Forward
Regulus Arcturus Black is determined to go through the world, suspicious of everyone and everything in it, wary of the danger and cruelty he believes lurks just below the surface. He is constantly on guard, continuously repressing anything that might be too good to be true.
His life is controlled by the very fear he is so eager to avoid. It has been a long time since he thought the best of someone instead of the worst. That attitude died and was buried under the pressure of a legacy needing to be built—a preplanned life needing to be lived. His story demands swift calculations, precision, and no room for error.
He seeks power as if it were a goddess capable of salvation because this constant pursuit was the only thing he was ever taught. It controls and molds him. It has not permanently shaped him yet, but it is only a matter of time. He is flawed. Flawed to the core just like everyone else, but refuses to believe it.
Deep down there is a longing, born from the ache of loneliness and absence. He doesn’t know what it is for.
Perhaps for a family different from his own.
For a brother who stays.
For a life of his own choosing.
For community or any break in the void of utter isolation at all.
He shoulders these burdens the only way he knows how: with stiff posture, and cold forbearance. He leans on things that ought not to be leant upon. On long-standing prejudices. On discrimination that provides a flimsy commonality between strangers based on having something that others never will.
And so, when we find our student, his life has fashioned the boy into a strong, if uncompassionate man…
Remus John Lupin knew suffering intimately. It was like a phantom limb that itched continuously; it was ever present and unable to be scratched. The pain hung itself around him like a cloud in many different forms. The physical agony of both the transformation and the days surrounding it. The emotional hurt of being friendless, feared, and hated. The mental torture of knowing that, at his core, he was a monster.
He was damaged. He was dangerous. He was unlovable. And he was not human.
His parents had tried, when he’d first been bitten, to impress upon him their love and his worth. It had worked, at first, but as he grew, the reality of life became too apparent to ignore. He’d be lucky if he made it to his twenties without being hunted, imprisoned, or killed. His household of attempted comfort quickly dissolved when his mother passed and father turned to drinking.
He was saved from this new misery by the invitation to Hogwarts. He, despite all odds, made friends that accepted him. Every part of him. They were like candles that kept the darkness at bay, not enough to dispel it completely, but still able to give him hope. A hope that was dying more and more everyday that brought him closer to graduation and the life waiting for him beyond it.
The Prank only proved him right. It placed his secret in the hands of someone who would use it to harm him, and was the product of a betrayal that displaying whatever friendship he possessed now would eventually be gone.
But fear wasn’t the only emotion that thinking about his future created. A deep sort of longing mixed with a love that only could ever belong to one person sat low in his heart, protected and hidden under layers of practice not getting the life humans do. It was a desire, a hopeless idea of someone to lean on, to live for, to cherish. But he knew family wasn’t in the cards for him. It hadn’t been ever since his four year old self had a monster hiding under his bed, the full moon rising.
So when we find our student, he is set on believing in a hopeless future and wallowing in self hatred…
These two boys are set on two very different paths, however close their educational proximity may be. In all likelihood there would be no reason for these paths to ever cross. However, life doesn’t always take the likely route. Little do they know that in the very near future two twin-souled sisters will up and shake everything they think they know about themselves and the world around them.