Disclaimer: I own nothing. JK Rowling owns everything.

A/N: I never understood why writers took so long to update posts until I became one. This is my procrastination piece because Chapter Ten of This is Lyra is not an easy one and I can't look at it for a while. I promise I have a lot written but yeah…

Those Fairy Tales

Remus John Lupin was a March baby. His parents had expected him at the end of February but Remus managed to hold on for a further 10 days, meaning his mother had to be admitted as a special case to St Mungo's, a place Hope Lupin never thought her Muggle eyes would see. It was a strange turn of events for the woman whose only real experience of the Wizarding world was a strange encounter with a lonely boggart that lurked around the forest outside Cardiff where she met her husband. She had spent her adult life as a sceptic, trying to work out how magicians did their tricks, staring at their hands for any sly movements or pre-placed props, until she met Lyall. Once she embraced the world of true magic, the sceptic adult became the mystified child once more. And as Remus Lupin came into the world on 10th March, a week and a half overdue, she wished for him to be able to experience that world for himself.

Remus Lupin was a very ordinary boy. His hair was brown, along with his eyes. His skin was pale and clear and he had a rather lanky stature, a boy content with a book and a lamp. He was good at schoolwork and excelled at pranking. He liked to read and hated broccoli and altogether there was nothing much more to the boy. Of course, he was adored by his parents and loved by his aunts and uncles, but he didn't appear as an extraordinary son. However, appearance wasn't everything.

"It's what's inside that counts," his mother had told him. But Remus was scared of his inside. He was only five when it happened, when he was bitten by the werewolf.

Hope had stopped working once Remus was born, preferring to stay home with the boy. His parents had decided that one child was enough so Hope took on the role as mother, carer, best friend, and sibling. His father's position in the Ministry of Magic meant that he worked the standard 9-to-5 day, five days a week. Hope had wanted to raise her son in the countryside, much like she did, and so the family settled in the southwest of the country, with the Floo network connected to the house for his father's ease of access.

Remus wasn't very sure of his father's position as an employee of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. All he really understood was that his father disappeared and reappeared through the fireplace and one day he wanted to do the same. Every evening when he'd arrive home, his dad would great him with a hug and kiss and some made-up story about work in the Ministry along with a story before he went to bed every night. He was setting the position up for Remus to be is successor, but that wouldn't happen unless Lyall absolutely sold the entire job to the boy when he was young. Hope didn't necessarily approve of her husband's harmless exaggeration, but he understood that Remus might choose a different path in life, and that it would be welcomed with open arms.

On the 25 February 1965, Lyall Lupin arrived home in a strange mood. As per his position in the Ministry, he was asked to stand in for the interview of a man believed to be a werewolf (but of course there was no proof) as one of his colleagues had called in sick. He greeted his son with his hug and kiss but no story. He asked Remus to go upstairs and that 'mommy and daddy need to have a grown up talk'. The five year old nodded, oblivious to the tone of his dads voice but irritated by the lack of a story.

"I'll tell you two tonight, how does that sound?" Lyall promised, rubbing the boys head and smiling. Remus beamed his gap of missing front teeth and then slowly began to climb the stairs.

Lyall walked to the living room and sat beside his wife. He put his head in his hands and told Hope the entire story of the catastrophic interview.

"They believed his story," he told her, his amber eyes beginning to redden. Hope placed a hand on his knee and egged him to continue his story. "It was blatantly obvious that he was the attacker, he was the werewolf, but they just saw a tramp and nothing else." He stood and looked through the window out into the garden and fields that surrounded their cottage. "That department will be the death of me. They can't control a single thing. They don't understand how dangerous a man like him is."

Hope walked to stand beside her husband, "Were you fired, Lyall?" she asked as she tied her blond hair back.

He turned and looked at her, "Suspended for a week. They won't get rid of me; I'm the only sane person they have left."

After three days of his father not disappearing in the fireplace, Remus asked why. His dad said he was on his holidays for the next week because he needs a break now and then from work. Remus had gotten two stories each night since, so it didn't bother him whether his father ever returned to work at the Ministry or not.

It was closing in the boys fifth birthday, only a week until he turned five. Five was a big age. Five meant that come September he was able to go to the big school, make friends, and read the big kid books. His mother had already placed him under strict orders that nothing about his father's work should be mentioned to the other boys and girls.

"Because daddy is very important! His job has to be top top secret because if it's not then daddy might get sad and that's not what we want is it sweetie?" Hope spoke one night as she tucked her son into bed. It was after one of Lyall's ridiculous stories, which always made the boy so happy, so of course she would never make him stop no matter how much she disapproved of centaurs and werewolves. She placed a finger on her lips and shushed as Remus did the same, his eyes dropping with tiredness. She smiled and kissed the boys head before leaving in silence.

Lyall had been at home for his full week now. He was due back to work on 4th March, and but had booked off the 10th, much to the Minister's displeasure, so that he could celebrate his son's milestone. Of course, in Lyall's eyes, everything the boy did was a milestone.

"… and out of nowhere the pixie appeared once again, and the young wizard realised that he hadn't been alone. Throughout the forest, the pixie had been his guide and helped him defeat the monster. That's when the young wizard realised that not all of the misunderstood creatures in the forest would hurt him. Some of them were there to protect him, like the stag and the pixie and the friendly giant," he finished, smiling at the boy who looked so in awe of his father's storytelling. He sat on the edge of his son's bed, as involved with the plot as Remus had been. As with many of his stories, accents and extravagant hand gestures had played a part. Along with a few sound effects.

"Do you ever think I'll meet a pixie one day daddy?" Remus asked, looking far more interested than Lyall thought he would have been.

He smiled proudly at his young son, "Of course, if you look hard enough you will. Right now, off to sleep. Daddy's back to work tomorrow so he needs his own sleep too. Too many stories might keep him up."

He hit the outside light switch as he left his son's room, pulling the door partly closed and walking down towards his own bedroom. Hope had already drifted off when he walked in. She had laid out his robes for tomorrow, knowing that he had to make a good impression to his colleagues. Naturally, they weren't very impressed with him for going against what they all had agreed was their outcome, but he was respected enough within the Ministry for him to be able to walk in tomorrow and still command attention. He was still a boss over someone and still had the same amount of work and control. Lyall liked to keep things in order. He liked things to go his way, as did everyone else, but was content when he understood a different viewpoint that was taken into consideration.

At 11:02, Lyall Lupin woke up to a very stuffy room, realising he had forgotten to turn of the stove downstairs, meaning the house was being warmed as if it was the depths of winter.

At 11:05, Remus Lupin woke to the same heat. It was uncomfortably warm and the back of his knees were clinging to his pyjama bottoms.

As Lyall made his way back up the staircase to his room, Remus was peaking his head out his door.

"I know its warm son. You want the window open?" Remus nodded and walked back into his room, leaving his dad to follow him. Lyall cracked the upper portion of the window open only a bit, making sure no flies would come in and irritate his sleeping son. He hugged the boy and walked down to his own room again, telling a groggy Hope that he had forgotten to turn of the stove and received a playful slap on the arm because of it.

At 11:56, Lyall woke again. The house was much cooler but he felt a little off. His stomach was in knots and he knew that tomorrow was going to be a lot harder than he had anticipated. He lay awake silently until the minutes rolled past midnight into the early moments of 4th March. He tried to force himself to sleep but as it came up to 1:00 he knew that he would have to face the morning sleep deprived, not a look he would have chosen for his first day back to a job where no one particularly liked him.

He rolled to his side and closed his eyes, listening to Hope's soft snores, only to be woken by a soft cry from down the hall. His eyes opened but he didn't move. Again another cry and a sniff, and another. Then silence for almost five minutes before a shriek was heard and then Hope was sprinting from the room to Remus's and Lyall was following on her heels, his wand wrenched from his bedside locker.

Lyall knew as he ran down the hallway. He knew what awaited him on the other side of his son's door. Moving Hope to behind him, he readied his wand and as he forced the white wood door inwards he screamed.

"PROTEGO!" he yelled as the vile creature took in his presence. All at once, the werewolf was forced away from Remus, who was on the floor…

There was blood…

"PROTEGO TOTALUM!" he yelled again launching his hand to the roof as Hope stood horrified by what she saw and being unable to help.

Had he been bitten or…?

The werewolf rebounded from the shield once again, falling against the far wall.

The emotion within Lyall Lupin meant that no spell seemed off limits. The werewolf, Fenrir he recalled, stood slowly from the wall, but Lyall repeated the spell once more.

"Hope!" he called to his wife, not taking his eyes from the creature in front of him, "take Remus now and go downstairs. No questions just go!" She darted from his peripheral vision and grabbed her son of the floor to his left, sobbing as she saw the blood and the lifeless form.

As she sprinted from the room, carrying her son that neither parent knew was even living, Lyall adopted his offensive stance.

"PETRIFICUS TOTALUS! STUPEFY!" he screamed in quick succession. The creature had been hit and limped to the window opposite Lyall, leaping through the slot he had only partially opened hours before. The Killing Curse rested on the tip of his tongue as the injured monster struggled through the small gap, but it was too dangerous.

He kept his wand up but didn't move, didn't hear the calls until Hope came back up the stairs. She ran past him to the window and slammed it shut, then grabbed his hand and pulled him downstairs to the living room where Remus had been laid out on the sofa.

"He's alive Lyall but he's been bit… Please tell me that means nothing? Lyall? Please!" the tears ran freely down her alabaster skin, the same skin that had been marred with scratches, and a horrifying bite mark on the boys upper left arm. Hope had collapsed against the sofa, sitting on the floor and stroking her son's hair.

Lyall place and hand on his son's arm, "Hope, grab my arm. He needs help." She did as she was told, and the family disapparated to St. Mungo's reception area.

As soon as the word spread that it was suspected Lycanthropy, Lyall's word began to fall apart. He and Hope waited outside the room where they had taken their only son, their darling Remus, with tears freely falling.

A werewolf was a monster. No one cared for them. They were scum. They were vicious and they were nothing like Remus. Nothing at all.

All those fairy tales Lyall told his son about the powerful magic that he could one day possess, and yet his own son had been hurt because of him. Lyall knew he was the true monster, and he would never forgive himself.