NOTHING GIRL || Remus Lupin

-Fifty: Open at the Close-

"No swearing in front of my kid." Lin murmured, a hollow echo of her usual self.

"Ay Ay, Captain." A smile ghosted across Helia's mouth. She looked down. There were going to be a lot of tough conversations to sort through, a lot of harsh realities that needed to be faced, and Lin needed to start facing them soon, or things would only get worse. "You are going to need to tell him though. It's a non-option. He'll find out when we go to Hogwarts anyway."

"I'm not going back to Hogwarts." Lin murmured. Helia was silent for a moment, lost in the thought of the best thing for her friend.

"Well then," she said at last, going for her phone again. "I'm ordering pizza."

................................

Remus had swallowed and tried not to let his nerves show when Helia had told him that she was going to Lin's for a couple of hours and Jack would be staying behind to make sure everything was okay. Helia had laughed at his feeble attempts to mask his fear and kissed him (something he still wasn't used to) and then told him that Jack was about as dangerous as a teddy bear with a chainsaw. Remus still wasn't quite sure what that meant, or whether it was reassuring, but he was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to mean this.

Jack had stumbled out of the rain, shaking it from his sandy blonde hair, and into the closed-off warmth of Helia's house. As soon as he saw Remus, sat on Helia's sofa, looking the picture of a person trying to act casual, he had grinned and chucked him the remote, and said, "Netflix."

Initially, Remus hadn't been sure if the Yorkshire-raised boy wasn't using another slang word to insult him, but it turned out to be this: sitting on the sofa with a diet coke can slowly getting closer to room temperature in his hand and watching TV. Every now and then, Jack would distract Remus from the muggle scenes happening onscreen by asking him a question, or making a sarcastic comment.

"Gogglebox powers." Jack announced suddenly.

Remus turned, frowning, and looked at him. "What?"

"If ya could 'ave a TV character power, wha' would it be?" Jack asked. Remus tried not to feel like he was in a cheesy YouTube video.

"I guess," he frowned, "the ability to always say the right thing to make everything better. Is that what you meant?"

"Yeah," Jack looked thoughtful, "Not ter 'appy endin' then?"

"Helia doesn't think happy endings exist." Remus explained, "She says there's always another page."

"She would." Jack grumbled.

"Can I ask you something?" Remus chewed the inside of his cheek nervously.

Jack shot him a look. "Ya just did, Posh."

"Right, well," Remus frowned, "What was Dean like, I mean really  like? Because Helia... Helia worships the ground he walked on, but I don't know how much of that is..."

"Blind loyalty?" Jack asked, "Yeah, I know. Our Hel... She needs a hero, doncha think? Sommat to prove the world is good. Dean was a special case o' protagonist material, that's for sure, but 'e was a hot mess. Not a person alive who could draw like him, an' he couldn't draw like anyone else either. Very stubborn. Hel was the end-all for 'im. I remember 'er firs' day o' school, an' her parents gave Dean the camera, put 'im at the back when she came running out. An' Hel, the little champion, ran straight past 'em, straight ter Big Brother. I still got ter picture, just a blur o' her hair, it is. He didn't care how much he burnt or 'er parents burnt if it meant Hel would be okay. She sent letters to 'is grave, did ya know?" Remus shook his head, wordless, "I found 'em one week, when I went up there. All stacked up in a neat little pile, like."