Casting Moonshadows

1. Blood and Moonshadows

I'm being followed by a Moonshadow,

Moonshadow, Moonshadow

Leaping and a hopping on a Moonshadow,

Moonshadow, Moonshadow

And if I ever lose my eyes,

If my colors all run dry,

Yes, if I ever lose my eyes,

Hey... I won't have to no anymore

(Cat Stevens)

REMUS:

Remus had always thought of memories as being like framed photographs on a shelf. Most of them were placed in the sun and faded over time. Sometimes the color disappeared, leaving only a vague sense of the time; the outlines of a memory that changed a little with the retelling. Sometimes it was the outlines that faded, so the color remained in bright, vivid blurs – a real sense of the time but no details.

Other memories were placed in the dark, overlaid by shadows. It was these memories – the ones you wanted to forget – that didn't lose their color or potency over time.

For Remus, the most vivid of the shadow-memories was his memory of That Night. That Night had repercussions that sent vibrations that echoed and changed events for the rest of his life. This memory - the one he most wanted to fade and change - was the one that would always remain with him in the most vivid detail.

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What Remus always remembered about his mother, long after the other memories had faded and grown dull, was her love of the moonlight. As the potions mistress for their local apothecary, her job often required for her to venture out at night to collect ingredients. On these nights, when the sky was clear, and the moon hung full-bellied and saturated with light, she would creep into Remus's room without bothering to turn on the lights. Wrapping his outdoor cloak over his pajamas and pressing his little feet into his shoes, she would take his hand and lead him out of the house, through the garden gate and into the thick woodland that backed onto their cottage.

As she worked, Serena Lupin would sing the Muggle songs of her childhood while Remus capered wildly at her side, joining in with his high, childish soprano, and watching his Moonshadow as it flickered and leaped among the darker shadows of the trees.

Remus knew that magic existed – he had grown up in a magical household after all – but the sight of the silver-blue Moonshadow and the haunting sound of his mother's voice seemed to weave a different kind of magic in the forest. It was less specific but more tangible. Electric and wild and at the same time safe and private.

Remus's father never joined them in their escapades. Those moonlit nights were a thing that had belonged between the two of them, and no one else was allowed to intrude. Remus, being so young at the time, hadn't realized how much his father resented the fact that his wild, unpredictable wife loved her son so much more than anyone else in the world. John Lupin worshipped the ground she walked on and Serena, in turn, regarded him with affectionate tolerance.

And so he would watch darkly from the bedroom window as the two little figures danced hand in hand into the forest, snatches of Muggle songs fading in their wake.

"Memory, all alone in the moonlight, has the moon lost her memory? She is smiling alone..."

"Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars! Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars..."