A/N: Mature references abound. Longer double-chapter this go, as we lead up to the final chapters.

For Peque Saltamontes

A Filled Space

NINETEEN

Remus traces the evidence of her presence with careful, guarded eyes. Each day leaves yet another imprint of her ministrations: lustrous stairs, replaced drapery, refinished wallpaper- he knows it's a form of self-abuse, allowing her to leave echoes of her touch on every surface. He's been tempted, on more than one morning, to linger beyond the necessary, to find an excuse to have her stumble upon him.

He imagines a likely scenario, pretending slumber in the kitchen with a book, chosen with her interests in mind, propped along his chest. Would she touch his shoulder, or brush his hair from his cheek? Would she linger in the doorway, her dark eyes tracing over his features? Would she wait for him to wake, perhaps speak whatever words she'd silenced and replaced with that outrageous display in an alley with a stranger?

He imagines happier, more advantageous circumstances that would cause them to meet again, and he certainly never imagines it to be the morning after the full moon, as he lay bloodied and exhausted in a heap of his skin and bones. Instead, he wakes to her kneeling form, her horrified expression staring down at the ruin he is the morning after.

Piss and blood, the remnants of his night as a monster without thought, cake his skin, and each of his senses are larger than the last. He smells her, beyond that thick, harried veil of his other self, a lovely perfume of her shampoo and skin; he hears her heart, racing in a steady climb; he watches as her lashes fold and flutter, her eyes wide with concern and pity and something damnably indiscernible.

"Oh, Remus," she whispers, and his name from her lips is everything golden and good.

He is too weak to move, still, but he wishes to know how her skin might feel against his fingers in these early hours when even that sense would be heightened and full. She seems to hear his unspoken wish, and her hands gently cradle his face between her palms, smoothing back his hair from his brow and touching his cheek. He breath catches, and all his blood can feel in that second is her warmth. It fills him and coils near his core, the part of him that is all male recognizing a pull that he hasn't the strength for.

She uses her hands to clean his face, the wet towel soft and lovely, and he fades in and out of sleep as she tends to him. He wakes when the sun is on its descent, the afternoon shadows long against the wall. His potions are lined, in order of taking, beside him, and a stasis charm keeps a bowl of steaming broth warmed and waiting. He listens for the sound of her, the slight murmur of her motions from a floor below, or a room beyond, but the house is silent.

He waits in the quiet, a bitterness and regret rising in his throat. He might be the adult, the grown man, but he thinks himself the greater fool. Remus drinks the potions, and with each swallow, the moon is left behind, the monster stilled, and he sleeps.

It is dusk when he wakes again. Lamplight shows that his room still waits her attentions, the floorboards unpolished and nicked. His bed, a dark oak antique that is older than him by decades is too large for the space, but not too large to hide that she perches at its edge, her brow furrowed and lips pressed.

"You haven't eaten," she reproves, and he struggles to sit up, loathing that he is still so weak to require help even with that small motion. She holds the bowl to his lips and waits as he drinks slowly, the thick salt and heat of the broth lining his lips and coating his throat. She repeats the gesture until every drop has been consumed, and satisfied, she sits back, hands folded in her lap, a considering expression clouding her eyes.

"Hermione-" he begins, voice hoarse and weary.

"Don't apologize, not anymore," she interrupts. He watches as her eyes close and then re-open, as her lips purse and then soften. She exhales and there, littered in the smooth stretch of her cheeks and the shadows under her eyes, is a small happiness. "I forgive you. It was a rotten trick, but I suppose, you meant well. I- well, it was my pride mostly that felt damaged. I had thought we'd become friends, but that made me feel like I was your student again, and I hated feeling that way."

He thinks of the night spent seeing her flirt with a stranger in a bar, of the sounds of her rustling in the dark, of cloth and skin and hushed embraces in the night. He thinks of her flushed face, imagining her reddened throat, and again, his body stirs in anticipation, in hopeful thought. He stares at her lips, feels the tightening in his belly, and wonders if she understands that he's not thought her a child for months now.

His lovely puzzle is all woman, and he longs to demonstrate the truth of that thought more directly.

But she is smiling, her eyes glassy with something soft and kind, and he saves the baser need for a different time. "Can we try again, though? Be proper friends this go around?"

She offers him her hand, her palm upraised and waiting for his returning clasp. He feels her tremble at his touch, feels the slight shudder that makes her tongue catch between her teeth and her gaze skitter from his own. Remus relishes her cool palm against his own, and nods his agreement.

TWENTY

The housewarming party is a grand affair, and Hermione times her 'return' from school to coincide with it. Only Remus and Sirius know the truth of how the past nine months have been spent, and she has faith in both well enough to keep her secret. No, her insecurity comes not from being found out, but rather from the friends she's managed to avoid for nearly a year. She dreads that first meeting and nearly flees a half dozen times in the first hour of the party, each floo arrival sending her heart in disarray and her cheeks ablaze.

She meets Remus's gaze from across the party, and it's his calm, patient smile that grounds her feet. That he grants each of his guests the same expression prompts a different sort of dread and awfulness, but that too, she resists. Their reconciliation and tentative friendship is something she values, and she has no desire to ruin it by displaying her immaturity.

That she smiles a little too widely and laughs a little too loudly are things she insists are more nerves than purposeful attempts to call his attention.

Ron greets her with a swinging hug that sends her head spinning and breath catching. He kisses her cheek, grabs her hand, and in moments, she's pushed to his mother's embrace, then first one Weasley brother's, and then another's. She flits from one red-haired man to the next, and Ginny flings her arms around her waist in happy greeting. There's a splitting from her skin that she recognizes as fear; it falls from her, sheds as a second skin, and she feels naked and free in its tumble.

The tears in her eyes, the tightness in her chest- Hermione feels the happiness bubble and bead, and the twisting halt of it is sudden and devastating when she finds herself staring up into pair of bespeckled green eyes. Ron's hand is on her shoulder, and he speaks in his usual booming, flowing way, but she hears only the beating of her heart in her ears, the pounding of her blood in her throat.

Harry smiles, a small thing that is a measure of sadness and fondness, and she is desperate to leave again when his fingers touch her cheek.

"Welcome back, Hermione," he tells her. "I'm glad you're back."

He doesn't linger beyond that, allowing the wellspring of Weasley gab and noise to swallow her back into its hold. Ginny shares the engagement ring that sparkles on her finger, and Mrs. Weasley conjures a diary detailing the pending dates of wedding preparation. Wine is pushed into her hand, and Hermione drinks too greedily. The hours pass, and when she realizes that Harry will not speak to her again, that whatever passed between them that night at Grimmauld place has broken something between them, she escapes to the roof where she knows only those intimate with the house would find refuge.

The night air is warm and thick, the promise of a full summer fresh in the breeze, and she gulps into the inky stretch of it, her hands pressed to her breast. Her head spins, her thoughts unfocused and dancing from one pause to the next, and she feels her knees sway and buckle as nerves and alcohol combine to take full purchase.

"Careful now," Remus says as he catches her around the waist, his chest warm against her cheek. "Too much to drink?"

Hermione shudders and tries to straighten, but he holds her more tightly, and with little real desire to escape, she gentles. "Harry hasn't forgiven me- he'll hardly speak to me!"

She feels him stiffen. "What would you have him say to you, then?"

"I don't know- anything! That he's still my friend, that he's fine, and we're fine. I'd take anything other than this strange politeness." She misses her best friend, misses his kindness and easy conversation. Ron was good for a laugh or a fight, but Harry was the one who offered her consolation when her heart hurt, gave her advice when she hadn't thought to ask.

"And what if he still loves you?"

Hermione laughs, the sound short and disbelieving. Remus's hold on her elbows loosens, and she steps away from him. "Harry doesn't love me, Remus. I'm not sure he knows how to love anyone- romantically, at least... He was just confused. And besides, he's engaged now and he's decided on Ginny, so plainly he's worked it out."

She can't help the bitterness that creeps in; what if she had shared a deeper tenderness for her friend? What if she had allowed a feeling to take hold? How very cruel his actions that night might have been- how very hurt her heart would be in this moment… but she had known, even back in her third year when such feelings had attempted to take root, that she was not meant for the boy-who-lived. Besides- and her eyes flutter to the man beside her, to the cross of his arms and fold of his jaw. She cannot help but admire the stretch of his sleeves, the dusting of light hair along his skin, and the large gather of his powerful hands.

She stares at his fingers, remembering the strength of them as they clutched at her arms, and dizzily, she imagines how they might feel pressed against her bare skin, hot and purposeful. She feels the peak and point of her breasts beneath her dress, feels the heat and damp of her thighs, and once more she longs to escape.

"You sound disappointed."

Hermione inhales slowly, willing away the vivid images from her mind, and focuses instead on the feel of the steel railing beneath her fingers, the rough concrete edge against her forearms. "I'm not, Remus, not in the way that you mean-"

"And in what way do I mean?"

She recognizes his tone then, the controlled anger he shows so rarely, but she doesn't dare meet his gaze, when his knowing hazel eyes are so clever. "Oh please, let's not fight. I'm not upset that Harry's over me- not that I thought it was real to begin with. You're reading too much into-"

But he interrupts again, a habit she hates, with more of his edged control. He hasn't moved, so surely it must be her who's neared, and she's caught on the curl of his fingers, how they're white in the night's darkness, held tautly as if in restraint- but against what, she wonders?

"- then for whose benefit were you going out every night, Hermione?"

She wishes otherwise, but a flush gathers at her throat, spreading to her cheeks and shoulders. For yours, she thinks but doesn't say. Because I needed something, but I still haven't the name for it, she thinks but doesn't add. Instead, she tries for ambivalence, for the worldly sort of carelessness she imagines real women, grown women, have in regards to sex and all that leads up to it. "It was hardly every night. I don't suppose you'd believe it was for my own, though, would you? I'm not a kid anymore, Remus. I have desires like any other adult does."

The air thickens, and she feels the press of a distant storm creeping from the corner of the dark sky. Hermione straightens, pulling at her skirt and smoothing out her shoulders. She's been gone too long, and it's enough that if both she and the host are missing, others are bound to notice. Schooling her emotions, clearing her thoughts, she raises her eyes to meet his own. She means to invite him to return with her, to balance out the strangeness of their conversation with a return to safer words, but the sounds die on her lips.

There's no cleverness there- no calculation. She sees nothing of plans or thoughtfulness in the hard crush of his gaze on her face. There's a dark want lined there, a naked demand of something she can't name, and once again, she's the one who's drawn near. It's her hands that unwind his arms at his side; it's her fingers that trace the buttons that line his chest; it's her breath that glances along his throat; and it's her mouth that whispers his name in his ear, a muted entreaty to react, to take action- to free whatever it is he feels must stay contained.

She feels his breath, hurried and disturbed on her cheek, can smell the salt from the sweat on his throat. Thunder rolls in from the west, and she wants it mirrored here, in her embrace, in his return. But he doesn't move; he makes no response to her gestures, to her more than obvious overtures, and with a sigh, she pulls back, straightening his collar and smoothing his hair. Hermione takes the two steps needed to return their distance to something less intimate and manages a small smile.

There are tears there, held deep within; there's a rejection she must deal with and lay out and cry over. But at present, she merely smiles and shrugs. "Too much wine tonight, I think."

The party continues late into the night, the noise and bustle from its energies in equal parts to the volume of the storm that finally reaches the house. The rain is thick and unrelenting, and in between the flashes of lightening and the echoing thunder, Hermione realizes that Remus never returns. She thinks of him standing still on the roof, immovable, and it's then that she returns to her parents' home and does not cry.