Chapter One
- The Wolfsbane Potion is a delicate potion and should never be tampered with. But when it is, the consequences can be deadly. -
The custody had been granted and the circumstances had been set. Rachael Lupin had finally been granted full custody of her daughter, Lily. Lily had been living with her adoptive family the Jameson’s until the end of her sixth year at Hogwarts. The circumstances set were that Lily was to spend a full month with Rachael with absolutely no contact with the Jameson family. Once that month was up she would be able to speak and visit them whenever she liked “ no strings attached. Rachael had to admit, she was a bit concerned about how Lily would take these rules. Undoubtedly, she had finally accepted Rachael as her mother; she couldn’t help but feel that she might not like being cut off entirely from the family she had spent sixteen years of her life with, even if they weren’t her biological relatives. When she confronted Lily about it, Lily said she didn’t have a problem with it.
Mrs. Jameson picked Lily up off the platform at Kings Cross Train Station and brought her back to their house where she would spend that day packing her clothes. Rachael would be coming during the afternoon the next day and would be taking Lily to her new home. It was an odd moment when Lily met Mrs. Jameson off the train; she didn’t know what she should call her. Mrs. Jameson sounded too stiff; mum wasn’t the correct title and calling her by her first name seemed wrong. In the end, she just decided to avoid calling her anything for as long as she could and concentrated on her packing. Packing, however, didn’t provide a good enough distraction since she had turned seventeen in January and was now a fully qualified witch, meaning she was permitted to do magic outside of school. It only took her ten minutes to pack her trunk and clean out her owl, Sapphire’s, cage.
Once she knew everything was in place, she resigned to the privacy of her room, making it known that she didn’t want to be disturbed unless it was an emergency. She sat on her bed, leaning against the wall and beckoned her owl over to her. Sapphire flew over and perched herself on Lily’s wrist, hooting softly as Lily stroked her absentmindedly; her eyes closed as she mulled over the new life ahead of her. She didn’t know what it would be like, all she knew was that she was comfortable with the life she had. She didn’t know if she wanted to leave it and go live with Rachael. What did she really know about her true mother? She didn’t know anything about her really, nor did she know much about her new family, save for what she knew from what Sirius said about the Blacks. All she really knew was that Sirius was her father, who was related to a bunch of pureblood freaks. Remus was her uncle, but he was dead, just like Sirius. All she knew about her mother was that she had to give her daughter up. None of that information was really enlightening or pleasant. She couldn’t even find out any other information as her mother was pulled back to her job at the Ministry, with many protests, and wasn’t able to reveal any more news.
Remus wasn’t able to provide her with much information either. As a matter of fact, he seemed highly reluctant to reveal anything to her; it was almost as though he was hinting there was something shady in the past and that he wasn’t the one who should tell her. Whatever it was, it was going to have to be exposed to her eventually.
There was a knock at the door which broke her out of her thoughts.
“Who is it?” she asked, suddenly feeling glad about the interruption.
“Riley,” said the Jameson’s nineteen year old son.
“Come in.”
The door opened and Riley backed into the room, carrying a tray of food. He stopped at the nightstand and placed the tray on it. “Mum said you didn’t have to eat with us if you didn’t want to,” he explained.
“Thanks.” Lily wasn’t really in the mood to eat, but she had to keep her mind off of things, and what better way to do that than with food? Riley nodded and began to leave, when a thought crossed Lily’s mind. “Did you know?” she asked, stopping Riley as he was about to walk out the door. He turned and looked at her curiously. “I mean… did you know I was adopted? Were you old enough to understand what it meant?”
Riley sat on the foot of her bed and nodded his head.
“Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t understand. I didn’t know how the whole process went; I thought you were really my blood sister. You look nothing like us, but I didn’t think it mattered. I kept thinking that until I was seven and Mum thought I was old enough to understand. She told me that you weren’t really my sister, how you were someone else’s kid, but we were taking care of you because they couldn’t. She also told me that you were a witch, but I wasn’t allowed to tell you, considering the circumstances.”
“That my mum wanted to tell me,” Lily supplied.
“Yeah. To be honest, we never thought your real mother would ever come to get you, so we took it for granted and never bothered to tell you that you were adopted. But I wanted to tell you this before you leave - no matter what blood flows through your veins, you will always be my sister.”
“It’s not as big as your old room, but it’s not small either.”
Rachael opened the door and brought Lily into a fairly large room, the room that would be her new bedroom. The room was already supplied with a bed directly across from the door, a nightstand standing next to it. There was a bookshelf next to the closet door and a dresser beside the shelf. The walls were painted a pale green colour and the floor was devoid of any carpet. Lily dragged her trunk over to the bed and dropped it on, while Rachael held Sapphire’s cage and placed it on the dresser.
“I’ll help you unpack,” Rachael offered.
“No,” said Lily, a little too quickly perhaps. “No… I’ll do it. I don’t need help.” Rachael looked taken aback for a second, before offering yet again. “No, really, I don’t mind helping. Besides, it’ll give me time to talk to you and to get to know you better.”
Lily hesitated for a moment, still not wanting any help, but she knew it was only right and therefore nodded. Rachael smiled and moved over to the spot where Lily had placed her posters. Rachael shifted through them all, admiring them, but saying nothing until she stumbled upon the Rolling Stones one.
“The Rolling Stones!” she said happily, holding up the poster and looking at it in a flattering sort of way. “You are my daughter!”
Lily looked up from the stacks of clothes she was putting away and saw Rachael holding the poster. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “Yeah… I like them.”
After that, the two didn’t talk much. Neither of them knew what to say. So, to avoid the moment when conversation was inevitable, they spent as long as they possibly could putting everything away. But it only took them an hour to finish.
Rachael stood in the middle of the room, trying to think of something while Lily sat on her bed. “How about Quidditch?” she said at last.
Lily raised an eyebrow at her. “What about it?” she asked.
“Do you play?” Lily nodded and beckoned her owl over to her. Rachael faltered for a moment, watching as her daughter stroked her owl, before asking, “What position?”
“Chaser.”
“You know, I’m surprised you’re not a Beater.”
“Why?”
“That was the position Sirius was best it.”
“He played for Gryffindor?”
“No, he tried out in second year, but he made one little mistake that cost him the position.”
“Oh… Did you ever try out for Quidditch?”
“No, I only liked watching it, commentated once in a while though. You got your talent in Quidditch from your dad.” Rachael smiled slightly, glad that they had something to talk about. She was never good with awkward silences. However the awkward silence had crept up again and this time she wasn’t the one who decided to break it.
“So, what other family do I have besides you?” Lily asked.
“Not a lot,” Rachael admitted sadly. “There’s me and you know most of the Blacks are dead, except maybe Bellatrix and Narcissa.”
They both made a face of disgust at the mention of those two; it was better to have no relatives at all than to be related to scum like them.
“Well, what about on your side of the family?” Lily asked a hopeful tone evident in her voice.
“It’s just your grandmother,” Rachael replied. “Your grandfather never had any siblings, and Remus obviously never got married. There may be some distant cousins, but none that I know of.”
Rachael waited for the next question, fearing that it might be the question she had been dreading. Much to her surprise, the next question never came as Lily excused herself to the bathroom. Rachael watched as her daughter left the room and sat down on the bed.
She knew this was going to be strange, for the both of them, but she just didn’t know what to do. There were only so many questions she could avoid that would lead to the uneasy revelations about her childhood. The truth was going to come out eventually. She only hoped she and her mother could pull off acting like there had been no animosity between them. Her mother was sincerely sorry about all she had done in the past, there was no denying that. They had not seen each other since Remus’s funeral and weren’t able to talk about why she had done what she did. She didn’t have to wait very long for the chance to talk to her, as she had invited her mother over for dinner. She had already devised a way to get Lily out of the house so they could talk. She had to say, that living five minutes walking distance from Hogsmeade had its perks. She would just give Lily some galleons and send her off. While the thought was still fresh in her mind, she pulled a handful of gold out of her pocket and left it on the dresser.
Still, she couldn’t help but worry about her mother not knowing that Rachael had given up Lily when she was a baby. How would she take that? Would she possibly say that Rachael hadn’t given her up for a good reason? Would she say that there was no reason to be afraid since they had apprehended Sirius a day or two after Lily and James died? But that wasn’t the only reason she had given her daughter up. She didn’t want to turn out like her mother and cause her daughter to live a life of pain and suffering with a mother who didn’t care about her. She did not want her daughter to have the sort of childhood she had. If that was any reason to give her daughter up, it had to be good enough.
“What’s the shed for?”
Rachael jerked her head up and saw Lily had reentered the room. Just by looking at the expression on her face, it was clear she wasn’t happy. She had forgotten that the window in the bathroom overlooked the backyard and she could see the newly installed shed standing there. Also, judging by the tone in her daughter’s voice, she already knew what it was for, and she didn’t like it one bit. Rachael felt bad about doing it, but it had been on Professor Dumbledore’s orders. He needed the Shrieking Shack (which was where Lily usually went during her transformations, even though she had the Wolfsbane Potion; it was just a precaution) for Order meetings and couldn’t house Lily there on full moons. She would go beyond the gates for every full moon and Apparate to her mother’s house.
“Professor Dumbledore needs the Shrieking Shack and thought it would be best to-”
“To lock me up?” Lily interjected angrily.
“Well yes… but-”
“But what? You’re my mother; you’re not making a very good first impression if you want me to accept you.”
“Lily, I didn’t want to do this but Professor Dumbledore needs the Shrieking Shack. Even though you take the potion every full moon, you need to come here and transform in that shed.”
“What does it matter?” she snarled. “They don’t need to keep it a secret anyway!”
When Rachael opened her mother, no doubt to ask why, Lily shook her head and merely muttered that she’d like to be alone. Lily sat on her bed and leaned her head against the wall. She was going to transform in a shed. That sounded primitive to her. Even though she knew that werewolves were never accepted in her society, at least people could have the decency to give them a proper place to transform. Did they think that the werewolves liked feeling pain? If they did than those people were just sick. It wasn’t fun to feel like your entire body was being ripped apart. The times when she didn’t use the Wolfsbane Potion were the worst times of her life. The very pain would make her want to keel over and die. That potion was the only thing standing in the way of her talking back to Snape during classes. If he didn’t make those potions for her, she would be a lot worse off than she was.
She rubbed her temples tiredly and discovered that she suddenly felt bad for snapping at her mother. Rachael was genuinely sorry about what she had to do. She knew that Rachael didn’t want to, but it had been on the Headmaster’s orders. For a minute, it seemed as though they were getting along just fine, talking about Quidditch and all. When they got to the family tree she found herself feeling slightly disappointed. The Jameson family had been considerably large; the extended family stretched on for miles and miles. Her real family, however, seemed so miniscule compared to them. And then there was her father’s side of the family. She would have given anything to not be related to people like the Blacks, the kind of people she couldn’t stand. She knew it was selfish to think in such a way. She knew she should be happy that she had a father as great as Sirius, but she couldn’t help but wonder what people at school would say. Everyone still believed Sirius to be a murderer, even though he was dead and they had hard evidence that he was innocent. She could only imagine what people would say if they found out he had a daughter.
Things had already been hard for her at school when everyone found out she was a werewolf. If it wasn’t for that then she would have no problem with everyone knowing her true identity. But for everyone to know she was a Black and a werewolf… that was too much for her to handle at once. If it wasn’t for Malfoy, if he didn’t have to be so nosey, she thought bitterly. If Malfoy hadn’t become suspicious of her monthly disappearances, no one would have ever had to know what she was. Of course he had done to her what Hermione had done to Profession Lupin and deduced that she was a werewolf. Hermione, however, had kept it quiet and Malfoy decided to expose it to the entire school. When she entered the Great Hall the morning after, she was greeted with a round of howls. She had to duck down and run to the Gryffindor table, burying her face in a book and trying with all her might to shut out the howling, all the while wanting to either burst out crying, or vanish into a puff of smoke. She couldn’t bear to think of what people would do to her if they found out her true surname was Black. She didn’t care if she was being selfish; she just couldn’t take it anymore.
She didn’t care anymore. If she wanted to survive her seventh year she would have to make a decision - Jameson or Black? She had thought of adopting Lupin as her surname, but it made her feel bad thinking about her uncle’s death, and it wasn’t her real surname. Jameson wasn’t her true surname either. It was just the title she had taken when she thought she knew who she was. In the end, she decided not to worry about it; she would know what to do when the time came for it. Besides, the doorbell rang and her mother was calling her downstairs.
Curious as to whom it might be, she got up from her bed and hurried downstairs. At the foot of the stairs, she saw her mother standing with someone who she recognised as her grandmother.
Rachael smiled and called her over to say hullo. “Lily, you remember your grandmother don’t you?” Lily nodded. She couldn’t help but notice that her mother looked slightly nervous. “Well, I invited her over for dinner, so let’s go to the kitchen.”
Lily hung back and let her mother step ahead of her, as she still didn’t know where the kitchen was. They entered the room to see spare ribs, corn on the cob and salad spread across the table. Lily and her grandmother took seats opposite of each other, while Rachael took a seat at the head of the table.
For a while there wasn’t a sound but the clinking of forks to plates and the thudding of the bottom of the glasses. No one seemed to know what to say until Mrs. Lupin chanced to break the silence.
“So, Lily,” she said, glancing up at her granddaughter. “How old are you?”
“Seventeen,” Lily answered quietly, though wondering why her grandmother didn’t know this already. Old people forget things, she reminded herself.
Mrs. Lupin smiled and continued her interrogation. “How are you doing in school? What’s your best subject?”
“I’m doing well… I passed all my O.W.Ls in fifth year, except Divination. And I guess my best subject’s Transfiguration.”
“Ah, you got that from me.”
“Did I?” She turned to Rachael, who was evidently listening intently to the conversation. “Mum, was that your best subject?”
“No,” she said. “No, I was better at Defence against the Dark Arts,” She looked over at her mother, who was watching them oddly. She clearly picked up that something wasn’t right.
“Rachael,” she said slowly. “Why wouldn’t she know that?”
Rachael shifted uneasily in her seat and Lily knew straightaway that she had made a mistake. Obviously her grandmother hadn’t known she was put up for adoption. But why wouldn’t she know? Then she remembered when she met her at the funeral; her mum had said that her grandmother never knew that she and Sirius had gotten married and had a baby. Her grandmother had apologised as well… More importantly “ why hadn’t she known and why did she apologise?
“Well, you know how crazy things were during Voldemort’s time,” Rachael said, her voice light in an attempt to keep a good atmosphere. “When everyone thought Sirius had killed Lily and James, I got scared… and I put Lily up for adoption.”
Mrs. Lupin nodded in a somewhat understanding way, but Lily was only more confused.
“Wait,” she said. “Why didn’t she know that?”
Rachael refused to answer her question, feeling that it was too soon for her to know.
Mrs. Lupin, on the other hand, took the liberty of answering. “Well, we’ve had many differences in the past.”
Rachael groaned inwardly. Why was her mother doing this? She wasn’t the person to tell Lily what had happened.
“Then, was that why you apologised at the funeral?” Lily asked.
“Yes, I realised that I was wrong about everything I had done in the past.”
“But what did you-”
“Lily!” Rachael interrupted loudly. “You know, it’s still early and it’s just a five minute walk to Hogsmeade from here. I left some gold on your dresser, why don’t you go get it and go there for a while? Honeydukes’ got a new shipment of Fizzing Whizzbees. You like those, don’t you?”
Lily nodded, her eyes travelling from her mother to her grandmother. “Did I say something wrong?” she asked, sounding rather guilty.
“No! No, of course not. Get a move on if you want to get back before it gets dark!”
Lily unwillingly got up from the table and dashed up the stairs, snatching the money and hurrying out the door. Rachael and Mrs. Lupin waited until the door slammed shut and listened carefully as Lily’s footsteps retreated away from the house. Once they were sure she was gone, Rachael turned to her mother.
“As you can see, I haven’t quite gotten around to telling her that yet,” she said.
“Clearly,” her mother muttered. “And why haven’t you?”
“Well, we haven’t had much time together and, to tell you the truth, I don’t want to tell her yet. I want to be more familiar with her first.”
Mrs. Lupin scoffed at the idea. “She would have found out eventually, being familiar with her won’t help that.”
“And the only way she will find out is if I tell her, and I’m not ready to.”
“I suppose when she gets back you should tell her.”
“No, I will tell her when I’m ready. I just need to clear some things up with you, while you’re here.” Mrs. Lupin nodded. She had been expecting this. “Why’d you do it to me? What did I do to deserve it?”
Mrs. Lupin sighed and rubbed her temples thoughtfully. How could she explain it to her? She knew that no explanation could ever make up for the pain that her daughter suffered. But she had to say something.
“Do you remember in your fifth year when we ran into each other in Hogsmeade?” Rachael nodded, how could she possibly forget that meeting? It had been the first time she had seen her mother since she came to Gryffindor Tower, unannounced and unwelcome. She wasn’t likely to forget what happened to her that night any time soon.
“And, do you remember how Mr. Gibbins told you it was anger issues? Well, he wasn’t lying.”
“Wait,” said Rachael, her eyes narrowing dangerously. “All of the hell you put me through was because of anger issues?” She couldn’t believe it! How could anger issues drive her mother to do the things she did? Anger issues could not have been the reason that she was abused so much. She had to be lying… she just had to be!
“Mum,” she said, her voice breaking slightly. “Stop lying. You hated me and you know it. Remus was always your favourite.” Mrs. Lupin shook her head sadly. Her daughter had seen right through her lie, but she didn’t want her to know the truth, that she was right. She did hate her daughter, but not anymore. “Mum, stop lying to me! I’m old enough to handle the truth! I’m thirty seven years old; I’m not a little kid anymore. If you hated me, or still do hate me, just tell me.”
Mrs. Lupin didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t lie to her daughter, who was now an adult and could handle the truth. It just wasn’t easy to say that Remus’s accident, though it wasn’t Rachael’s fault, had been all her doing and gave her an excuse to express her anger towards her. She didn’t even know why she hated her. It all started a little after the twins’ birthday. She just couldn’t explain it; she only knew it to be true.
“You’re right, I can’t lie to you,” she said quietly. “I did hate you… the feeling just came up, it was just something about you.”
“That I was with Remus that day,” Rachael finished. Her mother nodded shamefully. Rachael looked down at the floor and shook her head; this was how it started all the time. It always started with the day they went into the forest… the day that started everything. She just couldn’t believe that it was that one thing that made her mother hate her so much. “Mum, you know I didn’t do anything and that Remus didn’t have enough time to make an excuse for me. I never did anything; I didn’t deserve to be sent to an orphanage. You should have never beaten me up or have done anything to drive me to do the things that I did. I spent my entire life until fifth year trying to make you see reason. All I wanted was to make you love me like you used to.”
“Why until fifth year?”
“Because I had a talk with my friends, the only people left who cared about me after dad died. They said if I’d done all I could then I should give up. Why should I devote my life to something as useless as trying to make you see that I didn’t do anything?” She took a deep breath and leaned back in her seat. “I remembered what Sirius told me in our second year after I went to the Whomping Willow. He told me you weren’t worth it, and if you couldn’t see how great I was, then why should I try?”
“Sirius has always given you advice, hasn’t he?” Mrs. Lupin asked.
“That was what made him such a great friend. He was always there when I needed him, except now. It’d be so much easier to get through to Lily if he was here; he loved her so much…” She looked up wistfully for a second, before clearing her throat and coming back to reality. “Anyway, I really just wanted you to forgive me… and you did at the funeral. I just needed to know why.”
Their conversation was cut short by the slamming of the front door and Lily appearing in the doorway, holding her left hand on her right with a pained expression on her face. She asked her mother if there were any bandages, as she had a run-in with a particularly angry dog on her way to Hogsmeade. Immediately Rachael’s motherly instincts took over and she hurried to the bathroom. She found a roll of bandages in the medicine cabinet. She came back into the kitchen and saw Mrs. Lupin inspecting the cut, a look of disgust on her face. Rachael stood over her mother and looked at it over her shoulder. There were teeth marks on both sides of her hands and a large amount of blood coming out, mixing with the dog’s saliva. It looked extremely painful.
“I’ve felt worse,” Lily admitted, her eyes still squinted in pain.
Rachael nodded as she began wrapping the bandage around the bite; she knew very well that werewolf bites hurt much more than a dog bite.
“Did you see the dog’s tags?” Rachael asked once she was done applying the bandage. Lily nodded. “Are you sure?” Lily nodded again. “What was the dog’s name?”
Lily thought for a moment before saying, “Snitch.”
“Okay, good. You’ll be okay; you’ve sustained much worse haven’t you?” Rachael stood up and checked her watch, and turned to her mother. “Mum, it’s getting kind of late,” she said pointedly. Mrs. Lupin took no hesitation in Disapparating, leaving Rachael and her daughter. Lily looked at the bandage and turned to her mother.
“I’m kind of tired,” she said. “I think I’ll go up to bed. G’night.”
“Night.”
Lily hurried up to her room and, not even bothering to change, dropped down on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. She had to admit, she thought Rachael’s parental instincts might have been dulled in the past sixteen years, but they hadn’t been at all. Rachael had probably been looking far and wide for her daughter; the instincts would never have had a chance to die. Because of this, Lily found herself thinking that maybe life here wouldn’t be that bad after all.