I apologise for two things: Firstly, the time it takes me to update. But know there will ALWAYS be a new chapter even if it takes awhile.

This particular chapter was a real struggle for me to write but it's here and it is done.

Secondly, I know this chapter is shorter but it felt like the proper place to end it. Fortunately chapter 27 is already written and shall immediately follow this update.

The Call of the Moon

Chapter Twenty-Six

Black Cat Flu. That was what they had been told it was. So named for its variances in severity and sudden and sporadic onsets, it was an illness that could be as mild as the almost common cold, as unpredictable as (albeit in rare circumstances) sprouting whiskers, or severe and potentially life threatening. In the Lupins situation, it was the latter.

"It's rare, extremely rare but not…unknown for muggles to contract. It's a magical ailment that should only affect those with…magic in their blood but…" Lyall trailed off, running a tired hand over his face and placing a trembling hand on the front door. "I suppose that…long enough exposure to magic must…"

"Dad you don't…" His stomach still reeling from the aftermath of side along apparition, Remus stared at the door with an ever increasing sense of sorrow. "I mean you can tell me later." Grasping the handle of his trunk with one hand, he sidled past and opened the door.

Though the small house was barely home to him, like any house was liable to become when one destroyed it every few years, it already felt different, colder. He could see, even through little things like the lack of flowers on the mantlepiece and the wrong dishtowel over the handle of the oven, that these rooms hadn't properly felt a woman's touch in weeks. All Lyall would have had to do was wave his wand and the housework would promptly set up doing itself but never, in the hundreds of times Remus had heard him mention it in his childhood, had his mother agreed.
"You have your department, and I have mine" was what she replied to every offer.

Leaving his trunk standing upright beside the front door, Remus sidled through the small house. It was more of a cottage than anything and he had yet to discover where they had intended to lock him up to transform. The sound of the front door closing vaguely registered in his head as he tapped quietly on his parent's bedroom door. The voice that answered his knock was soft, and barely there but it was enough to make him smile a little.

"Lyall, I won't tell you again that you don't need to knock…"

Turning the handle slowly, Remus forced the small, barely there smile to get a little bigger and slipped his head through the door. "It's me, Mum…"

Hope sat up a little straighter against the pile of pillows cosily stacked up behind her back as he stepped into the bedroom. Her skin was so clammy and pale that she looked the way Remus felt before every full moon. Though really only thirty-eight, illness and worry had wearied her appearance so she looked ten years older than she was, and greying brown hair hung loose past her shoulders. To see his mother so helpless struck a feeling within Remus he could only describe as grief already.
But despite her appearance, there was no lessening the smile and the joy that spread over her kind face as soon as she saw her son.

"Oh Remus, you didn't need to come back already…"

He did. That was clear from one look. But it cheered him a little to see that she hadn't resigned herself. Smiling so the scars across his face wrinkled he crossed the room and leaned down to kiss the top of her head before pulling up the chair so he could sit with her. "Dad asked me to come."

"Oh, you know he worries over every little c-"

It was slightly ironic, Remus vaguely thought, for that to be the moment she dissolved into a fit of coughing. A thought quickly banished by a pang of pain, he forced himself to stop tapping his foot anxiously against the floor and reached out to hold her hand. "I'm sorry I didn't come sooner, Mum…I didn't know."

"Because I made your father promise not to worry you unless he had good reason…darling, would you…" Hope waved a hand to the glass of water beside her bed and Remus obediently passed it over. No sooner had he replaced it on the nightstand, the glass refilled itself immediately.

"Why? I would have come b-" She had to know, didn't she? Dumbledore and his father had made it perfectly clear that home was the place he needed to be, and as much as Remus didn't want to have to face it, there wasn't much long left.

"That's exactly why. Because you would have flown back right away or…appar-apari-teleported as quickly as you could."

Remus' lips twitched as she stumbled over the word, living with wizards had never taken the muggle out of her. It felt normal again for a minute.
"Apparated, Mum, and you need a licence for that."

"I wouldn't put it past those friends of yours to know how to do it already purely because they're not supposed to."

For a second, just a second, Remus forgot the gravity of the situation and grinned in response. If they could, no doubt James and Sirius would be. "That's completely fair."

The smile that lit his mother's eyes made Remus look away after that as she reached out and touched his hand.
"All I ever wanted for you was a normal life. Muggle or magical, you've always been our whole world, Remus."

"Mum…please don't-" His voice was barely above a whisper now but was silenced nonetheless by her tutting and squeezing his hand.

"I am still your mother, and you'll listen while I'm talking."

For a second she sounded so stern that Remus glanced up in alarm only to see her eyes twinkling. There was just much sadness there as there was mirth that made it clear she was trying her best to make light of the very real situation they all faced. Swallowing a thick lump in his throat, he nodded and let her finish.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry that we couldn't give you one. There hasn't been one day that I haven't thought about that night. I'm your mother and I couldn't protect you when my little boy needed me the very most-"

"Mum-please don't say that!" Tears were filling his own eyes now, threatening to fall if he even blinked and so, Remus didn't. He bit down hard on this inside of his cheek and raked his hands through his hair.

"I know. I know you've never blamed us. You never needed to say that."

That wasn't entirely true. There was a tiny part of Remus, buried deep down near the wolf itself that held his father responsible. Not his mother, never his mother, but there was a fraction of blame that he didn't want to admit he felt.

"But look at what you've grown up to be."

And only then did Remus lift his head slightly, and feel a drop of water slide down his face to look at her. She was smiling, so genuinely that the paleness of her skin and the sweat coating her forehead went away for a second.

"You have the weight of the world on your shoulders every day and look how well you carry it."

"Tell that to the scars on my face." And every other inch of skin.

"I am, Remus." And with a surprisingly firm grip, she reached over and placed his own hand on his cheek. The long scars spanning the width of his face tingled under his fingers and he felt the familiar twitch of shame he was so used to. "And I'm telling you to do the same. I might not know very much about magic, but I do know my son. That part of you is only that…a part of you, a werewolf is not all that you are."

"No…" Remus muttered, and as her hand left his, he dropped his fingers from tracing the scar and smiled a small and sad smile at his mother. "I'm your son."

"Much b-" and with a pained groan, Hope dissolved into dry heaving coughs and a jab of pain when through Remus who hastily passed her the glass of water again as the attack lessened.

"You need to sleep, Mum…" He murmured, desperately trying to keep it together for her benefit just as the door opened and Lyall stepped in, every inch the worn down husband.

"Please, Hope…"

xxxXxxx

The strangest part of grief is that it can begin before the loss itself occurs and grief cannot be described until it is truly felt. From the moment one accepts the reality of an impending loss, is when the roots of grief begin to set itself in the heart, in the soul and in the mind and one finds themselves beginning to mourn before the physical evidence is there that tells the body it's time. It was an automatic defence mechanism to try and lessen the inevitable emotional and mental blow that would occur any time. A defence mechanism that never works.

That was the only thing that Remus think of to explain the heaviness in his chest in the days that followed, his mind preparing for the agony it would surely soon feel. It wasn't a question of if. It was a matter of when.

There was rarely a moment in which neither Lyall nor Remus were at her beside, and often the both of them. And in those little moments of togetherness was the only cheer they could find, though it was under a great amount of effort for Hope's benefit so she would not need to see them suffering already.

Owls came, from his friends at school for Remus. After Remus sent back a short and direct reply to the first letter, he ignored all further correspondence, unable to explain any further than necessary.

Hope wouldn't hear her family speak of such sad things, and though she well deserved it, would not accept any pity. So instead of asking if there was anything he could do, Remus talked to her about Hogwarts, about how Sirius had been taken in by the Potters and how James would go so out of his way to impress Lily that his grades had all gone up this year already.

Every day her breathing grew a little more laboured and the coughing grew a little harsher. Every day her skin was a little more translucently pale and the grip in her fingers weakened. And in a way it was worse to watch her slowly fading away to a shadow of the woman she had once been than it would have been to find out about some tragic accident.

Because now they played the waiting game. There was no cure, no chance of a miraculous recovery, it was just waiting and hoping she wasn't suffering too badly.

He wished he could tell himself honestly that she wasn't but one look at his mother and he knew she was.

It had been five days since his hasty return from Hogwarts when Remus sidled into the bedroom and sat down with the smallest of smiles.

Hope smiled, her eyes were so sunken that a lump leapt into his throat when he saw it. Holding a finger up to her lips she nodded over to the other side of the bed where Lyall had finally fallen asleep for the first time in two days beside her. Unshaven and still with his boots laced, he was snoring quietly.
"Not that I think much will wake your father now." She whispered and then must have noticed Remus' hands behind his back. "What have you got there?"

Remus smiled in amusement and then glanced down at the floor for a moment before drawing out the small packet he held behind his back. The familiar gold foil crinkled a little and he looked up in time to see tears fill his mother's eyes as she realised the magnitude of the gesture.

"Chocolate? You wonderful boy…"

"It always helps me, it's the only thing that ever helps me in the mornings after…I thought, I really can't do anything else for you but maybe you'll feel-I don't know. Chocolate helps." He finished rambling quite lamely and snapped off a corner piece.

"Chocolate always helps." Hope corrected and though her appetite was nigh non existent and all she really ever consumed now was water, took the chocolate he offered. It was such a bizarre role reversal for a second that Remus felt wrong. He shouldn't be the one comforting her and bringing her chocolate to make her feel better. It should be the other way around.

"I still keep it with me at school you know…every full moon." He left out the fact that he knew it was his friends keeping the corner of his trunk stashed with blocks of Honeydukes chocolate and broke off a piece for himself. "I think you might have started a crippling addiction, Mum." For a second the smile on his face was genuine and with a glimmer of mirth that was mirrored in his mother's laughing eyes.

For a moment they just sat in companionable silence save for the crinkle of foil wrapping until Hope reached up to hold his hand and Remus' stomach dropped at how cold and small she felt.

"There is not one way that I could be prouder of you, son."

"I mean…I'm sure I could do-"

"Hush, you." For a second Hope's eyes held their old steely determination before softening again and making Remus hold her gaze. "Not one way."

A sharp pain filled his throat as Remus barely managed to swallow and he felt himself trembling as his squeezed her hand. Suddenly he was overcome with an overwhelming urge to never let go, as though this was all that was tethering her to his world now and if he dared let go she would be gone.

"Oh little child…be not afraid…"

It took a second for the words to properly process in his brain before Remus really heard her. His confusion must have been clear on his face because she continued when he looked up.

"Do you remember? The storm clouds mask…"

He said nothing for a second, taken by a sudden thought that her mind was going too until a little tiny part of him that had been such a long time hidden away and outgrown sparked alert again. A tug on his heart that went so deep he couldn't really place exactly when it was. It was a song…she was singing to him something that he had not heard in near ten years. And yet, the words came back, just for a moment.

"The storm clouds mask your beloved moon…" The words were so soft from his lips that for a second he wondered whether he'd murmured them aloud at all. A lullaby, from so long ago when he was a little child still small enough to hide in his mother's arms when she bundled him up to sooth a crying a child who didn't understand what was happening. A little terrified boy who couldn't remember anything more than a nightmare creature and pain, so much pain.

A tear slid unbidden down his cheek and involuntarily he turned away to hide it, when a soothing voice continued,

"Do you remember the end? In the morning…everything's fine in the morning…Remus?"

"The rain will be gone in the morning…"

"But you'll still be here in the morning."

xxxXxxx

Everything was not fine in the morning.