Shelter at Your Door (4–6 of 9)

[starfishstar]

SHELTER AT YOUR DOOR

Summary: Over the years, one young man keeps turning up at Andromeda's door.

Pairing: Andromeda/Remus

Characters: Andromeda, Remus, Sirius, others

(Parts 1–3 are here.)

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IV. A Wolf at the Door (1984)

Remus looked a decade older than when Andromeda had seen him last. There were unfamiliar lines around his eyes, threads of grey in his hair. Andromeda blinked at him, there on her doorstep like an apparition from another life, and reminded herself that this haggard-looking young man was only twenty-four, the same age as Sirius.

No, she wouldn't think about Sirius.

"Come in, please," she said to her unexpected guest, surprised to hear emotion welling up in her own voice. She had missed him, this serious, world-weary young man who understood her own grief.

"Thank you," Remus said, still shuffling uncertainly on the stone front step of her cottage. Andromeda reached out to usher him inside, and felt his bony shoulder blades sharp beneath her guiding hand.

It was nearly evening, so Andromeda skipped the offer of tea and moved straight to making him dinner. Remus demurred; Andromeda looked his gaunt frame up and down and told him to take a seat at the table. And despite his protests, Remus ate like a man who hadn't seen a proper meal in years.

"Where's Izzy today?" he asked as they ate. When Andromeda pointed out that Isidore was 11 years old now and had started his first year at Hogwarts, Remus dropped his head into his hands. "Oh, Merlin," he said. "Now I truly feel old." Then he blushed, remembering that she was another seven years older than he.

In many ways, rejoining the wizarding world had felt stranger to Andromeda than learning to live among Muggles had done. She had been slow and cautious in effecting her return, reconnecting one by one with a few people she'd known before, in her previous wizarding life. Not her family, of course, but others, fellow Hogwarts students she'd found level-headed and likeable at the time, and hoped might prove still to be so now.

She'd kept her house in the Muggle village, but had found a job at the Ministry as an administrative assistant to the Wizengamot, and she worked at it feverishly, madly, determined to leverage her way up to a position with the power to impact wizarding law-making as quickly as possible.

She had to try to make a difference, however small. Because Andromeda could see that nothing in the wizarding world had truly changed. Some Death Eaters were in prison now, certainly, but those who'd managed to weasel their way out of an Azkaban sentence were just as influential with the Ministry as they had ever been. Lucius had kept out of Azkaban, though Bellatrix and her husband hadn't, and Andromeda knew he was at the Ministry almost constantly, greasing palms. She kept away from the departments she knew he frequented. She had no desire to learn whether Lucius would pitch a fit at the sight of her, or if he would glide icily past as if she didn't exist.

This was still not a world in which she wanted her son to grow up. The open threat of Voldemort was gone, yes, but the prejudices that had allowed him to take over the minds of their society lingered and festered under the surface.

Andromeda wondered what had brought Remus back to wizarding Britain, after three long years away. Why now? Why ever, for that matter?

But she waited until they had finished their meal, and were sitting at the table in the warm lamplight and sipping the cognac she saved for special occasions, before she asked, "So, where have you been all this time, Remus?"

"Wandering," Remus said, with weariness in his voice. "Working when I could. Getting by, somehow."

"And what brought you back?" Andromeda asked, trying to make the question gentle.

Remus shrugged, his eyes pained. The lamplight rendered his face a little softer, a little younger, but his cheeks were still far too hollow, and his eyes were dark wells of memory. "Being elsewhere wasn't any better than being here, it turned out."

"Do you think you'll stay?"

"If I can find work. It's – sometimes, it's not–" Remus fingered the stem of his glass, seeming to struggle with himself. Then he said, "Andromeda, I'd like to tell you something." Finally, he looked up and met her gaze, his eyes startling and deep. No young man, she thought, should have such a world-weary gaze. "I'm a–" He swallowed, then visibly pushed on. "I'm a werewolf. That's why it's hard for me to find steady work, because I'm a werewolf."

Andromeda felt her mouth fall open, and closed it.

"Oh," she said.

She saw how Remus tensed. "I'm so sorry, I've misled you all these years without meaning to, I should have said–" He was already half-rising from his chair.

"No," Andromeda said. "Sit down, Remus."

He sat.

"You haven't misled me. Your medical condition is yours to disclose or not, as you wish. It doesn't concern me, and it doesn't change in the least how I think of you."

His voice baffled and small, Remus asked, "How do you think of me?"

Andromeda studied him, sitting there across the table from her, his face cast in half shadow now from the lamp beside the table. He wasn't a boy anymore, was he?

"Kind," she said. "Intelligent. Funny, when you want to be. Eminently capable of looking after yourself. But, Remus, you don't have to do everything alone. You're welcome here any time, I want you to know that."

"Thank you," Remus said, his voice hoarse. "I – thank you."

They met each other's eyes, and it occurred to Andromeda there, at the worn wooden table in her dining room with dusk falling around them, that she might well need Remus' friendship just as much as he clearly could do with hers.

She was sorry, truly sorry for Remus, that he hadn't been able to outrun his grief by running abroad. And yet she couldn't help but be glad, too, that in the end his restless path had brought him back here, to England and to her door. She hoped life here would go a little easier on him, this time around. She hoped this time he would choose to stay.

V. A Spark (1986)

Isidore was in bed, despite his protests that he was thirteen and not a child, and having a set bedtime was ridiculous, and anyway it was summer and it was still light out, so how was that fair?

Andromeda often had to bite her tongue against telling him just how good he had it compared to her own strict upbringing. But the paucity of information she shared with her son about the rest of the family was intentional. He didn't need to know that his grandparents on both sides considered his continued existence a disgrace – both she and her son had been blasted off the Black family tree, and Isidore, despite bearing the name Malfoy, was no longer that family's heir – nor that he had a mad, incarcerated aunt who would as soon kill him as look at him.

"You're far away," Remus commented, absently swirling the wine in his glass. Nearly two years of being a frequent visitor at their house, and he was finally loosening up enough to talk to Andromeda like a friend rather than an awe-inducing older sister. "What's on your mind?"

Andromeda sighed, settling further back against the sofa. "Family, I suppose. It still seems a bit mad to me that Isidore has grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins that he's never known. Even a half-brother. Well, a half-brother who's also his first cousin." She gave a soft snort. "We always did take the prize for inbreeding, we Blacks."

Remus stiffened almost imperceptibly beside her, and belatedly Andromeda remembered that at hearing the name Black, Remus invariably thought first of Sirius, the friend he'd loved like a brother, who'd betrayed them all and devastated Remus' life.

"I'm sorry," she murmured. "I know you don't like being reminded of him. I ought not to talk about my family with you."

When Remus said nothing to that, Andromeda turned to look at him, and found him blinking at her, comical in his confusion.

"I've never – I mean –" he fumbled. "Andromeda, no, I've never meant to give you the impression you weren't allowed to talk about your family, about – Sirius' family." He stumbled a little over the name, but found his voice again. "Say as much as you like. I've simply had the impression you didn't like to talk about them, that's all."

"There's not much to say," Andromeda said. "I tried to play by their rules, for far longer than I should have done. I should have had the sense to get out before it even started, before I let them marry me off."

Remus gazed at the glass in his hand. "If you hadn't let them marry you off," he commented, voice level, "then you wouldn't have Isidore now. And that, it seems to me, would be an unfathomable loss."

Bizarrely, Andromeda thought then not of her own child, but of Harry, little Harry Potter. The boy who, in a more kindly world, ought to have been like a godson or a favourite nephew to lonely, family-deprived Remus. She'd asked Remus, once, whether he'd been in touch with Harry since his return to England. He'd answered "No" with such pain and terror in his voice that she'd never asked again.

"That's true," she agreed. "My son is worth a few years of having to watch Lucius Malfoy turn up his nose at everything I cared about."

Remus chuckled, and Andromeda leaned over to refill his glass. They were on their second bottle, a nice vintage of Merlot that had recently become a favourite of Andromeda's. She earned a good salary now, as a senior clerk for the Wizengamot, and she liked to treat Remus to nice things, whenever she thought she could slip it past him. She knew how little he had, and also much his pride prevented him from accepting anything that could be construed as charity. And Remus' definition of charity was frustratingly broad.

As Andromeda finished pouring and went to set the decanter back on the low table in front of them, her hand brushed accidentally against Remus'. She heard his quick intake of breath.

Oh, Andromeda thought.

She set the wine on the table, straightened up again, and turned to look at Remus. His eyes were wide and shocked, fixed on hers. He looked as if he were trying not to breathe.

Very carefully, leaving Remus plenty of time to turn away if he chose, Andromeda leaned in and kissed him. His lips were warm and tasted of wine.

Remus gasped, and pressed against her, his mouth eager but gentle. For three seconds, four, five, they were kissing, and the world was perfectly as it should be.

Then Remus startled back from Andromeda, panic flaring in his eyes again. "No," he said, his voice harsh with alarm. "No, I can't, you know what I am, it was wrong of me to–" He broke off, breathing hard. "Forgive me," he begged, real fear in his eyes that she might somehow fail to forgive him for doing something so good and right.

"There's nothing to forgive – Remus–" Andromeda tried to catch his hand, but he was standing, setting his wineglass on the table with shaking hands, avoiding her gaze.

"I ought to go," he muttered. "I shouldn't have – yes – I'm sorry–"

Then he was out the door and gone, even as Andromeda was jumping up from the sofa, calling after him.

*

"Where's Remus been lately?" Isidore asked over breakfast a couple days later. "Usually he's over here all the time. Didn't scare him off, Mum, did you?"

"I imagine he's simply busy at the moment," Andromeda said, in what she hoped was a neutral but quelling tone. Sometimes she couldn't help but wish her son were just a little less perceptive.

"Mm-hm," Isidore said, smiling down at his porridge, and Andromeda wondered just what he saw, or imagined he saw. Had Isidore sensed something between her and Remus before even Andromeda herself had?

"Isidore," she felt compelled to say. "You know that Remus and I are just friends, right?"

"Yeah, Mum," Isidore said, his face all innocence – until Andromeda realised his nose was lengthening, almost imperceptibly.

Isidore had loved the story of Pinocchio, when he'd learned it at his Muggle primary school, and he'd spent months afterwards growing and shrinking his own nose in response to how truthful he felt the adults around him were being at any given time. And since Andromeda had had to train him very strictly never to let any sign of his magic show when he was at school, she tried not to curb him any more than necessary at home. So she had put up with him cheekily lengthening his nose at her whenever he disagreed with something she said. He'd outgrown the habit eventually, but it still made a brief reappearance now and again.

But he didn't say anything more, so Andromeda busied herself with washing up the breakfast dishes and let the question slip away.

One thing Isidore was right about, though: Remus truly was a frequent visitor at their house, more frequent than any of Andromeda's other friends, and his absence now felt strange, as if a part of their family were missing.

*

Remus turned up again a week later, with a sheepish smile and a bottle of wine that he held out to Andromeda in an obvious peace offering.

"I'm sorry," he said, still lurking in the doorway, even after Andromeda had accepted the wine and motioned that he should come in. "I panicked and ran away. I shouldn't have run away. But, Andromeda, the panic was warranted. I'm not a safe person to get too close to, and I won't allow myself to do that to you. I can't even hold a job, let alone a position in respectable society. And the full moons – well, let's just say they're not nice at all."

Andromeda thought about how Remus always disappeared for a few days around the full moons, unwilling to inflict on her his physical discomforts before or after the transformation. Unwilling to trust her when she said she didn't mind, that she would rather be there for him than to know he was out there somewhere, suffering alone.

It hurt, to think of Remus suffering alone. And it hurt even more now that she knew Remus felt more for her than she'd ever realised, yet wouldn't let himself act on it, out of some misplaced sense of responsibility.

Andromeda could have given him a good shake for that. And she could just as easily have kissed him, for the tender concern on his face.

"Oh, Remus," she said. "I don't mind all those things. How can you not have realised that I don't mind?"

"I know you don't," Remus said, his voice so achingly grave. "And I appreciate that more than I can say. Your friendship means the world to me, Andromeda, I hope you know that. But it can't be any more than that. It simply can't."

Andromeda looked at Remus, clinging there to her doorway as though it were a life raft keeping him afloat in a turbulent sea, and she saw how earnestly he meant what he said, how he truly believed he could not allow himself to have love.

Maybe that would change. Maybe someday she would be able to change his mind. But right now, Remus looked like a man drowning, and that was a sight Andromeda hated to see.

"All right," she said. "I can't say I agree, but I understand. Won't you come inside, Remus? I'm still your friend, regardless."

"Thank you," Remus murmured, sweet and shy, and he finally stepped over the threshold into her house.

VI. A Flame (1986/1987)

Being "just friends" wasn't as easily done as said, of course. They were forever catching each other's glances too long, then trying to pretend they hadn't seen. They still laughed together, and shared their worries and troubles together, and spent much of their time together. The truth of it was that they were each other's main support, romantic relationship or no.

On 1 September, after Andromeda had seen Isidore off on the Hogwarts Express and arrived home to an empty house, Remus came over with an armful of flowers picked from the garden of the ramshackle cottage he rented in Yorkshire.

On 31 October, the anniversary of James and Lily's deaths, Andromeda provided Remus with dinner and distraction in the form of conversation on any and every topic she could think of, and Remus gave her a painful and grateful smile.

Andromeda invited Remus to spend Christmas with her and Isidore, because Remus' parents were dead and Andromeda's might as well have been for all the role they had in her life, and no one should have to be alone at Christmas.

Remus insisted on doing all the cooking, taking over Andromeda's kitchen for the day and teaching Isidore to make the stuffing that had been Remus' mother's favourite. Andromeda, seeing to the pudding from the worktop at the other end of the kitchen, watched the two of them, heads bent together over the baking pan, Isidore scooping up a finger's worth of stuffing to taste and Remus laughing at something Isidore had said. Isidore's hair had once again subtly shifted to match Remus' in colour, and Andromeda felt her cheeks ache from smiling.

After dinner had been eaten and cleared away, Andromeda gave in to Isidore's pleas to let him spend a few hours at the home of one of his school friends, Charlie Weasley. With the house suddenly quiet, Andromeda and Remus repaired to the sofa by the crackling fire with cups of mulled wine.

This time it was Remus, his eyes bright in the firelight, who leaned in and kissed her, his lips soft and gentle and so warm. Andromeda felt it flood through her, the rightness of this moment, of Remus' lips against hers.

Remus sighed and pulled away, eyes still closed. "I can't," he murmured. "Merlin, I want to, but I mustn't."

"Tell me why not," Andromeda said.

Remus' eyes snapped open. "I'm a Dark Creature," he said. "I am poor, a pariah, and a very real danger. I would never want to inflict any of that on you."

"Remus," she said. "I don't care a whit about wealth or reputation. If I cared about those things, I could just as well have stayed a Black. I burned that bridge a long, long time ago. As for physical safety, I know you would never allow any situation to come about where I might be in danger from you, and I know I would never allow it either. I wish you would trust me that far, trust me when I say I won't leave you alone with the responsibility of keeping us both safe."

Remus stared back at her. "You really mean that," he said, his eyes gone wide with wonder.

"I do."

"You don't mind…what I am."

"I don't mind who you are. In fact, I like exactly who you are. Very much so."

"I… I need to think," Remus said. His glance darted to her lips, to his cup of mulled wine, to the dancing fire. "I don't think I can think very clearly just now. I may need some days to sort out what I ought to say to that. Can you give me some time?"

"Of course," Andromeda said. "Take all the time you need."

*

He did take time. The new year had begun and Isidore had left again for Hogwarts, when Remus showed up at the door, hands shoved into his sleeves for warmth and the dove grey woollen scarf Andromeda had given him for Christmas wrapped around his neck. He looked a little wild-eyed, smiling with a strange and nervous happiness.

"Happy new year," Remus said.

"Happy new year," Andromeda returned, feeling a smile break across her own face at the sight of Remus in all his uncertainty and warmth. "Won't you come in?"

"I've missed you," he said a little bashfully, as he followed Andromeda into the sitting room.

"And I you," she said, and she turned in time to see Remus smile.

"And I began to think, maybe that really is what matters most. I've been doing a great deal of thinking," he said, once he was standing by the fire, unwinding his scarf and rubbing his hands together to warm them. "And oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, what I've been thinking about most is James and Lily. They married at a time when the world was falling apart around us. By any logical measure, it seems a crazy thing to have done. And yet, I don't think they were wrong to reach out for happiness, despite everything. I would like to think I'm even a fraction as brave as they were. Does that make sense?"

"Yes," Andromeda said. "Utterly." She stepped closer and took his cold hands in hers, wanting to warm them with her touch. Remus looked down at their hands, then up at her, and Andromeda saw that he had no idea where to start.

"I'm going to kiss you," she told him. "And if at any point anything is more than you want, I'll stop. But just for tonight, I want you to try not to worry so much about what you think is right or wrong or proper, and instead let yourself feel what it is that you want. Please," she added, because what else did she have but the honesty of her desire? She wanted this for herself, and for Remus too – for him to let himself let go.

Remus gazed back at her, his eyes deep and warm.

"Does that sound okay?" Andromeda asked softly.

"Yes," Remus said, never looking away. "Very much yes."

So Andromeda leaned in, closed her eyes and kissed him. Just that, his lips brushing against hers, lit her up through and through. Remus' hand came up to rest against her back, and Andromeda kissed him harder. Unexpectedly, Remus smiled against her lips.

"All right so far?" she murmured, nearly holding her breath in anticipation of his answer.

"Yes," he whispered. "Very much all right."

"I want this," she whispered back. "I want you. Just you, like this, just as you are."

Her eyes still tightly closed, Andromeda felt Remus nod. I've done it all backwards, she thought. First I got married, then I became a mother, and only then did I fall in love.

Opening her eyes, Andromeda took Remus' hand and led him away from the fire. With the gentle pressure of her hands against his shoulders, she lay him down on the sofa, then followed him down, her lips still seeking his. Remus pulled her to him, firmly, certain now. He reached up and found the clip that held her hair back, worked it loose, and Andromeda shook her hair free, until it fell in a dark curtain around them both. She slid one hand up under Remus' shirt, feeling the welcoming warmth of his skin, and Remus looked up into her face and smiled and smiled.

Where once Andromeda had had to remind herself that Remus was an adult now, no longer a child tagging along behind her baby cousin, these days she more often had to remind herself that he wasn't nearly as old as the hardship of his life had made him seem. It was only when he smiled that Remus looked his true age, with the carefree joy of a man not yet thirty.

"So," she said softly, pressing down against him, and Remus, following instinct at last, arched to meet her. "Are we doing this?"

"Yes," Remus agreed, a whisper in her ear. "We're doing this."

Careful not to sound judgemental about it, Andromeda asked, "Have you done this before?" With Remus and his insistence that everything about himself was dangerous and not to be allowed, it was difficult to know.

He gave a self-deprecating laugh. "Yeah. Couple of times."

"Oh?" she teased, still gentle. "What happened to being too dangerous for anything beyond friendship?"

Remus' mouth made a wry twist. "It found itself on a collision course with being nineteen years old and horny, that's what happened to it."

Andromeda laughed with delight at the unexpected combination of Remus Lupin and the word horny, then sobered at the thought that that might indeed have been the last time he'd allowed himself to give in to this, at the age of nineteen.

"Remus," she said, though he lifted his head and met her with kiss that left no doubt as to his intentions. "You're sure?"

"Yes," he said, his voice dropping lower, as long-suppressed desire began to slip out between his measured words. "I'm allowing myself to feel what I want, and I'm sure."

He was clear-eyed and certain, and Andromeda was only too glad to lean in and seal that sentiment with a searing kiss.


(continue to the next part HERE)