Lupin's Beginning
By: DorkPangs
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all associated belongs to J. K. Rowling. If you don't recognize it, it's mine.
Summary: Remus Lupin thinks he'll never get into school, but his Aunt Darla and his father have arranged a meeting with Dumbledore...
Light filled the dank cellar from the barred window. It fell upon the center of the room, spearing into the darkness. The room was small and obviously bare, save for something crawling for the light. A white, frail, long-fingered hand was illuminated as it stretched into the beam of light. It belonged to an equally frail boy, about ten years of age, who was making involuntary noises as he forced his aching body into the warm light. Shivering, wincing, moaning, he forced his body into the glow of daylight, determined to get away from the dark. The light glanced off his wavy brown locks and his pale skin, and he rolled himself into a fetal position, naked upon the cold stone floor, gray eyes staring into the nothing of the cellar.
Suddenly, there was a loud cracking sound as the bar was thrown off the cellar entrance. The boy didn't respond, not even when the doors were pulled open to let more light in, just stared into the dark, lost in his thoughts far darker than what he saw.
"Son? Are you alright?" a man called out, his built frame blocking out the light as his feet touched the stairs into the cellar.
The boy blinked, but he didn't say anything. His shivering stopped as he heard the man's steps thud onto the cellar floor.
"Remus? Are you—My god!" the man sounded aghast, and the boy knew he had finally caught sight of his pathetic form.
The man rushed over, and the boy could feel a rough blanket thrown over his naked body. "Darla! Bring down the med kit! He's scratched himself up again!"
Sitting down beside the boy, the man pulled him into a sitting position in his lap. The man had strong features, his prominent chin and deep blue-gray eyes he had obviously shared with his son, and had a heavy farmer's tan over his muscular body. Wrinkles marking his brow and cheeks made it look as though smiling came easy to him. However, light from the cellar window glinted in his eyes, fear and sorrow claiming his face as he looked upon the boy. The man brushed Remus' hair out of his face, to examine his bleeding scratches.
"Roland? I'm here," a woman called before her as her slippers stepped heavily upon the stairs, a small case under her arm.
"Darla, I don't think we need any stitches. Maybe just a cleaning and then you can heal him up." Roland said to her as he began moving the boy's legs and arms. "It doesn't look like he's broken anything this time, though his wrists are fairly torn up and bruised."
Darla walked over to the pair, and sat before the boy. Cupping his face, she kissed him lightly on the brow, and then looked up at Roland, "It hurts so much to see him in so much pain… Why does he do so much damage to himself?"
Roland didn't answer her; they'd had this conversation before. He took the kit from Darla, placed it beside him, opened it, and began cleansing his son's wounds with modern medicine. Remus didn't respond when they spoke and attended to him, but the pair were used to this. It had been six years since he had been bitten, and the transformations never got any easier. He didn't simply change into a wolf; he was a wolf, beastly thinking and deadly claws and teeth all. Reverting back into a human was just as hard, perhaps harder, since the Beast took longer to leave his psyche.
"Darla, did you talk to the Headmaster, yet?" Roland asked, finishing up on a long scratch on Remus' chest.
The woman, dressed in a peasant dress, pulled out a long polished wooden stick from her waistband. It was thick where she gripped the mahogany wood and slender where she pointed it at the boy's wounds.
"Yes, he's coming to see him today," Darla said, making a wide curving motion with her wand. Suddenly jabbing, she muttered a word under her breath.
Slowly, Remus' cuts began to close, and the boy finally responded: he began scratching at himself. Roland, prepared for this, grabbed his arms and pushed them down at his sides. Remus made moaning noises, in which they could hear him mumble, "…itches, it itches…" over and over again. Soon, however, he stopped struggling and seemed to fall into a deep sleep as his eyes fluttered shut.
Tears were running down Darla's cheeks as she looked at the boy, and then she turned away from Roland as their eyes met. "I had best make sure the house is ready for his arrival."
Roland nodded at her retreating back, and then looked down upon his son in his lap. One tear escaped him and slipped down his cheek, dripping off his face. Before it could disturb the boy, however, Roland swiftly caught the tear in his palm, closed his eyes in prayer, and kissed the moisture. Wiping his hand on his shirt, Roland collected the boy in his arms and stood. Steadily the man, with the boy's head resting gently against his chest, pushed his way through the doorway and into the sunlight.
The cottage lay isolated in the valley, looking as if out of a fable book with a flower bed trailing along the cobbled pathway from closed fence to front door. A vegetable garden could be seen in the back, and the grass was well kept. Several trees kept the lawn well shaded, without impeding upon the plant life's sunshine too much. The cottage itself was decently large, with a large chimney pumping smoke out of the two-story roof. The first floor was mainly a dining, kitchen, and sitting room, while the second possessed the family's bedrooms.
Several owls were hooting in their tree; the hatchlings had just broken out of their shells and were ravenously fulfilling their hunger. A small boy was watching the baby owls balefully, his blue-gray eyes shining from the sun's warm reflection. He was sitting on his windowsill; he had been careful to sneak out of bed so not as to alert his father and Darla. They would just baby him and tell him to get as much sleep as possible.
"Soon, you guys will start learning to fly," Remus muttered, more to himself than the birds. "Quicker than you know, you'll be able to put this place behind you and join the real world, where there are real people and no one will think less of you for flying."
Quieting, he remembered when they had lived in the village. It was peaceful, for the most part, and filled with witches and wizards. They had lived in a small house then, and Remus had shared a room with his father. They had locked him in a cage in the basement when the moon came around to rising, and their neighbors had become concerned about the howling and screaming they could hear from the house. One night, Remus had been discovered, and the village people had run them out of town. The things they had called him… Remus shuddered, and tears began to well in his eyes.
"Remus?" the boy jumped at his aunt's voice, and wiped at his face before she could see it.
"Yes, Auntie?" he answered, turning so he could look at her from the sill. She was a rather petite woman, but that didn't make her any less stern with him. She was his father's sister, several years older and definitely mistress of the household.
"Get dressed now, in the clothes I laid out for you. The Headmaster should be here soon, and we want to be ready for him, yes?" she asked, her brown curls escaping her tight bun as she shook her head in emphasis.
"Yes, ma'am," Remus answered, getting off the sill. She put a hand on his head and ruffled his hair before turning away to go back down the stairs.
Remus looked at the clothes; they were far fancier than she normally had him wear. Somehow, he always managed to tear up or dirty his clothes within minutes of wearing them, no matter how careful he tried to be. These clothes were finely woven, the white shirt obviously silk, the burgundy vest and shoes were leather, and his soft pants were a dark brown. Definitely richer than he was accustomed to seeing around the house.
Dressing, he wondered what the Headmaster would be like. He envisioned a man much like their old village elder, who had referred to him as a 'half-breed'; a squat, bald man who was all wrinkles and fat with a very loud voice and who always took a sip from a flask at his side. Remus shuddered at the thought of facing someone like that, and he doubted his clothes, no matter how fancy, would be able to hide what he was.
He wandered into Darla's room, and looked at himself in her full-length mirror. Save for his messy hair, he looked like he could be a noble out of one of the books he read. Patting down his hair with his hands, a memory of the evening before flashed vividly in his mind. Collapsing to the floor, he quickly regained consciousness and looked at his arms to make sure his arms were no longer hairy. Once he was sure they weren't, he looked once more at himself in the mirror from the floor.
"Who do they think they could fool? Who wouldn't be able to see me for what I am?" Remus muttered, disgusted with himself.
Pushing into a standing position, he was startled to find someone leaning against the door frame, and sat back down on the floor.
"Yes, who couldn't but see you for the bright boy you are?" the old man said, blue eyes smiling down at him from behind half-moon spectacles.
More than anything, Remus had a hard time looking away from the man's odd nose; it was extremely long, and looked as though someone had broken it twice. The man moved into the room, his blue robes sweeping the floor as he sat upon Darla's bed facing Remus.
Seeing the man's expectant face finally reminded him of his ability to speak, and Remus managed, "Who-who are you?"
"Well, my name is Albus Dumbledore, and your aunt and father allowed me to come up here to speak to you."
Suddenly what his aunt had told him clicked into his head, and he abruptly stood and bowed, reciting the words his aunt had him memorize, "I'm honored to make your acquaintance, Headmaster."
"There's no need for all that," Dumbledore waved at Darla's stool, "please, just sit with me awhile, my back aches from walking about all day."
Awkwardly, Remus sat upon the stool and stared expectantly at Dumbledore. At his look, however, Dumbledore began to chuckle. "Oh, how I do miss being so young. When I was a lad, my favorite pastime was climbing trees."
"Did you ever get hurt?"
"Well, like all young boys, I wasn't imbued with some type of unnatural grace. First time I climbed a tree, I fell and sprained my wrist; I had been competing with another boy to reach the top."
"And yet it was your favorite thing to do?"
"Well, if it wasn't a little dangerous, it wouldn't be very fun, now would it?"
Considering this, Remus went silent. After several moments of quiet, Remus asked, "Then why are books fun to read? They aren't dangerous…"
"In a way they are. Books open the mind to new thought, new perspectives, and that could be dangerous to certain people. Reading puts you on a journey, and on that journey you learn, and the more you know, the more dangerous you can be to someone, especially to those who are in power. Also, books give you power, in a sense, and power is always appealing to everyone."
Considering this, Remus pondered the idea. "…But, I've never felt exactly more powerful, just…"
"Fulfilled? Entertained? Believe it or not, that power to be content or happy, even for a little while, is just enough to make the sorriest person try just a little bit harder." After a moment, the Headmaster added, "Though, if you get too involved in it, it's hard to deal with the tougher things in life, isn't it?"
Silent, Remus considered his words. Is that what he did? Escape to books so he wouldn't have to deal with his… problem? But then, he concluded, how could he deal?
Dumbledore had been watching him patiently, and when Remus looked back up at him, a smile spread across the Headmaster's face that Remus found contagious.
"Remus, I want you to come to Hogwarts. I think you'd be a valuable student."
The way Headmaster had said it almost seemed as though he had come here to convince Remus to come to Hogwarts, not the other way around. Remus didn't know how to respond, except to nod a little.
"Good, although there will be precautions to be taken, I think you'll like Hogwarts. Let's discuss it more with your parents, shall we?" and Dumbledore stood up slowly, stretching his back. Remus stood, and after a gesture from the Headmaster, led the way downstairs.
A/N: I hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know what you think!