Sophia too dropped the letter, in shock, and it fluttered to the floor, where the dog carefully examined it. Her father, was out of prison. He was looking for her. To kill her, but looking for her nonetheless. She felt a surge of powerful emotions rush into her stomach, and she sank to the floor. At first a great flash of fear took her over, but she shook it off. He wouldn't kill her. She was sure. Not if he saw her, spoke to her. But she was afraid of him; what if she saw him, and he didn't know her? Come to think of it, she had no clue what he looked like either. What if she didn't know what to say to him? What if he laughed at her for assuming he even cared?

"Vieara, Sophia! Come here right now! Pack your bags, we're going to London!" Sophia gasped. The dog squealed slightly and ran out of the open back door into the night. She tried calling him back but it was no use… he had run off into the meadow and was probably already in the woods.

"Sophia! Where are you?" Her mother yelled, with a note of panic in her voice. She could hear her sister shuffling around upstairs. She didn't want her mother to see that she'd read the letter.

"I'm here! I'll be upstairs in a second!" She hollered back in what she hoped was a normal, calm voice. But it didn't seem to matter very much, her mother was hardly listening.

In a few short minutes, Vieara and Kellen had shuffled down the stairs looking frazzled and quite dazed, Sophia looking upset following with her guitar bag, their mother rounding up the rear, followed by three floating trunks. They stopped in front of the fireplace and Elly pulled a small jar of Floo powder out of her bag.

"You go first, I'm still trying to remember if we need anything else."

"But where are we going?" Vieara protested.

"Number Seventeen Dorset Drive. Just say it clearly, and you'll be all right."

Vieara and Kellen took a pinch each and spoke clearly in unison. As soon as they were gone, Sophia shot a knowing look at her mother and stepped into the fire. Elly looked around the empty house for a moment and spotted the letter, still lying where it had fallen from her shaken hands. Her eyes burned with tears, but she rubbed them away and waved her wand at the piece of parchment. It shriveled as if being burned and disappeared into nothingness. She sighed and threw her pinch in.

"Seventeen Dorset Drive."

Once she got out she saw that the kids were waiting for her, Vieara and Kellen talking in hushed but frantic voices and Sophie standing off to one side clutching a bag of books and notebooks and her guitar. The room in which they stood was tiny and somewhat grubby, but very clean. A set of worn wizard's robes hung on the door of a small wardrobe, looking freshly ironed. The occupant, however seemed to be missing.

"Mum, where are we?" Vieara spoke angrily. "I don't understand what's going on! Who lives here?"

"An old friend of mine does. From school. His name is Remus. I haven't warned him that we're coming, but I'm sure he'll be glad for the company. Speaking of which, I should do that." She conjured a glowing silver leopard which bounded out of the room after nodding, as if she had received instruction. Minutes later bounded in a large bird, which seemed to speak, but the twins and Kellen didn't understand a word. Elly nodded at the bird and it vanished.

"He says he'll be home soon, although he's going out of town for a few nights in a couple days. Let's cook him some dinner. Lupin is always too thin. Sophie, drop your stuff over there and come sit with me." She gave Sophia a meaningful look. "You two can look around and settle in a bit, but don't leave the flat!"

With that they sulked off in the farthest possible corner to try to figure out why Vieara's mother had taken them to London for no apparent reason, with absolutely no warning. Sophia, on the other hand, sat at the chipped kitchen table examining her equally chipped black fingernails, while Eleonora tried to study her face.

"You read the letter." It wasn't a question, so Sophia didn't answer.

"Look at me." Her mother whispered furiously.

Sophia looked up. Her chin gave the ever slightest nod. "I don't see how you were going to keep it from me anyway, it'll be all over the Prophet by tomorrow morning at the latest. The highest security prisoner of Azkaban, escaped."

"I know I can't keep that from you. But do you understand what Dumbledore said? You have to be on your toes. You can't wander off, not when you're here with me, not when you're at school."

"Dumbledore says he's looking for me." Sophia said definitely and her mother had to stop herself from letting out a harsh, humorless laugh.

"He's not looking for a reunion, Sophie. Trust me. He's looking to finish what he started twelve years ago. To finish the job he never finished then."

"You don't know that. I'm his flesh and blood. He wouldn't kill me."

"Have you ever been to Azkaban? Not only do you have no idea what happened twelve years ago, but you have never seen a prisoner. There is no way he is the slightest bit sane anymore, even if he once was. Twelve years of those awful creatures are enough to make the most pure soul go mad, and his was hardly pure to begin with. You need to stay away from him. You need to promise me that you won't do anything stupid, that you won't go looking for him." Sophia kept staring defiantly, un-blinking.

"This is not a game, Sophia! We're talking about your life, and Vieara's and mine, and Harry's. There's a lot more to lose than there is to gain. He's not worth this trouble."

Unexpected tears welled up in Sophie's eyes and overflowed. She tried to hide them with her hands. "How can you say that? How you love someone and marry them, and then think they're a traitor? How can they be yours one day and the enemy's the next? How can he be my dad and then want to kill me?!" She couldn't stop her sobs, all those awful paradoxes that had cycled through her mind all year and now lay bottled in her chest, finally came loose. And her mother didn't yell at her like Sophie thought she would. She reached out and held her, murmuring "I don't know, Sophie, I don't know. I never knew," Softly into her hair.

Someone burst into the fireplace at that moment, and Sophia hastily tried to wipe her tears as Vieara and Kellen bounded into the room.

"Hello! Oh I've forgotten what it's like to come home to a noisy house! Elly, god, I haven't seen you… since…" Lupin stepped out of the fireplace and hugged Elly tightly.

"So you've heard, I take it?" He whispered in her ear. She nodded and whispered back, "That's why we're here."

"Heard what?" Vieara asked rudely, the fuse of her patience finally reaching the point of explosion. Kellen looked expectant, and Sophia couldn't help but sniffle. Lupin let Elly go and spotted Vieara and Sophia for the first time.

"Elly, they're nearly adults! Last time I saw them they begged me to buy them Ice Mice and toy brooms and now…" they look just like him, he wanted to say but he couldn't. Elly nodded, understanding. The upturned, proud noses and the sculpted cheekbones, the thick lashes were all his. Elly was only noticeable in their lips and brown, rather than black, hair.

"Why are we here?" Vieara asked again. "I mean… not that it's not nice to meet you and all…" She stepped forward and offered her hand. "Vieara, although I suppose we've met. What's going on exactly?"

Elly stepped forward. "Vieara, your dad has escaped from Azkaban."

Vieara lost all the traces of her summer tan, it seemed. "Don't call him my dad." She stared at Sophia, who hadn't reacted at all. "You know?"

Sophia nodded. "I read the letter."

Vieara stepped back. "I can't believe you didn't tell me."

"I just found out! You're not the only thought in my mind, you know!" Sophia spat back, getting angry.

"Yeah, I do. I bet you're sitting here imagining a reunion with the traitorous bastard, I bet you're thrilled."

"Don't tell me what I am! It's none of your fucking business anyway. Just because you're being a narrow-minded prat doesn't mean I have to be one too." Sophie's voice rose to top Vieara's angry tone.

"Hey, hey. You two have been out of hand lately. We are guests! Where are your manners?!" Elly moved between them. Lupin looked back and forth between the two, trying to follow the implications of their words. Kellen was sulking back, pale, looking as if he wanted to say something but didn't have enough guts. Sophia broke the glaring by looking away, to Lupin.

"I'm sorry. That was rude. Thank you for having us. Mum and I were going to make dinner. Would you like anything specific?"

Lupin smiled, removed his cloak. "Anything's great. I haven't done much cooking, I'm always too tired nowadays."

The mood slowly lightened, Sophia began bustling around the kitchen pulling out pots and Elly and Lupin began chopping up the vegetables they had brought. Vieara and Kellen sulked again to the farthest corner, still talking in furious sounding hushed whispers.

"I'm so sick of her goody-two shoes act!" Vieara hissed. Kellen still looked pale.

"So he's free? What if he… comes looking for you?" He asked, his eyes round.

"I hope he does, I'd like to give him a piece of my mind," Vieara spat. Immediately she looked like she regretted the sentence. "Not that I care about that traitor. He better just leave us alone if he knows what's good for him. " She looked around at the dreary flat and the sparse old furnishing. "I want to go home and practice Quidditch. I really want to make it on the team this year!"

Kellen nodded. "D'you think maybe we ought to go help them?" He peered into the kitchen, where Sophie was chatting with the adults.

Vieara shook her head. "I'm so sick of her angering mum all the time, and talking about him. I just want to go back to Hogwarts and forget about him."

After the dinner, Remus and Elly Conjured cots for the three kids next to the couch. They all rolled into bed and their breathing slowed to a relaxed, slumbering state. Remus offered Elly his bed, offered to sleep on the couch. Elly refused. He looked tired enough without a night's sleep on that shabby, uncomfortable sofa.

She looked him straight in the eye. "I'll sleep in your bed, and so will you. If you don't mind my company, of course."

He met her eyes, but looked away. He half-shrugged, half-nodded. "All right, then."

She hugged him. "I missed you, Moony," She whispered into his robes. He sighed and wound his arms around her. "Let's go to sleep."

They changed into nightclothes and extinguished the light in the bedroom. They lay side by side, carefully on their own side of the bed, careful not to touch, staring at the ceiling. Remus thought Elly was asleep when she whispered to him.

"What do you think he wants, Remus?"

"I wish I knew," he whispered back.

"I never thought I'd see him again. The first year, when the girls were born, It was like I kept waiting for him to come home. Like he'd gone on a trip. But then they started growing and I moved back, and it was hard enough to keep up with them running around all over the place. And I realized he was never going to come home. He was never going to meet them. And I realized I'd never see him again."

"It must have been… I can't even imagine."

"It's worse now. Those two little devils look just like him, Vieara's temper, Sophie's stubbornness, they're all his. And Sophie keeps talking about him as if he's on holiday and he did something bad, like we had a fight and he's coming back any moment now to say he's sorry."

Lupin didn't say anything, but somehow it was the right thing to do. He didn't do it because of that though. He didn't say anything because his mind was too busy having a dialogue. One side of his brain wanted to take Elly's hand, lying just inches from his own. The other side of his brain argued that it was an awful idea, she was Sirius' girl, and it was awkward and wrong enough that he was sleeping in the very same bed as her. But while this argument raged in his head he heard Elly's breath even and she snored lightly. He turned to the side and tried to forget what he had even contemplated. But as he drifted off to sleep he couldn't help thinking, she hadn't always been Sirius' girl, and she definitely hadn't been Sirius' girl for the past decade…