Warnings: Mention of past rape and murder, and implications of chan
"What the hell do you mean, Ro? It's not possible. You know I can't...with a woman."
Ro chuckled at his brother's hesitance to even say the word when it came to the fairer sex. "Nevertheless, you did. Once. Don't you remember? Right after Azkaban? We were out with Waldon. That girl and her husband? We all took turns..." He smirked.
Rab frowned. He'd forgotten, but the memory surfaced now at the reminder. "I remember. But how does that make him my son, then? He could be any of ours."
"But I've seen him. He might as well be you, Rab."
"It still does not mean he's mine." Something twinged inside him.
"Let me show you. If you still want nothing to do with him..."
"Fine. Where is he?"
Ro smirked, then held out his hand to his brother. "Come. I'll take you to him."
They apparated to a corner in Edinburgh, but it wasn't exactly the best bit of the city. Hell, it wasn't even the best of the worst bit. Rab was sure they'd catch something just from being here. "Ro..."
"No," his brother said softly, pointing across the street to a ragged young man who barely even looked a teen yet. "Just watch."
A man passed by, and the boy said something rather lewd to him, urging him closer. The man paled and hurried on, and the boy slumped against the wall, annoyed.
"Ro...what?"
"Look at him. Just...look. Or can't you see it?"
"See what, Ro? A common street urchin selling itself on the streets?"
"He looks like you Rab. When you were that age. Though far scrawnier."
Rab examined the boy, bemused. His eyes widening as he saw the truth for himself. The boy did look like him. A great deal.
Without a thought, he moved away from Ro, crossing the street and ignoring the Muggle vehicles as he moved around them. The boy looked up and saw him coming, and seemed to pull on a mask, putting on the same show for Rab he'd done with the Muggle. "Hey, mister. Want a bit? Won't cost you more than a fiver."
Rab blinked at him. "A 'fiver?'" he asked blankly.
The boy scowled. "I won't go no lower, mister. You want to pay less, you'll have to go somewhere else."
The accent was coarse, with a Scottish lilt, and it took Rab a moment to respond. "How about ten pounds, and I take you somewhere and put meat on your bones?"
"Take me somewhere? Me mam says no going with the chappies. That its not safe."
"Your mother knows that you do this?" Rab asked him with a growl.
The boy backed off a step, then nodded. "Says I gots to pay me way, sur."
Rab's eyes narrowed, and he couldn't truly blame the boy for backing off another step. He'd killed men for less. But his anger wasn't directed at the boy. "Ro!"
"No need to shout. I'm here."
"Where does your mother reside, boy?"
The boy looked between the two brothers, then stared, terrified, at Rab. "Er...upstairs, sur. But she's likely asleep right now. Usually does this time of day."
Rab ground his teeth together, then shooed the boy toward the door. "Take us to her."
The boy paled, but nodded. "Yessir." He turned and hurried towards the door, leading the brothers up the stairs of the run-down building he and his mother apparently lived in, and into a small one-room apartment. There was a Muggle box making a great deal of noise, so how the woman could sleep through the racket, Rab didn't know.
"Mam..." The boy was shaking his mother's shoulder. She grumbled, then struck out at him, and he fell to the floor.
Rab snarled and moved to the woman, pointing his wand at her. "Get up, you...cow. How...dare you?"
The woman woke abruptly at that, her eyes wide and horrified, and grew even wider in recognition upon seeing his face. "No...!"
Rab sneered. "So you remember me, then?"
There was no blood in the woman's face, and she couldn't seem to manage a single syllable any longer.
"You leave her alone!" the boy cried, grabbing at Rab's wrist.
His protective reaction astonished Rab. "What? The woman just knocked you over for trying to wake her. She sends you into the street to whore for her! And you protect her?"
"She's my mam. And you got no right...leave her alone!"
Rab pulled back, but glared at the woman, who was now cowering on the smallest section of the couch she could manage. "What gives you the right?" he asked her.
She seemed to gain a bit of strength from her son's defense of her. "He's my boy. You got no say."
"I have every say, haven't I?" he snarled. "Does he even know?"
"Know what? That you killed his da?"
The boy's eyes went wide at that, then he moved to put slender, dirty arms around his mother, and glared at Rab.
"That, I assure you, woman, is impossible. Given that I am his father..." He raised a brow. He was hardly going to tell the boy how he was conceived, but...how could he deny a son?
The boy's eyes widened even more in shock. "My...da...?"
"Don't you listen to him, Ryan. He's a lying, evil man. He killed your da, then..."
"Silencio! I think we've heard enough from you." Rab ignored the boy, who was now staring, just as shocked at his mother, who was clawing at her throat and trying to speak uselessly. "Ro...I don't suppose you have any truth serum on you?"
Ro smirked. "As a matter of fact..." he pulled out a small bottle. "Not as good as Severus's perhaps, but it should do. She's only a Muggle, after all."
"Don't you call her that! And...undo whatever you did to her! Now!" Ryan, the woman had called him, advanced on Rab.
"I haven't hurt her. She'll be just fine. Ro?"
Ro caught the boy's arm as gently as he could, what with the boy twisting away and trying to get at Rab. "No! Leave her alone!"
But Rab stepped forward, grabbing the woman's hair, then pulling her head back so that her mouth opened. He poured in a small dose, then released his spell.
She sputtered and coughed, then righted herself and glowered at him, though Rab could still see the fear underneath. "What did you do to me, you...sorcerer...?"
Rab snorted. "Is that supposed to be an insult?" He smirked. "Why didn't you tell this boy who his father was?"
"How was I to know? It could have been any of you. Or even..." Her voice broke. "My Michael..."
Ryan struggled to get to his mother. "Mam..."
"But he doesn't look like your husband, does he? And he does...odd things, too?"
Her eyes met his. "Yes. You...devil. You bewitched me! You cursed him!"
Rab rolled his eyes. "It is hardly a curse, woman. Why is the boy not in school? Didn't he get his letter?"
"Letter?" The two voices, woman and boy, echoed one another. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said, though Rab could see there was something nagging at her. The potion working on her to force her to speak truthfully. "I...it wasn't that bloody bird, was it?"
"What letter?" the boy asked. "Why would I get a letter?"
Rab turned to him. "For schooling. To go to my school."
"You have a school?" the boy asked, just as his mother shouted at the same time, "No! He won't go!"
Rab turned to glare at her. "Why? Because you need him whoring on the street, perhaps?"
She drew back. "He's all I have left..."
"Then you should have treated him better, shouldn't you?" He turned back to Ryan. "You have a choice. You can come with us, and we will give you a place to live until we can contact the Headmistress of Hogwarts to explain your absence. Or you can stay here. And whore for her."
The boy looked from Rab to his mother, then back. "But...she'll have no one if I go."
"We can make it so she won't even remember."
"She...won't remember me?" he glanced at his mother, who seemed torn between pleading and shock.
"If it would make you feel better about it."
"Will you...give her money? She'll have nothing if I go."
Rab scowled, then turned to his brother, who held out a small purse. "It should be enough to keep her for a while. Beyond that..." Ro smiled, and Rab knew he was thinking the same. The woman obviously abused some sort of substance. Likely the money would run out well before she died of an overdose, though.
Ryan looked at his mother again, who was now looking greedily at the purse. Obviously, nothing else mattered. He sighed, and bit his lip, then nodded. "Do it. But...I don't want to see it."
"Can you...?" Rab asked Ro, who nodded and released the boy, then moved toward the woman. Rab held out a hand, and the boy took it grudgingly, then let Rab pull him closer. "I will take you home. Just close your eyes." The boy shivered against him, then relaxed, and Rab apparated them away.