love, lupin

one

July 23rd, 1976
Friday

"Harlow this is ridiculous." Remus whined as she straightened out his tie. "I feel like it's too early. I'm sixteen!" Getting the dark mark wasn't something Remus was opposed to, infact he had always been brimming with anticipation for the day to come. But he'd never expected it so soon, when he turned eighteen yeah, but not now. He never thought now.

"You're apart of the New Generation Remus." Harlow Greybacks voice was cold but Remus knew she was worried for him, that she agreed with him. But as a simple lacky on a lower level then her husband Fenrir she couldn't do much. "Getting the Dark Mark as soon as your training was done was how the plan always has been."

At the mention of the New Generation Remus' chest visibly puffed out in pride.
The New Generation was the uprising Dark Lord's attempt at making a new and better breed of followers. The ordinary followers were simply known as Death Eaters and they were all the same; lowly, empathetic and in the big picture, disgustingly human. But the New Generation were considered higher ranked and better then a simple Death Eater. They were essentially robots created to do the bidding of their superior, children raised to become soilders and nothing more. Yes they were all human, most anyway, but they were also machines. And as the sole werewolf chosen for the New Generation Remus not only had a reputation to uphold but a standard to meet.

Remus glanced sideways at Fenrir from where he stood and the elder werewolf looked down at Remus with a stare as uncaring and as cold as ever. He had become everything Fenrir had been trained to make him but the man still wasn't proud enough, he wanted more from the teenager but the boy wasn't sure what else he could give.

"Don't embarrass us, boy." Fenrir growled as Remus moved past him and he simply nodded.
"Good luck." Harlow whispered and gave Remus that small reassuring squeeze of the hand she gave him whenever something big was about to happen and Remus appreciated it. He wasn't nervous really but he'd never actually seen the Dark Lord before.

He'd heard small stories of course and he actually even felt it weird when he had allegedly hand picked Remus to be apart of the New Generation. He wasn't scared either but the crushing wave of dark magic that hit him when he stepped through the door could have suffocated him.

Remus grew up around dark magic so he was used to the impending crushing feeling the aura of it pressing on his chest and temples but this was something else. This made Remus want to drop to his knees and scream. But of course he didnt.

"Don't embarrass us, boy."

Fenrir's voice echoed through his mind as a reminder and he planted his feet confidently at shoulder width and he straightened his back with vigour and he plastered an empty look on his face, just how Harlow had made his practice for days before today.
"The less emotion the better Remus." She had told him and Remus had given her back a rare laugh.
"Like that's gonna be a problem."

Remus' schoolmates would have described him as Sociopathic but he wasn't quite. Some would say psychotic but then they'd all met Barty Crouch Jr the next year and that faded quick.

The weight of the dark magic threatened his stance but he held through, focusing on powering through.

"Remus Greyback." A voice reverberated through the room amd Remus' eyes flickered up and met soft brown ones. It wasn't quite what he'd been expecting. The whole man in himself wasn't what Remus had expected.

Lord Voldemort wasn't a frail, bitter boney man with greying hair and withered skin like a Remus had expected him to be. Though he wasn't sure why he expected someone like that, most probably because of the Lord title. Most Lord's in the fiction books he read were often older men on their death beds. Lord Voldemort was certainly not on his death bed.