The Marauders and the Arenotelicon

Teffie looked at him in puzzlement. "Pictures, Master Remus?" she squeaked.

"Of Mum and Dad," Remus repeated. "Or just Mum. Surely there are some somewhere?" Teffie shook her head. "I don't believe it. They had to have had pictures taken at their wedding!" he exclaimed.

"You'll have to talk to Master Phineas," Teffie informed him and went back to her dusting.

Remus frowned at the house elf for a moment. She kept giving him covert glances and when it was obvious she wouldn't be intimidated in giving any information on the small mystery, Remus gave up and went to search for his father. A confrontation like this wasn't the way Remus had wanted to start his break, but the missing pictures had nagged him all morning. He'd never taken notice of the lack of memorabilia of the Lupin family before. His father would think it odd that he did now.

Straightening his shoulders, Remus headed downstairs to his father's laboratory in the basement. The bubbling cauldrons and the floating objects in jars and containers gave the place an eerie atmosphere but the 'mad scientist' look was completed by the gadgets shooting sparks in the corner and his father dressed in a white lab robe and black dragonhide gloves.

"Ah Remus!" His father motioned him over. "I got sidetracked the other day with my latest potion for you when I discovered it could do this."

Phineas dipped a small beaker into a particularly disgusting looking solution and poured a bit of the beaker's content on a plant. The plant shriveled and died instantly but half a heartbeat later it not only grew back but produced small berries. Near as Remus could remember the plant had never produced anything but leaves. Never any berries.

"Amazing, isn't it? Near as I can figure, it rejuvenates the roots but has to kill the old plant before regrowing it again." His father shook his head in wonderment. "The things you do by accident. I've contacted the Herbological Conservatory to see if they want to test it out for further study. They seem very interested." The Lupin fortune, such as it was, was sporadically added to by Phineas Lupin's occasionally successful experiments.

"That's great, Papa, but can I talk to you?" Remus hated it when his father didn't pay full attention to him, as was evidenced by his father's absent-minded "umhmm". "Is there a reason there are no family pictures around the house?"

The beaker crashed to the floor and Phineas whirled on his son. "I beg your pardon?" he barked tensely.

Remus flinched and took a step back. He'd never seen his father angry at him before. "I went downstairs last night looking for pictures of Mum," he explained nervously while his father continued to stare at him.

"Why?" snapped the elder Lupin, leaning against the lab table with one hand. He looked shaken.

"I've forgotten what she looked like and wanted to remember," Remus confessed shamefacedly.

Phineas stared at him for a long tense moment before sighing. "Damn," he muttered. "I'd hoped...ah hell."

"You'd hoped what, Papa?" asked Remus.

"Upstairs. Let me clean this up and I'll meet you upstairs. It's time we had a long talk, Remus. You aren't going to like what I have to say. I'd hoped it wouldn't ever come up but -" Phineas didn't finish the sentence and instead pushed his son up the stairs, closing the door firmly behind the boy.

Remus waited impatiently for his father to emerge from the basement. When he did he was more somber than Remus had ever seen him to be. Phineas walked into the parlor and motioned for his son to sit down. Remus sat on the love seat and was disconcerted when his father sat in an old winged-back chair.

"I'm not going to beat around the bush, Remus," Phineas began. "You deserve the truth and, Merlin knows, I've been keeping it from you long enough. She can be damned."

"Who can -" Remus stopped his question when his father motioned him to silence.

"When you were bitten, Remus, we were terrified. Not of what you'd become but whether or not you'd survive. We'd already lost one child, your brother Romulus, and the bites you'd sustained were enough to kill you as well. Adelia was unable to have anymore children and she'd doted on you so much." Phineas took a deep breath and removed his gaze from his son's inquisitive face. "Your mother is not dead, Remus."

Remus sucked in air, certain he'd not understood his father. "W-what?"

"She left us, left the wizarding world completely actually. That's why her friends never talk to me or you, why she's rarely mentioned unless it's as if she's dead. Everyone was scandalized. We, well, we fought, Remus, often and usually in public. Month by month she grew more and more afraid of you. I thought she was being ridiculous. I still do. As long as we took the very precautions you and I have taken, there was no reason why we still couldn't be a family."

Remus stared dumbly at his father, not wanting to hear what he was hearing but unable to stop himself from listening.

"When she left, I told her that I would tell you she was ill, dying. She told me she didn't care. She couldn't live a lie like this anymore. I told her good riddance, God help me I did, Remus. I was so angry with her, Remus, so hurt that she would just leave her husband and son when they would need her. It was like she didn't care anymore." Phineas pushed his hands through his graying brown hair. "I tried to make it easy for you, make you think that she'd died. I wanted to protect you from the truth, Remus. I didn't want you to think that she didn't love you -"

Remus exploded. "Obviously," he said scathingly, "she didn't love me!"

Phineas looked at his son, noting the anguish in his eyes. "That's not true. She did, does, love you, Remus. I get owls from her every month, right after the full moon, asking how you are, if everything is still all right. I just don't think she can bear the guilt."

"The guilt of leaving us?" snapped Remus.

"No, the guilt of letting you get bit," Phineas said calmly. Remus' mouth dropped open in shock. "You see, I wasn't there when you wandered off. I was in London at an alchemy conference. Your mother went into the house to tell Teffie something and you'd wandered off before she'd returned. She was frantic when neither she nor Teffie could find you. She enlisted the neighbors and sent me an owl. By the time I got here they'd found you and were bringing you into the house, all bloody and torn. Adelia was a screaming, hysterical mess."

Phineas' eyes were far away, reliving the horrible moments of the past.

"She kept telling me she'd killed our son, our only son. She kept asking me why I wasn't angry at her for being such a horrible mother. When it was revealed that you'd been ravaged by a werewolf, it was much more the worse. Her father had been killed by a werewolf, you see, and she couldn't bear the thought that you might be one."

Phineas look over to see his son's stony countenance staring back at him. No emotion flickered in the amber eyes and not twitch of any muscle in his body indicated Remus heard anything Phineas was saying. Unable to do more, Phineas continued to talk.

"Adelia tried, Remus, really she did. She and Teffie took turns staying up with you. It was Adelia that kept pushing me to find a cure. I wasn't allowed to help take care of you, my work in the basement was more important. Merlin help me, Remus, I let her boss me into it. I thought it might ease her mind, make her feel less guilty. Nothing helped. She never showed it to you, Teffie said, but in my presence alone she berated herself, blamed herself, hated herself. She was angry at me for not being angry with her. She wanted someone to hate her more than she hated herself. She was so afraid, Remus, so afraid and I didn't know what to do but reassure her that it wasn't as bad as it seemed, that we were still a family and that you and I still loved her." Phineas shrugged. "Finally, it didn't matter anymore. The guilt, the pressure she and her friends placed on her was more than she could bear. She left. Told her friends what she was doing and ignored them when they told her just to leave us and continue living as a witch. They blamed me for not trying to keep her in our world. I was so angry at her myself, so tired of listening to her tirades that the first few months were a relief of blessed silence."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Phineas' eyes begged Remus to understand. "I couldn't, Remus. How do you tell an eight year old boy that his mother left him because she blamed herself for what happened to him? I didn't want to see the heartbreak in your eyes, know that you, deep down, would blame yourself for your mother leaving. Because it's not true, Remus, she left us because she's weak, not because we're horrible or to blame for anything."

"I see."

"Do you?"

There was a long moment of silence.

"How many people know the truth of Mum's leaving?"

Phineas shrugged. "Many of her friends went along with my pretence of her death. Made it easier for them, I'm sure."

"I mean at Hogwarts. Professor McGonagall told me that she went to school with Mum." Remus' voice was without inflection and Phineas couldn't help but flinch at the emotionless tone.

"I couldn't say. Knowing Dumbledore's means for knowing everything, he more than likely knows."

The two of them sat in silence for almost ten minutes. Teffie interrupted the somber atmosphere by coming in with a tea tray with a pot of tea, three cups and a huge plate of lemon scones. "Masters?" the little house elf inquired timidly.

"Yes, Teffie?" sighed Phineas when his son made no motion toward the offered tea.

"I has something for youse both." The house elf drew two small envelopes from the inside of her care-worn, terry cloth towel gown and handed one to each of them. "They is from the mistress. She told Teffie to give them to youse if Master Remus ever wanted to know the truth."

Both Lupins cautiously opened the envelopes to discover a single photo and a note. Each note read the same: I love you and I'm sorry. The photo was of her, standing on a dock, the sea air blowing her dark brown hair about. Phineas' eyes filled with tears and he looked over at Remus to gauge his reaction.

"Mum was beautiful, wasn't she, Papa?" Remus said in a low voice.

"Was?"

"She's dead, right? For all intents and purposes?"

"I suppose."

"I'll have to think up a new lie, then. I'll tell everyone at school she died over break. I'll have to think up a new lie to tell them about every full moon."

Phineas closed his eyes in pain. "Yes, you'll have to think of something else."

"I'm going to my room." Remus stood up and left.

Teffie looked at Phineas. "Master isn't angry with Teffie?" she asked fearfully.

"Why would I be, Teffie?" asked Phineas mildly. "You're the best friend this pitiful wizard has." He briefly hugged the startled house elf. "This is going to be hard for him, Teffie. We're going to have to be stronger than ever."

"Yes, Master Phineas," agreed Teffie, but she didn't look anymore confident than Phineas felt.