A/N: Hello, pips. It's really late, we're damn tired, but YEY, look, still a new chapter. Let's see how this one boogies in Amsterdamn that's hot! Uh, sorry, don't really know what that one came from. As I said, we're tired. Anyway, we do hope that we manage to squick at least one or two of you out. If we don't, we must simply be losing our edge. Everywhere you look, a new and unexpected pairing! Or something. Goodnight.

Chapter nine

Concerning forgiveness

When Sirius had left, Remus stood for a long time by the kitchen window, staring without really seeing at the children involved in some kind of warfare on the playground outside. Suddenly, the feelings that had made him hyper-sensitive just a moment ago now formed some kind of thick blanket that seemed to wrap around his soul, muffling every impression and taking the edge of every thought. He knew, in the end, what he was going to have to do, but first he had to wade through the gluey substance that is indecision.

It had been hard enough to decide not to pull Teddy out of Hogwarts. Even though he had been absolutely livid at the time, and even though the thought of that man close to his own child made his skin crawl, he'd been unable to do it. Going to Hogwarts had meant so much to Remus when he'd been a kid, he had loved his time there, and judging from his letters, so did Teddy. Also, he suspected that it was rather nice for Teddy to not have to be around Grace all the time. She could be a very trying experience for her loving parents, and for a big brother… well, it was probably a wonder he hadn't strangled her. So, no matter how he twisted and turned the matter in his mind, Remus hadn't managed to justify depriving his son of this when he, after all, was damn sure that there wasn't any real danger. If Peter had really been in possession of some kind of mad urge for twisted revenge, he had been left alone in the vicinity of Teddy and Grace enough times for him to carry out any evil plot on them, had that been his objective. Dora had cautiously agreed. And once they'd made the decision, it had been unthinkable to tell Teddy about it. It wasn't something a kid should have to know and think about concerning his own teacher.

Remus lifted a hand that felt unnaturally heavy to once more rake it through his now grey hair, noting from the reflection in the drawing-room mirror that there were several dashes of white in it. He looked old for his age, and felt even older. Mostly, he guessed, because he was now slowly starting to feel guilty, as his conversation with Sirius sunk even deeper, through the layers of confusion and anger and into parts of his mind where he could not lie to himself anymore.

Had it been anyone but Sirius, he could probably have shut it out and told himself that they didn't understand. But Sirius did understand, and Remus had been so sure that his friend and former lover would agree with him, that when Sirius hadn't it had been like receiving a bucket-full of ice cold water to the face. Remus had wanted Sirius to be just as angry and resentful as he was feeling, so that he could prove to himself that he was right although even Peter was sounding more sensible than his own twisted motives. And then they could've been angry with Dora and Peter together, and maybe Remus wouldn't have felt so lonely anymore. But when even Sirius seemed to think he wasn't being rational – Sirius, who had every reason to side with Remus and didn't, because he didn't think it would be right – trying to convince himself that what Dora was doing was horrible and cruel was suddenly… impossible.

And now, he had to see Dora and ask her to forgive him. Sighing, Remus set his course on the kitchen. He felt the need for a very strong cup of coffee coming on.

Dora was dancing around the kitchen. Richard had gone away briefly to sort out some kind of trouble he was – according to the very upset third year who'd pounded on his door – the only one who could solve. He'd seemed tempted to tell the youngster to (in very mild tones, of course) sod off, but she'd waved for him to go. Sure, this was their last time together and sometimes she felt like she didn't want to let Richard out of her sight for long enough to go to the loo, but she'd been suddenly overcome with a strange need to be alone.

Knowing that she was perfectly allowed she started poking around the place to find something to entertain herself with. She ended up rifling through his CD's, shaking her head at what she found. Where was the groove? The boogie? The rock and friggin' roll? She ended up with bouncing around to 'Be my baby' by The Ronettes whilst trying to make herself a snack. She didn't know why, but she was ravenous.

A part of her felt that she shouldn't be happy. That she should be lying in a puddle on the sofa constantly mopping up tears, but the thing was, that didn't help. There would be plenty of time for being miserable once she was back with Remus, but right now she had a precious few days with Richard that she had decided to enjoy.

Hence the peanut butter–banana sandwich in her hand and the way out of tune I-have-my-mouth-full-of-sticky-stuff belting of "Be myyyy, be my baby!"

Maybe it wasn't the right way, but it was her way.

Suddenly, the volume dropped rather drastically, and a moment later, Richard was in the kitchen, looking amused. "Trust you to wreak havoc while I'm gone," he said, indicating the breadcrumbs scattered over the kitchen counter, the banana peel hanging over the edge of the wastebasket and the peanut butter smear on the door of one of the dressers.

She hurried her last bite down her throat, almost choking in the process, to be able to answer. "Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't think…"

Richard waved his wand at the mess to clear it, smiling. "Don't fret, dear. A little havoc is good for the soul. But if you don't mind I'm going to kill the music. After that particular tangle with testy teenagers I'm not really in the mood for Veronica and the girls."

"Kill away, kill away," Dora said with a hand-wave of her own. "You know, there's something I just figured out I want us to talk about."

Richard had hurried over to the rather ancient CD player that along with his kitchen and his phone had been excepted from the charms that would mess with all electronic devices that were brought into the school grounds. "Indeed? And what is that?"

She sat herself down and took another munch, providing some time for her to phrase her question. "Why, Richard? Why did you do… what you did back then?"

There was a tremendous crash as Richard knocked over the CD-rack and sent disks cartwheeling over the floor. "Sugar. Oh, dear." He turned around, apparently oblivious of the mess he'd caused, and he looked rather pale all of a sudden. "You… Why did you…? You want to know?"

"Well… yes. I don't know why, really, but I do."

He shook his head, stunned, and like a sleepwalker ambled over to slump heavily into a ridiculously cushioned armchair. "Why do you ask me this now? It's not a particularly pretty tale, and it doesn't hold any excuses or answers, and we have so little time as it is."

Dora shrugged. "Well, if we'd had all the time in the world I would have waited for some day when the rain was pissing down and we didn't feel like doing anything but lying silent on your bed staring at the ceiling. But the thing is, it seems like this is all the time we've got, and I need to know."

"Oh, well." Richard sighed and looked resigned. "Do you want the long or the short explanation?"

"What's the short version?"

"Oh, it goes along the lines of, 'I was a cowardly bastard and an idiot'. But I have a feeling that's not going to be enough."

"No shit Sherlock. That's not only the short, but also the public version. And you're stalling."

Richard smiled reluctantly. "You figured that out, did you?"

"Yup, you tried to buy me off with the theatrical version that went up in the movie-theatres. What I want is the extended DVD version with the behind the scenes documentary."

"Have I ever told you how much I love your metaphors?" Richard said with very mild sarcasm. "Very well then, the dog's bollocks, no bullshit, is that it?"

"Why Richard, you're swearing!" Dora squealed with a delighted smile.

"Yes, and I blame it entirely on you. If you don't mind…" He summoned a bottle of cherry wine and two glasses from a cupboard. "I'm going to need something to drink, and so will you." He poured a good measure in both glasses and then leaned back, preferring to look at the wine rather than Dora. "Very well then. Where to begin? You already know about my days in school and I suppose you can figure out what part that will play in it all. So, I suppose it begins when I left Hogwarts. How's the wine?"

"It tastes like a liquid pastry, and if you try to stall any more I'll force you to drink the entire bottle in one gulp."

"Can't blame a lady for trying. Well, I had actually figured that it would be good for me to… get away a bit from my friends after school, you know? I was quite sure that if I only managed to get some distance between us, I would be able to act less like an invertebrate around them. Unfortunately, life didn't turn out like that, because the summer when we left Hogwarts for good we walked straight into a madly raging war. And… well, I don't have to tell you what being in the middle of a war is like, do I?"

"No, no you don't," Dora answered with a grim face.

"So instead I clung to them for dear life, since they were the only real friends I had. We all huddled together like… some arbitrary small species with fur during a storm. If I had been dependent on them before, the war didn't exactly make things better. And so, when they joined the Order, of course I did so as well. It wasn't really a real choice I made. Of course I believed in the cause, but… well, suddenly I was a soldier without ever really remembering signing up as one. And of course I sometimes resented them for it. I couldn't help it." He took a deep gulp of wine and then put the glass down so that he wouldn't spill on himself. Suddenly his hand was shaking.

"You shouldn't have been there, man," Dora said, meaning it with all her heart. She knew the perils of having someone on a team like the Order that didn't want to be there. It was very, very dangerous, and as she knew how Richard's tale would end she felt very justified in her opinion.

"No, I shouldn't. But I had nowhere else to go and as I said, I was frightened. More frightened of being alone than of fighting. And so I did what I knew, deep down, was the selfish thing to do." For a moment he sat quiet, thinking. "It was during a battle that… I was duelling someone – no idea who, those bloody masks – and a body binding-spell from somewhere hit me in the back. I was blown out of the line of fire, and before my opponent could make short work of me, someone took my place and I was forgotten. It was dark and people were confused and… well. And I was left alone in the darkness when they took off, helpless." He shuddered at the memory. "Of course the Order had a system for picking up people left behind without risking ambushes, Apparating in a certain order and after a certain pattern to the battlefield. Unfortunately, some smart bastard among the Death Eaters figured that out and worked out the pattern, and so they walked into a trap anyway and only barely escaped. And then, the Death Eaters found me." De downed the rest of the wine in one gulp. "It was the Carrows that first noticed me, and they of course wanted to kill me at the spot after just some light torture to add some spice to it. But I wasn't as lucky, because in that moment Snape appeared and said, no, I know that one, he's weak, he'll sing like a bird if we just torture him for a while. And so I was taken to where they were currently keeping hidden, and… tortured. I don't need to describe what they did, do I?"

"No, you don't," Dora said gently with compassion in her eyes.

"I tried. I really tried." His voice was hoarse and choked now. "And even when I started talking, when my mind was so muddled with pain that I would've done anything to make it stop, I still managed to only answer to their questions, no more. I tried lying, as well, but Snape just looked right into my mind and saw when I did that. Nonetheless, they were going bored, and apparently I didn't know much enough to be worth the effort, and they were just going to put me out of my misery when… when he suddenly was there."

"Jesus Christ in a pair of slippers!" Dora blurted out. She was very much involved in the story, as she had an extremely vivid imagination and was practically writhing on the ground herself with the Dark Lord standing over her.

"That's one way of putting it." Richard swallowed. "Can you pour some more wine? My hand… Thank you." But as he took a new, deep gulp, the sweet, perfume-like taste just made him feel ill, and with a grimace he put the glass away. "He probably wondered what his followers were doing instead of grovelling before him. And when he saw me and Snape explained the situation, he decided to join the game." He nervously rubbed his hand against his robes, as it was now clammy with sweat. "Snape had looked into my mind during the torture, but it was nothing compared to his presence. He just pushed his way in and scrambled my mind like so much egg, and he was there, inside my head, while he tortured me. And he found that I… I react strangely to pain. I… please don't force me to say this. Do you understand what I mean?"

Dora's brow wrinkled, and then her eyes widened. "Are you telling me that… I mean… seriously?"

"Yes. Unfortunately. And so he tortured me and… he…" And now tears welled up in his eyes, as he'd known they would. "…he… did… he forced me to… he made me… and as he did, he forced me to… to enjoy it. I hated him and I hated myself but what did that matter to my body?"

"That is too many kinds of wrong to even start counting…" Dora intercepted, looking disgusted, and then her expression changed to horrified. "You know I mean what he did, right? I don't care a bit about what you…like."

"I know." Richard tried to smile reassuringly at her, but his face wouldn't cooperate with him. "But at any rate, it felt… very wrong,. And it kept on happening. He kept me alive. For fun or by design, I don't know. And after a while… I don't know how I can explain what happened, except perhaps by saying that my mind was so twisted and turned and cracked after just a few days there, and my body was giving in because constant panic wears you down, and so I scrambled madly for any kind of reassurance, any way to tell myself that what happened to me wasn't really that bad. And in the end…" He choked on his words, and had to take a deep breath before continuing. "Have you ever heard of the Stockholm syndrome?"

Dora had heard of the Stockholm syndrome, but she didn't particularly feel like making the very, very obvious conclusion that was looming above her head. "Please, Richard, please tell me that the one you… attached yourself to was some random Death Eater who, I don't know, took care of you when you were healing or something."

Richard closed his eyes; he'd rather not see her expression. "No, not exactly. You see, the Death Eaters weren't the ones that were hurting me. I mean, of course they tortured me as much as they could get away with, but it was only… it was only he… And after a while it became unbearable, and I… and I had to find some kind of reason… some way of excusing it when I… started to want for him to hurt me…"

"Ew! Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, eeeeeew! I'm sorry Richard but… I can't help it…" Dora shuddered. "Ew!"

"Well, that's a pretty healthy reaction. But that's where it started. Because after a while he let me go. Not that he understood what had happened, not really, he just thought I was more frightened of him than of what my friends would do if they found out I was a spy." Unconsciously he smiled, a bleak, eerie little smile. "He always thought about things in those kind of terms. There were so many things he didn't understand." The smile disappeared. "And I spied. And he was right about that I was frightened. I didn't ever want to have to go through that ever again. Not the torture and the… other stuff, but the fear. Being constantly afraid, thinking every second that it was over, and they would finally kill you…" He shuddered, swallowing with a grimace as his stomach twisted and his mouth filled with gall. "And in my broken mind I knew that I would never be able to keep away. Even if I kept out of every battle, even if I tried to hide… sooner or later, I wouldn't be able to… to live without him. And if I didn't do as he said, he'd punish me, he'd kill me… So the things I did… I didn't do them for him. I did them for me. I won't say anything else, because that would be lying, and what's the point? I did it because I was frightened, because I knew he wouldn't give me a second chance to live… But the reason the fear was a part of me in the way it was, was that he had made it so. The moment he became a part of me, so did the fear. To this day I don't know where my love for him ended, and the fear began. There wasn't much of a difference between the two, any way."

"Now there's a twist," Dora muttered. "You were actually in love with the Dark Lord?"

"Yes. I was. Trying to tell myself that it was just a mad obsession or… or that I was looking for someone to protect me… well, it was pointless. You don't feel like that if you're just… I mean, you don't go around worrying about the Dark Lord catching dragon pox when he's taming beasts for battle unless you really care. You don't dream about a future together with a homicidal mass murderer unless you'd seriously marry him if he asked. You don't get jealous when he…" He made an irritable grimace. "…actually, nevermind. The point is, it was stupid beyond belief and it was selfish and it was twisted, but it was still love."

Dora shook her head with a look of complete disbelief. "I know that they say 'love is blind', but in your case I think I'd say 'someone went in and chopped off love's head altogether', that someone probably being You-Know-Who himself. Damn, Richard! That was the most freakishly terrifying thing I've ever heard!"

And Richard couldn't help it; he laughed. "Well, yes. Quite. It seemed very logical to me then. Loving him, I mean. But of course, I was completely insane then, so that doesn't really count for much." But then the laughter died and he drew a very quiet, very tired sigh. "And so I went on spying, and no one suspected me. Ironically enough, it was probably partly because they knew I'd been a prisoner and had 'escaped'. Instead, they started looking sideways at poor Remus, as if he'd ever done anything that suggested that he'd… Well, anyway, I wasn't going to dissuade them. Partly because I was frightened, of course, but also because I was ashamed. Just the thought of what they'd say, what they'd think of me, if they ever found out… It made me want to crawl under a rock and die." He shook his head, his mouth twisting in a derisive smile. "I was pathetic. And since I knew it, I loathed myself, and my self-loathing just served to break down the last of my sanity."

"Huh, never figured I'd find myself feeling a sense of connection to Peter Pettigrew. I don't particularly like it," Dora said dryly.

"Well, I don't either," Richard said, grimacing. "But in my case I've only got myself to blame." He met her gaze for a moment, and then once more had to look away. Now came the truly painful part. "For a time, I actually believed that I could go on like that, and no one would ever have to know. But then, something changed. Suddenly, the Dark Lord was after the Potters. Because of some kind of prophesy, we were told, although they didn't tell us what it was about. James and Lily knew, and Dumbledore knew, but that was it. Probably because they knew there was a spy among them." He smiled bleakly. "But we all knew that the Dark Lord had heard about it. And so, through me, the Dark Lord found out that there was a spy in his ranks, although, as time proved, he never found out who. Most of us guessed what Snape was doing, but the Dark Lord… he couldn't understand love, and so…" For a moment, the memory of long since dead sorrow passed over Richard's face, but he quickly drove it away.

"And so he couldn't know why Severus would betray him? Is that what you mean?"

"Yes. In a manner of speaking. See, the Dark Lord was always a stronger Legilimens than Snape, but Snape was cleverer. All his motives were based on love, and since the Lord couldn't understand it, he couldn't see it, and Severus somehow made it look like there in fact were no motives at all. And then he just had to pretend to have different motives for every memory that looked like a betrayal. Don't ask me how it's done, I was never good at that kind of stuff. My mind was always an open book to my Lord, even if it is true that he often couldn't make sense of what he saw. After all, every single thing I did was motivated by my love for him."

For a while, Richard was silent, trying to think of a good way of explaining what came next. But there was none. That is, there were ways, but none of them felt like a good one. Which was only natural, since there was no good explanation to begin with.

"You know what comes next. They wanted to protect the Potters, and so… the Fidelius charm. Dumbledore offered to do it, but so did Sirius, and James always listened far too much to him for his own good. When I heard they'd chosen Sirius I remember thinking that they were insane. It was too obvious. And once they caught Sirius, which they would, he would go through everything they'd put me through, and worse, and eventually he would crack. And then…" He closed his eyes, rubbing his hand over them. "But of course that wasn't the plan at all. Almost directly thereafter, Sirius came to me and explained what they were really planning to do…" His voice faltered, and when he spoke next it was in a hoarse croak, not even a whisper. "I couldn't refuse. Partly because if I did, they'd start to wonder why, and the paranoid logic of my mind dictated that suspicion was the same thing as discovery. But mostly because if I did, the Dark Lord would see it the next time I met him, and he'd be very disappointed with me. I knew what he did to traitors. That is, what he did to people why betrayed him. And so I agreed, and…" More tears, but this time he wiped them away, angry with himself. "I told him. I knew he'd find out that I was the Secret Keeper anyway, and then he'd torture me until I told him where they were. And…" But there was no way of wiping the tears away now, so he turned his face away instead, covering as much as he could of it with his hand. "…and I knew… I knew that if he did torture me… I'd enjoy it… and I didn't want to enjoy… telling him…"

Dora scooted over to hold him. She wrapped her arms around his chubby frame and rocked him like she did when Teddy was afraid of thunderstorms and came into her and Remus' bedroom at night wanting comfort. She wanted to whisper 'There, there, it'll be alright,' just like she did to her son, but she couldn't because it would never be alright, so she settled for the truth. "I… I don't know what to say."

Richard said nothing for a while, but then gently pushed her away. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be…" He drew a shuddering breath and pulled out a lacy handkerchief from some hidden pocket and dabbed his eyes with it.

"Shouldn't be what? Sad because you were tortured and used with the added bonus of being a spineless traitor? Well, what do you think you should be? Performing a bloody tap-dance?" So maybe it sounded a little harsh, but Dora figured that's what Richard needed.

He flinched a bit, fumbling nervously with the handkerchief and looking ashamed. "I'm sorry," he said again. "I just feel like… it was my fault that… I don't really have the right to… have I?"

"Damn it, Richard! That was exactly the kind of thinking that made you the despicable person you were! 'No, I don't deserve it. I don't have the right.'" Dora found herself suddenly fuming. "I bet you didn't refuse to sign up for the Order because you felt like you didn't have the right to, or something along those lines. You fell in love with bloody Voldemort because probably you didn't think you'd ever deserve better than him and then you just spun down into that vile mudhole of moral corrosion that enabled you to fucking betray your best friends! Now don't you dare come and tell me you don't have the right to feel like shit about that because you have a bloody obligation to feel absolutely crappy about it so that you'll never ever even come close to becoming that kind of person again!"

Richard was about to apologise again, but then said: "If I say, 'I'm sorry' one more time, you'll chew my head off, right?"

"Damn right."

"Then I won't. Except… well, I am really sorry about how that came out. I didn't mean it like that." The scolding had proven to be just what he needed, and he sat a little straighter now. "It's just that… I suppose that really trying to remember this for the first time in a really long time makes it easy to… remember it a little too well, I suppose. Shall I continue?"

"Please do."

"Very well." After only a short interruption which included some more wine and tucking the handkerchief away, Richard continued, now in a much steadier voice. "After I told him and he went away to… to kill them, I was… well, as you can surely imagine, I hated myself more than I ever had before. And right then and there, I think, I lost what little sanity I had left. All that anger, all that loathing… it was all directed at me and I couldn't take it. I knew I was breaking and I was desperate to save myself, and it was really so simple, because all I had to do was find someone else to blame. And in my madness, it was suddenly so obvious whose fault it really was. It was Sirius' fault. He was the one who had suggested making me the Secret Keeper, he was the one who had given me no choice. If he hadn't – or better yet, if he hadn't suggested himself in the first place and had let Dumbledore do the job – I wouldn't have had to do that." Richard shuddered, feeling ill. "And it was all so simple," he repeated in a distant voice. "All I had to do was to punish him, to make him suffer, and then, surely, my pain must go away. If only I… It's strange, the way things became so very clear when I finally lost my mind. During my life I had always, when all else failed, faked illnesses and injuries to gain… well… attention, sympathy… just to get people to notice me for a while… and now I just had to do it again and then… direct the attention towards him instead. The plan worked itself out in my mind in a matter of minutes, and there was no one to stop me as I went. I remember…" Now there was an almost dead expression in his eyes, as they gazed into the world of memories. "I remember seeing Snape on my way out of there, looking just as bad as I felt, and for a moment he looked at me with pure loathing in his eyes… and then I remember Sirius' face… he was so stunned with grief and anger that he just let me shout my accusations without even trying to defend himself… as if he didn't even hear me. I remember his face just before I blew up the street as well… I remember the fear. And I heard him laughing as I slunk away, and I wondered why the pain wasn't gone yet." He blinked, shaking his head as if he was trying to wake himself up.

What he hell do I say to this? Dora thought, sitting with a stunned expression on her face. "Well… I feel like someone just put my head in a food-processor…"

"And I feel a spectacular headache coming on. Trying to think like… well, like me… like him… Well, you know what I mean… It requires trying to think like someone whose mind has been broken into a million itty bitty pieces and then put back together again by a less than skilled craftsman. And that is not very pleasant."

"I can imagine," Dora said, rubbing her temples.

"All in all, I think we could both need- Oh, bother!" He glared at the door. Whoever was on the other side of it apparently had no respect for this, and knocked again. He stood up, blinking and hoping that it wasn't too apparent that he'd been crying, and then hurried over to the door. He opened it, and then stumbled backwards as if he'd just received a forceful shove. It rather surprised him that he hadn't, considering that the person on the other side of that door was Remus.

It felt so strange to see him, this man who's features invoked nothing, who's being invoked nothing, and still feel this seething rage and hatred. In some convoluted and altogether confusing manner it almost felt unfair to resent this stranger so much. But it wasn't a stranger, was it? It was Peter Pettigrew, the bane of his existence. The mind boggled and tied itself into knots trying to wrap itself around the concept. Peter was alive, and standing before… no, stumbling away from him.

A short, very awkward pause ensued, and then the man's eyes flickered toward the room. "Well, either you're here to kill me, or you're here for Dora. For my peace of mind, I will assume the latter. Come in. I'll… I'll just be in the kitchen for a while." He backed away, as if first unsure if he dared turn his back on Remus, and then shook his head in what seemed to be exasperation and disappeared through a door. Remus hesitantly entered the room, and there was Dora, sitting on a sofa with so much baroquesque decoration on the frame that it looked like it was going to come alive at any moment. She looked about as lost as he felt, and for a while he had no idea what to do. However, sitting down next to her seemed like a good idea, so he did. Pulling her close and never, ever letting her go also seemed like a good idea, but he didn't know if he should do that just yet, and so he settled for: "I'm… terribly sorry about all this. I've been… vile."

Now, what do you do when your husband comes to apologise after a huge fight? Why, you kiss him of course. Passionately. And then you swat him over the head. "You don't have to be sorry, of course you were angry. You had every right to be!"

The kiss had left him somewhat disoriented. "Well, yes, but… but I almost… and then I… I don't understand how you could ever forgive me for…"

Dora stroked his face with her fingertips, rediscovering him. They hadn't been apart for long, really, but it felt like an eternity. "Well, you obviously… okay, you seem to be willing to forgive me for wanting to continue being best friends with a man who once was the person who wrecked your life. I mean… wow!"

"It was… easier once I realised that forgiving you wasn't the same thing as forgiving him. That took a while."

Dora looked shocked. "You thought I wanted you to forgive him?"

"Not as such. I just got it into my head that to forgive you for wanting to be friends with him, I was required to first forgive him, and… well, I couldn't."

"You idiot! I don't want you to forgive him! He doesn't want you to forgive him! Hell, I'm his best friend and I sure as hell haven't forgiven him! There is no forgiveness for what he did. Ever. However, I can still love who he is now. And you see… if it hadn't been for me he'd never have thought he could ever have friends, or any kind of close relationship. But then I sort of… barged into his life without asking for permission and just decided that we'd be buddies, and I gave him hope. When I found out about… well… everything I still felt kind of responsible. I mean, what was the likelihood of someone barging in again? And I'd shown him what life can be like when you share it with people who love you. That's a terrible thing to deprive someone of. I just… couldn't handle that. And then I went all melodrama on your hot tight little ass and threw hints around about our marriage failing if I couldn't have my way. Not precisely diplomatic, but on the other hand that's kind of what I felt like."

It did not feel like the appropriate thing to do, but Remus really couldn't help himself. He laughed, pulling his wife closer in an almost brutal embrace as he shook with helpless mirth. "What am I supposed to do with you?" he demanded once he was capable of speech again. "And whatever did I do to deserve this?"

"Well… I have a few suggestions to answer both your questions, but they'd just make you blush and think me horribly rude and insensitive," Dora answered, and felt she could afford a wicked grin since Remus couldn't see it anyway, squashed as she was against his chest.

He didn't see it, but he sure as hell knew it was there anyway. "You are right in your assumptions. The one about thinking you horribly rude and insensitive, at any rate. I am not blushing," he said, knowing he was. "And I do understand, now, what you were trying to say. I just needed P- Richard and Sirius to shout some sense into me first."

Dora felt her throat tighten and her eyes misting over somewhat. She knew what it had taken for Remus to not only mention Richard, but actually giving the man credit for him being there with her. "Well… good," was all she managed to croak out.

Leaning back a bit so that he could kiss his wife gently on the forehead, he then looked down at her face and thought, How insane was I, to even suggest that this woman should consider leaving me?

Then looked to the left of him and thought, What the hell is that tea pot doing here?

Because a tea pot in bone china with chrysanthemums painted on it, along with two cups, was indeed hovering next to them, and then gently settled on the table. Dora seemed to have noticed them too, and was smiling.

"The Queen Mother has spoken. We shall have tea," she proclaimed. Noticing the sceptical look on her husband's face she said, "Oh, don't look like that, he's not going to poison us," whilst pouring herself a cup. Then she took a sip and pulled a face. "I spoke too soon. Raspberry, vanilla and cream. He clearly wants us dead," she stated and decisively put the cup back on the table. "And he thinks I like weird flavours…"

"Well, you do," Remus said, sipping the tea to show goodwill. It didn't taste that vile, really. Just… flowery. "Those cupcakes are repulsive, and quite possibly a crime against humanity, I hope you do know that." And now they were talking about cupcakes, as if nothing had happened? The day just seemed to be getting odder.

"I will admit to no such thing. And why the hell are we even talking about it? I mean… Did Richard spike the tea or something? We've just…. I don't know, made up or whatever. We should be… something!" Dora waved her hands in frustration. She had no idea what she was trying to get at.

"Something like this?" Remus said, (knowing it was a terribly cheesy – and very Sirius-like, come to think of it – thing to say, and that she'd probably make fun of it… if she had the air to say anything at all, that was) before he leant forward and kissed her.

After a while, Richard – looking slightly amused and quite alarmed where he stood – heard Remus mumble something, and Dora's voice answering, "No, no, he won't mind!"

"Perhaps not, but I do," Remus answered, and some shuffling noises in the other room seemed to indicate that he was disentangling himself from her.

"Oh, fine then, be a prude," Dora could be heard saying evenly before hollering, "Richard, we're leaving!" Then she showed up in the kitchen door with a big smile on her glowing face. "But I'll see you tomorrow." She threw a look back towards where Richard supposed Remus was standing. "Late tomorrow."

"I had a feeling you'd say something like that, yes. And tell him I do appreciate it. It's velvet, you know. Very hard to get stains out." He smirked kindly, waving his wand to collect the tea pot and cups.

"I forgot. Fags and furniture… Anyway, see ya!" And she was off.

A/N: Had fun? We sure as hell did.

Oh, fun facts about waps: The Ronettes actually called themselves The Darling Sisters the first time they performed. And before you judge me, I didn't know that. I just noticed it when I was looking through their article on Wiki. So there. Why I was looking through the article? Ach, you never see the bigger picture, do you?

No, enough of this rubbish! Bed!