Chapter Text
25th February 1991
The flat smelled like chocolate.
Not the kind you found in shops — the thick, cloying kind that sat in your teeth, but real, rich chocolate, warm and slightly burnt at the edges. It came in waves from the kitchen, drifting through the narrow hallway, seeping into the peeling wallpaper and the books that never stayed on their shelves. Cecilia lay on her side beneath the patchwork quilt in her tiny room, it was a nook really, magically expanded years ago into the corner of what had once been a coat cupboard and let the smell coax her awake.
The flat was quiet, but it always was. Quiet in that way only old, over-lived places could be. It wasn’t lonely. Just settled. The air hummed like it had learned not to expect surprises anymore. She stretched, blinking at the ceiling. The walls were bowed ever so slightly, warped from the spell Remus had cast when she first came to live with him. The floor-bed was low and soft, piled high with old blankets.
She exhaled slowly, let her toes curl under the warm sheets, and whispered to the quiet, “It’s today.” Her birthday. She was eleven.
Remus didn’t say anything when she padded into the kitchen barefoot. He rarely did, first thing. He was hunched over the stove in one of his soft jumpers that had gone thin at the elbows, brow furrowed as he prodded the old pan like it had insulted him personally.
She slid into her usual seat at the little round table, chin resting on her arms. The kitchen, like the rest of the flat, was too small, but Cecilia didn’t mind. It was filled with soft light from the window above the sink, and it always smelled like tea, books, and whatever Remus had forgotten to clean the day before.
He glanced over. “Morning,” he muttered finally.
“Happy birthday to me,” she said, voice still hoarse from sleep.
Remus grunted. “You’ve only just woken up. Don’t get ahead of yourself.” But he handed her a steaming mug of cocoa, not tea, and that was enough celebration for her. There was also a plate set with toast cut into four neat triangles, each one topped differently: butter, jam, a bit of honey, and a smear of chocolate spread. Remus never said why he did it like that. He just always had.
She grinned, inspecting them. As she chewed through the jam triangle, her mind began to drift.
Eleven. She thought that would feel different. More significant. Like magic might shimmer around her fingertips or that she'd wake to a letter hovering at the window. But there was nothing yet, of course. Only Remus pretending not to make a fuss and making a fuss anyway.
She looked around the kitchen: mismatched chairs, a calendar still flipped to last November, as if neither of them had bothered to admit it was February yet. There was also a paper chain charm she’d made last Christmas still dangling from the lampshade. Nothing was new here. Except her age.
She glanced toward the living room, toward the box that sat above the hearth, sealed and untouched. It had her name on it. She didn’t know exactly what was inside, but she’d seen Remus place Gringotts papers there once. She never asked about it. Not because she wasn’t curious, she always was, but because she knew the box wasn’t really a mystery. It was just a reminder. Of something she wasn’t supposed to ask about yet.
⋆˙⟡
She hadn’t always lived here.
Before this flat, before Remus, there had been the grey halls of the orphanage. A magic-facing one, run by squibs. She remembered the dusty carpets, the windows that didn’t open all the way, the soft clink of ceramic plates in the dining hall.
She remembered his visits. They started when she was just old enough to walk.
They were never scheduled. Never regular. Just moments that happened, like weather. Some days he’d appear in the doorway of the common room, awkward and pale in his secondhand coat, eyes darting like he was scanning for danger. Other times, he sat down before she even noticed he was there, already fidgeting with his hands, pulling at a frayed thread on his sleeve.
He always looked tired. Not just sleepy, but tired in that bone-deep way that grown-ups sometimes got. His hair was never combed properly. He spoke softly, like he was afraid of startling the room itself.
The other children left them alone. Cecilia didn't know if they were told to, or if they simply sensed something about him that said he wasn’t the kind of visitor who brought toys or promises. He brought books sometimes. A tattered muggle fairy tale collection with hand-drawn illustrations, or an old textbook with silly moving doodles in the margins. Once, he tried to do a bit of magic, conjured a stream of coloured smoke that curled into the shape of a cat. It fizzled halfway and turned green.
Cecilia clapped anyway. She thought it was brilliant. He smiled, barely, and reached into his coat for a sweet. Always the same kind: toffees, wrapped in cellophane so thin it crinkled like paper. He’d hand her one, sometimes two, and say, “Don’t tell the matron.” She never did.
She’d babble nonsense at him at first, happy just to have someone who gave her affection, even if it was little. At some point, she started calling him “Dada .” It slipped out the way things do when you’re too young to know better, a name assigned to a shape in her world she didn’t have words for yet.
He’d flinch. Every time.
Then he bent slightly, hands braced on his knees, and said, with all the gentleness of someone trying not to scare a sleeping animal, “No, not that.” She didn’t understand what he meant, only that she’d made him sad. But she kept saying it.
Sometimes she forgot and called him nothing. Sometimes she said “sir,” like the other children said to the staff. But every time she said “Dada,” he’d correct her. Not sharply. Just... firmly. Quietly. “Not me,” he’d always say. “I’m not that.”
It went on for years. Her language grew, but the word stayed. She tried shortening it, softening it, as if one day he might not correct her if it didn’t sting so much.
One day, around her fifth birthday, she thought it was that year at least, she said it differently. Not “Dada.” Just:
“Da?”
It was barely a question. Just a breath. And this time, he didn’t correct her. He sat beside her on the little sofa with the peeling armrests and handed her a toffee. She didn’t say anything else that day. Neither did he. But he stayed longer than usual.
She was five when he finally took her home. He came with a different kind of quiet in his shoulders. Not guilt. Not apology. Resolve.
She remembered the matron in the office who had a hard face and glasses on a chain, and an old man who had been there too. She didn’t know who he was. He smelled like lemon drops and something electric. She remembered holding a handful of sweets Remus gave her and pressing them into her palms so she wouldn’t interrupt.
She remembered the sound of the quill scratching. Remus’s voice, quiet: “Yes. I’ll take her now.” A form signed. A bag packed. Her hand in his. And that was that.
⋆˙⟡
The cake was still warm when he brought it over.
It was lopsided, a little scorched along the bottom, and had a jagged slash of chocolate icing across the top like he’d given up halfway through trying to decorate. But there were three blue candles stuck into the centre, and the sight of it made her throat go tight.
“Did you… bake this?” she asked. “No,” he said, deadpan. “The cake fairy broke in last night and did it for me.”
Cecilia grinned. “I think she and the Tooth Fairy should swap careers.”
He huffed out a laugh, but there was a spark of pride in his eyes as he placed it in front of her. “Happy birthday, love,” he said, and she beamed at him. “Go on, then,” he nudged the cake toward her. “Make a wish.” She blew out the candles, all three, in one go.
Later, as they sat at the little kitchen table with their second slices. His slice was taken from the corner, where the icing had pooled thick, hers from the centre, where it was neat and even. Cecilia scraped at the edge of her plate with the fork tines and said, quietly:
“Did you think you’d be raising a witch when you were my age?” she asked.
Remus didn’t answer right away. His fork stilled mid-cut. His posture didn’t change, but something in his face pulled tight, as if she’d asked a question far older than eleven.
“No,” he said finally, in that voice he used when something hurt but he wouldn’t say so.
She watched him closely. His eyes were fixed on the cake, but not seeing it. Probably seeing something else entirely, some memory, or some moment he never shared with her. There were a lot of those.
“But I’m glad it was you,” he added, after a moment. Like an afterthought. “Even if I was a bloody mess about it.”
Cecilia didn’t answer straight away. She just looked at him, really looked at him, and he looked… younger somehow. The faint scars half-hidden beneath the stubble, the quiet way he always made himself smaller at the table, like he thought he might take up too much space. She’d learned over the years that he didn’t always know how to accept good things. Sometimes he just held them loosely, like he was afraid they might burn.
“You used to burn porridge,” she said after a beat, as if it was connected.
He blinked, startled by the shift. “Still do,” he muttered.
That made her smile. He glanced up, and they shared it for a second. Not a loud laugh. Just the kind of shared smile that lived in kitchens. In old flats. In families that weren’t quite whole but were trying to be.
She looked down at her cake again, picking at the edge of the slice. “I didn’t think you liked me, at first,” she said softly. Remus raised an eyebrow. “When?”
“When I was little. At the orphanage. You looked like you were always about to leave.”
He was quiet. “I almost did,” he said finally. “A lot… not because of you.”
She nodded. She knew what he meant, even if he didn’t explain it. “I’m glad you didn’t,” she said.
And then they were quiet again, the soft kind of quiet, full of unfinished things, and things understood anyway.
That night, the wind outside was starting to rise, brushing against the windows in low, steady sighs. Somewhere down the street, a dog barked once. The sound felt distant, like it had come from another world entirely.
Cecilia lay curled beneath the blanket in her room, knees drawn up, hands tucked beneath her pillow. The walls of her tiny space were covered in things she liked: hand-drawn posters, scraps of glittering parchment, the corner of an old celestial map Remus had rescued from a skip bin behind a magical bookshop. The floor-bed was warm from the hot water bottle tucked under her knees. One of Mary’s old jumpers that was far too big, was folded at the foot like a comfort blanket.
She heard the familiar shuffle of footsteps in the hallway. Light, careful. He always checked, even when he thought she was asleep.
“Da?” she called softly before he could reach the doorway.
He appeared a second later, a lean silhouette framed in the dim lamplight. “I was just coming in to say goodnight,” he said, with that faint little smile he saved only for her.
Cecilia shifted onto her back, peeking out from the quilt. She smiled at him. “Will you be okay next week?” He frowned. “I was going to ask you that.”
“Aunt Mary’s coming, isn’t she?” Mary wasn’t really her aunt, just an old school friend of Remus’s who lived mostly in the Muggle world now. She came around when the full moon was near to look after Cecilia when he couldn’t.
“She is,” he said, stepping just inside. “She sent a letter yesterday. Wants to bring you that book series you liked, the one with the potions apprentice who always blows things up.”
Cecilia grinned. “I like her.”
“I know.”
He walked in and sat on the edge of her bed, looking around her small room like it had grown since the last time he saw it. “Will you be okay?” he asked softly.
“For a weekend?” Cecilia raised an eyebrow. “I’ll survive.”
He nodded once. “Still.”
“I like when she comes,” she said. “But you don’t have to ask if I’ll be okay every time you change.”
Remus looked at her affectionately, and then leaned forward and kissed her on the crown of her head. He didn’t speak right away. “I just... I used to think I should protect you from it,” he said. “But you’re not afraid. You never were.”
“Why would I be?” she asked simply.
He huffed, that soft, broken laugh of his that never quite came from his chest. “Because most people are.”
“I’m not most people.”
“No,” he said, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re not.”
There was a pause, one of those quiet moments that hung in the air between them like steam from a kettle. “You told me when I was six,” she said suddenly. “About the wolf.”
“I did.”
“I still remember what you said,” she added. “You said it wasn’t a curse, just something that comes with you. Like freckles.”
He smiled then, properly. “That sounds like something I’d say.”
“It made sense,” she said. “Still does.”
He stood, lingered in the doorway for one last second, “Goodnight, Ceci.”
“Goodnight, Da.” He left the door slightly open, like he always did. The hallway light spilled across the floor in a golden line, and Cecilia stared at it for a while before closing her eyes.
She didn’t think about her mother tonight. Or her father. Or the sealed box with her name on it. Only the warm flicker of magic beneath her fingertips.
And the feeling that something... something... was coming.
After all, she was eleven now.