Alright my little buddy friends, old and new

Alright my little buddy friends, old and new. These original characters, this plot and some of the preface and first chapter belong to the Great and Wise Anomalous Anonymous.

This story is dedicated to Nommy because she wrote it, Shnee because her "Remus'-little-sister" fic is just awesome and is why I love those fics and Michelle who, by marriage law, gets half of everything I own considering I didn't get her to sign a pre-nup.


Preface – The Act of Remembrance

It is a strange thing, remembering. The act of remembrance is one that inspires emotional roller coasters in even the most bland of personalities – you become nostalgic, happy and somewhat depressed that those grand times are over all in one fleeting second as your mind goes over the past. Remembering may also inspire anger, hatred, violence – characteristics of a troubled past, my elder brother might point out. For me, however, the act of remembrance is one that I fondly take up as a pastime now and again.

Looking back on what I have been through as a child, as a teenager, is mesmerizing to me. Why? I suppose it's the uniqueness of it. How many girls, women, devoted scholars, can boast that their elder brother is a werewolf? It takes a strong character to deal with the events of my life, and I'm arrogant enough to know and acknowledge that fact. Most young women would be in an insane asylum by the time they were twenty if they had to go through my past, grow up as I did. Concealed in secrecy, shrouded by paranoia that someone on the outside knew, never letting anyone get close enough to understand you – it wasn't the best way to grow up. But what I hated most was the moving. Still, you can't miss what you never had, right?

Second the moving, a close second, mind, was the expectations of me. I learned as small child that my parents had high expectations of me – both to keep my brother's secret (a feat no child of three can particularly understand), and later, as a student, as their last hope of a normal child, one who can grow up living a normal life. My parents loved Remus, and yet they knew the difficulties that he'd have to face later on in life – or at least had some vague inkling of it anyway. I would have no such barriers in my life, doors were always opened to girl like me. But that's just the thing; high expectations became the expectation; I never knew, nor did I expect, anything different from the norm.

Growing up with an older brother who's a werewolf is like growing up with a ten pound weight on your chest – a ten pound secret. Sure, ten pounds sounds like nothing when we're simply chatting about it here and now, it sounds so facile. Let me ask you a question though – have you ever had a ten pound weight on your chest, relentlessly dragging you down, growing harder and heavier as you struggled against it? No? I didn't think so, and let me be the first to correct your assumptions – ten pounds can be as deadly as fifty, if given half the chance. And mate, there are plenty of chances out there in the world.

Although I grow older and my memories fade as the years flash by, taking the pain and easing the bite of cruelty of some moments with it, I will attempt to remember, and I will attempt to record. There are over six billion people out there in the world today, two and a half billion of them being magical. I doubt I am the only one who has dealt with the issues I have faced in the past, and perhaps what little I have left to offer can be of some use.

I will begin with the day my troubles took on a completely new meaning. The day I started Hogwarts, school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.