Word count: 3,000

Chapter 10

Revelations

"You know, Christmas isn't far away."

Remus glanced at James with one eyebrow raised as he continued piling textbooks into his bag.

"Yeah," he said, "it's hard to miss with all the Christmas trees and enchanted portraits singing carols throughout the castle."

"Shut up, Moony," James muttered with a fond roll of his eyes. "I just wanted to know if you were coming with me this year. Padfoot will be there, and I'm trying to convince Wormtail to come for a few days after Christmas. Maybe for New Year's. We could make a party of it."

Remus frowned. It was tempting. He'd stayed at James' house for Christmas two years before, and it had been one for the memory books. The previous year, he'd escaped reality with his friends by staying at Hogwarts, and that had been a welcome escape from what he would have faced at home.

"Sorry," he said. "I need to spend time with my dad."

He kept his gaze on his bag. Though the Marauders knew everything that had happened with his mother and how badly his father had taken her death, he still felt uncomfortable each time they openly discussed it.

James clapped him on the back.

"I understand, but if you decide you want to come over, you can drop by any time. Mum loves you more than she loves me or Sirius. She never shuts up about what a 'sweet boy' you are."

Remus couldn't help but smile at the thought of Mrs. Potter, who had been nothing but kind to him since she'd met him despite knowing the details of his condition.

"That's not true," he said. "It's Sirius who she likes more than you."

With a pout, James threw himself upon Remus' bed, laying back and throwing an arm over his head dramatically.

"My own mother has betrayed me for another son!"

Remus laughed, kicking at James' foot to make him sit back up.

"You really should come over at least for a day," James pushed. "It could be while your dad's at work or something. I want to see if my parents know anything about what Dumbledore's doing to stop You-Know-Who."

Remus snorted as he threw his school bag over his shoulder.

"I don't think you're any more likely to have success on that front with me there than on your own."

James retrieved his own bag before joining Remus at the door.

"Maybe not," he admitted, "but it's not the same poking our noses into others people's business without you."

Remus offered him a small smile as they headed to class.

"Lily wants me to go to Slughorn's Christmas party with her."

The other three Marauders looked up from the dinners to raise their eyebrows at James.

"Mate, no," Sirius said, shaking his head. "You can't do that."

James shrugged, moving a piece of potato around on his plate.

"It might not be that bad. Lily will be there."

"So will Snivellus," Sirius said with a frown. "And every other obnoxious git in this school. Tell Lily that you refuse to be part of such snobbery."

James squirmed, keeping his gaze on his plate.

"I already said I'd go."

Sirius groaned.

"Have fun," Remus said with a small smile. "Maybe something interesting will happen. Didn't Ryan Hampton knock over the punch bowl one year?"

"No," Sirius said. "That's not interesting, Moony. If anything funner than paint drying is going to happen at this party, we have to create it."

"'We'?" Remus said. "I wasn't invited."

Sirius leaned towards him with a smirk that had Remus averting his gaze to his roast beef.

"Lucky for you, my invitation mentioned a date."

Remus' fork clattered to his plate, and he turned bright red.

"D-date?" he stuttered. "Are you sure about that? People would suspect things."

Sirius shrugged, but there was tension in his shoulders as he reached across Remus to stab a piece of sausage off a platter with his fork.

"Let them," he said forcefully. "We have to save James from an entire evening of boredom."

"What about Peter?" Remus asked, gesturing at the boy who was playing with his food without looking at them.

He glanced up when Remus said his name, offering him a small smile.

"Sorry, Peter," Sirius said with a shrug. "I'm only allowed one date, and James is spoken for."

"It's fine," Peter said with a shake of his head. "I have the better end of the deal, right?"

His following laughter sounded fake to Remus, but Sirius and James joined in easily.

The party was everything Remus expected from a Slug Club party. It wasn't as loud as the parties they'd thrown in the common room, but the formality of it made it worse. From the moment he walked in, Remus knew he needed to behave a certain way to create an impression, but he had no practice of how to actually achieve that. It didn't help that his "date" was determined to make a terrible impression.

Everyone was in formal wear, and Remus had been forced to dig out a pair of dress robes that had been bought for his mother's funeral, which left him in a worse mood.

He stuck close by Sirius' side, a light pink tinge to his cheeks that could have been blush. Each time someone saw him, he waited for them to ask why he was there. He dreaded having to explain that he'd come as Sirius' date.

Sirius had decided they would do nothing more than trail James and Lily. While Lily kept looking over her shoulder to roll her eyes at them, she didn't tell them to leave them alone, and she didn't seem keen on mingling with many of the other guests either.

They'd been at the party for fifteen minutes when Lily froze, her eyes on the table littered with hors d'oeuvres.

"Marlene didn't say she was going to be here."

The boys turned, and sure enough, Marlene McKinnon was standing near the table with a small group of older witches and wizards. She was comfortable amongst them, more so than would be expected from a girl who had only left Hogwarts the previous year.

Before any of the boys could say a thing, Lily took off in Marlene's direction, leaving them to scramble through the crowd behind her.

Marlene saw them coming before they reached her, and with a panicked look at her companions, she headed in their direction.

"Who are they?" Lily asked Marlene when they met, inclining her head toward the adults.

Marlene shrugged, unsurprised by Lily's brashness.

"Just some people from work."

"Ah, yes, the mysterious work that I couldn't possibly understand."

Marlene rolled her eyes.

"If you're going to be like this, Lily, I'd rather not talk to you. I've explained myself enough times and don't want to do it again."

"Maybe if your explanations made sense, I wouldn't keep asking."

Sirius nudged Remus in the side and leaned in to whisper, "Do you know what this is about?"

"Later," Remus snapped.

Marlene took a step towards Lily and lowered her voice to avoid being heard by the crowd around them.

"I've told you: there's nothing to tell."

She cast a careful look at the crowd around them, and Lily copied her before taking a deep breath. There was still fire in her eyes.

"Fine," she said, "but I'll figure it out eventually."

"I'm sure you will," Marlene said with the closest thing she'd shown to a smile. "As soon as you graduate probably."

Her gaze turned to the boys, and her smile widened.

"Never thought I'd see the three of you subjecting yourself to one of these things. What are you doing here? And where's Pettigrew? Did you lose him?"

Sirius wasted no time in his response.

"Peter didn't have an invitation, but we all have to make sacrifices for love, Marley."

He inserted himself between James and Lily, throwing an arm around both of their shoulders.

"Right," she said, smirk widening. "I'd much rather talk about what's been going on between these two."

Patrolling was one of the most important duties of a prefect, but it was Remus' least favourite. When he had someone to patrol with, it was fine, but late evening patrols were typically done alone. All he wanted was to get back to the common room with his friends.

It didn't help that the whole castle had an air of uncertainty at night. There were any number of nooks and crannies for the unknown to be lurking in. When he'd been younger and exploring the castle with his friends, that had been exciting. Alone after wizarding Britain had descended into war, it was decidedly less so.

His senses were on high alert; no student would be slipping past him undetected.

There was a noise around the corner, and his heart raced. He held his breath as he inched forward, wand in his hand. He missed fifth year when a similar sound would have meant a roll of the eyes and surging forward to catch the rule breaker. He tried to remind himself that it was still more likely to be someone looking for fun than someone with sinister intentions.

Suddenly, a bolt of red light barrelled towards him, and Remus had a split second in which to perform a shield spell.

He ran forward, adrenaline coursing through his body. Rounding the corner, he found no sign of anyone. He turned in circles, looking for an indication of someone's presence, but he found nothing. After five minutes of being on high alert, he was almost able to accept that the perpetrator was gone.

His adrenaline caught up with him. His ears rang, and exhaustion set in like he'd run a kilometer without stopping. His body wanted to collapse against the floor, but he wouldn't allow himself to do that. There was no telling where his would-be attacker had disappeared to.

Possible reactions ran through his mind. The smartest course of action was going straight to McGonagall or Dumbledore to tell them what had happened, but Remus couldn't bring himself to go to them. As foolish as it might have been, he didn't want to admit that someone had tried to attack him.

He didn't know why. Perhaps it had merely been a student enthralled with You-Know-Who and had stumbled upon Remus as a convenient target for their anger. But perhaps what had just happened was a targeted attack.

Others might have thought he was jumping to conclusions, but he was sure the culprit had been Snape despite not having proof. If it hadn't been Snape acting alone, then it was people who Snape had told of his condition despite being sworn to secrecy.

And that left him too unnerved to seek help. There was little the professors could do to protect him once he was outside the castle, and he could easily picture his friends' reactions to the story. There would be horror, yes, but they wouldn't waste time before going after Snape no matter what Remus said. The last thing he wanted as to escalate things.

Outside the Fat Lady's portrait, he stowed his wand in his pocket and pasted a smile onto his face.

As Remus stood in the living room of his childhood home with his trunk at his feet, he couldn't worry about what career he would have after Hogwarts or how hard he needed to study to convince someone respectable that they should take a chance on a werewolf. All he could focus on were the memories.

"Everything's in the same place as always," his father said with a small smile.

Remus hummed in agreement, trying his best to smile back as he levitated his trunk and directed it towards his room.

The bedroom, too, was the same as always. While his mother had come in to tidy it up once a month or so, his father hadn't bothered to do that since September. A quick wave of Remus' wand got rid of the dust, but everything else remained exactly as he'd left it.

His father's position within the Ministry meant that he'd never wanted for anything as a child except a cure for lycanthropy. The material things, from clothing to toys, had always been there.

Even as an adult, his room contained remnants of those earlier years. The books on his shelves ranged from picture books to old Hogwarts textbooks. If he dug through his wardrobe, he knew he'd unearth a box of old toys.

Despite that, his bedroom held less memories of his mother than anywhere else in the house. Being there was the closest thing to a reprieve he could achieve without taking James up on his offer to visit.

It had been nearly a year since his mother's death.

Shaking his head, he pushed away the memories.

He left his room behind. The point of coming home for Christmas had been to provide a distraction for his father, who had to live in the house year round with reminders of his wife all around him.

Remus found Lyall standing over the kitchen counter. Lost in his own thoughts, the man didn't notice his son until Remus pulled out a chair from the table, causing it to scrape against the floor.

"Is it alright if we eat some leftovers?" Lyall asked. "They're from the pub down the street. It's safer than my own cooking."

Remus nodded even as he thought about how scandalized his mother would be to know his father was surviving on nothing but pub food.

After she'd been diagnosed, Hope had taught Remus how to cook. She'd tried to same with her husband, but he had resisted, perhaps because he viewed it as an acceptance of her oncoming death.

Not that his reluctance had made any difference in the end. She was as dead as she would have been had he learned how to fry an egg without cracking the yolk.

Remus watched Lyall place the food onto two plates and made a mental note to go straight to the grocer's after they'd eaten. Maybe his father would be willing to learn a recipe or two.

Or maybe cooking would only remind him of his dead wife.

"So, how's school?"

Remus internally sighed as his father sat down across from him and placed a full plate in front of him.

"Good. It's just a lot of studying."

Lyall's smile was bright and genuine.

"You'll do incredible, son. You've proven that much ten times over. Once you get those results, they'll be banging on the door wanting to hire you."

Remus sat his fork on his plate.

"Dad…"

Lyall's smile faltered.

"You had to have heard the news working at the Ministry," Remus said quietly. "With all those new restrictions on werewolves, McGonagall can't find anyone who will hire me."

His father briefly closed his eyes.

"This won't last forever," he said softly. "These things come in waves. They ebb and flow."

"So I'll get a job eventually just to lose it when things flare up again."

Lyall's shoulders sagged. The distraught look on his face reminded Remus of why he had been against having this discussion with his father.

"Not necessarily," he said softly. "But I've been saving money since you were five—"

"What?"

Remus pushed his chair away from the table, staring at his father in shock.

"We didn't know if you'd be able to attend Hogwarts, let alone what would come after that," Lyall said, hanging his head. "Your mother and I agreed it was the only way to ensure you were secure in the future. Especially when both of us were gone."

He leaned forward, shoulders hunched.

"We had hoped, of course, that you would never need it, but it would be there in case you needed it."

"I'm not taking the money."

Remus' shoulders shook from the tension in them. His jaw quivered so much that he was shocked he could get words out.

"Remus—"

"No."

His father leaned away from him, and some of his anger dissipated.

"I appreciate it, I do, but I won't let my dad support me forever."

"Perhaps not forever but—"

"No."

Lyall looked as if he were near tears. Remus wondered if he was imagining the tragic fates Remus might meet once he was out on the streets unable to take care of himself.

"It's all my fault," Lyall muttered to the floor. "The least you can do is allow me to support you. I'm the reason for everything you've gone through."

"What are you on about, Dad? You and Mum have done nothing but protect me since was I was bitten. If it weren't for the two of you, I'd be much worse off."

Lyall slowly raised his eyes to look at Remus, and his gaze was more haunted than Remus had ever seen it. Dread coated the inside of Remus' stomach.

"You were bitten by Fenrir Greyback when you were five years old because Greyback wanted to teach me a lesson."

Remus' blood ran cold.

"You always said that you didn't know who bit me. That it was a freak accident and we'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"In the wrong place when it was in your own bedroom?" Lyall asked before laughing darkly to himself. "No, I always knew it wasn't a coincidence. Greyback was angry because of some less than savoury comments I'd made about werewolves after he was questioned about the deaths of two Muggle children. You were the collateral damage in his revenge scheme."

Father and son sat across from each other in silence. Remus felt as if he were looking at a stranger. In the twelve years he'd been a werewolf, he had never bothered to wonder what his parents thought of werewolves before they were raising one.

"I need to be alone," he said, not waiting for his father's nod before he rose from the table and locked himself in his room.