What Makes Us
Chapter 20: Circling
She knew this place.
The grain of the wooden desk she sat at; the oval mirror before her; the window nearby with its faded green curtains.
Someone stirred. She looked up into the mirror, startled, to see someone approaching down the corridor behind her. Someone with a familiar, steady, loved gait; someone she knew very well. Someone she felt she had not seen for millennia.
The pure emotion that struck her then took her with the sheer force of a dueller's spell. Tears filled her eyes; filled, it felt, her very being, hot and turbulent and rent through with sorrow.
"I miss you," she whispered. Their eyes met in that mirror, and Hermione felt the ache inside her would surely break her. Remus-Remus-how long it had been, far too long. Intolerably, unbearably long.
"I miss you so much."
Remus came and stood behind her and bent, their eyes locked in the mirror, and he put his arms about her from behind. Tears streaked down her cheeks; she could not stop looking at him. If only this were real-and was it not real? His warmth around her-his face so close again to hers. She wanted beyond anything to turn to him, to turn around and see him, not his reflection; and yet she could not. No matter how feverishly she willed it she did not move; she could not move.
Because it's not real.
Hermione awoke with tears in her eyes, and with the full grief of more unshed tears pressing within her. She shut her eyes and, giving in to it, wept.
She had made up her mind, or so she'd thought. Forgetting, erasure––it was constantly on her mind these days. It was simple, just an owl or a memo away; make the appointment, and forget forever. She would do it. She had to.
Yet every time she thought of him, she forgot––forgot her promise to herself. She could not let him go. Not again. Not again.
Remus left her alone after their confrontation in the rain. He nodded at her across rooms, or gave only the faintest of smiles. No longer did he approach her, and now he was always just too far to speak to, at all the dinners and meetings they both attended.
This is good, she told herself. It was what had to be. It was good, this distance.
She couldn't be good, however. She found herself writing to him one night, weeks after the bookshop incident. Could we talk? she wrote. I want to apologise. She did not write: I can't leave it like this between us. I can't bear not talking to you. I should not be writing to you at all.
He wrote back shortly, agreeing to meet.
He had invited her over, to the modest house where he lived with Tonks. When Hermione arrived, she found that Tonks was not yet home, and was grateful for that. For how could she explain any of it, her anger, her outburst? Even to Remus she did not know what to say.
Remus greeted her with his usual calm warmth, but beneath it she sensed a faint wariness that chafed at her heart.
When they had sat down, Hermione on the sofa and Remus in the armchair adjacent, she leaned forward and murmured to the carpet: "I know it's been a while, but I'm sorry, about what I said, then."
"It's alright."
Silence filled the room; her missing explanation filled the space between them. She wasn't looking at him, she stared at her tea, but she felt the weight of his gaze on her, lift away, return. What must he think of her? What was she doing here?
"Hermione," uttered Remus then, abruptly and somewhat haltingly. "I can't help but feel that there is something between us."
Her heart leapt into her throat at his words. For one fleeting moment she thought: he knows, he knows, of course he knows––he's always known.
But she did not speak, and Remus was continuing: "...and I've been wondering, given the time you went to, the year...even if it wasn't quite the same timeline...might we have met, after all? You, and––whatever version of me existed there?"
She could only nod. Remus' eyes, on hers, were a little wider perhaps than usual, but otherwise he betrayed no emotion. She was sure it was not the case for her. It felt as if all the emotions of the past year chased their way through her gut, wormed into her throat, forced themselves across her face.
Remus said, "Can I ask...did I perhaps, back then...did I do something? Something," he added, with difficulty, "that may have––hurt you?"
Coldness alighted again on her heart; reality began to return around her. Reason murmured: he doesn't know...and he cannot.
So she gathered herself and said, "No, no. You didn't do anything. We––we barely met, there."
"Ah," he said.
Hermione lied to him then, as she knew she must. It was simply strange, she told him, to see him here again. It was still affecting her, the time displacement. That was why she had been so strange, so difficult. She had to apologise for it.
He nodded, and made all the right reassurances, as she knew he would. She wondered, however, whether there was just a hint of disbelief left in his eyes; whether he did not fully believe that they had hardly met. But he did not challenge her, and she certainly did not mean to burden him with the truth.
He walked her to the door a little while later and they were standing there in the foyer when he spoke, abruptly, quickly.
"Hermione, I––I don't know how different it was there, and god knows my memory here is not the best, of that year, but––that year was a very difficult time for me, at least here. And if you had met me there, and being what I am, if...if I have harmed you, or frightened you, in any way...please, you must tell me. My condition means I am––capable of a multitude of sins, and––you mustn't spare me."
His blue eyes were bright, hot with emotion, a familiar angst written across his features. It broke her heart, seeing him like this, this same fear of what he was capable of.
So she allowed herself to grasp his arm before she answered. "No, Remus. You did nothing of the sort. It's just me. It's only me. Not you. I promise."
He looked at her hesitatingly, imploringly. He was not a fool, and she knew that he must still feel it, that there was something she was still keeping from him.
"I'll go now, Remus," she murmured. "Thank you for having me over, and again I must apologise for how I've been acting. It's been strange, just...everything. But it's been getting better."
Things did grow better between them after that. For Hermione, she felt it had forced her to accept still further that there could never again be anything between them. Now when they met at dinners and meetings, she found herself speaking with him more easily. Like tonight, for instance; another birthday gathering, and Hermione felt almost entirely at ease with Remus nearby.
"That's what I was telling Ron," Luna was saying dreamily. "How about you, Hermione? Will you go?" Dean Thomas, it transpired, was getting married, but in a far-off place.
"It is a bit far," Hermione agreed. The collar of her new scarlet jumper, courtesy of Molly, was bothering her; she tugged at it experimentally, pulling it away from her skin. "I mean, I'll go if they allow direct Apparation."
"They can't, though," grumbled Ron. "Too many muggles."
Hermione smiled. She had gone to that place once, as a child, with her parents; they'd been part of the 'too many muggles'.
"I can't believe he's getting married already," Ron went on, and Hermione's mind performed a very quick backflip, considering the alternate universe where she and Ron might have married. But though this thought was quick, and now––she discovered––painless, it led on to thoughts of another man she might have married. This thought refused to pass so easily, and insisted upon giving her that sinking feeling in her stomach.
Trying to think happier thoughts, she tugged impatiently at her jumper again, and felt beneath her fingertip the scar that other man had given her. She traced it over, once; it was just a scar now, mere dead tissue. No heat in it, and no magic.
"What is that?" Luna asked.
Hermione did not realise what she meant until she saw that Luna's eyes had alighted on her hand upon her neck. Luna was watching with interest. Quickly, Hermione tried to pull the neck of her jumper over the scar, but it was too late.
"What sort of scar is it?" Luna was prodding. "You didn't have it before, you know."
For a moment Hermione wished fervently that Luna would simply vanish into thin air, and the past several seconds could be erased.
"No, you didn't," Ron was saying worriedly now. "Did you get it there? Did they hurt you, the Death Eaters?"
"No, that's not the result of wandwork," Luna remarked. "It is magical, though. Look at the way it was silver, like that––dull in brighter light, but almost glowing in dimmer––"
"Stop, please," Hermione interjected, covering herself, and felt both rude and too late. Too late, because the conversation had attracted the attention of none other than the bequeather of her scar.
"Did you..." he uttered, looking over, though he made no attempt to urge her to uncover the scar, to show him.
"Remus would know," Ron said helpfully. "If you dunno what got you. Not a vampire, is it, near the neck like that?" He chortled, oblivious to Hermione's rising sense of dread and panic. Remus could see it, though, of course he could––and she in turn could almost see the thoughts in his mind, the clicking into place of old suspicions. She looked away from him, unable for a moment to face him. For the memory filled her mind; their intimacy under the sunlight, his moving inside her, the love they'd shared, the day he'd marked her.
Remus did not press the matter. Instead he expertly engaged Luna and Ron in conversation on some other concern, leaving Hermione free to nod along vaguely for a few moments before excusing herself. She was not surprised when Remus found her some minutes later. It was her misfortune that no one else was about, only the two of them, standing in the brisk winter air of the garden.
He said, "I couldn't help but...I heard what Luna was saying, Hermione. About a scar?"
She made no reply.
"Forgive me," Remus said. "May I see it?"
If he saw it, he would know; it would be unmistakeable to him, he who had countless such scars on his person, rendered by werewolf encounters across the decades.
Even as she allowed him to see, she said, "It wasn't you. Don't worry."
His lips parted a little when he saw. He seemed to swallow, and he said, with some difficulty, "You're sure?" Unspoken, she knew what he was thinking: Because I would never forgive myself.
"I'm sure," she said. "And––I'm fine. It's nothing. It doesn't do anything to me. I don't even feel it." Anymore.
"How..."
"It doesn't matter."
"But––"
"I'd really rather not say."
He stared at her for a moment.
"It's unacceptable...so dangerous, so irresponsible...that does not look like a scar given by a werewolf in wolf form."
His growing anger at her unnamed assailant revealed to her again his old self-intolerance, that cold loathing of his condition.
"They didn't meant to."
"Who was it?" Remus demanded.
"I said," Hermione fairly growled, "it doesn't matter."
After a long moment, he seemed to slowly come down from the anger that had gripped him. He nodded, once and then again, acceptingly.
"Right," he said. "Right. I'm sorry."
But Hermione felt sorry, too, for she knew the pain behind his anger and self-hatred, knew that he was harder on himself than he would ever be on any other soul with his burden. She had seen his tumult, had been with him too intimately through the moons, to treat any of this lightly, as she felt she might have done before her displacement.
"I'm sorry, Remus," she told him quietly. "I wish I could tell you, but I can't."
"I shouldn't have pressed," he answered. "It's just that––"
But he broke off, for someone else had joined them in the garden. It was Tonks. Had she forgotten, for a moment, how the moons had passed?
"There you are," said Tonks with a smile. "Been looking all over for you. Arthur had something he wanted to ask."
Remus' eyes were still on Hermione. Suddenly, selfishly, she wished against reason that somehow he would stay.
Of course, he did not; she felt the moment his gaze moved away, the fading of a welcome weight.
"Ah," he said. "I'm sorry, darling. Here I am."
She had finally filed her Incident Report at work. How strange it was, to have all those months and the lifetime she'd lived reduced to one simple word. Incident. Her report spanned all the months she had been there, fading, in that other place; she'd written of all the solutions she'd tried and failed, and logged the symptoms and progression of her timesickness.
On her way home that night her finger hovered over the button in the Ministry lift that would take her to the department of the Obliviators. It would be simple to do it now––to reach out and tap the button.
Just a little while longer, part of her whispered. Just not yet.
The next day she did make her appointment. She was tired of pining. Tired of wishing for him and thinking of him.
Yet when the time came, after work on the following Thursday, she found herself unable to rise from her desk.
If she left now she would be late, but they would likely still take her. Any later, and...
But still she did not move. She waited. She wished. She thought of him.
My dearest Hermione...
She missed the appointment.
A/N: I must apologise for the length of my delay in posting, and I am immensely grateful for the kindness and encouragement you have all shown me over the months. I wish you all, belatedly, a very happy new year, and hope that you all stay safe and healthy, wherever you are in the world. Thank you again for reading.