A/N: This is the next stop on my journey of Remus Oneshot Smut! The last one, if you'd like to check it out, is Remus/Charity Burbage. If you hadn't figured it out yet, this is Remus/Daphne Greengrass. This is an exercise in challenging myself as a writer, thinking outside the box. Hope you enjoy. Reviews are always appreciated. Cheers!
-C
Remus knew there was nothing more wrong than what he was doing. After all, she was a Slytherin. She was a former student. She was even younger than Dora had been.
Dora. His wife. Or, she had been his wife. But then she had to go and get herself killed in that battle…
He'd told her to stay home. He'd begged her. He'd ordered her. He'd done everything he could think of to get her to stay home with their newborn son. But Dora couldn't handle not being a part of the action, just like her cousin. And they'd both died because they didn't know what was good for them.
But Remus was over that, he told himself, turning over in bed to wrap his arm around the body of the young woman beside him and pull her closer against him. He wasn't angry about it anymore, even though he was.
"Mmm," moaned the woman in his arms. "Morning."
"Morning," he whispered, trailing scratchy, pre-shave kisses along her smooth, porcelain neck. "Sleep well?"
"Yes," she whispered. "I always sleep well with you."
She had been having nightmares after the war. Most people had, but Daphne Greengrass had turned to her former teacher for advice, who she had become secretary for after the war when he became head of the Department for the Control and Regulation of Magical Creatures.
Ah, yes, add that to the reasons why what he was doing was wrong.
She always looked so beautiful there at her desk, he had thought at work one day, her dark hair drawn up in an almost-perfect bun, accentuating her sweet, swanlike neck. She liked to wear green robes to work, partly for Slytherin, partly because it was good with her coloring. She always looked so put together that nobody, not even Remus, knew how unhappy she was inside. Not until she told him.
She came to him at work one day, saying, "Sir, may I speak with you about something for a moment? It's…it's not related to work."
"Of course, Miss Greengrass," he said. "Come on in."
And she had told him all about her nightmares, and he had tried to be helpful, but he didn't know what to say. So he told her about his own nightmares.
And it became a bit of a ritual between them, having lunch and talking about all their hopes and fears and the darkest parts of themselves.
Lunch became dinner, dinner became evenings together. Evenings together very quickly became nights together.
For months they had spent nearly every night together, tangled up in Remus's sheets, mingling their sweat and cries of passion. She told her family she was staying with a friend from work, but not that the friend was male. Remus allowed his friends to think any number of things about the fact that he no longer spent nights out with them, including that he was taking care of Teddy, but not that he had Daphne Greengrass in his bed, moaning and screaming his name.
"We could get married, you know," Daphne had said one night, kissing his sweat-covered scars. "I could leave my family. Astoria's marrying Draco. They'll have their perfect little pureblooded marriage. They wouldn't need me."
But Remus had sighed with disappointment, knowing better than she all of the complications that would come with such a union. Eventually, he was able to talk her out of the idea, although he knew she had been incredibly disappointed. It just wouldn't work out, nothing good would come of it, and she wasn't Tonks. Daphne Greengrass wasn't capable of handling the social rejection of being the wife of a werewolf, even one with an Order of Merlin, First Class and the status of a war hero.
Because despite the changes, despite the progress in werewolf rights after the war, as championed by none other than Hermione Granger and Kingsley Shacklebolt, in all of the circles that mattered in Daphne's life, he was still a half-breed monster. He couldn't subject her to that, no matter how willing she thought she was.
And so they continued on in the way they were, her wishing for more but not saying anything for fear of pushing him away, him knowing everything about their union was wrong but continuing because it felt so much better than being alone, secretly laying out all their hopes and fears and desires and passion in the land between Remus's sheets.