Two-Headed Calf

Tomorrow, Mia and her brother will be found by a freak of nature and be bitten for a father’s crime. They will bleed from their necks and already feel their blood beginning to betray them.

But tonight, they are out in the backyard, and Remus is bouncing her on the trampoline even though she’s scared and thinks it’s too dangerous.

“You promised not to double bounce!” Mia whines, arms crossed against her chest with a deep scowl lining her tanned face.

Remus, because he is seven and is just now relishing in what it’s like to be older, shrugs with an unforgiving frown, “It’s fun. And you laugh whenever you fly.”

“So what?” Mia sasses back, climbing down from the trampoline. In her head, she thinks she’ll hold a grudge against her brother for a thousand years, but really she’ll ask to sit by him when dinner comes.

“I won’t do it again,” Remus sighs, putting down the argument before it could even start. Debates always made him stressed, the complete opposite of his sister.

“Yes you will-!”

“I won’t,” Remus finalizes, seeming to prove his point by sitting gently down onto the stretchy surface, while patting down the spot next to him, “Come on, we can watch the sunset. I know you like the sunset.”

Mia rolls her eyes, pretending to still be mad. She was six and still trying to figure out how to control her strong emotions.

“Mimi, come on,” Remus pesters once more, patting the spot next to him once again.

“You won’t double bounce?” The little girl asks apprehensively, taking a single step forwards.

“Promise it,” Remus nods. He holds up his two fingers and crosses them with firm lips and serious eyes.

Mia believes him automatically.

She plops down onto the spot next to him, so they bounce a little and the autumn leaves bristle in the wind. Fall was just beginning to settle, so much so that their mother wouldn’t let them go out without their jackets anymore.

The topic of weather change reminds Mia of her father’s absence. He left in the summer. With the leaves changing, that only meant he’d been gone for practically forever.

“When is Da coming back?” Mia asks absentmindedly, leaning into her brother’s shoulder, tucking her chilled nose into the rough fabric of his sweater. She feels her brother stiffen at her words.

“I dunno,” Remus shrugs, automatically wrapping an arm around his sister.

Mia huffs, “Well, I hope soon. He promised he’d bring me back some sweets from Honeydukes.”

“He didn’t promise me anything,” the boy scowls, already jealous.

The brown haired girl takes this opportunity to be as snarky as she can, “That’s because you didn’t ask. Not my problem!”

Before the little sister could say anything else, her brother had hopped up from his calm sitting position, an eager grin smeared across his face.

“No! You promised-!”

“Not my problem!” Remus laughs, jumping as high as he can, and landing as hard as he can, so his sister gains as much height as possible, her spindly limbs flailing and a scream bellowing out of her.

Remus seems to immediately assess that he went too far, because now he’s screaming with his sister, and he’s reaching his hands out to catch her but she’s already falling the wrong way, her body too close to the edge of the trampoline and not the middle.

Both are silent when the crack comes.

“Mia!” Remus is already crying, his little body falling to her side, already letting out a string of a thousand apologies, prepared for his sister not to forgive a single one.

“I didn’t mean to,” is what he’s trying to get across. He didn’t mean to be bad. He rarely ever was.

In his shock, however, he does not notice his sister’s laughter, or her sitting up with not a single injury to ravage her skin and bones.

“Rem, I’m okay,” Mia manages to breathe out, holding her arms out in front of her, inspecting them like she was prepared for a bone to be sticking out at any moment.

“What?” is all Remus can manage, still biting on the side of his cheek to stop the tears from leaking out of his eyes.

“I’m okay,” Mia says again, voice still hoarse from her screaming, “It was like something cushioned my fall. How weird.” She said the last part like she was impressed and a little creeped out, but mostly impressed. Mia had never been able to do accidental magic before, but now she knew that she could. In this moment, Mia feels like nothing really is that dangerous.

After the initial shock fades out, her eyes turn sharply to her brother, two angry brown pools glaring daggers at Remus.

“Never do that again.”

Remus only manages a nod, wincing a little from the guilt.

Before the two can converse anymore, their mother is running out of the house, towel in hand and barrelling towards the siblings like death was upon her, “What’s happened?! Who’s hurt?!”

“No one, Mum,” Remus blinks, shocked.

Mia gives her mother a thumbs up, drilling in the point.

Hope Lupin just looks at her two kids, still seeming to assess them for damage that wasn’t going to be found.

“Well then.” the woman mutters, running a hand through her hair, adrenaline still pumping through her body, “How about we… just come inside. Where mummy can watch you.”

Both siblings nod, and all three shocked members of their party walk into the heated home, with Hope holding a tight grip onto both her children.

The next night, her and her brother are attacked together. Bleed together. And nothing comes to help cushion the fall.

When Mia wakes up from the attack, she is alone in a dark, stale room. She wants to call out, for something, or anything, but then immediately stops herself. She found that the words would be too exhausting to get out. That it’d be better to just stay quiet. To see what happens.

Her mother would come soon. Or her brother. Or something. Anyone.

When Mia goes to move her arms after feeling an itch on her nose, she finds she can’t. Something has restricted her movement, tightened against her wrists and ankles. Her heart beats faster. Was this death? Was she in a coffin right now?

She opts to close her eyes, hoping death would be kind.

But it seems to only make everything worse, because with her eyes closed, her heartbeat only gets louder, and her pain feels more prominent. It’s a sting like a fissure that runs deep down her neck, all the way to her stomach. She’d never felt pain quite like it and wasn’t sure how she was just now registering it.

She’s alone in that dark room for days, chained to her bed, believing she was dead but knowing she wasn’t. In the dark, she lost her voice, and found she was too exhausted to find it.

All she did was listen to her heartbeat and wait.

Thump, thump, thump.

Voices outside the door. So she wasn’t dead. Or maybe they were ghosts.

Thump, thump, thump, thump!

Footsteps, whispers, but no one ever seemed to see her. No one ever entered the room.

Thump, thump.

Mia held her breath for as long as she could, tried to hold it long enough she’d pass out. Anything to keep from being awake. But her instincts beat her, and she takes in such a large gasp of air her body shudders, and the pain comes twice as hard. It felt like there was a ravine along her body. She was surely split in two.

Thump.

A door is clicked open. Footsteps enter and Mia squishes the lids of her eyes together, hiding from the light, or from whoever entered.

“I apologize for the delay, Ms. Lupin,” a man says in a crisp voice, “but we’ve been unsure on how to proceed with you and your brother’s case.”

Mia shudders, confused. The man’s voice seemed louder than it probably was. She refused to open her eyes, refused to look. For a moment, the girl was afraid she would see a ghost and not flesh. Because she couldn’t be alive. She was a ghost. If she were alive, her mother would’ve come for her days ago.

“Do you remember what happened?” The man’s voice is no longer crisp, but soft. Kind.

Mia has her eyes shut so tight it was beginning to form a headache. She shook her head. She couldn’t remember anything at all.

“You’ve no knowledge of the attack?”

Thump. Thump. Thumpthumpthump thump!

Claws and palms holding down her head, covering her screams. And then a bite.

Nothing else. Mia allows her eyes to open. The light is not so blinding.

“Can you speak?”

Mia shakes her head again. She wishes the Mediwizard could read minds. She had a thousand questions that needed to be answered.

“Last night, you and your brother were attacked by Fenrir Greyback. Do you know who that is?”

Mia nods. Werewolf.

She wants to cry but doesn’t. She’d never been much of a crier.

Mia closes her eyes again. Doesn’t listen to another word. She was a smart girl. She knew what it meant to be bit by a werewolf.

The first years of her and Remus’ affliction were spent in the basement of St. Mungo’s. They’d been taken from their mother due to safety precautions, and spent most of their time in each other’s company.

On full moons, they were locked in empty rooms, separated from each other with no windows. Mia found that when her bones began to break, and her mind separated from her body, only anger was left in its place.

The fourth time she transitioned, she realized that the wolf was angry at her. Each time she came back to herself, a new scar was etched into her skin, and her nails were dirtied with blood.

Once, it got so bad, she’d tried to take her eye out. The doctors had handcuffed her to her bed for a week after that full moon, and she had to wear an eyepatch for a month to cover the scar. That was the same week she turned seven. She felt more monster than girl.

“You can have my extra pudding,” Remus smiles one day at lunch, sliding over his little cup of chocolate goo over to his sister. Mia gives the boy a smile back, parting her lips to say something, but then the words don’t really come out. They get stuck somewhere in her throat, and a claw is pressed against her mouth, and there’s nothing to say.

Remus seems to understand that her smile meant a thank you anyway though.

“Mum sent me a letter the other day, she’s still trying to get us back,” the boy shrugs, frowning a little, “I dunno if it’ll be successful, but we’ll see.”

Mia shrugs, similar to her brother, taking a bite from the pudding. How did her mother still want them now? They were monsters.

Mia brought a hand up to caress her eye, where a crescent moon scar coddled it gently.

Remus seems to read her mind and deflates. Mia tries to stop herself from feeling guilty.

“We’ll see,” Remus says again. They’re quiet after that.

Most of the time in the basement, Mia is poked and prodded and treated like an experiment. The Mediwitches try to explain to her that this was to, ‘tame her,’ but Mia didn’t really understand. To her knowledge, the only person she’d ever hurt was herself. What was there to tame?

There was no pattern to her days, or what they decided to do to her. Mostly, Mia had no clue what was going on with her brother either. The fear was beginning to exhaust her. One day, while they were wheeling her down a hallway, the seven year old thought to herself, What happens to me doesn’t matter. Let them poke and prod me, and maybe I’ll just fade away.

In her free time, Mia liked to study the staff working in the basement. Liked to memorize their facial expressions, what they did and how they thought. It made them seem more human, less lab. It made her feel less scared.

In that basement, Mia did her best to fade. She didn’t talk, barely ate, and spent most of her time sleeping. But nothing seemed to work because every time, she still woke up. And every full moon, she was still angry at herself.

Two years later, their mother finally wins custody with the help of Albus Dumbledore. Mia is nine, her brother ten, and everything is different. They’re both much taller, more littered with scars, and much paler without the sun to gleam on them these last years. Two spirits entering the world of mortals once more.

It felt strange to leave the basement, and Mia had to hold tightly onto her brother’s hand the whole way. They met their mother on the curb of St. Mungo’s, where she leaned against a muggle car, smoking a cigarette.

Mia blinked. She didn’t recognize her. She felt Remus hold onto her palm a little tighter.

Hope Lupin had deep vines of eyebags hugging her skin, and a pale, wain complexion that clashed intensely with her once tan features. Exhaustion had seemed to finally sink in to their mother, and she looked much older than thirty-five.

When the two siblings reach her, Hope’s cigarette falls out of her mouth. She stomps it out with a kitten heel, eyes blown wide.

“My babies,” she mutters, unbelieving.

Remus and Mia stand frozen, unsure. Mia felt a deep longing in her bones, felt her heart pull towards her mother’s like an invisible string was connecting them two.

“Mum,” Remus mumbles, and suddenly, Hope has her arms outstretched, and Remus is running into them and Mia still stands still, glued to the curb.

Hope seems to notice this.

“My sweet girl,” she says sadly.

Mia was never much of a crier, hadn’t cried since she was six, but in that moment, she can’t stop the tears from pooling, can’t stop the sob from breaking from her throat.

She’s in her mother’s arms in an instant, clinging as tightly as she can, squishing her nose into the crook of her mother’s neck.

Mia wanted to say a thousand things. That she’s felt dead these last three years and only now can she know that she may actually be alive. That she’s a monster. That even though she was nine, she was really still six. And that she never stopped needing her mother. Never stopped wanting her.

Instead, she smelled her mother’s sweater. At first, all she could decipher was the stench of cigarettes, and then, of course, the familiarity of the scent after a thunderstorm came in. Wet grass and tea leaves and summer evenings.

“I love you,” her mother keeps repeating, keeps whispering. Kissing her and Remus’ heads like they would slip from her grasp at any moment.

Mia closes her eyes, leans her head on her mother’s chest and listens to her heart beating.

Thump thump thump.

They beat the same rhythm.

Alive.