A decision
The conversation turns grimmer as the bundle of joy runs across to brush his teeth as fast as he could.
“Don’t run inside the house, you’ll fall!” He called out.
All he heard in return was a sound vaguely like a bird’s chirp, and he knew the boy was laughing.
“He’s so wonderful.” Marlene gushed.
Remus turned to look at her, but she pointedly turned away to stare at the hallway Harry ran down. Her eyes were still wet but she was smiling, and Remus knew not to push her to talk about it.
He stayed quiet for a moment. He opened his mouth to say something but forgot what it was and closed it again.
“I’ve been teaching him how to read.” He offered a weak subject change.
“Is he still struggling? He had a hard time learning how to talk.” She indulged him, or maybe she really was interested.
“He had a hard time at the start, but once he got the hang of it he couldn’t stop.”
“Sounds like we’ve got another bookworm on our hands.” She snorted.
Her eyes turned to all the bookshelves in the corner of his house. They were empty save for some worn out old books you’d find in merchant’s stalls that hardly tended to wander into little villages like his, where people who knew how to read were scarce and those who would spend their coins on paper incredibly rare.
“Not even. I can never get him to sit still. He’s always out running in the dirt or climbing trees to talk to animals or something like that.” He sighed.
Last time Remus had told him to stay put, he found the boy up the higher branches of a tree making conversation with a snow white owl that was hiding by the trunk. In the middle of the forest.
“You could let Mrs. Figgs watch him.” Marlene suggested.
Remus wrinkled his nose, “The old woman who gives me the stink eye? Fat chance.”
She chuckled, “She’s polite enough to watch him for a night. Or you could stay with him, cancel your trip once in a while, would ya?”
Remus paled a little, taking the opportunity to collect his and Marlene’s emptied coffee mugs.
“Think about it. You’ll adjust fine enough, sell one of those books if you’re desperate-”
“Oh so that’s your plan!” Remus exclaimed with a laugh.
“C’mon, Dorcas has had her eye on that encyclopedia since you got it.” Marlene stood up from her seat, eyes twinkling with mischief.
“You’ll have to haggle that book out of my cold, dead hands, McKinnon.”
It was an old conversation they’d had time and time again. It was funny to think about, a blacksmith and an odd bloke fighting over an old, wrinkled book, but books on medicinal herbs were rare. Remus never had the heart to tell anyone where he’d got it from, a leather bookbag splattered in blood by a torn-up corpse he knew he’d tasted the blood of.
The memory darkened his mood. Marlene must have noticed his thoughts, turning quieter as she walked towards Harry letting him drag her away to talk about the snow white owl that kept visiting him. Did she wonder? About where he got his money from? Where he found Harry or where he went away to? The stories he told always varied. Tales the villagers somehow bought.
The two trailed off into his room as he babbled on excitedly. Remus sat by his kitchen cabinet, still like an animal hoping to be unseen, waiting for the footsteps to halt until he was sure they wouldn’t be able to rush back. The dark thoughts in his head told him that, if worst came to worst and the villagers chose to slaughter the beast that lurked the forests, too close to their homes to be considered safe unless one could shut the doors tight, then Harry would have her love to be raised on.
He bent down and opened his kitchen cabinet underneath his sink, brown wood and granite counters considered a luxury in his village (he could afford them for all the wrong reasons), where he pushed back his array of mugs to open a little cabinet the size of a small case.
Silvery liquid swirled in a thick glass tube. It’s colour altered between resembling silver knives or moonlight. Wolfsbane. The secret he kept from Marlene he was unable to keep from Dorcas, always a potioneer at heart. She’d managed to prepare him some, but it was expensive to have and suspicious to make every fortnight, so he had kept it hidden until he needed it most.
He poured himself some remainder coffee and dunked the liquid whole before shoving the case and empty tube back in the hidden door underneath his mugs. By the time Harry had returned, he finished it whole with one huge swig.
“A second mug of coffee? Really? Sometimes I think you’re a vampire with how much you must like being kept awake at night.” Marlene lightly punched his shoulder.
“Believe me, if there’s one beast I’m not, it’s a vampire.” He said.
Staying at home for one night. In the village with Harry in the house. How bad could it go?
“Horribly.” His mind supplied that evening.
A crowd of angry townsfolk with pitchforks and torches surrounded the village in a rampage.
Adrenaline shot through him as he grabbed his child in his arms and ran. An angry woman with a pitchfork raced and got too close, Remus closed his eyes.
He had hoped if such a day would come then Harry wouldn’t be there to see it. He held the boy tighter. Harry’s face was layered in dust broken by tear stains down his cheeks. Remus wiped them with his rough palm and waited for a blow that never came.
The woman walked past him. The woman. Walked. Right. Past. Him.
A dreadful realisation, like ice cold water poured on your shoulders or the way your guts jump to your throat when you’re about to fall.
They weren’t after him.
They were after Dorcas Meadowes.