1. 01/08/1980
World’s End was a lonely old place.
“World’s End; A little Cornish isle coming off of Land’s End, the aptly named island is home to the ancient Wizarding house of Dearborn. Unfortunately, Dearborn Manor has been left uninhabitable since it was burnt to its very bones during the height of Grindelwald’s reign of terror. Nonetheless, the island flourishes with magical flora and fauna, with reported unicorn and centaur sightings in the area. If we are to believe an Article published in a muggle newspaper in the late 1950s, it may even be home to what is rumoured to be a lone Welsh dragon (sources found to be rather unreliable). As of 1960 the Wizarding community on World’s End is virtually non-existent, the Dearborn Family having rebuilt property in London. The muggle community, however, is said to still pay homage to the isle’s magical roots, hosting festivals for Samhain and Lupercalia. To be visited with caution – countless reports of monthly beastly sightings have led to a wide consensus of potential werewolf threats on the western side of the isle.” – Bathilda Bagshot, Magical Mountains, Forests and Isles of Great Britain and Ireland
In August of 1980, Loveday Dearborn was happy to say that Bathilda Bagshot had hit the nail on the head. Dearborn Manor was a burnt shell of what it had once been; her uncle Caradoc had grown up in the family estate in London alongside her mother, Maria. It was only when Maria had fallen pregnant with Loveday’s half-sister, Dorothea Caldwell, that she’d moved into Hawthorne House on the western side of the tiny island.
Of course it was just Loveday there now. Caradoc came to visit here and there, but he was in the middle of leading an entire faction of the Wizarding Resistance. Lord knows the last time Maria had set foot in the rickety old house. Dottie lived in her own flat in London with their younger brother, Theodore Selwyn; both had graduated from Hogwarts and had been keen to follow in their Uncle’s footsteps as soon as they’d turned of age. Little Drusilla lived with her half-blood father, Arnold Castamere and spent the rest of the year tucked away in the Ravenclaw tower at school. As for little Georgie Wood, well he’d been born shortly after Loveday’s 16th birthday. Seeing as World’s End didn’t have any sort of college to attend once she’d finished with secondary school Caradoc had thought it alright to leave the little boy in Loveday’s care once Maria had gotten bored with coddling him. Of course, Caradoc had seen what a grave mistake he’d made in late July of 1980, coming in to check in on his niece and nephew only to find the bathroom walls painted with blood. He’d taken Georgie to live with Dottie and Theo the following morning.
She didn’t even have an owl for company. Luna had died in the spring of ’78, and no one had thought to take her to Diagon Alley to buy a new one. The Floo network didn’t work without a witch or a wizard present.
That wasn’t to say that Loveday didn’t have any friends; it was just that they’d all left her behind. She’d gotten through school, just about. There had been that awful rumour going around that Loveday Dearborn was a witch – what with all those strange plants growing off the side of her house, her strange, scarred face and her strange Uncle with the peculiar clothes.
She didn’t think anyone quite understood how much that rumour had hurt – and all because it simply wasn’t true.
Still, she’d passed off her monthly turmoil as women’s troubles. Of course, the fact that they coincided with the turn of the full moon had only fuelled the nasty old witch rumours even more. She’d blamed the scars on a childhood incident involving a large hound. She’d blamed the plants on her Uncle’s passion for World’s End’s old pagan festivals.
She’d even had friends of her own – that was until they’d all disappeared off to college, and now university. She hadn’t been able to follow them off to the mainland, and despite the odd affectionate letter or stray phone call at a telephone booth she hardly ever saw them. She’d been to Newport one weekend, when Caradoc had agreed to look after Georgie, to see the Sex Pistols with the twins, Fiona and Fionn, but that had been back in ’77. She’d seen Fleetwood Mac that year too, in Manchester. Fionn had driven them up, Loveday’s feet on the dashboard and Fiona snoring in the backseat. They’d crashed at their friend Vic’s tiny one bedroom apartment, all four of them shivering away from the lack of central heating. Still, Loveday was fairly positive that 1977 had been the best year of her life.
That was until she’d returned home to the real world – or rather, the Wizarding world. Credence Dearborn, her third cousin had been killed by what Dottie and Caradoc told her were Deatheaters. No one was safe anymore, they’d said. 1977 was also the year she’d begun to feel completely an utterly alone, left with nothing but the produce she grew in the garden to sell at the farmer’s market, and Georgie to look after. She’d been left alone with her pain; with her shame. She didn’t like to think about it too much, but she knew why her mother had left, why her siblings never came to see her, why her Uncle had never asked her to move to London.
If she’d simply been born a squib, then maybe she’d have had a place with them – but as a werewolf? Never.
So there she sat, on the 1st of August 1980, absentmindedly tracing the silvery scars on her wrists with her index finger. Caradoc had spent the last three nights sleeping on the pull-out sofa in the living room, watching her like a hawk.
“I want to take you to St. Mungo’s,” he said, waving his wand to send a plate piled up with a full English across the table to settle down in front of her. “Dottie works there, you know. She could take care of you – “
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Loveday grumbled. “I didn’t even need stitches – or a muggle hospital, much less a fancy Wizard one.”
Caradoc sighed and sat down on a wobbly chair on the other side of the table. She didn’t bother fixing any chairs but hers’ and Georgie’s. Her uncle rubbed at his temples and narrowed his eyes at her.
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about, Loveday. Something’s been wrong for a long time now and I can’t believe I’m only noticing it now – now that it’s almost too late. What were you thinking, child? Did you even think about Georgie – “
“Of course I did!” Loveday glared up at her uncle. “I’ve had it all planned out for months! I used Dottie’s owl to mail order a portkey when she wrote to me at Christmas so that I could send Georgie over to you lot in London. I even shut off the central heating every time so that I wouldn’t be too ugly by the time someone found me. I’m a squib, Uncle Doc – not an idiot.”
Her uncle’s dark skin had gone a strange chalky colour.
“Every time?” he muttered to himself, looking down at his hands. “Listen, Loveday, I really do think we should try getting you up to St Mungo’s. Even just for a check-up? Dottie could get you in round the back and it wouldn’t be a problem.”
Loveday blinked slowly. She really wasn’t sure why her uncle was so set on sending her to St Mungo’s – where Dottie had said she treated dragon burns, curse side effect, and war casualties. She did however know exactly why she’d never set foot in the place.
“Why would there be a problem?” she asked, frowning. “Because I’m a squib? St Mungo’s is witches and wizard, not for me.”
“Squibs are treated there all the time,” Caradoc scoffed, waving his hand in the air. “Only last week did we send half a dozen in after a nasty deatheater raid. It’s just that – “
“I’m a werewolf and no one would even touch me, much less treat me?”
Caradoc opened his mouth to respond, and yet nothing was said. She was right, she always was. As much as her uncle tried to tell her she’d be welcomed with open arms, she’d never met any of his colleagues other than batty Alastor Moody (who she was fairly positive was someone a little more important to Caradoc than any other old colleague) and Minerva McGonagall who’d come to give Dottie her Hogwarts letter all those years ago.
“They should know better,” Caradoc said quietly. “You’re a special girl, Loveday. You always have been.”
Cursed, more like. She hid a joyless laugh behind a forkful of blood pudding and shrugged.
“You’re going to have to leave me here then,” she said. “I won’t do it again. Even if I do, it won’t work. It never does.”
“You’re not doing a very good job convincing me,” Caradoc grumbled. “You need someone to keep an eye on you, Loveday. Merlin knows I’m not playing around this time.”
Loveday blew a wild strand of curly red hair out of her face. Now that she knew she wasn’t leaving the earthly realm anytime soon she’d have to do something about it. The full moon was in less than three weeks now and she’d have to braid it properly if she didn’t want to spend six hours hacking at her hair with a comb. Maybe she’d twist it into locs like Uncle Caradoc this time.
“You’re fighting a war, Doc,” she reminded him. “I doubt anyone has the time to play babysitter to a suicidal werewolf. I’d rather Dottie and Theo not hear about this, by the way. I don’t have a wand to vanish away the howlers she sends me.”
“Merlin be good,” Caradoc muttered to himself, gaze fixed on Georgie’s stuffed lion, tail sticking out from beneath the sink cabinet. “Where’s Maria when you need her?”
At that, Loveday giggled.
“Where’s Maria?” she laughed. “Where’s mum? What a question. Probably halfway across the Atlantic ocean right now. Last time Dottie saw her she mentioned a rich man who worked for MACUSA. We’ll probably have another little Dearborn running around the place soon enough.”
Caradoc huffed and stood from his chair. It wasn’t that Loveday hadn’t been hugged before – but it had been months since she’d embraced anyone other than little Georgie, his sticky little hands tangled into the pile of curls that was her hair – so when Caradoc rounded the table and wrapped his arms around her, pressing her head into his stomach, she melted. A familiar sting started in her eyes as she struggled to keep the tears at bay. In another life, where Caradoc had been the Dearborn to bring her into the world, Loveday might have been the happiest girl in all of Cornwall.
“I don’t want the next full moon to come,” she whispered hoarsely. “It hurts, Doc. I thought it would get better. Everyone told me it would get better Maybe if I’d at least been born a witch, it wouldn’t hurt quite as much.”
Her Uncle knelt down by her chair and took her hands in his. He was a fearsome man up close, with his long leather robes, the long twists of his hair sparking with what Loveday knew to be magic. He was covered in scars, her uncle – some big, some small, some barely there anymore. Alastor Moody was the same – being an auror was hard work, and it had Loveday fretting for her siblings, thrust into the same war her Uncle had been fighting for years. Her eyes caught onto the thick gold earing in his left ear. She’d bought it for him last Christmas, having engraved it with runes she’d found in an old tome in World’s End decrepit little library.
“Listen to me Loveday,” Caradoc said in an earnest tone. “I know a young man who’s just like you. He’s covered in all these little silver scars, just like you. He hates what he is, just like you. Each month he hurts just as much as you do. And yet young Mr Lupin is as much of a wizard as I am. I am not happy to say, though it might offer you some relief, that werewolves born with magic suffer all the same. Lycanthropy is a heavy burden to carry.”
Loveday sniffed and reached up to tug at her uncle’s piercing. She’d always loved the way they looked, but her skin healed too fast to be able to pierce her own ears. She’d tried a handful of times.
“He has friends though – this boy?”
Caradoc nodded. “A tight knit group,” he admitted. “He has been lucky in that sense, but listen to me, Love. I know the town’s folk might tease you sometimes, but you can live a relatively normal life here. Mr Lupin – in the wizarding world, he may never find a job, or a family. He has nowhere to hide.”
But he has friends, Loveday thought with a frown. Whoever this Mr Lupin is, he has friends he can share the burden of his curse with. He has magic to distract himself from the monotonous pain of a cursed life. He has a cause to fight for, a place to belong.
But Caradoc was only trying to help, and so she offered her uncle a feeble smile.
“Lupin, huh? A rather unfortunate name for someone of my kind.”
Caradoc smiled back at her. “His first name is Remus.”
The cackle that left her mouth bore no signs of artifice.
“I’m going to have to leave you here for a few days while I figure things out,” Caradoc told her, standing up. “Every morning and every evening I want you to send a note into the fireplace telling me you’re safe. If I don’t receive it, I’m coming straight back here. Do you hear me, Loveday?”
“Loud and clear,” she shrugged, and followed him into the living room to stare at the blazing fireplace. With a wave of Caradoc’s wand, the flames turned an odd green colour and a pile of what Caradoc called parchment appeared on top of the mantlepiece. “I can just use normal paper, you know.”
“That is normal paper,” he said in confusion. “It’s parchment paper.”
Loveday shrugged and rolled her eyes. Then, twisting her hands together, she turned to face Caradoc.
“You swear you won’t tell Dottie – or Theo?”
“I promise.”
“And you’ll bring Georgie to visit sometimes?”
“When I can.”
Loveday bit her lower lip and nodded, letting Caradoc wrap his big arms around her one final time. He smelt like the burnt cedar she kept in the makeshift potions kit she kept in the attic, using Dottie’s old textbooks to try her hand at all the odd concoctions wizarding kind had come up with.
“Please look after yourself, Loveday,” Caradoc whispered in her ear. “You know I care for you very much, don’t you? It’s just with this damned war…”
Loveday nodded into his chest, ignoring the raw feeling at the back of her throat. She’d always looked after herself, in her own way. She’d always had to.
“I know, Uncle Doc,” she whispered. “I’ll miss you.”
She always did.
“I’ll be back in a few days,” he said as he stepped towards the fireplace. “I’ll talk to Alastor and see what I can do.”
Loveday frowned and bit at her lip nervously. She hadn’t cared to ask before but -
“Do you think I could come to London maybe?”
Caradoc froze in his tracks.
“To London?” he asked in a surprised tone. “I thought you liked it here?”
“I love World’s End,” she said, her chest starting to feel a little colder with every word she spoke. Words she’d never spoken before. “It’s just that – well, it gets a little lonely round here. The twins are away and Vic’s still at Uni – and Dottie and Theo and Dru never really have time to visit anymore.”
“I had thought Georgie might have helped –“
“Georgie can barely talk! You left me here alone with a child!” she snapped and Caradoc took a step back towards the fire. Her hands shook ever so slightly, and even without looking in the mirror she knew her eyes had flashed a bright yellow. With a shaky sigh, she closed them, willing the anger to go away. Her nails had sharped and the edges were pressing into the scarred palms of her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, but she had already shown Caradoc exactly why she’d never been asked to move to London. “I’m sorry. I just – I just get lonely sometimes. That’s all. I don’t need St/ Mungo’s, Doc. I just – I just want some company sometimes.”
“I’ll speak to Dumbledore about it,” Caradoc nodded, not quite meeting her eyes. “I promise, Loveday. I don’t want you doing anything stupid again, alright? Write to me.”
“Every night,” she promised quietly. “I’m busy in the mornings.”
“Every night,” Caradoc repeated, and gave her one last hard glance before disappearing into the flames.
Stood all alone in Hawthorne House, Loveday Dearborn had nothing left to do but stare at the flickering green flames in the fireplace. Nothing left to do but stare at the chipped orange paint on her toenails; the little sun she’d painted on her biggest nail to try to distract from the pointed edge that wouldn’t soften no matter how much she tried to file it down. She blew a loose strand of hair out of her eyes and quietly trudged down to the basement to curl up on the old torn sofa she usually collapsed on at the end of the full moon. She’d plastered the ceiling with old National Geographic posters of star systems. She had never been allowed outside on the full moon but at least she could pretend.
As she closed her eyes, Hawthorn House was quiet once more.