Unkept secrets >>Wolfstar (UNFINISHED)

'Tis the season

Monday,
December 24th.

On Christmas eve, Remus awoke drenched in sweat. His clothes clung to his skin much like how his hair stuck to his forehead.

Perhaps it was due to the stress of not being in his dorm room, or maybe because Sirius called him the night before and seemed distraught that he had been Remus' first kiss.

Remus laid in bed, staring at the ceiling and clutching his aching stomach when a knock sounded at his bedroom door. This was curious because Remus' mother was out shopping and his father was finishing up work for the holiday.

"Remus?" Martin let himself in, leaving the door open just a fragment. Remus almost gaged at the sight. He was not in the mood to talk to Martin.

"Are you alright? Your mother told me that you weren't feeling well and she wanted me to check up on you," Martin began, taking a seat on the edge of Remus' bed.

"I'm fine. Just a cold," Remus held back a snappy response. Something about Martin was really irritating him.

"I know something that would make you feel better..." Martin placed a hand on Remus' knee. Remus' mood peeked at the thought of sexual gratification.

He and Martin hadn't gone beyond light groping and maybe this was their moment... or it would have been their moment if Remus' father hadn't walked in right as Martin's hands were inches away from the waistband of his boxers.

What Martin had forgotten to mention, was that Remus' father was the one who drove him there. Remus had been foolish not to question how he had arrived at his house from such a terrible distance.

The look on his fathers face almost made Remus burst into hysterics. Had he not realized how stupid he had been during the break?

"Get out of my house boy," his father directed that at Martin but Remus secretly hoped that he could leave too and not have to deal with the consequences of his actions.

Martin got up anxiously and left without a word. For a moment him and his father just stared at each other until they heard the sound of the front door shutting.

"Have you been doing this under my nose since you got back? Under my roof?" Lyall boomed.

After a moment without response his father swiped an angry arm across his desk, sending his belongings flying off. His vial of ink shattered on the floor, staining the paper of the unopened letters James and Sirius had sent him.

"Answer me," his voice sounded angrier than Remus had ever recalled. Remus nodded his head hesitantly.

"Yes father," he uttered just above a whisper. Nothing could protect him from his fathers barbaric movements.

A fist came cascading into Remus' cheek just moments before he was hauled out of his bed and thrown onto the floor.

Looking back on it, Remus liked to believe that he could've overpowered his father had he not been so ill.

His senses were strengthened to a point where he got headaches from the slightest of noises, his father pummelling him didn't help even in the least.

The owl that Remus had purchased his first year of wizardry watched the scene, flailing her wings and screeching as she watched her friend be beat senselessly.

After what felt like an hour, his mother arrived at home. She called out in search of her son, and after hearing the commotion she rounded upon his room.

When conflicted with the sight of her husband battering her son unconscious, she turned a blind eye. After his mother left, Remus truly believed that he would die.

His father sent a few kicks to his stomach that would surely leave a mark.

Remus' blood ran rampant through his body, a surge of anger and fear giving him the adrenaline to push his father off of him.

"Get out," Remus held a look of pure hatred, one that looked much like his fathers. His father twitched slightly, opening his mouth to bite back with something but he just didn't have anything else to give.

He left without another word, slamming the door behind himself. The only strength that remus could muster up was to haul himself back onto his bed and lay stiff and shaking.

This was karma for all the shitty things that he had done since Sirius arrived. He deserved this.

If he were to head downstairs he knew that his mother would be on her third glass of wine bordering on a fourth with a cigarette in her hand that would eventually stink up the living room. He was destined for failure the moment he was born.

On Christmas day, Remus packed his trunk full of the things that he was going to need once he arrived at school. He then cleaned up the mess that had been made of his desk, and then laid in bed for the rest of the day, clutching his aching stomach.

His mother knocked on his door every now and again, placing his dinner or his lunch or his breakfast outside the door, meals that he would never eat.

He wrote a goodbye letter to Thomas but not to Martin. He sent it out by owl and didn't expect to receive one back until he came back home for next vacation, a trip that he was loathing entirely.

Nothing stirred in the lupin household on boxing day, not even Remus' owl moved. His mother stopped leaving meals by his door and eventually accepted the fact that she had ruined their relationship.

NEXT CHAPTER: December 12th