To The Moon and Back | Remus Lupin's Daughter

10. Unwelcome visitor? - Remus

July 1993.

If it weren't for Astra I think I'd be dead right now. Not due to starvation or succumb to my self inflicted injuries after a full moon, no it would have been my mind that did me in. I didn't realise just how utterly depressed i was before she came into my life. it only hit me when i started feeling the same sickening feelings of regret and self hatred that were my daily companions before she arrived at my door a few months back. Only now i feel like not only have i failed my friends, my parents and myself. now, now i've failed her too. 

two months. two months i've been unemployed, usually that wouldn't bother me i know i'll find work eventually, if i lived past the next moon. this time round its hit me ten times harder, i've Astra to think about. I've been skipping meals at least twice a week just to make sure she gets enough to eat. she's still growing it's important i make sure she's getting the proper nutrition, i'm used to the rationing. it's what i came accustomed to since i graduated Hogwarts. No one would ever hire me, those who did fired me the minute they discovered the monstrosity i truly am. James and Lily were my saviours, they always made sure to invite me round for dinner at least once a week, making sure i got enough substance to keep me going, as would Sirius...meaning twice a week i was guaranteed a decent meal, though Sirius would make me cook it myself. he never could cook. Peter would drop in his mother's baking every few weeks especially on the ruin up to the full moon. they were good like that, back when we were a proper family. back before the deceit and the betrayal. before the broken hearted misery i was left to suffer alone. i didn't realise how much i relied on them, my brothers, to keep me sane in the hell i was cast into for the sin of affliction. a curse that i didn't ask for yet was looked down on and cast aside for, with their deaths and conviction i lost the only people who ever truly accepted me and loved me despite the monster i am on the inside.  i went for...maybe six weeks without a proper meal when i returned from the packs to find out what had happened to my family. i failed them. Now i'm failing her.

I'm failing her cause i can't provide for her the way a father should and yet she doesn't complain. she even leaves part of her meals aside for me when she sees i haven't made a portion for myself. My pup, my little moon is too good for this world. A world that will only ever be cruel to her. every time i think of the curse i have bestowed on my daughter the more my heart breaks. 

She's taken to gardening with me most days, basking in the summer sun while looking after our small vegetable plot at the front of the cottage. she looks the picture of perfection and i can't help wonder how on earth i could have helped create something as pure as Astra. it feels like some cruel joke that someone so small, kind and caring could host a wolf inside her. yet, i suppose Astra's wolf is far different than moony. Astra is carefree as a wolf, without a need for wolfbane, she is always so calm and brings the same soothing disposition to moony as long as he's in her presences, i've done research but can't find any information on why her disposition in her lupine form is so different to everything i've come to understand about lycanthropy. perhaps it's due to the fact she's still a pup, though i was biten as a child, a mere pup myself and i still came out of transitions with awful self inflicted injuries, yet the most Astra has needed me to attend to a slight grazing and shallow cuts caused my the transition itself. she barely has a noticable scar on her. i can't help but wonder if she'll at least be given a shot at a normal life. perhaps given that she was born with the condition her body was more acclimated for the strain the wolf poses onto the body. in other word, she was made for this while those like myself who had been bitten were not and that is what made our wolves so... hostile? 

"Daddy?" Astra called with a nervous tremor clear in her voice causing me to break free from my inner monologue.