CHAPTER: 11 WARNINGS OF A WEREWOLF
The month of January had finally appeared, and the year 1798 began strongly with mild temperatures contrasting with the snowfalls of the past month. The weather was pleasant, to say the least, although still a little fresh and conducive to outdoor lunches on the terraces. Despite being warmly dressed and shivering from time to time due to the winter cold, everyone could easily take advantage of this lull in the weather to enjoy a good hot chocolate while going about their business. Lily was one of those who had this idea, especially after her daughter had expressed her desire to play outside rather than stay locked in the mansion for so long.
Humming the delicious smell of cocoa escaping from her bowl, she took full advantage of this day, which was announced under good auspices. Calmness was omnipresent in the atmosphere, and stillness prevailed over the rest. By this time, devouring with the gaze an umpteenth comedy of Marivaux, of which she was a great reader, was an excellent idea. The plays he wrote were so sweet and light, yet provided a very accurate and detailed analysis of the feelings and romantic relationships of his contemporaries, making them a real treat for the eyes. This author's approach was very subtle concerning male-female relationships and current society, and the difficulties for two people to love each other. Internally, Lily thought that this man might have given her some advice about the current relationship she had with her husband.
"BEKKY! BRING US SNACKS IMMEDIATELY!"
James had the knack for being heard, and even the thick walls of the mansion could not silence his screams. Screaming about her house elf was also not very respectable in Lily's eyes, for a man openly pronouncing himself as part of the good side and a defender of all species living on this planet. But James was not known for his sense of logic, and between words and deeds, the gap was rather wide in him. He would never, in any case, advocate for the rights of the elves to decent working conditions, let alone emancipation. Like many Muggles with their black slaves, some wizards would be unable to survive without the help of their little servants, and James was one of them.
"HAVE YOU SEEN THIS TORY?! IT'S AMAZING!"
This is one of the few things Rosie kept from her father without even realizing it: her ability to scream nonstop. One could almost have believed that both had launched a competition to determine which one would be heard louder than the other, and in this game, Rosalyn could easily claim first place. Usually, her daughter was rather calm, but today differed slightly from the usual days because, for the occasion, Astoria Greengrass had done her the honor of her presence. When the two were together, the ears of people nearby tended to suffer painfully. Lily obviously had nothing against her daughter's best friend; quite the contrary. Her presence had at least the merit of making Rosie forget the absence of her older brother.
Inevitably, her thoughts immediately turned to him, her beloved son Harry. It had already been nearly five months since he had left the mansion for this orphanage, and five months during which she had no news of him. Harry couldn't risk writing to her anyway, and it would have taken a miracle for him to be able to send a letter to her or Rosie using an owl or a nice one, even at the post office on the Traverse Road. She herself had not had the courage until now to inquire about some news about him, but the desire was still present in her. Dumbledore and James, however, were always so cruel to him and forbade any contact with him, whether with her, Rosie, or Remus. Hogwarts headmaster and her husband still believed that Harry was at the Dursleys' house, and luckily, neither of them bothered to go check it out.
James was just acting like he didn't exist anymore, and to Lily's biggest surprise, he said, his desire to make his eldest son disappear was such that he had gone so far as to destroy the wall separating the room from his two sons to make only one, belonging, of course, to Matthew.
"It is simply so that he can flourish more freely in an environment that will allow him time to forget all the worries that his status as a savior causes him," had explained to her that day James, exploding the partition separating the two rooms. "And then, Dumbledore agrees with that."
Except Dumbledore had nothing to say about their family life and how it was to be run, at least until further notice. At times, Lily had the impression that the Hogwarts director's opinion was more important than her own, and that James lived only to satisfy the old man's desires. According to Dumbledore, Matthew had to feel all the love his parents had for him, no matter how, and giving him gifts continually seemed like the best way for him to know. The best example was certainly the Christmas day that nobody celebrated in the family. The mere fact of knowing that this Christian holiday made it possible to offer gifts to others was enough for her husband to offer dozens to Matthew, without doing the same with her or even Rosie. To use this feast for personal gain was already sacrilege, but on top of that, giving her own daughter nothing and letting her look sadly at her brother's pile of gifts was above everything in horror.
Suffice to say that the dispute which followed made the walls of all the manor tremble, and James did not lead widely in the face of the real crisis of fury of his wife. Even Matthew dared not say anything to defend his father and preferred to slip away into his room by obviously taking away the presents he had received. The children had thus not had the opportunity to see her administer a masterful slap to their father, let alone incite him with all the possible names of birds.
"I should have slapped him long before that," she muttered before taking a sip of her chocolate. Perhaps it would have allowed him to have clearer ideas long before.
This memory also made her sketch a slight smile while remembering the shock visible on her husband's face, accentuated when she had announced to him that she now wanted to sleep in a room other than hers as long as he would not change his behavior. Lily knew that James could exercise his right over her and order her to do the opposite, and the law was on her side. But strangely, he did nothing and even agreed to give her the largest room after Matthew's. Since then, the two had been sleeping in separate beds, and although their relationship had become pretty much normal again, Lily still could not forgive him for what he had done and continued to refuse the marital bed.
James was still in love with her, probably even more so than when they were both students at Hogwarts, and to imagine him for a moment forcing her to sleep with him or to use his right over her even more was not imaginable, at least according to her. On the other hand, being able to abandon her son and favor the other over the rest of her children was also not something she would have imagined before the night Matthew had supposedly saved the magical world. But facts now proved it: Nothing is impossible. The last issue of the Sorcerer's Gazette, placed a few meters next to her on the table, could testify to this. Her son and husband felt like angels reading the articles about them, but the reality was quite different.
"And it will not get better with time," she added, lowering her eyes again to her book. "Mom! Mom, look what I can do!"
Her daughter, still as exuberant and full of life, ran up to her as fast as she could, a huge smile on her face while right behind her, Astoria tried in vain to keep pace despite the heavy winter coat that slowed her down. Although she wanted to show Rosie, this discovery seemed apparently very important to take the risk of making noise and thus provoking James' anger, currently in the basement of the mansion teaching Matthew a new spell.
Rosie finally arrived right in front of her, trying to catch her breath, while Lily was busy cleaning with a magic wand the clothes dirty with mud from the two little girls. All of her body was magnified, although Rosie refused to allow her mother to clean the palm of her left hand for a reason she did not know, but it didn't matter. A warming spell later to prevent them from catching cold, and Lily had to face a new problem until then ignored: the excitement of her daughter who couldn't stay in place for more than two seconds without hopping like a grasshopper.
Trying to contain all this energy was almost like trying to calm a raging, impossible hippogriff. What is more, Rosie kept struggling to escape the inspection of her mother who persisted in wanting to make disappear the slightest stain of mud on her coat.
"Mom, my clothes are just a little wet! You don't need to look all over my body for any dirt!"
"I know, but I just wanted to embarrass you," she said, glancing at her daughter. "If I'm not mistaken, you openly mocked Astoria the last time you found yourself in this situation, and her mother did the exact same thing I did. Let's say I give you back your coin's coin."
Her daughter looked at her with indignation while behind her, Astoria openly giggled as she tried to hide her face in her hands. Lily herself resisted the urge to join her, but knowing Rosie, her daughter risked taking it badly. Making fun of her was one of the things she didn't enjoy, and more often than not, Rosie ended her day in her room pestering at the person who made fun of her. Her mother preferred not to get there knowing full well that it would be almost impossible to get her out of the room in which she would take refuge, and fighting to put her at the table was not really very tempting.
"So what did you want to talk to me about to put you in such a state?" she asked to quickly change the subject.
"Mom, look a little! You're not going back!"
Her fist finally opened, Lily could finally see what her daughter was hiding and discover that the mysterious object was, in fact, a dead leaf. Looking up to look at Rosie, arcing an eyebrow in the passage to show her disbelief, Lily tried to check if her daughter didn't play a bad trick on her or had set out to invent some kind of fable dealing with this dead leaf. But Rosie still kept that same happy and amazed look as if she had just made the greatest discovery of the century. Either something escaped her, or her daughter was a very good actress.
"I'm sorry, darling, but I don't see where you're going," Lily gently informed her, not wanting to hurt her.
Far from being struck down by her mother's perplexity, Rosie suddenly closed her eyes and took on a serious look that totally baffled her mother. Rarely did her daughter take that focused air with her, at least not in recent months and even less so when she was studying. Rosie was certainly studious, but Harry's departure had broken her desire to learn and floor on all facets of the world around her. What she was about to show her must certainly require a lot of effort, and the least that Lily could say a few seconds later, the result was really worth the work she did on herself.
The dead leaf began to move, as if taking slight jolts, before suddenly bending in half in its middle and rising slowly in the air. The two parts beat a few seconds later like wings, and soon the leaf fluttered like a butterfly around them before moving away towards the forest. Lily looked at this show, unable to utter a word. Her daughter came before her eyes to do accidental magic, at only five years old!
Obviously, Harry remained the earliest of his three children in this field since his first traces of magic had emerged when he was only two years old, but still, doing magic at that age was rare. She herself had had this kind of result at the same age as her eldest son now, and still: his accidental magic had only allowed him to bend and unfold the petals of a flower. What her daughter had just done gave her a strange sense of shame when she thought that two of her children showed amazing magical abilities largely equivalent to hers when she was a little girl, but shame soon gave way to pride, and a heartfelt smile at Rosie slipped on her face as she joyfully began to applaud her for her feat.
"Have you ever had the opportunity to do this kind of thing before?" she asked her anyway to check the degree of advance that her daughter had over the others.
Rosie exclaimed with a continuous smile, "No, this is the first time! We were playing in the heaps of dead leaves at the end of the garden, and it was by wanting to throw a handful on Tory that they started to flutter around me! You should have seen this, Mom, I felt like I was in the middle of a swarm of butterflies!"
"I would like it to happen to me too," Astoria said sadly, sitting on one of the chairs surrounding the garden table. "Daphne hasn't even had accidental magic yet, but she already knows how to use the spell to levitate objects. It's not fair!"
"Come on, Astoria, you're only four years old, you still have to wait a bit," Lily informed her. "I'm closer to having five now!" she continued, counting on her fingers. "In... two months!"
"You'll always be smaller than me, Tory!" Rosie jokingly hurled as she sat next to her. "Mom always says you have to respect people older than you!"
"Never!"
Both eventually went into a verbal joust to determine who was the more mature of the two, before the eyes of Lily who shook her head while sighing at this show, simultaneously amusing and terribly familiar. Rosalyn and Astoria may have been best friends in the world, but this kind of argument was very common when they were together, but usually went no further than the childishness of little girls as young as five years old. The only way to make them quickly stop arguing was to give them food, but unfortunately, nothing edible was at hand, except for her bowl of chocolate, which she jealously guarded.
"Gizmo?" she suddenly said, turning slightly towards the kitchen door.
Just two seconds later, the house elf who had long since resumed its original form since August appeared in a "Pop" sound, interrupting the dispute of the two little girls. The little gray-skinned creature, with globular eyes and carrying an apron on which were drawn the coat of arms of the Potter, immediately bowed before his mistress to the point that his nose touched the cold ground of the terrace. Lily watched him do nothing, even if internally, having servants subject to the point of being reduced to a state close to that of slaves did not please her at all.
"Did Mistress Lily call Gizmo?" he asked her in his little high-pitched voice for the house elf. "What can Gizmo do to satisfy the desires of his mistress?"
"Would it be possible that you bring these two ladies a hot chocolate and some pastries? Nothing like that to appease the heated minds."
"Of course, mistress! Gizmo is delighted to be able to make himself useful for such a good lady!"
The house elf immediately disappeared in the same way it had happened, leaving behind him two young girls expressing their joy at the idea of eating some good sweets and a woman sighing in front of so much bondage. Merlin, who had long been the daughter of a peasant woman who had to help her parents for the harvest during the summer holidays, now she had several elves at her service, and unlike many others, enjoying this new status was not his kind, far from it.
"Mom, do you think if I told dad that I flew leaves, he'd be proud of me?" Rosie suddenly questioned, looking at her with a worried air.
Deep down, Lily was convinced that no, James would not congratulate her daughter for what she had done. Worse still, he might find a way to say that these were just narratives from a little girl looking for attention. Now that Harry was gone, her husband's paranoia had turned against her, and James saw Rosie as a new source of trouble. Luckily, he hadn't come to his hands with her yet, but over time Lily feared it would happen, and that prospect didn't enchant her in the least. She had already had to separate from her eldest son; doing the same with her own daughter was above her strength.
"To hell with money and fame, she would never allow this, and sleeping under bridges was still a better solution to spoil the childhood of two of her children," she said, especially if the two named children were with her. It may have been selfish of her, but inwardly, Lily knew full well that Matthew would never leave his father to live with her, and even less give up all the privileges that James gave her. To leave, she would willingly give up her younger son for the other two even if she loved him just as much. The more time passed, the more Matthew behaved like a tyrant, and by his own admission, this behavior would sooner or later harm him. Fortunately, her daughter, who was waiting at this very moment for an answer from her, always looking at her with this same anxious air, would not follow in her footsteps, otherwise her mental health would not hold up.
"I am convinced that he will be," she lied, despite everything being convincing. "But maybe you should wait a little longer before you tell him about it. You know how focused he is on the training of your big brother."
"That's for sure, we can't forget it," she said in spite. "He spends his day touting the merits of Matthew without paying attention to what surrounds him. Maybe by telling him what I did, he will show more attention to me!"
Fortunately, the arrival of Gizmo allowed Lily to dodge the question and, at the same time, to divert the attention of the two girls from this topic of conversation so depressing. Their delighted look was really nice to see, as if the mere sight of two bowls of hot chocolate and cookies to soak in was enough to light up a day.
"Thank you, Gizmo!" joyfully threw Rosie, taking the bowl that the house elf was holding out to her. "You really are the best elf we can hope to have!"
Although a house elf could not normally blush, Lily was certain to have seen for a moment Gizmo's gray skin darken slightly at the cheeks. These little creatures tended to express their emotions in a completely different way and in a much stronger way than human beings, and as she quickly realized, her elf did not depart from the rule because it immediately began to burst into tears.
"Mistress Rosie is so good with poor Gizmo!" he stammered between two sobs. "Gizmo is so proud to faithfully serve such good and magnanimous mistresses that he would not exchange for anything in the world his place with another elf!"
His tear crisis lasted surprisingly long before Lily took pity and, deep inside herself annoyed by the scene he was causing, asked him kindly to go back to the kitchen to help the other house elves in their work.
"How is your family these days, Astoria?" she asked the little brunette playing quietly with a biscuit.
"As usual. Father is busy all day in the ministry for his work, mother, she spends her time teaching us what it takes to be good wives, and Daphne continues to play with her dolls when it's not to be the next Madame Potter. Nothing unusual in short."
"Your family life is really rich in Tory discovery," Rosie ironized, smiling with fun. "Not a day goes by without something unusual happening."
"Rosie," her mother warned her severely by frowning. "Don't make fun of your friend like that, otherwise you won't be able to see Harry when we go to see him next time."
The effect was immediate, and the smile that her daughter still wore a few seconds ago disappeared while she immediately adopted a stoic attitude towards Astoria. Prohibiting her from seeing her brother was the best threat she knew so far, knowing Rosie's immense urge to see Harry again and hug him. Not a day went by without her daughter asking her for news of her brother or asking her questions about potential letters he could have written or even dates that Lily would choose to go and visit her. Her brother's absence was really difficult for her, and the most awkward moment when she openly expressed it to everyone was certainly her birthday when' she asked her parents as a gift to bring Harry back to the mansion, even offering James to share her room with him so as not to disturb Matthew. Pain lost, her father remained of marble in the face of her supplications and firmly refused her request. This day also marked a fracture in the father/daughter relationship, and it was not uncommon to see Rosalyn call James by his first name to designate him. The title of father would be difficult to recover in her eyes, and her husband did nothing anyway to get closer to his daughter.
"It looks like you suddenly lost your tongue, Rosie," Astoria said, making fun of her friend. "You are less proud, I feel!"
"It is not true! See, I can still talk! And I can even shoot her!"
"Rosalyn Dorea Potter!" Lily rebelled at seeing her daughter carry out her threats. "Watch your behavior, girl!"
The doorbell of the front door suddenly rang, interrupting the house mistress in her rebuke. Far from worrying about this sudden arrival, Lily kept her calm perfectly, knowing full well that there were only the people closest to her family who were able to appear in front of the mansion and use the door to enter. The tusks of their home, although dating back several years now, had remained perfectly in shape and protected the home from visitors inconvenient for Matthew's protection. It was only during the birthdays where they were lowered to accommodate the guests; otherwise, the rest of the time, no one had access to it. Even the Muggles of the nearest village had no knowledge of this mansion lost in the middle of nowhere. Either the newcomer was a relative of the family, Sirius, or even Remus, or it could only be Dumbledore himself, and in the latter case, Lily didn't want to open it up to him in the least.
"Would Daphne like to join us next time?" she asked Astoria to forget this impromptu arrival. "I've seen very little since Harry left. Maybe spending a few hours here could change her mind…"
"Oh, you know, Ms. Potter, I doubt she's gonna need that for the time being. In fact, she is very weird lately: She keeps smiling and locking herself in her room to do I don't know what. Mommy doesn't know what's happening to her either, but she's happy to see her like that. I'm sure she's hiding something from us but she doesn't want to tell us anything. The only clue I could get was a piece of parchment burned in the fireplace that was signed by 'G. D. S.', but other than that, I couldn't find anything. Apparently, she has a secret correspondent, but our parents are not yet aware of it."
"You should blackmail her and order her to confess to you what she hides or you tell everything to your parents!" Rosie advised, smiling maliciously at this idea.
"Or you leave this girl alone and do not snoop on her private life," Lily added. "Would you like Daphne or even Harry to read your letters? It's not very nice to do that to someone you know."
"Harry let me read the letters that Daphne sent him, it did not bother him," said her daughter, taking a serious look.
Lily liked to answer that she doubted that her son could let her read her mail freely, but a new house elf interrupted her by appearing at the front door. The new creature, a female named Twinkie if her memories were right, bowed like her predecessor before her, crossing her gaze before addressing her in the fearful manner that the elves used to take with them.
"Mistress Lily, a visitor would like to meet you."
"Invite him to join us in this case, and prepare a little tea, please. I doubt this person likes hot chocolate."
The elf bowed again and motioned for someone to approach. While the little creature disappeared towards the kitchens, the stranger had approached him to the place where all three were in a slightly hesitant gait, if one relied on the sound of his footsteps. A man with a miserable appearance, wearing old clothes thinned in places and looking rather tired, finally appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, and everyone could recognize in him a very familiar face.
The newcomer was a man who seemed to be in his thirties, although his visual appearance made him feel more like a forty-year-old adult. His brown hair badly styled, the scars that he displayed on his face, and his melancholy air gave him the look of a poor man who had lived a life of misery that marked him much more deeply than by cuts on his face. For someone who doesn't know him, the man could very well be mistaken for a homeless man, a vagrant, or even a bandit, but Lily knew who he was and did not care about his presence among them.
"Uncle Remus!" Rosie cried out as she rushed towards him to hug him in her little arms. "What a joy to see you again! It's been a long time!"
"For a very long time," he affirmed by lifting the little girl to put her at the level of her face. "By Merlin, is it really the little Rosie Potter? It seemed to me that it was smaller and less heavy the last time I saw it…"
"I'm not heavy!" Rosalyn replied, crossing her arms. "And you look older and thinner!"
"Rosalyn…," Lily began, but Lupin interrupted her with a wave of his hand, giggling heartily at her remark.
"Don't worry, Lily, this charming little lady is still too young to really realize what she is saying and even less the impact of her words. And then I have to admit that I haven't really had the opportunity to see myself in a mirror lately. Don't I look more attractive like that, Rosie?"
In response, Lily's daughter mimicked the gesture of a person vomiting, which immediately made the man holding her laugh again. Remus Lupin, his real name, was by far the man she appreciated most in the world, perhaps even more than her own father. It had to be admitted that everything opposed him to James: Patient, calm, thoughtful, cultured, and simply friendly, Remus could be the exact opposite of his friend, like a mirror reflecting the opposite of our personality. The only false note was the lycanthropy from which he suffered and prevented him from being able to live a decent life. No one wanted to hire a werewolf for any job, and so Remus stuck to tasks for the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore that took up a lot of his time. This was also the main reason why he was very little present in the lives of Harry and Rosie despite his status as godfather for the first. It seems that Dumbledore wanted to avoid meetings between these two...
"So miss," he said, sitting down on the first chair available to him after greeting the two other people present, "what are you doing on such a day?"
"We're playing witches!" Rosie announced proudly. "Besides, I did my first accidental magic!"
"Really?" he asked, arching a perplexed eyebrow. "But you're only five years old…"
"Mom will be able to testify, I did it in front of her!"
To approve her words, Lily simply nodded her head, making the book that she always kept in her hand disappear. Remus looked at her with the same astonished look he had at Rosie's words before finally accepting this astonishing truth and proudly shaking the hair of the young girl sitting on him.
"Well then! It looks like you're quite early in your family, and you haven't seen anything yet! In a few years, I will be as strong as you, and Harry and I will form a duo of shock against Dumbledore and Matthew! We're gonna kick them…"
"I advise you not to finish this sentence, girl," warns her mother by shooting her a look. Rosie preferred to obey her mother by quickly donning a biscuit, while Remus began to laugh openly at her behavior. Lily, on her side, watched her friend laugh, a friend who had surprisingly missed her. His missions were obviously the main cause of this absence, but not only. Remus would have had a lot of opportunities to come to the mansion in recent months, but James and Dumbledore's decision about Harry had kind of thrown a chill into the relationship binding them. Remus absolutely did not accept this decision and had made it clear to James by giving him a resounding punch that day.
The difficult relationship between father and son was well known to everyone, at least people close to the Potter family, but this choice to take Harry away from his family was too mind-boggling for his godfather to pass up. Remus's confidence in them had since been broken, and although he continued to follow Dumbledore's recommendations for the Order of the Phoenix, a tenacious resentment persisted in him, and the wolf's instincts slumbering in him prevented him from being able to forgive them one day. His behavior was very much like a she-wolf and her cub, a cub that would have been ripped from him without him being able to do anything except to attack those who committed such an act.
"The only way Remus had to express all the anger that emanated from him was to sulk outright the mansion and limit his visits. The only people he came to see besides were only Lily, whom he had been made aware of the decision to place Harry in an orphanage, and Rosie, whom he loved as his own goddaughter. Matthew and James were getting in the background, and anyway, greeting a six-year-old boy who had treated him a few times of hybrids without his father taking him back was not part of his plans."
Lily didn't have to blame him for her absence because each of her reappearances was like a day of celebration for her and her daughter, far from the comings and goings of Sirius and his immature behavior all day long. Yes, he missed his presence, and seeing him next to her, smiling and having fun with Rosie, was a pleasure to see.
"What if you were going to play girls now?" he suddenly offered them by searching through one of his pockets. "I have something that might interest you."
A few seconds later, Harry's godfather pulled out a small golden bullet with two wings resembling those of dragonflies that he immediately released into the air. "A living of gold!" Rosie exclaimed as she looked at the little ball in awe. "Matthew never lets me play with his!"
"Well, consider this your late birthday present. I engraved your name on its surface so that your brother would not attribute it to himself."
"Thank you, Uncle Remus! Come Tory, the first one who catches him can give a pledge to the other!"
The two girls quickly left in the wake of the golden rush, giggling joyfully without worrying about the remarks that Rosie's father could say. The two adults present watched them having fun without talking, each enjoying this little moment of happiness so rare lately. Still, a small voice in Lily's head was telling her that Remus had not only come to inquire about her family's news, but that she had, otherwise he would have announced his presence to James and would not have made Rosie leave so quickly.
"So what is the real reason for your visit?" she finally asked him when the girls were far enough apart.
Remus did not answer right away, too busy drinking from the cup that appeared a few seconds earlier in front of him, taking care to look elsewhere except at her. Finally, when he could no longer escape this question, he laid his cup on the table, breathing a sigh of both contentment for the delicious nectar and spite for his friend's innate sense of unearthing the buried secrets people she used to rub shoulders with.
"Nothing can be hidden from you," he said, slouching in his seat. "I obviously did not come here just to hear from you; I absolutely needed to speak to you in truth."
"It must be important not to want to tell me this in front of James. I must admit that I was slightly surprised to find that you did not ask me a single question about him and what he is currently doing."
"Needless to say, I know he's with Matthew to train him and follow Dumbledore's plans. Merlin, this situation is beyond me. James really makes me feel like a dog in the pay of this old man. He wasn't like that when we were students at Hogwarts, and I have to admit I'm worried about that..."
Lily nodded to approve her words, herself often imagining James wearing a collar and leash and obeying her master blindly.
"Actually, I spent a few days in Muggle London to recharge my batteries and forget for a while my werewolf condition and all the difficulties I encounter in my life these last time. This allowed me to think long and hard about some of the little things that trotted me in mind, especially in relation to the tasks that Dumbledore assigns me. The last mission he gave me almost cost me my life, but I preferred not to talk about it in front of the girls."
"What happened to you?" she questioned him by raising an eyebrow.
"I have encountered many packs of werewolves during my travels on behalf of Dumbledore and the Phoenix Order, but the latest one is certainly the worst I have ever seen. I don't know what took Dumbledore to want to create an alliance with them, but they weren't really receptive to our dear headmaster's advances."
Remus suddenly raised the sleeves of his frock coat to show off his forearms, and Lily could not help but gasp in horror as she saw the many scars on her friend's skin. It was as if he had been used to sharpen butcher knives, and his executioners had apparently given themselves to heart joy to mark the slightest centimeter of skin.
"I really did not have a lot of trouble finding them; the villagers of Kyoto told me at length about a valley where no one dared to approach because strange disappearances were taking place there. The members of the pack were not tender, and many of them practiced black magic without a hint of remorse, especially when it includes human sacrifices. You can't even imagine what I saw, but next to them, Fenrir and his own pack would pass for lambs. Suffice to say that they were not very receptive to my proposals of alliance, and I almost stayed there."
Remus paused for a few moments, his gaze lost in the wave as he played nervously with a thread escaping from his frock coat. Lily felt as if she had a man next to her who had lived too much for her age, and the impression Rosie had when she saw him was not so far from reality: His friend seemed to have aged ten years.
"I wanted to advise you to pay attention to Dumbledore. Maybe I'm getting some ideas, but I feel like his urge to meet this bunch of crazy people wasn't trivial. I have already wondered at length about the fact that I am by far the one who works the most for the Order, unlike others like Sirius who do strictly nothing, that I am the one who takes the most risk although my condition promotes dialogue with other packs of werewolves, but this time this incident was the incident too. Dumbledore could not but know the danger of this last mission since he inquires beforehand about the individuals I have to meet. The rumors spread in this country should have warned him of the dangerousness of my task, but he either ignored them, or he was not aware of it, and it would mean that he himself is not doing his job properly."
"You... You mean you suspect him of wanting to eliminate you?"
"That's the impression it gives me anyway."
Lily didn't know what to say about Remus. Dumbledore was not someone she appreciated, especially since he was interfering in her family's life, but from there to suspect him of wanting to eliminate a person as admirable as Remus… Until a few years ago, she would have immediately challenged the words of her friend, but there, her supposition was strangely not completely crazy to her. The headmaster of Hogwarts was a character after all very complex and showing authority on occasion to achieve his ends, he said, in particular by influencing the Wizengamot to pass laws favorable to him or cancelling decisions that would harm his entourage. Harry's case was one of those scammers, and the loss of his son's title as the future Lord was just a drop in Dumbledore's manipulative ocean. Although the reasons why he would attempt to murder Remus still eluded him, Lily was persuaded deep down even though he was capable of it.
"In any case, I repeat it to you once again: beware of him. He could very well sooner or later go after you or even Rosie. I don't worry about Matthew and James; they're both already under his thumb, and Dumbledore wouldn't risk losing his two favorite pawns. Harry was the first one he wanted to get rid of, but he probably won't be the last."
"What are you going to do, then?"
"For now, nothing. I have not yet informed him of my return so far, and I will make sure to avoid him as much as I can so as not to have to leave on a mission at the risk of my life. I will also keep my suspicions to myself and keep a low profile despite the desire I have to express my anger to him for all his decisions. The one about Harry still remains in my throat. You are not the only one," Lily confessed, sadly lowering her eyes to her now-empty bowl. "The more time passes, the less I can bear this man."
"In fact, I also have something else to tell you," Remus said. "During my stay in London, I inquired about the latest announcements of the Muggle newspapers, and one piece of information, in particular, alerted me. It's about the orphanage you left Harry in."
In less than a second, Lily's initially worried face turned into a grimace of horror as she looked at Remus in a panic. "What's going on?" she asked him in a frightened voice. "Did something happen to Harry? Is he injured?"
"No, thankfully, otherwise, I would have come much earlier to warn you. Well, talk about it! What happened for this to make the headlines of the Muggle newspapers!" Despite Lily's alarmist and harsh tone, Remus kept his calm perfectly. He could not blame her, after all, for worrying about her son; he himself had almost run to this orphanage to take news of his nephew when he had learned.
"It appears that the woman running the orphanage was arrested by the Muggle authorities for embezzlement and falsification of administrative documents. Apparently, this lady was receiving rents from associations by providing them with false information about her private life. She would have received two pensions as a widow by posing as both her husband's wife and also that of her own son. In addition, it would also have diverted the money offered by the royal court for personal purposes, while this money was intended to improve the living conditions of its residents. The authorities noted several problems in her building and the dilapidated conditions in which the orphans in her care lived. There were several other pieces of evidence of malpractice on her part, but these were apparently the most obvious."
Although she did not let anything appear, Lily could not help cursing herself for what she had done. Her lack of information about the orphanage she had sent her son to could have been more serious if the charges against this director had not been discovered. This woman had seemed to her polite and in good faith, at least the two times she had met her, so to imagine this old lady as a criminal was very difficult. 'The habit does not make the monk' as they say.
"What about the orphanage? Has it been closed?" she inquires.
"No, but this Ms. Cole has obviously been arrested. Apparently, someone else would take her place in a short time, but I couldn't find out more. The orphanage itself is constantly invested by commissioners sent by the British government to identify other problems within this institution, and visits are, therefore, interrupted. I don't know what happened to the orphans, but I guess the current weather doesn't allow them to go outside."
"One would have to think of going to see him," mumbled Lily while looking with a lost air at the park in front of her. "He has been there for several months now, and no one has yet gone to hear from him. He must feel terribly alone without us. I just hope that he has made some friends and that he is not too unhappy so far from the manor…"
"We could plan a visit in the coming months, taking advantage of a day when James and Matthew would be absent. It would not be complicated, in fact, since they are continually invited by the Minister of Magic to dinners on behalf of the Ministry. Fudge takes advantage of Matthew's fame to seek a new term as Minister of Magic. Everyone is happy in the end."
"Except that at these dinners, I must be present at the side of my husband to display to everyone the image of the perfect little family," she objected, sighing. "We will only have to think about this later; putting this kind of thing in place takes a lot of time in preparation and organization."
"Mom! The golden snitch got stuck in a tree!" Rosie cried out to her in the distance, giving her great signs. "Can you come help us?!"
"A golden snitch... stuck in a tree? Merlin, your daughter will always surprise me!" chuckled Remus as she got up from her chair.
"You can't even imagine all the crazy ideas she's been thinking since the last time you saw her. Did you know she wanted to become the first Minister of Magic? I don't know how long she's been thinking about this career choice, but she's constantly taunting me to go to the Director of the Magic Justice Department to discuss this with her. Are you did not even have to undergo its phase 'I want to be the first person to reach the moon on a broom.' It was absolutely impossible to get her off her broom, even explaining that he could not go more than five meters high because of the constraining spell."
"So it's better to go help her quickly before she starts to become a famous tree climber," proposed her friend by moving quickly towards them.
Without worrying about the noise Rosie was making and the reaction James would probably have at the table at night for her behavior, Lily and Remus walked towards her together, greatly appreciating each other's company and the cheerful atmosphere of this January afternoon. Forgotten the training and the threat to their shoulders over Dumbledore's plans; Forgotten the disturbing silence in which Voldemort and his henchmen were hiding; For once in their lives, everyone would take advantage of this moment to forget their concerns and would focus on the difficulties of everyday life like any family.
Far away in Valencay, the situation was totally different for Harry. He rarely had the opportunity to have fun, especially this afternoon, or exceptionally, his mother's and aunt's classes had been reversed. This daily load did not bother him, however, although the desire to play games with the children of the village or even just spend time with Pauline was when even felt. But if he wanted his goal of becoming the best wizard in the world to be achieved, he had to go through it, and Harry was not balking at the tremendous workload that was being given to him.
Also, the afternoon was today devoted to a small practical course of magic without a wand, an area on which he had been working for a long time now and which was also part of his favorite lessons. The stage of levitation with his fingers of the objects surrounding him had long passed, and recently, the more advanced spells were part of the new skills to master.
According to his mother's own words, the spells he was currently learning were at the level of a fourth or fifth-grade Hogwarts student, but the school policy wanted that kind of spells to be taught only late. Previous years were devoted to the assimilation of uninteresting and useless spells such as that growing deer horns or sinking from the nose of the snot…
"It should not be surprising if the level of Dumbledore's students in defense against the dark forces is so catastrophic when you hear the idiots they learn," had moreover declared his mother one evening while addressing the theme of the teaching at Hogwarts.
"There was truth in what she was saying, and Harry was even afraid of appearing too advanced in his school level compared to his future classmates, but learning these spells may not have been so horrible compared to the grueling half-day he had just over a week ago when he and Marie-Louise had a long time posed for a painter to have their first family portrait.
Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun was a very talented artist, Harry could recognize her but also a great friend of Marie-Louise and a real pipette. This lady had apparently painted the portraits of many personalities, from the simple traditional to the great dukes to the marquis and kings. The whole of Europe snatched it from itself, and to be painted by it was an unnamed honour. Most of the paintings of the castle had themselves been made by her, and despite her little knowledge in this area, her brushstroke and remarkable ability to show emotions on the faces of her subjects were remarkable to Harry.
The only shadow on the painting was probably the conversations she was holding that were constantly dragging on. 'Merlin, this woman is a real word mill,' he muttered, thinking he wasn't being heard.
Mal took it from him, his mother, sitting next to him that day while he was standing to take the break gave him a slight but significant kick in the ankle to sermonize him. It wasn't her fault after all that Elisabeth Vigee kept repeating that she was still in shock to see her friend mother of an eight-year-old boy, but this Marie-Louise did not seem to understand him and even less to understand his desire to see this day end quickly.
The already long session was even longer because of the long conversations that both held to remember the good memories of the monarchy. Knowing the wand movements to catch his opponent was not as horrible compared to that. Only the finished painting hanging above one of the chimneys representing them as a real family gave him the impression that these painful hours had not been so horrible, and the radiant smile of Marie-Louise was well worth this small sacrifice.
But for now, the situation was not to be raptured in front of a portrait but to train The room in which they were both was an old unoccupied cellar usually acting more as a storage room than a storage room living room. Yet this room had not been forgotten by its owner who had made it a training room adapted to the courses she taught Harry. Between the bookshelves on defensive and offensive spells, the wooden or straw mannequins serving as targets, the desks and chairs used for the theory lessons and even the various instruments used for the lessons of botany, astronomy or arithmancy, the room was very practical for them. Twenty people could easily compete in a duel without counting the possible space if we removed all the furniture from this training room. His mother was currently casting a few spells aimed at making their little session completely private and safe from prying eyes even though everyone at the castle was trustworthy, he said, while he watched her do it while making reels with her handles to warm up. Nothing was worth a good warm-up before an exhausting workout, and that was the first rule he had learned from being around this lady.
'Gabriel, as I announced yesterday, today we will again do magic without a wand although this session will be very different from what we have done so far.'
Despite the fact that she now spoke only French in her presence, Harry understood in his entirety the sentence of his mother, and this for a very simple reason: His level in this language had increased considerably for almost a month. The reason did not come from the countless textbooks he had read since then, but from a skill used by Marie-Louise to teach him much more quickly French in its smallest details: The legilimency.
Who would have thought that penetrating into the mind of a person would also give him in exchange for knowledge that the said person did not possess? He himself would never have thought of it, until the next day when this method was used, he realized that his vocabulary had progressed.
In truth the technique his mother employed was relatively simple and worked in the same way as the memories people put inside a thought so they could re-study them later. Marie-Louise simply penetrated inside her mind and poured into him bits of information about this difficult language, especially knowledge about the many times of conjugation she possessed. The simple past and the subjunctive no longer had a mystery to him, but many things still eluded him. His technique could also have provided him with other information, particularly on certain subjects he was studying with her, but his mother had refused to let him fall into ease and was content to wait lazily and without lifting a finger for the much desired information. 'We are never better served than by ourselves,' did she repeat to him often when he asked her to use the legilimency to help him when he could not properly perform a finger or wand movement.
It had to be admitted that looking for information in a book and persisting in his efforts to obtain a suitable result was still more rewarding than waiting for the answer to his question on a book plateau, and Harry understood it in the end by rapturing with joy whenever he managed to cast a spell, whether with or without his wand. Knowing everything about all subjects would end up being terribly boring and very belittling for his own self-love knowing that he had done absolutely nothing to achieve it.
'So far, I've noticed that you always use the same finger to cast your spells, the index finger. For what reason?'
'Well, it's one of the fingers that we use most frequently, especially to indicate a direction, hold his pen to write, his fork to eat, that kind of thing. It seems logical to me, I mean... This finger is much more mobile than the others, especially when compared to the ring finger or even the little auricular.'
'But what would happen if you accidentally lost your index finger during a duel, or even by accident? I'm well aware that you could use your other hand to cast spells, but admitting that both are severed, don't you think it would be a shame not to know how to use others? Being dependent on your indexes could be dangerous, especially if you are not able to establish a connection between your magic core and others. Your wand would therefore be the last resort you would have, but even there, it will be much more difficult for you to hold it.'
Seen like that, Harry had to admit that his mother scored a point. Looking back, he even considered his attitude slightly sufficient, although he had not really thought about the usefulness of his other fingers for his practice of spells. He was resting too much on his index finger, and it could have played tricks on him.
'Moreover,' resumed his mother by orienting his right hand towards him, 'each of them is just as mobile and efficient as another. Reducto!'
Without warning, Marie-Louise sent Harry the offensive spell he had been trying to learn for a few weeks, thanks to his little finger. The spell missed him, of course, but touched the ground between his two feet, forming a small hole of a few centimeters. Soon all the other fingers passed, and Harry found himself surrounded by small holes and crevices all around him.
'Try now,' she ordered him to sit on one of the chairs.
Harry nodded and stood in front of one of the many scarecrows acting as a target. The puppet, strangely resembling James if one excepted the absence of glasses, also seemed to look at him, a vague smile sewn on his head in a pale imitation of a contemptuous grin, and that made him boil inside. The feeling of having James Potter in front was quite striking, though, and Harry hoped that one day he could do the same with the one who was otherwise his father by showing him all the panoply of spells he knew and would know. He would not in any case wear this rictus by seeing its potential.
'Which finger do I use?' he asked, pointing his hand at the scarecrow.
'It doesn't matter until you forget how to bring your magic to your hand.'
This task, which proved to be very complex a few weeks ago, was no longer a concern for him, although channeling his magic inside a finger was still quite complicated. The process was relatively simple but required a lot of concentration and willpower to bring his magic to his arm. The idea was that the method to be used had to resemble the link linking him to Daphne, except that this time the inking point had to be the end of his finger."
"Closing his eyes to concentrate better, Harry gave his magic a few seconds to start acting and extricate himself from the shields of occultism that he had previously weakened. His control over these shields was not quite perfect, but to be able to increase and decrease their power without needing to dive back completely into his subconscious was a not inconsiderable effort. In just a few seconds, Harry could feel a tiny bit of his magic slowly creep up his arm using the many veins running through his body.
This feeling was very pleasant although a little fresh but it was better than writhing in pain as most initiates of magic without a wand used to. The blood channels did not necessarily have the strength to withstand this magic intruding into them, and often, they could simply break when the quantity was too large. Fortunately Harry did not have this problem there, and his magic was able at his ease to move towards his thumb that he had chosen to cast his spell. Once the amount of magic stored in his finger was large enough, he did not wait any longer to try this new training.
'Stupefy!' he cried out full of hope.
Unfortunately, the effect was not what he hoped for, and simple red sparks escaped from his finger. Dazed, Harry watched without understanding his finger as he wondered what had not been, while his mother shook her head slightly in front of this insufficient result.
'Start again,' she said.
Anxious to do well, Harry returned to his work, but the result was the same five other times. Finally his mother was right: If he had never tried to learn to send spells by changing fingers, the risk that he would find himself destitute during a duel was great. The work he would have in the next few years seemed at that time even more important than now.
'You do not correctly turn your thumb in the air,' informed his mother by heading towards him. 'See, do like this,' she added, taking her hand to show him the right moves. 'The placement of your other fingers, arm and even shoulder is also paramount and depends on which one you will use. I personally took almost five years to get a decent result, so I'm not surprised that you didn't succeed the first time. It would have troubled me more than anything to tell you. Try again once again.'
Marie-Louise, as a precaution, moved away from him to protect herself from possible errors. Harry pointed his thumb again at the scarecrow that kept taunting him. Forgetting momentarily his head made of old cloth, Harry imagined his father's face instead, a face that looked at him arrogantly as James used to.
'I will show you one day... You will see that I am not the useless and talentless boy that you persisted in seeing in me...'
Screaming the word 'Stupefy' again, Harry was surprised to see a red light escaping from his finger and hitting the scarecrow head on. His desire to scream his joy at this result nevertheless quickly gave way to surprise by seeing his fate literally explode the poor straw puppet in dozens of pieces. The blast of the explosion was such that both were thrown back as a few books on the shelves flew into the room like missiles. Harry took a long time to get up, not because of any injury but more out of shame: His spell was far too powerful, and his willingness to show his father what he was really worth made him momentarily lose control of how much magic he wanted to use. The result was far from his expectations.
'It seems that it is not yet quite to the point,' he hurled timidly to his mother who seemed to drown in an ocean of tissues, he said, unable to get up.
'You believe?' she said, turning to him. 'Tell me in the future when you have decided to blow up the castle so that I can start writing my will now.'
The two looked at each other in silence for a few seconds before suddenly laughing without restraint. This situation still had the merit of being rather funny for them, especially since finding underwear almost in plain sight for Marie-Louise was no longer embarrassing, but she preferred to laugh rather than cry.
'Let us go, let us resume where we were,' she decreed, getting back on her feet. 'But now, pay attention to the power you use in your lot. I don't really want to do any work in my castle in such cold weather.'
'Promised, mother,' he said, repairing the scarecrow with the passage of a wand.
Hoping, however, that the image of James does not make him lose control of himself, Harry returned to his task, determined to succeed in this exercise. No matter how long it took him, he was sure he would make it. Failure was no longer part of his vocabulary, and this desire to overcome the obstacles in his way only appeared in him: The future would prove to him that he will need it."
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