I was rereading the first book and wondered how unusual young Remus must've been at Hogwarts. Read and enjoy – R
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns all to do with Harry Potter, his friends, family and enemies. This story is for fun, not profit.
A New Home
Lonely
Remus Lupin was an unusual boy as he loved to do his homework when other boys were catching scaley reptiles, tracking dirt through expensive living rooms and scaring two years off the lives of people in the street with exploding firecrackers.
Presently he had barricaded himself in his tiny room behind a fortress of books. Everything from Ancient Runes to Zoolology vs Magizoology were scattered around him, with bookmarks poking through well worn pages. Though he did have the erudition of an older wizard; tonight he was madly flipping through pages, quizzing himself as he read.
When he was younger he had been playing in the garden when a small white puppy crawled out from under the bush. Remus played all morning with it without a qualm until his mother came out brandishing her wand and screaming. The puppy snarled and bit Remus before scampering away under the bush. His mother had cried that whole day, even when taking him to the hospital to heal his wound. He remembered her sitting at the table for weeks after that, staring quietly at an envelope in her hand. A month later after Remus had his first transformation he was registered as a werewolf. From then on, his life took a huge turn.
To sit down in your desk at the far corner of the room only to have every other student still shift their desk a few metres away, hurt him inside. At Friendship Vale Elementary, the older bullies, who used to pick on him when he was in the younger grades, now ran like the wind in fear whenever Remus sneezed. Some nights when he went into his mother's menagerie, the creatures with the highest Ministry of Magic classification would scamper away into the darkest corners of their cages and bowls, as if sensing his alternate power.
His loneliness was insignificant compared to his guilt. His parents had suffered just as much, if not more, due to his condition. His father owned an Owlery and was the biggest producer of couriers in the county. That was until people were unsure about the quality of the trained owls if the man could not even keep his son under control. The Lupins were on the brink of broke and owed Gringotts four mortgages on their property.
His mother's vocation of a magizooloogy assistant was both blessed and cursed by her son's lycanthropy. Her book, "Living with a Werewolf Cub", was a best seller with a foreword by Kipling himself. However fame was not without its price and the cost was ostracism from society. Even muggles from Friendship Vale had somehow received bootlegged copies of her book and their lack of knowledge about werewolves had caused a surge of hysteria. Hate mail, poisoned owls, destroyed property, obscene phonecalls and the investigations every few months had tested their parental love and devotion to Remus. He could not shake his guilt no matter how often they smiled and spoke of an optimistic future of understanding and reconciliation. He could not foresee this future.
Yet, this evening was a typical evening in the Lupin household. It started with the dinner discussion on the topics in the Daily Prophet that morning: tonight his father was complaining about the price of owl pellets rising again and how that Potter family had bought another publishing firm and doubled the employees' wages.
His mother drilled him on how he had wasted another perfectly wonderful summer inside away from other children. She could not understand how someone as kind hearted and intelligent as her little boy could find it so hard to make friends. Now that she was going with Professor Scamander to Africa, he could not rely on her to hold his hand through school, though he considered the idea ridiculous as he had not held her hand since he was three.
Then his father stepped into the conversation, reminding her that making friends was difficult for Remus because of his condition. Even supporting their family was difficult because very few people want to buy trained owls from a man whose own son is a little different.
While this conversation was evidently spinning out of control, Remus would finish his meal and slip upstairs to his room to read. He detested being the burden on his parents, but they just did not understand the pressures he was under. Tomorrow he would be attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and he needed to prove Headmaster Dumbledore that he was an admirable student and worth all the troublesome politics for his admittance. The Headmaster had sent a letter explaining that Remus' lycanthropy was to remain confidential to the staff only and certain precautions for his monthly transformation would be implemented before his arrival. What these implementations were was not outlined in the letter but as long as it meant leaving Friendship Vale for six months, he would accept anything.
Suddenly his door opened and his mother there in her dressing gown, scowling at him. "This is the last time I'm going to tell you, young man. It's three in the morning and you need your sleep. If I have to come in here again you will not have any money for the trip." The thought of no chocolate for the entire nerve racking trip sent all his books falling to the floor and his head snuggling into the pillow. "That's my boy," his mother whispered and as she closed the door she saw his foot twitch as he fell asleep.