Chapter Two
What Happened?
"Bad, very bad... couldn't possibly get any worse," a voice muttered in the far off distance. Rachael wanted to open her eyes so badly to see who was talking, but she was much too tired. Her head was spinning, aching, throbbing, it was all so painful.
"How bad is it? What happened?" said a second voice, a woman's voice.
Trying with all her might, Rachael opened her eyes to see the fuzzy outline of a middle-aged, short, brown-haired woman standing mere feet away from her. She looks familiar, Rachael thought, unable to think straight. The woman glanced down and Rachael recognised those sharp green eyes; it was her mother. Mrs. Lupin looked over to a balding man wearing a white lab jacket. Who was he?
"Well, Mrs. Lupin," the man said. "We don't know what happened. All we can go by is what your husband told us, and it isn't very helpful." What were they talking about?
Then Rachael noticed there was a bed next to her, with someone in it. She leaned forward to get a better look. It was a sleeping Remus. It was odd though, there was such a peaceful air about him. It was one that she had never seen before in her life, except when she visited her grandmother on her deathbed. This set her thinking.
Was Remus... dead? No, he could not be... after all... what could possibly kill him? Then she remembered the wolf. The wolf was chasing them; did it ever leave them alone? Rachael looked around to see where she was. She was a white room with one bed, the one Remus was in. There were some potted plants, two doors at opposite walls of each other, the man, and her mother.
"Well, can't you run some tests or anything?" her mother said anxiously. The man nodded and that was when Rachael realised he was scribbling on a clipboard. What was this place? What tests was her mother talking about?
"Well, yes, we can, but it'd be much easier if one of your children to tell us what happened," the man said, still writing on the clipboard.
Her mother looked at Remus and then at Rachael. She smiled upon seeing her daughter fully awake. She walked over and knelt down next to the chair Rachael was sitting in. "Rachael, sweetie," she said in a calm, but urgent, voice. "Can you tell us what happened?"
"What d'you mean?" Rachael asked. She even didn't know what happened. Her mother looked at her, puzzled, disbelieving. Her mouth was twitching slightly in the corners, a definite warning sign. She didn't believe her daughter and, frankly, Rachael had expected it from the moment her mother asked her that question. Undoubtedly, Mrs. Lupin loved her daughter very much; she had always seemed to favour Remus more, probably because he was the youngest by ten minutes.
"Rachael," her mother said, her voice getting tenser. "You were with your brother when this happened! What happened to him?"
Rachael flinched as Mrs. Lupin yelled sharply in her ears. Why didn't her mother believe her? She didn't know what happened. Why would she? She didn't even know why she didn't know.
"Mum, I said I don't know!"
"Don't you lie to me!" she yelled, startling the man and Rachael. There was now an intense fire in her mother's eyes, one that Rachael had never seen before. "What happened to my son?"
They heard stirring from behind them, Remus was awake. They turned around to see that he was sitting up and rubbing his temple. Rachael could just see the tiniest bandage covering one part of his forehead and it was soaked in blood.
"I'll tell you," he said quietly.