Behind the Mask

Chapter 6 - A diary and a growing puzzle

After writing that last paragraph I get up from my desk to retrieve a small tome from the bookshelf on the opposite wall. It is bound in worn down, black leather and has a faded, silvery moon engraved on its cover. I thumb through the pages until I find the date I am looking for. There, everything I need to continue with my story, written down in Lupin's neat handwriting.

I sit back down and use Effingorus, a copying spell, to transfer the contents of the entry to blank, new sheets of parchment.

At first I had planned to simply add the whole diary to my finished stack of parchments, with instructions where to find the parts that are relevant to this story, but after reading it through I have decided against it, some things he has written in there are too personal to share with the public.

I know, he is long dead and won't be affected by it, but it does not seem right to me, without asking for his consent first. It is funny, what time does to people. Years ago I would not have had such qualms, I think Harry's influence has finally achieved to somewhat corrupt my Slytherin to the core personality.

Alas, I dip my quill into the inkbottle and continue my writing...

As I was not allowed to go to Privet Drive on that night, I had not witnessed the things that occurred there. I did not find out what had happened exactly, until years later and that had only been a fractured report, interrupted by long pauses, during which the person that told it to me wet my robes with his sobs and tears.

Fortunately I have come into the possession of Lupin's diary after the werewolf had passed away. He has written in a mostly clear and detailed way about what has occurred after the events I mentioned earlier:

# Excerpt from the Diary of Remus John Lupin #

-5 July, 1996-

Dear Padfoot,

I know I have not written in this diary for a long time, but today something happened, something which is troubling me a great deal and you said to me once, that writing things down helps to order the mess in one's mind. I will write it as if it would be a letter to you. I think that will make it easier for me.

After coming back from the mission to rescue Harry, I went straight to my room and began pacing back and forth on the worn carpet, occasionally throwing a glance to the small wooden desk in the corner I'm sitting at right now and the diary lying there, as if waiting for me to write everything down to get it out of my head.

I needed to calm down a little first, before I was able to write about what had happened at Harry's so called home.

The pacing did not help me to get any calmer but it gave me something to release a small part of the pent up anger my body was filled with.

I had to stop myself several times from running straight out of the door and all the way back to these poor excuse for human beings, Harry's relatives are, to rip their heads off and claw with my blunt nails into their bodies until they would be reduced to a dead mass of torn flesh.

I think I have already told you that the wolf in me considers Harry a packmate's offspring. Therefore it wanted, for once, the same as me: Vengeance for what has been done to him, to let them feel exactly what he must have felt. But I'm reaching to far forth with this, let me tell it to you from the beginning.

Dumbledore had come to Grimmauld Place to inform me, that there was something happening at Harry's relatives' home. He asked me to accompany him and Arthur on a mission, to find out what was wrong.

I was already anxious before we apparated to Privet Drive, when they wasted their time talking instead of getting to aide Harry instantly I became so upset, I began to shout at them. I feared for Harry's life, I could not loose him too like I have lost all of you.

It was all partially my fault anyway, as soon as Albus had told me that there was something wrong with Harry I felt a tremendous amount of guilt wallowing up inside of me.

Harry had come to me before he departed on the Hogwarts Express and pleaded, nearly begged me to let him stay the summer with me. Before your death I would have had the presence of mind to question him further about the reasons why he didn't want to stay with his relatives. But after your death I was in so much grieve and despair, that I simply didn't have the energy to think about anything other than the fact that I had lost you yet again.

It was nearly unbearable when you were taken from me the first time, but at least then I knew that you were alive. I still did have hope to be reunited with you some day, but now, now I haven't even that hope left anymore.

I said to Harry that I couldn't help him and then told him to leave me alone. I saw, that I had hurt him with that, but I just couldn't bring myself to care about it. It is as if there was a Remus Lupin that existed prior to your death and one that exists now and the two of them have not much in common.

After I dismissed Harry I walked out of Hogwarts, straight to the apparation point, from where I apparated back to Grimmauld Place. It was time for me to go back there and face my fears.

You know, after you fell through the veil, I had been afraid to go back to the room we formerly shared, afraid of how it would be like to be there without you being there too. I was grateful that the Headmaster had let me stay at the school in the days following your death. I couldn't have managed to stay at your house on my own, in that first day, without getting stupid ideas of ending my miserable existence to be together with you again. I have become so dependant on your company over the course of the last two years.

Forgive me Padfoot, for I am digressing, I will go back to write about what has happened tonight.

After the Headmaster had finished speaking with Professor Snape we disapparated at once to Little Whinging. We couldn't apparate to anywhere near the house, so we had to run the rest of the way. Due to the extra strength and stamina my lycanthropy gives me, I arrived there earlier than the other two. I let my senses roam but could not sense any person that smelled of magic nor traces of any magic having been used in the area surrounding the house, within the last few hours.

I was relieved at that discovery at first, it did mean that there was no immediate threat of Death Eaters ready for a fight, but then I began to worry again, if it wasn't an attack then what else could be wrong with Harry?

Finally, Albus and Arthur arrived too and I quickly told them what I had found out so far. We decided that it would be best to approach the house and enter to investigate further. The Headmaster cast a sleeping charm that worked solely on muggles, so the house's inhabitants wouldn't get in our way. It was easier than having to obliviate them later.

Arthur used Alohomora to unlock the front door and we got inside. The house was dark, the only audible sounds were the noises the muggle's electrical devices made and a muted snoring from upstairs.

After charming the windows to be opaque, because we didn't want to alarm any neighbours, who might have been awake, we turned on the lights and began to search for Harry and any clues for what had happened here, tonight.

We decided to check the ground floor first, in case it was, after all, a trap set up by Voldemort's followers and we would need to get out quickly.

Everything was tidy and neat looking, no signs that there had been a fight anywhere, no traces of any Death Eaters being present either. I let my werewolf senses take over and looked for remains of blood or something similar, which would have given us any sort of indications.

My scent led me to the backdoor in the kitchen. On the doorstep were blood stains, but they were already dry and seemed to be a few days old, so rather then solving this puzzle it created another one. Why would Harry's relatives have bloodstains at their backdoor in an otherwise obsessively clean house and most importantly, whose blood was it?

Just as I was about to return to the others and tell them of what I had found, I heard Arthur calling out for us. I hurried into the direction his voice came from, to find him and Albus standing at the open door of a cupboard under the stairs. I walked nearer and peeked over Arthur's shoulder to see what they were looking at. The next second I wished I hadn't, because the view that presented itself to me was a disturbing one.

Inside the cupboard was Harry's school trunk and atop of it a cage, a cage in which a motionless snowy owl lay. Hedwig, I remembered that that was the name Harry had given her.

The cage's bottom was covered with excretions and the owl was lying right there in her own waste, too weak to sit on her perch. It looked like no one had tended to the cage or the owl in the last three weeks and judging by the stench that came out through the opened cupboard door, possibly nobody had.

Hedwig was entirely to thin and as I let my gaze wander more thoroughly over the cage and her unmoving body I discovered the reason why she wasn't moving, there was not the tiniest drop of water left in her bowl. She must be seriously dehydrated and if it was already bad enough that she couldn't even sit anymore, her chances did not look good. I cast a sad glance at Albus, he looked back at me with equal sadness in his eyes. Depending on when her water supply had been exhausted, probably the only thing we would be able to do for her was to give her a quick, painless death instead of letting her suffer for much longer.

How had she come to be in such a bad condition, anyway? It wasn't like Harry to neglect his owl, from watching him with her, one could see how much he cared for her wellbeing. So why did we found her dying in her cage in a locked cupboard then? It all made less and less sense.

After cleaning the cage with a quick cast spell and giving her some water, all that could be done for her at the moment, we decided to continue our search upstairs, we had to find Harry immediately, if his owl was in such a condition I didn't dare to think about what state your godson might be in.

The stairs we were ascending creaked rather noisily on certain spots but none of us cared, all three of us had only one goal, find Harry as fast as possible and meanwhile pray to Merlin that he would be still alive when we found him. As I quickly told the others about the blood I had discovered downstairs, we reached the first floor.

There were four doors leading from the hallway we were standing in, the first one turned out to belong to a bathroom, we tried the second door behind which the snoring from earlier could be heard, only a hell of a lot louder.

Arthur silently opened the door to reveal a large bed with a bony looking woman whose face did very much resemble a horse, Petunia, Lily's sister sleeping on the left side and a bulky man with an enormous moustache who was the source of the snoring we heard earlier, her husband Vernon, sleeping on the right side.

I quickly glanced at the photos, arranged like a shrine for some deity, on Petunia's nightstand but they were all of a fat little boy, probably Harry's cousin Dudley. There was also a bottle containing some muggle medicine, but I didn't paid it any further attention. We walked out unnoticed by the sleeping muggles and continued our search.

The next door we tried led to a large room that seemed to be filled with broken electronic things and broken furniture. It looked like someone had trashed everything in there with a sledgehammer, but why? Another unanswered question. And where the hell was Harry's cousin? He should have been sleeping somewhere on this floor too.

The fourth door was the only one left so if Harry was still here, he had to be in the room behind it. The door was locked with no less than four heavy locks, my confusion increased tenfold, the whole house was becoming a mystery to me, nothing we found seemed to make any sense.

The Headmaster finally lost his patience when he saw the locks and let the door vanish with a flick of his wand. We looked anxiously into the room behind it and were greeted by a view so horrible that it will be branded into my mind for the rest of my life. Albus buried his head in his trembling hands muttering a stream of words that sounded like 'No, my fault, all of it my fault.'

Arthur's choked out 'Oh, Merlin' was followed by him bolting past me to reach the toilet from where I soon heard the unmistakably noises of someone throwing up. My own reaction was an anguished howl, before I hurried into the room to Harry's side, gently lifted his wrist, the one that seemed to be undamaged, in my hands and began to frantically search for a pulse...