(A/N): We're back with Remus, Elaine, Mia, and Dahrya. Foreshadowing, but it's all pretty obvious, I think. First chapter of 2025, woot!
Trigger Warnings: Not exactly references to child abuse/neglect, but more references to Leo and Mia's childhood being shitty BECAUSE their parents were abusive/neglectful.
Remus
Elaine and I shared a look that was both incredibly confused, and extremely wary. Mia wanted to become an animagi? Better yet, Mia wanted to become an animagi so badly that she'd asked Leo to help? Even better yet, not only had she somehow found out what Leo was- whether he'd told her outright, or she figured it out for herself, or she'd approached him not knowing and he'd seen fit to set her straight- but he hadn't told her about the rest of us... and proceeded to turn her away. This was, undoubtedly, one of the first times that had ever happened... one of the last, too, I suspected.
"To be fair," Elaine said slowly, calmly- placatingly. "He didn't want to help me, either." I think we'd both come to the silent agreement not to mention the boys- it wasn't worth bringing it up, knowing it would only make Mia feel more betrayed.
"What about the boys?" Dahrya asked- suggested- because of course, even if she was aware of Elaine and I's secret agreement, she didn't consider herself beholden to it. And I suppose, given everything, it was to be expected that she would be on Mia's side in this... especially if it meant making life more difficult for Leo. As if Leo's life needed any more difficulty.
Mia's nostrils flared, and for one of the first times if not the first, I saw Cipicia in her face. The features were always there, but the feeling... the feeling was new. Elaine breathed out a long, exasperated breath from her nose at the same time Mia did, though I knew they were annoyed for very different reasons; Elaine was annoyed at Dahrya for undermining us, whereas Mia was clearly cursing Leo out in the back of her mind- or, well... maybe the middle of her mind, considering how close to the forefront it still was. "Look, Mia-'' Elaine started, only for Mia to cut her off with a surprisingly threatening glare. Don't get me wrong, her ability to be threatening wasn't what was surprising, but instead, the fact that she would direct such a look toward Elaine. I guess it shouldn't have surprised us as much as it did, since Leo's fondness for the both of them didn't necessarily mean that they automatically held any fondness for each other, but I knew Elaine did... and I thought Mia had, too.
"Don't bullshit me, Folley," She snapped, and Elaine didn't flinch, exactly, but her eyelids fluttered as if she'd just had a painfully bright light flashed in her face and was struggling to adapt. "Leo's earned that right, as much as I may hate it, but you haven't. Either bow out, or tell the truth- don't feed me lies and expect me to thank you, because I won't." It was, by all standards, a very 'Elaine' thing to say- which may be why she responded to it so strongly.
Her expression softened into understanding- with, understanding- and she held up her hands in surrender... and conciliation. "Alright, alright, okay. I get it, I- You told me you admire our loyalty, so I know you understand why my first instinct was to follow the precedent Leo set for the situation, but I sympathise with you, on this subject especially. I don't know why Leo chose not to tell you himself- other than his vital desire to keep you as far out of harm's way as possible- but since he's chosen to leave us out of the loop, I can only assume that the need for secrecy has passed, now that you already know what we are." It was, of course, intentionally optimistic. In reality, we knew there was no way Leo wouldn't want us to keep all of the information from her, even if we couldn't keep it a secret anymore, but since Leo wasn't here to ask, well... we could feign innocence. Or, failing that... ignorance.
Not that Leo would believe us, even if he couldn't smell lies, but... it was the thought that counted, I suppose. The corner of Mia's lips lifted, halfway between a true smile and a smirk. "...sure," She said with more than a little amusement. "Leo would absolutely see it that way, no doubt." Dahrya's couldn't be confused with anything but a smirk, which was a fitting contrast. "I'm assuming by 'the boys', you mean James, Sirius, and Peter?" Elaine nodded.
"Yeah. Leo was a little more willing to help them, though, considering-" She cut herself off, visibly hesitating, and Mia arched a brow at her.
"While you work out how to tell me what you have to tell me without causing problems for yourself down the line, how about I list all the reasons that I know aren't why Leo would be more willing to help the boys than you? Number one: Because they're boys." Yeah, no, that was never going to factor into a choice like this- not for someone like Leo. "Number two: Because he likes them more than you. Number three: Because he trusts them more than you." Elaine flinched, and Mia's eyebrow twitched as though she was taking note of this reaction- and the cause.
Elaine shook her head. "Leo helped them, because I made myself such a menace that he didn't trust them not to do the same, and end up getting themselves killed." Which was why she'd hesitated to tell her- because, as we knew, Mia was just as much of a menace as Elaine... and now that she was aware of what had worked before, there was nothing stopping her from doing the same. It wasn't something either one of us wanted to happen- let alone for it to be on our heads. "Why do you even want to be an animagi, anyway?" She asked, which was the all-important question, really, wasn't it? "Surely it's not to help Remus, which is why we all did it, so... why?"
Mia shrugged, the skin around her eyes tightening slightly as though she was trying to hide her true reaction, and only mostly succeeding. "I can't say I'd be unhappy about helping out on the occasional full moon, but no, that isn't why I want it." No one spoke for a few seconds, and it became obvious that Mia didn't intend to tell us her reasons of her own free will. Of course it couldn't be that easy.
"Well, then why-" Mia cut me off, which was a bit frustrating, considering her reluctance to talk when we wanted her to. Maybe she just needed to pretend that we'd dragged it out of her- that she hadn't given the information away, the second she was asked.
"I've wanted to be an animagi ever since the first time I heard about them," She admitted, and there was a hint of reverence in her voice that felt like it was more for the concept of animagi in general, rather than for Elaine, the actual animagi standing right in front of her. "The stories always made it sound so... satisfying- No; freeing. As a little kid, stuck in a house like that, with all those rules- trapped living a human life as people who weren't aware they weren't entirely human- we latched onto the idea of being able to change into something else, and just... leave everything else behind. Everything but each other." It should've been obvious, considering she'd already told us that the only person who'd given enough of a shit about her at that age to tell her stories- including about animagi- was Leo, but it was this last part that made Elaine and I both realise for the first time that maybe Leo hadn't been completely honest with us about his motivation for becoming an animagi.
Everything was silent for a minute, before Dahrya broke the silence with a snort of amusement that I didn't think was all that warranted. "Speaking of which, you never told me what Leo's animagus form is." Elaine and I teamed up to shoot her an incredibly dry, reproachful look. "Lion. Beaver. Walrus. Heh- vampire bat! Tell me when I'm getting warm-" Mia cut her off with a single glance that was half approving, and half disapproving.
"I'm more interested in what all of your animagus forms are, knowing how well Leo's fits him. Cheetah, by the way." She said this last part to Dahrya, even if she never took her eyes off Elaine- the only animagi present. "Do you think yours fits you, Elaine?"
She narrowed her eyes at the younger girl, folding her arms across her chest at the same time. "Hard to say," She said somewhat sharply. "Rat, dog, stag, wolf. It's up to you to figure out who's who-"
Mia snorted, then swiftly answered, "Peter, Sirius, James, you. Yeah, I'd say they're pretty fitting." ...wow, okay. That's- Were we sure that all of Leo's deductive abilities were strictly vampire related, rather than veela? Or maybe even just- well, not Joannis related, but Meliflua, perhaps? "I asked him, after he told me, whether he'd done it because of all our talk about it. He said- He said he did it for you guys, because he wasn't sure if there was still a me to do things for. He also said... he wanted to know if he was still human enough for it to work." Oh, Leo... "If he'd ever been human enough for it to work." Oh. Leo. "I should've known that Elaine wouldn't let him do it alone- and that those boys would do anything for Remus, even this." The weight of all of their friendship was a warm glow in my chest. "I should've known he'd be a cheetah, too." Elaine and I shared a look.
"What do you mean?" I asked her. "How could you possibly have guessed-?"
She smiled somewhat sadly. "Soft toys weren't exactly 'proper'," She said with no small amount of bitterness. "Only two were ever permitted. When Leo was born, Caliste- our mother's mother- provided a small, plush toy for the new baby boy. When I was born, she provided a second. Father tried to get rid of Leo's pretty early, but mother fought him on it- she's always been sensitive about her mother, and this was no different. Eventually, Leo saw the writing on the wall- he gave me his, for a few years, until father decided I was getting too old for plush toys, as well. He hid them in the attic- Leo, not Sebastien- and after he was... gone, I used to visit them sometimes, up there. It was one of the few things of his that I had the opportunity to interact with, even in secret." She took a deep breath, as if to steady herself. "Leo's was a cheetah. That's why I said I should've known."
Elaine and I shared another look, this one incredibly pained. "And... what was yours?" She asked, and Mia shrugged one shoulder sort of tersely.
"Mine was more typical," She said quietly, as if even this were a secret she was keeping- probably from her parents. "A little brown bear... I called it 'Little Leo'." Dahrya blinked, appearing somewhat disbelieving.
"You named your teddy bear after your brother?" She sounded skeptical, and a little mocking, and... painfully awed.
Mia shrugged. "It's only fair," She said judiciously. "Considering I've shared a name with his cheetah since I was born."
(A/N): Mia called Leo 'Big bear' in 122 because the bear is 'Little Leo'- Little Leo also being the name of the arc in which Leonides gets kicked out.
'(I should've known) that those boys would do anything for Remus' is sort of my version of the 'anything for our Moony' from All The Young Dudes.
Also, there is a piece of information presented by Mia in this chapter that might be subtly contradicted later- keep in mind that while she is telling the truth (in this particular situation, in others she may lie, as people are wont to do), she is not all-knowing... so while she is presenting the facts as SHE knows them, they may not be entirely... er, factual. In this case, she has made an assumption based on what she has experienced in HER life, and IF she has shared that assumption with someone who could correct her on it, they haven't... which is such a 'Leo' thing to do that you probably don't have to guess who I'm talking about, there. It isn't something important, really, pretty much just a breadcrumb that might tip you off to something being odd if the rather subtle 'correction' of that assumption didn't take place in a chapter so full of tip offs to things being odd that you're pretty much going to be in a darude sandstorm of odd tips. That chapter is 584, by the way, which is set to come out on the Anniversary this year, and is the absolute latest we're going to hit 1 million words. There's... a reason I wrote it for the Anniversary.
Also also, I'm only 4/5ths of the way through chapter 667, because I wanted to reference something I was sure I wrote in an earlier chapter, only to not be able to find it, then eventually coming to find out it was part of an end of chapter author's note meme, so when I do include it, I'll be making the 'subtext' into 'text', but also that's not going to happen in 667... so instead, we ended up with hopefully meaningful, hopefully character growing, banter... which can sometimes require a lot of brain power for me to write.