a little touch of heavenly light
You don't really know how it happens, or how you realize you're in love with him, in love with this man almost old enough to be your father.
It just… Happened, you guess.
Between one breath and the next, in the space of two heartbeats, his eyes catch yours from the other end of the room, and he just smiles and it feels so obvious you wonder how you didn't see it before.
You like him.
(but of course, you knew that already – a kind soul in a battered body, a brave man cursed into cowardice, and you, the woman who thinks she could help him be free)
(what else could you have done but fall for him?)
More than like even, you love him.
Your father doesn't approve. Of course he doesn't.
"He's much too old for you," he protests, and you want to scoff. Remus still looks much younger than he has any right to, considering how tired he always looks. But even the grey in his hair fails to make him look anything but distinguished in your eyes.
"Maybe I like my men older," you answer, and then you laugh at his wince. You are his daughter, but you also aren't his – love doesn't mean he can dictate this choice (any choice) for you.
"He's a werewolf," he protests next, but it's only half-hearted. Your father knows Remus – not well, but they've met, and that is enough for him to know that Remus' condition bears no impact on his character, or at least doesn't make him more dangerous than anyone else as long as it's not the full moon.
You expect your mother will be harder to dissuade on that point. You think it's her upbringing – she may try to distance herself all she wants from the Blacks and her ideals, but you know that part of her will always listen to the instincts her parents ingrained in her first, even if just for an instant.
You see it in the fear that shines in her eyes. Anyone else would have missed it, but you know that face too well, know only too much how those eyes can look too, for you to be fooled.
(you used to have her eyes, you remember, back before you changed them)
(you used to have her eyes and your father's nose, and you spent days in front of your mirror trying to make them just right so you could glare just like your mother did, so that the next time Ethan McGrabble asked you out just because he wanted you to look like the girl from his dreams you'd be able to scare him away)
(you used to have her eyes, dark and deep and mesmerizing, but you forgot how they looked on you)
Your mother is afraid of the man you love – or rather, of the beast hidden inside him, of the monster who comes out when the moon is full.
She doesn't actively try to tell you that you can't be with him because he's a werewolf though, and you guess that it's a nice enough beginning.
You only understand why later, when she takes you apart one day after she finds you on her sofa, eating ice-cream, your hair a dull shade of brown.
The problem with Remus, she explains sadly, is not that he's a werewolf, but that he has gotten so used to run she thinks he doesn't know how to stop, if he ever will.
"He will," you protest, but the words taste like ashes in your mouth. In your mind's eye, you can see all the ways he has rejected you already, and all the ways he will reject you still, until either you find the right one or he finally manages to crush away the last shards of your heart.
"Maybe," your mother answer, but you can tell from her voice that she is just as convinced as you are.
Still, you will not give up. You are your mother's daughter – the daughter of the Black who gave up her family for love, who defied tradition to settle down with a muggle-born when she had been set to marry a pureblood, who taught you that your happiness should always come before your family's expectations.
(that was your favorite tale as a child – other kids got to hear Beedle The Bard's stories, and sure you heard them too, but you had something even better: a real-life tale that proved that love could overcome anything, that it was the greatest magic of all)
(you think you might need some of that magic now)
Not all of your family is so split, of course. One of them is actually delighted.
Sirius, the cousin she had only barely remembered, now a man whose ghosts carved deep scars on his face, tells you to stay behind one time after an Order's meeting.
He serves you two full glass of Firewhisky and waits until you're drinking to tell you that he knows.
"So, I hear you've got the hots for Moony?" He asks with a wink, waggling his eyebrows, laughter in his voice.
It occurs to you as you spit out the burning liquid that went the wrong way that this is the most alive you've seen your cousin look since his godson left. He looks better laughing, less stern, less like the shadow of a man and more like the man she can still catch glimpses of in her childhood's memories.
"Well, I say hear… I mean, you're kind of obvious with your advances," he says with a somewhat apologetic tone, before trying to reassure you when you send him an alarmed look through your bout of coughing. "Don't worry though, Moony's always been the blind one when it comes to the matters of the heart."
He jokes, but there is something bitter in his tone, something almost wistful. It tastes like the worst kind of what-if, but it also feels infinitely private so you don't push.
It may be your imagination, but you think he is grateful for that.
But still, the evening goes on. You finish your drink, more carefully now that you know of Sirius' tendency to blurt out surprising things while you're drinking, and he finishes his. The conversation is light, and somehow by the time you leave you've ensured that he'll help you woo his best friend.
He has already given you tips: likes, dislikes and other ideas you sort of want to try. Most of those you already knew, but some of it you didn't, and for these you are very thankful.
Considering how reluctant to open his heart Remus seems to be, you truly need all the help you can get.
For a while, it even seems like you are making progress. Remus, though still somewhat distant, is letting you get closer to him, closer to the man hiding beneath the façade he shows the world. You spend more time together, and for a while you allow yourself to dream that you can get this happy ending.
For a while, it seems like you will.
And then Sirius dies, and Remus shuts off. Where you take this as a sign that you must now live in the present and not hold back (it makes you shiver just to think of it, to think that they might not have the happily ever after you want), he takes it as a sign to back off.
But you are tired, tired of his excuses, tired of the way he toys with your heartstrings however unwillingly, and most of all tired of the way he tries to deny that he loves you just because he believes he doesn't deserve it.
And one day, you crack.
"Love isn't something you get to deserve, you idiot!" You yell in a savage scream, tears you barely manage to hold burning in your eyes. You're distantly aware that your hair is circling through angry shades of red and has risen around your head like a burning crown, but you don't care. All that truly matters is to make him understand what you feel.
"You don't get to choose for me," you continue, and there your tone slips into something colder. You get this from your mother, this cold anger that makes the whole world go still, that makes your vision narrow until all you see is the cause of your pain and sorrow, the reason for the endless burning pit in your stomach.
Remus tries to say something, but you cut him off before he even finishes his first word. "No," you say, and you've never felt so powerful, so clear-headed, "I'm my own person. I'm not some kind of, of redemption project for you. You don't get to say you're doing this for me, that you're keeping me safe," you spit the last three words like they're a curse, "when all you really want is to make yourself feel more miserable because that's the way you think it has to be.
"Well, guess what? It's not. You're miserable because you want to be, not because it's something you deserve, and certainly not because you're a werewolf. And congratulations, because in your endless quest for self-flagellation, you've managed to hurt me too. Because if you think for even a moment that this, this distance between us, that your 'we can't be together' acts are helping me or protecting me, are doing anything but hurting me too, Merlin help me I will curse you so hard you'll feel it until the day you die!"
You are breathless by the end of it and for a moment you consider leaving – you're not ashamed of what you said, because you think these things needed to be said, but you are slightly embarrassed about the way they came out.
You're almost afraid to look at his face. You've been so focused on his eyes during your rant that you haven't really taken a look at it, and now you're afraid that this is it, that this is the moment he will finally say the thing that will make you stop.
(he could, you know he could)
(it would be so easy to break your heart, to make you hate him – so terribly easy that you can't help but wonder why he hasn't yet)
(that, more than anything else, is the cause for the flutter of hope between your rib cage)
You never get the chance to, because it takes him two steps to close the distance between the two of you, and then his hands are cupping your face and wiping away the tears you hadn't realized you had let fall, and then his lips are on yours.
He takes your breath away, literally. It feels like fire, warm and wild, but this fire doesn't rage, it doesn't burn (not like your earlier anger). This fire just seeps in through your every pore, washing away everything that is not you and the man in front of you, kissing you like he's been drowning his whole life and you're the oxygen he's been desperately hoping for.
Your knees go weak but somehow you manage to stand, and you put your hands in his hair, tugging and pulling. Soon, you know, you'll have to pull up for air, but you don't want to. You don't want this moment to end. You want to keep it all in your mind, a perfect memory frozen in time, so that no matter what happens to you or him next, you can at least say that you've had this, that this was real, even for a moment.
You close your eyes and lose yourself in the moment. One, two, three… Seconds pass but time has stopped for you – until it doesn't.
You don't know who breaks the kiss first. Maybe it's you or maybe it's him, but you find that it doesn't matter. Not when you finally have the man you love a breath away from you, closer than you have ever felt to any other living being.
"You are aware I'm not letting you go after this, aren't you?" You ask, one last chance to back out and your heart still for this terrifyingly important moment.
But then Remus smiles and you feel like you can breathe again. "That's what I was hoping for," he says with a smile.
(here are all the things he doesn't voice out loud then, but that his eyes tell you anyway:
he is sorry for hurting you and though he knows nothing can make up for it, he is still willing to try
he is still afraid of this and will probably run again, and he is sorry for that too
he loves you and if he runs you can hunt him down and bring him back)