December 25, 1995
6:23 am
12 Grimmauld Place
When Hermione Granger woke up on Christmas morning at Grimmauld Place next to Ginny Weasley, the first thing she did was eagerly shake the redhead's shoulders. The year so far with Umbridge had been immensely stressful, and to finally have a break surrounded by all of her friends was amazing.
"Ginny, wake up!" she said, shaking the Weasley's shoulders covered by her bright purple G sweater.
"I don't know why I agreed to share a room with you," teased Ginny, pulling a strand of hair from her mouth that had fallen there in her sleep. "Why exactly are we waking up at six am?"
Hermione grabbed her freckled hand and began to pull her down the stairs.
"I'm just really excited to see what-"
And then, in a sudden flurry of movements, Ginny tripped a protruding iron baseboard and ran directly into a bookshelf. Not being able to stop herself in time, Hermione fell on top of Ginny and landed with a groan as a book fell from the shelf and landed on her back.
"Very graceful," Ginny grumbled sarcastically. "Hopefully we didn't break this thing, it looks ancient."
Brushing off her pajama pants with narrowed brown eyes, Hermione looked carefully at the book that had fallen.
Unlike the rest of them that were bound with black leather and golden lettering, this book was rectangular with a warm, soft brown and no title giving any indication at what the contents inside could be.
It occured to Hermione for a few moments that this might be private, but her curiousity overwhelmed her as she cracked open the cover.
Inside, there was a picture of three little girls labelled The Baddest Bitches in All of Hogwarts - 1971
"1971?" Ginny muttered in shock. "This thing really is ancient."
"Who are these people?" Hermione asked, flipping a page back and seeing that there was a torn rip where the first pack should have been. "Someone took the first page."
"You lot's clumsy banging is going to wake the entire house up," Fred groaned, nearly tripping down the stairs himself. "This is why I apparate."
He noticed their silence in confusion and snacthed the book directly from their hands.
"This some sort of diary, ladies?" he joked with a wide grin, flipping to a page far back. "What's inside-"
He cut himself off abruptbly as he saw the picture he had flipped to.
Inside was a hospital bed very similar to the one they had visited Mr. Weasley in the other night with two people sitting on top.
The first one was a girl in what looked to be her sixth year with coily, inky black hair and tawny skin laced with lighter, raised scars. She had her arms tightly wrapped around a boy that was clearly taller than her even whilst sitting that had jet black hair as well that flowed gracefully to his shoulders.
It was clear that the two of them were incredibly close with their heads resting on the other's shoulder and chest, but none of the three knew how.
"Look at the caption," Hermione whispered thoughtfully, pointing to the elegant handwriting.
Hollis and Sirius - 1977
"That's Sirius?" Fred asked in awe. "But he looks so.. young."
"Well it was twenty two years ago," Ginny said with a crooked grin. "Basic maths, Freddie."
"Why do we not know a Hollis?" he questioned.
A flood of memories from her third year suddenly came rushing back to Hermione.
"She's dead," she whispered. "Killed by Voldemort."
"Ah, I see you have found the book."
The Weasleys and Granger whipped around to see Remus leaning in the doorframe with a mug of hot chocolate and Sirius next to him with the same but full of tea instead.
Hermione instantly fumbled with the book as a guilty expression crossed over all of their faces.
"I'm sorry!" she squealed, furious at herself for interrupting their privacy. "I shouldn't have done that."
Before Black or Lupin could answer, though, Fred jumped in.
"Who was Hollis?"
The past tense would never stop making them cringe.
"I think that it would be easier if I would only have to explain this once," Remus said, motioning them for go to the kitchen table. "Go get Harry, Ron, and George. Harry especially deserves to know who he's named after."
A few minutes later, the boys had been dragged out of bed and were all sitting around the chipped black kitchen table.
"It will be the easiest if I start from my perspective," Sirius said, heavily sitting down on the chair next to Harry. "As many of you know, this is my childhood house. Never a home, but my house. Hollis was a Rosier, a pureblood. This meant that she was expected to never associate with halfbloods, muggleborns, or Gryffindors in general."
Every person at the table possessed one of those so called 'flaws' and squirmed a bit unpleasently.
"When we were little, we both had very, erm, violent parents, as to say," Sirius explained, sorrow flickeirng in his face as he could hear the slaps echoing through the halls even now. "One day, things got a little too heated and my father used magic to throw a chair across the room."
The Weasleys all visibly shuddered, already not being able to think of a more polar opposite to Arthur and Molly.
"Hollis moved in front of me," Sirius said plainly. "She had a scar for the rest of her life, and we never saw each other again until we went to Hogwarts."
While he was saying this, Remus reached forwards and opened up the book to the first page.
"Hollis is the one on the left, then your mother Lily, Harry, and then a girl named Marlene Mckinnon," he explained. "As you can see, Hollis already decided that she was going to do the exact opposite her parents had told her even at eleven years old."
"That couldn't have gone well," George whispered, and Remus gave him a tight nod as he began to flip faster through the pages until he got to their fifth year.
"For many years, the only thing we can assume is that it didn't," Remus said. "But the first time we really figured anything out was on the train ride to Hogwarts in our fifth year. The compartment that I was alseep in was knowing in the 70's as the Marauders Compartment. Hollis hadn't known that, and she fell asleep right on one of the benches."
"She wasn't in any good state," Sirius said solemnly to his captivated audience. "When she walked out, there wasn't enough room in the doorway. Some blood from her shirt got on Remus's shirt and James's hands."
Ginny took in a sharp exhale.
"Wait, what happened?" Ron prompted. "Why was there blood on her shirt?"
"We still don't know," Remus said. "We can just assume that it was her parents, but that part comes later. Anyways, your father especially, Harry wasn't just going to let that slide like it never even happened."
"Called out after her," Sirius said with a small smile as he shook his head. "And that was when we really first got to know her. Told us off like there was no tomorrow, the scariest girl you've ever met."
Ginny and Hermione were increasingly liking this Hollis.
"The first half of our fifth year before Christmas, that was when a lot of things changed," Remus explained. "She decided that she was going to get away from some not so kind Slytherins and stick with Marlene and Lily."
"Was Malfoy's dad one of them?" Ginny asked sourly as the thought of the diary he had slipped into her cauldron at Flourish and Blotts, and Sirius nodded. "That git."
"We all became a lot closer during that time," Sirius said. "She's the one who taught us all how to become animagi, actually."
"So she was really clever then?" Fred asked, and the two men both smiled.
"She's the one who figured out how to make the Map," Remus revealed, and Fred and George immediately began to fangirl.
"She's a goddess then," George whispered. "A pranking goddess."
"A pranking goddess that your dear old Professor Lupin decided it would be a dandy idea to kiss."
Harry spit out the bit of tea he had been drinking from Sirius's mug in shock as Remus's pale face started to darken furiously.
"Is Sirius telling the truth, professor?" Ginny asked, suddenly throughly invested. "Did you really do that?"
"Not my finest moment," Remus muttered, but nodded. "Didn't talk to me for two solid weeks afterwards, and I can't say I blame her."
"The Marauders couldn't have two of us fighting for long, though," Sirius said. "So they both got over themselves after months and finally realized they should get together already."
"Then the summer of 1976," Remus continued as they all watched him eagerly for the rest of the story. "Didn't see her for three months, but James and Sirius did."
All of the teenager's heads turned to Sirius, who looked immensely regretful all of the sudden.
"It was the first time I went to Rosier Manor," he said slowly. "James and I were being stupid and reckless, we didn't think through the consequences for us or Hollis. And.."
They all looked at him nervously.
"And we saw a Mulstone Rosier, her father, be so cruel that you could not possibly imagine it," he said as quickly as possible. "I don't think I'll ever forget."
"Hollis is the strongest person I've ever known, though," Remus jumped in, seeing Sirius about to break down if he kept talking. "We also know that summer, Voldemort personally tried to recruit her among many other teenagers."
"Before her sixth year?" Ron asked, horrified.
"Oh, she was already a part of the Order by then," Remus said sourly. "Dumbledore started to recruit early too. It was something both sides were guilty of, not just one."
"But to the point, a series of very detailed events led to Hollis getting a fake Dark Mark to serve as a spy," Sirius said, and the entire table stiffened.
"That's.." Hermione trailed off, not even being able to find the right word with her immense vocabulary.
"Mental," Fred finished for her. "Absolutely mental."
"It worked, though," Remus told them, pride leaking into his voice. "She kept it hidden from us for months on end."
"That's when a lot of these pictures come in," Sirius said, pointing to the book so that the teenagers around them could match some pictures to words. "In the library on the southern corner was out spot, everyone called it the Marauder's Corner. Our initials are still there."
Fred and George made the mental note to check it out when they got back to Hogwarts, to honor their leaders.
Ginny and Harry smiled at the picture of Hollis sitting on top of Remus's shoulders cheering for Gryffindor, looked at one another, and then quickly turned away with cheeks tingling with pink.
"You look so happy," Hermione whispered, stroking her fingertips lightly against the moving frame. "What happened?"
This is the part where things were going to start to hurt, Remus and Sirius could both feel it.
"There's something that you have to understand first," Sirius explained. "Well, none of you will never fully get it, but I can try."
He took in a deep inhale as he looked around Grimmauld Place.
"These pureblood parents, not all of them were like Mia and Fleamont, James and I's folks. They were insane aabout keeping the bloodline pure," Sirius said slowly. "They would horrible things happen to their own children, do them themselves if necessary."
Remus took up this section, knowing he needed to make the statement as concise as possible.
"While at Hogwarts, Hollis was placed under the Imperius Curse by her own brother."
There were a few moments of shocked silence. The idea of something like the Imperius Curse happening to a person in the first place was already awful, but for it to be done by family and such a young person only made things worse.
"And you think I'm annoying," Ron grumbled to Ginny. "Imagine if I did that."
"I hope you wouldn't even try to think of it," Remus said sorrowfully. "She was under the curse for two months, and I could speak for all of the class of 78' when I say that it was the most confusing and distressing thing to watch."
"It was like she was being forced to become the prejudiced, selfish person that she hated, and it took us far too long to figure out what was going on," Sirius told them. "And some things had already happened that were simply too late to fix."
Remus's fist clenched slightly as he thought of Nott, and Fred and George exchanged a menacing look at the implication.
"But at the end of April, we helped her break it," Remus said with a small smile. "Ran away from Hogwarts, James, Sirius, Hollis and I without hesitation to get her to St. Mungo's."
"You just ran away from school?" Hermione whispered, appalled.
"Well, when you put it like that, it sounds bad," Sirius said, grinning slightly. "But I suppose we did."
"What ended up happening to her brother?" Harry asked curiously. "Was be put in Azkaban?"
Remus hesitated slightly.
"Back then, it was much harder to trace the uses of the Unforgivables. They were being used to often and the magic wasn't as advanced as it was now," the Lupin explained, figetting with the leather band around his wrist. "So no, he wasn't sent to Azkaban. He was killed."
Harry paled slightly at the way Remus had said this.
Like the Rosier had deserved it.
"Many of these pictures are from St. Mungo's," Sirius said, pointing to the one of him and Hollis hugging. "Me and her were very close."
Hermione gave his arm a gentle squeeze at the loss in his voice, which he smiled as much as he could at her for.
"I like this one," Ginny said, flipping the page to a picture of Hollis and Remus hugging on the balcolny of St. Mungo's. "You two look so peacful."
Hollis and Remus - 1977
"We were," Remus said with a soft smile. "Hollis was that one person that you just can't describe, no matter how hard you try."
"Your father once said that she was 'a Salazar Slytherin excpet less evil,'" Sirius chuckled as he looked to Harry. "And that was rather accurate."
"Not a bone in her body to hurt someone," Remus said, his hand moving over the picture of the hugging. "Unless they deserved it, then they better watch out."
"Did many people deserve it?" Ron asked, leaning his forearms on the table.
"They did," Remus said grimly. "She built up quite the reputation for herself of not wanting to cross her."
"How long was she in the hospital for?" Ginny asked. "Did she recover quickly?"
"Her parents took her back to Rosier Manor before she could go back to Hogwarts for the end of her sixth year," Remus said. "That last week might have been one of the most stressful of my life."
"That's an understatement," Sirius said grimly. "James, Remus, and I devised a plan to get her out of there a week into the summer, that's how bad it was. We were scared she wouldn't come back to school the next year."
"Before we could try and save her, though, she saved herself the day she turned seventeen," Remus told them with pride for even having known her. "Escaped the manor and found my house in the woods."
"She just left?" Harry said with confusion. "There was nothing more to it?"
"What there was to it was that she was going to die if she stayed there a second longer."
"That's an exagerration, right?" George said, hopefully giving Remus a smile at his statment that quickly fell.
"No, it's not," Remus said, his deep voice vaguely cracking. "Her parents.. they found her fake Dark Mark and tortured her using the Cruciatus Curse and other violent methods to try and get the information out of her for how she had been spying."
"Her own parents?" Ron cried in horror. "But-"
"But I told you that's how things were," Sirius interrputed, gesturing for him to sit down. "James and I came from Potter Manor the instant Lyall, Remus's dad, contacted Mia, second only to Hollis in all the healers I've ever known."
"She was barely alive," Remus whispered as he pointed to a picture in the book.
It was of him, Hollis, James, and Sirius in the living room of Lupin Cottage. They were all passed out with their arms and legs touching, along with fingers entertwined even in sleep.
Hollis, Remus, James, and Sirius - 1977
"You guys look like a family," Hermione said with wateirng eyes.
"We were a family."
There were a few moments of silence before Remus turned the page, no longer able to look at the picture.
"She moved in with me after that," he explained. "And the first half of our seven year were some of the best months of my entire life."
"He's right," Sirius confirmed. "We snuck out to go smoke, don't smoke kids, nearly every week."
"And that's when you guys did the tattoos right?" prompted Remus, and Black smiled sadly as he laid the back of his hand on the table so that the pad of his thumb was visible.
The fox paw inside of the dog's had never faded.
"My first tattoo with Hollis Rosier," Sirius smiled. "It was a stick and poke with quill ink, also don't do that kids."
"What stopped the happy months?" Harry asked. "Why was it just the first half?"
Remus put his hand other a few pages and turned to a sudden collage. It was full of Daily Prophets, torn pages from books that made Hermione wince, and handwritten notes. Along with all of the paper was a noticable amount of darkened wrinkles splotches like tears.
"Hollis went missing," Remus whispered. "I did something that I shouldn't have, and we got in a huge fight that made her go to Lily's house."
"And then she set us up," Sirius said wryly. "Sent us all over our houses so she would have time to go.. to go do something."
He cringed as he thought of his late brother.
"Everyone thought she was dead," Remus said, emotion coming down like a hammer and cracking the delicate glass of his voice that had been threatening to break now that she really was.
"Until one day she showed up half dead in the Great Hall with Slytherin's locket around her neck," Sirius said with a sigh. "And the news that someone that loved her was dead."
"So she did something against Voldemort, then?" Harry asked, and Lupin nodded.
"The healing took a long time," Remus told them, pointing to the pictures. "But it was worth it."
He thought for a few moments as Hermione and Harry gazed intently at a picture captioned These Mental Mammals - 1978 of a stag, dog, and fox playing on the beach together.
"That was the thing about Hollis. There were good times and there were incredibly dark ones. But most of all, the light just showed how much we had grown from the darkness."
They all sat on these words for a few moments as Hermione decided that she wanted to have what Remus and Hollis had.
There was a moving picture of them dancing together as they kissed with a bar of chocolate blocking the camera from their lips that made her heart warm.
"Wolfboy and His Fox - 1978," she read aloud. "You two were beautiful together."
Ginny looked at two pictures next to one another of Hollis with her legs wrapped around his waist on the astronmy tower and their foreheads pressed together and another of them reading in the Gryffindor common room, both of them labelled the same thing.
They Won't Stop Reading and It's Annoying James - 1978
"They were," Sirius emphasized. "But our pancake was even more beautiful."
All of the teenagers listened in confusion as Lupin and Black started to chuckle, but their eyes confirmed what their ears could not.
There was a picture of a vintage, spacious kicthen with five teenagers crammed into the frame with ingredients all over their bodies and eggshells all over the kitchen around them.
Sirius was lacking a shirt and looked the happiest any of the students had ever seen him, while Hollis and Remus had their bodies entangled while similtaniously tripping and taking a bite of charred pancake. James was diving into Hollis while trying to avoid being hit with an oven mitt by a fuirous Lily.
Pancakes at Four in the Morning at Whore (Potter) Manor - 1978
The entire thing was chaotic and perfect and beautiful.
"What happened that summer?" Fred asked. "After this, did you start fighting in the war?"
Remus slowly nodded.
"Yes, this was one of the last times we were all together not for a battle," he said sadly. "There were many times that we all fought and were horribly injured, but we always had each other's backs. Things would happen quicker than you could blink, and there was no stopping them."
He fidgetted with the copper band on his pale finger.
Hermione noticed, and hesitated for a few moments before asking.
"Did you get married?"
Sirius was about to answer for Remus, but the Lupin shook his head in confirmation that he could handle telling the final stretch of their story.
"Two days before the wedding, I made the biggest mistake of my life and accepted a mission to leave for Fenrir Greyback's cave," he told them with a frown. "I was immidiately tagetted as an enemy. They found this ring and used it to lure Hollis and the other in, because they knew they would want to save me."
"That's awful," Ron whispered, and Remus nodded.
"Hollis barely made it out alive," the Lupin told them. "If she was a second slower a dozen times, I doubt Sirius, Harry, or I would be sitting here. You would have never been born."
Harry silently thanked this astounding woman for all she had done for him even if he had never known it.
"The narrow escape let to some arguements, though," Sirius said, a frown tugging down at his mouth. "And Peter told Voldemort where Hollis was."
The trio's eyes widened in horror.
"That was the thing about her reputation," Remus said solemnly. "Mad-eye wanted to recruit her without even knowing her well, there were good things like that. But that also meant Voldemort already targetted her as an enemy. So when Peter let his tongue loose, that meant she was now top priotity."
"She knew, though," Sirius said in a low tone. "So bloody clever, Hollis was. Wrote us each a letter before she was killed."
"She saved all of us that day," Remus told them sincerely. "If she hadn't put us under a sleeping enchantment, we would have died. She is the bravest person I have ever known. Hollis was like a sister to your father too, Harry. The bond they had was something very few siblings ever achieve by blood."
There were a few moments of silence as her story sunk in.
"Is that the end?" Harry asked with glittering green eyes. "She died for you and my parents and Sirius? And then you're never going to see her again?"
"Two for three," Remus said with a small shake of his head. "That was the end of her time here, and she did die for all of us."
He smiled a bit as he could hear her laughter in his ears.
"But I know I'm going to see her again."
And sure enough, a few years later, he found himself clean of all injuries and dirt. His clothes felt warm as if they had been hanging by the fire.
And his heart felt full because Remus and Hollis Lupin were at peace at last.
THE END