Rane had made a promise not to speak of Harry's mission, and she meant to keep it, but with one very explicit stipulation: stay in touch, whenever possible. Owls were largely out of the question, of course - they would draw too much attention, and much besides, Hedwig had perished at the hands of the Death Eaters alongside Mad-Eye in July. So, too, were Patronuses; now that Harry had donned Sirius's old mantle as the most wanted man in the country, there wasn't a witch or wizard this side of Moscow that wouldn't recognize his silver stag. So, on the morning before Harry, Ron and Hermione infiltrated the Ministry of Magic, Rane did something she had never done before.
"I'm gonna teach you guys some Quenya magic," she said.
They were sitting at the long table in Grimmauld Place's kitchen. Rane had made them some toast and coffee, but none of them seemed very interested in it. Rane herself felt keyed up, thrumming like a livewire, and she was very aware that the feeling wasn't her own; she was picking up on her companions' emotions, a sometime-ability she could thank her father for. He called it empathy, but it was far more than that; Rane had always seen it as a sort of broadcast signal receiver that worked about half of the time, usually when it was least welcome to.
"Sorry?" said Hermione, glancing up at her distractedly. She had three books opened before her on the table and had spent the last thirty minutes poring over them and muttering to herself.
"I said I'm gonna teach you guys some Elf magic," said Rane, balling up her napkin and tossing it onto her plate of toast.
"What for?" said Ron.
"Communication." Rane slid the plate away from her and began to roll up the sleeves of her hoody with slow deliberation. "I have a feeling we might not be seeing each other for a while after today."
Harry gave her an alarmed look. "What? What d'you -?"
"It's not a bad thing, necessarily," said Rane at once. "It doesn't feel bad, anyways, and I could be wrong, of course, but just to be safe . . . In case we end up spread out without any way to talk."
"But what if that means they'll catch us?" said Hermione, looking frightened.
"D'you reckon you could know that, Rane?" asked Ron, staring at her, his face draining of color.
Rane paused rolling up her sleeves, looking at the three frightened faces staring at her.
"Guys, I'm not a fortune teller," she said. "It's just a feeling. I think it's something else, not the Ministry thing. Sorry," she added, and sighed. "I'm anxious as all fuck. It came out wrong."
She took a quick sip of coffee and leaned forward, clasping her hands before her on the table.
"I'm going to show you guys how to talk to me without owls and such," she said. "It's not hard, but there's a trick to it, up here."
She tapped her temple with one finger.
"And after today, if I'm right - which I may not be," she added quickly as Hermione shifted nervously, "I won't be nearby to help you do it. It'll be up to you. So I want to get it right, while we're all together. Okay?"
Harry, Ron and Hermione exchanged an edgy glance. Harry nodded. Ron pulled out his wand.
"Elves don't use wands," Hermione told him, and Rane was heartened by the faint echo of her old haughtiness in her voice.
"Yeah, you won't need it," she agreed. Looking mystified, Ron pocketed his wand again. "So, for this spell - I guess it's a spell, sort of - there's an invocation phrase. Cen im'nin."
"Cen im'nin," Harry repeated. Rane nodded, satisfied.
"That's Quenya. Good job. So this next time when you say it, I want you to think about me - my name, my face, what my voice sounds like, whatever. It's easy with me sitting right in front of you, but it'll be harder once we're apart." She nodded to Harry. "Try it. Keep me at the front of your mind and say those words again."
Harry studied Rane's face for a moment. "Cen im'nin."
Rane gave it ten seconds, then shook her head. "You're not concentrating hard enough. Try again."
This time, Harry stared at Rane for a good deal longer, his green eyes flicking back and forth as he marked her features carefully.
"Cen im'nin."
There was a soft humming sound and suddenly a bright bluish-white ball of light, about the size of a grape, sprang into existence over the table. Ron, Hermione and Harry all gasped. It hung there between them, casting off little tendrils of smoke and rolling lazily.
"Excellent," Rane exclaimed, clapping her hands together. "That's all there is to it."
"What is it?" Ron asked, staring at the ball of light.
"We can use it to talk to each other, now that there's a connection. Kinda like a CB radio."
"Is it magic?" Hermione asked dubiously, eyeing the orb.
Rane shrugged noncommittally. "Eh . . . Sort of, for lack of a better word. More like a mental link." She tapped her temple again. "It's all inside your head, just projected. Hard to explain. Call it a Jedi mind trick."
"So if we need to talk to you, I just think about you and say those words in Elvish?" Harry asked. "And that's it?"
"That's it."
"It's sort of like when Sirius would put his head in the Floo at Hogwarts, I reckon," said Ron musingly.
"Not quite," said Rane. "You won't be able to see me, just hear my voice. Still . . . Pretty useful."
"Why in the bloody hell didn't you ever show us this before?" Harry remarked.
Rane shrugged. "Never had any need. Owls work just fine when you're not being hunted down by the Ministry. Also," she added, a trifle guiltily, "the Elves don't like to share this kind of stuff with humans. If they found out, I'd be in deep shit. So mum's the word."
It was a good thing Rane taught them the invocation when she did, because it turned out that her intuition was right on the money; she did not see Harry, Ron or Hermione for several months after their final morning together. Thanks to the spell, she was able to touch base with the three of them once or twice a week between the Ministry infiltration and Christmas, and it did Rane's heart good (as well as Molly's, who was relieved to know her youngest son was alive and well).
Though Harry weighed on her mind, Rane had her own fish to fry that Fall. She and Wade had become fugitives themselves, and Pius Thicknesse had wasted no time in making the public aware of it, garnishing their Ministry getaway with colorful phrases like "attempted murder" and "long-time conspirators" in the half-page article that appeared in the Prophet. As a result, Rane had been cooped up inside the dismal walls of Grimmauld Place more or less since September, uncannily mirroring Sirius's final year. The Order remained busy, of course, but the periods of time between missions had grown long, and its members seemed scattered. Meetings happened less often, sometimes only once or twice a month, and deaths were frequent. It was clear that things were breaking down.
Of course, fewer meetings was just as well for Rane, because she had fallen into bad form. She'd begun to drink, and not a little. Many times her evenings that winter ended curled up on the sofa after midnight in the dark livingroom of Grimmauld Place, watching Neth'Un glimmering out the window with tears streaming down her face, her chest hitching silently. In the mornings she awoke to the silent, musty corridors of Grimmauld Place feeling ill and forlorn, trudging pallid and silent to the porch where she would sit, wrapped in her mother's purple afghan, sipping coffee and staring at the growing dawn with haunted eyes. Never, not since Sirius's death, had she felt such a deep sense of dismal disquiet.
Remus showed up one evening in early February amid a violent, lightning-splashed snowstorm that had knocked out all the power for several blocks around Grimmauld Place. Snow had stacked in billowy white drifts nearly to the middle of the front door; when Remus came in, quite a lot of it came in with him, falling unceremoniously onto the ratty rug and blowing inside in powdery drifts with the wild wind outside. He closed the heavy door behind him, shutting out the shrieking storm, and stamped off his boots. With an absent wave of his wand, the snow vanished, leaving a dark damp spot on the rug, and he strode into the foyer, making no attempt to stifle the sound of his approach.
Rane Roth could hear conversations four blocks away when she was topped out, but she didn't hear Remus Lupin coming into the livingroom that evening until he was nearly upon her. She was sitting in her usual spot on the sofa, legs curled beneath her, a mostly empty bottle of firewhiskey uncorked on the table before her. A candle, melted down to the wick, was flickering on the table before her, casting its red-orange glow on her face. Remus came in towards her at an angle, and he was stopped nearly dead by how she looked. For a moment, he simply stood in the foyer, staring at her, silent. Much like Sirius once upon a time, Remus had never been stricken by the fact that Rane looked like an Elf until tonight, something he chalked up later to the months that had passed since he'd see her. She was startlingly beautiful and startlingly sad in the candlelight, and though her breathing was steady and slow, tears were streaming down her cheeks in glistening rivulets, her dark brows drawn together and her mouth turned down. Except for the hair, she could have been Iliwynn in that low glow, curled slender and still on the sofa.
"Rane?" he said gently.
Rane was badly startled; she spun around, her hair whirling about her head, slopping her firewhiskey onto the arm of the sofa, and stared at him with wide, shocked eyes.
"Christ!" she exclaimed, gaping at him. "I didn't hear you come in!" Then, aside as if to herself, "Fuck, how did I not hear you come in?"
"I am sorry if I frightened you," Remus told her, coming around the sofa and taking a seat beside her. "Is this . . . Erm, a bad time? Are you quite alright?"
"Am I . . . bad time . . . ?"
Rane stared at him for a moment in bafflement, then abruptly seemed to remember herself. She straightened, set the glass of firewhiskey onto the table and wiped hastily at her cheeks with the heels of her hand.
"I'm - yeah, I just - I didn't expect to see anyone tonight," she said. The slur in her voice was more than a little prominent - I din 'spect t'see anyone t'night - and Remus frowned at the firewhiskey bottle on the table, which was empty save a scrim of reddish liquid sloshing at the very bottom.
"Of course."
Rane was looking at him now, her gaze narrow. "It's been a minute, Remus."
It had been more than a minute. By Remus's calculations it had been nearly five months, and if he was being honest, he'd regretted staying away for as long as he had. His anger with her had lasted all of two weeks, during which Tonks had taken great pains to talk him down. She'd been surprisingly understanding about the situation, even after Remus confessed to her what the true nature of their conversation had been, and had taken up for both Rane and Harry.
Don't be thick, she'd said sourly. Harry's not yet twenty, and Rane's just spent near a year pregnant and alone. Remus, you must understand why they were angry with you.
And he had, of course; after his initial rage had passed, something that he was at great pains to master in his life, he had felt simple shame for what he had suggested. He had stayed away from Rane until he could not stand the bad blood between them any longer, as worried by their animus as he was by her silence. Molly had expressed concern for her several times to him privately, noting that she'd lost weight and grown silent and grim during the winter. Wade had, as well. It seemed she had avoided everyone, not just Remus.
Now that she was sitting before him, he could see where their concern had come from. She had indeed lost weight, a dangerous feat for a lady with no pounds to give away, and her eyes seemed hollow and oddly empty. Remus had known her to drink, of course - how many evenings had they spent together over too much ale or wine while Sirius was alive? He'd lost count - but he had never known her to drink alone, at least not to this extent. An entire bottle of firewhiskey was no small feat, and she was still on her feet, for the most part. She'd been practicing, then. But why?
"It has, yes," he said at last, nodding.
"So, what makes you suddenly feel like turning up?" Rane asked him, sounding a trifle truculent. Now that the shock of seeing him was passing, her anger was springing up to replace it; it was written all over her face. "Order stuff?"
"No, no, nothing official," said Remus, shaking his head. Now that they'd come to it, he was feeling a little diffident. "I came to . . . Well, to apologize, Rane . . . "
"Oh, to apologize," said Rane, patting her cheek with exaggerated surprise. "Apologize, he says! And it only took him six goddamned months to arrive there! A great mind is amongst us! He shall now scatter pearls of wisdom!"
She tossed back her remaining firewhiskey and then slammed the empty glass onto the table before her with a clang. Remus watched her cautiously.
"Rane, forgive me for saying so, but are you -?"
"Drunk?" Rane wasn't looking at him. She uncorked the bottle of nearly-empty firewhiskey and dumped the last bit arbitrarily into her glass, spilling some onto the tabletop. "You bet your ass I am."
"Is this a bad time to speak?"
"Is it a bad time?" Rane eyed Remus over her glass, looking amused and grim.
"It's always a bad time nowadays, friendo. You of all people must know that by now."
A silence fell between them. Remus was looking at Rane, feeling quite ill at ease. Rane was swirling her drink around and staring out the window at the stars overhead, her mouth thin and downturned.
"You came to apologize," she repeated, low.
"Yes, I did." Remus paused, wringing his hands. "I was bang out of line when we spoke last, Rane. To both you and Harry. You were right, I shouldn't have thought of leaving Tonks right now. I was . . . Frightened, I suppose."
Rane was running her finger along the rim of her glass, her eyes still fixed on the sky.
"Frightened," she said quietly.
"Yes. Having a son or daughter . . . One that might be like me . . . Well, we've spoken of it before, haven't we? The idea tormented me when I found out. I would not wish my affliction upon anyone, lease of all my own child."
"Yeah, having a kid is some scary shit," said Rane, sipping at her glass.
"Rane, is something wrong?" said Remus, abandoning pretense.
Rane snorted. "Remus," she said softly, shaking her head. "What kind of a dipshit dumbass question is that, huh?"
"I don't understand you.
"You don't understand me," Rane laughed, then suddenly threw her glass across the room as hard as she could. It struck the far wall and shattered in a spray of glass. Remus jumped. Rane leapt to her feet and batted the empty bottle of firewhiskey off the table; it hit the carpet, miraculously unbroken, and rolled away from them.
"DID YOU COME HERE FOR A PARDON?" she shouted at Remus, her eyes wild. "WELL, YOU'RE PARDONED, REMUS! GO LIVE YOUR FUCKING LIFE WITH A CLEAR CONSCIENCE, HOW'S THAT SOUND?"
Remus stared at her, nonplussed.
"What's the matter?" he asked her quietly. "Please, Rane."
Rane stared at him for a moment longer, breathing quickly, then she collapsed ungracefully back onto the sofa, her browns drawn together.
"Remus, something awful . . . " she trailed off, staring at him desperately. "I don't know how to explain it. I feel like . . . Like it's coming."
"What is?"
"I don't know!" Rane shook her head and struck the arm of the sofa with one clenched fist, anger flashing in her face. "I don't know, Remus, but it won't leave me alone! It's like . . . It's like it's haunting me, like it won't go away . . . I can't get rid of it!"
Remus reached out, hesitated a moment, then grasped her hand. It was cold, and she gripped at him with panicky tightness, like a woman drowning.
"Surely you must know what it is, though?" he said quietly. "Is it Harry?"
Rane waved this off, shaking her head. "Harry's fine, I've talked to him twice a week for the whole winter."
This was news to Remus, who felt genuine relief pass through him. "Is he?" he said, helpless not to press her further. "Where is he? What's he doing?"
But Rane was already shaking her head. Drunk or sober, she was not about to divulge any more on the subject of Harry.
"I can't tell you," she said. "He's okay. Ron and Hermione, too. It's not them, Remus, it's something else. But Harry's part of it. I don't know. It's all confused."
She clutched at her forehead.
"I don't know what to do," she said quietly, sounding strangely childlike.
"The Elves, perhaps they can -"
"I tried." Rane looked at him grimly, her eyes red-rimmed and haunted. "Iliwynn told me it's umbarae. Which does fuck-all," she added, and laughed without humor. "Spit in the ocean and see if it comes back, I guess."
This meant nothing to Remus. "What does it mean? Umbarae?"
"It means 'shadow of fate,'" said Rane, low. "It's a feeling that comes before something happens. I felt it before Albus. So did dad."
A silence fell between them. Remus felt at a loss. He had not anticipated this; when he'd finally decided to come here and make amends with Rane, he had simply assumed he'd find her in a good state of mind. Instead, she was drunk, frantic and volatile, talking about premonitions and ill fortune.
"I'm sorry," said Rane, and laughed. "I sound like a fucking crazy person." She gestured to the empty bottle of firewhiskey glittering on the ground. "I'm drunk. I'm just fucking drunk."
"Rane . . ." Remus hesitated, glancing at the bottle, too. "How long has this been going on?"
"What the hell does it matter?" Rane laughed again. Remus decided he didn't care for that laugh at all. It had all the cheer of a landslide.
"Rane, it matters a great deal to me that you are happy," Remus told her. "And it means a great deal to many others, as well -"
"Remus, I haven't been happy since Sirius died," said Rane quietly. She sighed suddenly, a raucous and fraught sound, her breath wavering as if she were on the verge of tears. "And that's been going on two years now. Two years in June."
This statement hung pregnantly between them. Remus knew, of course. He'd known since he'd seen her collapse in the hospital wing at Hogwarts after Albus had told her about Sirius's death. The Rane Roth he had known before that long and strange year had been a tough, spirited young woman, beautiful and outspoken, unbent by the perils of the world. The girl who sat before him now seemed older, broken in some fundamental way. He was reminded suddenly of a story he had heard years and years ago, during History of Magic in his Hogwarts days. It was an Elven legend of Luthien, an Elf woman, who had fallen in love with a mortal man called Beren. When he was killed, Luthien spent a time grieving for him, away from her people, and at last died herself.
But you can't just die from . . . From being sad, can you? James had asked Professor Binns bluntly.
Ah, Professor Binns had said, lifting one transparent finger. Mortal men, perhaps not. But Elves are a different species, Mr. Potter, which bond far more fiercely to those whom they care for. Luthien simply died of a broken heart, as many Elves have.
James had scoffed at this, and had likely made plenty of jokes about it in the Common Room later that evening, but Remus had felt oddly disturbed by it. Now he felt that same disquiet, unchanged by the long years since Hogwarts. Once again he felt out of his element; was it possible that losing Sirius had simply destroyed a part of Rane in much the same way? What was to be done in the face of such a thing?
"Idril," he heard himself saying. "What about Idril?"
For the first time that evening, a genuine smile touched Rane's mouth, and her face lightened a little. "I love Idril," she said. "With every fiber of my being, I love her. But Remus . . ."
The light in her eyes faded again.
"I just . . . I can't move on. I can't. I feel it." She placed a hand over her heart. "I feel it like it was new. Every day. Just . . . Just pain." She sighed again, dropping her hand. "And now this. This new thing."
"I don't understand."
"I know you don't. Neither do I."
A silence fell between them. Rane looked over at him at last, her eyes wide and desperate in the starlight.
"Will you stay here with me for a while?" she asked softly.
"Of course," said Remus. "Rane, of course I'll stay."
He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to him. She stiffened at first, as if unused to the touch of another, but then he felt her relax and lay her head on his shoulder. Together they watched Neth'Un glittering in the sky outside, neither speaking. At length, Remus felt the gentle shudder of her silent tears, and then, when some time had passed, her breath lengthened and she slept.