Chapter Thirteen: Pruning

"Where is he!"

"Surely Harry hasn't already gone to him?"

"What are we going to do?!"

The voices of distress and concern echoed around him, and Remus locked eyes with Minerva from across the Great Hall. She shook her head in worry, and he looked down, unable to answer her unspoken question.

Could they ask a young man who has gone through so much to sacrifice his life? Could they afford not to?

"He'll go," Hermione said in a low voice beside him. "He won't feel that he has a choice."

With a sweep of her arm, Minerva cast a spell that showed a countdown clock on the wall above the doors. Then, she put herself to the task of sending groups outside to find the wounded and dead so they could be brought inside. Remus assigned himself to physical duty, moving tables and clearing debris to make room for more wounded. At first, it was a struggle to make space in enough time to make a difference, but eventually, he and the others working with him had packed away the tables and conjured nearly fifty pads for people to lay the wounded and dying. Part of the problem was that the furniture in Hogwarts' Great Hall was impervious to most sizing charms, as well as nearly all levitation. Remus and the others had needed to move everything by hand.

He'd turned to find the next place he would be needed when Minerva called him over to the high table.

"Hermione has asked to catalogue the names of the dead. She has particular skill in charming documents to cross reference, but-"

"But that grim task is too emotionally damaging for any one of us, much less someone so young?" Remus interrupted. "I wish I could understand why it is she's so determined to punish herself!" He scrubbed a hand over his face, wishing he could do the same to his heart. Touching a wound always seemed to make it feel better, but this ache was intangible, and thus unsoothable.

"It's not my story to tell," Minerva said in a voice thick with regret. She steadied herself with one of the great wooden chairs the teachers used at mealtimes.

"You'd rather let her suffer in silence when someone who loves her would do anything and everything possible to help?" Remus said sharply. "A fat lot of good that does!" With a surge of anger, he pushed the chair beside Minerva towards the wall with all of his might. It flew as if he'd used magic, shattering into splinters against the wall.

Remus expected harsh words of recrimination, but Minerva simply pursed her lips in disapproval and walked off, her stiff posture the only reproof necessary. He knew he'd acted rashly, and so did she. He'd apologize later.

Remus turned away, meaning to look for Hermione, but found that she had been standing behind him. The look on her tear-streaked face was hopeful.

"You love me?" she whispered.

He stepped down from the dais toward her. The surge of his raw emotions was too strong to tamp down, and he told her everything that was in his heart. "I dream that you're sleeping beside me until I wake to find myself alone. I turn to speak to you at every meal, whether you're there or not. The thing I used to dread above all else- the pain of condemning a loved one to a life dominated by the full moon -seems like no hardship in comparison to living without you. Yes, I've fallen in love with you. And I'm sorry that I wasn't there for you during what was clearly the most traumatic event of your life, even if you never tell me what it was."

The joy on her face was tinged with sadness, but she threw herself into his arms, and he buried his face in her hair. The messy braid was loose enough for some of the curls he loved so much to escape. He could see the clock counting down from where he stood, and every second of the twenty-three remaining minutes weighed on him, but he couldn't let her go, not just yet.

"I love you too," Hermione said against his chest. He could feel her starting to cry in earnest. Remus assumed that she'd spent at least some time among the deceased that were lined up in perfect rows by Poppy Pomfrey's professionalism, so he just held her close. "You were th- Oh, I can't!" Hermione said after a few long minutes. "I want to, but- oh, Remus!" Her tears soaked into his shirt.

She lifted her head and he braced himself for a rejection. He opened his arms reluctantly, pulling his dignity around himself as best he could. The parts of his heart he'd opened up to her would be impossible to retrieve, but he'd given them freely.

"Why are you all tense?" Hermione asked. He'd closed his eyes, so when he felt her hand on his cheek, he jumped in surprise, opening them again. She was looking at him with fond exasperation, an expression he was ashamed to recognize. "Oh, you dear noble idiot! I meant I want to tell you what happened, but it's just so…" Hermione brushed her thumb across his cheek before removing her hand to make a frustrated sort of helpless gesture with both hands. "I did not mean to imply anything negative about the two of us. Got it?"

A cry of anguish from across the room drew their attention before he could answer her with anything more than a grateful nod.

Molly Weasley was kneeling, her arms outstretched towards a stretcher that had just been levitated into the room at the wand of Professor Flitwick. Remus couldn't see who was on the stretcher, but he could tell by the way the person's chest wasn't moving that they weren't breathing. The other thing that he could see was the person's hair. It was long and red.

"Ginny?" Hermione whispered in a small, scared voice.

Remus scanned the room, remembering that Ginny had been helping Minerva earlier. He saw her across the room, starting to run towards her mother, and pointed her out to Hermione wordlessly.

"Charlie!" Ginny screamed.

On the other side of the room, Fred and George had been working with Febronia among the most wounded students, acting as water bearers and cheering them up with jokes. Both of them thrust their levitated pitchers at Febronia, who managed to catch one with her hands, the other nearly dropping to the ground despite her frantic wand-waving.

"Go on," Remus told Hermione, who seemed frozen in place. When he saw her start walking over to where the Weasleys were congregating around Charlie, he went over to Febronia. Gently, he cast his own levitation charm on the pitcher and brought it to the ground. He took the other from her hands, noting that she seemed like she was in shock.

"Oh, Remus," she said, and threw herself at him in almost the same way Hermione had after helping Sirius dress as Bellatrix. "Changing everything is not possible, it seems. There's a cost. I was foolish to think otherwise!" she said, her voice shaking even more than usual.

Remus conjured a soft, warm handkerchief for her, and she took it gratefully. After a minute or two, she pulled back.

"I'm sorry to be so forward. That's the last thing you'll be needing right now!"

"What, comforting a friend? I'd say the whole room is engaged in that activity. I could hardly hope to be exempt," he said, gently teasing.

A short chime sounded, and when he looked up to see its source, he saw that the timer had just passed below ten minutes. There were still more bodies being brought in on gurneys, and more cries of dismay. A child's voice, one belonging to someone too young to still be in the castle at all, drew Remus's attention.

"Colin, no!" Dennis Creevey was crying.

Remus knew he needed to go to the boy, but he didn't want to leave Febie before she was feeling better. He looked back over to her, and saw that she was again holding onto the object on the chain around her neck.

"Does it help?" he asked her, nodding toward it.

Her smile was sad, but she nodded. "Even more so now. No matter what happens, I'm glad to have known you, Remus Lupin." His eyebrows shot up at the clear language of goodbye, and she chuckled. "Yes, I plan on casting the spell. It should always have been me, you know. Even though you persuaded me otherwise. I'm just returning the balance back to equal." Febronia held up the fist hiding her talisman. "I'm going to encourage Hermione to show you hers, but if she doesn't, don't give up on her. Keeping it secret was perhaps the biggest mistake of my life."

"I thought you gave it to her," Remus said, confused.

Febronia shook her head. "No. You did."

He stared at her, baffled, until he heard the sound of Dennis's crying again. Remus knew he had to compartmentalize today, just as he'd had to do that awful Halloween night when James and Lily were killed. It wasn't that Febie's comment wasn't important, it was just that it wasn't immediate. Dennis was.

Dennis had thrown himself on his brother's body. When Remus knelt beside the boy, he saw Poppy come over, sadness etched into her features. He stood up and she told him quietly that she'd come over to make sure the path was clear for any other stretchers, but it seemed, thankfully, that Colin's might be the last.

"Gathering everyone up took the whole hour," she said. "Great Merlin, I didn't think I had the strength!"

"Is there a reason why we aren't barricading the school or sending the rest of the younger ones to Hogsmeade?" Molly Weasley asked loudly. Her face was wet with tears and red with indignation. "Not one of us would have forced Harry to go out to the Forest, and I very much hope he's hiding somewhere. That means they'll be coming for us!"

"Harry isn't hiding. At least, I don't think he is," Minerva said from the doorway. "He was in the Headmaster's Office for a while, I think, but now…" her voice faltered.

Outside, the sounds of celebration could be heard; Remus heard explosions of magic that he recognized as the same spells cast everywhere for days after Voldemort's defeat. He'd always associated them with James and Lily's deaths, not with joy or triumph as they'd been intended at the time. Judging by Minerva's face, they might now be associated with another Potter death.

Then, the sound of Voldemort's voice echoed through the school yet again.

Harry Potter is dead. He was killed as he ran away, trying to save himself while you lay down your lives for him. We bring you his body as proof that your hero is gone. The battle is won. You have lost half of your fighters. My Death Eaters outnumber you, and the Boy Who Lived is finished. There must be no more war. Anyone who continues to resist, man, woman or child, will be slaughtered, as well every member of their family. Come out of the castle now, kneel before him, and you shall be spared. Your parents and children, your brothers and sisters will live and be forgiven, and you will join me in the new world we shall build together.

"He's lying!" Neville shouted. "It's a trick. Harry would never run away, never."

"He didn't run even when we were eleven years old! He went out there like he was told to and Voldemort killed him!" Ron added his voice to Neville's.

Soon, everyone in the Great Hall were voicing their own objections. As Remus stood staring at Minerva's stoic expression, someone tugged at his arm. He looked down to see Dennis Creevey. Everyone's protestations faded away as though they'd become mute in their grief, and Dennis's voice rang out.

"What if we went out there and all attacked him at once? If he's going to kill us anyway, we should take him by surprise, yeah?" he told Remus. "I'm not going to bow to someone who killed my brother."

"Neither am I," Ron said in a voice that broke half-way through. Arthur put his arm around his son and shut his eyes, clearly in great pain.

It seemed like the whole group of survivors were looking to him for a decision. Remus pulled his wand out. "Let's go," he said.

One corner of Minerva McGonagall's lip turned up in the smallest, most impactful smile he'd ever seen. She lifted her own wand and spun on her heel, stalking out of the Great Hall and on to spring the trap Voldemort had undoubtedly set for them.

Hermione waited by the doorway for him, and beside her was Kingsley, a white bandage wrapped around his knee. He was limping, and his face was bloody.

"Clawed by a werewolf," Kingsley said with a lopsided grin. "You and Bill Weasley will have some compatriots after this night."

"There's no chance Febie grabbed a vial of Polyjuice and one of Harry's hairs, is there?" Hermione asked Remus, her voice wistful and haunted.

Kingsley shook his head. "Polyjuice doesn't persist in death, does it?"

A horrible sound of utter anguish came from the gaping hole that used to be the front entrance to Hogwarts. Soon after came more cries of dismay. Remus and the rest of the group rushed out to see for themselves.

Hagrid was standing a few paces behind a ghastly figure that could only be Voldemort. In the half-giant's arms was Harry's body. Hagrid himself was shaking, a twisted look of misery on his face. Remus was struck by the cruelty of the scene; of all the faculty, Hagrid was the most empathetic, the most likely to be emotionally destroyed by the task he'd been given.

"You're a monster!" a voice shouted from the group of survivors.

As if a dam had been broken, more voices hurled insults at their tormentor. The stunning sight of Harry's actual body had prevented them from following through with Dennis's suggestion of a surprise attack, but that tide had turned back again. It was only a matter of minutes, Remus thought, before someone threw a curse. He felt powerless to stop it.

Hermione slipped her hand into his just as Neville Longbottom charged at Voldemort, his wand raised high.

oOoOoOo

Without the option of a Pensieve to review the memory of the next twenty minutes, Remus didn't think he could ever properly explain the sequence of events. To go from the defeat of Hagrid holding Harry's dead body, to Neville's brave charge and Voldemort's subsequent punishment of him was eventful enough, but to follow that with a centaur charge and a group of giants attacking?

The way Neville had pulled the Sword of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat to kill the final Horcrux was poetic, given that Hermione had told him Voldemort had tried to make Horcruxes out of an artifact from each of the Founders.

Now, as Remus battled desperate Death Eaters, surrounded by not only Order members but also former students, families of former students, professors, Hogsmeade shopkeepers, and various other friendly faces, he wasn't even surprised to see that the Hogwarts house elves had joined the fray. They were being pushed back toward the Great Hall, and for the first time since he'd heard Minerva's awful scream of grief, Remus felt like they might yet win.

Harry had disappeared and Febronia was nowhere to be found. Could she have found his Invisibility Cloak and taken Harry's body? Would losing the proof of his victory over Harry be enough to stop Voldemort from winning the war itself?

The Great Hall was in shambles. Poppy had managed to cast shield spells to protect the bodies in their neat rows on the floor, but around and atop them was the rubble of the walls, as great holes were made in the walls during the fighting. Remus saw that a few dark figures were climbing up and out of the room, and he tried to make his way over to stop them, but the battle was too intense to do much more than defend and press the attack.

Hermione fought beside him. She was fierce and vicious in her curses, favoring hexes and spells that disabled and disoriented her opponents. Her hair had fallen free of its confinement and the force of her anger was sending sparks of magic through it as she battled.

One by one, Death Eaters fell, and eventually, only Voldemort remained. He roared with anger when he saw that his closest and most trusted companions had either been defeated or run away in fear. The evil man started to cast a killing curse at the person nearest to him, Molly Weasley.

A Protego flashed up to protect her, and suddenly, Harry Potter was standing there, battered but alive, his Invisibility Cloak falling away.

The duel that followed was mostly fought in words, at first. When it was over, though, Harry hadn't been the one to cast a killing curse. Voldemort did.

And it had rebounded on him. His dead body, no longer protected by shards of his tattered soul, lay still. It was over.

They had won.

oOoOoOo

Once their initial joy and shock at Harry having truly defeated Voldemort and fulfilling the prophecy had faded, Remus, Minerva, Kingsley, Poppy, and many other adults each started to find the places they were most needed. That was when Remus remembered that there was still one task that needed to be taken care of.

"Bellatrix got away through the break in the wall," he told Minerva and Kingsley as they were conferring about where the remaining uninjured students could rest and recuperate. "I imagine she's long gone by now, but she may be waiting to spirit away the body. If you can spare me, I'd like to go check."

They both nodded at him, and Kingsley rested a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Be careful," he said. "Her interpreter is dead, but she's skilled at wordless curses. Don't underestimate her."

"I won't," Remus said grimly. He exchanged respectful nods with Minerva and went to find Hermione. She was with Sirius, Harry, Ginny, and the other Weasleys crowded around Charlie's stretcher. Beside his body was that of a young woman. Her short hair was a soft pink, and Sirius was holding her hand with tears in his eyes. Hermione had an arm around Sirius and the other around Ginny, whose head was on Harry's shoulder. Everyone's expressions were serious and sad. Remus reached out and laid a gentle hand on Sirius's shoulder.

"I feel like I failed her, Moony," Sirius said without turning to see who had touched him. "The only member of my family here, and I couldn't keep her safe."

"You didn't fail Tonks any more than the rest of us failed those we lost. Not if you tried your best," Remus told him.

Hermione kissed Sirius's cheek, turned to give Ginny a full body hug, and pulled free to come over to Remus. Her cheeks were wet with tears, and she didn't bother wiping them away.

"I need to check outside for Bellatrix, but I didn't want to go without telling you where I was," he told Hermione.

"-without taking me with you, you mean," she said firmly.

Remus thought about arguing with her for about half a second before nodding and taking her hand. She looked up at him, startled.

"I thought you'd want to… I don't know, ease everyone into this?" she said quietly, lifting their joined hands.

"If there's a problem, we'll deal with it."

"Even if they tell us it's just a trauma bond?" Hermione asked as they walked out of the Great Hall.

"I hadn't thought of that," Remus admitted.

"Good," Hermione said. "Because it's not."

The sunshine felt out of place, as if daylight had come abnormally early, instead of being earned by a long night of fighting. The amount of smoke and debris visible were sobering.

"Remus." Hermione's voice trembled with fear. She was transfixed, staring at the Whomping Willow, which was completely still. Directly underneath it was a lone figure in black standing over a crumpled body. The shape was too small to be anything other than a child, and even at that distance, Remus could see that they were wearing school robes. The standing person gestured with their wand, and Remus's hair stood on end as he saw the figure writhe in pain.

"Who -?" Hermione whispered in a horrified tone.

Suddenly, Remus knew with an awful certainty. "Dennis," he breathed.

"She didn't leave by herself," Hermione said, drawing closer to him, her wand gripped tightly in her hand. "There were other Death Eaters with her. It's a trap."

Across the lawn from them, Bellatrix Lestrange gestured again, and the boy at her feet cried out in pain, the sound carried to them on the wind. Remus turned to Hermione.

"All that time I was desperate to stop you, and here I am, faced with the same choice, coming to the same conclusion."

Hermione closed her eyes, the press of her eyelids causing the waiting tears to course down her cheeks. "Let me. I know what to do. You can grab Dennis, and-"

"No," Remus said, emotion making his voice gritty. "I won't let her take someone else I love. Not again." He leaned over and kissed her, a fleeting touch that still felt like fire against his lips.

"I could run back, send a Patronus, get backup," Hermione protested, her voice turning shrill.

"I know exactly how you feel," Remus said, leaning over to tip his forehead against hers, "-but the Willow could un-freeze at any moment. There's no time. It has to be now, and it has to be me."

Her arms came around him in a fierce little hug before she slid her hands up to frame his face. She spoke with speed and certainty. "I understand. If anyone's hiding, ready to attack, I'll stop them."

"Promise me you won't cast anything against her," Remus said as he walked away from Hermione and toward Bellatrix. The anger he felt at the unfairness of the entire situation made his next words come out in a growl. "I owe her one."

When his focus was back on Dennis and his surroundings, a sense of dread started to rise up inside him. The very farthest edges of the tree's branches were starting to move. He broke into a run, and Bellatrix spread her arms out to her sides in a challenge. She threw her head back in a soundless laugh. Behind him, he heard Hermione cast a shield charm and saw the bubble of protection form around his body. A nearly imperceptible glow coming from Bellatrix's direction glanced off of the shield, and Remus couldn't stop his gasp.

Without her voice, Bellatrix gave no warning when she was about to strike. Only a wand movement would signal that she was casting, and she was gesticulating wildly. Her hands moved in an intricate dance that might be spellwork and might be an attempt to trick him into thinking it was spellwork. There was no way to tell.

Hermione cast again, and this time the bright green spell that bounced off the shield was unmistakable.

He was going to die, Remus realized. He hadn't had to watch Iraja fall, but Hermione would have to watch this.

Remus was close enough to cast on Dennis, and he traced out two spells in rapid succession. First, a shield charm and secondly, Levicorpus.

As he suspected they would, the Death Eaters hiding behind the Willow walked out into sight, their wands lifted and pointed at him. Hermione shouted a warning and cast another Protego, but Remus was focused on the child. He gathered up his magic and swung his wand arm in a wide arc, starting to levitate Dennis's crumpled body away from danger. Two spells flew toward him, one glancing off of Hermione's shield. He braced himself for the second, but it glanced off as well. He hadn't heard her cast again, but clearly someone had.

Then, from the opposite direction of where he knew Hermione was standing, a figure limped into view. It was Hermione, her brown curls blowing around her head with the force of the magic she was gathering around herself. Her clothing was different, and in his confusion, even though he was almost to Bellatrix, even though Dennis was almost to safety, Remus stopped to stare at her.

Behind him, Hermione's familiar voice screamed, "Febronia, wait!"

Then, just as he understood what had to be happening, he was propelled away from the Willow with a blast of magic so powerful he lost consciousness.

The last thing he heard was Febronia's voice, addressing Bellatrix.

"I'm taking you with me this time."

oOoOoOo

Remus woke in a dark room. Only the faint outline of light around the door and where it was in relation to his bed told him where he was- in his room at Potter Manor. His head and his ankle hurt, but not badly enough for the Hospital Wing or St. Mungo's.

At first, he didn't move anything but his eyes, too overcome by the memories of what had happened right before he was knocked out.

Was Dennis all right?

Had Bellatrix gotten away?

Did Febronia cast the spell?

Remus closed his eyes and pictured the last time he'd seen Febronia. She'd been upset, had left her tears on him just as Hermione had, and he remembered clearly looking down at her white collared shirt. It was the same shirt that he'd seen the second Hermione wearing right before he was knocked unconscious. There would be no reason for her to spend so much magical energy on a Glamour like that without it having a huge weight of meaning behind it. Her last line had clearly been thought out, as well.

'I'm taking you with me this time.'

That implied that she had attacked Bellatrix before.

There was a strange sense of urgency that Remus felt hovering in the far distance of his mind, a conclusion he needed to make. There was a weight to that urgency, as though he had but to reach out and grasp a particular concept… and if he did, he would finally understand something really important.

Febronia was a part of it, and Remus thought about her odd behavior and what it could mean. She'd been so upset after they'd found out that Charlie had died, talking about changing things. Febie had told him that 'it always should have been me,' in reference to the sacrificial spell that he was certain she'd cast right after pushing him out of the way with magic.

Remus opened his eyes.

What if Febronia really was Hermione, instead of her just choosing that Glamour at random?

He thought back to when he'd first met her. She'd stared at him and then apologized, told him that he reminded her of someone she'd lost. Then, every time he interacted with her after that, she had seemed afraid of him, so much so that he'd eventually apologized to her about it. Her reaction had been that of surprise, and Remus had just taken it to mean she was humoring him. Now he wasn't so sure. What if she hadn't been shocked at all? What if she'd been genuine, there; Febronia hadn't expected him to think she was afraid of him. He had assumed she was hiding something, and she had been.

She knew his favorite meal. Knew that he didn't take cream in his tea. She'd looked rattled to her core when he touched her before Apparating.

Remus sat up, forgetting that he'd been trying to stay still in case someone had cast a spell to alert them to his movement, something he knew Poppy Pomfrey had used on him when he was at Hogwarts. If he was right, Febronia was an elderly Hermione after a long and happy life with her husband and children.

His children. Their children.

Not only that but Febronia had clearly been trying to persuade a desperately unhappy Hermione that life was worth living by telling her about her own happy life. Hermione's future happy life. He swung his legs down from the bed and felt around with his stockinged feet for his slippers. Every inch of his skin felt like he was connected to a live wire; he had goosebumps and was short of breath. Hermione Granger -Lupin?!- had traveled back in time to change something about the way her best friend hadn't been properly involved in fulfilling the prophecy.

Remus tried to stand up, steadying himself on the bedpost. His head pounded, but his ankle felt less stiff with weight on it. He decided that the pounding was probably related to the things he was coming to understand. He took a step forward and rested his forehead on the coolness of the wall.

His heart ached for the Hermione that wasn't his. She must have been terrified to see the possible destruction of her timeline, when the changes she hadn't been expecting put Remus in danger. She'd been limping, but still managed the strength to save him. He chuckled aloud. He was proud of her. The fierce, intelligent, elderly witch that his alternate self had loved was every bit as amazing and infuriating as his Hermione.

Thinking about his Hermione had him overwhelmed, again. He'd nearly lost her. After all the time he'd spent trying to keep her from making a self-sacrificial decision, he was forced to make that same decision in the space of a few minutes.

Then, something Febronia had said during the battle made Remus shake his head at himself. She'd told him that she was meant to cast the spell that ultimately saved him, even though he had persuaded her otherwise. But… he hadn't. He had never spoken to Febronia about her casting the spell, only Hermione. The evidence of who she was had been there the whole time, and he hadn't caught it. Remus turned around to rest his back and shoulders against the wall, feeling deeply troubled by having missed something so important. How much evidence had he overlooked?

He straightened up and walked over to the desk to pull out a length of parchment to note down his thoughts. The first one he found wasn't blank; it was the message from Hermione on his birthday. He sat down at the desk and traced his finger across where she'd written his name. On a second, smaller piece of paper, he started writing down things Febronia said that had struck him as odd.

There was the day they'd met. She'd seemed so afraid of him, to the point of Minerva comforting her once he'd left the room. Febie had avoided touching him the day he and Hermione had shown up at the boarding house, and had clearly been affected when he'd Side-Alonged her to the Shack. Then, there was the necklace she was always holding onto.

Remus groaned aloud. Hermione had one too. He'd even remarked on the similarity!

He ran his hand through his hair and tried to remember the particulars of his conversation with Febie about it. Instead of thinking about it from his point of view, he thought about it from hers- a conversation between a woman and a version of the man she loved. She'd said something about keeping the necklace a secret, which was definitely odd. Remus wrote that down. Then, he had asked her if she'd been the one to give the necklace to Hermione. Remus groaned again. She hadn't, of course. She didn't have to. It was the same necklace!

Her response about that had been strange too, he remembered. She'd told him he had given it to her. Yet again, Remus shook his head at himself. The night had been chaotic, but he wondered why the comment hadn't resonated with him more at the time! He didn't give anything like that to Hermione, and it couldn't have been at a later date if his Hermione already had it, so what could Febronia have meant?

Remus tried to think of any time when he'd given anything to a woman. There were birthday and Christmas presents for Lily, once James had brought her round, but-

Thinking about his time at Hogwarts jogged a memory.

He had given a necklace to a woman. He'd given his mother's pendant to Iraja.

Remus pressed his palms to his eyes until he saw colors against the blackness of his eyelids. As if he'd converted them into a Pensieve, the swirls smeared into memories. Iraja pulling her thick curly hair up off of her neck in relief. Iraja hissing in pain as the effects of her illness manifested themselves. Hermione in the library, sighing in relief as she pulled her hair up. Febronia crying out and holding her head in the seventh floor corridor. Hermione clutching an object on a long chain around her neck. Febronia doing the same.

Febronia's last words to Bellatrix.

He dropped his hands onto the desk and stared at them in disbelief. Was he looking for connections where none existed in an attempt to forgive himself for falling in love with someone who wasn't Iraja?

The long chain he'd found to pair with his mother's pendant had been a last minute thing, bought from a female friend who had seen his distress when his attempts to conjure one that wouldn't disappear had failed. He had berated himself for worrying about the length of time it would stay conjured in the first place, considering that Iraja only had days to live at the time. But to him, there had been something symbolic about it, and even altering the chain he'd purchased had felt wrong. It was an unusual length, and so was Hermione's.

"Is it possible to overdose on adrenaline?" he asked himself out loud. The rush of awareness and urgency felt familiar at this point, after the night he'd had. Almost immediately, though, Remus felt shame. So many good people had died, and he was worried about the damage an excess of adrenaline could cause? He clenched his hands into fists, revealing the words that had been hiding underneath. Hermione's birthday letter.

He stared at his own name, and realized something.

Iraja had written his name in the letter he carried with him.

Remus pulled his wallet from his pocket and stared at it for a few seconds. He'd long since stopped taking Iraja's letter out to re-read it, as he'd memorized it within months of her death. The parchment she'd written it on was spelled imperturbable, but it still felt fragile, and Remus had felt fragile when reading it. He had dutifully transferred it to each new wallet he'd owned, even when it was the only thing inside.

"So your theory is that not only has Hermione Granger time traveled from the future to save your life, but she time traveled into the past and was your first love?!" Remus said to himself in a harsh whisper.

As soon as he'd said it he knew he was being unfair. Iraja had resisted him to the point of absurdity. Febronia had said multiple times during the battle that things were turning out differently than she had expected. Febronia had chosen to go back, but Hermione probably had not. She'd described what happened to her as a catastrophic accident.

There was a knock at the door, and Remus dropped the wallet on his desk, startled. After calling out for whoever it was to come in, he stood, resting his fingertips on the wallet, which lay on Hermione's letter.

It was Minerva. She came over to him in a rush, stopping herself with her hand on the bedpost.

"When we found you after Hermione came to get us, hysterical-" she broke off, holding a clenched fist to her lips. "I'm glad you are awake."

"Febronia saved me. I know who she was, now. She cast a Glamour before she attacked Bellatrix," Remus said. Minerva's eyebrows shot up and he held out a hand, a lump forming in his throat. "I say 'know,' like I could ever understand what I, what the other me meant to her…" he trailed off, staring at the floor, speechless. Minerva didn't say anything, and he couldn't look at her. "Did you know, the whole time?" he asked, thinking about when he'd first met Febronia and the comforting words he'd overheard Minerva speaking after he'd left her office.

"No," Minerva said. "I only truly understood what happened after you gave me her journals, after she was gone."

Remus looked up at her and saw the dismay on her face as she realized she'd said too much. As if waiting for the other to be the first to take the next breath, they stood staring at each other.

"Remus," Minerva finally said in a choked voice. He shook his head decisively, just once, and turned toward his desk.

"Don't fret," he told her, not unkindly. "I was in the middle of persuading myself it couldn't be true when you knocked."

With shaking hands, he opened his wallet, pulled out Iraja's letter, and laid it flat beside Hermione's.

The handwriting was identical.

"How?" he whispered. His heart ached, and he wasn't entirely sure whether he was grateful or miserable.

"She died, Remus. It's called Time Death." Minerva walked over but didn't touch him. He could feel the warmth radiating from her body, and that was comfort enough. Anything more and he felt like he might collapse in on himself. "In her letter to me, it was clear that she thought it would be permanent. When I spoke to her for the first time here she was, well… stunned, miserable, and distraught that she was alive."

He pulled in a ragged breath and turned to look at Minerva. "Shedidn't know she would live?"

"She didn't know."

NOTE: It has been a joy to watch some readers guess at Febronia's identity and others wonder what was up with her! Thank you for sharing your thoughts. This story is close to my heart and I have adored getting to read what you think. Not too much longer now!