onwards and up
"I spent my whole childhood wishing I were older and now I'm spending my adulthood wishing I were younger."
Ricky Schroder
The thing about life as a child was that I wasn’t able to plan things. I wasn’t really in control, which was fair, I was a four-year-old, but still. I couldn’t exactly study for hours and hours and practice cool magical stuff because I was always within my parents’ sight.
I tried to not run away too much, mostly because Hope and Lyall were…nice.
(And maybe I loved them. Just a little.)
Hope usually set me on the ground next to her when she was cooking, and I was supposed to amuse myself with the small trinket like toys or the magical xylophone, but usually, I’d climb up to the counter and watch as she cooked. Eventually, she accepted that I liked watching her do that, so she started to explain exactly how and why she was cooking certain dishes. Even if I wasn’t really learning Welsh cuisine from osmosis, I have to admit, it did make me more comfortable around her. It gave me a routine, and something to look forward to.
Lyall, on the other hand, was usually busy with his job and such, and he seemed to be doing something very important if the stress lines were of any indication. Initially, he wouldn’t let me enter his office, but after wearing him down-
(“Can I play in your office?”
“Um…it’s rather dangerous, Remus. Not now?”
“Okay then.” Soft thuds as I walk away, repeating the same ritual daily. )
-it was in inevitable that he’d let me in.
Of course, it was conditional on the fact that I did not touch anything, which was fair. Lyall wasn’t the type to store blatantly dark artefacts, but then again, magic was capricious at best and I didn’t know what to touch. I was happy to even be allowed, and I played with an enchanted toy train as he wrote his…proposals? Ministry things? Papers with suspicious green ink?
It was peaceful and nice and I had no plans to do anything, not yet.
I was satisfied just existing, adjusting to my new reality, and slowly filing away things for later.
You might be wondering as to why I didn’t plan anything, why I didn’t study anything. Surely, I could learn all the Hogwarts curriculum beforehand, surely I could find some mystical, magical object that would prevent the war and give me infinite powers. Surely, I, a lowly four-year-old, could embark on a fairytale-esque journey and become the master of death or something similarly inane.
Ha. No.
First of all, life doesn’t work that way. I might have adult sensibilities, but my mind was still a child’s. I remembered my old life and such, but I had neither the motivation nor the ability to devour entire encyclopedias. I was smart, yes, but by no means Hermione fucking Granger. I figured I could give myself a year or two to adjust to the whole werewolf conundrum/reincarnation shtick before jumping into anything.
As to why I didn’t write nor plan anything yet, well.
The simplistic reason, as I found out thankfully early on, was that Remus couldn’t read. Oh sure, he could speak both languages well, and with practice, Welsh was somewhat familiar to me, but my parents had never taught me how to read.
I actually have no clue if that’s normal or not, considering I only really started devouring books in first grade (the kindergarten teacher was a bitch and quite frankly, I was a crybaby with undiagnosed anxiety), so I had no clue if wizards were monumentally late or if everything was going according to plan. In fact, I’d wondered why they didn’t send me off to primary school or something when I realised they were letting me digest all my pent up wolf-trauma.
Besides, being absent three days a month was a bit of hard sell. Maybe in the future, they’d explain it away, but for now, I was to be taught by my parents.
When my father did sit me down to teach me how to write, I had a leg up. While tracing over the parchment worksheets (think letter writing practice), I had to slow myself down over the course of two weeks before I was shakily writing big letters.
It was fun, and it was almost practice for delaying my development in other ways. I wanted to be ordinary, honestly, and picking up writing too fast was a glaring red flag. I didn’t want to be marked as a prodigy, not now, not ever.
The real trouble, as it turned out, was when my mother decided to teach me how to write Welsh.
The alphabet, honestly, wasn’t that hard. The pronunciations were a bit different (as Remus kindly sang in my head) but the alphabet just took a week or two. But writing statements, sentences? My mother had cleared out an hour in the afternoon for practising Welsh for the foreseeable future.
"Byddaf yn mynd i'r farchnad ddydd Sul,” Hope intoned, brown eyes patient in the face of my somewhat mangled pronunciation.
“Byddaf...yn mynd... i'r farchnad ddydd…” I looked up at her, helplessly, looking down at my messy handwriting.
“Sul,” she said, exhaling softly. "Amser... gymryd saib.” I slumped in relief. It was good of her to offer me a break, honestly. My hands were tired.
I slipped out of the kitchen chair and ran into the sofa, jumping onto the cushions with my knees. The whole indoor shoe thing was hard to get used to, at first, but its almost second nature now, even if I am still pretty particular on which shoes I wear inside the house and which shoes I wear outside.
The couch was my most favourite thing ever. I could lay on it for hours, snuggling into the soft cushions.
Strong hands lifted me up slightly. My father sat down next to me, watching me fondly.
I smiled back, scooting closer, and he wrapped an arm around me.
I liked being physically affectionate with them, to be honest. Human touch is something special, and being loved was novel. My old parents loved me, but they were both gone in a sense. My mother was six feet under and my father had been an ocean away, so I was trying to treasure all these small affections.
And now I was someone else, and they hadn’t even been born yet. I frowned slightly.
“Remus?” I looked up to see Lyall’s worried expression. “Are you feeling well, child?” I tilted my head up at him.
“I think so.” He didn’t seem comforted by my stunning response.
“Do you want to…talk about it?” The man grimaced slightly, and I stifled a giggle. He was just so awkward, honestly.
“Can we go somewhere?” He paused, waiting for me to go on.
“I want- I want to go somewhere and play with- I want friends.” I really, really did. I tried to convey how serious I was about this because as much as loved Hope and Lyall, they still expected me to be a child. I was happy to indulge them, but surely, friends were a good thing?
I had…reasons for asking for friends, complicated reasons that definitely didn’t involve playing tag with someone, not at all. Reincarnated mastermind here, nothing more, nothing to see here.
I want friends.
I know they won’t be the same people as before, that my old friends were special. But I needed a support system outside the magical world, or at the least, outside Hogwarts. Remus seemed lonely, so the solution was to make friends. Sure, if they were muggle I’d never be able to reveal to them my furry problem, but certainly, the bruises and cuts could be explained as arthritis or some sort of rare genetic disease.
(Or, you know, not at all.)
So. Mission 1. Make friends.
But I couldn’t really do this without them letting me go and play with someone.
“We’ll think about taking a trip soon, okay?” Lyall gave me a soft smile, trying to hide the worry in his eyes. It didn’t work, but I could see why. My skin milk-white and blue-veined, and I looked small and fragile. Playing or even letting me out of their sight could mean I was in danger.
(They hadn't been able to protect me from Greyback, and they were afraid they would fail to protect me again, even if they were just protecting me from other children.)
“Okay.” I pressed closer to him, listening to his heartbeat.