The Last Horcrux

Pasta Primavera

Sev and Remus couldn't bear to send Oakley back to Madame Marple's and he wasn't interested in going there anyway, since Delphi was gone. But after a few weeks at home he was bored. They enrolled him in the local Muggle creche, where he knew several children from the neighborhood. He was a social creature at heart and soon made friends. He seemed happy enough, except for the nightmares, which often sent him running to Sev and Remus' bed in the middle of the night. Sev didn't mind. After everything that had happened, he liked having him close. He had a hard time dropping Oakley off at school in the morning, and he could never pick him up without remembering that awful afternoon, when he had gone to fetch him and he hadn't been there.

Oakley worried about the moon. This was new. He asked when it was coming, how many days away it was, who was going to watch him when it came. He studied the sky, fretfully, every night. One spring evening, Sev found him out in the garden, anxiously watching the crescent moon that glowed against the sunset.

"Will I be a wolf, like Moony when I grow up?" he asked Sev. The question had clearly been on his mind for some time.

Sev honestly didn't know the answer. He and Remus had already discussed this at length. Lycanthropy was typically passed on through saliva, not genes, and feral werewolves bit their own children in order to keep the trait alive in them. Still, Oakley was a unique case, and it was unclear what magic Dionysius Cutler had performed in the lab when Remus had become pregnant. They knew that his goal had been the breeding of werewolf babies, but how successful he had been was yet to be determined.

Sev sat down beside Oakley. "I don't know," he admitted. "Probably not."

"They called me wolf pup," Oakley said. "At Delphi's house. Does that mean I have to turn into a wolf some day?"

Sev put an arm around the little boy and pulled him into a hug. He was so light, so vulnerable. Sev's deepest desire was to protect him, always. "We'll just have to wait and see," he said. "But if it does happen, we'll deal with it. And we'll always love you, no matter what. You know that right?" He touched Oakley's snub of a nose with his finger, wondering if it would ever transform into a long canine snout.

"You love Moony, even though he's a wolf," said Oakley.

'That's right," said Sev. "I do."

Oakley snuggled in. "I guess it'll be all right," he said.

"It will," said Sev.

"I miss Delphi," Oakley sighed.

"Maybe we can write her a letter," said Sev.

So they did. They wrote several letters to Delphi and sent them off by owl, but they all went unanswered.

But Oakley never forgot Delphi. He regularly asked Sev and Remus when they were going to find her and bring her home to live. They did try. Peter Pettigrew was in Azkaban, and Remus got special dispensation from the ministry to visit him there. He came home from that long, cold journey pale and discouraged and had to be put right to bed with a hot water bottle and a glass of firewhiskey. He had discovered nothing useful. All Peter had wanted to talk about were his missing arms.

Harry was training in the Auror office and was involved in the active hunt for Rodolphus Lestrange, but Rodolphus had gone to ground, taking Delphi with him. Dionysius Cutler, Euphemia Rowle and Ignotus and Cadmus Gridelwald were all likewise in hiding, and an extensive search by the ministry turned up nothing. Theo Knott and Gregory Goyle were discovered running a Muggle prostitution ring in Brighton, but their testimony revealed nothing of interest, and they went to Azkaban and served their time there without incident.

Phoenix grew from a delicate newborn into a chubby baby with a full head of dark curls. She had Sev's dark eyes, and even in her tiny baby face, it was clear that she had Sev's strong nose. She had his strong personality as well. She laughed easily, but when she was frustrated her face darkened and she howled with fury.