A/N: Thank you for the continued reviews and support. I had something upsetting happen to my family this week, and being able to distract myself with final revisions and your kind comments has been exactly the sort of diversion I needed. Just for reference, we have six more double-chapters after this, plus an epilogue.

Warnings for unwanted advances; nothing too graphic.

For Peque Saltamontes

A Filled Space

THIRTEEN

Remus thinks it an interesting thing that his comrades, friends and co-workers, so easily forget that he was once a Marauder. The Map and the pranks; the quests and late-night dares- he was not just a reluctant participant to the mayhem. He was not one to enter a water halfway; he thinks and then commits, and nearly never regrets later.

And so when he wakes one morning to a sky slick with sleet and ice, and he thinks of slippery pavement and Hermione's shoes, he is not surprised that his mind connects the dots to a dangerous plan.

He decided, after she finally told him of her mystery, that the string that kept bringing him back to thoughts of her and concerns of her was that she required a solution. An intelligent mind requires challenge, and hers is the sort of puzzle that draws him to his library and centers his dreams on thoughts of snapping bones and broken bonds.

Remus sees almost nothing of her in the week that passes after their breakfast; he spends it in his library, and then in Sirius's, and even one night's trip to Hogwarts. The writings on magical bonds are slim, but he finds most of the studies are in children. Wizards, when still babes, channel powerful magic, but they do so without direct will.

The magic can come, but only in moments of high emotion: great passion or sadness; great anger or fear.

The idea is too perfect, too clever to ignore, and he watches through the window for her approach and then thinks of what to best trigger the reflex. He thinks she needs only a single moment of spontaneous magical reaction to feel reassured; he is certain that the single moment will trigger later ones. His theory is simple: the bond is not damaged, simply dormant.

But what to kick it off?

It only takes a few hours of poking in the attic to find his DADA chest, and then only another hour still to remember the code to unlock the lower chamber of it. Remus doesn't wait for the boggart to shift into a proper form before binding it to the hollowed out book he prepared earlier. It is near dark when he finally stumbles out from the attic and down to the ground floor.

She's already left, and when he stages the book near the door, balanced so as to fall upon her entrance, he does not think twice. He does not regret, he does not second-guess. It's a chance and a dare, but Remus has a gambler's heart.

It will work, he is convinced.

FOURTEEN

Hermione does not notice the stack of books that block the doorway, not at first, and so when they tumble across the polished floor, she only sighs and begins to restack. Her smile, half-fond, half-bothered, catches as a pair of black boots pause beneath her gaze. She traces the legs that follow them, her eyes lifting until they meet with a face so familiar, so dear that she cannot help but cringe at the hate gathered there.

Hatred for her, she imagines.

"So this is where you've been hiding?" Harry's voice is as it was nearly eight months earlier, brittle and tight. He stands firm as she slowly rises, leaving her little space to back into, the door behind her and only him to her front. "I suppose you thought me too thick to figure it out."

"N-no," she stammers. "I didn't think that at all, Harry, I just needed some time-"

"Save it." He pushes into her, not pausing until she's forced against the door, pinned without space to escape or run. "I've always hated how easily you lie to me."

She can't disagree; she can craft the greatest deceptions, when forced to it. Leading witches to angry Centaurs, or tricking hapless Muggles into donating extra coin; Hermione is clever and quick, and people trust her too easily.

"You didn't have to go this far, though, you know." He fingers a strand of her hair, his fingers icy on her skin, and speaks into her ear. "If you had waited that night, long enough for me to finish, you would have learned the truth of it."

Too much to drink that night, too much to celebrate and grieve, and when all had left to sleep or find others means of solace, it had been only her and Harry left in the Grimmauld study, the fire low in the hearth and his collar unbuttoned and wrinkled.

"Did you think it meant I loved you- did you think I was trying to confess?"

Her wine spilled, the dark red too awful of a color for the jumper to remain, and with a laugh, she tore it from her, the fire greedy in its appetite. The cold air bit at her bared shoulders, the thin straps of her camisole a beige stain against the tanned expanse of her skin. He had kissed her there, first, a lingering touch on her shoulder that slowly spread to her throat and then her cheek. The fire groaned, and its flames shifted.

"I was drunk, Hermione, and in need of a distraction."

The elven wine left her dizzy, and she thought the lips an invention, at first. The vague disconnect between the green eyes that clung to her and the mouth that whispered her name against her too warm skin felt wrong; she felt strange. Hermione, he begged her, Hermione. She considered it for a brief second; he is her best friend, the closest piece of a family she has left. He is warmth and comfort and goodness, and she could think of a thousand reasons to agree, to return the words he cannot manage to say.

"If you weren't such a prig about it, we might have had a good time. Instead, you dreamt up some fake scholarship to what? Run away from me and clean houses?"

When he lowered his mouth to hers, when he moved his lips and sighed into her breath, she did not move. And when he finally lifted and found her eyes, she could only show him the truth of it: She did not love him, not in this way. She left first, the green dust lingering behind her, and she began her plans that night.

"What'll you do now, then? I know your secret." Harry leers down at her, his expression more grimace than smile, as his fingers dig more deeply into her hair. She shudders at the touch, a deep awful fear beginning to settle in her stomach. Remus, she thinks dimly, where is Remus?

She feels his lips settle, cold and hard, near her ear. "Perhaps if we pick up where you left me?"

He chases his words with direct action, his free hand tilting her chin toward him, his thumb across her lips. She shudders, fists clenching, but remains still. Harry would never hurt her, she is certain. Not her friend, not the boy who once claimed her as his savior.

But the man whose fingers tighten on her skin, his nails digging into her jaw- he shows little concern when she cries out, or when she finally turns her fists against his chest. He laughs and mocks. "What sort of witch leaves her wand at home? Hermione, you're such a Muggle sometimes."

He stills her struggle and once more turns her face toward his; his kiss bruises, his teeth sharp and the metallic tang of blood fills her mouth. He is strong- stronger than she remembers. Her Harry is gentle and kind, quick to spark, but never too long to dwell in it. He forgives, and certainly, always forgives her.

Harry loves her, and yet-

This Harry, he-

Hermione gasps, the hands pinning her vanish in a whirl and whoosh of dust and ether; she stares into the emptied space to the man who stands at the entry's end. His arm is extended, his wand brandished, and eyes fixed, his parted lips finishing the spell distantly.

Her ears hum with the sound of it, the meaning slow to arrive.

"Riddikulus!"

A string coils in her stomach and pulls taut. "W-what-"

"Hermione, I'm sorry! I-" His wand falls from his fingers, and Hermione watches as he raises trembling hands to his face. "I didn't know they could do that, that they could touch others."

"Boggarts are dark creatures, Professor. They'll adapt as the magic suits them." The tensed strumming fills her blood and her ears rush with the song of it. "Dark magic amplifies their effects, and as you well know, I'm cursed."

He replies, but the words disappear into the new noise that consumes her world. He had tricked her, hid the creature to what? Hurt her? Test her? To what end then? What does he want-

The blue fire that circles her hands is an old friend, her earliest piece of mastered magic, and she has missed the flames that so comforted her loneliest times at Hogwarts. The humming is lovely, she thinks, as the fire trails up her arms and into her chest. The warmth swells, consuming her, and she smiles through it, her anger dissolving into a black bliss as the fire surges through her.

Remus calls to her, but she is tired now-

So tired.

She sleeps and for the first night in months, she does not dream.