Author's note: Remus/OFC I created years ago but never got around to writing out fully, though she's in « When We Fall Apart ». The idea here is that Remus uses his dreams to cope with the world around him by creating a better world without magic but with the people he loves being still there, so it goes between dreams and his own awareness of his dream world.

Not gonna lie, it felt good to write Remus again.

But a dream
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Edgar Allen Poe

Her skin is smooth and soft and sweet under his fingers, Remus shifting to drag his lips across the back of her shoulders. Dark hair smelling faintly of roses tumbles down her back, his scarless hands pushing it aside. He surprises himself when he notices the wedding band on his finger.

His wife lets her head fall back, smiling in the light of the full moon. Remus pulls her to him, kissing her as softly as he can. The woman sighs contently.

She's been in his dreams of years by now. Remus would dream of a world without magic, where he wasn't a werewolf, where his best friends didn't die or leave or suffer. He'd imagine spending five, ten years with Sirius in a little flat somewhere in London, just a short drive from James and Lily and the baby. (His mind somehow always forgets Peter; maybe without magic they'd never have met him? Maybe his mind always knew the truth, of who had betrayed the Potters, and so in this happy world removed him.) He'd watch Harry grow, being called Uncle. He'd see James get wrinkles and Lily's hair get lighter and lighter.

Then, around the time the real world Remus went to Hogwarts to teach, his mind inserted a new character.

He'd broken up with Sirius in the imaginary world two years previously. They'd ended it amicably, because Remus was in love with his teaching (British literature) at university and Sirius was in love with every good-looking person who walked by and so perhaps they'd always known it would come to nothing, their love, but it was good while it'd lasted.

His mother (who had grown old and happy instead of dying young of a clearly broken heart) Remus had moved her into his house after he broke up with Sirius, since she hated being alone after his father had died. She'd visited in his dream that particular day, at university; Remus must have been teaching late and there she sat, smiling at him and whispering, "My boy. My boy who makes me so proud." He'd smiled and she'd laughed and then in had walked a young lady Remus had never seen before.

It'd been intriguing, to say the least; he'd never dreamed up someone before like her.

Tonight she's in the library in their house, reading to a little boy that Remus reminds himself is her nephew. His wife's (adopted) sister is a thin blonde thing with piercing eyes and an air of arrogance to her and yet Remus and his wife still adore her, the way she would melt at her husband taking care of her son from a previous relationship or how she would bake them all cookies and insist that Remus take the biggest one. Wait– did the sister live with them? Remus can't remember, leaning against the door and watching the sight.

Paris! They've moved to Paris, that's right, back in with his in-laws (Gwenevere, the son Arthur, and the French husband Pierre). Remus teaches English literature at a French university and takes night classes in French literature.

When little Arthur runs by the woman sits up, smiling at Remus and rubbing her small stomach. "I love you," she mouthes, wedding ring glistening in the light.

While at Hogwarts his dreams had had him courting the woman: Rosaline Piccard, originally of Bath. Her parents had died soon after her birth and the old woman who had adopted her and Gwen had raised them in Paris. Rosaline had grown up with everything she could ever want, never lacking anything, as all children should grow: safe and protected. (Remus's mind had reminded him that in his dreams he may have grown up middle class but he hadn't been poor, he hadn't been desperate.)

Rosaline had been young, only a half dozen or so years older than Harry, but she had walked into his classroom with confidence to hand in her sister's assignment, explaining that Gwen was ill. (Actually she had been pregnant, they'll later discover.) Something in the dreaming man had responded to her and part of him knew it was because in his world of fantasy she was made perfect: her love of literature, the way she took her tea, the sort of jokes she made.

For all the pain that he suffered that year at Hogwarts, there was always his dreams with Rosaline waiting to keep him calm.

He's studying a picture of their wedding when Rosaline enters the room, her long hair pulled up. "Remus?" she asks, light green eyes finding his. She must be six or seven months pregnant at this point, and healthy, and unafraid of the man who had never become a werewolf; such things were for the fairytales they would tell their daughter. "Remus, your nephew called–" she means Harry "–to say his father and Sirius are still planning on coming out for your birthday."

"Birthday," he repeats under his breath, Rosaline folding something and placing it in a drawer.

"Not every day you turn thirty-six, after all." And she gives him a small kiss, grinning and holding his hand to her stomach. "You should go, your mother can stay with me and Gwen. The womenfolk will still be here when you boys get back, after all, and you deserve a little more fun before the baby comes."

Remus nods because everything his dream wife says always makes sense. "Rosaline?"

"Yes dear?"

When the world had turned dark, a new war on the horizon– that's when Rosaline had stuck to him and they'd married. Lily had cried at the wedding and James swore he hadn't even though he had too. Harry had sat with the little Arthur and Rosaline had looked incredible in white and Remus had felt young. He had felt as if he was finally living.

Remus had never felt more like a liar in his dreams than at the beginning of the war, when he so needed them at night to get him through each day.

By the window Rosaline coos the baby, holding her to her chest. Remus on the bed watches, amazed, as his wife turns towards him and hands him their daughter.

Little Catherine has her mother's pale green eyes but her father's brown hair, her paternal grandmother's nose and (supposedly) her maternal grandfather's chin. And she fits perfectly in Remus's arms, his wife curling up under the sheets next to him and brushing hair from his face.

"Isn't this perfect?" Rosaline muses aloud and when he looks to her she's the image of serene beauty, so he kisses her.

There had always been a few quirks in his mind that had made Remus question if Rosaline really was purely fictional. Maybe he'd actually known a Rosaline, years ago? Maybe she'd been a student? Maybe he'd seen her in Diagon Alley, or London, or that one summer he had passed in Paris?

It was things like how she spoke Italian– Remus didn't speak Italian and yet when he'd wake he'd look up what she had said and it was all perfect, quotes and deep sentiments. How could she do that if he had made her up?

Or how did she know more about Judaism than he did? His mother had been a refuge, after the Second World War from Poland, but Remus had been raised Christian and never learned the things Rosaline so easily knew. In his dreams it would delight his mother, the two women explaining to Remus what they were going on about. And when he'd go visit the local synagogue by day and ask his questions, the rabbi would always tell him that that was correct, is Remus sure he wouldn't like to stay for service to learn more?

His mind was playing tricks on him, Remus is certain of it.

A small Kitty cries in his arms, screaming for Mama, and it breaks Remus's heart as he holds his daughter closer. Gwen leaves the hospital room and takes the girl from her father, Kitty screaming that she didn't want to let go of Daddy. With all the strength he has Remus kisses her head, whispering, "Be good for Aunt Gwen, Catherine, and make Mama and Daddy proud."

In the small room Rosaline's bed has been moved closer to the window, his wife looking out it at the grass below. "Isn't the world beautiful, my love?" she asks as Remus sits on the edge of the bed, holding her hand and kissing it.

"It's been more beautiful since you've come into it."

Pale green eyes fall on him at that, Rosaline smiling despite dying. "I don't know– as we've grown you seem to have forgotten your friends back in Britain. Your mind has been so occupied."

"I suppose it has," Remus reasons.

"And you're forgetting to go to work. Maybe that's to spend more time with Kitty and me?"

"There was never enough time with you two," and he fights back the sting of tears.

"No," Rosaline agrees, "no I suppose you've never slept long enough at night to allow yourself ample time with us. Perhaps that's why this dream has become so small, so focused."

Now Remus is confused, looking at his wife and trying to follow her logic. "Rosaline, don't speak like that–"

"You know what it means," she interrupts, "that I'm dying, right?"

In the hallway the sound of Kitty's cries have ended. Out the window he finds literally only grass: no roads, no people, only grass. The writing on the signs all around the room are scribbles he can't make sense of.

"I'm dying too," Remus finally says.

"I was only ever but a dream, my love." Rosaline squeezes his hand as Remus lays down beside her on the bed, wrapping his arms around her. "I hope it was a pleasant dream, to get you through the years."

"You've become my everything."

"Good!" the woman laughs. "I don't like sharing you with others, even if you have a real wife who had a real baby."

"My… my son," Remus moans; he so rarely can connect reality and dream but now it's all come crashing together. "Rosaline I'm scared." Maybe he could never admit it to others but if this was his dream that he had created, surely he could admit it here.

"I know, my love," Rosaline coos, kissing the tip of his nose. "I've always known."

"Thank you," he breathes and the woman laughs.

"For what, dear?"

"For being, here, in my dreams."

Rosaline smiles. "You don't think I'm wholly imaginary anymore, do you?"

"No, no I don't. You can't be, I'm sure you must be real."

"Good," and his wife kisses him deeply. "If you still believe in me, then we can be together after this is all over. Finally together, as we ought to be."

"With Catherine?" Remus asks

"With Catherine, and Gwen, and your friends, and anyone else you want."

Remus sighs, stroking Rosaline's face. "Are you an angel of death?"

"Less angel of death," his wife corrects, "more dream of love. I've been with you only when you needed me; I did not expect it to be this long."

"How much longer till I die?" Remus asks, his voice cracking, and so Rosaline drapes an arm around his neck.

"Close your eyes and count to ten and you'll feel nothing, I promise. I'll be here with you through it all."

"One," Remus breathes, his eyes falling closed, and he remembers the first time he ever held Harry, actually held him in the real world. "Two," and there's his mother's lifeless body being replaced with one of her alive in his mind. "Three," and it's his first kiss, with Lily, fifth year. "Four," and Rosaline nuzzles his nose. "Five," and Sirius isn't so empty, isn't so hollow, isn't so lost. "Six," and the world gets black, just a bit blacker, and maybe Remus thinks he's dreaming and living at the same time. "Seven," and he imagines Harry defeating Voldemort, a world finally free of that man. "Eight," and the sound of Catherine's crying comes back, filling his ears the way Teddy's crying would at night. "Nine," and Rosaline kisses him desperately, as if she too was afraid of the end. "Te–"