Four To The End Book Two (Marauders Era)

Chapter One Hundred-Twenty-Seven - Another Night

Author's Note: Thank you to HollowNightmare (on AO3) for the help with the Italian! Also wanted to say that I have slowly been putting some of my fanart up on my tumblr so if you want to check it out https://dovahtobi.tumblr.com/tagged/SL-fanart! Third, for good news, my mother may be getting out of the hospital this weekend!

Onto the bad stuff. Warning for child abuse in this chapter.

~*~

The rest of Remus's holidays were spent trying to like his new room (and failing), reading, carefully redoing all of his essays, and brooding around the house missing his friends. He wrote multiple letters, all of which ended up being flushed down the loo. He also pretended that he didn't notice that the antsier he got, the grouchier Hope got.

On Wednesday he decided to try to cheer his mum up a little bit. He went out into the woods, gathering lots of bluebells and other flowers then snuck the flowers inside. Once the stalks and leaves were carefully trimmed, he tied the stalks together with a length of pink yarn before sticking them into a vase he nicked from the attic. Lyall had put it there since it was chipped, but Remus managed to mostly fix it with the repairing spell, though if you looked closely you could still see an outline of the chip.

When he was satisfied with how it looked, Remus set it on the dining room table. Hope was doing work in the garden and he went out to help her, pretending like nothing happened. He hid his grin, sounding innocent whenever he talked, excited when Hope finished her gardening and headed back inside.

"Oh!" she gasped when she saw the flowers, dropping her gloves. "Is—did you do this?"

"For you!" he said excitedly. "I thought it might cheer you up."

Her eyes grew a little watery and she flung her arms around him, hugging tightly. "Thank you! Thank you so much. They're beautiful!"

"Like you," he said firmly.

Hope gave him a little roll of the eyes but smiled before kissing the top of his head. "That's what you were up to all morning." She touched one of the bluebells. "It's wonderful. Thank you."

Remus beamed, very pleased with himself.

But the brief respite was very brief. By suppertime she was sighing over him leaving again, and the flowers seemed to have made it worse; she kept saying how he was 'acting' more like his 'old self' by being home, that she was worried once he returned to school he'd go back to having a bad attitude. This gave him a bad attitude, and he got into a small row with his mother about it which resulted in his father dragging him down into his stupid bedroom and locking him in there for the rest of the night. He spent the night under his bed, something he had never done at home before. It was just being locked up next to his wolf room made him feel extremely uncomfortable and vibrate-y in a bad way, so he disappeared under his bed, clutching Gwyllgi, trying not to cry.

Thursday was also spent sulking, since at breakfast he had accidentally cracked a joke about his lycanthropy, making both his parents angry. Lyall threatened Remus for the 'inappropriate' joke, then told him he needed to reread The Cure For Lycanthropy. Remus didn't read it, instead he stormed around his room, grumbling to himself.

"The Marauders would have laughed," he told Arthur who hooted in agreement.

When Lyall got home he asked Remus if he had read the book again, and Remus lied saying he had. Lyall then made a comment about how he hoped it wouldn't become an Easter tradition. That made Remus angrier. His father could make jokes like that but he couldn't say anything. Oh no, that'd be wrong.