AN: This chapter begins to address what happened to Remus directly after the fall of Voldemort with a few flashbacks about what happened to Remus during the war. There will be more on both those topics in chapters to come. If you haven't figured it out yet, this story has a lot of flashbacks.
There's a lot of introducing OCs this time, but I hope you'll find them enjoyable OCs. A few of them come into play later. None of them really steal the spotlight, but hopefully they spice things up a bit.
There's also slight Remus/Sirius in this chapter. We're talking minor stuff like it being implied that they kissed, so it's very PG.
Ack, it's so long. It's 3 a.m. and I figure you'd rather read it and let me do a more thorough edit tomorrow.
Thanks to those who have reviewed. As promised, let the Remmy angst goodness begin:
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THE MORNING AFTER VOLDEMORT'S FAILED KILLING CURSE -- 1981
(We go back to Remus and another member of the pack, Seamus. After watching the pack slaughter the inhabitants of a small rural town, Remus apparated away from the carnage to catch his breath, pretending to have killed the town mayor. Reread Chapter 1 if you've forgotten.)
"Found him! And boy did he do a number on the mayor!" Seamus jogged ahead of Remus as they reached the pack's rendezvous point, a wooded hill above the town.
Greyback turned around to face the two, a genuine smile of pride lighting up his scarred face. He walked right past Seamus and gave his "eldest son" a hug.
"And to think there was a time when you thought you couldn't kill a human," Greyback laughed, slapping Remus on the back.
It was times like this when Remus hated Greyback the most. How could the heartless murder sound so much like a loving father when talking about eviscerating human bodies? It made Remus feel filthy.
That scared him too. Remus wasn't a hateful person by nature. He like tea and books and even pranks. But half of him wanted to jab his wand into Greyback and whisper a few choice and very illegal words.
Instead, he shrugged dispassionately:
"He didn't really put up much of a fight, I'm afraid. I'm surprised my wolf had the patience to play with him long enough to let the man flee that far," Remus spoke casually, gesturing to the field just west of the hill.
He hated speaking so callously about human life. He hated listening to the response, the cheerful laughter of the pack, men and women ripe with the smell of drying blood. He hated that it all felt so natural these days. He hated his dark, grim life. It was driving him mad.
Greyback patted Remus on the back once more, and guided him over to a group of wolves huddled over something curled up on the ground.
"Wait until you see this. We've got a double," Greyback crowed with pleasure.
There in the center of the commotion was a woman in a tattered and bloody robe, clutching something to her chest and rocking from the force of her sobs.
Remus felt his heart sink, as he tried to culture his voice to sound simply curious, "How old?"
"Don't know about the wench, but the cub is two and mine," Greyback replied.
It was a familiar situation, and Remus easily understood his meaning.
The woman was holding a two-year-old boy to her chest. Both had been bitten, and Greyback felt the tingling connection that meant he had been the one to bite the boy. Remus felt a slight tingling as well, something in the wolf's nature telling him this child was now family.
The discovery of pack connections had been a shock that Remus had struggled with since joining the group. It was especially troublesome because Remus felt the strongest connection with the man who had bitten him, Greyback, a man he hated unconditionally.
That tug in his chest that told him to obey and please Greyback always made him feel sick with himself. The first time it had happened, he had literally gotten sick, all over a woman's clearly expensive silver stilettos.
Greyback had thought it was hilarious.
TWENTY-ONE MONTHS EARLIER
Remus Lupin was standing at the bar, glancing nervously around the shadow-laden room. He was shakily sipping on his third Sprite, not trusting himself anywhere near alcohol at the moment.
The door to the bustling pub banged open with the wind and two cloaked figures ambled in. Remus jolted, but reminded himself that this might not be the man he was here to see. The last 12 people entered in the same fashion and none of them had been the right person either.
He was waiting for a werewolf called Seamus, who apparently was in the business of recruiting werewolves for Voldemort.
Remus slowly turned to eye the two newest entrants. His eyes instantly locked onto a pair of dull grey irises, seemingly without his willing them to do so. His knees trembled, his head spun and he sunk to the floor, retching all over the feet of the stranger who had been standing next to him.
The hair on the back of his neck prickled as the man with the grey eyes laughed, but he felt oddly comforted when the same man came to stand next to him and place a hand on his shoulder. It felt familiar somehow.
The bartender was yelling at Remus, and Remus shook his head trying to understand what was being said.
Suddenly there was a growl and the pub went unearthly silent.
"Oh, he's with you?" The bartender murmured to the man with grey eyes.
There was another low rumbling snarl from the grey-eyed man as he turned and began walking to the door.
The companion that the man had walked in with grabbed Remus around the waist and hoisted him over a shoulder.
This was bad. This was not the plan. The plan was: Go to the bar, meet with the recruiter, strike up a conversation implying he'd like to join up with Voldemort's forces, get any information he could and then schedule a time to meet once more in hopes that they'd eventually invite him to join the pack. That had been Dumbledore's proposed strategy. The wolves were notoriously distrusting of outsiders, so he was to slowly earn their trust.
So why was he slung over this brute's shoulder like a sack? Where on earth were they taking him? Why did his head start spinning anew anytime he looked over at the grey-eyed man? Why couldn't he even move enough to protest being carried off like this? Had someone drugged him?
After a great deal of walking they met up with another man who handed them what must have been a port key. The feeling of being yanked by the port key did nothing to settle Remus' stomach. A while later he was conscious of someone setting him down. They appeared to be in a cave, and he could see dozens of shadows moving around deeper inside the cavern.
There was a chuckle.
"Are you sure it's him, Greyback? He's about as limp as noodle."
Greyback? And suddenly it struck Remus with horrifying clarity that the man with grey eyes was indeed the most notorious werewolf of all time. Had he been so transfixed by those eyes that he hadn't even noticed earlier?
Greyback smacked the first speaker, a tall, lean man with black hair, who appeared to be roughly the same age as Remus.
"Of course that's him. It's just the bond has made him out of sorts. He is my first son, after all. You, wouldn't understand, Ly." Remus watched blearily as Greyback crouched in front of him with an eerily kind smile. "Don't worry, my boy. You'll be feeling much better once we get you initiated."
Over Greyback's shoulder he could see the black-haired man scowling.
Then Remus was being lifted again, carried to another room and then set down in a chair at a small table.
"Do you know who I am?" Greyback was sitting across from him.
"Fenny Grehbah. Werewoo," Remus slurred.
"Yes, we're all werewolves here, Remus. This is my pack, your pack," Greyback explained, his crooked smile growing impossibly wide. Remus tensed at the realization that they knew his real name.
"Explain it to him, Ly," Greyback said. "You're better at these annoying magic theory things and shit."
The dark werewolf frowned and looked away.
"Lionel Malfoy!" Greyback barked.
Remus and the black-haired werewolf both jumped a little, but Ly gritted his teeth and walked over.
"Do you know who bit you?" he sneered.
Remus looked over to Greyback.
"Yes, of all the sodding luck in the world, you just happened to be bitten by the most powerful werewolf in the world. And you're the first person that ever lived after he bit them. Do you know what that means?" Ly asked.
Remus wearily shook his head, wishing that he was in Godric's Hollow sipping hot cider while chatting with Sirius, James and Peter about what to name James' soon-to-be-born child.
"It means, you lucky son of a bitch, that you are the eldest son of Greyback himself, and the funny feeling that is driving your stomach crazy is your pack bond," Ly leaned against the table.
"Normally, it's not a big deal," Ly drawled, "But those idiot humans that raised you kept you away from your real family for so long that you're not used to it. And since you were out there living with humans, you've never come of age like a proper werewolf, so your body isn't quite sure what to do with you now that you're suddenly surrounded by all these wolves."
"Huh, told you it was complicated. Don't quite get it myself," Greyback's toothy grin was really starting creep Remus out.
"I'm b-b-bloody 19, 'course I'm of age," Remus was embarrassed that he still was struggling to speak.
"Doesn't matter if you've graduated from that pretentious school of yours, and it doesn't matter how many birds you've shagged. You're not of age as a werewolf," Ly walked around the table, clearly enjoying this part. He set a hand on Remus' shoulder, and Remus tried to swat it away.
"You see, Remus," Ly continued his explanation, unfazed. "The reason those wizards and witches hate us so much is because they fear our power. Ancient magic runs through the veins of a werewolf. We're an old species. We're connected to each other. The bond of a pack is a powerful magic and there are certain…rituals, things a lone werewolf would never know, things the pack has to do for you so that you can reach your full potential.
"But, of course, the power of the pack is in exchange for your loyalty. You understand we're your real family, don't you Remus? You've been with humans an awfully long time, but you can feel the bond can't you? Your wolf wants to be reunited with the pack."
"You've felt it missing, right? The absence of the pack? A cub is fine, but there comes a time when a mature werewolf needs to join his pack as a proper adult."
Greyback cut in, "So Remus, you need to join the pack."
"How do I do that?" Remus' heart was beating like crazy. He was terrified and he wanted out of here. But he couldn't very well say, "Gee, fascinating, mind showing me the way out?" After all, he was supposed to be infiltrating the pack. Apparently it just wasn't going to be as hard as he and Dumbledore had suspected.
None of this had ever been in the books he'd read on werewolves, and he'd read almost everything on the subject. Those books, however, had been written by wizards, hadn't they? He'd always thought of packs as brutish herds of men and women gone wild, but perhaps they had their own books or some sort of oral history? Remus could almost picture Sirius laughing at him. Here he is surrounded by a bunch of dark, murdering werewolves and he was pondering the anthropological significance of werewolf lore.
Greyback reached across the table and grabbed his hand.
"You're my first son, so I won't make it easy on you. Show them what you've got," and with that Greyback stood up and walked out of the room, with several other wolves following. Ly stood there a moment longer.
"So, first the right of passage. I recommend you kill him before he kills you," Ly whispered in his ear and forced a glass to Remus' lips. "And I'd drink this."
Remus choked down the liquid before he could think over how wise that was, and Ly took the empty glass and Remus' wand with him as he left and shut the door.
Remus realized there was still one werewolf left with him in the room. He felt a little steadier with Greyback gone. Remus looked up at the other werewolf and felt a twinge of recognition even though he was sure he'd never seen the werewolf before.
But the eye contact was short lived because the other man suddenly jumped at him with a howl. Remus was knocked out his chair, struggling underneath the man as the other wolf reached to strangle him.
Tapping into his werewolf strength, Remus grabbed the hands as they lunged for his neck. He wasn't sure how long he could hold the squirming arms at bay with this man sitting on his chest.
And then something shifted in his mind. It was his wolf. Every now and then the wolf inside Remus showed a little when it wasn't the full moon. James and Sirius called it PMSing when Remus would get irritated and growl a little, when, for example, they'd raided his private chocolate stash.
But now the wolf was pushing forward to the front of his mind and it seemed to be passing right through his normal barriers of self-restraint with ease.
There was a growl, and Remus realized it had come from his own throat.
He suddenly yanked the other wolf's arms to the side, hearing a satisfying pop as the other man's right shoulder dislocated.
He flipped over, smashing the other man into the side of the table. He leapt on top of the burly young man punching him again and again. The man threw him off and Remus stumbled over a chair, but he quickly snatched up the chair and slammed it into the other man. Somewhere in the back of Remus' mind, he was wondering what on earth he was doing. But that was quickly quashed by the wolf's desire to rip his opponent limb from limb.
Remus raised the chair and hit the man again and again. The young Hogwarts graduate grabbed the man by the scruff of his neck and threw him onto the table, where he began punching him.
Then, the man on the table whimpered and Remus looked at his face and felt that familiar tug on his heart again. What on earth was he doing? Remus took a few steps backwards.
"I'm sorry," he said, but the man had now drifted into unconsciousness.
Great, now what? Remus looked around the room, trying to find some way out of this situation. This wasn't him. Spy mission or not, this was madness. The way his wolf was still fighting for dominance scared Remus to no end.
Finally, he heard a doorknob turn, and Remus jerked around to face the door.
Greyback stepped back inside with a few other wolves following.
"Sounded like it had quieted down," Greyback said with a smile, coming up to put an arm around him. Remus flinched. Greyback walked over to the other man and poked him. "Not dead, hmm?"
"No…I…" Remus trailed off, rubbing his chest where he still felt that tug. His blood was pounding in his head even louder and the wooziness was starting to return.
Greyback saw his movement and nodded, "Ah, recognized your brother did you? He's my second eldest. Well, he's older than you in years, but I bit you first."
The head werewolf gestured to Ly, who was standing by the wall, "Ly is the third eldest. A year older than you by human reckoning, but that's just another year wasted in a life before becoming what we all are now. Time wasted, eh, Ly?"
Ly looked away. There seemed to be some hidden insult to Ly there, but Remus wasn't sure what it was.
"But, anyway, you seem to have beaten Riki pretty soundly."
"D-d-din't mean too…"
"Oh, I figured you might have a little trouble channeling your wolf under a waning moon after living under the repression of humans for so long," Ly said, his cultured voice a contrast to Greyback's grating speech. "That potion should have helped loosen you up and bring out the real you for the test."
Remus did not consider his wolf the real him. There was no denying it was part of him, but he did not like things disrupting the equilibrium he had found with his beast years ago.
"S-s-so that was it? I still f-feel..,"Remus was quickly loosing himself to the dizziness.
"Oh, that all was just to earn the right to join the pack as a grown werewolf," Greyback leaned closer.
Dang it. Remus' legs were wobbling again.
And suddenly, Greyback lowered his head to Remus' shoulder and bit down, hard.
Remus screamed. It hurt, it hurt like mad. The older werewolf had just bitten exactly where he had bitten Remus 15 years ago. The old wound burned and the burning spread through his blood as though his veins were on fire. He remembered the sensation vaguely from when he was four years old.
The burn was fading, and suddenly he felt the compulsion to sit up, realizing at the same time that he had crumpled to the floor. Sit up. He'd felt it again, and slowly he sat up. He didn't feel so ill anymore, but at the same time he felt as though he could almost sense the connection with Greyback. In fact, he could sense the presence of every werewolf in the room. His breathing sped up. He was sensing all sorts of odd things, and it was overwhelming.
He looked up into grey eyes.
"You belong to the pack now, Remus," Greyback gave him a sunny smile. "I'm glad you're home, my boy."
BACK TO 1981
Remus leaned against a tree. The new female werewolf was shrieking. First the screams had been for them to give her boy back, and now it was because she was being beating to a pulp. It always went this way.
It was extraordinarily difficult for a fresh werewolf to fully succeed in the right of passage.
Remus looked down to the child at his feet, and was grateful that only adults received this torture. This boy would at least have a fighting chance to become a member of the pack when he came of age.
Adult werewolves who failed the right of passage were called "Lessers," which was quite literally what they were treated as. They were slaves.
The pack leader would sink his teeth into a true adult werewolf for several minutes, allowing plenty of time for whatever magic was involved to seep into the other wolf. Lessers, those who failed the right of passage, only received a nip, sometimes barely breaking the skin, and it left them weak, never fully developed.
Remus had spoken with Ly at length on the process. The ritual was ancient, very ancient.
Apparently, there were books on all of this. The tomes simply were kept far away from the hands of wizards. Most werewolves weren't allowed access to them either, although Ly had been forced to share the information since Remus was technically his superior. Oh, how Ly hated that.
Riki was an idiot and had never been a threat to Ly, but Remus was clever, a wand user and had been raised by humans.
Ly, who had been thrown out of the human world at the age of five, seemed to be infuriated that Remus had the audacity to be bitten first. (As if Remus could have done anything about it.)
Apparently, Lionel's father had insulted werewolves one too many times, and Greyback knocked him down a peg by biting his son. Greyback, of course, knew better than to bite the elder son, Lucius. That would have been going too far. The senior werewolf only barely escaped with his head because Voldemort had found it amusing. Even the Dark Lord occasionally got sick of the pretentious pure blooded family.
And like his family, Lionel Malfoy regularly drove Greyback nuts.
Ly was quite well-educated, though mostly self-taught, and Greyback constantly teased that Ly thought he was too good for his crude "father." Greyback, meanwhile, was infinitely proud of Remus, a wand user who chose to return to his roots on his own. He seemed to find Remus' human mannerisms endearing, after all, the boy couldn't help it.
Ly was trying to be sophisticated like a human. Remus already just was. And his magic and cleverness impressed the simpler Greyback.
The treatment of Remus caused even more bickering between Ly and Greyback, but even that was somewhat familial.
Ly, for his part, generally tried to please Greyback. He was precise and ruthless with his prey and always bowed to the will of the pack leader.
Not that he had much choice. Remus had learned the hard way that once you became a member of a pack, you were tightly bound to the leader through old blood magic. Absolute loyalty kept a pack strong, but it was problematic when you were a spy.
Remus laughed to himself. Igor Karkaroff always said werewolves made terrible spies. At one point it had been decided that werewolves would be great for undercover work because no one would recognize the social outcasts. But that proved useless, given that most were poorly educated and had a tendency to blow their cover in fits of violent rage.
For Remus, there was an entirely different problem. He'd gained a great deal of control over his bond. Being such a high-ranking werewolf gave him strength others didn't have, but he still couldn't outright betray Greyback, and Remus loathed that.
21 MONTHS EARLIER
He stood in the hallway for a moment and then knocked on the apartment door. He had a key, it was his flat. But he figured he didn't want to startle Sirius, if he was home. Remus had been missing for a week, after all.
There was some bustling behind the door and then it opened to reveal James. James blinked.
"Mooney, oh thank goodness, Mooney! Guys, guys! He's back. Oh thank goodness, thank goodness, thank goodness."
James pulled Remus though the door and began pushing him toward the living room, but Peter and Sirius came barreling into the entryway before they got far.
Sirius tackled Remus in a hug and Peter seemed to be weeping.
"We thought something awful had happened," Peter cried.
Without detaching himself, Sirius began steering Remus back in the direction of the living room.
"Hang on a sec, I'll go floo Lily, and Dumbledore will want to know," James raced away.
Sirius noticed that Remus was shaking a little as he pulled him down onto the sofa.
"Where the bloody hell have you been?" Sirius asked.
Remus opened his mouth to explain, to tell the whole terrible story of his abduction and unknowing induction into the pack.
But his lips didn't move, and he closed his mouth. It was an action that the Marauders would get to know well over the next several months.
"Hey, it's okay, Remmy, take your time," Sirius began rubbing circles on his back. "Wormtail, get him some tea, would you?"
Peter scurried off to the kitchen.
Remus tried to speak again. Yet, again a little voice in the back of his head told him not to say a word that would betray his pack or, above all else, his father. Remus shook his head. That bastard was not his father. But the compulsion was strong, and Remus had already discovered that even thinking traitorous thoughts caused him great pain. He suspected Greyback could sense any disloyalty as well. Stupid bond.
Sirius was looking at Remus worriedly, and Remus realized he was still waiting for Remus to say something.
"Didn't go as planned," Remus answered lamely.
"Obviously," Sirius snorted.
James came back into the room with Peter in tow. Remus took the offered tea.
"So, are you okay?" James asked.
Remus exhaled loudly.
"Well, they weren't as hesitant about letting me join as we thought," Remus carefully thought over his words. "They took me right to their den, and I couldn't get away until now."
He wanted to give them as much information as possible. These were the people he actually thought of as his family, his pack.
"Wait, what? I thought you were going to take this slowly?" James asked.
"Yeah, well, that was the plan, but I guess they..uh…needed new recruits badly enough to let down their standards," darn it, he was lying to his friends.
"That's great. So where are they at? Do you think you'll be able to see them again after the next full moon to figure out where they plan to attack next or are you already on top of that Mr. Super Spy. Lupin, Remus Lupin," Sirius was bouncing on the couch.
"Dude, Padfoot, you have issues," James rolled his eyes.
"It's from an awesome muggle movie, James. Bond, James Bond," Sirius stuck out his tongue.
"Why did I ever let Lily lend you those tapes? And what is with the James bond James bond?" James poked Sirius in the ribs.
"Sigh, must I explain everything. Not you, James. 007. His name is 'James Bond.' He's this awesome secret agent working for her majesty's secret service, and he…" Sirius trailed off as James gave him a look.
"Uh, so… Remus?" Peter cut in.
Remus was glad for the tangent. It had given him time to compose his thoughts, but he still didn't have a good answer.
"I, well, I can't really say where the den is."
"Oh, did they blindfold you?" Sirius asked.
"No, it's sort of complicated. I just can't."
"What do you mean you can't?"
"Sirius. Obviously they're not going to just trust random new members with all their secrets. I'm sure they've got it enchanted so that only a secret keeper can disclose the location, you twit. And don't ask Remus to confirm that because obviously the spell wouldn't let him," James seemed triumphant when Remus smiled at him gratefully. "So when do you think you'll be able to get back there?"
"Well, I was going to head out in about an hour. I told them I was going to practice, err, hunting," Remus said.
"Wait, what?" Sirius asked.
"I kind of have to live there."
"What, already!?! But you're my roommate. That's totally unfair. And besides, we have a week's worth of snogging to catch up on," Sirius shouted.
"We so did not need to know that Sirius," James groaned.
"I'm sorry," Remus whispered, starring at his hands.
"Oh, hell, Remmy, no, I'm sorry. This sucks, but I guess it sucks for you more, huh? Sirius soothed, abashed.
They chatted for another hour or so, and Remus told them to pass things on to Dumbledore. As the time came to leave, Peter was sobbing again. James was trying to pack him a trunk of robes despite protests that it would be out of place in the den, so instead James shoved some chocolate bars into Remus' pockets.
Sirius stood there looking somewhat hurt, clearly not wanting to let the werewolf out of his sight. He was upset with what Dumbledore was asking his boyfriend to do, and he didn't like that there were things Remus couldn't tell him. He couldn't help but be a little frustrated with Remus. In a few months that frustration would turn to anger, as he felt he knew less and less about Remus.
But that would come later. Right now Sirius was trying to see how red Remus' cheeks could flush.
James sighed, "Oh, for heaven's sakes, Padfoot. Stop kissing him before I'm tempted to go runoff and live with the werewolves, too, just so that I don't have to watch any more of this."
BACK TO 1981
Remus missed moments like that. Now the other Marauders wouldn't even talk to him, not that he could blame them.
He was sitting here watching a women get tortured in front of her own son.
"Father, I'm going to take the cub back to the den. All that playing with my food seems to have worn me out," Remus spoke up, lifting the child into his arms.
Greyback, ever doting on his favorite son, gave him a wave. Ly raised a suspicious eyebrow. Remus was going to have to do something about that. He couldn't shake the feeling that his third brother knew Remus wasn't all he pretended to be.
Remus sighed and apparated to his room in the den. He quickly shrugged on a robe, still uncomfortable with nakedness no matter how common it had become
He walked down the hall to where the young ones slept, although the passageways seemed unusually quiet on the way.
The children were generally allowed to run wild, so long as they didn't interfere with adult business. Once they reached the age of 12, they began rooming and hunting with the adults in preparation for their coming of age.
Remus found the cubs particularly upsetting. It was these conditions that had produced a man like Greyback. They were wild, uneducated little terrors, and it broke his heart to think how different their lives could be if someone just set them down at a school desk.
Greyback, who was illiterate himself, had given Remus permission to try to teach them how to read. Some of them ignored it, but Remus had a small following, particularly among some of the children who had been bitten at an older age and who still had some warm memories of home.
As Remus entered the sleeping quarters, the children in the room paused their rumpus and stood in respect. This was a very important werewolf, they knew. They'd all been told he'd be the pack leader one day.
Remus felt a twinge in his chest just before a hug attacked his legs.
Ah, this is what made living in this place bearable, moments like this.
"Good morning, Will."
"Morning, boss-man," the four-year-old replied.
Will had dubbed himself Remus' guardian. It was completely ridiculous, but Remus loved it. Right now his little body guard was covered with cuts and bruises from the moon. The pups could be rough with each other in their games. Remus magicked up some bandages, shooting them at a few other children who looked a little worse for the wear.
Will had been bitten by Greyback shortly after Remus had joined the pack. It was the first newly bitten child Remus encountered, and he was a particularly sweet kid to begin with.
Greyback had warned not to coddle him, explaining that he needed to get over his home sickness. But it was a lost cause. They were nearly inseparable, and Greyback allowed it because the kid was just too cute, too mischievous and too devoted to Greyback's eldest. Still, he gave the cub a good kick every now and then to remind him of his place. It was a good way to put Remus back in line, too, on the rare occasions when they argued.
But Greyback was off in some field creating a new Lesser, and so Will could get in as much hugging as he wanted.
"Who's that? Is it a new one," Will asked, peering up at the new cub.
"Yeah, you look after him, okay?"
Will nodded. He was also Remus' emissary in the nursery.
"Kevin was by earlier, asking if you were back yet," Will hesitated. "He looked kinda sad."
Remus was taken aback. Kevin Foster was one of his few fellow wand-bearers. He had graduated from Hogwarts a few years ahead of Remus and was bitten while working as an auror.
He didn't take being suddenly cast out from society well. He was by no means upper-class, but he was a bit obsessive compulsive and duty driven. He didn't like dirty caves and being thrust in with what he considered the bad guy's team.
Kevin, thus, was a natural ally. In fact, Remus had stumbled across Kevin trying to send information to the ministry, and from that point on they'd worked as a team. The two of them still struggled to come up with ways to get out warnings without tipping anyone off that they were betraying the pack.
They knew that 99 percent of the time their letters were hopelessly indecipherable. And it didn't help that Remus' friends didn't trust a word he said these days.
They'd send bizarre owls, like one he's sent as warning for an attack on the British Museum.
"Hope you're safe. I hear Harry nearly took his first steps the other day and now has enough messy hair to rival his father. I'm so scraped up after the last moon that I look like one of the mummies from that muggle museum Lily likes. Looks bad out here, but getting by. Cheers, Remus."
He'd had a raging headache by the time he was done writing it, and Greyback kept throwing him confused looks as though he sensed something for several days afterwards. Remus had had to sit for hours staring at the paper before he'd even been able to will his body to write that obtuse message. The letters were often hopeless, but the duo was determined.
So, it was worrisome that Kevin, an auror by training, was visibly upset about something enough that a child had noticed.
Remus could hardly focus on Will's grumblings about how someone had lost the only red crayon so that now they only had green and blue. He left a little quicker than he normally would have, and started searching for Kevin.
Remus found the lanky man, resting with his face in his hands near the entrance of the cave.
"Kevin?"
The man jerked up.
"Remus, oh, geeze, sorry. I didn't realize you'd be apparating back ahead of everyone, so I thought I'd wait out front. So, have you heard?" the man nervously ran his fingers through his wavy blond hair.
"Heard? What? Did one of the other packs get into trouble?"
"No, but they're going to get into trouble. Tonight is going to be all out war, Remus. The death eaters have all slunk off, but the wolves are rabid about the whole thing. The packs are saying they're going to take revenge. They think it's just a trick by the ministry and he's not really gone."
Kevin had a habit of doing this – rambling and referring to werewolves as though he wasn't one.
"Wait, what are we talking about here? What do they want revenge for?" Remus asked, after all, plenty of werewolves lost their temper at just about everything.
"You Know Who. They say he's dead," Kevin was breathless.
Remus paused his head reeling.
Perhaps it was the shock of the day's news, perhaps it was the agony inflicted on his mind when he attacked Greyback later that night, or perhaps it was how hard he hit his head during that fight, but this is where Remus' memory started to go fuzzy.
Later it would return to him in terrifying dreams, but he couldn't really remember any of it when he awoke three weeks later.
3 WEEKS LATER
Remus awoke facing a pale blue curtain.
"Hello, Remus," Dumbledore's voice came from the other direction and the werewolf flopped his head around to stare at the leader of the Order of the Phoenix.
"Whr mm eh.." Remus asked weakly.
"Ah, where are you? St. Mungo's, I'm afraid. You were in rather bad shape when we found you, but your message arrived just in time. A lot of lives were saved because of you," Dumbledore explained.
"Ss tru?" Remus tried again to speak.
"I'm sorry, Remus? What was that?" Dumbledore asked with a kind smile.
"Is," Remus took a deep shuddering breath. "Is it true? V-voldmort…dead?.." Remus broke into coughs.
"Ah, yes, well, I'm not quite sure about dead, but he is gone, that is certain. And it seems that there will be a brighter future," Dumbledore offered.
Remus felt peaceful for once and smiled back. This was wonderful news. Maybe he wouldn't have to go back to the pack. He wonderer how much of the pack was even still alive after last night, at least, he thought it was last night.
"How long have I been out?" he asked, getting his voice back more and more.
"Three weeks. Gave Madam Pomfrey quite a scare. She came over to look after you personally. You always were her favorite student. I feel somewhat bad for the St. Mungo's nurses. Madam Pomfrey was quite the slave driver. I doubt a werewolf has ever been treated so well at St. Mungo's before," Dumbledore paused and frowned. "How much exactly had you heard about Voldemort's demise Remus?"
"Not much, Greyback was just furious," Remus said.
"Ah," the headmaster hesitated again. "What about the Potters?"
Remus shot up in bed. And then fell back into the mattress with a pained moan. He latched his hand onto Dumbledore's wrist. His eyes stared pleadingly up into Dumbledore's.
"What about them?"
"It seems Voldemort was trying to attack them when he was defeated. He has used some sort variation of a petrification spell on Lily and James," Dumbledore explained. "The ministry is attempting to unfreeze them. They actually just were moved out of the hospital on Tuesday."
Remus had no idea what day of the week it was, but it didn't matter.
"What about Harry? Why haven't you mentioned Harry?" Remus asked.
"Harry is quite fine, although that's a matter we need to discuss," the older wizard said.
"Is Sirius looking after him?" Remus paused. "Dear God, did Sirius… is he the traitor?"
"I'm afraid so," Dumbledore sighed as Remus began to tremble. He was a strong young man, but the headmaster worried that he was burdening the werewolf with too much.
"I'm sorry to tell you that he killed Mr. Pettigrew before the authorities were able to catch him. He's in Azkaban now."
Remus' trembling stopped, "He wasn't under the Imperius curse?"
"I'm afraid not."
Remus sat quiet for a long while.
"Then who is looking after Harry?"
"That, Remus, is something you and I need to discuss."
**********PREVIEW FOR NEXT CHAPTER*********
Harry Potter was pretty freaked out at the moment.
Kingsley. Parents. Dad's former boyfriend gone psychopathic murderer.
Although he was curious about the second part of that, the third seemed most pressing.
Harry pulled out his wand and pointed it at the convict, glancing over at Kingsley trying to figure out what he wasn't doing anything. They just needed to stall long enough for his dad to get here so that he could sneak up and get Black from behind. Surely, Black's presence in the yard had set off every alarm ward his father had ever cast.
"Hey, Harry, uh, sorry about all this…Oh, geeze, don't point that there, Black is innocent," Kingsley slowly approached the teenager and pushed down his wand arm.
"Innocent?"
"Peter was our secret keeper," his mom explained.
"Kingsley? What the heck?" Harry gasped, eyes darting around in growing
panic.
"It's okay, Harry, really," Kingsley said. "The ministry just unfroze the Potters, err you parents, I mean, your birth parents…? Anyway, they said Black wasn't the secret keeper and it all checked out, and so the ministry set him free, and we're looking for your dad so that we can ask where Dumbledore is so that we can make sense out of this whole business."
"Wait what do you mean we're looking for his dad? I'm right here," James said.
Harry blinked.
Suddenly there was the sound of footsteps running inside the house, apparently attracted by all the shouting.
"Dear God, Harry, it's Sirius Black! Get back inside!" a new voice shouted from the doorway. A boy slightly taller than Harry and startlingly similar in appearance grabbed Harry's shoulder.
"Wait, Will!"
Several things happened at once: The second boy in the doorway shot a rather violent curse, Harry tackled said boy, and Remus Lupin dropped his grocery bags standing at the gate to his yard.
"Don't kill Black! He's innocent!" Kingsley shouted at the top of his lungs. A neighbor mowing the grass down the street shot them an odd look.
AN: What happened during that gap in Remus' memory? Well, you'll just have to wait to find out because the explanation is still two chapters away. The next chapter deals with how Remus wound up looking after two kids. And yes, it will explain why Will looks so similar to Harry, and no they two boys are not blood related. You think James would go cheating on his dearest Lily?
Please read and review. It might motivate me to get the next chapter up sometime this year.
