(A/N): We're back with Remus, Elaine, Mia, and Dahrya.

Trigger Warnings: Child abuse and neglect, plus discussion of possible child murder (obviously didn't happen, but still). Talk of infidelity,

Remus

Elaine was clearly painfully affected by this, and I couldn't blame her. I wasn't far behind her, if I was being completely honest; the thought of a young- well, younger- Leo with a broken leg, just trying to protect his little sister and suffering endlessly for it. It made complete sense to me that everything in Leo's life as we knew it- his being kicked out and disowned and ending up living with his father, his entire identity as a half-vampire- was kicked off by him trying to make Mia happy. I hadn't really put much thought into how Leo's life had changed, the method more than the effects, but if I had ever thought about it, I'm sure that would've been at the top of my list. I had never assumed there was a cause per se, I'd only ever seen it as an unfortunate- but necessary- transformative event. If Leo hadn't been thrown out, then we likely would never have been friends- and not just because he almost certainly would've been in Slytherin.

"That's... heartbreaking," I told her, and Mia shrugged, though she looked quite affected by all of this as well. "I do have one question, though." Her brow furrowed as though she was concerned by the prospect. "You said your father stunned you for yelling at your mother for kicking Leo out- was that... immediate, or...?" She narrowed her eyes at me, trying to figure out what I was getting at.

"Not... immediate, no. Why?" I glanced at Elaine, who was watching me just as warily- though likely because she didn't want to find anything else painful out about Leo's past, at least while she wasn't able to give him a hug.

"So, you had a chance to gauge his reaction to the news, then?"

They both reacted to that differently- Elaine was visibly concerned, and Mia relaxed, snorting quietly. "Oh, yeah. He took it surprisingly well, actually." I was surprised by that, given what she'd told us about Sebastien's proclivities, as well as everything else we knew about him. "He laughed, at first. Tried to have a go at mother for being 'the unfaithful one' for once, until she told him..." She trailed off briefly, shaking her head. "You know what he said, after mother told him that I was his, even though Leo wasn't?" Elaine and I shared a look, and echoed Mia's own shake of the head. "'Blond'." What? "He said that Leo's father had to be blond- That he'd always assumed Leo was blond like a Meliflua- like mother, and grandfather, and- Anyway, mother hated that, and as we all now know, it wasn't true to begin with." No, I suppose it wasn't.

"What an odd thing to fixate on," Elaine said, and Dahrya frowned.

"Not necessarily," She said, drawing our attention to her, which made her flush slightly and cross her arms over her chest defensively. "I mean... it's sort of the inverse of the situation, but... I know I've spent a lot of time thinking about my father- who he is, what he's like. And it's not like... My mum hasn't tried to keep it a secret, exactly, but she didn't like talking about it when I was little- 'cause she said I was too young- but now I don't want to talk to her about it, and while she's told me some things, in passing, that's not really enough to feel like you know someone like that- someone you should know, if things were... different." She shrugged tersely. "I can see why Leo's stepfather decided to dwell on the physical, is all I'm saying."

It was more than I'd ever heard Dahrya say at once, I think- not just on this rather delicate subjects, but in general- and I patted her on the shoulder as reassuringly as I dared to think I could get away with. "True," I said calmly, though I tried not to edge into that 'gentle' territory, in case it set off her 'rip and tear' instincts once more. "If Leo didn't meet up with his dad right away like we always assumed, I wonder if he had any similar expectations before he met him. Maybe you should ask him in your next letter." She opened her mouth to protest, but I pressed on before she could. "It would really help us get to the bottom of this whole thing, Dars. Please?" She shot me a look that was equal parts threatening and vulnerable.

"Bold of you to assume my next letter isn't going to just be a wall of expletives," She sniffed angrily, but said nothing else that would lead me to believe she wasn't on board. I turned my attention back to Mia, who was watching this whole exchange with a somewhat bemused expression.

"Right, so, my one question is-"

She cut me off, frowning. "Wait, I thought the question was about how my father reacted." I tilted my head to one side.

"I thought you were finished telling us about that... was I wrong?" She hesitated, which made me think I definitely was. "Mia... you know you don't have to tell us if you don't want to, but-"

"She said she killed him, and father told her off for it." I blinked heavily and shared a glance with Elaine, who looked just as shocked and disturbed as I felt. Leo's stepfather had thought his wife had killed their- her- son, and he'd scolded her like a naughty child? As if killing someone- As if killing Leo was no more dire than sneaking an extra biscuit, or something? "Of course, that's not the last time he came down very much on the side of keeping Leo alive when my mother wanted the opposite-" I panicked for a second, thinking this was some new thing that Leo had hidden from us until I remembered Leo telling us, in that small diner after the gala we'd all attended, that Sebastien had prevented Cipicia from killing him. Elaine wasn't far behind me, but Dahrya still looked endlessly perturbed, so I bumped her shoulder with my hand to reassure her that we were already aware. "-which is odd, considering he was usually the one that went out of his way to harass Leo when we were-" She cut herself off, clearly seeing no need to finish that sentence.

Elaine's frown was so deep, I worried it was making a home in the dungeons with the Slytherins. At least Dahrya would be able to keep it company. "What do you mean, 'harass'?" Mia shrugged far more loosely than I thought the situation warranted.

"I don't know if that's my place to talk about," She said, which was abysmal code for, 'ask Leo, I'm not telling you anything further on the subject'. "I can tell you that while my father was telling mother off about maybe sort of killing Leo, he made it very clear that, in no uncertain terms, even if Leo wasn't human, and wasn't technically a Joannis, he didn't really have any choice but to accept him as such." I felt my brow furrow. "To openly disown him would be admitting that mother was unfaithful, which would reflect poorly on him as a husband and a man- despite the fact that all the purebloods do it, really." ...was Sirius in on this 'open secret'? "To admit that Leo was anything other than human would be tantamount to throwing away their status as purebloods, and, most importantly to father, handing the heirhood to Aunt Markaisa." Who?

"But... aren't you guys part-veela, anyway?" Dahrya asked pointedly, and Mia rolled her eyes like she'd been expecting this question.

"Not if you ask the rest of pureblood society," She said. "The only people who know we're not- entirely 'pure', are either too scared to speak out against grandfather, or agree with him that the magical lines are too depleted, and thus need a new injection of raw magical power- magical blood. That is, apparently, his reason for marrying, and reproducing with-" 'Reproducing' was a nice way of putting it. "-our grandmother. Of course, then he had to go through all the extra trouble of trying to find a way to make use of that power in a way that wouldn't out what he'd done to the rest of the world, so..."

That... was a lot to take in. I looked to Elaine for her opinion, but found her vaguely uncomfortable with the whole thing, so I turned my attention back to Mia- to my only hope of getting answers, at least for the time being. "You said that openly dis-"

"She told us she gave Leo a choice: Leave, or die." Logically, one would assume that the option Leo had chosen would be obvious, since he was still alive today- and in a way, it was... but I think we all somehow knew that he'd made the opposite choice to what was logical. "She said he tried to argue, saying that forcing him to leave was as good as killing him... She told us she hurt him badly enough that if he was human- fully human- he wouldn't have survived it." She paused to take a shaky breath. "Having seen the blood on the carpet, and everything else very wrong in his bedroom, I can't help but agree. It was after that, that I-" She made a vague gesture, but we all knew what she meant.

I felt awful having to do it, but I had to ask now, before anything else came up- and I thought she might be more inclined to answer me, now. "Mia- you said they weren't planning to disown him, so... why did they? What changed their minds?"

She stared at us for a long moment with a furrowed brow, before she replied, rather solemnly, with a single word: "Grandfather."

(A/N): Last night I finished writing the chapters that will take us through to the start of November next year, so I've got nine chapters left to write before next year is all finished up... will I stop there? I doubt it, but that is, currently, 'the plan'.