Larger Than Life {Remus Lupin}

4: Family Values

Three days after receiving Leonard's letter, Ella decided she had all her thoughts out on paper and was on her way to send it when she ran into Jonathan. The day was quite brisk, as it was early October, and at first she assumed that was the reason of his quickness and hunched posture. This was soon proven false, when they neared each other his eyes were wide and his face pale and clammy.

"Jon? You don't look well." She said, hands hovering on if she should touch him or not. He jumped as if he hadn't seen her and sighed, visibly shaken. "Do you want to go see Madam Pomfrey?"

"No, I-I think I'll be okay." He glanced behind him quickly, then put his hands on her shoulders and leaned in close. "What about you? Have you noticed anything weird, like people following you around?"

"No. Why?" Ella scrunched up her eyebrows. Concern was replaced with realization, and she narrowed her eyes at him. "Have you gotten involved with those purists again?"

Jon, as of two years ago, had befriended some children of the friends of his father. Because Jon and the kids were all of pure blood, they assumed he shared their ideology. When they found out about Ella and her parents, the group wasn't pleased and proceeded to harass her in school her second year, calling her slurs and insulting her mother. It was around the time she had first moved in with her Dad.

Upon hearing them say such things about her unwell mother, Ella punched a Slytherin boy square in the jaw when the bottle inside her holding all of her anger exploded. An emotionally vulnerable badger backed into a corner, as her friend Daphne had put it when she returned to the common room in tears that evening.

"No, nothing like that. I'm just worried about all the news going around lately." He shook his head, and she relaxed a tiny bit.

"About all the dark magic stuff, yeah. I get it." She nodded and he moved away from her. "That still doesn't explain why you're so pale and bug-eyed."

"It's nothing, I'm alright." Jon waved her off and began walking past her, but not before he whispered in her ear. "Keep an eye out for anything odd, okay?"

"Yeah, I will." Ella patted him on the back and waved, telling him to get inside. "You'll catch a cold."

"Thanks, Mum." He waved back before hurrying into the courtyard. She laughed and turned, bumping into another person. She recognized him as a Slytherin two years her senior, and backed away to give him space.

"Sorry about that." She apologized and started back on her way to the owlery.

"Watch it." He snarled, and she hurried her steps away from his hostile presence.

"Mum, can I go outside with Terry and George?" Ella said, gazing out of the window longingly as her brother and step-brother ran around tackling each other in a slightly more violent game of tag. She had spent days wandering the new house, trying to find every nook and cranny there was to be found, but she was now bored. "I've been in all day."

"Hold on, sugarplum. I want to show you something." Julia smiled at her, and Ella sighed quietly to herself and followed her mother down into the kitchen. This had been about the fourth time Mum had shown her Aunt Pat's pictures from Hogwarts and afterwards. Ella always sat close to her mother and listened quietly, but it was beginning to get repetitive.

Aunt Pat was Mum's sister, a Muggleborn witch. She had been friends with Ella's father in school, and that was how her parents met. She'd also heard that story many times, how when Julia first met Raymont she thought he was sooo handsome with his dreadlocks and bright twinkling brown eyes.

Aunt Pat died six years before, when Ella was four and Mum was pregnant with Terry. That was what split Julia and Raymont apart, in the end. The nail in the coffin. Grief did them in.