Frigus . Sirius Black (Mortem BOOK 2)

chapter twenty-one

March 25th, 1979 - Lupin Cottage 

Remus Lupin hadn't seen the outside of his room ever since the new Law was proposed in the Ministry, the one that called him a monster, the one that proposed that things like him should be chained up once a month because they were such a danger to society and other, normal people. 

He had been fired from the bar he was working at previously, although it hardly mattered to him. Of course, he'd been fired, even muggles knew that someone with scars like was dangerous. Lyall had taken Hope and the two were staying in his grandmother's old apartment in London to be closer to where she was being treated with chemotherapy. They hadn't told their son the other reason why, but Remus wasn't an idiot, he knew. After all, the last thing his mother wanted was the added stress of seeing him in such a state. 

Pretty much everyone had been over the past ten days, the marauders, the girls, Gideon, and yet none of them had managed to get a word out of Remus. The most progress they'd seen was the werewolf taking a bite out of something, courtesy of James and Gideon managing to coax him out of his room for a brief sandwitch. 

Still, the boy hadn't said a single word to any of them, leading the group to take turns staying over at Lupin cottage to look after him best they could. 

That day was Nephera's turn, and she was slowly growing frustrated. Her anger wasn't with Remus, far from it, she was angry with the world as a whole. Because for some reason, for some reason she couldn't fucking identify, the worse things happened to the best people, and she was growing sick and tired of it. 

Peter and Lily, being the ones working at St. Mungo's, had been in charge of digging up any sort of dirt on Umbridge's past, looking into her records, her family's records, and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, Sirius and Ailani had met up with one of Nephera's contracts, a man that specialized in smuggling people in and out of the country, but for the right amount of money, he could also be really useful when someone wanted to dig up dirt on others. 

Nephera was left coordinating everything, waiting for the one thing that they could use to blackmail Umbridge with. She herself wouldn't be doing the blackmailing, far from it, she'd pass the information to Riddle and he'd send one of his Death Eaters, Nephera's name wouldn't appear anywhere. 

Currently, though, she had a much more important job to do, and that was convincing Remus to come out of his room. How she'd do that, she didn't know. 

"Moony," she tried, "Want to come grab a bite with me? I brought some of James's casserole," 

No response, but then again, it was a rather weak attempt. 

"Alright, you're not hungry. I get that. You want to get drunk and curse at the world?" 

Still nothing. 

"Has the silent treatment actually ever worked on any of us? I know you won't answer so I'll do it for you, no, no it hasn't. Now, the way I see it, you have two options, you can either stay in there until you grow roots and are permenantly attatched to your bed, which I can understand, if I'm honest, or you can come out here, eat something, and save us both the time and the trouble," one final push 

"Go away," came Remus's voice from inside the room 

Not the response she would've liked, but at least it was progress. 

"Ah, so he does speak. And here I was thinking you'd lost the ability to do so. Want to maybe open the door?" 

The charms the werewolf had placed on the door were complex, but Nephera could've broken through them easily if she wanted to. yet, something told her that bargin inside the room wasn't the best idea at that moment.