Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

A/N: I'm not supposed to be writing this.

You see, I have a rule that for every two pieces of fanfiction that I publish I must write a piece of original fiction. And then once I had got the original thing done I was supposed to write something for a competition that is due in quite soon. But what can I say? The call comes and the writer answers, and the call does not discriminate due to rules or deadlines.

Written for the "So you think you know your character" competition, question 8 (What were your goals for the future and why did they change?)

I hope you'll enjoy it!

stars burn out

Remus Lupin is born on a clear, starry evening in March. The birth is easy – so easy that, by the next day, Hope Lupin is strong enough to sing her baby a lullaby. Later, they tell him that she never sang as well as she did that day when the supreme joy of motherhood had come to her. He supposes this is where it starts.

His very earliest memories are all of his mother's voice, and the way her golden-brown eyes gleam as she sings and her hair flutters around her as she dances. In those years Before, his mother resembles a slip of a girl more than anything else and his father's shoulders are never stooped with guilt. They look – young. They are only twenty-three, after all.

By the time he is three years old Remus's mother is already teaching him some of the songs she grew up with, Muggle songs which for some reason always sound better than their wizarding counterparts. Soon two voices, one gentle and refined with a lilting Welsh accent, the other bright and childish, float almost constantly around the little house. Sometimes Remus feels guilty about not ever singing with his father, but Lyall Lupin seems so happy to just listen to his wife and child that he uneasily pushes away the little stabs of conscience.

At four years of age, people are already beginning to stare when they see the child come running down the stairs, singing some unfamiliar tune in his clear, sweet voice. "You'll make a singer of him yet," his grandmother says to his father, and Remus cannot help but smile proudly at the obvious compliment.

There are a few other little wizard boys who live near them. Sometimes, Remus likes to play with them – they pretend to be Aurors fighting Gellert Grindelwald during the war in Europe, or Muggle pirates sailing away to conquer the world. One day, he's invited over for tea at Jake's, and Jake's mother asks him to sing for her. He does, a little shyly but quite conscious of his skill, and once he's done the lady wipes tears from her eyes and tells him he has a Talent. The other boys don't even tease him like he thought they would, just give each other wide-eyed looks every now and then when they catch him humming to himself.

He always remembers his fifth birthday as idyllic – it is the last time his paternal grandparents will smile at him, and the last time his parents are still young. After they've all eaten a lovely gooey chocolate cake, Remus's favourite sort, they go into the sitting-room and his mother puts on one of her Muggle record-players. Remus sings like he has never sung before and never will again, without self-consciousness or reserve, and his childish heart glories at the pride in his parents' and grandparents' eyes.

Three days later, he meets a strange creature in the garden by night, a creature with coarse grey fur and yellow eyes, and an indelible mark is left on his carefree, golden life.

When he comes home from the hospital a while later, everything has changed in ways he cannot comprehend. Father looks constantly miserable and Mother's eyes, the golden-brown eyes which he has inherited, are always filled up with tears. Jake and the other boys don't want to play with him anymore – they throw stones at him and call him a monster. And his grandparents, who were always so proud of him and so kind, give him contemptuous glances and spit at his feet. His grandmother tells him to roll up his sleeve, and once she sees the new scar on his shoulder she calls her son's son 'vermin' and sweeps out of the house, telling them that if they don't tell the Ministry of Magic, she will.

"What's there to tell?" Remus asks curiously once his grandparents are gone, and his mother gives a sob and Father buries his head in his hands.

They move house after that, to a remote little town in Cornwall. Father tells Remus that he mustn't play with anyone outside now and Mother hurries to the shops to buy lots of white cloths she calls 'bandages'. Remus, lonely and bored, shuts himself in his room and sings softly and sweetly. There's a little bird perched on a branch outside his window, and it looks at him with wise, knowing eyes. It seems to know some secret Remus doesn't – something everyone except Remus knows.

He knows quite well the next week, when he wakes up in the cellar bleeding and bleeding, his throat scratchy and raw. Father tells him he is a werewolf, and explains that this will happen to him quite often now and he must be a brave little boy. Once he is better he can sing again, though, and that makes everything all right. And slowly, Mother starts to sing with him.

By his sixth birthday he has realised that this new life, one of secrecy and wounds and frequent visits to the hospital in London, is his forever now. It is a painful thought, but his thin, frail shoulders – he has become very thin this past year – take their burden of sorrow as cheerfully as they can.

His transformations are difficult, but he has his mother's smile and his father's tender care and he manages to be happy. Throughout the long days filled sometimes with pain and more often with loneliness, he sings to himself or anyone else who will listen and the world smiles a little.

As he grows older, the hope he has cherished since he was very young begins to blossom. Remus wants to sing – not just for his parents and the sky, but for adoring crowds on a brightly-lit stage. He wants the world to know him. The dream grows bigger and brighter every day and sometimes he cannot breathe for its intensity – oh, how he wants to sing!

One moon a short while after he turns seven, the pre-transformation fever is raging and Father's eyes are blank with fear as he carries Remus down into the cellar. "Be brave, child," he says, so softly that Remus knows he was not meant to hear. "Be brave." Then the moon begins to rise and Remus screams as he always does, flinging everything into the cry and hoping it will lessen the pain somehow.

It has been a bad moon, the worst moon Remus has lived through yet, and when his wounds refuse to close they take him to St Mungo's Hospital in London. There he is placed in a soft white bed and the young nurses curl their lips at him and call him monster behind his mother's back. A kindly, elderly Healer is assigned to his case, and everything is going well until Remus, in a spasm of hatred for the empty, characterless ward, begins to sing.

Almost immediately he breaks into a fit of hysterical coughing. The nurses cannot calm him down and eventually one of his wounds reopens. Then the Healer comes in, and after a long time they succeed in stabilising him again. "A narrow scrape," the Healer tells his parents solemnly. "What was the child doing?"

"I wanted to sing," Remus whispers through parched lips. "I needed to sing."

The Healer is evidently shocked and a pained look comes suddenly into Father's eyes. "Sing?" the Healer repeats. "But –"

Mother holds up her hand gently to stop him, and Father sits down on the edge of his bed and tells him the terrible truth. The days of singing are no longer – Remus screamed himself very nearly hoarse this month and if he strains his voice much, he could do permanent damage to his throat. And the clear sound he is so proud of is lost now, tainted by month upon month of suffering. He will not sing again.

They take him back home eventually, and after a while he begins to run and play again. He helps his mother in the kitchen and studies the books Father brings him diligently. His parents still view it as a miracle that he survived.

But he will not sing again.

A/N: Soooo... I wrote this in a day. Was it readable? Please tell me in a review!

~Butterfly