Otherwise known as: How Luna tore apart the fabric of reality so that her friends could get decently laid, and accidentally saved the world in the process.

A/N: Welcome to Chapter Twenty! It's very short, and not what I had planned, for which I apologise. It has been a tough week, medically, and I've had a rough time trying to put this together, but I really didn't want to miss the posting date - even if it means I come back and tweak it later. I'm sorry that it's such a state, though!

Unbetaed as always.

Love Always,

Eli x

EDIT: Hi again! This has now been completed as of 28/11/2017! Thank you for your patience!

Disclaimer: I do not own the works herein, all characters from the Harry Potter Universe belong to JK Rowling, and all characters, storylines, situations, plots and the like do not belong to me. I make no money from this work.

Warnings: Rated M for situations, swearing, violence... The whole lot, basically.

Iacta Alea Est

Chapter Twenty

The girls had mostly forgotten to be worried about Remus – except, of course, Hermione, for whom he was never completely absent – and it was with relief mixed with varying levels of guilt that they saw him at the table that morning. He was pale but present, which loosened the knot of worry in Hermione's gut, the one that always doubted whether she'd gotten her answers right, be it in an exam or on a Horcrux hunt. James and Sirius were also in a much lighter mood, probably caused by Remus's regained health, and neither seemed willing to take a jab at their presence and risk ruining the light atmosphere. Rather, they ignored the girls' appearance and chatted amongst themselves.

Breakfast had been laid out on a sideboard on the back wall, opposite the windows. Carafe upon carafe of pumpkin juice, orange juice, apple juice, pots of tea, one pot of coffee were lined against the wall, and on trays in front were glistening sausages, perfect eggs, griddled bacon, toast – even those little ramekins of marmalades and jams at one side. It was a haven of delicious breakfast foods, all kept in stasis by the subtle fizz of elf magic. Unused to such a plethora of options, Lavender dithered over it, gobsmacked and starry eyed at the many different types of meat and fat she could eat in one meal. Eventually, her stomach let out an embarrassingly loud grumble that even the boys took notice of. She raised her chin stubbornly and sent them a challenging look; but it didn't stop Ginny laughing from where she was piling her plate with protein. In retaliation Lavender dived forward, nicked her dish out of her hands, and sauntered back to the table with a sassy 'thank you!' thrown over her shoulder, the whole action taking less than a second. Ginny, left staring at Lavender's pitifully empty plate, rolled her eyes and began again.

Hermione lingered there for a few moments after the other girls had taken their loads to the table, as they had commandeered the opposite corner to the boys, and this was the closest part of the room to Remus without her looking odd. It might have seemed suspicious that she spent so much time inspecting the apricot chutney, but she didn't care about that too much. He was well, she could feel that, his presence an inviting heat against her occlumency shields. If she dropped them, then she would be able to inspect his health more thoroughly, but she'd not done that since sixth year when she had just discovered the link in her meditations, but hadn't been sure what it was.

She wasn't sure what it was now, even. Remus had promised he'd explain everything later, after the war, when she'd last seen him. He hadn't seemed overly blown away by the discovery, nor surprised, but had refused to answer her questions, so she'd turned to her refuge. Books. Bonds weren't widely written about, though it had been enough that she knew it was a bond. Werewolf literature was even vaguer, and harder to get her hands on. She'd thought perhaps they were Mated for a few weeks, until he married Tonks. The wedding had crushed that possibility efficiently enough, plus the fact that none of her research mentioned this sort of metaphysical connection between Mated pairs.

It was something, though. Mating with him, with the capital 'M', and them being together forever, had been a child's dream. Her constant awareness of him, her intimate knowledge of him despite their lack of speaking, that was a reality – and finding the answers had become more pressing a responsibility, because now she didn't know him, they were strangers, and he was likely to notice the magic soon and demand an explanation. An explanation she didn't have.

There was a low hum of conversation in the air, but it stayed light, nothing about the future or the war. The Marauders were talking about some party they had gone to the other week, their mutual friends, some names came up that Hermione vaguely recognized but wasn't overly interested in. She'd add the new information to her book later, just in case. Conversation was delicately structured to avoid mention of Peter, which added tension, but otherwise they might have been having breakfast any other day.

On the girls' side, where Hermione finally retreated with no notion as to what she might have put on her plate, Luna was braiding her hair while nodding along to Ginny, whose energy was, if anything, growing after their earlier run. Her fitness regime, she told them, took up about three to four hours every day, starting with a jog at dawn and ending with a jog before bed. Leaning closer, her eyes alight with excitement, she lectured that because people ate large meals in the evening, they had too much excess energy in their system which wasn't being used. "Eat more in the morning," she advised sagely, pointing at her loaded plate of protein.

Lavender, who wasn't listening at all, leaned back in her chair to make a scornful face at Hermione behind Ginny's back. Normally Hermione would have been resolutely on Ginny's side, but she was a happy size 14 and fit enough for it in a way that Luna and Ginny couldn't empathise with. In the interests of preventing a civil war - which seemed highly possible, from the dangerous look on Lavender's face as she pointedly shoveled food into her mouth - she summoned her notebook and dropped it on the table with a smile, the thud attracting the other girls' attention to her.

"We need to talk about the situation," she said, pointing at her book. Luna nodded, but the other two looked a bit lost. "You know, the one that brought us here?"

"The War," Ginny said slowly, seeming concerned about Hermione's lacking mental state, "we know. What about it?"

"It occurred to me that the Potters and friends all expect us to guide them through the war," Hermione began quietly so that the boys wouldn't overhear, a little bitter about having to break the light atmosphere, but mostly determined to get the issue sorted. "We haven't done anything to convince them otherwise, either. Yet, we don't have a clue what's going on so far, or how to start getting things in order. While they think we're some magical miracle solution, we need to remember that we're not, and it's going to take a lot of work on our side to get anywhere near success."

Hermione scrunched up her face, not liking the sensation pressure on her shoulders. She wasn't a leader, had never asked to be. At best, she was an efficient second in command – she followed instructions well, and could boss people about with the best of them, but lacked that essential spark that led to the creation of new spells, new curriculum, new governments. Her work in the DoM had consisted of finding problems and solving them, which was what Hermione was best at, but she was useless at solving problems that didn't exist, at poking holes where they didn't belong and filling them before anybody noticed. Since being dropped in 1979, however, it seemed the responsibility of the War lay squarely on her shoulders. The other girls may have had a pop about her lack of pureblood knowledge, and they may be determined that they fix the wrongdoings of the war, but none of them had actually started to do anything.

Truthfully, the way they had won their war was through trial and error. It had been a cluster-fuck of epic proportions, complete with underfed dragons destroying ancient Wizarding metropolis and strokes of luck to cover up their lack of any actual plan. To be expected to collate all of that into an actual, workable strategy to unravel history from the start… it was an immense challenge. She felt like Lachesis, stood over the tapestry of life, with all this power and knowledge and ability at her fingertips, only Hermione was suddenly realizing she didn't know how to weave.

Ginny seemed to understand what she was thinking, or it was written all over Hermione's face, for she reached out to take the notebook and frowned at the pages. It was open to the rough timeline Hermione had sketched, from the first thing she knew about the first Wizarding War – the Bones family deaths – all the way through to Voldemort's defeat at Hogwarts. On the next page, glamoured invisible to those who did not know it was there, was the list of Horcruxes. It was obvious the second Ginny noticed it, for she froze – genuinely froze, like a deer in headlights, from her toes to her eyes – before nodding as though she'd come to a decision and putting it down again. Then she looked at Luna.

"You pack anything useful in that bag, or is it all just naked pictured of me?" She joked, her smile somewhat sincere, though the effect was spoilt by her sudden paleness.

Luna nodded, munching on a strawberry. "Old Prophets, books on the war, the entire backdated Quibbler archive from 1976 to 1999. They're in there, if you look."

The brunette looked vaguely surprised, but accepted that explanation easily. "Then I'll do research, straight after breakfast. We do need to focus more on the task at hand though, so to speak."

"Lavender's health is just as important as the War," Ginny scolded, but didn't object.

When it seemed the others were on board, Hermione explained her idea for their part of the war, first checking the boys weren't paying attention. "We can't cross the Order, not yet. Saving lives is fine, but we'll need to find a way to do that which doesn't put us in the path of…" here she glanced around furtively, as though paranoid that the man in question would suddenly appear for jam and scones, "Dumbledore. Preferably, we wouldn't want to draw attention to us from Riddle, either, so we'll have to be quiet and inconspicuous."

"Right, but if we're not fighting, we're sneaking about in our saving lives, and we're not coming out, what are we doing?" Lavender asked, though it was a bit muffled as it came on the end of a bite of sausage.

Hermione passed her a scathing look at her lack of manners. "You aren't doing any of that, anyway, until we're sure a) that your magic isn't a ticking bomb, and b) that you getting a paper cut isn't going to exsanguinate Remus. And to answer your question, we'll be looking for these." She tapped the list with a fingernail, ignoring Ginny's flinch. "Of course, first we'll need to find somewhere safe to keep them, then figure out where they all are right now, before we even think about bringing them back and destroying them, but their destruction is our ultimate aim. At the same time we'll need to be looking out for fixed points in time, and watching how they've changed – that will give us an idea of how much we've changed time, if at all. We've got a lot to do and not much time to do it in."

Lavender, still not looking pleased, pouted up at Hermione. "And what will I be doing, if I'm not allowed to be hunting for horcruxes?" she demanded.

Hermione, returning her notebook to her bag as the thrill of research began to tickle across her skin, gave a grin to the other girl. "The admin, of course."

"What do you think they're talking about?" James asked, breaking into a conversation on the Holyhead Harpies to send a suspicious glare across the room, tapping his spoon against his bowl of porridge agitatedly. Glancing across, Remus noticed that they had indeed ended their relatively loud conversation about exercise and were now muttering together, heads bent close. As he watched, the brunette – Hermione, Remus recalled – looked up. Their eyes only met for a brief moment, but even as she broke away, in Remus' mind Moony woke up and began to watch.

"Remus, probably," Sirius replied, pausing halfway through a Cumberland sausage to follow their line of sight. "Hardly going to be make-up and shopping with that lot, is it?"

Remus rolled his eyes, feeling irritated for no good reason with his friend. "They're still women, you know," he reminded the two of them, because the other two seemed to view their time-travelling guests as the enemy, and without good reason had cast them as some sort of moustache-twirling villains without either personality nor life of their own outside of throwing theirs into turmoil. Remus was frustrated that this instant judgement had been made so quickly, but equally so that he'd not had the pleasure of being able to think these things himself, on account of Lavender's essence loitering at the back of his mind, waiting to be acknowledged. He liked to think he was a good guy, but even a really good guy liked to make his own judgements about people.

This, again, wasn't an option. Lavender's presence was delicate, effeminate, overlaid with the scent of bell heather – a curious scent for a person who looked like Lavender Brown to have, if he was honest. He was reluctantly intrigued by this, as well as the natural interest he should have for a new member of his pack, but these feelings only frustrated him further, because he knew that had he been wholey human he wouldn't be thinking things like is she as delicate as Lavender, or as hardy and stubborn as heather? Because it wouldn't be something he'd notice enough to bother with. Even more concerning was the fact that she felt lonely – something he was intimately familiar with, and it was this more than any wolf instinct that made him soften towards her in the end, for it drew memories of himself as he came to terms with his own lycanthropy. It made him pity her a little, which while being something she would find offensive, was also more effective than sympathy in getting him to view her as a person rather than a burden visited upon him by his curse.

James sent him a surprised look at his words, and Remus didn't blame him. While he hadn't bought into the non-stop bash fest Sirius and Remus were enjoying, this was also the first time he'd defended them. It was the first time he'd been in the mood to defend them. He'd yet to tell his friends about what had caused him to collapse, and they had only asked the once so far before giving into their relief that he was whole, unharmed, and well. He'd have to tell them at some point, of course, but they'd seemed to have reached an unspoken compromise with the girls, and Remus was loathe to be the reason it broke prematurely.

"Don't let Lily hear you say things like that," James said, recovering himself slightly and adopting the hushed reverent tone that was his default when talking about his fiancée. Remus and Sirius exchanged an exasperated look – eight years now, and James still spoke about Lily as if she was some sort of temperamental Goddess; beautiful and terrifying in equal turns, yet completely irresistible. Sweet, yes, but Remus couldn't imagine ever falling for anybody so completely, and Sirius agreed. Together they were waiting impatiently for the day James and Lily started acting like a normal couple, because at the moment it seemed that if Lily chose to Avada James, he would die smiling for the pleasure of being the centre of her attention for the time it took.

Moony gave a snort of disagreement and let out a huff. That was the first of his plentiful daily reminders to Remus that Moony disagreed completely with this assessment – he thought that one day Remus would have a Mate, and he'd then understand. Remus disagreed vehemently with this assessment, and it was likely the sort of thing they'd never come to terms on. He didn't buy into the whole 'wolf-mate' myth; there was no evidence it existed, and while the romantic side of himself (a rather large part, if he was honest, though at the moment it was gagged and bound on this subject) thought it was a delightful idea, the logical side knew that if there was a perfect person out there for him – beautiful, clever, witty and beyond his wildest wishes – then the best thing he could do for her would be to run a mile.

Depressing thought, but true.

"It's the muggleborn in her," Sirius was saying when Remus tuned back in. He had donned the airs of someone with great wisdom – a person as far removed from Sirius as it was possible to be, probably – and was waving a fork around with authority. "Muggle women get really offended when you say stuff like that, Moony. You know, categorise them according to their gender. You say they like makeup and jewellery, and they'll provide you with a hundred examples of women who don't touch the stuff and men who do, or worse." He shuddered theatrically, his other hand rising to stroke a finger over a scar on his temple. "Take it from me, you don't want to be on the wrong side of a girl's temper when it comes to women's lib, magic or no."

Remus smirked at the memory. In 1976, Sirius had wandered into a night-time political rally in Edinburgh and obliviously started hitting on one of the leaders. Getting beaten by a dozen irate scotswomen after one too many firewhiskeys and an indecent joke about lesbianism had left its mark on him, alright. In Remus' eyes (and Lily's, and Marlene's, and Mary's, and every woman at Hogwarts') it was a lesson he should have learned earlier.

James scoffed, sending Sirius a contemptuous look, though it was laced with enough amusement that Remus could tell that he, too, was fondly recalling that night. Sirius had cried for help as he'd gone down, but James had been unable to render aid on account of him laughing too hard, and Remus had felt morally obliged to let the women have their say. Peter, the only one of them who may have given him assistance, had conveniently disappeared, later to be found passed out face-down in an alley off Queen Street.

"Yes, well, we're not all so stupid as you, Pads," James sniffed.

"I prefer indelicate," Sirius faked affront, a hand to his chest.

"I prefer imbecilic," Lily's voice floated in as she took the seat next to James, unsurprisingly the one closest to the girls on the other end. To make her lack of allegiance even clearer, she added a grin and a jaunty wave in their direction before turning back to them. "Since we're starting the morning by offending the entirety of the fairer sex, and Muggles to boot," she said in an acidic tone that told them she'd gotten the gist of the conversation, "perhaps you can attempt to at least please your own woman, for once, James, and get me some breakfast?"

James flashed them an alarmed look but dutifully nipped off to the sideboard, while Lily turned her attention on Remus. She unleashed a soft, affectionate smile of the sort that warmed Remus through to his bones, and she only ever used on special occasions. "You look better," she observed, looking at the new colour in Remus' cheeks and the brightness of his eyes with approval. "How do you feel?"

"Fine," Remus responded with a gentle smile, trying to beg her with his eyes not to ask the question he knew she was going to.

"Well that's good," she perked up, "any idea what happened?"

There it was. Remus looked down at his plate, cursing her in his head half-heartedly. He'd be happy to tell her, but not right now, in the company of an intent Sirius and an interested James, and not with the girls within hexing distance. "Does it matter?" He volleyed lightly, before shovelling the last of his bacon into his mouth at speed. He stood, and in a display of extraordinarily dreadful manners, he spluttered an excuse about fetching more food through the chunks of meat and darted off to the sideboard, sending his chair thudding to the ground in his wake.

And then, just as suddenly, he stopped.

There was… something… in the air. Something… sweet… so sweet… so delicious smelling…

His mouth was watering, his eyes almost crossed as it wafted through his senses, luring him into a trance of pure pleasure. It was so strong… so pungent… as if the source was right there…

Moony had padded to the front of his mind, sniffing and whining, but making no attempt to break through. In honesty, Remus wanted to whine too, it was so delightful… he only just had the presence of mind to shut the sound down before it came out…. Only just, though…

It was so comforting. Like home, but not his home, a new home… one with laughter and hugs and kisses and long nights in bed followed by lie-ins and more laughter and more kisses and children and a garden and…

Remus had the absurd urge to rip it from the air, form it into a blanket and wrap himself in it, never to let go…

Moony had the urge to roll in it, covering himself so thoroughly in the beauty of it that no amount of washing would ever rid him of its comfort…

There was a clatter in the background, but Remus paid it no mind. Moony was stretching, preparing for a hunt, and Remus thought that was a brilliant idea, wonderful, anything to find the source of…

A cool burst of air swept past, clearing his nose, wiping it all away so rapidly that Remus couldn't prevent a vicious growl. He span, hs eyes opening, to face the culprit.

Stood at the other side of the room, holding a window pole at her side like a triumphant warrior Queen, stood Luna. Her eyes suspiciously wide and innocent, she smiled at him. "Oops, sorry!" She sang, continuing nevertheless to open the windows lining the wall, letting in the spring air and simultaneously ridding the room of the last dregs of the intoxicating fragrance. "Just thought it was getting a little bit stuffy in here, that's all. Is there a problem, Remus?"

Her eyes were, at first appearance, completely guileless, but at the back – and Remus could only see this because he was so buoyed by Moony's rage at the girl, later thinking that he might have imagined it – there was a shimmer of apology.

"No," he responded shortly, seeing no other choice.

"Oh, good," she practically purred, her face as bright as the morning sun as she broke into a smile. "In that case, I think we have work to do. Hermione?"

The girls cleared out in record time, dumping their leftovers into the compost for Dorea's vegetable garden and piling their plates on the sideboard before filing out the door. During the whole performance, Luna held his eyes, still looking oddly melancholy, before with a respectful nod, she disappeared too, the door closing gently behind her. Remus was left to answer to his friends.