Coup de Foudre [Fred Weasley] [6]

⚡️ Chapter 30 ⚡️

... and now you've torn it quite apart,
I'll thank you to give back my heart!

Celestina ended her song on a very long, high-pitched note and loud applause issued out of the wireless, which Mrs. Weasley joined in with enthusiastically. Vega was momentarily distracted, pulling out of the conversation between Harry and the adults. She looked up when Fleur shifted, and she already know what was coming up next.

"Eez eet over?" Fleur asked loudly. "Thank goodness, what an 'orrible –"

"Shall we have a nightcap, then?" Mr. Weasley asked loudly before his wife could turn to Fleur to retort, leaping to his feet. "Who wants eggnog?"

"Professor Lupin," Vega spoke up as Mr. Weasley bustled off to fetch the eggnog, and everybody else stretched and broke into conversation. "Are you also doing missions?"

"Oh, I've been underground," Lupin replied, and Vega noticed that he looked a bit awkward, most likely stemming from Dora. "Almost literally. That's why I haven't been able to write, Harry; sending letters to you would have been something of a giveaway,"

"What do you mean by that?" Vega inquired.

"I've been living among my fellows, my equals," Lupin answered. "Werewolves," He added, at Harry's look of incomprehension. "Nearly all of them are on Voldemort's side. Dumbledore wanted a spy and here I was... ready-made,"

Lupin sounded a little bitter, and perhaps realised it, for he smiled more warmly as he went on, "I am not complaining; it is necessary work and who can do it better than I? However, it has been difficult gaining their trust. I bear the unmistakable signs of having tried to live among wizards, you see, whereas they have shunned normal society and live on the margins, stealing – and sometimes killing – to eat,"

"People suffering from Lycanthropy don't equate to being evil," Vega spoke. "But rather, sometimes, their circumstances force them to challenge their own morality,"

"Precisely," Lupin replied. "Not to justify it, of course,"

"Yes, I understand," Vega said.

"How come they like Voldemort?" Harry asked suddenly.

"They think that, under his rule, they will have a better life," Lupin informed him, turning to look at the boy. "And it is hard to argue with Greyback out there..."

"Who's Greyback?" Harry asked, and Vega tensed up.

"You haven't heard of him?" Lupin said as his hands closed convulsively in his lap. "Fenrir Greyback is, perhaps, the most savage werewolf alive today. He regards it as his mission in life to bite and to contaminate as many people as possible; he wants to create enough werewolves to overcome the wizards. Voldemort has promised him prey in return for his services. Greyback specialises in children... bite them young, he says, and raise them away from their parents, raise them to hate normal wizards. Voldemort has threatened to unleash him upon people's sons and daughters; it is a threat that usually produces good results,"

For a second, Lupin paused, and then said, "It was Greyback who bit me,"

"What?" Harry asked, astonished. "When – when you were a kid, you mean?"

"Yes," Lupin answered. "My father had offended him. I did not know, for a very long time, the identity of the werewolf who had attacked me; I even felt pity for him, thinking that he had had no control, knowing by then how it felt to transform.

"But Greyback is not like that. At the full moon, he positions himself close to victims, ensuring that he is near enough to strike. He plans it all. And this is the man Voldemort is using to marshal the werewolves. I cannot pretend that my particular brand of reasoned argument is making much headway against Greyback's insistence that we werewolves deserve blood, that we ought to revenge ourselves on normal people,"