Friday's Child // Draco Malfoy

26

Juno had pestered Ron and Hermione for updates on Harry - eager to know he was safe, desperate to know how he was doing. To her dismay there was not much information to give - owls were being intercepted so they couldn't write to him, they just had to take solace in the fact the Bond of Blood kept him safe at the Dursley's. 

Not only had she grown closer to Hermione and Ron, Juno found herself reacquainted with an old Professor of hers; Remus Lupin. During her first meeting, she arrived, and scanned the faces of all the members, searching for someone familiar - she had almost skimmed past him, he'd always looked rugged with his shabby robes and the lines of exhaustion etched on his face but there was something different to him now - it was more than just exhaustion that made his skin grey and sink into his skull. His eyes were dull and downcast, hair even more grey despite his young age, unkempt and falling onto his face, his frame was even thinner and his knee constantly bounced, clearly an anxious habit. She'd always felt a warm glow come from her professor - he was kind, and good, regardless of the prejudice he faced, he was compassionate and intelligent, perceptive and selfless - but now, sunken into his chair, folded in on himself as though he were trying to seem as small as humanly possible - all of that was dulled, and instead he was surrounded by grey. It was written in his skin - he was disconsolate. He was in such anguish, such despair - her heart ached for him, she wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around him and hope she could hug the pieces of him back together. His eyes lifted as she studied him, and she smiled her warmest smile, conveying all the love she could muster for him and felt such joy when he offered her the ghost of a smile back. 

She came to learn that it was grief that had cast this dark cloud over him. The two had been placed on patrol together - sipping tea from a Thermos, made Irish with Bourbon as they kept watch over the edge of the protection charm on one of the safe houses - the mixture of the liquor and Juno's kind nature and ability to draw out information from anyone, loosened Lupin's tongue, and he found himself spilling all his grievances to her as she listened intently, picking each apart. He told her of his own time at Hogwarts, of his three best friends, how they'd formed a group they called the Marauders, that they were invincible and unstoppable. He told her of James' infatuation with Lily and his own confusion at that age - he'd never looked at a girl and felt anything. He told her of how he'd hardly realised he'd fallen in love with his best friend, Sirius Black, until he saw him kissing a friend of their's, Marlene McKinnon, and he felt so upset and so angry that he couldn't look at Sirius for three days. He told her of how happy he'd been when Sirius confronted him, clearly devastated his best friend had iced him out for no apparent reason, when, in a moment of panic and frustration, Remus had kissed Sirius and suddenly everything seemed to make perfect sense. He recalled their blissful time together, sneaking around the castle until they could no longer keep it a secret, the joy they felt when their friends accepted them without question, he reminisced the summers spent at the Potters' with his boyfriend and his best friends - when Lily finally agreed to go out with James and everything was good. He recounted how the wizarding world had turned dark - people were going missing, muggles and wizards, showing up days later killed in cold blood - there was talk of a dark wizard on the rise. He told her of how James had insisted they fight, that they start a resistance, form a group to fight against this Dark Wizard - build their own army, Sirius, eager to support his best friend and thwart his blood-prejudice family had agreed instantly, and then for Remus there was no question - the girls had joined too, and Peter, though more reluctantly, had idolised James and would've done anything he asked. He continued to tell her of the war that followed, of the strain it put on their relationships, of the devastation and the fear - the distraught as it became clear someone was betraying their side, that someone was feeding the information straight to the Dark Lord. He recounted that disgusting feeling of no longer trusting those you loved so dearly, and of not feeling trusted just the same. With glassy eyes and a husky voice, he fought his way through the story of the night of Halloween in 1981 at Godric's Hollow - how he came to lose every single person he loved, how for years he thought it was the love of his life who had betrayed them - their best friends, the man who had been like a brother to Sirius, he choked through the way the grief and guilt and anger and confusion had eaten him alive as he spent 13 lonely years building himself back up again, only to find out more than a decade later that Sirius had been innocent all along - that he'd been rotting in Azkaban while Pettigrew got away with his betrayal. He told Juno of the sheer joy he felt when he finally had Sirius back - that, even though it was so hard, and so different, that part of his life was no longer tainted, he expressed that he had even felt hope, he had Sirius, Harry finally knew who he was - he wondered if it would be possible that he and Sirius could take Harry now - that they could be the Uncle Moony and Uncle Padfoot they were supposed to be. It had sickened him that Harry knew him only as a professor. "I should've been Uncle Moony," he had choked, over and over again, tears dripping off the tip of his nose, Juno's hand rubbing reassuring circles on his back. He cursed the cruelty of the world for taking Sirius away from him again - after just getting him back, how was it fair that he was gone again? He admitted that he didn't think he'd pull himself out of his grief this time - he couldn't stand the injustice of it all. Juno could hardly blame him - she didn't know how one man could store so much grief. He was such a wonderful man too, the least deserving of such adversity, she found herself crying along with him - whispering praises of his bravery, showering him with the credit he deserved, recognising his strength, hardly understanding his pain but admiring him for feeling it, insisting he was a superhero for coming out of it all as such an inherently good person. She couldn't believe her Professor, who had doubled over laughing at the sight of Snape in Neville's grandmother's clothes, who liked chocolate more than what was healthy and had given his students anything they needed despite having nothing himself - had gone through such trauma.