Happy Birthday Remus Lupin! Our favourite mild-mannered werewolf turns 47 on the 10th of March. This three-part fic is my tribute to him, but also an exploration of Tonks, Andromeda and the accusations made against Sirius. I wanted to call it 'Lycanthropy is teh sex', but didn't really think it would be appropriate (lol).
For another form of tribute, head on over to deviantart (link from my profile) to see the first card in my Order of the Phoenix Trading cards series. (Unofficial, of course.)
Also, I'm aware that Sirius did not have a trial, but there must have been a hearing of some kind since Dumbledore gave evidence against him. If only for formality's sake. And since there weren't many people left who could be said to be close to our dear Padfoot, Remus and Andromeda have been called to offer their own opinions.
Anyway, here's part one. Enjoy and remember: I am not JK Rowling. I merely wade in the ocean of her brilliance.
Of Black Sheep and Werewolves
Part One: Giving Evidence
They'd never been introduced, but she knew his face. A friend of her cousin's; yet he'd always seemed so much older. There was something about that she thought that she should remember. But for the moment it eluded her.
She watched him while they waited. This was the face, she thought, of a man who has lost everything. The blank expression of someone who has nothing left to live for. She shuddered as she reminded herself whose hands that blood was on. The war was over, but it had fallen to the young man sitting opposite her to pay the ultimate price.
Her daughter and husband approached. She tore her eyes away and smiled weakly.
'Still waiting, huh?'
'Yes. Dumbledore is still saying his piece, then they'll call for us.'
'Mum, who's that?' whispered the girl close to her mother's ear, nodding in the direction of the man who shared the waiting room. 'I've seen him before.'
The man did not look over at them, but she could almost feel him listening for her next remark.
'His name is Remus Lupin, dear,' she told her daughter. 'He's a friend.'
Remus stared at the floor. He knew she was watching him with pity in her grey eyes.
He didn't want her pity. He just wanted to leave.
He knew her, of course. They'd never been introduced, but it would have been hard to forget the scandal she'd caused back at Hogwarts, when he had been second year and she seventh. It had been especially difficult to ignore Sirius's mixed reaction of outrage and secret admiration (he had been young, then, and not so adamant in his opinions).
Quickly, he put that particular memory out of his mind, just as he did with every memory of Sirius that came to him.
The man was her husband. Remus remembered him too. A muggleborn. The reason for the scandal.
They had a daughter. About eight, by the look of her. She had perfectly straight blonde hair and looked nervous. She kept twisting the hem of her nice clean robes up over her knee and biting her lip. Her parents were locked in murmured conversation that Remus couldn't make out.
He stood up and made a show of examining a nearby painting. The waiting was getting to him, and he had to find something to do – anything that wasn't sitting around looking sorry for himself. He did too much of that. James had always said he did too much of that.
James could be a right prat at times.
He sighed. He felt sort of … hollow. All his emotions had shut down. There was nothing – no anger, no hatred, no sadness. Just nothing. There was nothing left. It had only been a week – it felt like an eternity. While the rest of the Wizarding World celebrated, he had mourned his friends and now there was nothing left.
His hands felt heavy in his pockets. He closed his eyes for a moment, welcoming the comfort of the darkness.
Then, feeling a presence nearby, he quickly opened them again. The little blonde girl stood next to him, glancing with a light frown between the painting and his own worn face.
The expression in her dark eyes was very frank.
'Are you ill, Mister Lupin?' she asked pointedly. He shook his head.
'Just tired,' he explained. She nodded.
'I see. I'm not bothering you, am I? Mum says I'm an awful bother sometimes.'
'It's fine,' he told her. 'You're not bothering me.'
'Good. Mum's going to tell me off anyway, though. You just wait. She always tells me off when she thinks I'm bothering someone. I'm not as bad as she thinks really. Most people don't mind talking to me a bit. Are you another cousin?'
This last question took a moment to register in his mind.
'What? I … no. I'm just … just a friend.'
'Oh.' The girl sighed. 'I thought you might be related to Mum somehow. I don't know much about her family, you know. That's why we're here – because of her cousin. They say he did something terrible.'
That last part was added in a conspiratorial whisper. Remus sighed internally, wishing that he could borrow her innocence just for a moment, to think of the whole world in terms of a grand adventure with good guys and bad guys, instead of feeling like a hollow shell that had lost whatever little faith in humanity it had possessed.
In fact, he couldn't remember a time when he'd had that innocence. What with one thing and another, it had been stolen from him long ago. And now whatever had been left after that had been stolen too.
'He did,' he murmured. The girl's dark eyes were wide.
'Do you really think so?' she asked, her voice throbbing with the thrill of the scenario. 'How horrible.' Suddenly her heat-shaped face broke into a broad grin. 'I'm going to be an auror when I grow up, you know.'
'Nymphadora! Leave Mr Lupin alone!'
The girl rolled her eyes at Remus. 'I told you she'd tell me off,' she muttered, heading back to her mother.
Remus turned back to the painting, doing his best not to look as though he was listening to Andromeda Tonks' gentle admonishment of her daughter. It was just so … so normal, such a routine exchange. He admired Andromeda for that. Any sense of normalcy in this strange new world was a wonderful thing.
As he thought back on young Nymphadora's words – still coming up with desperate plans to distract himself from what they were all doing there – he caught a rebellious smile threatening his lips. He supposed that from a child's perspective things really could be that simple. Someone did something bad, and they went to Azkaban.
For a moment he wished that Andromeda hadn't called the girl away – the conversation, one-sided though it may have been, might have been just the thing to lift his spirits. He sighed.
'Mr Lupin? Mrs Tonks?'
He turned. A bored-looking secretary with a clipboard was standing in the doorway, surveying them all over the top of thick-rimmed spectacles.
'Yes?' Andromeda said, rising to her feet.
'They're ready for you now.'
She went first. Her piece was short. Yes, she was the only living member of Sirius's family still on speaking terms with him. Yes, she was aware of how close he was to James Potter.
No, she couldn't see him being involved in any dark activity. But …
He'd always been unpredictable.
He'd always been difficult to understand.
And there was the matter of his brother, and her own sister, and various other family members that he might have had contact with.
What more could she say? She stepped down from the podium, unable to shake the feeling that she'd let her cousin down in some way. Shouldn't it have been the other way around? Sighing, she took a seat to listen to Remus Lupin.
'Name?'
'Remus John Lupin.'
'Relationship to the accused?'
'I was at school with Sirius Black, James Potter and Peter Pettigrew from 1969 to 1976. In that time we four became close friends. We remained so after we left school.'
'Do you think James Potter could have chosen anyone other than the accused to be his Secret Keeper?'
'No.'
'Therefore, Sirius Black was the only one who could have divulged the information of the Potter's whereabouts to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?'
'Yes.'
'And therefore, in your opinion, Sirius Black must have been involved with the organisation known as the Death Eaters?'
A pause.
'Yes.'
'In your opinion, do you believe Sirius Black to be capable of this crime?'
A sigh.
'Yes,' said Remus, barely audibly.
'Anything more to add, Mr Lupin?'
Another pause.
'No. That about covers it.'
'Thank you. You may stand down.'
He wouldn't catch her eye as he got off the podium and she wondered if he felt much the same way as she did. Where there ought to be triumph at the impending justice they had brought about, there was only a hollow feeling of guilt that they had sent someone close to them to an early grave in Azkaban. No matter what he had done, the way that Sirius Black would suffer for it had been decided by them.
They went back out into the hall. Ted and Nymphadora were waiting still.
'How did it go?' Ted asked gently.
She shrugged. 'It was short.'
Nymphadora tugged on her mother's sleeve.
'Is Mister Lupin all right, Mum?' she whispered. Andromeda turned to see Remus with his head in his hands, slumped over in a chair by the door to the courtroom. The small glimpse of his face which she could see through his fingers was paler even than before.
'He's had a hard day, love,' she told her daughter quietly. 'We should just leave him alone.'
'Come on,' Ted said bracingly, taking the young girl's hand in his left and placing his right at the small of his wife's back. 'We should go. Dinner isn't going to cook itself, is it?'
Andromeda smiled and allowed herself to be led away, but she could not resist a glance back at the young man with his face in his hands. She hoped that the next time she saw him it would be under happier circumstances.
