Hogwarts, not least at your hand."
"And no one will know?" Lyall asks carefully. Hope sees how his mouth has turned into a flat line, how hard his eyes have grown. She looks back to Albus, her cheeks burning.
"It is our secret," Albus says, rising gracefully to his feet. Hope stands to show him out.
He stops in the doorway and looks back at Remus, who is smiling slightly to himself. "I shall see you on the first of September, Remus. Goodbye." He gives Remus a wink and leaves the room.
When she walks him to the front door, Hope doesn't open it right away.
"Professor Dumbledore - "
"Please. Albus."
"Albus," she tries, though is comes out as a choked cry. She clutches her still-trembling fingers to her chest. "Thank you so much. You don't understand what you're doing for my son."
"I think I do, Mrs. Lupin. Remus deserves the same opportunities as every boy his age."
"I know that. I know," Hope says quietly. "But not many people would agree."
"Well, that's something we'll have to work towards changing, isn't it?"
His blue eyes twinkle with a promise. Hope feels, for a moment, as if something much bigger is happening here, bigger than herself and her little family, bigger than all of them. She nods numbly, overcome with relief and gratitude and excitement. "Thank you."
"Goodbye, Mrs. Lupin."
A quick smile, and he disappears before her very eyes.
When Remus' first letter arrives home, Lyall makes tea as Hope sits at the table and reads it aloud to him. He is stirring very deliberately when she reads, "I have been sorted into Gryffindor."
She sees him smile down at the limp teabags. "That's my boy," he says, and she could swear she can hear the mistiness in his voice.
"Did his daddy proud then, our Remus?"
Lyall stops in the middle of the kitchen, a mug clasped in each hand, and looks up at her. "He always has done, Hope. You know that."
He leaves her tea next to her hand and she taps her fingernails on the mug as she reads and reads. About dormitories and homework and three other boys, mostly loud and troublesome in the way that eleven year old boys tend to be. Not Remus, though. Not usually.
"Do you think he'll be okay?" she asks quietly, as she sips at her sweetened tea.
"What did you say that other boy's name was? Black?"
"One of them, I think," Hope says, scanning Remus' letter. "Sirius Black. Why?"
Lyall smiles, a grin Hope would've perhaps once described as wolfish. "Our Remus is not the only misfit in that tower," Lyall tells her, laughing to himself. "A Black in Gryffindor! Oh, there'll be uproar."
Hope lets a faint smile flutter on her lips; perhaps Remus and this other misfit will be fast friends. Perhaps he has found someone who might understand.
"What's so unusual about a Black in Gryffindor?" she asks.
Lyall laughs, and beings to explain.
It takes her a long time to admit it, but Hope can no longer deny that there is now a vague awkwardness when Remus comes home. As if he has been replaced by a copy of himself; her Remus, but not quite as she knows him, not quite right. She supposes that this is what happens when your son spends three quarters of the year away from home. They are not his only family anymore, and it seems he has grown up while she was busy weeding the garden, or buying milk.
Now, he's fifteen, and it's the middle July. The sun dips behind the trees in the back garden, the air still summer-warm and muggy. He lies beneath the old tree that Lyall used to let him swing from when he was a boy, a strong rope and his father at his back. That was all he needed then.
Hope watches from the kitchen window, a forgotten gravy-stained plate in her hand. Remus flicks through page after page of the book on his lap, a thick, dusty thing. There is a pile of even larger books next to him. He has spent every day of the summer so far out there, doing this. Sometimes he picks up a quill, jots something down. Other times, he writes pages and pages. Letters, Hope assumes, to the friends who probably know him better than she does.
She wonders when she became little more than an acquaintance with her son. The plate clinks against the metal of the sink when she drops it. She wipes her damp fingers on a tea towel, and makes her way outside.
"Hullo there," she singsongs awkwardly as she approaches. Remus looks up quickly, closing his book over. He squints up at her, a hand thrown over his eyes to block the sun.
"Mum! What are you doing?"
Hope shrugs. She settles down in the grass next to Remus and smiles at him. "Can't a mother want to spend some quality time with her only son?"
"Well - yes, I mean, of course you - but I was - "
"Remus," Hope says softly, reaching across her crossed legs as if to hold his hand, but thinking better of it at the last possible moment. She pats his leg instead. "I miss you, love. Really miss you. That's all."
Remus blushes, a trait Hope can only blame herself for. "I'm still here, Mum," he says gently, kindly. "I've been here for a week now."
"And exactly how many conversations have we had that didn't involve chores or telly?"
Remus is thoughtful. "You asked me about the journey here. I told you about the food on the train and Peter's trunk being stolen by Slytherins."
Hope shakes her head. "You know what I mean, Remus."
Remus looks almost regretful. He smiles apologetically. "I know, Mum. It's just that - you and Dad have this whole life without me, you know? I can't just come back and take up all your free time. That would be...bloody selfish of me."
"I don't get to see my son for most of the year. I get the odd letter every now and again, but it never gives away much. When my boy comes home, I want to steal as much of his time as I possibly can. Understood?"
Remus' hand snakes into hers. She squeezes. "Understood," he replies. "I missed you, too. Mum."
She doesn't believe for a second (that's the thing with teenagers, isn't it? So caught up in their own lives that they really don't notice the problems around them), but she appreciates it all the same.
She notices in his fifth year that something has changed. He comes home for Christmas and locks himself in his room. He barely speaks, but he writes letter after letter after -
"Who are you writing to?" she asks offhandedly one day, when he's come down in search of more parchment. "A friend? A...girlfriend, maybe?"
Remus goes scarlet and shakes his head furiously.
Hope gives him a knowing smile. "Check your dad's study. There should be some fresh rolls there."
Remus rushes off to the study and Hope sits still for a moment and listens. She listens to his quick footsteps on the stairs, the sounds of opening and closing drawers, more shuffling footsteps as Remus retreats, then the slam of his bedroom door.
After that, the silence lingers, so she turns the wireless on, turns it right the way up until she can barely hear herself think. She switches to the channel that plays love song after love song and sings them at the top of her lungs as she tidies.
Her little boy is growing up.
He tells her the morning after the August full moon.
There is less than a week remaining before his return to Hogwarts, and Remus is in a bad way. These transformations have...changed. Hope remembers, far more vividly than she wishes, the sounds of the wolf growling and snarling and howling viciously. Now, the wolf...cries. He pines.
Hope can only assume the wolf has gotten used to the freedom of the Shack, more room to scrape and run about and more things to pull apart and destroy. Not this empty, dinky little shed, with his mother waiting patiently by the door.
The wolf cries, and Hope runs her hand along the shed wall. "There, there, Remus," she murmurs. "I know. I know. It's okay." Mindless, pointless words, but there is no way a mother can listen to the sounds of her son crying and stay silent, no matter his form.
The wolf pines, and Hope tells herself it's for her. Or normality. Or home.
She tries not to believe that the wolf wants to go back to Hogwarts, wants people who aren't her and places that aren't here. But, she supposes, there will always be a part of Remus that finds Hogwarts home, even if that part only comes out at the full moon.
When dawn has cracked the sky, the wolf's whimpers turn to stony silence. The sounds of a younger Remus weeping in the mornings after echo in her head, but Hope imagines that he lies there, jaw clenched, exhausted, and afraid to move because of the sheer pain of it.
"Remus?" she calls through the door.
"Mum," he croaks back. The sound hollows out her chest.
She unlocks the door and pulls it back an inch. Sunlight streams in and falls across Remus' tired body. He lies stiffly on the floor, his hands by his sides. There is blood under his fingernails. A series of nasty gashes across his chest. One small one just along his jaw. It is by far not the worst morning after scene Hope has witnessed, but it still breaks her heart.
She shrugs the blanket from around her shoulders and covers Remus' naked body. She holds out one hand. "Can you get up?" she asks gently. Remus jerks his head in a single nod. "C'mon, take my hand."
She helps him to his feet carefully. He huddles tight into the blanket, leaving bloodstains along it. They walk slowly up the steps to the house and into the kitchen, where Hope seats Remus on a rickety wooden chair and begins to dress his wounds.
"Not a particularly bad night, eh?" she remarks, tending to the few not very deep marks on Remus' chest. She dabs them gently and he hisses. "Sorry."
"It's alright," Remus mumbles, exhaustion slurring his words slightly. "Mum, I - last night was different."
Hope's hand pauses just below Remus's jaw, where a small, jagged wound drips blood onto his neck. "Oh?"
Remus doesn't open his eyes as he speaks. "The wolf was... He wasn't angry. He was sad. Or - or lonely."
Hope swallows. She casts around for something to say, anything. "The wolf has always been lonely, love."
Remus doesn't speak.
"Remus? Are you - do you feel lonely?" Hope tries. She keeps her voice soft, but there's still a note of awkwardness there, a sense of intrusion.
Remus shakes his head. His tired face looks pained. Hope watches him swallow, watches his jaw work soundlessly. When he finally speaks, it is a scrape of a thing, a rusty choke. "I miss him, Mum."
Everything goes impossibly quiet. Remus' eyes stay closed. Hope tries to swallow, but her mouth is dry and her throat is painfully tight. Something about this moment feels important, heavy with a certain significance. "Who?" she asks. "Your dad?" she adds weakly, but she knows that's not the answer at all.
Remus shakes his head again, and then, very slowly, opens his eyes and meets his mother's gaze. "Sirius," he whispers. A single word, but Hope feels the weight of it hit her square in the chest. "I'm sorry, Mum," he mumbles. Tears slip down his cheeks and drop onto her still outstretched hand.
"Remus," she breathes. "Why are you crying?"
Remus looks at her miserably, with eyes far older than a fifteen year old's. "Why can't I do anything right? Why can't I be normal?" he gasps, voice still low and gravelly. His breath hitches with small sobs.
Rage bubbles in Hope's chest.
"Remus Lupin, you stop that right now," she admonishes, straining to keep her voice as gentle as possible. "Look at me," she says, and Remus' old eyes meet hers once more. "There is nothing - nothing - more normal than falling in love with another person. There is nothing more beautiful and freeing and terrifying than falling in love, and I am so happy that you've found that - that you've found Sirius. Nothing will ever change the way your father and I feel about you, Remus," she says, tears choking her own voice now. "Don't you ever be ashamed of who you are. Don't you ever think anything about you is wrong. Do you hear me?"
Remus nods. He reaches for her free hand and squeezes her fingers tight. "I love you, Mum," he whispers fiercely. Hope leans up and pulls him into her arms - carefully - and hugs her son as tight as if he were five years old again.
"I can't wait to meet him," she says into Remus' hair. He smiles against her neck.
"Don't...don't tell Dad." Remus' voice is tiny, falling fast into the hollow of Hope's chest and hitting her right in the heart. "Not yet."
"Not yet," she repeats, and holds him closer still.
She finds the lump just after Christmas. Her mind jumps to all sorts of horrible conclusions that she knows Lyall wouldn't understand, so she goes straight to Remus' bedroom. She sits on his bed and wraps herself in an old jumper of his, and thinks about her mother. Her own mother, who died far too early from this very thing.
She books an appointment with the GP the next morning.
He sends her to a specialist, who says, "Breast cancer," as if he were a reluctant executioner. Hope nods numbly.
She explains to Lyall as best she can, but he hasn't seen the horrors of disease like she has, like most Muggles have. "There's every chance I'll be fine," she tells him, "but it's going to take a long time to get there."
Lyall kisses her gently and tells her he will do whatever he can. She doesn't tell him that there is no definite cure, and nothing he can do.
She finds writing to tell Remus possibly the hardest thing she's ever had to do.
When Remus comes home for Easter, Hope's already shaved her head. The chemo had thinned her hair terribly, left it so that it fell out in chunks and clumps, so she'd taken a razor to it one too-quiet afternoon.
Lyall didn't understand. Refused to listen. "They're pumping you full of poison!" he roared. She couldn't argue with that. He tries his best most days, offering to fetch her medications and dropping her off to appointments, but he still doesn't understand. Not the way Remus does.
Remus, precious Remus, who's read so many books, seen so many films, where this bald head is a precursor to the shine of a waxy corpse in a silk-lined coffin. He understands. Perhaps too well.
She doesn't greet him at the station. She waits in the car, outside, away from prying eyes. A silver headscarf hides her secret, but anyone with eyes can see; cancer.
Remus knows. Remus already knew, but now it's real, an actual, tangible thing. Hope sees it in his eyes as he approaches the car, takes in her thin, fragile form, her bleary, pink-rimmed eyes. The denial trickles out of him with each step closer.
"Mum," he says, spilling himself and his trunk into the back of the car, "Your hair..."
She plasters a smile onto her lips. "It's easier to manage this way anyway," she grins.
Remus smiles back. Or tries to.
"How's it going though?" Remus asks, with a vague gesture of the hand. "The... everything."
Lyall groans as he clambers into the car. "Your mother is letting those mental doctrers poison her slowly," he grinds out solemnly. It has the air of an argument that's been growing ever more present lately. "She's losing her hair, she's losing weight, she's sick and weak and tired and in pain - I don't know of any remedy that's made the patient bloody worse. And all for a little lump."
Hope stiffens. "Lyall, it is not just a little lump," she hisses. "Cancer kills millions of people. It's hard to beat, and there's no cure, and this is all they have right now. I trust them completely. And for the love of God, it's doctors!"
Remus coughs awkwardly. "Has it done any good?"
"The tumour has started shrinking," Hope says cheerfully, shooting a glare at her husband. "The doctors are hopeful."
"That's great," Remus says, patting the back of her chair. "That's - Mum, that's great."
"And what about you?" Hope asks with a slyness colouring her words. "Did I hear something about a friend coming to visit?"
Remus shoots a panicked look at his father, who doesn't notice a thing and keeps on driving. He makes eye contact with his mother in the passenger mirror and she winks. "The Black boy, is it? Sirius?"
"Black?" Lyall asks suddenly, then chuckles. "A Gryffindor Black. Oh, I'll have to meet this one. See if he's any different from the rest."
"He is," Remus says. "Loads different. Completely different."
Hope watches him in the mirror as he looks out the window, smiling to himself. "Different is good," she says.
"Different is great," Remus agrees.
By the time Sirius arrives on the Saturday morning, Hope has made a hearty breakfast for all and managed to eat exactly none of it.
"Hope, please," Lyall says, "eat something."
"I'm not hungry," she snaps, and goes back to serving up Remus' breakfast.
At the front of the house, she hears the door open and loud voices echo through into the kitchen. Definitely more than just one boy, she thinks to herself. Remus appears at the entrance to the kitchen looking sheepish.
"Er - James and Peter turned up too," he blurts in a rush. "Not to stay or anything just - I don't know, just for the day or something."
Hope smiles. "That's alright. Bring them in. I'm sure I have enough food anyway."
"You'll finally have enough people to eat everything you make," Lyall mutters.
"God knows it's never stopped you trying." Lyall scowls when she pokes him playfully in the stomach.
At that moment, the kitchen is swarmed by a group of teenage boys, all talking excitedly over each other.
"Minnie doesn't know it yet but I will get that O in Transfiguration. I mean, you've seen what I can do, and anyway - "
"Prongs, I've seen your teapots hop away from you and your hairbrushes hissing. I think you'll be lucky with an A!"
"Well, at least I'll beat Wormy here," the tall one with glasses says, slapping a small, chubby boy on the shoulder. "No offence, Pete."
"None taken," Peter says, "but you will help me when we go back, won't you?" His worried little voice carries around the kitchen.
"Don't worry, we won't let you fail," says the long-haired one, with an air of boredom. "Anyway, we're being rude, boys," he adds, flashing a smile to Hope and extending a hand. "Mrs. Lupin," he says politely, bending low to kiss the hand Hope has placed in his. "A pleasure to meet you. Remus has told us so much."
Hope feels a blush creeping up her neck, and looks to Remus, who has gone bright red. "And you must be Sirius."
Sirius nods and grins mischievously. "Has he talked about me then? Told you how smart and devilishly handsome I am?"
Hope chuckles and swots at his arm affectionately. "Something like that," she says with a wink. Remus makes a choked sound of embarrassment.
"Mr. Lupin!" Sirius exclaims, as if he has only just noticed Lyall seated at the table, regarding them all suspiciously over the tops of his Prophet. "Sirius Black," he says, holding out his hand again.
Lyall lowers his paper and shakes the boy's hand with narrowed eyes. "Orion's boy?" he asks.
Sirius nods enthusiastically. "The very same," he says. "Do you know him? Unfortunate that. Believe me, I know a lack of fortune when I see it."
Lyall's mouth quirks up on one side. "You're not like them, are you?" he says slowly, watching Sirius as if he were some ridiculous creature that somehow accidentally wandered into the kitchen.
"Merlin, I hope not," Sirius says, a note of panic in his voice. "James, you know what they're like," he calls to the bespectacled boy, "I'm nothing like that, am I?"
"Merlin, no!" the boy called James exclaims. "Bunch of bigoted old bats, your family, Pads."
"James Potter, I take it?" Lyall asks. Hope knows of him from Remus' letters, but Lyall stares at James as if he recognises him. Or, she realises, as if he seeing someone else entirely. "My, you're the spit of your old man," he says wondrously. "It's like being twelve again looking at you. Head Boy in my second year, your father was. Great man."
James nods solemnly. "Thank you. He'd have been glad you remembered him that way."
Lyall nods respectfully. "And you?" he says to the last boy, the little squat one. "Peter, isn't it?"
"Peter Pettigrew, sir," Peter says nervously. "My - my uncle was in your year at Hogwarts, I think - "
"Of course!" Lyall's face lights up with excitement. "Potty Pettigrew! Didn't he go off to try and slay dragons in Sweden or something? How is that old nutter?"
"He's, er, dead, sir. Turns out dragons can slay people a lot quicker than people can slay dragons."
"Oh."
An awkward silence lingers for a quick beat before Hope remembers the pans. "The bacon!" she squeaks, shuffling over towards the pan. "I take it you're all hungry, boys. Am I right?"
A chorus of yesses echoes around her.
"Well, you all squash around the table there and I'll have your food ready in a flash," she says, smiling fondly as Lyall moves over to make room for James, and Remus shoves Sirius into a chair. Peter stands there awkwardly and waits until everyone else has been seated.
"Don't be shy, dear," Hope says kindly, as the others begin to talk Quidditch. "Shove in there."
"Mrs. Lupin," Peter stutters out. Hope gets the feeling that he instantly regrets speaking, but his words come out in a bumbling rush anyway. "Is there anything I can do? It's just that, Remus said you'd been ill and Mug - I mean - this disease you've got - it's bad, isn't it? And you look awfully tired - oh, I don't mean - you look lovely - well, I mean, for a Mum - not that - it's just - "
"Now, now, pet," Hope says, patting Peter's arm. "It's kind of you to offer. But I'm fine. Tired, yes, but I'd rather be here than stuck up in bed staring at the ceiling." She pushes him gently towards his friends. "Go on, make yourself at home. Don't you worry about me."
Peter gives her a tight, worried smile, and joins his friends at the table.
"Who wants toast?" Hope calls over the roars of Quidditch warfare. Several happy voices call back to her, and she potters over to the toaster, basking in the liveliness and excitement that this kitchen - this house - hasn't seen in a long, long time.
Days later, in bed, Lyall tosses and turns. He huffs out apologies with every upset of the bed. Hope winces slightly at the pain as she is jostled. Her body does not take kindly to unexpected movement anymore.
She is tired. Constantly bone-tired, ready to drop, but she pretends, for her boys, that she is fine. It is only when she gets to bed that she lets the weariness swallow her, lets the exhaustion drown her, drag her down into long, medication induced, blissfully pain-free hours.
And tonight she can't even have that, because Lyall is being restless.
"Lyall, please," she mutters sleepily, "I just want to sleep."
"Right," he says, and stills completely. "Sorry."
"That's alright. Goodnight."
"Night, love."
Silence rings for the next few minutes, the sounds only of wind through trees and Lyall's breathing until -
"Hope," he blurts suddenly, voice conspiratorially low. "Remus and - the other boy - "
"Yes?" she asks, unable to open her eyes. She doesn't want to see his face. She's not sure what it looks like right now.
"Well, they're not - they aren't...you know. Are they?" he finished lamely.
Hope opens her eyes and rolls over with care. She meets her husband's eyes in the almost-darkness. "And if they are?" she asks. There is a threat, a dare in her tone as she speaks, sounding for all the world like a mother wolf protecting her cub from the inevitable.
Lyall looks at her. Confusion clouds his face. "I'd just - I'd like to know. You don't think I'd - after all we've been through?"
Hope says nothing.
"He's still my son," Lyall says tenderly, reaching out to cup Hope's face with his hand. "He'll always be my son."
Hope almost cries with the relief, but nuzzles into his hand instead. "And Sirius?" she asks.
"Well," Lyall replies, faintly amused, "I suppose he's as good as."
"He makes him so happy, doesn't he? Sirius? Makes him look like a kid at Christmas again."
"A gay werewolf," Lyall murmurs with a chuckle. "You can't make this shit up."
Hope smacks him on the arm. He laughs and leans across to kiss her. She lets him, kisses him back, even, all thoughts of sleep fading further and further away.
On the day of the full moon, Remus and Sirius sit in the kitchen. When Hope walks in, they're playing chess and chattering away. They fall silent as soon as they notice her.
"What's with the silence, boys?" she teases. "Seems suspicious."
Remus shoot Sirius a quick look. "Sirius has said he'll stay with me tonight, if you - if you're not up to it." His eyes follow the fidgeting of his own fingers.
Hope freezes at the sink, her hands pressed on the counter for support. "All...all night?" she asks. "He would... You're okay with that, Sirius?" Her voice sounds weak even to her own ears. She hadn't ever thought it would come to this; here she is, staring at her son, her Remus, who doesn't need her anymore. Not even at the full moon.
Whether or not it's a side effect of one of her many medications (Lord knows she's on enough of them), Hope suddenly feels very close to crying. The lump in her throat feels like the moon itself.
"I'm fine with it as long as you are, Mrs Lupin," Sirius says. His voice is kind, perhaps too kind, and she wonders if the boys know how she is feeling right now.
She nods, forcing a smile. "Yeah," she chokes. "Yes, okay, that's fine. Just - you will be careful? Both of you?"
"Promise, Mum," Remus says, grinning. "Thanks."
"I'll make sure Moony's alright, Mrs Lupin," Sirius assures her. "It's what I do."
Hope regards him for a moment. Then, "Moony?" she snorts.
Remus blushes furiously. Hope's hands grip harder on the counter in an effort to stop herself reaching for him, reaching out to lay her palm against his hot cheek like she did when he was a child.
Remus is no longer a child.
"Hold on," she exclaims suddenly, "what do you mean it's what you - "
At the boys' panicked exchange, Hope falls silent.
"Oh, bloody hell. Okay. I don't need to know; just don't do anything bloody stupid, alright?"
Remus looks almost ashamed as he nods; Sirius grins wickedly.
"I'll be down as soon as I wake up." She reaches for a washed mug from the draining board and put the kettle on. "Do not - I repeat, do not - try to tend to any wounds that look deep, inflamed, or are bleeding heavily. You might make them worse."
The boys listen to her blather on about things she is sure they both already know - "The moon rises early tonight, so listen to your body, Remus, don't get distracted - " "Yes, Mum, I know."- but it calms her down just to keep talking.
This is the first full moon that her son has been at home for that she will spend in her own bed. Lyall rests a heavy hand on her hip. "He'll be fine," he whispers. "Sirius is with him."
In the morning, Remus sits in the kitchen eating toast and Sirius stands at the counter preparing two mugs of tea. Remus is pale and looks exhausted, but he's dressed and clean and looks unharmed.
"Nothing too bad?" she says breezily, as she shuffles into the kitchen as quickly as her swollen joints will allow.
"Not a scratch," Remus says, looking over at Sirius, who smiles.
She doesn't know why this makes her feel both elated and absolutely dismal.
She doesn't see Sirius wince slightly as he reaches up to fetch her a mug from the cupboard, his hand pressing against his side for a moment. She doesn't find any blood on the grounds, or see the huge paw prints all over the back garden, and she didn't hear a sound the night before.
If she did, she'd probably murder them both.
The next few months pass in an increasing blur; the days and nights begin to melt into each other as Hope struggles to sleep, and then struggles to wake up, and then struggles to do anything but lie in bed all day anyway.
Remus comes home for his first Christmas since he was 11 years old. Sirius comes with him, though he technically lives with the Potters now – ("Remus, we'd be happy to – " "Maybe when you're doing a bit better, Mum.") and the boys bring with them such Christmas spirit that Hope cries twice before noon on Christmas day just because she's so happy. She had been happy with her quiet Christmases with Lyall, simple dinners and an exchanging of gifts, sweet wine and sweeter kisses before the fire. But this, these silly boys, sitting on the floor despite the fact that they are seventeen years old, taking turns transfiguring each other's ears and noses and playing Exploding Snap and laughing – it lights up the day. Laughing and laughing and laughing. Laughing heartily and happily and often.
She watches Remus over dinner – the first Christmas dinner that she has stepped back from and allowed Lyall to prepare – and sees happiness folded into the creases of his eyes. She sees laugh lines, or maybe imagines them where they will be in the not-so-distant future. She forgets the scars and the fresh cuts and just sees her boy, her little boy who is actually a man – and a fine one at that – who has fallen very deeply in love. A man who is almost finished his schooling, who will transition to the big bad world in all its terrifying glory.
Her heart aches for the future she knows awaits her son. The hardships. The discrimination. The pain.
But she looks at Sirius, whose elegant fingers find themselves drawn to Remus' wrist almost magnetically, whose eyes always seem to be watching her boy's mouth, whose laugh echoes around the house, easy and carefree, and who simply belongs. In this house, in this family, in Remus' life. In Remus' heart.
"Mum?" She snaps her gaze away from Remus' hand, which is open and laid delicately across Sirius' pale palm. "Are you okay?"
For the third time that day, Hope feels herself welling up.
"Brilliant," she says softly. "Bloody brilliant."
Remus raises an eyebrow at Lyall, who shrugs in response. "She's gotten very sentimental lately."
"I just love my boys," she says, waving her fork in protest. "All three of them."
She smiles at Sirius. His pale face is flushed pink, but he gives her back the biggest grin.
"Oi, Mum," Remus admonishes, "get your own Black."
"There's enough of me to go around, Moony," Sirius says, sending a cheeky wink at Hope.
And then she is blushing despite herself and Remus is laughing again and Lyall is shouting about the Christmas crackers and it's all wonderfully loud and insane and perfect.
When Remus goes back to Hogwarts, he hugs her for just a second too long.
"I'm fine, Remus," she whispers into his ear. "Really. I'll be right here when you get home this summer. Promise."
He presses a kiss to her cheek and another to her forehead, and doesn't say a word.
"Cup of tea, love?" Lyall offers for the fourth time that hour. She finally accepts.
"You should go back to work," she says when he brings the steaming mug to her. He looks appalled.
"And leave you here? On your own?"
She purses her lips. "I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself for a few hours in the afternoon, Lyall."
He sit down on the edge of the bed and rests a warm hand on her wrist. "I know you are. But I'm not perfectly capable of being in that bloody office and knowing you're here. Alone." He sighs, exhausted. He closes his eyes when he speaks. "I thought you said this ragiotherapy - "
"Radiotherapy," Hope corrects.
" - radiotherapy would make you better," he finishes lamely, adjusting his glasses on his nose.
"I hoped it would," Hope says, smiling weakly. After the chemo, this had been the next best move, the logical step. "We'll just have to wait and see."
Lyall stares at her, as if he is memorising her features. His brown eyes flicker over her face carefully, taking in each wrinkle he has witnessed the birth of, each line a story of their past. "I'd be lost without you," he says simply.
She nods. Her eyes are growing watery. "I know," she manages, forcing a smile. "But you'd have the boys. And your job. Your friends."
"You're my life, Hope." His fingers encircle her thin wrist, warm and sure. "Always have been. Please don't leave me."
"I'll do my best," she promises softly, and she has never meant something so much. "We'll just have to have hope that – what are you smiling at?"
"That's all I've ever had, or needed," he murmurs, his voice the kind of low that swoops straight into her chest and settles there, heavy and comforting. He leans down and presses a chaste kiss to her lips as she blinks back tears. "Hope."