Disclaimer: Thea and Mel's and other OCs are free, because they come with Rowling's character and plot attached and I can't charge for or claim something I've only borrowed, even if I've added to it.
Washing Dishes
Business was slow tonight, Thea grimaced. She was slow. She was so bored she was moving like a tortoise.
"And when he looks at me, his eyes just sparkle. Did I tell you what Chris said the other day? It was the cutest thing…" Thea tuned out again and Clyde chopped a carrot with particular viciousness. They didn't need the carrot. No one was here and it was already half past nine. But it was better than chopping up Erin's head. The teenager had gotten a new boyfriend three days ago, and she had not shut up all night long. Bernie was still pretending to listen to her, but Thea was about ready to beat her own head in with a soup ladle, and Clyde was looking downright murderous.
Thea stirred the soup of the day, a thick beef stew, mindlessly. She hoped someone else ate it after closing time, so it didn't go to waste and she didn't have to. Customers raved about Clyde's beef stew, but personally Thea didn't care for it. The bell rang at the door. Thea shot up, but Bernie beat her out the kitchen door. Thea followed him, hoping with all her might that the customer sat down at an even table and she could get out of the kitchen. He didn't. The man in the worn out trench coat and the shabby maroon-and-gold striped scarf sat down at Table Seven. Bernie's territory. But Thea smiled anyway. Bernie groaned, turning to face her, eyes pleading.
Thea shrugged magnanimously. "If you want to get away from the crazy teenager, be my guest," she said. "He's sitting at your table. But just know you were worse."
Bernie grimaced. "I wasn't!" he protested.
Thea was merciless. "You were. Anyway, he'll probably stay late and I can talk to him afterwards and get some intelligent conversation."
Bernie looked at Remus Lupin, and sighed. "First customer in half an hour and I'm going to give him up," he said. Remus looked up at them and waved at Thea. "We both know the reason Mr. Shabby's not looking so sad is because he's here to see you. But you owe me, Ramora." He pointed a finger at her face for emphasis. "Remember that. You owe me."
Thea grinned. "Thank you, Bernie," she said.
Bernie nodded miserably. "Do me a favor? When you get back with his order, split my head open with Clyde's cleaver?"
"And face Clyde's wrath over the mess I'd get on his shiny knife?" Thea gasped in horror. "Tell you what, though, he might forgive us if we split Erin's."
Bernie grinned in evil appreciation. "Might even help." He waved her off. "Go on, Ramora. Customer's waiting."
Thea grabbed her notebook out of her apron pocket. She was beginning to consider Table Seven to be Remus Lupin's table. As she approached she observed him. He looked healthier and a little happier than she'd seen him last two weeks ago. He smiled at her, putting aside that book he inevitably brought. It looked like some sort of almanac tonight, Thea thought, though there seemed to be a few too many planetary bodies on the cover before he hid it like he always did. She was glad to see him. "Hello, Remus."
"Nice to see you, Thea," he replied. "I got the job with your friend Ms. Austin at the library."
Thea nodded. "She called to tell me. You could've, too, you know."
Remus' face fell briefly for half a second, but then he pushed past whatever it was and simply said that he had wanted to thank her in person.
"According to Ms. Austin she's thanking you," Thea told him. "She told me that you're polite, efficient, and very well-read. Also said you're really good with the kids. She thanked me about three times for recommending you."
Thea grinned to see the pleased embarrassment on his face as she repeated his boss' praise of him. "I like Ms. Austin," he said. "She's a very sweet woman. I can see how she might have helped you through high school."
"She worked there, then," Thea explained. She frowned briefly. "'Bout the only good thing about that place. I volunteered to be her assistant for a semester when I was thirteen." She snorted. "I did more reading than actual work."
"So. What will you have?" Thea asked, getting out her pen and pad.
Remus looked at the blackboard by the door. "The soup of the day sounds good," he said. Thea nodded, pleased. Someone was going to eat it!
"I'll have it out to you in a bit, Remus," she said.
Thea returned to the kitchen. Clyde was taking off his hat, preparing to leave. He looked about as annoyed as Bernie felt. "Clyde, can we have one last soup of the day before you're out?" she asked. Grumpily, he nodded, returning to the soup pot.
"Oh," said Erin, "Do we have a customer, or are you just hungry?"
"There's a customer," Thea said. "I'm hungry, too, come to think of it. Maybe you could make me one of those awesome cheese-and-tomato sandwiches?" Erin's grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches were a specialty of Mel's. Erin nodded.
She checked her watch. "Then I suppose I better head out with Clyde," she murmured. "It's getting on ten o'clock." Erin turned to the stove top, and Bernie shot Thea an exaggerated look of relief behind her back. Thea held back a laugh.
"So are you guys both going to stay with the customer?" Erin asked. Here Bernie grinned.
"I have a feeling I'll get to go home to Ashley," Bernie said.
Thea shrugged. "If you want."
Clyde poured the soup out into a bowl and put in a spoon. It smelled delicious. It had been simmering for a few hours, now. Clyde sniffed at it with a pardonable pride.
"I'm going to head out, Thea, Erin, Bernie," he said. "See you next week." He scowled as he left, as if next week were much too soon.
"Thanks, Clyde," Thea called as he hung up his apron. He grunted, and walked away. "Poor Clyde," she chuckled. "I think being stuck in a kitchen with a love-struck fool and a hormonal teenager was more than that grumpy middle-aged bachelor could stand."
Erin stuck out her tongue over her shoulder, and Bernie grinned. Nevertheless in a moment, Erin handed over the sandwich plate, and took off her own apron. "Maybe if I hurry home, Chris will still be up. I'm going to call him," she said brightly, kissing Bernie on the cheek and hugging Thea.
"You do that," Thea said drily. Bernie saluted.
"I'm out, too," he said. "Have fun with Mr. Shabby!" Thea rolled her eyes.
"Whatever," she muttered. She took the sandwich and the soup out to Remus.
"Here you are, Remus," she said. He nodded. "They're gone again. There wasn't much to do tonight anyway."
"Thanks, Thea." Remus said.
They both began eating without a word. For a while they sat in companionable silence, until Remus said, "I find it tempting, too."
"What?"
"Reading, when I'm supposed to be working in the library." He looked rueful. "I've always liked children's stories."
"Really?" Thea gave an exaggerated sigh of relief. "I've always been the only adult I know that still reads them. Or-at least- the only one that admits to it. What's your favourite?"
Remus thought for a moment. "I must confess an enduring partiality to Sherlock Holmes," he said. "Though that's one that may be found in children's and adult's libraries alike, I first read it when I was about nine. What about you?"
Thea grinned sheepishly. "Peter Pan," she said. "I'll read Barrie over and over and over again. I had a friend once right before I left for University. She always used to tease me and say fairies weren't—"Thea nodded confidingly. "You know. I clapped every time."
Remus let out a little bark of surprised laughter. "That's-"
Thea grinned. "Mental, I know. So she told me."
"I was going to say that's adorable," Remus corrected. He looked thoughtfully at Thea. "Do you really believe, or do you just pretend to?"
If anyone else had asked a question like that Thea would have suspected they were making fun of her. But Remus asked it seriously, as if he really wanted to know. Thea thought a moment. "Believe in fairies, "she asked, mulling over her answer. "I don't know. I've certainly never seen one. And that breaking out of a baby's laugh thing is obviously a bit of pretty nonsense. But…there is this feeling I get, whenever I read about fairies in the old stories. Or giants, or dragons, or monsters. The older you go, the more possible it feels, you know?" She shrugged, feeling rather self-conscious, but Remus only nodded for her to continue. "There are these weird similarities," she said, not looking at him. "You know, in worldwide myths and legends? They're all eerily alike when they talk about giants, witches, vampires, dragons, and yeah, fairies." Thea laughed rather nervously. "They pop up everywhere- from China to Africa to the North American Native tribes to here in Britain. It makes me think that it can't all be entirely fictitious. Or maybe that it wasn't, once upon a time and long, long ago."
Remus was staring at her. "Sounds crazy, right?"
He shook his head. "Actually, not at all. It isn't what a girl your age would normally be thinking, but it's far from crazy. I think it's incredibly arrogant of us when we count out things we haven't seen just as if we know everything."
Thea smiled, encouraged, and leaned forward. "Or are even capable of knowing everything," she added in excitement. "The way they go on sometimes in my science courses, it's like they think they can. It reminds me of my younger sister, Ginnifer."
Remus raised an eyebrow in polite confusion. "Does it?"
Thea shrugged. "Yeah. She's seventeen, and she thinks she knows just about everything. And I remember being like that, but now I've found so much more that I don't understand: so much that I don't think I'll ever understand it all, and fifty year olds I've met are even more clueless. It makes me think sometimes that the human race as a whole is just a bunch of teenagers."
Remus' face twisted briefly. "Done a lot of damage for a bunch of teenagers," he spat suddenly. Thea froze up, wondering what she'd said. But in a moment Remus had recovered himself. "Do you ever think," he said, seeming to digest his words with care, "That maybe it'll be better if we don't grow up? If we don't discover what else is out there? It might just give us the ability to be far more unpleasant characters than we are already."
"What do you mean?" Thea asked, finishing her sandwich.
"Say we return to fairies," he said slowly. "And giants and wizards and vampires and dragons. Say that things might actually be like they are in an old fairy tale or myth, out in some hidden corner on the planet, and humans haven't rediscovered them because we don't know enough yet."
"Yes," Thea said, wondering where he was going with this.
He scraped the bottom of his soup bowl with his spoon. "Have you ever come across one of the original Brothers Grimm stories in all your library perusing?" he asked in a controlled voice.
Thea grimaced. "They're gruesome, I know."
"What if they weren't far wrong?" Remus suggested. "What if all that magic we don't believe in because we haven't rediscovered them yet really is gruesome?" his words were calm, but his eyes weren't focused on Thea or on Mel's at all. They were off someplace else entirely, the place where Thea supposed he had gotten all that sorrow he carried around with him. "If there were giants and dragons, maybe it is best we don't know about them. They might not be nice at all."
"I daresay giants and dragons might not be," said Thea, amused. But Remus continued.
"And wizards and witches, too. Say magic existed, and we human beings discovered it again. It would just be a power like any other, wouldn't it? Like money, or strength, or intellect. The people that possessed it would still be people, they would only have more ability to hurt one another, don't you think? I've been trying to study some physics in my spare time," he said. "It seems to me that when human beings discovered more about how they operated all it did was enable them to kill far more efficiently, and that that opened up a whole new area of problems to solve and things we didn't know."
He lowered his voice, and now he was back in the room. "Maybe, if we found magic, we'd start to wish we hadn't." he murmured in a low voice. "Maybe it would just open up hundreds of new ways to be miserable, and thousands of questions. Maybe it is better not to believe in fairies, Thea," he said finally. "Because if you believe in fairies, you might discover magic, and find that just like everything else, it has a very dark side." He stared at his clenched fists. His jaw was tight. Thea could almost smell the anger and grief on him, but it was not directed at her. She wondered, more than ever, what he'd stumbled into that was too big for him. What was Remus Lupin's story? She had asked once, indirectly, but she dared not ask again.
He was silent for a long time. Thea thought for a moment he would leave. Then he shifted, and Thea held out her hands to take the money for his meal. He did hand it to her, in exact change as was usual for him. But when Thea slipped the money in her apron and stood to take his plate, Remus stood as well, and grabbed Thea's plate as well as his own empty bowl.
Thea was confused. "You know, this is a restaurant," she pointed out. "Unless you get a takeout box, you can't take the plates with you. I could get you one, if you like, but your soup's all gone."
Remus shrugged. "I thought about it after last time, and it occurred to me that you co-workers leave when you decide to stay behind late, and you end up stuck with the clean-up they'd have helped you with if you'd just left on time," he said quietly, balancing the bowl on the plate and sticking his book into his pocket. "I didn't think that was exactly fair. So-I can at least help you with the clean-up tonight."
Thea blinked at him. "You really don't have to," she said. "I don't mind handling it alone, really."
"I know," Remus said. "I'd like to help, anyway."
Thea regarded him for a moment, and then nodded. "Come on, then. I'll show you to the kitchen."
He followed her quietly to the kitchen, and, after putting Remus' money with the day's takings. Thea took up her place at the sink to wash her dish and Remus', and the last few plates from customers Erin had left in the sink. Remus handed the plate and bowl back to her and quietly took up the rag there for drying. "They go on the rack up over our heads?" he asked, pointing to it.
"Yeah," Thea said. Remus' happy mood earlier had fled, but Thea sensed that he was more grateful for her company than he'd been even when he'd waved and said he was glad to see her. She moved over to allow him room and began washing.
The silence was weighted; the man who stood beside her looked every bit as miserable as the man she'd met two months ago. Something had shifted. The silence oppressed Thea. With an effort, she broke it.
"Do you like working at the library?" she asked quietly.
"I do," he said. "The people that come in are polite and interesting, and though it's quiet, there's enough to do that I don't get left too often to my thoughts. There's something to be said for a load of basic tidying up, organization, and mindless daily tasks."
Thea looked at him, and Remus smiled. "Oh, I'm grateful, Thea," he clarified.
"It's just not what you wanted to do," she said.
Remus shook his head mutely. "But sometimes there's not a lot of choice," he said.
Thea shrugged. "It's like that here, too," she said. "I love Mr. Foster and his wife, and I like the people I work with. I meet a lot of interesting people. But waiting tables isn't exactly my dream job, either. It's not what I wake up for in the morning. But…"
"It's much better than sitting around starving with nothing to do but chase around thoughts in your skull," Remus said. His voice was harsh. Thea merely nodded.
"You were, weren't you?" she said. "Nearly starving, that is. I thought you were. You were using all the money to make rent?" She spoke calmly, but Remus started, as if he hadn't thought she'd take it so literally. He looked like he might run, or wouldn't say anything further, but then he nodded. "And that wasn't the awful part, was it?" Thea asked, even softer. "The awful part was sitting alone in that flat when your mind wouldn't shut up about all the things that are bothering you."
Remus shifted, and Thea washed a cup and handed it to him. "I'm not asking, Remus," she said.
He dried it, and hung it up on the rack with the others. "Don't," he said shortly.
"You should know, though," Thea said, forcing that same, casual tone and very pointedly not looking at him. "It's written all over you. The minute you walked in here you looked like you were just about ready to cry. Or throw something. Maybe both. "
"And what?" Remus ground out in a carefully controlled voice. But he'd paled, and his hands were shaking as he dried another bowl. "You felt sorry for me?"
Thea looked at him, then. "Frankly? Yes. But that's not why I started talking to you. I talked to you because you like to read, and you were nice about me singing. Why I gave you Ms. Austin's address, too, instead of just the other two."
Remus said, nothing, but he relaxed. Thea washed another plate. "You know," she said, "A couple times in my life, I've gotten these odd urges. Urges to climb up to the top of the English building and jump. Make some kind of point. Or to launch myself in front of a bus. It happened first when I was ten, and lasted until I was nearly thirteen. Then again about a year and a half ago. I started wondering who I was important to, really, and who would miss me when I was gone. I don't talk to people much, you know. They tend to be awkward around someone that goes around singing as much as I do, or something." Thea gave a little halfhearted smile. It was a bad joke. "I thought, what's the point? I'm barely making it from month to month, and I can't see how I'll ever get to where that's not the case. I thought, I can't see where I'm going, I don't like where I am, and I hate where I've been. And if tomorrow the sun rises, there's only another sunset and another tragedy waiting."
Remus turned, and faced her. "And is this supposed to make me feel better?" he demanded.
"It didn't for me when my mom committed suicide and I had to basically raise my sisters. I didn't again when I almost flunked out of school after graduating top of my class," Thea said. Remus' eyes widened.
"Thea, I had no…"
"Well, now you do. I told you," Thea said quietly. "Eventually, though, you learn. Right when I get home, before I start studying, or writing, or eat a meal, or go to bed, I think, 'Today I have food and I'm alive to enjoy it. Today there's a bed and I can sleep in it.' And you learn to consider that a success, and let the tomorrow that never comes and the darkness take care of themselves."
Thea found her hands clenching the last plate, though it was clean, tightly.
Remus grabbed its other edge. "Does it fix things, Thea?" He laughed bitterly.
Thea looked at him, right in the eye. "No," she said. "But it makes it so it doesn't rise up and overwhelm you all at once."
Remus held her gaze, and inclined his head once, ever so slightly. He prized the plate from her fingers, then, and dried it. "You don't know what you're talking about," he said quietly, "Though to be fair, I can't imagine my mother dying that way. You still don't know what you're talking about. But thank you. Thank you," he repeated. He placed the last dish on the shelf, and walked over to the bus-bin. He took the rag for wiping the tables, and tossed Thea the broom.
Thea made an attempt to catch it, but missed. The broom fell on her foot, hitting her shin as it crashed. Thea retrieved it, face burning, but Remus didn't laugh. He merely handed her the dustbin. "You sweep, I'll wipe," he said.
They worked in silence for a while. Remus was grim, Thea thoughtful as she tried to work out what she wanted to say. As they finished cleaning the dining room and stacking the chairs on top of the tables before lockup, Thea finally thought of it. He walked to the door in silence, and would have left, but she stopped him.
"Listen, Remus," she said. "Do you have some fatal disease?"
Remus was quiet for a moment. Thea at first was horrified, thinking he did, and now her encouragement was useless, but then he said, "No." He seemed torn between weariness and, oddly, some bitter amusement. "No. I'm not dying of any disease."
Thea jerked her head. "Alright then," she said. "Then your life's not over. It probably feels like it is. Maybe you've fantasized once or twice about jumping in front of a bus yourself. But don't. The days are getting longer already. Spring is coming, and one day you'll get up and be glad of it. There are good people to meet, and good places to go, and good things left that you can do. Whatever's happened, I can tell it was a tragedy. You won't be able to forget it. You won't ever be the same. But you will be able to live past it. Okay?" She held out her hand, challenging him.
Remus took it, and his eyes softened. "That still doesn't fix things," he informed her. "But…it makes it better. A little. A very little."
"I'll see you?" The words were a question.
"You'll see me," he promised. As he released her hand to go, Thea hoped she wasn't imagining that it felt a little warmer.
A/N: My word, I had trouble with this chapter! But in the end I'm VERY happy with how it turned out. I think I've written something true to both Thea's character and Remus', at the time. I might extend this story. I had a basic storyline for each chapter. There were going to be seven (I feel seven is an almost mandatory number for Harry Potter), taking them to around summer 1982. Now I feel there ought to be more, extending at least until November 1982, and possibly longer. I don't know exactly what to do with Thea in the end, though.
I can't in good conscience kill her off, nor make them have a fight. It would just be too cruel to Remus. But neither can I bring it all the way up to the nineties and the canon storyline. I'm getting a sense that she has to disappear. I'm considering marrying her to somebody, or having her move (Remus could always find her if he moved, but if she left and didn't tell him where she was going?). She could get hit with a Memory Charm in the end, too, and have to forget all about him and everything she learned. 'Cause that's pretty clear, too. She's gonna find out about something. She's too smart and open minded and attentive not to. At the very least she's going to have to realize he was friends with Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew.
Anyway, whatever the difficulties, I'm excited about next chapter: the first that takes place outside of Mel's. Review, and tell me what you think!
God Bless,
LMSharp
