Author Note: This idea has always struck me: the potential friendship and alliance/support that I can see that Remus and Sybill may have shared. That they have many things to connect over so here is one situation I believe might have started it.
Remus Lupin stood at the door. He did not know her very well. This was not a good idea. What he knew was always from what he saw and he had never interacted with her. This bound not to be a good time. Then, he had never known Sybill to be one to commit herself to time, either.
He hesitated. She wasn't really a busy woman, was she? Not busy in the conventional sense. But neither was he. He knew through word of mouth that he was the root of her interest this particular moon. He remembered the first time they had crossed paths. It was in the hallway after he had boarded the train quite humanly and perhaps felt he had not quite woken up.
Two huge planetary lenses. He had seen himself in them although the woman of question held her distance, he remembered. He hadn't observed her because he was too busy observing himself and shame that had just settled inside the walls. Had she known he was subject to lycanthropy? quite likely. Had Dumbledore told her? quite likely. They were chums. It was true. It was the dottiness, Remus felt, that attracted them together to have tea in the divination room. Not a place Remus looked favourably upon visiting, even though Minerva had invited him.
Minerva was very tolerant of those meetings and he supposed in retrospect he had been called-on for concrete concepts and conversation. In which case, she would have the wrong man. And she knew it. Anyway. He thought, poking the pockets of his robes to even, his scar outlined and his cardigan straightened. Sybill, as he hoped he was allowed to call her mentally. He would apologise mentally of course but he'd rather keep the image the bill of a bird in his mind. It connected. Books were his undoing.
He dropped his eyelids in irritation and squeezed his hands. He started again. Sybill, he thought, had been following him. Harry had told him that much. The divination lessons that involved Harry she had had lowered herself to note-passing like a wildly-grown, extra-feminine Sirius Black. He had been told she had passed messages outright to Harry before-hand.
The letters were, detailed at best but not quite what he hoped to have from a description. They usually would go as follows: Jupiter. No no yes yes no ~ with a different planet every time and sometimes a cheerful reminder 'You are capable of death and destruction and...My eye is clouded. ' He assumed she meant when it came to him, and he couldn't blame her. He was convinced her ramblings were not visions, if you could call them that, but attempts, and insanity and he felt he needed to come just to put the poor woman out of her misery.
He knocked on the door. Three times. He may as well do something constructable. A triad of knocks. One at the top of the door, one on the right and one in the centre. He waited, apprehensive. He'd rather not enter the tower, but what could you do? It could do him some assistance to broaden his horizons, he supposed. One office and one classroom and a great hall for one man was quite limiting. He did have the shack. He thought, sarcastically. A holiday resort if he ever did see one.
The door opened. He stepped in and he saw Sybill sat on a cushion in the middle of the room. Her hands danced around a crystal ball. One of the older kinds from when he was at school. He recognised the maker's initials. They had used to be made in-school on the grounds. If he recalled properly it had been a scheme in the 30s to employ squibs who could not perform magic a well-paid job. It was also in his knowledge that crystal balls at the time had been on the rise. War required even the most stable of mind wizard to look forward to know what would become of the world.
He noted Sybill and he pulled excess of his robes in his hands so he could sit down on a student sofa booth. Not asking, but knowing when to just invite himself to do something in her presence because there would be no answer. She did not oblige to the same social formalities and functions and he understood it.
Sybill rose. Her eyes growing as she stood and revolved around the cushion she had just been sat on rubbing its pink dirty surface to the side and knocking the ball over in the first place. Remus winced for each stair it touched on the journey down from the tower. No doubt it would end up on the quidditch field pitch for some reason or other. He wished it luck, and he regarded Sybill again somewhat nervously. "I think it was in my interests that I see you since you've tried so many times to contact me. I would have written back had I known what you meant and that's down to how skitter-brained my logic is for my age."
Sybill dismissed his claim. The jewelry in her hair jangled. "My predictions were out of their element before they processed to the present." she sighed raspily. "Your timeline is not chronological."
Remus would liked to have made a mental note that she was pacing. But she wasn't. All he could really relate it to his evening haze of tiredness is that it was like a crab scuttling around in a musical. It was very precise, but no shell. It made sense that her messages had not been decodable. His admittance to his logic was not strictly true. He had two sleepless nights rising to the challenge and had come out empty handed. That did not happen. Not with divination. Potions maybe. His wolfs bane potion and it's process went straight over his head and he often let it stay there.
"Sybill, why don't you take a seat? Not that you need me to tell you, this is your classroom but you looked comfortable before I came in." Sybill regarded him like she didn't know what comfort meant and her head was jittery and she twisted it like a meerkat listening for predators. Quite tourettes-like in sharpness and she ranged over to the ancient kettle brewing on a shrine-like stove.
Remus took this as an invitation to remove his hand and he regarded her curiously. If she had nothing to tell him he supposed he should be on his way but he would like to offer her some sort of support or explanation to his condition or anything in the sort that would cast her away from her obsessive analysation with his stars. He watched her put in the tea bags and shut the kettle. He had one like that back when he had the old flat with Sirius. He figured it was supposed to be for camping but against logic it was cheaper than a kitchen kettle although their job was exactly the same. He had charmed it to have birds flutter out of the handle. The reason was that if you inserted eggs to hatch on the nozzle. Out they would come with the steam and he left the window open for them to set off in the mornings.
He never saw that kettle again. Sirius had come to realise that it was indeed, a camper kettle and off it had gone with Sirius and James and escapades into the good of humankind in their Ministry work. He sighed and came out of the thought to distinct herbal scents and he let himself sink into it goodnaturedly and watched Sybill's ringed fingers spoon various contents into mugs and stir.
He was very surprised that she used normal mugs, actually. He expected goblets, maybe, like the kitchens. Or decorated bowels or something. He preferred mugs for the simple nostalgia of his upbringing and the image of James picking one up when he had brought one in his sleeping bag to the potters in the summer and he had knocked igainst it with his fingers as if he was carrying something in it.
Sybill, he knew now, did not make that mistake and it was interesting to know a decision had to have been made for her to stray from Hogwarts cutlery to leave and to return with mugs. He very much doubted that it took five minutes. He suspected that the mugs had not come from Scotland at all. Now to think of it they looked oriental. That was a part of the world he had the pleasure to visit in his lost years.
"Singapore." he pointed out gently labelling the mug she was holding. She turned slowly her head, bug-eyed. "What region?" as if she suspected that it had been a lucky guess, or that he was a misled amateur or had seen the bottom when she was not looking. He sat up slightly. "North-east by the looks of things. Distinct pattern of the south though but all of the regions share their designs. It is, after-all, a nation."
Sybill let him have it and went back to the tea carrying them to the circular table Remus was sat at. Remus had to hold the much newer crystal ball complete with finger smudges as she placed them down with place mats. He passed the crystal ball on to sit beside him and hoped to the unbothered gods that she was not angry at him for doing it. He looked to his tea and he watched the steam and the gentle curdling tidal wave of brown sweet, and slow and he found himself smiling rather exasperatingly grateful for all all things hot and he felt painfully and regrettably English. It was then that he noticed that he had not told her his preferences. There they were.
He had been told endlessly that his concoction of tea and the way he liked it was so unique and unheard of that it was impossible to make to someone who knew him let alone god forbid the poor beginner who would try and fall victim to Remus not only not touching but watching it tearfully and in grief a waste of tea decease in front of him. Sybill seemed to have mixed hers with coffee. Unusual. He had not seen that before. Due to lack of milk (which was an appalling choice personally and he would not be able to handle it) it had not turned black like he thought it would, but the same shade as his. He felt like he should be bested for glasses himself although he had been tested at the age of seven. It gave him incentive to think they had come to the wrong conclusion.
Sybill cleared her throat. He smiled queasily and made eye contact. She looked away again. He straightened his back and used his hands to gesture. "Sybill I really do insist that you tell me what is on your mind so I can have hope of replicifing it." Sybill reacted with interest seeming surprised by his passion. He hoped she had not considered him inactive and toneless but of course, that was the persona he gave off and quite often, it was the truth. She looked interested in his tea. He tookit with each second letting it warm his vocal cords and leave his chest and diaphram active with life and heat.
It did seem to look like she wanted him to finish. He would try his best. But he never liked to drink it too fast because it would leave him with no social manoeuvre to preoccupy himself with when conversation turned awkward. But it was awkward enough, and with Sybill he was not afraid of it. He thought that any moment it would be Dumbledore's time to come in. Like an appointment, maybe. Maybe that is what Sybill did with her time. Allocate teachers to slots, though she never had not known he was coming. And he had a nagging feeling Dumbledore knew exactly what was going on, and was revelling in it.
Sybill sipped hers coarsely holding it up to her face like a child with a cup. He found it endearing because it touched her nose and her lips were very limp and nervous. She was also unblinking which he found less appealing to his self-esteem. He put his mug down again. "Tell me Sybill how is the moon tonight?"
Sybill looked at him as if a rabbit asked how its friend the dog that pursued its life every day was and when it can pop over for an alcoholic beverage. Her hands dangled in front of her and she closed her eyes. "It is complacent." she murmured.
"Is it?" Remus whispered with a warm tone. "Ah." he spoke soothingly like it had done him some good to know the information she gave him to encourage her to speak to him more fluently. "It is at a distance." "Oh?-" "It is at a point of no return." she jumped in before Remus could finish. He put his mug down. "No return?" she opened her eyes, her eyes shaking as if she was picking something up like a telephone wire. He wondered what she meant and most of all the truth that it held, if it did. It entertained him to play with the idea.
"Is it not foreseen that it will not fade from existence-" "No impending doomsday then?" she ignored him and his nervous joke hung in the air. "But it will become a better moon. It will change its appearance like the emperor and its clothes." he listened no longer led to believe that she was deceiving him in any kind of way that she knew of. Her voice became high-pitched. "Something will come! something will come! Do not fret because something will come."
Sybill became silent for a close to a minute before she rose again and in that time Remus had come to go in for another sip of his tea, strangely gaining the will to want to try hers and hanging his head back to contemplate her words, and in what layer of the cosmos that it applied. Certainly not grand-scale. The moon could not be altered. They sat in companionable silence. The atmosphere had evolved to quite a relaxed one. Sybill's words seemed to be simultaneously remembered and forgotten and it was her, the very woman herself who decided to bring out the tarot cards.
He could not place the last time he had seen tarot cards. Maybe it had been on a fishing dock in Ireland in his isolated travellings two unshaven sailors on a dock or maybe it was late-august of the year James and Lily left the world and it had been in their kitchen. With Sirius. All spread out. It was picking fun mostly to refer to tarot cards. It had always been a go-to knock for Sirius who found that there were always funny when desperation threatened to smother him. "I've got the woman. Oh my god hahahaha Moony do you see what she's telling me? she's telling me 'deception' ooh spooky. I'm in for it now. She's got my future figured out. how can I deceive when I can't even hide my unwashed socks from you?"
The memory hurt, as all memories consisted with Sirius often did. Not from fault of Sirius but how he had let them be tainted by the events of the last decade. He shuffled and sorted the cards with Sybill and laid them out in order. It sorted out his thoughts to do this. He wished that Peter could have been there. It was a frustrating and hollowing reflection to see how many moments Peter hadn't been present for. At the time he would not have let it slide if he had put that together but it was not a time where anything fit. He divided the cards and they played an old-fashioned game of snap which was ironic considering they were using subjects such as 'death' and 'fertility' to slap together and then again part once more.
Both being as they were the game was not all that effective as they were both acutely aware of not wanting to be quick, or overly-passionate so it ended up being more of a moving cards around the table kind of ordeal. Remus could tell that it was not her kind of thing and he looked at her blessingly for having the good will to host him like this. Eventually they put them away. In between a student came in. Apparently for an incriminating love note. He knew this as he took a glance and he found that it was very wise of the student to retrieve it before next lesson where all hell would inevitably break lose.
His lessons didn't have any of that. The only thing threatening to break lose was himself. He kept up quite the reputation of being unhinged and ungeneric and he liked it that way. It was what he and Sybill both shared in common. He was coming up to finishing his mug. He was thinking in that moment how cheeky and out of character it would be of him to ask for another but he was just that content although it was always a fear that it was the incense burning away in the corner.
Remus regarded the window and the sunset that was outside of it as he drained another sip from the mug. The porcelain had simmered to a cold touch and he was missing the scorch against his hands. He placed it on the table for Sybill to inspect. He had drunken from it enough times to know that it what she ad been waiting for since he arrived and he was all too obliged to give it to her.
He did not know what service it served. Aware through their conversations of the evening, confirming that she was very much aware of his predicament and he got the impression she was chillingly and counfoundingly jealous of it that this was the climax of their meeting. She swirled it. Not as impulsively as she did before. She seemed to have found the internal part of her that was relatively calm and she tossed the bottom of it twice, sieving the contents.
She left her chair with it only to return with mugs in their twenties hanging on her arm and she put them all down one by one onto the table. He recognised the cream one with the blue strip. As he should. It was his. He had been drinking from it only fourty-five minutes before he left to go to the divination tower to see her. He recognised another. A brown faded mug. That was one from his cupboard too. That had been due to be washed-up in the kitchens by the house elves who he paid for their troubles among many others he also came to the conclusion was his whether he knew them or not. He got through so many cups of tea a day evidently it was not hard for designs to slip unnoticed in his life.
By this time Sybill has smoothed her chair and sat back down and was cradling the most recent in both hands. He felt the need to reach forward and take some into his vision to see what she had found in them to have reverented such a hoard but he decided against it and to allow her to tell him in her own time. It was dark in the room except for the candles and it gave a film-like sense to what Remus was receptive to. Sybill opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish. He would have liked to have been underwater at that moment. To feel sand beneath his toes.
"I have never viewed such continuity." Sybill whispered. "It doesn't work like this." Remus felt foolish not only because it had been a very long time since he had schooled himself divination from a book and his knowledge was redundant but he could not see what what was causing a reaction. "May I?" he enquired gently gesturing to the closest mug to him. A yellow and green marbled design.
"Professor Remus Lupin." it was the first time she had used his name and he smiled pleasantly at the sentiment. He left his question alone and he waited for her. "Fortunes are series and sequences. They are always changing. There is never just one alone from any other pulls of destinies and outcomes." she looked as if it was the only time her subject had ever left her completely disconnected from working out. Her lower lip wobbled. He felt the need to comfort her. He felt it was safer not to move save her thinking that he was going for a mug to peer into.
Remus found it was hard to articulate what he felt with the details. It was a peevish, boyish thing to do by someone who hangs around in library sections reading every material known to man to draw up his conclusions. He imagined what he would do if Sybill's words were all he had. Sybill's spasms grew and she began to move the mug away from her. "The Grimm."
Remus stopped in his tracks. He replayed it in his mind and he took the mug calmly. The tea leaves were jet black with no traces of brown. Very pure, he noted. That was no Grimm. He smiled wistfully. "It may look like a Grimm. Regretfully, not quite. He is not so dark to remove any doubt that he is at all."
Sybill looked shocked. "Ha-ha-he?" she clasped her hands together in a ball. "He." he clarified. Now that he knew what he meant. He was stunted on what it could mean in his circumstance. He needed to expand on what he said to Sybill. She was looking rather like was he was referring to another werewolf or something of the sort and he would correct her. But closer - closer - he needed to see inside it and around it and all over it for clues. If there was anything that required his skills, this was it and he felt at a loss of where to start but it came. It came quite easily.
The 'Grimm' as Sybill called it and Remus would continue to deny himself emotional connection in fear of physical shut-down he scanned the contents. The tea leaves formed into a halo and he almost laughed out loud. It was too comical to restrain the laughter it aroused. It was very much a Sirius quality. And it seemed humorous only because to him a halo was a culturally critical symbol but in divination there was no such advancements from the etymology.
Remus thought carefully to second-year where in his spare time in the summer confined to his home he had chosen to not only read a muggle dictionary but to memorise it twice over. What was the definition of the halo? and why did he need it when a child could answer what it meant? He needed the exact definition and he needed it now. ha•lo (ˈheɪ loʊ) n., pl. -los, -loes, n. 1. Also called nimbus. the representation, as in pictures or statuary, of a radiant light, usu. in the shape of a disk, ring, or rayed form, above or around the head of a divine, holy, or greatly exalted personage...
He didn't need it. Innocence. He settled. Innocence. He collapsed in on himself. "Innocence." he said out loud. He sounded like he could not handle the sounds that they made in his mouth. "I'm very sorry." he apologised to Sybill and his world began to spin around him. How was something that was accepted become so easily dismantled in no effort at all? why then was it that the dismantling hadn't happened before? Very close and very near to a heart attack moved his shaking hand to unleash the map he had confiscated from Harry.
He held it very close to his chest like a blanket and he rested his hand on Sybill's shoulder. She was no closer to understanding so he spoke almost robotically as he squeezed it. "Sirius, my friend." his grip intensified but was still soft, holding himself up. Sirius Black was not only that. He was so much more. So much more than he could ever hoped for and - his stomach felt like it was being stabbed and he doubled-over. He needed to be sick. To get rid of all of the bile that had filled him in the years since James and Lily had passed. The poison...oh he might as well as been under an unforgivable curse of his doing.
He fell to the window and he opened it despite it Sybill's requests. He felt the night air fan his face. He craned his neck in all sorts of angles as if due to some futile attempt it would allow him to see askaban. As if it was anywhere near. He felt dementors swell to his right and he laughed bitterly yet it was a ghost of freedom that was beginning to resurrect. He laughed, joy overcoming him.
Joy that he was giving birth to with every wracked sob. His hand on his heart, the map fluttering in the wind, his face arched to the sky. His eyes closed, his mouth open in ecstasy and his body flopped and boneless with pain. The joy that rackled him interfered with the dementors that were grouped below and they moved backwards with each breath Remus Lupin made.
Time was no longer appropriate. Years shed from Remus like they shed from a pencil from a knife. The knife was tearing him from the inside but it had helped him see what the weight had made him no longer to see. He was twenty two again and his fragile body and his position of a teacher were bonuses that made the feeling all the more sweet - like a particularly moistened Honeydukes sweet unwrapped and left on a table.
Sybill had already been and gone to retrieve Albus and Minerva had accompanied him and had gone straight to the tea leaves for guidance on what the commotion was all about. Albus stood, smiling. Had he known or had he not, Remus did not know and he dizzily accepted Minerva lifting his arm for her to assist him in moving in his comatose state. Albus looked outside and his eyes Sybill could have sworn were red that she had never seen the headmaster make under his half-moon spectacles. Albus spoke. "Mr Lupin, I hope you're aware that I no longer have any dementors on the grounds of this school and that they seem to ceased to exist to protect it?"
Remus rose his head and his eye met with the calm and untouched walls of the school. There were no longer any flaps of material rousing a sense of unease in his heart and in his bloodstream. "Sirius." was his last word before he faded to black. From there he was taken to the hospital wing in the very same bed where he had been waited upon by Madam Pomfrey for a series of seven years. Yes, indeed, the moon is at the point of no return.