Written for The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, Season Four (Round 9)
Team: Puddlemere United
Position: Seeker
Prompt: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Note: I foucused manily on the songs. The title is a line from the opening song The Bells of Notre Dame.)
Word Count without A/N: 1,040 (Google Docs)
I also have another 900 words written for that prompt. It's a totally different story (unless...) and I'm not sure whether or not I'm going to post it.
Every decision, no matter how minor it may seem, influences both the decision maker's own life and the lives of everyone around them. Some only cause minor differences, but there are other kinds too.
There are choices that can start or end wars, create new alliances or obliterate them forever.
One of these decisions, was the one Severus Snape had to make. Granted, he had to make many decisions in his life—many influential ones even—but this was one of the most important ones.
In most worlds, Severus Snape took almost two decades until he told Remus' secret. He told it in Harry Potter's third year, after Sirius Black escaped (twice), thus angering the three true Marauders at the very same time (and one of them even beyond his grave).
In this one, however, he barely lasted two days. He had enough of the Marauders and was willing to show them that he could give as good as he could get.
And, boy, he did meet that goal. Surpassed it, even.
From that day on, Remus Lupin had to listen to constant insults wherever he went. People never seemed to stop yelling things like 'half-breed', 'mutt', or 'monster'.
Well, there was one exception. When they were running away, in the other direction (even if their timetables demanded otherwise) as fast as they could, they didn't yell these things. But that didn't feel any better. In fact, it felt way worse.
During the lessons, everyone sat as far away as possible from him.
Everyone? Well, no, that wasn't exactly true. Pretty close to the truth, but not quite.
Three brave souls, Remus Lupin's best friends—James Potter, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew—stayed. If anything, they tried to sit closer to him. They made sure Remus was always accompanied by at least one of them, and, whenever possible, all of them.
They tried their very best to get Remus to ignore the comments and were openly glaring at those who made the comments, but, unfortunately it simply was not enough to convince them to stop most of the time. In hindsight, the students really should have expected the revenge pranks after five years of experience with the Marauders, but for—some reason—they didn't.
The Marauders tried to convince Remus that these stupid fools were completely and utterly wrong and that he was not a monster.
Yep. That would be hard work.
Perhaps it was because they already knew—and had know for years—that they were the only ones defending Remus from the very start.
After all, once they were over the initial shock, the number of supporters of Remus Lupin grew slowly, but steadily.
It started quietly, barely noticeable, when a couple of students, other than the Marauders began to glare at those insulting Remus.
When the owls and howlers came the next morning, demanding that Remus should leave, Florence Manco climbed onto the Ravenclaw table and yelled, "If you force Remus Lupin to leave, I'm leaving too!"
This was followed by similar declarations of the other Marauders, Lily Evans and her friend Mary Macdonald from Gryffindor, Jennifer McLeod and Florence's boyfriend, Gideon Stebbins, from Ravenclaw, Davey Gudgeon, the boy who nearly lost an eyeball trying to touch the Whomping Willow, from Hufflepuff, and, surprisingly (to James and Sirius at least), Emma Vanity and Lucinda Talkalot from Slytherin.
"Why should he stay in school with us?" Bertram Aubrey questioned loudly. "He's just a monster who will hurt, turn or kill all of us if he stays!"
While Sirius, James, and Peter stood up and tried to make their way to the Ravenclaw table (they were held back by numerous members of their own house), Remus tried to make himself smaller and looked like he was desperate to run and hide somewhere. Lily noticed this and quickly climbed over the table to hug him.
"Excuse you, Aubrey?" Mary Macdonald glared at the sixth-year. "Do you even listen to yourself? Heck, do any of you listen to yourselves?!" She yelled into the hall. "This is Remus Lupin you are talking about! If it was any of the other Marauders I may have understood it-"
"Ha ha. Very funny, Mary," Sirius growled, still fighting other Gryffindors to get to Aubrey.
"I know, right?" She smiled. "But that is not the case! It's Remus Lupin, the boy who tutored roughly half the school—regardless of their house!—at one point. The boy who occasionally stops to smell flowers. The boy who reads more romance novels than every other Gryffindor combined and who I have witnessed saving bugs and mosquitoes several dozen times! Can any of you please explain to me what part of that indicates 'monster' to you," she requested, making air quotes around the word monster. "Because I honestly have no idea!"
"He's dangerous!" Helen Martin from Hufflepuff protested.
"No, he's not!" Seventh-year Slytherin Emma Vanity disagreed. "Werewolves are only dangerous once a month for a few nights! And I assume the teachers have a way to deal with those, otherwise he wouldn't be here." Her tone clearly implied what she thought of the Hufflepuff's intelligence.
The teachers nodded and Remus looked up, stunned that someone other than his best friends would defend him.
"But he's a werewolf! A half-breed! He shouldn't be allowed in Hogwarts! He's a monster!" Bartemius Crouch Junior argued from his spot at the Ravenclaw table.
"Now that's rich coming from a future Death Eater," James snorted.
When Bartemius started to protest, James continued as if he hadn't heard the fourth-year and addressed the hall as whole. "I mean honestly, the lot of you are hypocrites! Perhaps not every single one of you, hopefully not even the majority, but I bet a lot of you are rooting more or less for that dickhead-"
"Language, Mr. Potter!" McGonagall admonished.
"-Voldemort! That guy deserves it Professor. I refuse to apologize. He and his followers are hurting, raping, and murdering people, and yet you dare to accuse Remus of being a monster? Completely ridiculous! Voldemort is several hundreds, no, what am I saying, thousands of times!—more a monster than Remus and still he is called a monster? What kind of twisted logic is behind that? Don't you people understand who is the monster and who is the man?"
Please tell me what you think!
Marvelgeek42