A/N: Thank you all so much for waiting for the last update. If anyone wants an excuse, I was distracted by classwork. I hope this answers any questions anyone might have.

Twenty-five: Questions

Dinner that night was quiet. Harry was nervous, worried that Remus and Tilia would be angry when they found out how much he had seen. Remus and Tilia seemed to be waiting for Harry to say something. He didn't. The silence stretched almost to the breaking point.

Finally, the table was cleared and the dishes were clinking softly in the background, cleaning themselves. Harry bit his lip, and, unconsciously mimicking his mother, picked at the edge of his placemat. He wished he knew where to start.

Once again, Remus and Tilia glanced at each other. Then Remus sighed and quietly said, "How much did you see, Harry?"

The boy looked up. Remus didn't sound angry, only curious.

"Er, everything, I think. It seemed like it, anyway." Harry paused to let the two respond, but they simply nodded, encouraging him to go on. "Can I ask why you have a Pensieve? I mean, I thought they were rare…" he began hesitantly.

"Not particularly," Remus said. "Hard to find, perhaps, but not so rare as to be impossible. Did you know that you can hide memories in a Pensieve? Give yourself enough distance from a memory that it makes it easier to block Legilimens from seeing that memory?"

Harry, about to shake his head, suddenly remembered his Occlumency lessons with Snape, and nodded instead.

"That's why we have one," Tilia said. "There was every possibility that we would get caught during the war, and neither of us is an expert Occlumens. We hoped that using the Pensieve would stop the Death Eaters from gaining a greater advantage over us because they couldn't comb through our memories and find our weaknesses."

"Did it help, when you were—you know, Remus—sixth year?" Harry asked awkwardly.

Remus gave a wry smile in understanding, and said, "I think, when I was—away—that it hurt more than it helped. Physically, I was further away than I had ever been. The Pensieve made it easier for me to be emotionally distant as well. I was awfully stupid, that year. I'm sure you saw."

Harry grimaced. "Did you take Wolfsbane with you, at least?"

"No." Remus shook his head. "Another one of my stupider moments. But they would have wondered, and it would have blown my cover if they found out Tilia was sending me Wolfsbane."

"Now I see why she really didn't want you to go," Harry said. Tilia smiled.

"Like I said, it was hard enough to convince him he was human when he wasn't around other werewolves, especially because everyone knew what he was."

"Yeah, I was wondering about that. When Remus was teaching, no one knew. But everyone knew you'd married a werewolf. Sorry," he added, glancing at Remus, who shrugged.

"When he applied to continue studying spell-smithing, ward-smithing, they would have accepted him, except they received a letter telling them he was a werewolf. It was quite a scandal because he'd just graduated from Hogwarts…" Tilia sighed. "The papers didn't let it go for weeks. They forgot eventually, and then Snape reminded everyone, and it started all over again."

"Do you know who—?"

"No," they both said.

Harry cast about for something else to say. "Bill said, in the one memory, that you didn't get recognized for your work, Tilia. Is it because—?"

"Because of Remus?" she finished, raising an eyebrow. "Yes, more or less. If I hadn't been as vocal defending him, perhaps…"

Harry snorted skeptically. "As if that will ever happen." She grinned at him.

"Er, speaking of where you work, what's a night guard?"

"Someone has to make sure the potions left standing overnight don't go critical and explode. We also let people in if they need to work—say, something needs to be stirred every three hours on the dot, or the knotgrass has to be added at exactly 2:37 or the whole thing will be worthless…"

Harry stared. "O-kay," he said slowly. "Another reason to hate potions; I mean, I knew they were fiddly and complicated, but that's just plain crazy."

"I've been telling her that for years," Remus said. "Not least because some of her colleagues think it is amusing to schedule Tilia for the night after the full moon every month, and she's given up swapping because she 'doesn't want to be a nuisance.'"

Tilia rolled her eyes, and Harry smiled, some of the tension slipping from the room. A sudden thought crossed his mind, and he said, "Remus? Why did you let Tilia's boss in, that time when he didn't fire her?"

Remus frowned. "What—? Oh. That. He knew who I was and he hadn't run away yet, and he was polite, and I didn't want him to think worse of Tilia because I had turned him away. And I was curious myself. I'd heard a lot about him."

Harry nodded. "Makes sense." All three were quiet for a moment. Remus' last phrase set Harry thinking, however. "There's something I've heard a lot about, but never really found out the details," he said slowly.

"What's that?" Tilia asked.

Harry swallowed, then said, "When Sirius told Snape how to get past the Whomping Willow. Why did he do it? Sirius said Snape deserved it, that night when we were in the Shrieking Shack. But no one's ever said why."

Remus and Tilia looked at each other uncomfortably. Remus didn't quite meet Harry's eyes when he said, "To be honest, I—I don't really remember. Whatever it was though," he looked directly at Harry, "I am sure Severus did not truly deserve it. He rarely deserved much of what we put him through."

Harry looked at Tilia, but she simply shrugged, silently agreeing with Remus. "Was there anything else, Harry?" He knew that she was changing the subject, and let her. There was no reason to push them, since he still wasn't comfortable talking about Snape himself.

"Yeah, actually. Remus mentioned Tilia's boggart…What is it? If you don't mind my asking."

She shook her head. "Not at all. It's Moony, but a Moony who isn't Remus anymore, just the wolf, and terribly angry."

"Oh." Harry tried not to think about too hard about that. He remembered another incident with a boggart and turned to Remus with a frown. "In class, you turned the boggart into a cockroach. Why?"

Remus smiled and shrugged. "I wasn't planning on facing the boggart myself. It was the first thing that came to mind."

"But it isn't funny," Harry protested.

Remus laughed slightly. "Dumbledore, in an effort to promote staff unity, had us helping Severus clean out some of the old, disused cabinets in the dungeons. The house-elves had been forbidden from touching any of Severus' things, and he hadn't looked in those cabinets in years. The amount of cockroaches down there…anyway, it was laugh or cry at the mess. I chose to laugh. I planted a few in his desk just to see if I could. His face, when the one escaped and got into his best cauldron, was priceless."

Harry grinned. "Now that's funny."

All three laughed for a moment. Tilia, grinning, asked, "Anything else, Harry?"

He shook his head, then, as a thought struck him, said, "Yes. At the first feast, did Remus ever get his potatoes?"

There was complete silence for a long moment, and then they began to laugh.

"No, actually. I don't think so."

And still laughing, the three said their goodnights, and the world went back, more or less, to normal.