ii. all of my doubt goes away somehow

Hermione stepped through the fireplace and rushed to her bedroom, stepping inside and shutting the door. The coat was still there, although that was something Hermione wasn't going to allow herself admit having worried about. Something had happened, someone had given her this tangible link to Remus. Hermione had to settle her heartbeat, had to acclimatize herself to the object enough that she'd be able to carry it to a place where other people would see her with it. They'd figure out how she felt, they'd know, she was sure of it.

Hermione always had been able to rationalize anything to herself, and this was no exception.

She reached up and released the trench coat from its hanger and carried it into the living room. It felt heavy with the hopes she'd imbued it with, and she lifted the garment to her face, allowing herself this indulgence for a few precious minutes. She could smell him on it-not just the everyday scent of a person's laundry, but the scent of wearing and living in something more recently than two years ago. In the time since he'd disappeared she'd expected her feelings to fade, to evolve into something milder, more chaste, but it was all still there with renewed intensity. Futile desire unaltered by time or logic thickened her throat and misted her eyes over. Hermione turned to lift her face toward the window in her favorite spot in the room, the place she loved to stand and bask in the morning sunshine. She stood perfectly still, eyes closed as she hugged Remus's coat and allowed herself to take a few calming breaths in preparation for showing it to her friends.

She could feel the brightness of the sun on her eyelids-and she felt the loss of it for a brief flicker, as though something had passed between the sun and her window. Hermione opened her eyes, and while she didn't see anything, she heard footsteps. She rushed over to the window in enough time to see the figure of a woman walk quickly behind a large tree. She couldn't have heard it, but Hermione swore she could feel the pop of Apparition.

Hermione brought the coat tucked in its box back to the Burrow, but Molly put them to work with all manner of party preparations, so she sat it in a corner under Teddy's pillowcase. Once their friends and fellow Order members started arriving, Hermione threw herself into socializing with them. She wasn't much for parties, but this was like an intense little reunion, with mostly happy news from everyone since they'd last met. New jobs, relationships, and magical accomplishments filled their conversation with back pats and congratulations. Harry let his godson help blow out his birthday candles, but it was the present-opening Teddy was most delighted with. He kept everyone amused by changing his hair color to match the ribbons on Harry's gifts, and to Hermione's great pride, he'd also managed to curb his toddler tendency for greediness. She'd worried that Harry would confuse the boy if he kept Teddy with him while opening things, but Teddy had a natural joy in generosity that reminded her of Remus. It didn't need to be a gift for him to make him happy; seeing Harry pleased with something was enough, even at three years old.

Thinking of Remus made Hermione hold Teddy a little closer before laying him down to sleep in Ron's old room. Teddy had stayed there often enough that he fell asleep right away, leaving Hermione grateful and nervous at the same time. Downstairs, most of the older generation of Witches and Wizards were saying their goodbyes to the birthday boy, and most likely by the time she came back to the table there would be just their core group of DA members left. The years of searching for Remus had taken their toll on those friendships, even if her friends had tried to hide it. She supposed she did understand, they'd lost siblings, lovers, a godparent-all relationships closer than hers to Lupin. Her crusade had been well camouflaged by her guardianship of Teddy, but Hermione was perceptive, she could tell when her friends were uncomfortable. She'd pulled back into herself, taking her updates and conjectures with her, despite how painful it was for her. The resulting relief she'd seen in her friends had added another layer of distance. Now that she was about to rock the flimsy foundation she'd rebuilt, she wasn't sure it was worth it.

She took a deep breath, shut her eyes, and stood up to leave the room and let Teddy sleep in peace. Hermione turned toward the door and saw Ginny standing there looking fondly at her. Hermione walked quietly to the door and opened her mouth to tell Ginny she'd changed her mind about their proposed conversation.

"Nope," Ginny said, making a popping noise at the end of the word. She tucked her hand into Hermione's arm and tugged her toward the stairs.

"How did you know that I decided to-" Hermione whispered. She was silenced with a look. "I just think-" Hermione started, but Ginny interrupted her immediately as she reached out to pull Teddy's door gently closed.

"We could hear you thinking from downstairs."

"I'm sure everyone's sick of hearing about-" Hermione said, only to be interrupted again, this time by Harry.

"Nope," he said, rounding the corner to greet them from the base of the stairs. He popped his 'p' in the same way as Ginny, and Hermione grinned despite herself. She allowed herself to be pulled into the brightly lit, cheerful living room with Ron, Fred, Neville, and Luna there waiting for her.

It turned out Ginny had done the hard work for her, intuitively guessing that Hermione was concerned about bringing her quest back to the forefront of conversation. When everyone was settled and looking at her expectantly, her worries were put to rest when Harry broke the silence.

"Ginny says you might have a lead," he said, leading toward him as he balanced at the edge of his seat. A quick glance around the room showed similar attitudes; no one looked like they were experiencing the internal eye-roll Hermione had sensed so often in the past year.

"Someone, well. Someone sent me this," Hermione said, stepping quickly over to the mysterious box and pulling out its contents. "It's his, and it's-well, look at it."

"Clean," Luna said.

"Not fresh out of that battle, that's for certain," Neville agreed.

"Right?" Ginny said.

"But maybe someone just, I dunno, found it and washed it and figured out where Teddy lives," Harry said, looking doubtful.

"He's worn it since, I'm sure of it," Hermione said. She paused for a second, then spoke again, rushing through the words. "It smells like him. H-he's out there somewhere, and someone's done his laundry, and I just know he didn't leave that for us, but someone did."

"I like thinking that he's made friends with someone who knows better than to let him stay away," Luna mused. "He always did think he was too dangerous for friends."

"He was wrong," Harry said, emphatically.

"Wait," Hermione said thoughtfully. "If he is somewhere where he's taking proper care of his clothes, a place that's not a… a den," she said, shuddering, "then we can make some conclusions about that, right?" She started looking in Teddy's changing bag for a quill, grinning at Ginny when she looked back up to find a notebook being handed over by the other witch. "Right. So if someone's able to send us this, there's shelter and food, don't you think?"

"Makes sense," Ron said.

"Not only that, but, you didn't live at the cottage before everything," Ginny waved her hands around as though to convey many complicated things; "happened, so to find you and Teddy, whoever this is would have to be told about you, yeah?"

"Brilliant, Ginny," Harry said, rubbing her shoulder.

"Oh. Oh. Of course!" Hermione felt a little overwhelmed at that. Remus would know (or at the very least, soon find out) about her caring for Teddy. Somehow, everyone else knowing this-and even possibly guessing that she might have other motives for doing it-was far enough removed from the man himself that it didn't phase her, but the very real possibility of him already knowing launched a half-dozen butterflies into her stomach.

The butterflies were stomped to death at her next thought.

"Someone connected to Remus knows where Teddy is, we can agree on that, right?" Hermione said in a pinched voice. "We also agree that he wouldn't have left us his coat."

"Stubborn git, he wasn't going to say anything, was he?" Harry said, catching her implications and voicing them, hands curling into fists on his lap.

"And wherever he is, he thinks he's better off without us!" Ron said, standing up in indignation.

"Worse," Fred quietly spoke for the first time. "That we're better off without him."

The rest of the conversation had ebbed and flowed with emotion, concluding with Harry promising to once again check into what the Ministry knew of Fenrir Greyback, something he'd done a few times the previous year after Hermione had annoyed and finally exhausted her contacts there. At last word, the dark werewolf had retreated far into the wilderness with the remains of his tattered pack, content to lick their wounds and keep out of sight. Hermione had chosen to sit and listen to her friends chat after they'd concluded their Lupin conversation, setting aside her quill and parchment and simply sitting with his coat folded in her lap. She'd rested her hands inside the folds, twisting her faux wedding ring around her finger until the cascades of yawns sent everyone home to their own beds.

"Stay?" Ginny said, the tangle of her hands in Harry's making it a mixed message. "Or," she added, noting the hesitation on Hermione's face, "you could head back, Teddy will be fine, and you can come straight away in the morning?"

Ordinarily, Hermione wouldn't have agreed, but as she pulled her hands from the warmth of Remus's coat and stretched, she scrubbed them over her face and smelled Remus on them, ever so slightly. The thought of trying to drag Teddy from sleep with hands that smelled of his father was too much for her fragile heart just then. She nodded at Ginny, gathered up her things from Teddy's changing bag in case it would be needed before she came back (she hoped not!), and Apparated home, too sleepy to bother with the floo.

Harry had begged her to set up serious wards and protections about the house, assuming probably rightly that whoever was associated with Lupin now may have at the very least been associated with werewolves, and possibly even Death Eaters. Hermione had already been using one of the powerful protective wards she knew of, but tonight, instead of looking to lock down her cottage with a powerful Keep Out message, she realized she wanted to do just the opposite. Impulsively, she sat at her desk with quill and parchment and wrote a message quickly, grabbing the spellotape and fixing it to her door before she lost her nerve. Then she cast a timed sleeping spell on herself and lay down, bothering only to toe off her shoes for the sake of comfort.

ANY FRIEND OF REMUS LUPIN IS A WELCOME FRIEND OF OURS
PLEASE COME BACK FOR TEA ON 4TH AUGUST

Tuesday
There wasn't any change to the parchment on the 1st. This was perfectly reasonable, considering it had only been up for less than 24 hours, and Hermione's fingernails had been too long and in need of a trim in any case. No one expected the hands of a single mother of a three year-old boy to be perfect, surely.

Wednesday
By midday on the 2nd, there was still no change. "Fingernail biting is a very bad habit," Hermione reminded herself and Teddy. That afternoon, they went shopping for the ingredients for double chocolate biscuits, Teddy (and Remus's) favorite. That night, Hermione went to check the front door and stopped herself so many times after dinner and before bedtime that she almost set up a mirror on the column on the porch so she could check without opening the door. As soon as Teddy was down (and had stayed down) for the night, she'd walked to the door, opened it, and checked. There under the text of her invitation was a reply!

Lovely! Will be there at half six, thanks!

Thursday
Hermione loved baking with Teddy, unless she was currently baking with Teddy. It was adorable, messy, frustrating, and priceless, so she tried to do it often enough that he got to enjoy the novelty, and infrequently enough to keep her sanity. Once everything was cleaned and put away, and the misshapen and broken baked goods were properly 'tested' and disposed of in their bellies, Hermione kissed her sweet boy goodnight. Her excitement and anticipation were off the charts, but she had one more surprise to come. She found it when she went to remove the parchment from her front door.

Spellotaped to her invitation was a folded letter.

Hermione,
Please forgive my intrusion, firstly! I hope your reactions will be more pleasant than our mutual friend's have been, as I am sure you already suspected. But I get ahead of myself.

My name is Arawa Farell. My brother is a werewolf. He was bitten when he was 17, in 1993 by Greyback, just as Remus was. For a long while we kept to ourselves, but this became impossible once Greyback decided to come for those he had sired, to force them into his service, and His service. Samiel wasn't strong enough to resist, but he stayed in the background, nondescript and ordinary, as we had promised each other. After the Battle of Hogwarts, Greyback drew back to a series of remote caves with his sires. They were allowed to lick their wounds, allowed to lay low, but not allowed to leave.

We think Greyback got bored, overconfident. He wanted more thralls. He chose poorly. He bit a young man from the area, I don't want to say his name-but, Hermione, he saved my brother and all the others! He fought Greyback and WON. I don't even know if this is known outside of the periphery of the pack, the family that stayed to try to help, like me.

This brings us to Remus. We have all been living in a makeshift village the pack family built. Some of the werewolves left with their loved ones immediately, but not everyone was strong enough to. We (the rest of the family) have all been working so hard to bring these men and women back to humanity, Hermione. Remus… he was very broken. It wasn't until last month we even knew he had family. Not everyone does, I get that. But the look on his face when he talked about his son! He says you're both -no. I'm not going to say those awful things, because I think it would hurt you to hear them and he is WRONG. He's not better off. You two are not better off.

He says his wife is dead. You clearly aren't. I can't pretend to understand why he tells himself these things, and I am sure you're already so very hurt by his absence… but I could see how much you still love him. I saw you in the window. I think you saw me, and I want to apologize, I never meant to pry on such a private moment! I just… he's a good man, Hermione. Everyone can see it but him. I know how very angry he would be if I told him I've come to you. He's a fool, a broken one. I want to help fix him, if you'll let me. I'm so very afraid he'll run away from you again, from his pack family, too.

So, there it is. I'll come by tomorrow. It's still over a week until the full moon, so I don't think he'll be able to smell that I've been to see you. I want to promise you, I will (and the other pack family members you'll hopefully meet soon) do everything I can to bring him back to you.

With hope,
Ara