Christmas Eve was a solemn affair. The family went to church together, and even Selene tagged along out of respect. Church was usually quite nice and relaxing on Christmas because it mainly consisted of singing carols and listening to the more light-hearted passages of the Bible. This time was different, however, because the congregation was so small and local that everyone there had known Hope very well. As a result, the priest regularly mentioned her and asked for her to be added to everyone's prayers, and the carols that had been chosen were far more sombre than usual. It was clear that everyone was trying to respect the family's grief at this time of year, but to Remus, it just felt like all eyes were on him. Most of these people had been at the funeral, and therefore, most of them had witnessed his outburst and he knew they were staring at him. He kept his head bowed for the entire service and the only thing he really prayed for was it to end.
Christmas Day was more light-hearted, because it involved presents and nice food. Remus didn't receive any presents from his friends, but only because they would have been sent to his house rather than to his grandparents' house, but the ones under the farmhouse tree were decent enough. His gran had knitted him a red and green jumper, and his granddad gave him a book on birdwatching which was written all in Welsh. Remus didn't know where his granddad had got the impression that Remus cared about birdwatching, but this was probably his demonstration of how he liked to pass down everything he knew to the next generation– he himself was an avid birdwatcher.
Lyall gave him a pocket watch, one which his grandfather had passed down to him. It was a wizarding one, and it didn't just tell the time. It also showed an image of the outside in its round window so you could immediately find out what the weather was, and it played a sweet little piano melody everytime it was opened. Apparently Lyall's grandfather had been a rather eccentric man, and the pocket watch was his own invention. Remus wore it proudly around his neck for the whole day, and he was determined to carry it around everywhere. Lyall warned him not to break it, and Remus assured his dad that he could trust him. He was a young adult now, and he could look after the watch as well as his dad could.
Selene gave him the new David Bowie record, called Diamond Dogs, which Remus put on as the background music of the whole evening. Selene turned Christmas dinner into a rather exciting affair as she suggested they play a game with the sixpence in the Christmas pudding. Remus didn't know this game, because Selene never played it round their house when Hope was still alive, most likely assuming that Hope would disapprove, but it was apparently a bit of a tradition in the Lupin family.
Everyone who partook had to have a cigarette or a cigar, or anything that could be smoked, even the children– although they were usually just given a lit cigarette for the purpose of the game. Remus was handed one by Selene and he resisted the urge to smoke it himself, but everyone else was smoking. His grandfather was a cigar man, especially at Christmas, and it stank up the room.
The sixpence, which, in the Lupin family would have been a knut, was placed on top of a napkin, which was then placed on top of a glass, so that the sixpence was balancing over it. Remus was technically excluded from the game, since he had found the sixpence in his Christmas pudding, and the game was supposed to decide who had to do the dishes. Remus was exempt as the winner of the sixpence. He still wanted to join in though.
Each person had to take turns touching the napkin with the end of their cigarette, which caused the napkin to singe. The point of the game was that whoever's cigarette caused the napkin to finally break and consequently cause the sixpence to fall into the glass, had to do the dishes. It was incredibly tense, and cheating was rife among some of the adults, especially Tom. He'd place his cigarette end just above the napkin so that it barely touched it and left only a tiny singe mark, which got him yelled at by the keen-eyed members of the family, and he was forced to leave his cigarette end on the napkin for longer than was comfortable. As a result, it was him who eventually caused the napkin to break, and he was in charge of the dishes. They all laughed at him, although Remus decided to give him a bit of a helping hand. He liked chatting to his uncle, even when the topic of Hope came up. At least with Tom, there were no depressing stories or sadness or regrets that many other people seemed to express when they talked of Hope now. He just recalled fond memories of him and her growing up together, and the fights they got into or the games they played. He talked about the smaller things, the memory of him and Hope going down to the frozen lake at the end of the farm and throwing stones at the ice to try to break it. They'd spot fish underneath the ice, frozen in place, and they wanted to break the ice to try to free them. They were never able to, since the ice was too thick for their small stones, but it was at least fun watching them bounce.
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Boys Will Be Bugs
Fanfiction[REUPLOAD] Remus Lupin has more than one secret, and there's no way of knowing who he can trust. All he has are his parents, but they can't protect him when he goes off to Hogwarts. But then Remus meets a boy and his two other friends, and soon real...
