#early posting today bc it's EID AL BNAT Y'ALL

[spindrifters]

night seven: the story goes

for @hanukkahwolfstarweek

The story goes like this.

A boy is born in Swansea on a cold spring day in March, 1960. He’s named John for his father’s father, Rémus for his mother’s — hold the accent aigu. After all, the Jews of Morocco name their children for the living, not the dead.

Remus John Lupin grows up speaking Welsh at home and English at school and Haketia with his ma whenever they damn well please. He has his father’s tawny hair and his mother’s thick curls and olive-gold skin, and by the time he’s done growing he’ll be taller than either grandfather ever was. His mother teaches maths at the local uni and his father works on assignment for the Ministry of Magic, capturing boggarts and banishing lethifolds and dueling against spirits of all kinds. Ma still thinks she’s got the more exciting job.

When he’s four, he survives an attack.

He survives.

He survives.

There’s a part of the boy that no one can know about, not even his new school friends. If they find out, he’ll have to leave. He’ll be driven away, out of fear and ignorance and an unwillingness to learn that there’s a breadth of experience outside of one’s own sphere. Little boys, after all, don’t grow up on stories about monsters by accident. Their parents want them to know that in the darkness, there be dragons, so they'd do best to stay close to the light.

No one can know. Dad reminds him of that all the time, in the summer before he goes to school. He needn’t bother. Remus was raised on stories of refugee ancestors fleeing Valencia massacres for Moroccan shores, grew tall on days celebrating Esther and Yehudit’s necessary deceptions. He knows how to hide what others fear without making a single part of himself small.

Read the rest on AO3.

#hanukkah wolfstar week #wolfstar fic #wolfstar #remus lupin #sirius black #early posting today bc it's EID AL BNAT Y'ALL #time to make FOOD #my fic