Hope Lupin died five days after Christmas. The night before her death had been a full moon; Remus hated to think that his mother had spent her final night on Earth listening to his wolfish self howling in pain and anger. He was hardly strong enough to attend the funeral they held for her, the chill of the December air seeping deep into his exhausted bones, but he held his chin up and endured it for his mother. Sirius and James let him lean against them whenever he felt too tired or overwhelmed to stay standing on his own.
Instead of a cemetery, they chose to bury Remus's mother in the privacy of their own wooded land, just behind her precious gardens. They dug her grave with shovels instead of wands, as Remus and his father knew she would have preferred—Remus was too weak to help with the digging, but the other Marauders all stepped in to take his place, James calling red roses from the earth around her grave.
That night, Remus sat in silence with his father in the living room until the early hours of the morning, the Marauders having long since gone to bed. Lyall Lupin was stoking a small fire beside the sofa with his wand, the flames highlighting the tight wrinkles marring his face.
"I'm sorry, Dad," Remus said eventually, breaking the interminable silence. "Mum's death…it was the cancer, I know, but it was also me and…and everything I forced her to worry herself about. I think—I don't think she would be dead now if it weren't for me." The words had been festering somewhere inside Remus for weeks now. In a way, he thought, his mother had been dying ever since he received his werewolf bite so many years ago.
Lyall's head shot up abruptly. "Don't say that," he growled. "Your…condition…it isn't your fault." He inhaled a shaky breath; Remus saw that his eyes were brimming with tears. "It's my fault, Remus. All of it—your lycanthropy, your mum—it's all my fault."
"Of course it's not your fault, Dad." Remus leaned forward, surprised at his father's sudden display of emotion.
"You don't understand." Now the tears were trickling down his cheeks. "All these years, Remus, I've been lying to you about what happened that night, the night you were…were bitten."
"Lying to me?" Remus's heart began to pound. "Dad, what do you mean you've been lying to me?"
"I told you that I didn't know anything about the werewolf who bit you—that he was a random wolf who attacked you without knowing what he was doing. But it's not true, Remus." Remus had stopped breathing, a sudden nausea roiling his stomach. "The wolf that bit you was Fenrir Greyback."
Greyback. Remus tasted blood in his mouth. Fenrir Greyback was the most notorious werewolf in all of Britain, well-known for his proclivity for attacking children and his tenuous alliance with Lord Voldemort. Without thinking, Remus found himself rolling up his sleeve to examine the bite that scarred his biceps. Greyback had given that to him.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked hoarsely.
Lyall shook his head, his breaths hitched. "He bit you because of me, Remus. I…I was working for the Ministry when you were little, you know. Greyback was brought in for questioning one day over the deaths of a couple of Muggle children. The other two men on the committee—two right berks if I've ever seen them—they thought him an innocent Muggle tramp who had nothing to do with the deaths, but I knew better. I knew he was a werewolf, and I…God help me, Remus, I told him that werewolves were soulless and evil, that they deserved nothing less than death."
Remus had gone very still—he could no longer feel his face, his limbs, anything that was a part of him. "I swear, son, I have never regretted anything in my life as much as those words. There is nothing in the world I wouldn't do to take them back."
"That's why Greyback bit me," Remus whispered. "To get revenge on you."
"He should have bitten me," Lyall spat. "I would have bloody well deserved it. But Fenrir always goes after children, and you…you were the perfect target for him." He tore at his hair. "I never told you the truth because I'm a coward, Re. I didn't want you to know I said those things—and I didn't want you to hate me for saying them, for ruining your life the way I did…." He lowered his face into his hands and let out a strangled sob.
For a long, cold minute, Remus found himself unable to think straight. He'd been bitten because of his father—and more than that, he'd been bitten because of what his father had said about people like him, soulless and evil and deserving of death. But Lyall was also the father who'd planted kisses on every new scar he received after the full moon, who'd uprooted his entire life in order to protect him, who'd never let Remus think he was anything other than perfect. Maybe he had believed those things he'd said once, but he certainly didn't anymore; certainly he didn't believe them about Remus, at least.
Almost on instinct, Remus moved to sit beside his father on the sofa and wrapped his arms around him. "I could never hate you, Dad," he said firmly. "It's not your fault I was bitten—it's Greyback's."
Lyall Lupin looked up at his son, his lips trembling; then he leaned over to give Remus a kiss on the temple. "You're too kind to me, son," he murmured. "You've always been too kind."
But Remus didn't feel very kind. A hot wave of anger had risen up within him, not directed at his father, but instead at the werewolf he now knew had made him what he was. Remus had always pitied the wolf who had bitten him, thinking him one of lycanthropy's innocent victims who'd have to spend the rest of his life with the knowledge that he had savaged a little child. But Greyback was different; Greyback liked to savage children, relied upon it, expecting horrified parents to toss their newly-infected children out on the streets so he could pick them up and recruit them into his pack. Greyback specialized in ruining lives—lives just like Remus's.
For the first time ever, Remus truly felt like he had enough cruel strength in him to want someone dead.
