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starfishstarRAISE YOUR LANTERN HIGH
Summary: In which Remus and Tonks fight battles, arrest criminals, befriend werewolves, overcome inner demons and, despite it all, find themselves a happy ending. A love story, and a story of the Order years. (My Remus/Tonks epic, which has been years in the making! This is the second half of the story, set in the Half-Blood Prince year.)
Chapter 18: Scents of Spring
And in the spring I shed my skin
And it blows away with the changing wind
–Florence + the Machine, Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)
Tonks stood outside the Three Broomsticks, her foot tapping with anxious energy she couldn’t quite contain. The first pale hints of spring were emerging around the village, blades of grass slipping up between the cobblestones and tightly furled buds revealing themselves on the branches of the trees. Today for the first time she’d worn her favourite spring cloak, a vivid red one, instead of her more sombre winter wear.
Nervously crossing and uncrossing her arms as she waited there in the Hogsmeade high street, seeing that flash of red in the corner of her vision whenever her eye caught sight of her own sleeves, Tonks was unexpectedly reminded of an old Muggle tale her dad had told her when she was small, the one about the girl in the red cloak and the dangerous, scheming wolf she met on her way through the woods. Tonks frowned. Yes, she was here to meet a man who was also a wolf. But he was nothing like that old prejudiced folktale view of what a wolf must be.
“Something the matter?” asked a quiet voice at her ear. Tonks whirled towards the sound, overbalanced, stumbled half a step forward, and Remus’ hand caught her impeccably by the elbow.
Her co-liaison had arrived for their meeting.
“Hi,” Tonks gasped.
“Hello,” Remus said, his eyes fixed sombrely on hers.
Oh, he was a feast for the eyes. Remus was pale and thin in his endlessly patched clothes, but he didn’t look any worse than he’d done that day when Tonks had seen him, so briefly, outside the Hogwarts gates. And most of all, he was whole. He was safe. He was here.
Remus glanced down, realised he still held Tonks’ elbow in his hand, and let go.
“Happy birthday, belatedly,” Tonks blurted out. “Tell me you didn’t forget your own birthday again.”
Remus gave a laugh, short and startled, but a very welcome sound. “No,” he said. “Not at all. But the pack don’t observe much in the way of birthdays. We celebrated the spring equinox far more than we did any one person’s birthday.”
We, he said. We, the pack, had celebrated the equinox. No other single word could have reminded Tonks so forcefully how much time had passed, how much must have changed, since she’d last properly spoken to Remus.
“It’s, um,” she said. “It’s good to see you.”
“And you,” Remus said, his voice thick with – what exactly? Emotions, yes, but which ones?
Tonks studied him, probing with her eyes for signs of injury or illness. So many full moons he’d come back from his travels and she’d studied him like this, looking closely to reassure herself he really was all right.
Accurately assessing the meaning of her gaze, Remus said, “I’m fine, Dora, truly. The pack I live with is a peaceful one. They themselves pose no danger to me.”
Anger flashed through Tonks, or maybe it was a spike of the same fear and worry that had been her constant companions through all these many months of no contact from Remus, no way to know if he was even still alive. She felt the panic of it flare in her stomach, a residual fear. “Well, it would have been great if you’d ever bothered to tell me that,” she snapped.
Remus stared at her, like it had never occurred to him that she might worry.
Tonks straightened her shoulders, angry at herself, now, for letting her feelings slip out. This was meant to be a work meeting, liaison to liaison, werewolf pack to Order of the Phoenix. It hurt so much, to stand here in front of Remus at long last and then talk about nothing but business, but that’s what she was supposed to do. This was work, this was the Order. This was not meant to be about them.
A spring breeze ruffled Remus’ hair, and Tonks stared up over his head and tried to pull her voice back to something halfway professional. Finally, when she felt able to get the words out, she said, “So, let’s talk business. Dumbledore’s been hinting he wants me to try to arrange a meeting with some of the pack. Did he say the same to you? What’s the plan?”
“I –” Remus hesitated, then seemed to gather himself. “Yes, I think that should be possible. It will take time and some convincing, but I hope eventually to bring a few of the pack members here to visit Hogsmeade. I would very much like for them to have a chance to see that there are some good sides to wizarding society, not only the prejudice they’ve experienced.” Again, he hesitated, then said more softly, “And I’d like – I’d like for you to meet them. You of all people, Dora, would be able to see them for the people they are.”
It was unfair. So unfair of him to say a thing like that, and give her a look like that, and still be intending to leave after this meeting and disappear back into his other life.
“Sure, I’d be glad to,” Tonks said, hoping her voice sounded steadier than she felt. “Bring the pack here, if they’re willing to come. We could meet up for a day, I could show them around the village.”
Remus was giving her that grave look, almost awed, that he got whenever she reacted to talk of werewolves with equanimity instead of the horror and disgust he seemed to expect.
Tonks sympathised with the experiences he must have had, to leave him expecting such contempt from everyone he met. She sympathised so much. But Remus was staring at her like the offer she’d just made was something extraordinary, and it wasn’t. She was certain it wasn’t. Anyone would offer the same, once they’d had a chance to get to know a few werewolves and understand that they were people, too. Tonks believed that. She had to believe it, or what was the point of all this, the pain of this terrible war?
“Right,” she said with great determination. “Tell me about the pack. Give me some background, so I know a bit about them when we meet.”
– – – – –
“I’ve changed my mind,” Remus said, approaching Serena with the slightly submissive posture of a werewolf asking an equal for a favour. “Would you teach me to retain memories from my wolf mind, starting this next full moon? I would like to learn.”
Serena looked up from where she was whittling an as-yet-unidentifiable object from a piece of wood and raised an eyebrow at him. “Would you, now?”
Remus dropped to his haunches beside her, a position that now felt like a natural one in which to hold a conversation. “I realise I can never learn it as well as I could do if I’d trained from the time I was a child, but I would like to try to learn what I can.”
After a full moon night, Remus never woke with more than a vague sense that he had or hadn’t eaten, had or hadn’t run all night and worn his limbs into exhaustion. He could never tell stories, as the others here did, of games and races he’d engaged in with another werewolf, or how many hares he had chased across the moor, or how the bright moon had shone behind scudding clouds. Remus had no conscious memory of ever having seen a full moon.
And since he’d met with Tonks in Hogsmeade, not only had she been on his mind even more constantly than before, but some strange sense had been brewing in Remus that this – learning to recall what he could of the time spent in his wolf mind – was a thing he needed to do to better understand himself. It dismayed him, now: How had he ever thought he could be a partner to Tonks when he didn’t have even a rudimentary understanding of such a significant part of himself? Yet another aspect of his own astonishing naïveté. Not only had he never tried to train this part of his mind, but he’d presumptuously believed he didn’t need to.
Serena gave him a considering look, then nodded. “I’ll teach you,” she said. “You can practise together with the children this full moon.”
On the day of the full moon, in the early evening before the sun set, Serena sat Remus down next to Joy and Eirwen at one side of the clearing. First, she ran them through a series of breathing and focusing exercises. She explained, for Remus’ benefit, “The idea is to cultivate a habit, in the human mind as well as the wolf mind, of listening to our unconscious senses, not only our conscious ones. So, let’s practise: What do you smell right now?”
“The campfire. Grass. New yew tree needles,” Eirwen answered promptly. Her confidence had grown in leaps and bounds in the weeks since the pack had driven Greyback away.
“Cold,” said little Joy. “Not snow, but maybe, like it’s an idea of snow? Is it going to snow again tonight, Mama?”
Serena lifted her nose towards the sky and inhaled deeply. “Hmm. Could well be. Well done, Little One.”
Joy wriggled happily. “I hope it does snow, just one more time. Then it’s allowed to be spring.”
“What about you, Quiet?” Serena asked. “What do you smell?”
Remus closed his eyes and inhaled. “Werewolves,” he said, the first and strongest scent that came to him. There were subtleties of scent that distinguished a werewolf, small differences that lurked beneath the outwardly human form.
“How many?” Serena probed.
Remus kept his eyes closed, asking his conscious awareness to stand down, letting the minute informational threads drifting on the breeze pass through and around him. “Seven,” he said finally. “I think Alpha and Thunderstorm must be away hunting right now.”
“Hm, good,” Serena said.
They ran through similar exercises with their senses of sight and of hearing, then rounded out the session with more breathing and some mental exercises that reminded Remus of what Muggles would call meditation. He wasn’t entirely sure how it all related, but he trusted Serena.
That night, just before the sun set and the moon rose, she said to Remus, “As you transform, keep thinking the words, ‘I will remember my senses’ over and over to yourself for as long as you can. It doesn’t sound like much, but it primes your mind to focus on the senses even when you’re no longer consciously thinking about them.”
Remus nodded his thanks, then stepped away from Serena to find a spot where he could transform in semi-privacy. The pack were communally minded in almost all things, but the first excruciating minutes of a full moon night were one time when all werewolves sought solitude.
Remus could feel the full moon, hidden just behind the rise of the moor to the east, already tugging at his body and his mind. His bones ached, more with each passing minute, and his thoughts were growing fuzzier, slowing down. It became increasingly hard to form a human thought in those last moments before moonrise, but for as long as possible, Remus continued to repeat inside his head, I will remember my senses. I will remember my senses.
The moon’s pull was tearing at his body now, every cell frantic in its need to change shape. Bones screamed against skin, muscles ripped themselves apart. From long years of practice, Remus did not cry out. I will remember my senses, he thought one last, desperate time, then his body tore itself to pieces and he knew no more.
– – – – –
Remus came to consciousness lying flat on his back, panting with exertion. In every fibre, he could feel that his body had moments ago painstakingly pieced itself back together, from its smallest parts up to the whole. His limbs ached and his throat was raw, and Remus allowed himself the smallest of groans. Transforming hurt, it would always hurt. But here, in the company of other werewolves, at least he didn’t wake to find that the wolf had spent the night trying to tear its own flesh apart.
I will remember my senses. The words drifted sluggishly through Remus’ mind. He opened his eyes to the tree branches above him, where the new green life of spring was unfurling.
He could recall the sound of the others howling, Remus realised. It was not perfectly distinct, but there was more clarity to it than he’d ever retained before. And with that sound memory to latch onto, other snatches of awareness came as well – the warm familiarity of wolfish figures running out ahead of him, the glint of moonlight on silvery fur.
Remus dropped his head back down against the ground, not even having noticed that he’d raised it in astonishment as the memories hit. This was more than he’d ever remembered from a full moon night, brief though the flashes of memory were. So it was possible to learn to remember, extrapolating what he had done from the remembrance of how it had felt. Just as Anna had told him in the beginning, when Remus had been too sceptical to believe. Still nauseous from the transformation, Remus rested his head against the ground and quietly laughed at himself.
When he finally felt able to sit up, Remus looked around for Serena, and saw her across the clearing with Joy in her lap. Finding his legs unsteadily, Remus made his way across to them.
He was hesitant to disturb their peaceful tableau, but Serena smiled when she saw him, so Remus settled gingerly onto the ground next to them. Serena seemed to be quizzing Joy on what she remembered of the night. Joy had her eyes squeezed tightly shut in concentration, and Serena’s hands rested gently on the girl’s head, as if that warm contact might help her remember. Perhaps it did.
“Um, and, and –” Joy was saying, “– and then we weren’t running with everyone, we were running just me and you, and you showed me those yellowy flowery plants –”
“Gorse,” Serena supplied.
“Yeah, and I tried to smell them and it was really prickly! And I wanted to try to smell them again, but you kept running moonrise-way.”
“East,” Serena corrected gently.
“Yeah, and then, ooh, then Quiet came and joined us!”
Remus startled. Had he?
“And he played that game with me, what’s it called?”
“Hide and seek.” Serena cast an amused glance at Remus, who stared back at her.
He had played hide and seek with Joy? Did wolves play hide and seek? What had they even hidden behind, on the open moor?
“That’s our Quiet,” Serena added. “Everyone else wants to hunt and race and howl at the moon, but Quiet just wants to be sure our littlest one is having fun.” She shot Remus another look, more intent than the last. Remus swallowed and looked away.
“Would he play with me in human shape, too?” Joy wanted to know, eyes still tightly shut.
“Why don’t you ask him?” Serena suggested. “He’s right here.”
Joy’s eyes popped open and she wriggled around to face Remus. “Hi, Quiet! Will you play hide and seek with me?” As the youngest of the pack, she was the only one who didn’t seem to be feeling any ill effects from having had her body ripped apart and slammed back together at moonrise and again at moonset.
“Gladly,” Remus agreed.
“Right now?” She was already scooting around in Serena’s lap, making to stand up.
Serena rested a staying hand on her shoulder. “Let Quiet rest after the moon, first, Little One. Ask him again this evening, or tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Joy sighed, sounding terribly put-upon. “I don’t know if can wait that long, but I’ll try.”
Serena smiled over Joy’s head at Remus. “And you, Quiet? What do you remember?”
“Little more than glimpses,” Remus admitted. “The sound of howling. The way it looked when I was at the back of the pack and everyone else was running out ahead of me. I think I can remember the taste of snow on the air.” He reached over and tapped Joy gently on the nose. “You were right, weren’t you? It did snow in the night.”
“It did!” Joy agreed, her petulance forgotten. “And I caught snowflakes on my tongue, and they tasted like winter solstice, even though it’s already past equinox!”
“And that may well be your last snow of the season, because spring is coming, sure as you can say ‘Beltane’,” Serena told Joy, cuddling her closer for a moment. “Now, how about some breakfast? Since you’re so full of pep, Little One, why don’t you go see if there are any apples left and report back to us?”
“Okay!” Joy leapt from Serena’s lap and landed lightly on her feet. Both Serena and Remus shook their heads at her energy as they watched her scamper away across the clearing.
– – – – –
A Hogsmeade resident reported having seen a window suspiciously ajar at the back of an unoccupied building in the village. Ever vigilant, Tonks went and watched the place for several nights, but she saw nothing out of the usual.
Proudfoot, when she told him about it afterwards, was dismissive. “What did you expect? You can’t follow up on every single supposed lead from people who are panicking, Tonks. You’ve got to pick and choose what’s worth looking into. I know you’re young enough not to believe this yet, but you only have twenty-four hours in a day, just like the rest of us.”
Tonks frowned at him at the time – condescending about her age and about her ability to do her job correctly, great, thanks – but the next day, as she walked along the high street on her patrol rounds, looking nonchalant but always scanning the village for signs of danger, she couldn’t help thinking there was a small way in which Proudfoot was right.
Tonks hated – no, strike that, she detested – hitting up against the limits of how much she could do. It drove her wild to think there was something nefarious going on in Hogsmeade and she couldn’t seem to catch it. The clues kept slipping through her fingers.
But it wouldn’t do any good, either, to obsess over one thread of investigation to the point of neglecting her other duties.
Tonks knew it couldn’t always be dramatic battles with clear winners and losers. Sometimes fighting this war meant plodding on through the day-to-day, in the hope that she was still doing some good, even if it was in less quantifiable ways.
She looked around at the village as she walked. Even in the spring sunshine, Hogsmeade had the look of a place in fearful hiding. Tonks kicked at the cobblestones, even as she kept her wand at the ready and her eyes alert. It ached, seeing so many shuttered houses and subdued shops.
She repeated it in her head like a mantra: I can’t fix everything. There’s only so much one person can do. But I’m damn well going to do as much as I can.
– – – – –
His new role as liaison between the pack and the Order brought Remus a sudden degree of freedom. Before, his ties to wizardkind had been something to keep circumspectly quiet; now those same connections were an asset. When Order duties or a meeting with Dumbledore occasionally took him away from the pack, none of the werewolves begrudged him the time away.
For the first time in Remus’ life, balancing his werewolf life and his human one didn’t seem such an impossibility.
He was even able to catch up on some of his own research that he’d had to neglect while living away from books and society, now that he had occasional opportunities to borrow and skim a book from Dumbledore before it was time to return to the moor.
One day, with a little free time left before he was expected back at the pack, Remus even got a chance to Apparate to London to visit the Magical Archives there. He’d been wanting to look for any recorded mentions of werewolves that could shed light on how and why Britain’s separate packs had formed. The werewolves’ own historical record was preserved entirely through oral storytelling, which provided valuable insight but didn’t tend to be strong on hard dates. Wizarding records might help, even if most written sources would be filtered through wizards’ prejudiced viewpoint.
Remus Apparated to the back entrance of the outwardly drab office block that housed the Archives. He located the correct window (third from the left), tapped the correct corner (upper right), and the window spun like a pinwheel until it resolved into a door.
Inside, he approached the welcome desk, where a bored young wizard weighed his wand and issued him a small rectangular card reading “Remus Lupin, Visitor: Research,” which Remus fastened to the front of his robes. Then he was free to ride the lift down to the lower level, into the Archives themselves.
He hadn’t been here for several years, but the scent of books and old parchment that rose up to meet Remus’ nose as he stepped off the lift was a familiar one. Oh, it was good to be back among books. He browsed, flipping through volumes and checking footnotes, and eventually determined that the book most likely to be of use was an older volume housed on a level even further down, in the Preservation and Restoration department.
He took the lift again, then wound his way through an open-plan floor crammed with shelves, to the Archivist’s desk at the back of the room. A young woman sat behind the desk, although all Remus could see of her was the top of a blonde head of hair as she bent over a piece of parchment, painstakingly reconstructing it from miniscule fragments.
Hating to disturb her concentration, Remus cleared his throat quietly and said, “I’m sorry to bother you, but I was told on the main level you might be able to help me find the book I’m looking for.”
The witch behind the desk looked up with a kind smile. “Of course. What’s the title?” Her eyes flicked reflexively to his visitor’s nametag, then seemed to stutter there. She blinked, and returned her eyes to his face with an unreadable expression.
Disconcerted, Remus answered, “Er… A Most Wonderfulle Account of Travels in the British Wilds. Here, I’ve written it down.” He held out the slip of paper on which he’d noted the title.
The Archivist glanced at the paper. “Yeah, no problem. Hang on a sec.” She slid from her seat and disappeared into a back room, casting him a last, indecipherable look as she went.
When she returned, she handed Remus the book in question, its faded grey cover soft with age. He took the book from her gently and thumbed through it. Yes, here was the chapter he needed, a naturalist’s account of a year spent tracking the movements of Britain’s – at that time – five werewolf packs. Remus scanned the first few paragraphs, and was wryly gratified to find the tone of the writing only mildly prejudiced.
“Is there any way I could get copies of just these pages, chapter 12?” Remus asked. He looked up to find the witch still staring at him. Had they crossed paths somewhere before? Or did she know him by his unfortunate public reputation, as the werewolf teacher exposed at Hogwarts?
“Er, yeah,” she said, her tone slightly strained. “I can do the charm for that, if you don’t mind waiting a minute or two.”
She took the book back from Remus’ hands, laid out several sheets of parchment next to it, then performed a complex duplication charm. Once the charm was fully invoked and writing was scrawling its way down the parchment sheets, the Archivist looked up at him.
“You’re Remus Lupin,” she said.
“Yes…?” Remus agreed.
“I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Er, have you?” Remus asked, still baffled. She was surely too young to have had children at Hogwarts when he’d taught there, but too old to have been a student at the time herself. And Remus wasn’t aware of being notorious for any reason other than that most obvious one.
She fixed him with a stare. “Nymphadora Tonks is my closest friend.”
“Ah,” Remus replied faintly.
“Yeah,” she agreed. She glanced down at the pages of parchment on her desk, checking their progress. “I’m Ariadne Warwick, by the way. Dunno if Tonks has mentioned me.”
All in a rush, Remus recalled a game of Truth or Dare played in a wintery field, one late night when he and Tonks had volunteered to meet some wizards flying in from abroad with a crate of potions supplies for the Order. The stars that night had been so clear, and Tonks’ laughter so bright, as they waited for the delivery and passed the time with a harmless-seeming game that nonetheless had skirted close to perilously personal questions, even in those early days of their friendship. And in talking of her Hogwarts years, Tonks had indeed mentioned Ariadne.
“Yes,” Remus said, not quite trusting his voice to come out even. “She’s mentioned you.”
“And you,” Ariadne said, unnecessarily. She checked on the duplicating documents again, then returned to scrutinising Remus. “I guess you probably won’t be surprised to hear, I was fully prepared to dislike you.”
“Er,” Remus replied, idiotically.
“But you seem frustratingly nice.”
“Do I?” Remus asked, caught off-guard and surprised.
“Yeah,” Ariadne said, frowning. She glanced down at the pages of parchment between them. “Here, look, your copy is ready, and I’m due for my break anyway. Let’s go get coffee.”
“…Okay,” Remus said, and gave himself over to the sensation that this day was only going to keep getting weirder.
Ariadne rolled the copied pages together, tied them neatly with a length of ribbon and handed the resulting scroll to Remus, who tucked it safely into his robes. She returned the book itself to the back room, muttered a safeguarding charm over the document she’d been piecing together when Remus approached her, then led the way out through the stacks to the lift.
“Björn, I’m taking my half-hour break,” Ariadne called as they passed the young wizard by the entrance, the one who had given Remus his visitor’s pass when he’d first come in.
“Yeah, okay,” agreed Björn, hardly looking up.
Ariadne led Remus down a side street and into a tiny Muggle café barely as wide as a standard shopfront. It was cosy inside, with a handful of patrons at the handful of wooden tables squeezed into the small space. The proprietor, a grey-haired woman, stood behind a miniscule counter heaped high with cakes and pastries.
“What would you like?” Ariadne asked Remus, her tone a little gentler than before. “It’s on me. I’m determined to grill you, so the least I can do is buy you a warm drink while I do it.”
Remus ordered tea, watching the proprietor prepare it and finding the ritual of it oddly comforting. Ariadne got a cappuccino, and they found seats at a small table up front near the window. Setting his tea down on the scuffed wooden tabletop and sliding into his chair, Remus wondered what Tonks’ friend had heard about him. Probably nothing good. Then again, probably nothing he didn’t deserve. He met Ariadne’s eyes.
“So, right,” she said, suddenly looking as uncertain as Remus felt. She swirled her spoon in her coffee, rattling it against the sides of the cup. “So, I dragged you here because…I guess I always thought, if I ever met you and got the chance, I would ask, why did you break up with Tonks? Because I have to tell you, it didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense when she tried to explain it.”
“I didn’t –” Remus began to protest, then stopped himself. “No, you’re right. I was the one who took the decision that we shouldn’t – which is to say – yes, I was the one who broke it off.” He paused, to steady himself for this next bit. “Did Dora – did Tonks – tell you what I am?”
Ariadne cast a quick glance around at the Muggles surrounding them, blithely enjoying their lattes and cappuccinos with no idea there was a werewolf in their midst. “Yes, she told me.”
“And that didn’t strike you as reason enough?”
Ariadne frowned down at her coffee, then up at Remus. “Honestly, no. I mean, I won’t pretend I wasn’t shocked when she told me. And by the way, in case you care, it was months before it occurred to her to mention that fact. Not that she was trying to hide it, mind you, it’s just that there were a hundred other things she was so eager to tell about you first. She didn’t see your illness as your defining characteristic, not by a long chalk. You don’t seem to get that if Tonks says it’s not a problem for her, then it’s really not a problem for her. So what, Remus Lupin, is actually the problem?”
Remus steeled himself to answer as honestly as he could. “You know what I am,” he said. “But you don’t know the itinerant, destitute life I’ve led because of my condition. I am shunned by wizarding society; I’m rarely able to hold a job for more than a few months. Those who associate with me risk becoming pariahs as well. And that’s quite aside from the fact that once a month I become a ravening beast and have to lock myself away lest I kill or maim someone. I wouldn’t wish myself on my worst enemy, let alone someone I – care for. But I deluded myself, for a while, into thinking I could have that: a normal life with someone I care about. In deluding myself, I misled Dora, too, and I wish every day that I could go back and take it all back. I wish I’d never hurt her.”
Ariadne’s eyes were wide and bright with sadness. “So you’re really not going to get back together? There’s no chance of it at all?”
Remus’ voice caught in his throat. “No,” he said hoarsely. “It’s for the best.”
Ariadne’s cappuccino sat forgotten, though her fingers rested against the rim of the cup. She studied Remus, staring hard as if she could see all the way through him. “I think one day you’re going to change your mind,” she said slowly. “So all I’m going to say is: If you do, don’t be too proud to admit it, okay? If you find you’ve changed your mind, don’t hide that from Tonks.”
Remus stared back at her, disconcerted at the certainty in her voice. He knew he wasn’t going to change his mind.
Not because he didn’t want to. Because he couldn’t allow it of himself.
Her gaze still steady on him, Ariadne said, “Just…remember that, okay? When you change your mind, don’t hide it.” She held his eyes another moment, then glanced down and remembered her coffee, which she picked up and sipped.
They passed the next few minutes largely in silence. When Ariadne consulted her pocket watch and told Remus she needed to return to work, he followed her out through the maze of tiny café tables. On the pavement outside, they stopped and faced one another.
Ariadne said, “You’ve got the copied pages?”
“Yes. Thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome.” She fiddled with the watch she still held in her hand, then looked up at Remus. “Sorry for giving you the third degree, but – she’s my best friend. I want her to be happy. So – think about what I said, okay?” She bit her lip, then gave him a very small smile before she turned to go. “Take care, Remus.”
“Goodbye,” Remus said, feeling dazed.
Ariadne turned and walked back towards the Archives. Remus set out in the other direction, and made it perhaps a hundred feet down the street before he had to stop and lean against a building. The whole strange encounter was catching up to him, and his knees felt weak.
He rested one shoulder against the building wall and tried to catch his breath, remembering how Ariadne had stared at him and said, I think one day you’re going to change your mind.
Bizarrely, the thought that popped into Remus’ head was how much Sirius would like Ariadne – seemingly mild at first, then unexpectedly fierce. Very much his type.
And then Remus’ legs did buckle beneath him, because for that one single moment, he’d forgotten Sirius wasn’t here to think anything at all.
Dizzy, Remus turned to press his back fully against the rough brick wall, staring blankly out over the street. He could hear Sirius’ voice clearly in his mind, and that imagined Sirius seemed to say, I may be dead, but she’s right and you know it. It’s not too late to change your mind.
Remus bowed his head, feeling the coarse scrape of the bricks at his back, and closed his eyes, as if shutting out the sight of the world might also block out the voices in his mind. This was not as simple as just doing what he wanted.
Even if he knew exactly what he wanted.
Chapter end notes:
Here I'd like to credit![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stereolightning for the idea that the full moon starts affecting Remus’ mind, slowing down his thoughts, even before the moon rises and the physical transformation starts. I thought that made an awful lot of sense (especially in explaining the events at the end of PoA!) and have adopted it as my headcanon.
Also, Remus' memory that's mentioned here, of the Truth or Dare game late at night in a wintry field, took place in Be the Light in My Lantern, Chapter 7: "Feeling the Pull."
And here, again, is the list of werewolf characters, for your convenient edification!
the Alpha, a male in his 40s, the pack’s leader
Anna, or the Mother, the oldest pack member, symbolic mother of all
Brighid, or Fire, the Alpha’s mate, roughly his age
Serena, or Trouble, roughly Remus’ age
Jack, or Thunderstorm, a little younger than the Alpha, Ashmita’s mate
Ashmita, or Rock Crag, Jack’s mate
Ronan, or Hardwood, young adult member of the pack, perhaps 20
Narun, or Rapids, roughly the same age
Adair, or Jump, roughly the same age
Tamara, or Blackthorn, roughly the same age
Eirwen, or Slither, a young teenager, 13 or 14
Joy, or River Run, the pack’s youngest member, 6 or 7
(continue to CHAPTER 19: Beltane Eve)
Summary: In which Remus and Tonks fight battles, arrest criminals, befriend werewolves, overcome inner demons and, despite it all, find themselves a happy ending. A love story, and a story of the Order years. (My Remus/Tonks epic, which has been years in the making! This is the second half of the story, set in the Half-Blood Prince year.)
Chapter 18: Scents of Spring
And in the spring I shed my skin
And it blows away with the changing wind
–Florence + the Machine, Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)
Tonks stood outside the Three Broomsticks, her foot tapping with anxious energy she couldn’t quite contain. The first pale hints of spring were emerging around the village, blades of grass slipping up between the cobblestones and tightly furled buds revealing themselves on the branches of the trees. Today for the first time she’d worn her favourite spring cloak, a vivid red one, instead of her more sombre winter wear.
Nervously crossing and uncrossing her arms as she waited there in the Hogsmeade high street, seeing that flash of red in the corner of her vision whenever her eye caught sight of her own sleeves, Tonks was unexpectedly reminded of an old Muggle tale her dad had told her when she was small, the one about the girl in the red cloak and the dangerous, scheming wolf she met on her way through the woods. Tonks frowned. Yes, she was here to meet a man who was also a wolf. But he was nothing like that old prejudiced folktale view of what a wolf must be.
“Something the matter?” asked a quiet voice at her ear. Tonks whirled towards the sound, overbalanced, stumbled half a step forward, and Remus’ hand caught her impeccably by the elbow.
Her co-liaison had arrived for their meeting.
“Hi,” Tonks gasped.
“Hello,” Remus said, his eyes fixed sombrely on hers.
Oh, he was a feast for the eyes. Remus was pale and thin in his endlessly patched clothes, but he didn’t look any worse than he’d done that day when Tonks had seen him, so briefly, outside the Hogwarts gates. And most of all, he was whole. He was safe. He was here.
Remus glanced down, realised he still held Tonks’ elbow in his hand, and let go.
“Happy birthday, belatedly,” Tonks blurted out. “Tell me you didn’t forget your own birthday again.”
Remus gave a laugh, short and startled, but a very welcome sound. “No,” he said. “Not at all. But the pack don’t observe much in the way of birthdays. We celebrated the spring equinox far more than we did any one person’s birthday.”
We, he said. We, the pack, had celebrated the equinox. No other single word could have reminded Tonks so forcefully how much time had passed, how much must have changed, since she’d last properly spoken to Remus.
“It’s, um,” she said. “It’s good to see you.”
“And you,” Remus said, his voice thick with – what exactly? Emotions, yes, but which ones?
Tonks studied him, probing with her eyes for signs of injury or illness. So many full moons he’d come back from his travels and she’d studied him like this, looking closely to reassure herself he really was all right.
Accurately assessing the meaning of her gaze, Remus said, “I’m fine, Dora, truly. The pack I live with is a peaceful one. They themselves pose no danger to me.”
Anger flashed through Tonks, or maybe it was a spike of the same fear and worry that had been her constant companions through all these many months of no contact from Remus, no way to know if he was even still alive. She felt the panic of it flare in her stomach, a residual fear. “Well, it would have been great if you’d ever bothered to tell me that,” she snapped.
Remus stared at her, like it had never occurred to him that she might worry.
Tonks straightened her shoulders, angry at herself, now, for letting her feelings slip out. This was meant to be a work meeting, liaison to liaison, werewolf pack to Order of the Phoenix. It hurt so much, to stand here in front of Remus at long last and then talk about nothing but business, but that’s what she was supposed to do. This was work, this was the Order. This was not meant to be about them.
A spring breeze ruffled Remus’ hair, and Tonks stared up over his head and tried to pull her voice back to something halfway professional. Finally, when she felt able to get the words out, she said, “So, let’s talk business. Dumbledore’s been hinting he wants me to try to arrange a meeting with some of the pack. Did he say the same to you? What’s the plan?”
“I –” Remus hesitated, then seemed to gather himself. “Yes, I think that should be possible. It will take time and some convincing, but I hope eventually to bring a few of the pack members here to visit Hogsmeade. I would very much like for them to have a chance to see that there are some good sides to wizarding society, not only the prejudice they’ve experienced.” Again, he hesitated, then said more softly, “And I’d like – I’d like for you to meet them. You of all people, Dora, would be able to see them for the people they are.”
It was unfair. So unfair of him to say a thing like that, and give her a look like that, and still be intending to leave after this meeting and disappear back into his other life.
“Sure, I’d be glad to,” Tonks said, hoping her voice sounded steadier than she felt. “Bring the pack here, if they’re willing to come. We could meet up for a day, I could show them around the village.”
Remus was giving her that grave look, almost awed, that he got whenever she reacted to talk of werewolves with equanimity instead of the horror and disgust he seemed to expect.
Tonks sympathised with the experiences he must have had, to leave him expecting such contempt from everyone he met. She sympathised so much. But Remus was staring at her like the offer she’d just made was something extraordinary, and it wasn’t. She was certain it wasn’t. Anyone would offer the same, once they’d had a chance to get to know a few werewolves and understand that they were people, too. Tonks believed that. She had to believe it, or what was the point of all this, the pain of this terrible war?
“Right,” she said with great determination. “Tell me about the pack. Give me some background, so I know a bit about them when we meet.”
– – – – –
“I’ve changed my mind,” Remus said, approaching Serena with the slightly submissive posture of a werewolf asking an equal for a favour. “Would you teach me to retain memories from my wolf mind, starting this next full moon? I would like to learn.”
Serena looked up from where she was whittling an as-yet-unidentifiable object from a piece of wood and raised an eyebrow at him. “Would you, now?”
Remus dropped to his haunches beside her, a position that now felt like a natural one in which to hold a conversation. “I realise I can never learn it as well as I could do if I’d trained from the time I was a child, but I would like to try to learn what I can.”
After a full moon night, Remus never woke with more than a vague sense that he had or hadn’t eaten, had or hadn’t run all night and worn his limbs into exhaustion. He could never tell stories, as the others here did, of games and races he’d engaged in with another werewolf, or how many hares he had chased across the moor, or how the bright moon had shone behind scudding clouds. Remus had no conscious memory of ever having seen a full moon.
And since he’d met with Tonks in Hogsmeade, not only had she been on his mind even more constantly than before, but some strange sense had been brewing in Remus that this – learning to recall what he could of the time spent in his wolf mind – was a thing he needed to do to better understand himself. It dismayed him, now: How had he ever thought he could be a partner to Tonks when he didn’t have even a rudimentary understanding of such a significant part of himself? Yet another aspect of his own astonishing naïveté. Not only had he never tried to train this part of his mind, but he’d presumptuously believed he didn’t need to.
Serena gave him a considering look, then nodded. “I’ll teach you,” she said. “You can practise together with the children this full moon.”
On the day of the full moon, in the early evening before the sun set, Serena sat Remus down next to Joy and Eirwen at one side of the clearing. First, she ran them through a series of breathing and focusing exercises. She explained, for Remus’ benefit, “The idea is to cultivate a habit, in the human mind as well as the wolf mind, of listening to our unconscious senses, not only our conscious ones. So, let’s practise: What do you smell right now?”
“The campfire. Grass. New yew tree needles,” Eirwen answered promptly. Her confidence had grown in leaps and bounds in the weeks since the pack had driven Greyback away.
“Cold,” said little Joy. “Not snow, but maybe, like it’s an idea of snow? Is it going to snow again tonight, Mama?”
Serena lifted her nose towards the sky and inhaled deeply. “Hmm. Could well be. Well done, Little One.”
Joy wriggled happily. “I hope it does snow, just one more time. Then it’s allowed to be spring.”
“What about you, Quiet?” Serena asked. “What do you smell?”
Remus closed his eyes and inhaled. “Werewolves,” he said, the first and strongest scent that came to him. There were subtleties of scent that distinguished a werewolf, small differences that lurked beneath the outwardly human form.
“How many?” Serena probed.
Remus kept his eyes closed, asking his conscious awareness to stand down, letting the minute informational threads drifting on the breeze pass through and around him. “Seven,” he said finally. “I think Alpha and Thunderstorm must be away hunting right now.”
“Hm, good,” Serena said.
They ran through similar exercises with their senses of sight and of hearing, then rounded out the session with more breathing and some mental exercises that reminded Remus of what Muggles would call meditation. He wasn’t entirely sure how it all related, but he trusted Serena.
That night, just before the sun set and the moon rose, she said to Remus, “As you transform, keep thinking the words, ‘I will remember my senses’ over and over to yourself for as long as you can. It doesn’t sound like much, but it primes your mind to focus on the senses even when you’re no longer consciously thinking about them.”
Remus nodded his thanks, then stepped away from Serena to find a spot where he could transform in semi-privacy. The pack were communally minded in almost all things, but the first excruciating minutes of a full moon night were one time when all werewolves sought solitude.
Remus could feel the full moon, hidden just behind the rise of the moor to the east, already tugging at his body and his mind. His bones ached, more with each passing minute, and his thoughts were growing fuzzier, slowing down. It became increasingly hard to form a human thought in those last moments before moonrise, but for as long as possible, Remus continued to repeat inside his head, I will remember my senses. I will remember my senses.
The moon’s pull was tearing at his body now, every cell frantic in its need to change shape. Bones screamed against skin, muscles ripped themselves apart. From long years of practice, Remus did not cry out. I will remember my senses, he thought one last, desperate time, then his body tore itself to pieces and he knew no more.
– – – – –
Remus came to consciousness lying flat on his back, panting with exertion. In every fibre, he could feel that his body had moments ago painstakingly pieced itself back together, from its smallest parts up to the whole. His limbs ached and his throat was raw, and Remus allowed himself the smallest of groans. Transforming hurt, it would always hurt. But here, in the company of other werewolves, at least he didn’t wake to find that the wolf had spent the night trying to tear its own flesh apart.
I will remember my senses. The words drifted sluggishly through Remus’ mind. He opened his eyes to the tree branches above him, where the new green life of spring was unfurling.
He could recall the sound of the others howling, Remus realised. It was not perfectly distinct, but there was more clarity to it than he’d ever retained before. And with that sound memory to latch onto, other snatches of awareness came as well – the warm familiarity of wolfish figures running out ahead of him, the glint of moonlight on silvery fur.
Remus dropped his head back down against the ground, not even having noticed that he’d raised it in astonishment as the memories hit. This was more than he’d ever remembered from a full moon night, brief though the flashes of memory were. So it was possible to learn to remember, extrapolating what he had done from the remembrance of how it had felt. Just as Anna had told him in the beginning, when Remus had been too sceptical to believe. Still nauseous from the transformation, Remus rested his head against the ground and quietly laughed at himself.
When he finally felt able to sit up, Remus looked around for Serena, and saw her across the clearing with Joy in her lap. Finding his legs unsteadily, Remus made his way across to them.
He was hesitant to disturb their peaceful tableau, but Serena smiled when she saw him, so Remus settled gingerly onto the ground next to them. Serena seemed to be quizzing Joy on what she remembered of the night. Joy had her eyes squeezed tightly shut in concentration, and Serena’s hands rested gently on the girl’s head, as if that warm contact might help her remember. Perhaps it did.
“Um, and, and –” Joy was saying, “– and then we weren’t running with everyone, we were running just me and you, and you showed me those yellowy flowery plants –”
“Gorse,” Serena supplied.
“Yeah, and I tried to smell them and it was really prickly! And I wanted to try to smell them again, but you kept running moonrise-way.”
“East,” Serena corrected gently.
“Yeah, and then, ooh, then Quiet came and joined us!”
Remus startled. Had he?
“And he played that game with me, what’s it called?”
“Hide and seek.” Serena cast an amused glance at Remus, who stared back at her.
He had played hide and seek with Joy? Did wolves play hide and seek? What had they even hidden behind, on the open moor?
“That’s our Quiet,” Serena added. “Everyone else wants to hunt and race and howl at the moon, but Quiet just wants to be sure our littlest one is having fun.” She shot Remus another look, more intent than the last. Remus swallowed and looked away.
“Would he play with me in human shape, too?” Joy wanted to know, eyes still tightly shut.
“Why don’t you ask him?” Serena suggested. “He’s right here.”
Joy’s eyes popped open and she wriggled around to face Remus. “Hi, Quiet! Will you play hide and seek with me?” As the youngest of the pack, she was the only one who didn’t seem to be feeling any ill effects from having had her body ripped apart and slammed back together at moonrise and again at moonset.
“Gladly,” Remus agreed.
“Right now?” She was already scooting around in Serena’s lap, making to stand up.
Serena rested a staying hand on her shoulder. “Let Quiet rest after the moon, first, Little One. Ask him again this evening, or tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Joy sighed, sounding terribly put-upon. “I don’t know if can wait that long, but I’ll try.”
Serena smiled over Joy’s head at Remus. “And you, Quiet? What do you remember?”
“Little more than glimpses,” Remus admitted. “The sound of howling. The way it looked when I was at the back of the pack and everyone else was running out ahead of me. I think I can remember the taste of snow on the air.” He reached over and tapped Joy gently on the nose. “You were right, weren’t you? It did snow in the night.”
“It did!” Joy agreed, her petulance forgotten. “And I caught snowflakes on my tongue, and they tasted like winter solstice, even though it’s already past equinox!”
“And that may well be your last snow of the season, because spring is coming, sure as you can say ‘Beltane’,” Serena told Joy, cuddling her closer for a moment. “Now, how about some breakfast? Since you’re so full of pep, Little One, why don’t you go see if there are any apples left and report back to us?”
“Okay!” Joy leapt from Serena’s lap and landed lightly on her feet. Both Serena and Remus shook their heads at her energy as they watched her scamper away across the clearing.
– – – – –
A Hogsmeade resident reported having seen a window suspiciously ajar at the back of an unoccupied building in the village. Ever vigilant, Tonks went and watched the place for several nights, but she saw nothing out of the usual.
Proudfoot, when she told him about it afterwards, was dismissive. “What did you expect? You can’t follow up on every single supposed lead from people who are panicking, Tonks. You’ve got to pick and choose what’s worth looking into. I know you’re young enough not to believe this yet, but you only have twenty-four hours in a day, just like the rest of us.”
Tonks frowned at him at the time – condescending about her age and about her ability to do her job correctly, great, thanks – but the next day, as she walked along the high street on her patrol rounds, looking nonchalant but always scanning the village for signs of danger, she couldn’t help thinking there was a small way in which Proudfoot was right.
Tonks hated – no, strike that, she detested – hitting up against the limits of how much she could do. It drove her wild to think there was something nefarious going on in Hogsmeade and she couldn’t seem to catch it. The clues kept slipping through her fingers.
But it wouldn’t do any good, either, to obsess over one thread of investigation to the point of neglecting her other duties.
Tonks knew it couldn’t always be dramatic battles with clear winners and losers. Sometimes fighting this war meant plodding on through the day-to-day, in the hope that she was still doing some good, even if it was in less quantifiable ways.
She looked around at the village as she walked. Even in the spring sunshine, Hogsmeade had the look of a place in fearful hiding. Tonks kicked at the cobblestones, even as she kept her wand at the ready and her eyes alert. It ached, seeing so many shuttered houses and subdued shops.
She repeated it in her head like a mantra: I can’t fix everything. There’s only so much one person can do. But I’m damn well going to do as much as I can.
– – – – –
His new role as liaison between the pack and the Order brought Remus a sudden degree of freedom. Before, his ties to wizardkind had been something to keep circumspectly quiet; now those same connections were an asset. When Order duties or a meeting with Dumbledore occasionally took him away from the pack, none of the werewolves begrudged him the time away.
For the first time in Remus’ life, balancing his werewolf life and his human one didn’t seem such an impossibility.
He was even able to catch up on some of his own research that he’d had to neglect while living away from books and society, now that he had occasional opportunities to borrow and skim a book from Dumbledore before it was time to return to the moor.
One day, with a little free time left before he was expected back at the pack, Remus even got a chance to Apparate to London to visit the Magical Archives there. He’d been wanting to look for any recorded mentions of werewolves that could shed light on how and why Britain’s separate packs had formed. The werewolves’ own historical record was preserved entirely through oral storytelling, which provided valuable insight but didn’t tend to be strong on hard dates. Wizarding records might help, even if most written sources would be filtered through wizards’ prejudiced viewpoint.
Remus Apparated to the back entrance of the outwardly drab office block that housed the Archives. He located the correct window (third from the left), tapped the correct corner (upper right), and the window spun like a pinwheel until it resolved into a door.
Inside, he approached the welcome desk, where a bored young wizard weighed his wand and issued him a small rectangular card reading “Remus Lupin, Visitor: Research,” which Remus fastened to the front of his robes. Then he was free to ride the lift down to the lower level, into the Archives themselves.
He hadn’t been here for several years, but the scent of books and old parchment that rose up to meet Remus’ nose as he stepped off the lift was a familiar one. Oh, it was good to be back among books. He browsed, flipping through volumes and checking footnotes, and eventually determined that the book most likely to be of use was an older volume housed on a level even further down, in the Preservation and Restoration department.
He took the lift again, then wound his way through an open-plan floor crammed with shelves, to the Archivist’s desk at the back of the room. A young woman sat behind the desk, although all Remus could see of her was the top of a blonde head of hair as she bent over a piece of parchment, painstakingly reconstructing it from miniscule fragments.
Hating to disturb her concentration, Remus cleared his throat quietly and said, “I’m sorry to bother you, but I was told on the main level you might be able to help me find the book I’m looking for.”
The witch behind the desk looked up with a kind smile. “Of course. What’s the title?” Her eyes flicked reflexively to his visitor’s nametag, then seemed to stutter there. She blinked, and returned her eyes to his face with an unreadable expression.
Disconcerted, Remus answered, “Er… A Most Wonderfulle Account of Travels in the British Wilds. Here, I’ve written it down.” He held out the slip of paper on which he’d noted the title.
The Archivist glanced at the paper. “Yeah, no problem. Hang on a sec.” She slid from her seat and disappeared into a back room, casting him a last, indecipherable look as she went.
When she returned, she handed Remus the book in question, its faded grey cover soft with age. He took the book from her gently and thumbed through it. Yes, here was the chapter he needed, a naturalist’s account of a year spent tracking the movements of Britain’s – at that time – five werewolf packs. Remus scanned the first few paragraphs, and was wryly gratified to find the tone of the writing only mildly prejudiced.
“Is there any way I could get copies of just these pages, chapter 12?” Remus asked. He looked up to find the witch still staring at him. Had they crossed paths somewhere before? Or did she know him by his unfortunate public reputation, as the werewolf teacher exposed at Hogwarts?
“Er, yeah,” she said, her tone slightly strained. “I can do the charm for that, if you don’t mind waiting a minute or two.”
She took the book back from Remus’ hands, laid out several sheets of parchment next to it, then performed a complex duplication charm. Once the charm was fully invoked and writing was scrawling its way down the parchment sheets, the Archivist looked up at him.
“You’re Remus Lupin,” she said.
“Yes…?” Remus agreed.
“I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Er, have you?” Remus asked, still baffled. She was surely too young to have had children at Hogwarts when he’d taught there, but too old to have been a student at the time herself. And Remus wasn’t aware of being notorious for any reason other than that most obvious one.
She fixed him with a stare. “Nymphadora Tonks is my closest friend.”
“Ah,” Remus replied faintly.
“Yeah,” she agreed. She glanced down at the pages of parchment on her desk, checking their progress. “I’m Ariadne Warwick, by the way. Dunno if Tonks has mentioned me.”
All in a rush, Remus recalled a game of Truth or Dare played in a wintery field, one late night when he and Tonks had volunteered to meet some wizards flying in from abroad with a crate of potions supplies for the Order. The stars that night had been so clear, and Tonks’ laughter so bright, as they waited for the delivery and passed the time with a harmless-seeming game that nonetheless had skirted close to perilously personal questions, even in those early days of their friendship. And in talking of her Hogwarts years, Tonks had indeed mentioned Ariadne.
“Yes,” Remus said, not quite trusting his voice to come out even. “She’s mentioned you.”
“And you,” Ariadne said, unnecessarily. She checked on the duplicating documents again, then returned to scrutinising Remus. “I guess you probably won’t be surprised to hear, I was fully prepared to dislike you.”
“Er,” Remus replied, idiotically.
“But you seem frustratingly nice.”
“Do I?” Remus asked, caught off-guard and surprised.
“Yeah,” Ariadne said, frowning. She glanced down at the pages of parchment between them. “Here, look, your copy is ready, and I’m due for my break anyway. Let’s go get coffee.”
“…Okay,” Remus said, and gave himself over to the sensation that this day was only going to keep getting weirder.
Ariadne rolled the copied pages together, tied them neatly with a length of ribbon and handed the resulting scroll to Remus, who tucked it safely into his robes. She returned the book itself to the back room, muttered a safeguarding charm over the document she’d been piecing together when Remus approached her, then led the way out through the stacks to the lift.
“Björn, I’m taking my half-hour break,” Ariadne called as they passed the young wizard by the entrance, the one who had given Remus his visitor’s pass when he’d first come in.
“Yeah, okay,” agreed Björn, hardly looking up.
Ariadne led Remus down a side street and into a tiny Muggle café barely as wide as a standard shopfront. It was cosy inside, with a handful of patrons at the handful of wooden tables squeezed into the small space. The proprietor, a grey-haired woman, stood behind a miniscule counter heaped high with cakes and pastries.
“What would you like?” Ariadne asked Remus, her tone a little gentler than before. “It’s on me. I’m determined to grill you, so the least I can do is buy you a warm drink while I do it.”
Remus ordered tea, watching the proprietor prepare it and finding the ritual of it oddly comforting. Ariadne got a cappuccino, and they found seats at a small table up front near the window. Setting his tea down on the scuffed wooden tabletop and sliding into his chair, Remus wondered what Tonks’ friend had heard about him. Probably nothing good. Then again, probably nothing he didn’t deserve. He met Ariadne’s eyes.
“So, right,” she said, suddenly looking as uncertain as Remus felt. She swirled her spoon in her coffee, rattling it against the sides of the cup. “So, I dragged you here because…I guess I always thought, if I ever met you and got the chance, I would ask, why did you break up with Tonks? Because I have to tell you, it didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense when she tried to explain it.”
“I didn’t –” Remus began to protest, then stopped himself. “No, you’re right. I was the one who took the decision that we shouldn’t – which is to say – yes, I was the one who broke it off.” He paused, to steady himself for this next bit. “Did Dora – did Tonks – tell you what I am?”
Ariadne cast a quick glance around at the Muggles surrounding them, blithely enjoying their lattes and cappuccinos with no idea there was a werewolf in their midst. “Yes, she told me.”
“And that didn’t strike you as reason enough?”
Ariadne frowned down at her coffee, then up at Remus. “Honestly, no. I mean, I won’t pretend I wasn’t shocked when she told me. And by the way, in case you care, it was months before it occurred to her to mention that fact. Not that she was trying to hide it, mind you, it’s just that there were a hundred other things she was so eager to tell about you first. She didn’t see your illness as your defining characteristic, not by a long chalk. You don’t seem to get that if Tonks says it’s not a problem for her, then it’s really not a problem for her. So what, Remus Lupin, is actually the problem?”
Remus steeled himself to answer as honestly as he could. “You know what I am,” he said. “But you don’t know the itinerant, destitute life I’ve led because of my condition. I am shunned by wizarding society; I’m rarely able to hold a job for more than a few months. Those who associate with me risk becoming pariahs as well. And that’s quite aside from the fact that once a month I become a ravening beast and have to lock myself away lest I kill or maim someone. I wouldn’t wish myself on my worst enemy, let alone someone I – care for. But I deluded myself, for a while, into thinking I could have that: a normal life with someone I care about. In deluding myself, I misled Dora, too, and I wish every day that I could go back and take it all back. I wish I’d never hurt her.”
Ariadne’s eyes were wide and bright with sadness. “So you’re really not going to get back together? There’s no chance of it at all?”
Remus’ voice caught in his throat. “No,” he said hoarsely. “It’s for the best.”
Ariadne’s cappuccino sat forgotten, though her fingers rested against the rim of the cup. She studied Remus, staring hard as if she could see all the way through him. “I think one day you’re going to change your mind,” she said slowly. “So all I’m going to say is: If you do, don’t be too proud to admit it, okay? If you find you’ve changed your mind, don’t hide that from Tonks.”
Remus stared back at her, disconcerted at the certainty in her voice. He knew he wasn’t going to change his mind.
Not because he didn’t want to. Because he couldn’t allow it of himself.
Her gaze still steady on him, Ariadne said, “Just…remember that, okay? When you change your mind, don’t hide it.” She held his eyes another moment, then glanced down and remembered her coffee, which she picked up and sipped.
They passed the next few minutes largely in silence. When Ariadne consulted her pocket watch and told Remus she needed to return to work, he followed her out through the maze of tiny café tables. On the pavement outside, they stopped and faced one another.
Ariadne said, “You’ve got the copied pages?”
“Yes. Thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome.” She fiddled with the watch she still held in her hand, then looked up at Remus. “Sorry for giving you the third degree, but – she’s my best friend. I want her to be happy. So – think about what I said, okay?” She bit her lip, then gave him a very small smile before she turned to go. “Take care, Remus.”
“Goodbye,” Remus said, feeling dazed.
Ariadne turned and walked back towards the Archives. Remus set out in the other direction, and made it perhaps a hundred feet down the street before he had to stop and lean against a building. The whole strange encounter was catching up to him, and his knees felt weak.
He rested one shoulder against the building wall and tried to catch his breath, remembering how Ariadne had stared at him and said, I think one day you’re going to change your mind.
Bizarrely, the thought that popped into Remus’ head was how much Sirius would like Ariadne – seemingly mild at first, then unexpectedly fierce. Very much his type.
And then Remus’ legs did buckle beneath him, because for that one single moment, he’d forgotten Sirius wasn’t here to think anything at all.
Dizzy, Remus turned to press his back fully against the rough brick wall, staring blankly out over the street. He could hear Sirius’ voice clearly in his mind, and that imagined Sirius seemed to say, I may be dead, but she’s right and you know it. It’s not too late to change your mind.
Remus bowed his head, feeling the coarse scrape of the bricks at his back, and closed his eyes, as if shutting out the sight of the world might also block out the voices in his mind. This was not as simple as just doing what he wanted.
Even if he knew exactly what he wanted.
Chapter end notes:
Here I'd like to credit
stereolightning for the idea that the full moon starts affecting Remus’ mind, slowing down his thoughts, even before the moon rises and the physical transformation starts. I thought that made an awful lot of sense (especially in explaining the events at the end of PoA!) and have adopted it as my headcanon.Also, Remus' memory that's mentioned here, of the Truth or Dare game late at night in a wintry field, took place in Be the Light in My Lantern, Chapter 7: "Feeling the Pull."
And here, again, is the list of werewolf characters, for your convenient edification!
the Alpha, a male in his 40s, the pack’s leader
Anna, or the Mother, the oldest pack member, symbolic mother of all
Brighid, or Fire, the Alpha’s mate, roughly his age
Serena, or Trouble, roughly Remus’ age
Jack, or Thunderstorm, a little younger than the Alpha, Ashmita’s mate
Ashmita, or Rock Crag, Jack’s mate
Ronan, or Hardwood, young adult member of the pack, perhaps 20
Narun, or Rapids, roughly the same age
Adair, or Jump, roughly the same age
Tamara, or Blackthorn, roughly the same age
Eirwen, or Slither, a young teenager, 13 or 14
Joy, or River Run, the pack’s youngest member, 6 or 7
(continue to CHAPTER 19: Beltane Eve)
