Spellbind

12. Introspection

A/N:

>>>>> = Time Skip

<<<<< = Flashback

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Niyla POV:

It took a lot of convincing and getting used to the hate that never seemed to leave my father's heart. It was staged so well; Remus had no choice but to believe Sirius betrayed the Potters— giving Voldemort their location so he could kill their son. A prophecy seen by Trelawney, led Voldemort to believe a child born at the end of July would eventually lead to his downfall. With him believing 'neither one can live while the other survives', Harry was never safe from that point on; and Sirius's revenge to make Pettigrew answer for his betrayal would make him unable to think clearly. So focused on hunting down Pettigrew, Sirius failed to see he was staging a plot to have Sirius arrested for Pettigrew's villainous crimes.

The human mind will only allow fragments to linger behind after so long. But after years of straining to remember as far back as I could, I now vaguely recall I was never in a place for more than a week or two, before Albus Dumbledore used apparition to bring me to Remus's home. I was barely able to form full sentences and shattered windows when I cried when Dumbledore was finally successful in finding someone in the Order to adopt me. I remember the cold stare I would find in Remus's eyes. But that would fade, just like the known fact I wasn't his by blood.

Out of all who housed me while Dumbledore sought to find me a home, Remus was the only one who could tolerate me the most; though his eyes watched me with such a burning hatred for being the child of the man he thought murdered his best friends. In my younger years I grew to loath not knowing why he looked at me that way, his hunter-green eyes debating whether or not I'd grow up and be just like my father— a traitor. A killer.

It wasn't until he nearly killed me, that he decided I wasn't guilty of any of the actions Sirius Black was imprisoned for. And he finally softened the look in his eyes when he called me his lupine wolf.

Last year, after he nearly killed me a second time, we sat calmly arguing how he was a danger to me, and me trying to convince him he wasn't. Remus ended the conversation by explaining he felt it was like it was some sort of unfavorable fate, being born with the ability to become a wolf and then inheriting the name Lupin. Lupine— (Lupus, Latin for wolf; related adjective lupinus, 'wolfish'). As if it was always going to be my destiny to become his daughter.

I wasn't eight yet, the season at the start of a shift, unusually hot for the beginning of spring. I woke up with a labored breath, sweat running down the sides of my face, from a dream that was snapped out of my brain the moment I sprang upright. The silver-white glow of a full moon made it easy for my eyes to adjust to the darkness in my room, a hot breeze flowed through my partly opened window. I walked to it, there was something lonely in the quiet of the pre-dawn. But in the silence, somewhere too far to reach before the sun would rise, a howl was heard. It was faint, but I recognized it enough to know it belonged to my father.

I don't know what provoked me,— maybe it was the loneliness my little eight-year-old self couldn't bear alone— but I found myself wandering the woods, searching for something. Something, at the time I hadn't thought to figure out what it was exactly. Maybe I was aimlessly searching for a good enough reason to continue my existence. The sharp dried grass and thorny shrubbery that I constantly kept walking into, made my eyes sting. Once I realized I might be lost and tripped over the brittle ground, I balled up at the base of a tree and sobbed until the howl grew closer. I began to wander in search of the only person I had no choice but to feel a sense of safety with.