CHAPTER TWO
Dinner was always a silent affair for the Lupins. John Lupin, usually tired out from a hard days work, preferred to finish his meal as quickly as possible, before sinking into bed and another night of quiet. Maria Lupin, shy and submissive, never spoke without her husband asking her to, and was hence more than happy to eat quietly, then join her husband in a restful sleep. Remus, well, he just went along with what his parents did, for conversation in the household, in the rare instance it occurred, was nearly always to scold him, whether in a harsh or gentle manner.
The meal after Dumbledore's visit, however, was different.
Practically bursting with excitement and relief that had long been kept within him, Lupin found himself anxiously biting his lip, waiting for his father to say something, to tell his mother-who had been in the garden-the good news. When he didn't, Lupin took it upon himself to break the untold law.
"Mom-I got into Hogwarts!"
Maria looked up slowly from her meager helping of string beans, swallowed, glanced at her husband, then said quietly, "That's lovely, Remus," before returning to her meal.
Undeterred, Lupin tried again. "Mom-I'm the first werewolf ever to get into a magic school-especially one like Hogwarts! It'll make all the difference in the world. That's what Dumbledore said."
"Stop self-immortalizing yourself, Remus," John ordered, "It's very impolite and immodest, not to mention inaccurate. What the Headmaster did say was that a heavy layer of protections has been put in place especially for you, so you had best be careful for the next seven years and not cause any trouble. The man's done more than enough for you."
"But-"
"No ifs, ands, or buts. Now, go to bed. Your mother and I will clean up dinner."
Lupin flinched. It was as hard of a rebuttal as he ever got. When his father excused him from chores, it meant he did not consider his son fit, or worthy, enough to carry them out. And uselessness was one thing the young werewolf could not stand.
Trudging grumpily to his bedroom, he creaked open the un-greased door, locked the rusted lock behind him, and sank onto his bed.
The boy's bedroom was small, like the rest of the house, with only enough room for a beat-up old single bed, and a single rickety old chair. Now, however, the chair had been removed, sold at auction, bringing twenty-three pounds to the impoverished family after a glamour charm had been cast upon it.
Toxic lead paint peeled in deadly flakes from the ceiling and walls, and each of the four corners had holes the size of fists in them, making the roof look like a badly placed jigsaw piece. No matter where Lupin moved his bed, snow in the winter, bugs in the summer, rain in the spring and leaves in the fall, all managed to assault the sleeping boy.
Leaning back wearily into the musty sheets, Lupin buried the side of his head slightly into the stained flat pillow, struggling to make sense of all that had happened that day. None of it was logical. Well, none of it discluding his father's reaction. And Lupin was a creature of logic. He needed to understand why. Why such glorious and wonderful things had happened to him, and what, so to speak, was the negative aspect of these occurrences.
Lupin sighed, running shaking hands through his thin hair. He knew some things couldn't be explained by logic, but that concept was always hard for him to grasp. Logic was his only foundation left in life, and with so many others lost to the dark of the world, he was not about to let this slip through his fingers.
Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to drift into a dark and lonely sleep, the cold that was ever present in his heart seeping through to his limbs. Silence, spare his breathing. Silence was not what welcomed the boy in the land of dreams.
The gate had opened, and the young boy picked up his pace eagerly. Lupin watched in desperation, failing to produce any sound to warn the boy, as the gate transformed into a large, gaping mouth. The boy screamed, and turned to run, but was trapped behind a wall of vicious, sharp teeth. Eyes blinking hellishly in the dim, moon-lit night, the beast swallowed the boy whole. The young child's screams continued, all down the throat, until-
Lupin forced his eyes open, breathing raggedly. It was the same dream every night. The terrifying mouth of doom, poverty, and self-destruction. The wolf. Lupin didn't need to be a Seer to tell that.
Standing and stretching, he moved across the damp floorboards to a roughly cut window and gazed out towards the woods. Rain. Again. He sighed, rubbing his eyes. There was no way his father would let him out in this.
Feeling like a caged animal in his room, Lupin strode out towards the living room, where his mother was sitting, mending a broken cup with her wand. It wasn't working well.
Sighing, Lupin sat down next to her on the salvaged couch and picked up the dictionary to read.
"Where shall I start, mother?" He questioned, flipping exasperatedly through the reference material. "Hm? You know, you can speak without my father."
Maria looked up warily. Normally her son was quiet and kind, nearly as quiet as her. That Dumbledore had changed him…
"Mom! Hello, Earth to Mother!" Lupin sighed, leaning back in his seat and slamming the dictionary closed, making his mother jump. "I give up."
And with that the boy stood and swept out into the rain ignoring his father's angry, "Get back in here this instant!"
Running into the deepest part of the forest he knew of, Lupin swung expertly into a tree and stilled the swaying branches with his left hand, his right placed on the trunk in front of him, ready to give him the momentum to leap.
He heard his father's hard footsteps pounding on the soggy grass. Leaning slightly over the edge of his tree, he glimpsed the top of John's head and, on a whim, chucked a stick at it.
He'd always had good aim.
So did his father.