PRODIGAL SON. Remus Lupin

i.

CHAPTER ONE;
MONDAY MORNINGS ARE A BORE (NORMALLY)

Somedays, Coella Rosewood sits by the window in her small, cramped house and wonders what it would've been like to love Remus Lupin. Her eyes water at the thought even now as she contemplates what to do with her hair as she stares into her bathroom mirror, readying herself for another dreary Monday morning at work. She has always loved Remus, even at school when they barely knew each other. Coella would glue herself by Lily Evans' side, causing her to never really be seen. Lily always had the spotlight on her, and Coella hadn't minded a single bit. It gave her ample time to look at Remus whilst Lily was preoccupied by the bespectacled friend.

She would stare at him quite often, and now, she knows this seems pretty creepy, but did he ever once notice? No. Because no one noticed Coella. She was just there, plain and dull, and quiet as a mouse. She had exactly one class where they sat together. It was potions back in fifth year, James hadn't been very well, so he missed classes that day, was it snowing? She thinks it might've been.

Slughorn announced rather loudly that Coella would have to move, and her heart practically jumped to her throat as she nervously brought her stuff to sit at the front with Remus. She had eyed him first before saying a quick hello. She doesn't remember much else from that time, the memory has all but faded in favour of newer ones.

She decides it's easier down, so she combs her blonde locks for a final time, wiping her watery eyes and heads out, bidding her quiet home goodbye.

Her office is not much different than her home. It is a cramped cubicle that holds no keepsakes nor personality, much like Coella. She decided early on in her auror career that this would hold her back, and leave an open wound for her to be ridiculed by those older around her. She did not want these older aurors to see what she really is; a girl. A girl is the worst thing she can be, Coella realises this from the get go. She is a frail weak thing that clutches to her pre war memories like a doll. She hates the feeling of being like this. So once she started her job, she knew she had to burn and deform the old Coella, until no one recognised the quiet, dull girl she once was.

She had to be feared.

And feared is what she is as she relaxes into her seat. She shoulders off her wolf fur coat and drums her pink nails onto her desk. Pink, she realises, pink was the only girly thing she held onto after the suicide of her past self. She rather enjoys pink, even if the older men scoff at her nails. She stares back, a tilt of her head, as if to ask, what's wrong with you? They dont answer, they don't want to bother her, they deem her more palpable with pink rather than when her hands are bloodied a deep vermillion.

So pink it is.

She stares into space for another few minutes. She had been doing this much more lately. It reminds her of dear madam bobbin from down the road. A spindly old woman who sat beside her door, waiting for her granddaughter to return. She never does. She's dead at the bottom of a ditch. Coella feels sorry for her, but feels much more sorry for the dead girl she gets mistaken for by Bobbin.

"Rosewood?" a voice brings her out of this guilt ridden daze and she snaps her head up to see Alastor Moody staring at her with his beady fake eye.

"Yes?" she replies, straightening her body

He flings a newspaper down onto her desk with a light thud. She picks it up, eyeing the page, "what's this?" she questions moving the newspaper around as she tries to find the front cover.