Happy Schoolday, Keith Lupin

Happy Schoolday, Keith Lupin

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Chapter 4

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The next days and weeks went by happily with the school's inhabitants getting used to the youngest of them. The house-elves were delighted to prepare bottles for the tiny wizard, and students and teachers alike adored the baby boy.

Sirius and Remus, the proud parents, now lived in their own room -- even though Keith was thankfully a peaceful and quiet child, he did cry sometimes, and it wouldn't have done to wake their dormmates -- with a beautifully decorated nursery attached to it. The nursery had special magical doors that could get them, and only them, to any of their classrooms and back to the nursery. Therefore, it was not rare to see a teenager boy rising from his seat when a baby's wail shot through the classroom and go to a nearby door to go to change or feed his son. When they were in a class where there were no possibilities for Keith to be hit by a charm or a hex, Sirius kept the baby securely in the carrying cloth folded around his chest. At first some had laughed at him, saying that he looked sissy, but those had all quieted down by now.

So, everything was good and well in the little Lupin family. Nothing was threatening their peace -- not even Sirius's parents, who had left him in peace when he had married Remus, taken his name, and then disowned himself. There was no reason to worry...

Until one day, somebody found a way to get through the nursery room attached to the Charms classroom...

"I wonder why Keith hasn't woken up to be fed already," said Remus, frowning a bit as he looked up from the DADA essay he'd currently been working on. He, Sirius, and the other Marauders were all in their tiny quarters, doing their homework. The others glanced up from their work, too. "Well, he did stay awake a little longer than usually this morning. I'll go to pick him up, now."

Sirius just nodded, concentrating on his Transfiguration textbook. He dropped it on the floor, however, when he heard the horrible scream from the nursery. Running towards the source of the sound -- Remus, if he wasn't sorely mistaken -- his friends on his heels, he went over all the horrible scenarios of what might have happened to Keith. When he threw the door to the nursery open, he was fairly sure that he'd find his first and only son dead. Fear laced its icy fingers around his heart as he saw Remus standing next to the baby's crib, the werewolf's face deathly pale and his whole body shaking.

As soon as Remus heard them entering, he turned around them. "He's gone!" he shrieked, tears bursting from his amber eyes. "Sirius, he's disappeared! Somebody's taken Keith!"

The young Grim Animagus immediately ran to his equally young husband's side, closing him into a warm, comforting embrace. Over the weeping werewolf's shoulder he saw that the crib was indeed empty. Now, he was even more fearful. Whoever would kidnap a baby? And what would they want?

Just then, his eyes caught a slip of parchment in the crib. James, who'd also spotted it, reached out to take it as Sirius was currently wholly entangled in comforting his husband and fighting against the tears himself. It was only two days after the full moon, and Remus was always extremely sensitive around his transformation, which had him weeping like a lost child now. Although Sirius felt like wailing, too.

Then James turned towards him, his face paled past white to grey. "Read," was all he said as he pushed the slip of parchment into Sirius's hands. The other black-haired teen took it, his eyes quickly skimming through the short text. Then he swore. Loudly.

*

"If you want the brat back alive and whole, the werewolf will have to leave the school. If he hasn't left the school in four days, we'll snap the little bastard's neck. You've been warned."

"Professor Dumbledore," Sirius said sharply, turning towards the Headmaster. "Professor Dumbledore, what exactly is the meaning of this message? How would anybody know of Remus?"

"I'm afraid that I know," whispered the ancient wizard, hanging his head down. "Last year, some Slytherins came to me, telling that they'd found out about Remus's Lycanthropy -- not through Severus," he added hastily as Sirius's eyes hardened. "They'd figured it out on their own, thinking that nobody else knew. So, they were quite surprised to hear that instead of thanking them for this and forcing Remus to leave the school, I would expel them if a word leaked out to anybody. I didn't tell even you, I thought you had enough to deal with already. And seemingly, now you're paying for my mistake," he added quietly.

"I will leave," Remus said quietly, now speaking up for the first time. "I'll leave and never come back to the school, if that's what I have to do to keep Keith safe. I'll do anything to keep him safe."

"We still have time," muttered Sirius. "We don't have any proofs that they would even return Keith if you leave. Yes, I know it's painful, but it's the truth," he said as he saw his husband flinch. He was on the verge of tears himself, now. "He must be somewhere in this castle! The kidnappers couldn't have got him out of here! But the problem is, the castle is huge. It'll take us ages to find him."

"We will find him, Padfoot," promised James, wrapping an arm around his friend's shoulders. "We'll find your son, and then we'll make those who took him pay."

"Yeah," muttered Remus tearily from his chair. "I just hope they won't hurt Keith before that." And at that, everybody fell silent, as nobody had anything to say that could have made his fears fade.

*

"Shut up!" a young wizard raged at the baby who lay in the crib in front of him. "Shut up, don't you hear, you brat!" He cracked his knuckles as if preparing to hit the baby. As little Keith didn't quieten down, however, he picked him up and shook him in the air viciously. Of course, this only made the child wail even louder, and the boys surrounding them had to cover their ears.

"Stop that," a cold voice commanded. The boys all turned to look at the speaker, the one who'd been shaking Keith stopping his movement.

"Stop what, exactly, Malfoy?" asked the baby-tormentor. "The brat won't calm down!"

"Quite understandable, as you're trying to kill it by the looks of it," the blond Slytherin said dryly. "One third of the infants shaken like that will die. Another third will become permanently damaged, and only the last third comes out somehow unharmed. Do I need to remind you of the fact that the brat has to be alive and unharmed for the werewolf to leave the school?"

The boy hastily put the baby back into the crib, not wanting to be the one to face Malfoy's wrath if the blond got angry. That was known to have rather messy results. "How can we make it shut up, then?" he then asked grudgingly, throwing a dirty glare at the baby.

"Quite easy," sighed the young aristocrat. "Give him to me. I suppose you haven't happened to even check his nappies?" As they all wrinkled their faces in disgust at that, he chuckled dryly. "That's rather messy," he said. "I have a sister nine years younger than I am, I ought to know. But dirty nappies make babies wail. As does hunger." Glancing around, he picked one of the youngest Slytherins in the group. "You. Change the kid." As the boy seemed to protest, the blond glared. "If I'm going to feed him, then I sure as hell am not doing the dirty work for you. This was your fucking idea, you should be grateful that I'm here to stop you from messing it all completely up!"

With a sigh, the young Slytherin got to work on a nearby table, where they'd stolen some baby supplies from Keith's magical nursery. The others watched from afar, the sound of Malfoy's foot tapping impatiently on the floor being the only thing they heard, other than Keith's occasional cries. When the baby was finally dry, Malfoy snatched him, obviously not trusting his companions in crime to handle the delicate little creature. With a bottle of milk that just seemed to appear from somewhere, he started to feed the little child, holding him on his arm like he'd spent all his time doing just that, and even looking elegant while doing it. The others could just stare in wonder as the baby calmed down, sucking greedily onto the bottle.

At last, the bottle was empty. "Okay," Malfoy said, smirking a bit as Keith burped, a bit of baby drool rolling down from the corner of his mouth. "Now, let's see if this infernal menace won't sleep a bit."

And truly, almost as soon as the child was placed down onto the crib, he fell into sleep. Now the other boys were all watching Malfoy in wonder, their eyes wide as platters. The tall blond, however, just smirked.

"Get over it," he snapped. "It's not my fault if you all are the bloody youngest or even the only kids in your families. And it most certainly isn't my fault if you decide to kidnap a child you cannot even look after. But remember, if you manage to kill him off, the werewolf will only return to the school, if he ever even leaves in the first place." And with this, he stormed off, not sparing them another glance.

*

"I think I've got it." The others all raised their eyes to Lily, looking hopeful. The witch smiled gently, especially at the two distraught teenparents. "The point is to find Keith, so we can get him back to you, right?" she asked. As everybody nodded, she continued, "Well, couldn't some kind of a Scrying Glass help us to locate him? Or some other way to see lost things?"

Sirius's mouth dropped down, although he closed it soon after that. "You know, Lily," he said, "you might have come up with just the thing we need..."

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