Chapter Twenty-Six - The Father
I felt nervous, anxious and scared, all at once. I attached myself to my uncle's leg, and peered over at the crowd. They were splitting, as if to let someone pass. And there it was. The moment I had been waiting for.
Remus Lupin was walking slowly towards us, a man with a mop of black and messy hair limped behind him, aided by a wooden cane. Crookshanks was at the rear, looking dignified.
The man looked as if he were older than he was supposed to. He had a stubbly beard that was as messy as the hair on his head. His eyes - green like mine, but he wore rounded spectacles, like in the pictures my mother showed me - seemed distant, that much I could tell, as the two men stopped a few meters away from us.
The man's clothes seemed to have been used for years, and his skin was scarred in several places. He gasped for air, as if he had ran for miles. "Hello, Ron," he said, his voice raspy and tired.
My uncle was looking at him, startled and with some sort of apprehension. "Bloody hell, it is you," he blurted out.
Harry - my father - chuckled. "Still the same, I see," he said quietly. "Let's get out of here, my friend." Then he looked down at me, and gasped. "You are John," he stated. I nodded slowly, but still held my uncle's leg. "I've read about you, on the newspaper."
I looked down at my feet, not knowing what to do. Then at my uncle and Luna, both smiled, as if encouraging me to do something. "Hello, father," I said, letting go of my uncle and hugging the man I had been looking for instead.