Riddikulus
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Various encounters between Remus Lupin and boggarts.
--
Table of Contents
I - Father and Son: 1971
II - Magical Mischief Making: 1974
III - Phoenix Lot: 1979
IV - Dark Creatures: 1982
V - Not Remotely Frightening: 1985
VI - As Exorcist: 1988
VII - Fair and Impartial: 1990
VIII - As Professor Lupin: 1993
IX - Molly and Sirius: 1995
X - Magic That Cannot Deceive: March 1997
XI - Father and Son Redux: December 1997
--
"Hogwarts... the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world." (PS/SS)
" -- never forget Wizard Barrufio, who said 's' instead of 'f' and and found himself lying on the floor with a buffalo on his chest -- " (PS/SS)
"... next to a pile of comics that all seemed to feature The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle." (CoS)
"Force it to look comical." (PoA)
"It seemed impossible that I would be able to come to Hogwarts. Other parents weren't likely to want their children exposed to me." (PoA)
"... we may as well be hanged for a dragon as an egg... but the cat's among the pixies now... " (OotP)
"It was Greyback who bit me... My father had offended him. I did not know for a very long time the identity of the werewolf that attacked me." (HBP)
"On James's left was Lupin, even then a little shabby-looking... " (DH)
"... it was never obligatory before. Of course, nearly every witch and wizard in Britain has been educated at Hogwarts, but their parents had the right to teach them at home or send them abroad if they preferred." (DH)
"Lupin sprang to his feet: His chair toppled over backward, and he glared at them so fiercely that Harry saw, for the first time ever, the shadow of the wolf upon his human face." (DH)
I - Father and Son: 1971
It was quiet, painfully quiet, in the battered cottage on Pepper Lane. It was absurdly quiet for a fine spring day at a house that -- far from being abandoned -- held an eleven-year-old boy, whom the neighbors (the nearest of which was a half mile off) weren't to know regularly performed magic and transformed into a werewolf.
Pepper Lane was so quiet that when Sylvia Lupin's well-worn Oxfords hit the first step of the stone pathway outside, the noise carried down five yards, went through two doors and several wards, and made her son look up from his reading and snap to attention.
By the time she got inside and looked in on the study, her son was, evidently, just finishing his maths. He was ready to turn to the Martin Miggs creased open on the arm of the two-seater.
"All quiet hereabouts, dear?"
She seemed soon satisfied on that point, and left him with his comic and a very surreptitious sigh of relief, because he had almost been caught. He hadn't timed it right, Mum had gotten home before he expected, and he was very nervous that he hadn't acted naturally... He chanced a guilty glance to the top of the tallest bookcase. He hadn't put the box back the same way it had been, he was certain of it...
He had really been very bad. He had gotten into the books he wasn't allowed to read. Again.
"... Remus," she said, and the addressee jumped; she had doubled back to peer into the study again, frowning as she took in the scene. Remus lost all hope whatsoever. Mum always seemed to know. It was very hard to get anything past her alert, concerned eyes. They were now sweeping over the room, from the curio with drawers in the farthest corner, over the worn old-fashioned carpet, over the bookcase, over the two-seater, to the workbook in front of him. Just as he was about to try apologizing, however, she said, "Oh, for heaven's sakes," and she sounded annoyed, but not as though she were talking to him; when she did speak to him she only said: "Come help me in the kitchen."
Remus elected not to look a gift hippogriff in the mouth, and obeyed.
--
They made dinner but had to keep it a good long time. Dad was quite late home, and offered no explanation. Mum always knew what was afoot anyway, and no one felt the need to let Remus in on this sort of thing. But then Dad was always like that -- dependable and distant. He often had an air of carrying unknown weights and privately deciding difficult questions, and this, combined with Dad's magic, made Remus feel utterly safe. At least, it did apart from full moons, but there was nothing to be done about those, and the less they were thought about the better. When they went down the stone pathway to meet Dad coming in Remus saw both his parents' eyes flickering upward to the waxing, low-hanging moon, but he stared determinedly at the hydrangeas.
He tried to pretend that his parents' not-so-subtle preoccupation with the night sky a moment ago hadn't made him lose his appetite. Mum talked about her research, and Remus put up a very valiant effort to follow the thread of projection, displacement, and repression. It was, at least, a definite relief that Mum showed no signs of bringing up her suspicions about Remus's new reading habits, so he cheerfully jumped up once Mum started to clean off the table to do it himself.
"I'll get that tonight," Dad said absently. "You shouldn't have to clean up when it's down to me we're eating so late."
"That's so very sweet of you, dear," said Mum, "going to all the trouble of swishing and flicking..."
She and Remus laughed. Even Dad grinned abashedly.
He had a good hour before bedtime was going to be enforced, so he wound up in the study again. It was too dangerous to break into the forbidden stash, and frankly he'd had quite enough of it that morning anyway, and would have happily never seen those newspaper clippings and heavily bookmarked and annotated volumes such as The Unleadable Curse and A Compendium of Dark Creatures ever again. This time he headed quite readily for the bottom bookshelf, reserved for his various adventure books. The epic final installment of Annette Lorring's goblin war series had recently come out, and Remus was almost done rereading it for the third time.
But as it happened, he never finished Ivan the Irascible and the Battleaxe of Doom that evening. He'd just tugged it free of the bottom shelf, which was fit to burst with the Lorring books, when he heard a banging noise, the shake of wood against wood. He straightened and looked around warily. His mother's indistinct, pretty voice from outside overcame the soft banging, but his eyes found the bottom drawer of the curio in the far corner rattling.
That was strange. Dropping The Battleaxe of Doom at once, he went to go see what it was. The drawer stuck fast. It took a very hard yank before Remus could open it, and then he promptly dropped it on his toes.
Remus kicked the drawer off his foot quickly, unthinkingly. His eyes had caught a flash of something whitish and he was looking for the source. It wasn't till he thought to look up that he saw a pearly sphere.
Above his head.
It was that which he never looked at if he could help it. In the study. And it was at full.
What?
Instinctively, he yelled: "Dad!"
Heavy footsteps responded immediately and Dad was at the doorway to the study in a matter of seconds. Remus managed to tear his eyes away from the orb to look up just as Dad's tense shoulders went slack.
"All I did was open that drawer," Remus explained, pointing. "I don't know how this got here."
Dad nodded, slowly unclenching the fist around his wand. His breathing was regularising.
"What is it?" asked Remus, feeling more interested than alarmed now. There was no need to be worried at some odd bit of magic now that Dad was there, but that it had to take that form bothered him.
"Well," said Dad, "well, I'm not sure precisely..."
"It's not really dangerous, though," said Remus, a little abashed. "I shouldn't have panicked."
"No," said Dad sharply. "No. You saw something unusual and you called for me. That is exactly what you ought to do."
Remus felt more abashed still -- he never dealt well with being scolded or reprimanded -- and hung his head while Dad considered the orb as well.
"I think that may well be a boggart." Now Dad's voice was no longer sharp. It sounded almost bleak. "It's -- it's turned into the moon for you, then, did it?"
"So if it's a boggart," said Remus, trying to remember what he had heard about them, "it just changes its shape, right? I wasn't sure if I should move or not."
"No," said Dad firmly, and Remus froze with one foot several inches in the air. "Stay where you are," he continued, "I don't want it to move."
Remus replaced his foot on the ground but otherwise stayed put. Dad still stood far back in the doorway.
"Can they do anything else?" Remus asked anxiously. "Can it -- can it really do what -- you know -- the real moon does?"
"No, no. It's all right," said Dad, in that way that often did make things seem all right, or at least pretty near. He gave an odd smile. It was odd because it was still very rare for Dad to smile about anything, and it had only started (so far as Remus could remember) since the night some weeks ago when Professor Dumbledore had come for dinner and told them that Hogwarts would be accepting him come next autumn. "Let's see if we can have you get rid of it. Do you have your wand on you?"
Remus looked up at him in surprise. "Yes," he said, putting his hand on the wand in his robe pocket -- an automatic gesture, even though he'd only had it for about six months. "But how -- ?"
Dad allowed attempts at magic, though under the strict understanding that Remus only try when Dad was there to supervise. Remus had managed to use his wand as a sort of artificial sparkler, to levitate small objects, to make the pages of the local telephone book flip on their own, and to cause some sort of change into a toothpick, although instead of really making it remotely needlelike he had simply rendered it useless for anything (despite this, Dad had announced that he would be saving the Transfiguration attempt). He felt that being asked to banish a magical creature was rather a large leap forward.
"It's not difficult," Dad reassured him. "In fact, even Muggles can banish a boggart. All you have to do it laugh at it."
Remus looked doubtfully at the orb again. He felt more than a bit stupid at the thought of just bursting into laughter, and, indeed, the longer he looked at it, the less he felt able to. It was just so weird: he never saw the full moon, and remembering why was extremely uncomfortable.
"But for wizards, there is also a spell." Remus instantly felt better. All the sudden, an unknown spell seemed a much easier prospect than it had before he'd heard about the whole laughing bit. Besides, when Dad spoke Remus remembered that Dad himself never laughed, so he felt like less of a dunce for not being able to do so himself. "You point at the boggart" -- Remus did so with his wand -- "and you say 'Riddikulus'. It forces the boggart to change into another shape."
Remus gave it a try, but nothing happened except the orb bobbed once or twice.
"You made it react," said Dad. "Go for it again."
But nothing more happened, and Remus was starting to feel rather thick.
Why should anything happen, anyway? He was never able to stop the real moon, no matter how much he willed time to change as it waxed. Now face-to-face with a full moon, he felt small and pointlessly weak as it reminded him that it wouldn't be changed, not into anything, and he looked up at Dad again, rather hoping that he would simply step in and do the spell properly himself.
"You have to make the boggart amuse you," said Dad, a bit absently. "You can change it into anything you want."
"Erm," said Remus, helplessly.
"Don't tell me you can't think of anything," said Dad, after a moment, voice quiet and rough. "Goodness knows you're always laughing at all manner of fool things. I would have thought you a natural at this."
Remus wanted to think of something. Whatever his reluctance, he didn't want their boggart-lesson to end. Dad was looking at him -- something else he could hardly ever remember Dad doing before the visit from Dumbledore. Before that his gaze had been permanently averted from Remus's face, even when they were talking... even when Dad was healing him after transformations... even when Dad had first tried to teach him magic. If their eyes ever met, Dad had always grimaced and looked away. Remus had been basking in the glow of his father's attention the past few weeks and would have done a great deal not to lose a moment like this, Dad regarding at him from a wary distance, but with something that might well be pride and pleasure.
But doing something was one thing -- coming up with something couldn't be done on the spot. "I don't understand. I don't know what I should make it into."
"Anything. Anything you want."
That was the problem. "So I could -- I could turn it into a page of Martin Miggs or something?"
Dad actually made a chuffing noise that might have been what was, for him, a laugh. "It's not that you change it into something else completely... it's... oh, hang it all. Your mother would be better at this explaining business than me -- "
But Remus could spend time with Mum whenever he wanted, she was almost always home. Not so much Dad. "Not something else completely?" he repeated desperately, before Dad could turn away to fetch her. "So -- it still has to be like the -- the moon -- "
"Right." Dad nodded. "Just so."
This reduced the confusion from an infinite amount of possibilities to a buzzing sort of nothing. "Erm," he said again. "Like -- like what?"
Dad looked rather blank. "Well, I don't rightly know," he admitted, at long last.
They both stared at the boggart-moon for another moment. Remus was mentally experimenting with different notions of the moon's "face," or the man on the moon, or what have you, when Dad made a tentative suggestion that sounded as though it had been wrenched from his furthest depths.
"You could turn it into a block of cheese?"
And Remus laughed, not even noticing how the orb quivered alarmingly. "That's so lame!"
"Remus." Dad used an automatic warning tone. "Don't be disrespectful. Where did you pick up that sort of language?"
"I don't know -- " Remus knew quite well that he had learned that phrase while visiting his cousins last Christmas, but he had liked them very much and felt it would be unsporting to incriminate them. "I'm sorry."
Dad had not only gotten back his old stiffness, but seemed to be going above and beyond his normal levels. "No, son," he said, shortly. He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry," he said, in a forcedly normal tone. "I shouldn't be letting you try and take this on your own. You've not had any real training yet. Just -- just edge on over here, to the doorway. Quick -- before the boggart -- there's a boy." Remus gratefully darted past Dad into the hall, but as he turned he saw Dad still standing in the doorway, looking into the room, dead motionless.
"Dad?" he said, a little unnerved by a degree of rigidity that was unusual even for the likes of John Lupin.
"Stay there," said Dad curtly. Remus froze.
Beneath Dad's raised wand arm he could see a little into the study. He crept forward hesitantly again, wanting to see Dad banish the boggart, to see what it was like. But just as he got a half-decent glimpse --
"Remus, go to bed." Dad's tone brooked no argument. "Now."
Only the snap in his father's voice could have shaken Remus out of his bewilderment and disbelief. Reluctantly, Remus moved to tear his eyes away from the scene in the study, but once he got one step in he found himself positively dashing up the stairs, suddenly frightened, suddenly not wanting to know, not wanting to know, not wanting to know, any more than he had wanted to look at the moon in any of its phases.
His father had been facing Remus himself in the study, and Remus didn't want to know what it meant, he didn't want to know or remember it at all.
He could put off thinking about it by changing into his pajamas and brushing his teeth. But once he had laid down in bed all he could do was stare up at the dark ceiling, and there was nothing to stop him wondering about that perfect image of himself, pointing straight up at Dad with fury in his face.
The hallway light came on, and Mum came in, gently asking why he was in bed so early, and what had been going on in the study. "Dad says it's a boggart. He's taking care of it and told me to go to bed." Remus didn't trust himself to say anything else. The past quarter of an hour was inspiring in him the sort of terror he associated with the day before a full moon, and he never confided in Mum on those days, either. On those days he simply accepted her comforting embrace in silence, just as he did tonight with her goodnight kiss. And he felt a sort of relief when she turned out the light and left, because then he wasn't tempted to break down and express all his confusion and unease.
It was a puzzle, to see himself looking that way with Dad, why would he ever point upwards at Dad so aggressively? Boggarts were so bizarre...
But the bizarre boggarts knew how to do the most uncomfortable, unaccountable things. This one had changed into the moon, of all things, and then had shown Remus himself in a fit of wild anger, and Remus knew that wild anger perfectly well. It darkened the very edge of his consciousness all too often and sometimes tried to engulf him. Every so often he found himself fighting tooth and nail against that anger, until it skulked back into its little corner that Remus's mind had grudgingly been forced allow it for the past four years. Remus recognized that shadow on the face of the boggart-him, and it chilled him, and made him anxious and resentful. It wasn't fair that the boggart could pretend it was him and make him look like that.
That wild shadow now perked up from the silence it had been in all evening and urged him to scream. Go away, Remus ordered it. He didn't fully understand the response; it was so unfair that the wolf didn't argue with words. I don't throw a tantrum when I go to the cellar full moon nights anymore and I won't now, so there, he told it, and after a sulky moment a relative quiet reigned in his head.
It simply left him fidgety. An hour of tossing and turning passed. He dozed off so lightly that he was aware of the lights and the noise and quiet words down the hallway as his parents also went to bed, but he only woke fully once everything was still and dark again.
He held out against the impulse -- he reflexively held out against impulses now -- but then decided that it was prudent and not the suggestion of the wolf. He had to know what it meant that the boggart turned into him and that Dad had acted so distant and cold, the way he used to before Professor Dumbledore had promised that he could go to Hogwarts. And finding out meant sneaking downstairs to the study.
Twice in one day he was getting into the forbidden books, he thought, but there was just enough moonlight that he could see the grandfather clock in the hallway and it told him that it was one o'clock. So it wasn't in the same day at all. It was rather disappointing. The thought had given him a daring, rebellious feeling.
He found he liked the house a lot more by night. During the day it felt confining, but it was different now, larger, shadowy -- both offering protection and providing a bit of adventure.
But he had not enjoyed it enough to forget about why he was up and about. Once in the study, he turned on the lamp, blinking in the sudden light, and again climbed from the armchair to the top of the bookcase in order to grab the box. Getting down was tricky; he felt sure, for a moment, that he wouldn't land on the two-seater and would make a thud that would wake everyone up, but he was more anxious to find out about the boggart than anything, so he risked it and barely noticed the discomfort when he landed hard on the box.
The box was full of hardbacked Wizarding books, Daily Prophet clippings, and some very weird, boring Muggle paperbacks. Remus hadn't figured out why the Muggle books weren't with the rest of Mum's novels, but it was obvious why everything else had been kept (supposedly) out of his reach. As he had long suspected, it was all related to his condition.
There it was -- The Compendium of Dark Creatures. Ignoring the bookmarks this time, Remus consulted the table of contents for the boggart section and began to read. It took him barely a minute to find the most telling sentence.
"In the presence of a wizard, a boggart will shift its shape in order to impersonate that which the wizard most fears."
Remus frowned. It was exactly as his vague fears had suggested. But he didn't want to think about it just yet, and found himself rereading the paragraph. It gave examples of absurd boggart encounters (the Wizard Baruffio's boggart had been a hampster that scolded away in Madam Baruffio's voice), but Remus didn't crack a smile.
He read on, a bit desperately, hoping to find something to refute the conclusions he was already drawing. He had read through an explanation of how to banish boggarts (which was much more lucid than Dad's had been), a guide to their geography (ubiquitous, as long as there was darkness and confinement), and an account of ways in which they had affected Wizarding history (they had been used to some effect to inspire terror in opposing armies during times of war) before he gave up. He knew what he had seen, and the book wasn't going to tell him differently. Dad's worst fear was Remus himself.
That's why Dad never looked him in the face.
He had been doing so, recently, Remus reminded himself.
But only sometimes. And only since he'd learned that he would be sending Remus away to be trained in magic instead of having to do it himself.
It fit. It was all too clearly true: Dad -- Dad, who was frightened by nothing -- was frightened of him.
This realization would have simply been bemusing -- if he hadn't already read the rest of the forbidden stash. A couple of months ago, and he would have been merely confused. He would have forgotten about the mystery rather quickly, turning listlessly to other books, other thoughts, other worlds, knowing without really knowing why he only had books instead of playmates anymore.
But he looked tensely at the pile of books on lycanthropy and remembered certain words, certain accounts. He fingered one of the many newspaper clippings nearly hysterical over the unstoppable kidnapper, a terrible werewolf named Fenrir Greyback.
He stared at another clipping, into the photographic face of a nine-year-old girl. She was healthy and gaptoothed when she smiled, and it was hard to believe that she was doomed to die within a year of that picture in a pool of her own blood, abandoned by her own mother, who later served four weeks in Azkaban after the protracted deliberations of the Wizengamot.
Was Dad as disgusted by him as Dacia Mutty's mother and the author of The Unleadable Curse? Did he have to force himself to tolerate him? Dad had always been so distant, so close-mouthed, so undemonstrative... it made it far too easy to believe.
It had not been what you might call a treat, reading the books that had called werewolves filthy, abominable half-breeds, Dark and deranged, one of the greatest threats to a peaceful Wizarding community -- and knowing that you were one yourself. But just reading it had been more weird and unreal than anything. Finding that Dad might think the same thing made him feel sick. Sick, and scared, and ashamed, and too small to live --
Heavy footsteps down the stairs.
Remus straightened (he had unconsciously been curling up, tucking his feet underneath himself and hunkering down his shoulders) and he desperately eyed the heights he had to scale to return the books. But it was too late: the footsteps were already in the hallway. Remus hastily flipped to the section with the bookmarks, where the pages about werewolves were supplemented by annotations in Mum's tidy writing on almost every paragraph. He was going to be in trouble for looking at the werewolf books, but there would be trouble if he brought up boggarts.
He glanced up anxiously. Dad was in the doorway, again.
He half-expected to be yelled at... not necessarily because Dad may well have thought of him as a dirty beast that should have been put down had he been anyone else and who must be hidden away because he was his son, but simply because Dad told him to go to bed in pretty uncertain terms a few hours ago.
But Dad just looked at him with his opened book steadily, then ran a hand over his eyes and sighed.
Remus waited. Under any other circumstances he would have tried to explain himself, but not that night.
"Close the book, Remus." He sounded upset, but more tired than angry. He crossed the room, and they both began to pack the books back into the box. Remus reflected that it was just as well that it wasn't Mum who had discovered him. Mum would have known that he had changed the page with one of her swift, suspicious looks, but, judging from the way his eyes lingered on the newspaper clippings, Dad didn't seem to realize he had come down to look up boggarts.
"I wish it had just been the ones about sex," Dad muttered, placing one of the lurid-covered paperbacks inside.
"What?"
The corners of Dad's mouth twitched. "Nothing." He looked as though he didn't know whether to laugh or to throw up his hands in despair, but the expression slipped back into his more familiar one, taut and distant.
Dad was easily tall enough to put the box away without clambering on the two-seater. He tucked the it back behind the molding on top of the bookcase, but didn't turn around again. There was a long moment of silence.
"Did you read about Greyback?"
The question was so terse that Remus was rather grateful that his father's back was to him. He hesitated. Being a liar was a horrible thing. Then again, he was supposed to lie when they had to call in local mediwitches after particularly bad transformations and tell them that he'd met a large dog that had bit him, because being a werewolf was worse still.
He was his own father's boggart.
"No."
Remus had no idea why Dad had chosen to ask after the Greyback clippings, of all things, but Dad relaxed visibly at his answer. After a moment, he turned from the bookcase. He did not look at Remus's face. But he did sit down next to him on the two-seater, head in his hands.
"I'm sorry," said Remus quietly, because now Dad had that air of helpless, frustrated pain that he hated to see on either of his parents. He would have gone closer, put a hand on Dad's arm and leaned against him, because that seemed to help, sometimes. But his boggart-double was emblazoned on his mind and he couldn't do that tonight. Instead he looked down at his knees.
"God, Remus," came Dad's broken voice from behind his hands. "Don't be sorry." He lifted his head again and did look directly at Remus, although he flinched as he did so. "Your mother always said you were bound to look someday."
Dad's gaze was fixed on him now, taking him in. Every second he did so Remus felt more hopeful -- he had to have been wrong, he'd been mad to think -- but then Dad ended with a wince and looked away again.
"Put it all out of your mind, son. Don't worry about any of it just now." He was diligently keeping his gaze fixed on his own fingers, which were slowly flexing and unflexing. "You're going off to Hogwarts now. The headmaster's arranged it all. Go to school. Get lost on your way to class, work hard, fool around with your classmates -- enjoy the food. Hogwarts is famous for its food." Dad almost smiled. "Be a normal wizarding boy. I'd like you to have a nice, carefree year. Next year, next summer, if you still want, we can talk about all of this. You may take all the time you like to read those books and we can discuss it together. But for now -- not yet. You're not ready for it -- " A grimace. "And if you are, you shouldn't be. And goodness knows, I'm certainly not... So don't worry about it yet."
Remus felt deeply uncomfortable, but he nodded. Then he remembered that Dad had averted his gaze again, so he had to say aloud, "Yes, Dad."
"That's my boy." Dad nodded at the curio. "Get yourself off to bed now, son. You need your rest."
Remus tried to obey without further ado, but before he could really leave the room he made himself stop. He had been lying and keeping too many secrets. It was a relief to turn around to face Dad on the two-seater again and say, however apologetically, "I kind of already knew, though..."
Dad looked up sharply, questioningly.
Remus took a deep breath. "I mean... I promise not to read those books till next year... but I won't not be able to think about it..."
"How much have you read?" asked Dad.
"A lot," admitted Remus, hanging his head. Now it was his turn not to meet his father's eyes. "But even if I hadn't... I would have gone off to school knowing anyway... I mean, I'm not normal, am I?"
"No," said Dad, defiantly, but slowly, as if he were trying to convince himself as well as Remus. "You're not normal. You're a young wizard, for one thing. You will be a fully-trained wizard with a Hogwarts education, which is the envy of the world, in seven years' time. And you've no mean magical ability, you know, more than I could have ever done justice to by teaching you at home. No, you're not normal -- in any sense..."
Dad was tensing again, and Remus wished he hadn't said anything -- yet saying it felt such a relief, too, and he had stared at his father levelly until he trailed off.
"I mean I'm not normal because of the accident." He spoke quietly, but it started to come out of him in a rush. "It won't be a normal year no matter what I read. Professor Dumbledore made me promise to be discreet, didn't he? Because... well, Spurius and Lucy Penrose threw bottles at me, and we had to leave Ayley-upon-Whisper after the accident. It's why we've had to move so often, isn't it? And a lot of the Healers and apothecaries you took me to wouldn't touch me, they were afraid to... and you won't tell anyone in the family, even, except for Grandmother Lupin. And you've had to find different work all those times because they've thought you were... that you were a werewolf."
Dad was frozen. They never actually said that word in the house.
They also had never really discussed all those incidents, not in front of Remus, and he was surprised to find how many there were, once he started to list them all. Saying it made it sound too real, too inescapable... and it made his hands tremble a bit when he realized, as he spoke, that in a couple of months he would be sent out into that hostile world, without the impenetrable wall that was Dad and isolation...
Yet saying it also somehow cleared the air. And that was worth a great deal.
"And you, Dad," he said, in quite a small voice, because Dad was not going to break the silence, and he may as well finish what he had started, "you... you're afraid to look at me."
Dad startled so badly that the box of books fell off his lap to the floor. "That's -- "
But then he broke off and said nothing more.
"Why?" Remus asked desperately, his rising nerves getting almost panicky, for he knew a deliberate lack of denial when he saw it. He wished he could tear off his own skin and be rid of it. "Why are you afraid of me? I know I have to be locked up at full moon and I try and be good about that now because I don't want to hurt anyone but I'm not dangerous when I'm human, you told me so before yet I know you're afrai -- "
"Don't talk foolishness," said Dad, sharply. "You are my son! I could never be afraid of you."
But the boggart -- it didn't matter that Dad was angry with him, Remus looked up at him just as sharply -- Dad was lying to him --
"I admit I -- I don't like looking at you," said Dad, tersely. He forced himself to do so now, making a face as he did. "It is not fear, it's -- "
Their eyes held each other.
"What? What is it?" Was there something openly wolfish about him, that he'd never spotted in the bathroom mirror but that was obvious to normal people? Remus's hands were shaking more violently now. If only he had never left his bed...
Dad got to his feet, crossed the room, eyes fixed on Remus and smouldering with something inexpressible. Remus didn't have time to coherently think it through because then Dad bent over and held him tightly.
This was so astoundingly un-Dad-like that Remus's ever-churning mind actually blanked out for the rest of the night. He burrowed against his father, finding that he was screwing up his face and shaking worse yet, with dim memories of all the full moons that had passed since the accident chasing each other 'round in his head. If only he had never left his bed that night, either -- and surely this was why Dad usually kept his distance, because in his embrace it was all Remus could do not to break down crying, and why, he didn't know -- only he couldn't, he really couldn't, as it was still Dad and Dad had been very stern about what age was too old to cry, and Remus had already passed it -- but Dad was burying his large hands in Remus's hair and perhaps he wouldn't mind just now --
"It's nothing, Remus," said Dad's rough voice in his ear. "You don't look remotely frightening. You look ill, that's all."
Of all the things that night that made no sense, this made the least sense of all. Yet it was still incredibly reassuring to hear.
"Speaking of which." Dad released him and used his normal voice again. "Let's get you to bed. I'll take you up properly, this time. Nox."
The lamp in the study went out; only a shaft of moonlight palely lit the room.
Dad's hand on his shoulder kept Remus close to him all the way up the stairs.
"Dad?"
He sighed. "Yes?"
"It still doesn't make sense." Remus's voice sounded childish even to himself. "Why should me looking ill make you afraid to look at me?"
A pause. They made it up to the landing before Dad's reply came from behind him. "Because your father is a coward, Remus, and was a liar to pretend anything else to you. Never you mind, I'll make sure not to do it anymore."
"But you're not a coward!" It was unthinkable if Dad were, because then there was nothing in the world to rely on. "And it still doesn't make sense," he added, as an slightly petulant afterthought, nudging open his bedroom door.
"In you get," said Dad, pushing him lightly towards the bed. "I know it doesn't. Of course it doesn't make sense to you. As a matter of fact it's... it's absurd, like most of life. But for this, Remus, for hating to see you so sickly, that's something I cannot apologise for. It's only natural -- well, you'll understand one day. When you grow up and..."
His warm, confidential tone trailed off.
"What do you mean?" asked Remus sleepily, snuggling deeply under the quilt.
"No," said Dad stolidly. "I'm a liar to say so. And I can hardly ask you to trust me enough to take my word for it -- "
"What do you mean?" repeated Remus, blinking momentarily awake again.
"Never you mind," said Dad flatly, rising from where he had perched on the edge of the bed. He took a deep breath and said more quietly, "Goodnight, son. No more midnight wanderings, you hear me?"
"Yes, Dad." Remus's soft voice trailed off into a sigh. He wanted to understand more. But the conversation was clearly over. And besides, he also wanted so much to close his eyes... The darkness was a blessed thing after the unnatural electric light in the study.
Boggarts like the dark, he remembered idly as he listened to Dad's heavy tread down the hallway. Mum would have woken up; she would be waiting; Mum was always watching and worrying. Sure enough, half a second later he heard her light, pretty voice whisper-calling to Dad, asking, John Lupin, what on earth is going on in that study... I wonder if we bother them as much as they bother us, boggarts... Wonder what one would look like for Ivan the Irascible... still don't understand why Dad's turned into me... He turned on his side and curled up... I did look scary then, I looked much more angry than ill...
He was falling asleep even as he overheard his father reply, wearily: "You were right about trying to put one over on him, Sylvia. Doesn't miss a trick, that boy..."
Wonder if Mum could see them, he thought, before sinking into dark and hazy dreams.
--
A/N: This chapter was hell. I had to cut beautiful details, backgrounds, scenes, and Mrs Lupin's birthday out in order to keep my eye on the ball. You all know the pain of killing your literary darlings. Don't expect chapter two to work itself out very soon, it's giving me even more trouble.
Better suggestions for the title of the Lorring book are hereby solicited.
--
Quotes for Chapter II ("Magical Mischief Making"):
"There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot..." (PS/SS)
"Break a rule in front of her, put just one toe out of line, and she'd whisk off for Filch, who'd appear, wheezing, two seconds later. Filch knew the secret passageways of the school better than anyone (except perhaps the Weasley twins) and could pop up as suddenly as any of the ghosts." (PS/SS)
"I'll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I'm not there." (CoS)
"It's always best to have company when you're dealing with a boggart... I once saw a boggart make that very mistake -- tried to frighten two people at once... Not remotely frightening." (PoA)
"Messers. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief Makers, are proud to present the Marauder's Map... " (PoA)
"Because you never did anything for anyone unless you could see what was in it for you..." (PoA)
"You always liked big friends who'd look after you, didn't you? It used to be me... me and Remus... and James..." (PoA)
" ... I spent too much time in detention with James. Lupin was the good boy..." (OotP)
"Caradoc Dearborn, vanished six months after this, we never found his body..." (OotP)
"I don't need to look at that rubbish, I know it all." (OotP)
"... your father and Sirius were the best in the school at whatever they did -- everyone thought they were the height of cool -- " (OotP)
" 'I thought you could start... with boxes one thousand and twelve to one thousand and fifty-six'... his father or Sirius's names, usually coupled together in various petty misdeeds, occasionally accompanied by those of Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew." (HBP)
"... [James's] glasses were a little lopsided, like Mr Weasley's." (DH)