10: The Dream
Pain.
His throat seared with discomfort but he dared not speak a word – he had no wish for his sobs to be met with yet another harsh backhand. He could see little in the gathering darkness, branches and brambles that scratched his face and arms as they ploughed forward, the last distant glow of sunset fading against the trees to his left.
The moon would be rising soon.
The man – if he was a man, for what man had he ever seen before with claws for fingertips? – had not loosened his grip upon him, one arm bundling him firmly against his chest to still his wriggles, the other hand, with its sharpened ends, digging hard against the soft skin of his neck in an unspoken demand for silence. His breath was a harsh reminder against the top of his head as he surged forwards through the undergrowth, heedless of any damage to himself or the child he carried as he pushed on, on, on, deeper into the woods, casting looks over his shoulder as he ran. Every so often, he laughed.
He did not like his laugh. He did not like this man.
He wanted to go home.
He didn’t understand what was happening, why the man had taken him away from his parents and fled with him into this darkening, once loved but now sinister forest on the outskirts of their home. He was confused, terrified, bewildered – he wanted to cry but he had quickly learned that the penalty for tears would be pain. The sun was all but gone now. He wasn’t allowed out after dark.
Why was this happening? Why was he here?
The man had shouted at his daddy. He had thrown things. He had cursed. He had smashed his way into the peace of their evening. He had used words that he did not understand.
Reparation. Retribution. Justice.
Daddy hadn’t liked those words. The man had not liked daddy’s answer. He had not liked mummy’s blow.
For it was then the man had snatched him up and dragged him away to this place.
Suddenly, shockingly he was hurled to the ground. He felt himself gasp at the bruising impact as roots and brambles slapped at his small body, swallowing hard at the pain in his throat as blood trickled from the five puncture wounds left as residue from the man’s claws. He had half-scrambled to his feet, when a sharp hand clasped his upper arm and hauled him around to face his kidnapper.
The man’s face was broad, crisscrossed with a pattern of vicious scars, the freshest of which, acquired just minutes before, was staining his cheek with scarlet. His hair was short and tightly curled. His eyes gleamed gold in the gathering night.
He hated the eyes. The eyes terrified him.
He whimpered and sniffed as he flinched away. He couldn’t help himself.
The blow rocked him backwards, the harsh grip on his arm all that kept him from tumbling to the floor. Silent tears streamed down his face as he fought not to make a cry. The man snorted with disdain.
“Pathetic.” His voice was an icy rasp. “Just what I’d expect from a brat of Lupin’s. A coward just like your father. But you will learn the folly of his hiding and excuses.”
His other arm was seized as the man all but lifted him off the ground, drawing his face close. His teeth glinted. Behind his head, the last vestiges of sunlight had disappeared.
“He’ll come for you, boy.” The man’s voice was a whisper, his face all but pressed against his petrified captive’s. “But he won’t come alone, oh no, because he knows what I’ll do to him; he’ll call his little Auror friends first. And that will give us time, just enough time to set things to rights and be away. Remus.” He shivered at the sound of his name on this man’s tongue. “How typical. Christened a victim, just as I was. But as was once done for me, I will make you better than your name. I will see you renamed, reborn. Do you know why?”
He shook his head. He was too afraid to do anything more. The man’s smile spread – it almost seemed, suddenly, to be a smile of a great many more teeth.
“Well.” The word was expelled in a gravely tone, almost a growl. “Your dearest daddy owes me boy, owes me for a life and a lifetime. And you’re my payment.” A glint of silver whispered behind the trees, a hint of rising moonshine. The man’s lips curled upwards, his golden eyes filled with vindictive bliss as he shifted and writhed with some strange sensation that the child did not understand. His shadowed outline seemed almost contorted, his grip against his arms suddenly odd.
“You’ll go now and my true self will come for you. You’ll thank me for this, one day.” The words were thrown out in a gasping rush as he threw his head back with a howl of joy. “I’m giving you a gift.”
The grip released abruptly; he tumbled backwards, slumping to the uneven ground as he stared up, transfixed in horror at the twisting form of his kidnapper.
The man was changing shape.
His head was elongating, his body sprouting tufts of fur as his clothes ripped away; he tumbled from his crouch onto all fours, gasping with painful pleasure. Half-changed, half-formed, he lunged suddenly towards the frozen child slumped on the earth before him, thrusting his muzzle-like face at the boy as he spat out a single order.
“Run.”
The child’s terrified scream echoed through the trees as he obeyed.
He screamed and could not stop. The pain was unbelievable, like nothing he had ever thought possible, a ripping agony that centred on the savagery of torn skin where the wolf’s jaws had ruthlessly clamped down. But it did not stay there. It spread in waves, flowing through his skin and veins like a creeping poison; was it his imagination that he could feel himself being twisted, the very makeup of his body rewritten into some new and mysterious code? And there was more.
There was a presence.
What was happening to him?
Hands, hands grasping him, people everywhere shouting, a voice calling his name. It sounded so far away, his mind shocked and strangely numb unable to create any response but screaming, more screaming. Something swathed him, a blanket perhaps as he felt himself lifted from the ground, as he caught a glimpse of his father’s face, his comforting voice whispering to him as his strong arms engulfed his son. He felt detached, removed from his own being and floating loose as the presence, the something pushed his limbs into a frenzy of contortions and blows, fighting against his father’s hold. Why was he fighting? He didn’t want to fight! He just wanted to hold on and be held until all the awful horrors of that night went away. But he was no longer in control.
It was.
He could feel it, sliding across his mind, vicious, vindictive desire tearing at his consciousness as though seeking to drive itself inside, into the very essence of him. It wanted to claim him. It wanted to be him.
He didn’t want it there! He wanted it out! Get it out, get it out!
All sense of time was lost to him – he did not know how long he struggled within and without before the walls appeared, the horrified faces that stared down as he was deposited onto softness, a bed of some kind in a long panelled room that he had never before seen. His father’s arms were abruptly gone, the hands that pinned him suddenly unfamiliar. With a last desperate heave he broke to the surface, screaming for his daddy at the top of his voice before being dragged sharply back under. Beyond the wall of unknown, white robed figures he caught a glimpse of his mother, pale and sobbing desperately and his father beside her, repelling the white clothed woman who hovered around him, his clothes soaked with blood, his stance peculiar, his neck scratched and bloody from his son’s own unwilling assault. He did not seem to care.
He was staring at his thrashing son with distressed, horrified repulsion.
And then suddenly, he was there, forcing aside the white clothed figures as he reached out and touched his wand to the forehead of his struggling son. He was going to fix it. He was going to send the presence away. His daddy knew about things like this. His daddy could fix anything.
His father’s face was pale and set. He spoke a single word.
“Obliviate.”
* * *
“Remus! Remus!”
Hands, hands shaking him, still shaking him; he gasped and fought instinctively to free himself from their grasp, eyes tight closed as he pushed back against the grabbing. He was not going to let them! He was not…
“Remus, for goodness sake, wake up!”
There was a shocking splash – icy cold water washed across his head to soak his hair and drip and dribble down his face. Gasping with surprise, Remus’ eyes flew open and fixed upon the concerned faces of Poppy Pomfrey and…
And his father.
Reynard Lupin was staring down at Remus with a mixture of relief and concern. His silver hair remained thick in spite of the passing of his seventieth year, his face, though more wrinkled, much like his son’s. One white-knuckled hand was grasping the cane that had helped him to walk for as long as Remus could remember – not that the length of his memory seemed to mean much now. The other was resting gently but firmly against his son’s shoulder. He smiled tentatively.
On the other side of his bed, Poppy was not smiling. An empty water glass, its contents the cause of his abrupt awakening, was clutched in one hand; her other hand was clamped firmly to his forehead. Her lips were pursed sharply but her eyes were filled with worry.
“Remus,” she said carefully. “Are you all right?”
A good question, to which the answer was no; he was not sure that he had ever been less all right in his life. Images from his dream swirled and contorted, mocking him; Kane’s laugh and half-changed face, his father’s determined stare as he raised his wand to wipe the memories from his son’s mind, and that presence, that horrible, horrendous feeling of invasion that he had felt - so he had thought - only once before, but recognised all too well.
1981 was no longer his first and only feral incident.
Kane’s knowledge of his feral past suddenly made a great deal more sense. He must have seen his struggles after he…
After he had bitten him.
Abraham Kane had bitten him, just as he’d come to suspect. And more. He had not wandered into the woods, he had been dragged there. He had been dragged there for a reason. But understanding of that reason eluded him. He could remember now what had happened that terrible night. But he had been too young to understand why.
He only knew that Kane had blamed his father. That somehow, in some way, he had felt he was settling some kind of score.
And his father had wiped out his memory to hide the truth of it, and kept it a secret for thirty-four years. Whilst his only son lived with and suffered the results.
Oblivious. Literally.
The wall was gone, collapsed by the weight of his realisation the night before of what must have lain behind it. And he was more confused than ever.
A soft touch made him start – his father, now sitting on the edge of his bed, was staring at him with concern.
“Remus?” he said softly. “Son?”
Poppy was walking away, grasping a damp towel. His face was dry once more. The matron had cleaned him up and he hadn’t even noticed. He was even sitting upright.
He stared at his father. His father stared back.
There was a hint of fear in the older man’s eyes. A terrible chill rose in Remus’ heart. This was his father. His only family. He loved him dearly and believed himself loved in return. And yet his dad had lied to him, kept secrets from him for almost all his life.
His hand drifted to his throat, to scars old and new. Secrets that had almost got him killed. Twice.
Confusion, hurt and anger waged war inside his mind as his entire collection of childhood memories came crashing down. Had it all been a lie? He had lost the purity of his school memories to Wormtail’s presence, the knowledge of what he would become a taint on happy times. Now the cherished recollections of his parents had shifted inexorably too. Was every good memory he had in his life destined to be tainted by the discovery of deceit?
Anger was winning the battle as the cold grasp of betrayal ran its fingers through his soul once more; he was too shaken and shocked to deny it. He wanted to know why his life had been ruined before it had really begun, and why his memories were now spoiled. He was owed that much, surely.
“What did you do?” he whispered.
Reynard blinked; his eyes narrowed uncertainly at the intensity of his son’s stare. “Pardon?”
“What did you do?” Remus repeated the question more sharply. His voice was stronger now, and cold – he had not felt this kind of icy rage since that dreadful night in the Shrieking Shack that had ended his last sojourn as a teacher. “What part of that night, exactly, didn’t you want me to remember?”
His father was staring at him with bewildered confusion. “Remus, what are you talking about? Look, you’re not well and you’ve just a strange turn in your sleep – you were thrashing all over the place! Just lie down and I’ll call Madam Pomfrey back…”
“No!” The weight and volume of his tone shocked even him. Reynard flinched back as though slapped by the word. Sharp footsteps sounded, approaching rapidly. Poppy had sensed her patient was upset.
He couldn’t wait, not now. He was not going back to sleep. He would not take a tonic. He did not need to rest. All he needed was to know just what the hell was going on.
He leaned forward, his voice a harsh hushed murmur for only his father’s ears.
“Thirty-four years ago today,” he whispered sharply. “That’s why I was thrashing in my sleep. Kane. Obliviate. I remember.”
Reynard froze, staring at the son he knew so well, drinking in the narrowed eyes, the quiet rage and the icy aura of betrayed disillusionment. All colour drained from his skin.
“What is going on here?” Poppy’s voice penetrated the moment, an unwelcome intrusion. “Remus, you need rest, not…”
“Poppy.” Remus cut her off with rapid abruptness, stopping the inevitable words of strict concern before she could hit her stride. “I need a word alone with my father. Do you think you could find something to do elsewhere for a while?”
The matron gaped. “Remus, for goodness sake, you almost died less than a day ago! And if the tone you were taking is any indication, this conversation will only make you more distressed…”
Remus interrupted yet again, his tone clipped and meaningful. He knew deep inside that he was being terribly rude but this was simply too important. “Poppy, the only reason I will be distressed is if I don’t get to talk to my father. Alone. I’d rather stay here, in the Hospital Wing, where I should be, but if necessary I will take this outside.”
The gaze he fixed upon her was both pleading and sincere, but at the same time betrayed a cool determination that even the steely matron could not match. “Please,” he said softly. “I need this.”
Poppy’s expression was both confused and troubled; she glanced at the older man for a second opinion. “Reynard?”
She did not find one. Remus’ father said nothing. He was staring blankly at the bedspread, breathing hard as though he’d run a mile. He was almost as pale as his son.
The Hogwarts matron was clearly not happy. But nonetheless, she could not match the stubborn resolution of her patient and sighed. “Very well, I’ll be in my office. But no exerting yourself!”
Remus waited until he heard the door to Poppy’s office pull shut before turning to face his father once more. He had demanded this talk – but now he could not find the words to say. He simply stared, stared at a man he’d thought he’d known better than any other, a man he had loved more than anyone but his much missed late mother and tried to suppress the ice around his heart that whispered he was staring at a stranger. He desperately wanted there to be an excuse, a reason, something that would make everything all right again between them, but he dared not hope for such a miracle. His hopes had been dashed on such matters too many times in the past.
He simply looked at him instead. Reynard’s eyes had lifted to stare at his son, brimful with a cauldron’s worth of fear, regret and weariness; a lifetime of secret keeping weighed heavy on the mind, it seemed. And he looked old. Rey Lupin had never looked old until the last few years, even when the last trace of brown had faded from his hair; not until the day his wife had died, a stupid fall from a window in a Parisian hotel, attending a conference in France to spread the word about her finally successful Wolfsbane Potion. That awful day, watching the coffin of the woman who had been his life for more than forty years vanish beneath the earth forever, he had suddenly appeared his true age. Now, sitting on the hospital bed of his angry son, he seemed yet even older.
Two sets of eyes met. Both frowned. Neither spoke.
It was Reynard who broke the silence.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice breaking slightly. “I never meant you to find out like this.”
Remus frowned, irritated by the platitude even if sincerely meant. “Forgive me, but I’m fairly sure you never meant me to find out at all.”
Reynard could not hold his gaze against such a fierce stare; his eyes dropped once more. “That’s sort of true,” he admitted softly. “But it was…”
“For my own good?” That phrase. He’d been expecting it. It fuelled the icy fire inside his chest.
Reynard looked up sharply, his expression one of vague offence. “Necessary,” he finished firmly. “You were too young, Remus. How could you understand…”
“I’m older now. Help me understand.”
Reynard shook his head abruptly, a hint of anger of his own creeping into his eyes. “That wasn’t what I was going to say either. Do you want to know the truth or would you like to keep interrupting?”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m five, dad!” Remus did not appreciate being reprimanded, snapping almost before he could think better of it.
“Then don’t behave like it!” Reynard shot the response back instantly, raising his hands sharply to cut off his son’s indignant response. “I know you’re confused and angry and upset. You’ve just had a horrendous dream and it’s shaken you. But please, calm down. Bawling at each other will get us nowhere.” He took a deep breath. “I hope you can appreciate that I’m more than a little shaken myself. It’s not every day a man gets a call from the Headmaster of Hogwarts telling him his son has almost been killed by the very same creature that…” He bit his lip as he fought to calm his rapid breathing. His eyes met his son’s over-brimming with a kind of tortured relief.
“You’re all I’ve got Remus and I love you very much. You’ve near enough scared the life out of me these last two days, all but bleeding to death yesterday, having fits in front of me this morning. I don’t think either of us are willing or able to make this a shouting match. You wanted to talk. So we talk. What do you want to know?”
Fighting the fire inside, Remus forced himself to regain control his anger. He felt suddenly ashamed; he had not considered the worry he had put his father through, bad enough in any light, but terrible to one who had knowledge of his history of Kane. Suddenly Moody removing him from the mission was making a great deal more sense.
And much as he hated to admit it, his dad was right; the memory of the dream - or the dream of the memory perhaps – had left him shivery and uncertain, shaking him from his usual composure and causing him to snap and snipe at his father like an irritable schoolboy. Enough was enough. This was no way to behave. He wanted to talk. Fine. It was time to get to the point.
“You memory charmed me.” He forced calmness into his voice, but could not keep out the cold. “In St Mungo’s. I was in pain and all you could do was memory charm me.” A plea crept into his frosty tone in spite of itself. “What was so important that that you couldn’t even wait until I’d stopped screaming to wipe out?”
Reynard was shaking his head before his son had even finished his sentence. “It wasn’t like that, not at all.” He sighed again. “Remus, how much do you really remember?”
“Everything.”
“That’s not helpful.” The older man retorted at once. “Your everything may not be the same as mine. I assume you know who bit you?”
“Kane.”
“Yes. And that he took you?”
“Yes.”
Each curt, one-word answer seemed to cut at Reynard like a knife. Nevertheless, he ploughed on. “Do you remember him appearing into our house? All the words he said? The confrontation I had with him?”
Remus hesitated, wading through a morass of foggy memories and found only a few vague images. Perhaps the wall, the wall he now knew to be his father’s Dementor damaged Obliviate spell, had been a little sturdier in places than he’d thought.
“Sort of,” he admitted. Oddly enough, his father’s familiar practicality was calming him, in spite of the situation; he barely paused a moment before clarifying. “Not really. I can see him standing there shouting at you but I don’t remember what was said. And I think I remember being pushed behind a chair by mum.”
His father twisted his lips thoughtfully. “I doubt it would have meant much to you anyway. Abraham Kane and I – it’s a complicated business in more ways than one.”
He stared absently at the ceiling, fingering his cane. “I got this gammy leg beating him off from you,” he muttered softly. “Damn fine shot with those claws of his. Marked the pair of us didn’t he? Killed us financially too – I had to take a desk job, your mother gave up most of her contracts to look for a cure for you… Oh yes. He got his revenge very nicely in that respect.” He met his son’s eyes once more. Remus was astonished to see a hint of tears. “But he didn’t win, Remus. He thought we’d hate you, you see. He thought he would ruin our family. But we didn’t let it happen; if anything, it made our bonds stronger. We didn’t stop loving each other. That would have been his true revenge.”
Remus stared at his father. The anger had drained away, lost behind the flood of poignant memories. Whatever happened, whatever was about to be revealed, his father was right; whatever had occurred that night, it would not change the years that had followed. But still, he needed to understand once and for all. It was the only way that they could both come to terms.
“Revenge for what? Dad, please.”
Reynard regarded his only child. “Did he say anything to you? Do you remember?”
The words of the dream-memory replayed themselves in Remus’ mind. “He called you a coward,” he replied, his voice low. “He said that you owed him for a life and a lifetime.”
His father smiled, a humourless smile of bitter regret. “In a way, he’s right. I didn’t start this, Remus. To be honest, neither did he. It was forced onto both of us until it spiralled both our lives out of control. And then he went and dragged you in too. I know I made bad choices, but at the time they seemed the right ones – I had no way to know where it would lead. I think about it, even now and still it makes no sense.”
“Then tell me about it.” Remus sat forward, resting one hand beside his father’s on the bedspread. “It might make more sense if you talk it over.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“The beginning usually works.”
Reynard gave another bitter smile, this time tinged with ruefulness. “I’m not sure where that is anymore. My beginning, his beginning and he had more than one. It’s all confused. And a long story.”
Remus managed a smile, gesturing to the empty Hospital Wing and his injuries. “I seem to have time. I certainly haven’t much else to do.”
Reynard sighed, reaching over cautiously. When Remus offered no protest, he laid one hand over his son’s. “All right – I’ll try. I’ll do my best. But you’ll have to bear with me. As I said – it’s hard to know where to start.”
Remus nodded quietly. “Just tell me. Give me a reason to believe that what you did really was… necessary.”
Reynard nodded, gently squeezing the hand he held. “It was. Truly. Well. I suppose I’d better begin somewhere…”