Tightly Knit ⟶ Fred Weasley

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

"It's not all your fault, Margaret," Remus said, "Merlin knows, a good deal of the blame falls onto me for not being involved. But honestly, a lot of the blame should fall onto the Ministry of Magic. They do not have a proper system in place to deal with muggle-borns or magical children that grow up in the muggle world. You and Eleanor are not the first to be faced with this predicament and you certainly won't be the last with how things are run."

"It sounds like the Ministry is quite corrupted. Whether it's not providing for the werewolf community or making no attempt to help families, I don't understand their logic. If they wish to remain hidden, why are they making things harder on themselves and others?"

"That's a question I've been asking myself for a long time and probably the reason as to why my father retired from the Ministry finally. He couldn't take the obvious corruption and he didn't want to be a part of it anymore. Once I was infected with lycanthropy, he had to relearn everything he knew about werewolves. They weren't these soulless monsters in the sense that he had taught, they were people struggling to find a cure and try to live their lives as normal as possible."

Remus looked over one photograph in his hand where Eleanor appeared to be holding up a stuffed toy that appeared to look like a wolf, causing a lump to develop in his throat.

"I always feared that if I had a child, they would be infected with lycanthropy as well. I never had any plans to have one too afraid of the life they would live. I remember how awful those transformations were when I was younger before wolfsbane was even invented. Did Eleanor ever show any odd tendencies that were...wolf-like?"

Margaret shook her head. "No, nothing that I know of."

There was a small sigh of relief as Remus settled back into the sofa. He looked tired as well, but he continued to keep looking over the photos quietly to himself.

The next morning, Eleanor awoke in her own bed and remained still for a minute or two. She remembered dozing off on the sofa the night before, resting her head against Remus' shoulder as the two shared in a conversation. But as she sat up, the household appeared to be quiet, as it normally was when she returned for the summer holidays. And immediately, her mind travelled to the thoughts of perhaps she had dreamed everything. Goodness, how embarrassing it would be to learn that Remus wasn't her father and she had just dreamt about it?

Curiosity got the best of her as Eleanor pushed herself out of bed and quickly made her way down the stairs. She was about to head to her mother's room to question Margaret, but before she was fully down the steps, she came upon the scene in the sitting room of Margaret and Remus asleep on the sofa. Hurrying down the rest of the steps, Eleanor entered the room where Margaret used one arm of the sofa as a pillow and Remus was slouched over in a terribly uncomfortable position. In his lap, was a book of her baby photos, and judging by the boxes in the room, her mother had pulled out a bunch of Eleanor's baby belongings.

There was a surge of giddiness that raced through Eleanor's chest, realising that it hadn't been a dream. Her father was Remus Lupin, a werewolf that had been her Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, but most importantly, he was her father who wanted to be involved in her life. And while Margaret had been terrified initially over the idea of Remus being a werewolf, she seemed to get over it and had even suggested that she would help Remus financially to obtain the Wolfsbane potion.

Things were working out way better than Eleanor had ever anticipated and even though she wanted to wake up both of her parents to continue spending time with them, she figured she would let them rest as she headed back up the stairs to her room.

After taking a shower, brushing her teeth, and getting dressed, Eleanor was drying the ends of her hair in her room when she heard a crash at her window. The towel dropped to the floor as she became startled and turned her head to see the Weasley family owl, Errol, fluttering outside her bedroom window. Feel her heart pounding in her chest, Eleanor made her way over and opened the window to allow the poor owl inside. As per usual, Errol dropped the letter intended for her and flew into her room to rest.