A/N: A sort of alternate to Portrait, though it isn't necessary to read that. Tilia is Sirius' cousin, and she was also in Gryffindor. Remus is just as stubborn here as in Portrait, though this time he is channeling it in a better direction, I think.
Gambling
The young woman tightly wrapped her cloak around her as she opened the door of her cousin's small house and stepped onto the covered front stoop. She frowned as the relentless storm surged around her tiny sanctuary. She sighed and leaned back against the doorjamb, hoping the rain would let up in a few minutes so she wouldn't get soaked on the short walk to the safe Apparition point two blocks away.
Ten minutes later, her cousin rounded the corner at a run, his coat held up over his head. She immediately reached for her wand, but relaxed when no one followed him. He skidded on the stairs to the sheltered space under the awning, gasping for breath.
"Going somewhere?" he asked, eyebrows raised curiously.
"Yes. I told you yesterday he wanted to see me," she said without taking her eyes off the rain.
"And you're standing here in front of the door because—?"
"I was waiting for the rain to slow down a little," she told him.
He turned to look at the sheets of rain falling so thickly he could barely make out the street lamp in the gloom. "I don't blame you. Did he say why he wanted to see you?"
She turned her head to look at him. "He's my best friend. Does he need a reason?"
Her cousin took a deep breath. "They're changing the law, you know."
She tilted her head in confusion. "What law?" she asked.
"They're going to make it illegal for werewolves to marry," he told her.
"That's horrible," she said, her voice tinged with dismay. "How can they—?"
"People like the Blacks are really running the Ministry," he said. "They think werewolves are monsters. But that's not my point." He looked away as a flash of lightning cut across the sky.
She stared at her cousin. "You think he's going to propose?" she asked in surprise.
Her cousin shook his head emphatically. "I know him better than that. I figure he just wants your opinion on the matter. Since you've never thought of him like that." He looked at her and saw she was biting her lip.
"Do you really think that?"
"Yes, I—did you want him to propose?" he asked incredulously.
"You don't approve." It wasn't a question.
Her cousin sighed. "Ten minutes ago, he wasn't worth you getting wet." They stared at the rain for long minutes in silence.
"You really don't approve, then, do you?" she asked softly.
"He's not exactly what I had in mind when I saw you marrying. I mean," he added hastily when she glared at him, "you're like a sister to me. I care what people say about you. The Blacks certainly won't approve, and neither will—"
"The rest of the world," she finished. "I know, but we left our family; it doesn't matter what they think."
"You can't leave the rest of the world," he said angrily.
"I know," she snarled, her temper flaring in response. "But I took a gamble seven years ago when I decided to become his friend knowing what he was, and knowing our family wouldn't approve. Every decision I've made since I met him put who I thought I was supposed to be at risk. I gambled the security of the life our family offered, and it paid off. I gained a better family, but I gambled that when I left the Blacks, who threaten to make sure I lose it."
"What are you betting for him then? What can you gain that's worth losing everything you have while he's only a friend?" her cousin asked in a pained voice.
"I don't think I could live alone forever, knowing that I claimed to love him, but he wasn't worth it."
"I don't understand," her cousin said, annoyance in his voice.
"Since I was Sorted to Gryffindor, I've never let others' preconceptions stand in my way," she explained quietly, a roll of thunder drumming a counterpoint to her words. "I don't think I can say I love him because of who he is, despite what he is, if I let the world's opinions stand between us. If I really love him, there can be no obstacles."
"No obstacles," he repeated. "Like the fact that this conversation is entirely hypothetical because he'll never have the guts to say he loves you?" her cousin asked her.
"If he won't come to me, I'll go to him," she declared.
"I thought you didn't want to get wet?" He gestured to the driving rain, the movement sharply etched in the glare of another fork of lightning. "I think the storm's getting worse."
She made a face at him and pulled her coat up over her head, preparing to make a run for it.
"Besides, you don't even know if he loves you. You could be completely wrong," he called after her as she darted away.
Her voice came back to him on the wind. "You wanna bet?"
00000
The young man pushed the heavy chair as close to the window as he could before curling up on it. He leaned his arms against the back, resting his head on the crook of his elbow so he could watch with fascination as a fork of lightning cast the dark green room into sharp relief. The jagged white line had hardly flickered out before a huge crack of thunder tore the sky in two. Then it rained, sheets of water so many layers thick he could barely see the porch light in the gloom.
Time passed; the clock chimed four-thirty. She should have been there at four, but she was always late. And with the storm far worse than predicted, who knew if she would come at all?
"Don't sit so close to the window," his mother said suddenly, sharply, as another white hot flash lit the room. "And for heaven's sake, turn a light on."
He jumped, whirling on the spot and nearly falling off the chair. He sighed when he saw the silhouette in the doorway, annoyed at his own anxiety. "I'm watching the storm, Mother," he said quietly, turning back to the window. Watching for her.
"It isn't safe to sit that close to the window. The lightning—"
"Will hit the pond before it hits me here. Or the trees in the forest. Please, Mother, I can take care of myself," he said.
His mother sighed. "I know; I just can't help it. You're the only child I have."
"And I'm not a child anymore," he told her firmly. "I'm intending to ask her to marry me today."
His mother frowned. "Are you sure? I mean," she added when he turned to look at her with a closed expression, "you're both awfully young."
"I know, but it's the only chance we'll get." He smiled bitterly.
She looked away for a moment. "Her family will protest. And not just her family—"
"The entire world. I'm aware of that," he said, annoyance edging his voice.
"You don't even know if she loves you," his mother protested.
"If I never ask, I'll never know." He turned back to the window.
"There's a world of difference between friendship and love, especially for someone like you."
"So I should just give up now, right? Keep the friendship I'm sure of, and never know love?" he snapped, then winced at the anger in his tone.
"There is no one in this world who would willingly, knowingly chain herself to you and all your baggage," his mother told him bluntly.
"That's why I can't help thinking that if anyone could, it would be her," he said softly. "She's never judged me, Mother, and she's the only friend I've got who admits that she was afraid of me once. But she's seen me at my worst, and has stayed with me."
"That's friendship, nothing more," his mother said.
"None of my other friends have done what she has for me; they don't even come close to what she is to me," he said.
"To you," she repeated as thunder crashed directly over the farmhouse. "There's no guarantee you mean the same to her. Why throw her away?"
He glanced out the window. "Because the day I realized that I wanted a family, and wanted that with her and no one else, was the day it truly hit me that I could never have that."
"If you know you can't, then why try?" his mother asked in a pained voice.
"You and Father said I would never go to school, never have friends, but I've graduated, and I have the greatest friends. I gambled my deepest secret to go to school; I gambled my friendships to keep them. I've gambled so much for a chance to live normally and I came out a winner. If I don't go for broke, the rest of it means nothing," he said, his intense eyes gleaming in a flash of lightning.
"And on what stakes are you gambling your best friend?"
"A life not spent in solitude, regretting that I never had the courage to ask her if she could love me," he said simply.
"Maybe you shouldn't risk everything. Maybe you should wait for her to come to you," his mother said quietly, sighing.
The front doorbell rang, almost drowned out by the low rumble of thunder and the hiss of the wind-driven rain.
He smiled as he stood, and said, "She has."