Guys, before you read this chapter know one thing: I have never been to Wales and English is not my first language, so please, I might have made a few mistakes. Though I'm certain that this chapter will be slightly disappointing - I know you are waiting for the Christmas chapter, but this is an almost Christmas chapter lol. We understand a bit more of the Lupins here.

LEAVE COMMENTS! LOTS OF COMMENTS!.

Caefwar's rain had given them just enough time to get from Cardiff to it without having to slow down in the road, but according to Lyall – who was driving, something he rarely did – some houses in the village had almost lost their roofs in the gales at the start and middle of the month, but now it was mostly rain. He guessed they wouldn't have a White Christmas that year, which made Remus quite happy, because snow always made his hip and back hurt.

"So..." Lyall said, lowering the volume of the radio of the car. "I exchanged letters with Lord Black about Christmas. Regulus will come at the 24th for the Christmas' Eve and then leave after midnight. I'll Apparate him home."

"Isn't it worthy connection Grandma's fireplace to the floo?" Remus asked from the passenger seat.

"Your grandmother doesn't want it. It's her house," Lyall answered. He, too, had liked that idea better. "Regulus will be brought here by someone from his family."

"His father, you're guessing by your sneer," Luna said, looking at her father through the review mirror from the backseat.

"It's the most probable," Lyall agreed. "And I have more news. I sold my house in Cardiff and moved back into Cawfwar, I brought everything that you two had with me and already made-up rooms in your grandmother's house."

Luna smiled, but Remus didn't.

It wasn't that Remus didn't like their grandmother, on the contraire, they were rather close. The thing was that Remus looked a lot like his grandfather and seeing the way his widow grandmother looked at him, with such sadness and pain, was uncomfortable and completely unbearable to him. There was a part of her that wanted Remus to become like his grandfather, studying magical animals and advocating for their rights, protesting their wrongdoings. That wasn't who he was, he was sure of it.

Luna was euphoric. She loved her grandmother, or 'Nain', as they usually called her. She was a lovely old lady with a lot of fight left in her even after going through the chemotherapy; she always acted younger than she truly was, eager to gossip and giggle like a schoolgirl whenever Luna was nearby to accompany her, she even dragged her granddaughter to meetings with her village friends to gossip about neighbours and everything that she had missed while she was in Scotland or England.

Catrin Jones-Lupin was a force to be reckoned with and nothing would change that.

An Irishwoman born to a Welsh father and an Irish mother, only to go and marry a Welsh man and never leave her father's land again and still bear a smile. Only a strong woman could do that.

As soon as the car stopped, the front door to the big house opened and Catrin smiled.

"MY BABYS!" she exclaimed.

"Nain! Nain!" Luna said, jumping out of the backseat and running to her, leaving the car door open.

"Oh, how you grown!" her grandmother said, voice wavering when she noticed that Luna was the same height as her now. "My beautiful girl. How wonderful. How wonderful!"

They pulled apart from one another and Catrin smiled at Remus, who was closing his sister's door and taking his (and hers) bag. He smiled back at her, but did not run, nor could he with the weight of two bags in his arms.

"Nain, you alright?" he called out.

"Quite alright, dearie," she answered. "Oh, you've grown even more. No wonder your trousers are short."

Remus looked down, seeing his trousers struggling to reach his ankles and smiled awkwardly. He knew his parents were spending a lot of money in his clothes since he was growing so much and so fast, but now that Catrin had mentioned it, he could see that Luna had grown as well. She was still considered short nonetheless, but now she looked like a whole human-being, not half of it.

"It tends to happen to boys his age, Mam," Lyall said, locking the car and taking Luna's bag from Remus so he could hug his grandmother. "And I'll buy them new clothes as soon as Christmas passes. Now that I have some of the house-money, I'll be able to get more."

"And with your garage open, as well," Catrin said.

Luna raised her eyebrows.

"Garage?" she asked.

Lyall blushed a bit, taking off his hat and trying to contain his curls.

"When I was younger I... dabbled on fixing cars and such," he said. "Now that I'm less and less work as a solicitor, only to a few dear families, I have a lot of free time."

"And Mister Brown just moved to Wales and it lost in getting a mechanical to fix his motorcycle before his wife threatens to sell it again," Catrin added, smiling at her son's blush. She turned to Remus. "He's been working a lot."

Luna frowned a bit, unsure of why she had needed to say that to the boy but said nothing about it to her.

Catrin turned to her almost as if feeling that she was wondering what was happening.

"And you, lassie... a boyfriend?" she asked, raising her eyebrows at her.

Lyall scoffed, closing the front door now that they were all inside. Remus smiled just a bit – just a twitch of lips – and took off his jacket.

"Well, yeah," Luna said, pressing her lips together.

Catrin leaned towards her.

"You're blushing..."

"No, I'm not!" Luna said, but she could feel her cheeks and forehead burning. She cussed mentally. "It's just cold out there and warm in here."

Remus chuckled as he walked through them and stopped beside his grandmother.

"They are inseparable. I'm surprised she didn't drag him here right away," Remus said.

Lyall grimaced.

"They're in a formal courtship, Remus, it's not the same as dating," Lyall said.

Remus looked at him, confused. "Pardon me?" he said.

"When it's a formal courtship, there's a protocol to follow to protect their reputations and images," his grandmother explained. "It was used in my time," she winked at Luna, "and often broken."

"MAM!" Lyall exclaimed, turning so red that his ears were pink.

"Oh, Merlin," Luna mumbled, turning around and taking off her scarf, hanging it near the door. "Nain, please, don't."

Remus looked between all the three of them.

"Nobody is going to tell me anything?" he asked. "I mean, James did comment on it, but he wouldn't go into detail and Sirius –" he stopped himself as if the name had slipped out of his tongue. He looked at Luna, searching a reaction, but she was so used to hide her reaction when his name came up that she didn't even blink, "well, my other friends just didn't want to get into the subject when I asked. Well, Peter didn't know what the hell I was talking about, anyway."

"Pettigrew? He's a good boy," Lyall said, nodding to himself.

The group went further into the house, going to the sitting room. The fireplace was prepared and already burning, so Lyall dropped heavily on the armchair near the turned off television, Remus claimed the smaller sofa and lied down on it, but he had become so tall that his legs were hanging awkwardly. Luna and Catrin sat in the bigger sofa.

"A contracted and formal courtship only truly begins when the parents of the parties get together and agree upon a set number of demands," Lyall said.

"What were the demands?" Remus asked, frowning in a bit of worry.

"Nothing important," Luna said, rolling her eyes. "None of your business, either."

Lyall rolled his eyes as Remus pushed himself to his elbows to stare at his sister.

"Why're you being so rude for?" Remus asked.

"I'm not rude, you're just nosy!" Luna answered.

She hadn't recovered from the embarrassing situation that happened in the day the Blacks and the Lupins met to discuss the agreement that her father had signed. The open discussion about her virginity (long gone, not that they knew that, or will know that) only got shut down over the promise of Regulus to throw money over it in case it was 'tainted' by the time the courtship ended, which – no matter the situation – he would need to pay.

It was something that had not crossed her mind again, but with Remus speaking of wanting to know the agreement, it wouldn't leave her mind.

"Common agreements, especially about money, after all we are talking about the Black Family," Lyall said. "Your sister didn't read the agreements, but all their demands were reasonable. They requested that we are not to ask for more money than it was agreed on Regulus' –" he swallowed, distasteful, "especial clause."

Luna looked at the ceiling, hating the conversation.

"What especial clause?" Remus asked.

"None of your fucking business, Remus!" Luna said, annoyed.

"Don't cuss in front of your grandmother!" Lyall scolded.

Catrin laughed. "You've said much worst things in front of me when you were younger than her, Lyall. Leave the girl alone, she's embarrassed."

Lyall turned to look at his mother before turning to his daughter.

"Your mother should talk to you," he said, more to himself than to her.

"Not again, please," she grumbled.

Catrin laughed again.

"Alright, enough of that now," the woman said, getting up. "You boys go and put Luna's bag in her room, and fix it for her, please, Remus. Now, you, dearest, will come with me. Help me in the kitchen."

Luna and Remus were both better cooks than most people imagined. With their mother so often out of the house, they had learned how to cook since they were old enough to be left alone in the house. Luna cooked less than Remus, focusing more on laundry when they split the chores. Remus liked cooking, but Luna liked cooking with her grandmother.

They crossed the hall and the dining room before getting into the kitchen.

"You father told me of the contract," her grandmother said as she moved to get the pans. "And he also mentioned your boy's clause."

She shook her head. She didn't want to talk about it, but she knew there was no way to escape the subject.

"His parents are very difficult; he did that so there was no way that I would be blamed for anything. The way his mother is, she'd find something to blame me for," she said.

Catrin watched her for a moment before nodding and putting the pans over the counter, where they would start preparing the cake that she wanted to make, but needed someone with a stronger arm.

She glanced and saw her granddaughter looking over to the kitchen's windows, seeing the small wooden gazebo in the garden. The rain was starting again, and the vines going up the gazebo sides were greener than ever. Had Luna been closer, she would've seen there was a flower growing amongst the vines.

"So... has he kissed you yet?" Catrin asked suddenly, a malicious smile on her lips.

"Nain!" Luna exclaimed, eyes widening.

"What?! It's a normal question. Your grandfather kissed me before our wedding, it's completely normal. By what your father tells me, you've been with this boy since the start of the year –"

"Not exactly," she mumbled, but was ignored.

"—it is time enough to be kissed. I'll not judge you. I was a girl once, too, you know? I was in love once, too," she continued over her granddaughter.

Her only love had been Arianell Lupin. She had left home to marry him, she had a son with him. And then he died before her.

Luna softened.

"No, there has been no kiss," she answered.

Though there was a small edge of melancholy in Catrin's eyes, she smiled nonetheless and leaned against the counter casually.

"Well, that situation can be easily remedied. Lucky for you, I can find mistletoe without a problem, if you want me to," she said, a huge smile in her lips as she watched Luna fumbled with her words. "It's just a kiss, dear. I'm not telling you to let him debauch you... though, if it does happen, apparently, you'll leave untouched regardless – though 'untouched' is not the best word for it now, is it?"

"Alright, this conversation is over," the girl insisted. She looked at the kitchen supplies. "What are we doing? Carrot cake?"

"You know me well, dearie."

On the next day, Luna woke up with Remus poking her.

The curtains were closed, the window locked. The room was warm and dark; it was too comfortable to get up or open her eyes, so Luna grumbled and tried to push him away without getting too far off the covers, complaining without real words about his interruption of her dreams.

"Just wake up already, I called you through the door and you didn't answer. Mum's here," he said. "It's almost noon."

Luna just moaned, turning her head away from him, though that did little to block out the noise of him calling her name several times in a now, poking her sides as he usually did back in Bristol when she wouldn't wake up.

In school, Luna woke up with the smallest of noises, sometimes complaining when Marta came back late from her rendezvous with her boyfriend, waking her up if she closed the door too loudly. However, at home, it was rare the times that Luna would actually wake up the first time her parents or brother called for her, most times she would sit, talk and then go back to sleep in the first opportunity. But Remus was the one that took the least amount of time to notice her state (sharing bedrooms and whatnot) and would wake her up completely.

"So it's not noon yet?" Luna grumbled.

"No. Five minutes to midday," he said.

"Then I have five more minutes before I'm a burden," she said, closing her eyes again.

"Don't you get up a bit earlier than usual and do what you must do right now? You'll take a lot longer than usual to get ready for Christmas, Regulus being here and all that," Remus said, walking to the doorway and stopping there.

Luna sat on the bed, eyes narrowing.

"I barely slept with the thunder –"

"And the thought of Regulus Black," he teased.

She was quick to reach for her spare pillow and throw it at him with all her strength. Remus had better reflexes than she expected, because he held it just before it hit his face and threw it right back at her, letting it fall onto her legs instead of hitting her face.

"I'm going to tell Mum you're being a prat," she warned.

"Mum was the one to send me up to wake you."

"It's not her house, it's grandma's," she reminded him.

"Grandma told me to wake you up so she can show you off in the market this afternoon. Mrs Roberts has been asking about you, apparently; her son's single again," he added. "And the rain stopped, by the way. It started snowing this morning."

Luna groaned, falling back into bed, pulling her covers up to her neck.

It was not that she hated snow. On the contraire, she liked it very much... when she was safe and warm and could only see the snow through the thick window, not letting it damp the inside of her house. But with Remus – the one that liked to go outside in the snow more often than necessary and for fun, until his mother yelled for him to get inside – it was quite difficult to not be attacked by a snowball or have a handful of snow not shoved into her cloak's hood.

"No throwing snow at me today," she warned, taking a deep breath, kicking the covers away.

"No promises."

"I'll tell Nain that you're planning to ruin Christmas," she warned.

"Nain loves me."

"But I look prettier when I cry."

Remus, unsure of what that meant, walked out of the bedroom as she got up from the bed and closed the door.

With a loud sigh, she prepared to go downstairs to see her family.

"Good afternoon!" her mother greeted as soon as she walked down the stairs.

"Morning, Mum," she answered.

"It hasn't been morning for a while now, Lady," her dad teased, kissing her head as she walked by. She smiled at him as he winked and passed her a plate with breakfast – he had kept some bacon warm and crispy for her, and there were beans in her toast. "Eat up. Your grandmother is eager to show Mrs Roberts that you're no longer available to Ronan."

"I was never available to Ronan," she said, biting into the toast.

"Don't tell that to Mrs Roberts, she'll be upset," her mother said, sitting on the other end of the big dining room table, opening the newspaper, reading through it in silence for a moment. It was a Muggle one. "This Prime Minister is a joke."

"Wilson is from the Labour Party, Mum. You like the Labour Party," Remus said, eating his grapes and trying not to laugh at her frown.

"Doesn't mean he's doing a good job right now," she said. She glanced up at Remus before looking back at the newspaper in hand. "Sure, he did some good things: decriminalising homosexuality, for example."

Remus shifted slightly in his seat and glanced between his parents before his eyes stopped in Luna, accusatory. She raised her eyebrows in an innocent manner – whatever it was that their mother was implying, she certainly had nothing to do with it. She shrugged to drive the point home, he looked away.

"It was just certain homosexual acts, Mum, and only here and England," Remus reminded her.

There was some weight in Hope's shoulder as she looked up at her son, unsure of what to say.

"His first office was indeed better," was all that Lyall said, busy with his own newspapers. It was a Wizarding one. "And in comparison, this Miss Eugenia Jenkins is certainly losing my vote for her next office."

Hope looked at her ex-husband.

"I thought you liked her, even went as far as exchanging letters with that miss, I believe," she said.

Lyall didn't seem to notice that Hope was watching him.

"Yes, at the time I was very interested in the Squid Marches happening and was about to retire from the Ministry. I was working with a colleague of mine in stopping the pureblood riots that came against the marches, Miss Jenkins dealt with it all well once she had our support," he said.

"Yes, yes. I remember that colleague of yours. Agatha Reel, isn't it?"

Lyall looked up, seemingly confused.

"Yes, I believe it was her," he agreed.

Remus and Luna exchanged a look, looking between concerned and uncomfortable. The truth was that Hope had been a jealous wife and they both remembered very well how those conversations looked like.

Luna looked away first, looking at food, certainly no longer hungry.

"Not during Christmas, please," Remus said, voice lower and more mature than his usual. "Not this Christmas, either. Luna's boyfriend is coming over."

Hope looked at Luna.

"I'm not doing anything," she said, as if it had been the girl to say something.

"I didn't say you were."

"You were acting like –"

"Are you ready to leave, cariad?" Lyall said, jumping into the conversation and glancing at his mother standing at the dining room's doorway. "Nain's calling."

Luna got up from her seat, not finishing her breakfast and not looking at her brother. She didn't look at her grandmother as she crossed the dining room and went to the front door, only giving herself enough time to shove her hair (it was down) into her hood and put on her coat in silence. Holding her gloves on her teeth, she unlocked the front door and walked out into the snow.

"Your mother is in a bad mood, darling, that's all," her grandmother said.

"She seems to be always in a bad mood," she said through her gloves and teeth.

She put on the gloves as her grandmother locked the door.

"She's had a difficult day. Holydays are difficult in the hospital, and she had to ask for time-off," Catrin said. "It's a lot of pressure stepping away from everything like that."

"Yes, stepping away from your work for your children is certainly worthy of... pressure," she said, disgusted by the word. "It's not even that! It's just... she insists of coming here every year and every year the same thing; Daddy and Mum argue at some point. I just don't want it to happen in front of Regulus, and this keeps building up. She's picking fights already – they were talking about politics, and she found a way to imply that he had been interested in other women just after they separated."

Catrin pressed her lips together.

"Do you remember when your parents divorced, Luna?" Catrin asked. Luna shook her head. "You were, what? Six?"

"Five, almost six."

"You were too young to know what happened, too young to understand what a divorce can do."

"But I was not! I saw what a divorce can do!" she said, annoyed. "Daddy left without a word, and I didn't even know they were divorcing. One day he was there, and the other he wasn't. Nobody explained me anything other than the fact that they didn't love each other anymore."

"It was the right thing to do," her grandmother appeased her.

She shook her.

"I'm fifteen and nobody tells me anything yet," she said.

"There are things that are better left unsaid."

Luna, noticing that her grandmother wouldn't explain anything, just would feed her the exact same lines and phrases that all adults in her life seemed to do when she asked when she younger (when she still had some energy left to ask anything at all). No matter how she grew, people seemed to think her a child still.

Fortunately, the supermarket wasn't too far away from their home. As soon as they walked inside, Catrin greeted the young girl near the entrance by name. Luna ignored the exchange, trying her best to pass the tears gathering in her eyes as something that came due to the cold wind.

As they went around, buying fresh fruits and chocolate to make hot-chocolate later in the night, probably before going to bed, after Regulus went home, they saw a woman in her late-forties of blonde hair pinned up and a thick coat over her leggings and leg warmers as she bought chocolate as well.

"Mrs Roberts!" Catrin greeted far too loudly.

Luna knew that she had very little right to be angry at her grandmother. The divorce wasn't her business at all, and she wanted to keep Luna in a good relationship between both of her parents. What she couldn't see, however, was that her relationship with her parents was cracking due to the silence around her.

"Oh, my dear Mrs Lupin!" Mrs Roberts greeted back, walking towards her friend. "And this can only be Luna! Oh, how you've grown. The last time I saw you, you were... what? Twelve?"

"It was last year, Mrs Roberts. I was fourteen," she said, as politely as she could without drowning her annoyance. It was enough to make the woman blush and shift, clearly not remembering the case at all. "It doesn't matter."

"Well, at least you can say you look younger than you truly is. You'll be glad for that one when you're older," the woman said. Luna forced a smile. "My son just turned nineteen. How old are you?"

"Fifteen, ma'am. And so is my boyfriend," she said.

Catrin smiled proudly. "Luna got herself a suitor. A Londoner," she said.

"And a posh one at that," Luna added.

"Well, you go to a private boarding school in Scotland," Mrs Roberts said, quite bitter in her tone. "Any lad you got would be a posh one."

Luna was tempted to add that Regulus was to be a Duke in the future and that he had enough money to buy the whole village if he so desired. She was unsure as to why she was so intended to brag about being in a courtship (and she used the term lightly, for there was some confusion to what the term meant now that there was no necessity for their ruse, but they had agreed to continue it regardless). She held herself back, of course, it felt wrong to do that and it was far too alike to exposition Regulus.

"Perhaps you'll bring around this lad of yours if the weather calms down," Mrs Roberts said.

"I'm certain that I can try," she answered.

Catrin nodded.

"He'll spend Christmas with us. If the snow stops, we'll take a stroll," Catrin said.

Luna didn't want to take a stroll, she wanted to stay with Regulus and talk.

But the snow didn't stop, but it did slow down.

As Luna dressed, she watched the snow falling through the window, allowing a small childish part of her to be glad for the White Christmas that year that provided Wales. It was a beautiful sight to distract herself as she fixed her black sweater around herself and buttoned up the denim trousers. Her hair was down, natural blonde hair reaching under her breasts (and she was a bit proud to say that she had put on her good bra, filling herself a bit more since the sweater was so loose around her body).

That was when someone appeared at the end of street and walked towards the house.

It was Regulus Black and his father, Orion, walking beside one another in the snow, and Regulus was looking straight at her window.

Luna smiled to herself.

I hope you all liked Grandma Catrin! What are we thinking about the whole divorced couple, by the way?