Chapter Sixteen
Piecing the Past

Professor Lupin sat at his desk in his office. His feet were propped up on his desk as he was looking at an old album. It was red, leather-bound, and with a gold inscription on the cover that read The Lupin Family. He flipped through the pages of pictures, looking at all of them carefully, particularly the ones of his daughter. He noticed she was almost never in a picture alone; she was always with her brother, unless it was a picture of her from the Muggle school they were sent to. Those were the only pictures of her where she was completely alone. In those pictures she was so happy, looking as though she hadn't a care in the world. He knew she and her brother were the best of friends when they were younger. You could almost never catch them apart, but they had been separated for three long years. Maybe that had something to do with this all, he thought as he gazed at a picture of her and Remus from their seventh birthday.

He turned the page again; it was another school picture from when she was in the third grade. She was sitting in front of a giant tree on a wooden stool, hands folded on her lap and looking right at the camera, apparently trying to keep herself from laughing too hard. She had always thought school pictures were foolish. Under that picture was Remus's school photo. He was smiling, but he also didn't like school pictures. He didn't think they were foolish, he just didn't like them.

After those two was a picture from the year before their last birthday together. It had been a quiet birthday, as they hadn't the money to have a big one like they did the year after; business wasn't going well at work. But still, it had been a nice time, both of his kids with him, the family happy. He never thought that a few months later he would be saying goodbye to one of them, to both of them, in fact.

He closed the album and placed it in his desk drawer; he sat up and looked around the room, heaving a great sigh. He wondered if he should ask Remus what was wrong with his sister. But no, Remus was too sick to answer any questions, for today at least. How was he going to handle this? He couldn't talk to his daughter; she would just fly at him and storm out of the room. He had to find out. He knew how…

He stopped in front of the old orphanage. Looking up through the windows, he could see vaguely into the common room and saw a group of kids sitting by the window. He walked up to the front door and knocked on it. The door opened and he saw a blonde haired, blue-eyed girl, who looked to be Rachael's age, standing in front of him.

"Can I help you, sir?" she asked nervously.

"Yes," he answered kindly. "I need to speak with a – err - oh right, Mrs. Ramben, please?" The girl looked a bit hesitant. Just as Professor Lupin was about to ask again, Mrs. Ramben appeared besides the girl.

"Becky is there a problem?" she asked in her stiff voice. The girl named Becky looked up and pointed to the professor. "Oh, it's you. Your daughter is off at school, you know."

"Yes, I'm aware of that," Professor Lupin answered, sounding a bit agitated. "I needed to speak to you about her."

Looking startled, Mrs. Ramben nodded and stepped aside to let him. He followed her to her office, which was full of loose paperwork at the moment, and sat down as she sat at her desk. She moved aside some papers and folded her hands on the table.

"What did you need to talk to me about?" she asked.

Professor Lupin thought for a moment. There was so much he needed to know, he just didn't know where to start.

"I need to know," he said, "what happened to my daughter here?"

Mrs. Ramben stacked some more papers and began to talk.

"Well your daughter was… how can I describe it? Well, she was different." She said how his daughter and her roommate didn't get along and were always fighting, both verbally and physically. She spoke about how she was always getting detentions and doing some other punishment chore. She talked of the time when she was caught leaving a mouse in Becky's bed, as a way of pay back for Becky leaving a dead rat in Rachael's bed.

Professor Lupin listened intently. He was hanging on every word, looking for something that could help him understand why his daughter was acting like the way she was. He was getting a lot of information about her, but none of it seemed to help. She was always getting into arguements when she was home; it wasn't anything to make her act the way she did.

Then there was his answer. Mrs. Ramben brought up what Rachael had told Remus, the time when she was going to get rid of her problems forever. Professor Lupin listened; horrified at what he was hearing, his daughter had done this? It couldn't have been, but he knew no one would lie about such things; to lie about something like this was a sick, cruel joke.

"After that, she kept close to herself. She didn't talk much for a while, and then she got back to her regular self. That's about all I can tell you."

He was silent for a moment, and then stood up.

"Thank you, Mrs. Ramben," he choked, holding out a hand for her to shake. "I needed to know that. That's all I need, bye." He let himself out and went to the front of the building. He crossed to the side alley and sank down against the wall, burying his face in his hands.

He wished he had never come to the orphanage to find out what was wrong. But he had to otherwise he never would have known. He never would know what he had to do to fix it. He couldn't help but think this entire thing was his fault. Rachael was right, he could have argued better than he did; only he didn't. He had to talk to his daughter.

"Wait for it…"

"Wait for what?"

"Quiet or we won't be able to hear it."

"Hear what?"

Just then, there was an explosive farting sound coming right from where Snape was sitting. James, Sirius, Peter, Rachael and Lily were sitting in the Great Hall, eating their dinner, while James and Sirius were planning a nice little revenge trick on Snape because he threatened Rachael. Rachael thought the idea was absolutely hilarious, but Lily thought it was horribly mean and didn't want to take part in it.

James and Sirius slapped each other's hands in congratulations and saw Snape jumped in fright of the noise; he didn't know where it was coming from so he just continued eating. He also didn't notice that every time he took a bite into his meal the farting noise came again.

"I like to call it Fart Foods, compliments of James Potter and Sirius Black," Sirius laughed as more noises came from Snape.

"Oh yes, you're very funny," Lily said through gritted teeth. "Real mature."

"What d'you expect?" James said. "You're talking to us after all!" Without a word Lily left the hall. "Right… so… let's hear some more from the Snape Symphony."

Rachael was sitting in the common room, Quidditch through the Ages open on her lap, but she wasn't reading it. She was staring into the fire, her eyes unfocused. She was thinking about what she had said to her dad. She really made him upset but she just couldn't help what she said; she had meant it. Should she go and apologise to him? She didn't know if he even wanted to talk to her, but she had to try. She glanced at the giant grandfather clock in the corner of the common room, it was only seven o' clock; curfew was in an hour. She had enough time.

She ran over to the portrait hole, about to push it open, but it opened from the outside before she could try. Much to her surprise, standing on the other side was her dad.

"Err… hi?" she said uncertainly.

"Can you come to my office for a minute?" he asked.

Wondering what she could have done now, Rachael followed him to his office. She looked at his desk and saw he was boiling a pot of water and two teacups were placed next to the kettle.

Professor Lupin told her to sit down while he poured some cups of tea for them.

"No, I don't want any," Rachael said as she sank into a chair. He nodded as he poured himself a cup. He sat down opposite of his daughter and took a sip. "So," Rachael said, drumming her fingers on the arm of her chair, "what'd you want to talk to me about?"

"I visited the orphanage today," he said quietly.

"Please don't mention that place."

"I have to, unfortunately. In order for me to understand you, I have to talk about this. After this, I promise I'll never mention it again." Rachael studied her dad for a minute before nodding. He folded his hands on his desk and began to talk. "Well, the woman who works there, Mrs. Ramben, she told me a bit about you when you were there, how you got into fights with your roommate. You would always get detention and one other thing…"

He told her that all of that was new to him; he had never known his daughter to do anything like that. Why did she? Rachael just said she couldn't explain it; she just wasn't herself for the time she was there. She told him how, when she was there, she had to change completely in order to survive. If she had stayed her quiet self she wouldn't have lasted a minute, so she adopted the attitude of a loud person who loved insulting people for no good reason, which was far from her real self.

She didn't like the idea of it, but once she had started acting that way it grew on her. No matter what she did it stayed with her, which was probably why Snape loved to pick on her. She would always try and think of a better comeback than he could.

"But why didn't you just forget about them and act like yourself?"

"If you were there you'd understand why. Becky and all of them were just horrible; I tried being myself for the first few days. It didn't work though. I got a black eye and ended up cleaning the entire place for acting like myself. It wasn't working so I had to change, I didn't want to though."

Her dad did nothing and said nothing; he was simply lost for words.

"Well, this all explains a lot," he muttered finally. "Now I know why you were acting the way you were; you were just frustrated I guess." Rachael nodded. "And I'm sorry I blamed you for the incident with Snape in the hallway earlier, I'm sorry for everything."

Rachael shook her head. "No, I am. I was being stupid; it's not your fault."

"It doesn't matter, just as long as we're not arguing. After all, you've always been my favourite, just don't tell Remus that."

Rachael gave a short laugh.

"I think you should be getting back to Gryffindor Tower, don't want Filch to catch you."

Rachael said good night to her dad and trudged back up to the Portrait of the Fat Lady. She said the password, "Owl Pellets," and went off into the dormitory. She sat down on her bed and leaned on her back. She was glad her dad found everything out. It turned out to help; she and he were friends again.