16

LYALL could not quell the queasiness that churned in the pit of his stomach the moment he and Newt set foot inside.

The fear as he cautiously crept his way down the hallway towards Newt's spare bedroom he'd so graciously put Hope up in for the night, threatened to engulf him entirely.

Lyall was a man who'd taken more than a few life changing chances in the past, but in this moment as he stood outside the door…he was afraid to take another.

Though, before he could lose his nerves, he steeled himself and raised his knuckles to knock, unable to shake the sense of dread from his senses, how this was truly an awful, terrible, bad idea, to let Hope see him again, especially like this.

He was grateful, at the very least, there was no mirror in this hallway that he could look into to see the worst effects of the Stinging Jinx the man hit him with.

Exhaling a shaking breath through his nose, Lupin raised his knuckles and gingerly knocked on the door.

He felt his cheeks turn hot and his stomach flutter, and Lupin forced himself to swallow down hard past the lump in his throat. It was late, well past midnight by this point, and there was a strong chance that Hope might be asleep.

Lupin found he almost would prefer that to be the case, for in another few hours, this damned Stinging Jinx would wear off, and his face would be returned to normal then.

He had no way of knowing if Hope were asleep by now and he was disturbing her rest, or if she were awake and worried over wondering whether or not he would return.

His heartbeat, now little more than a throbbing mass of corded muscle as horrible visions of how Miss Howell would react to see his mangled face looking like this, flitted in the forefront of his mind, torturing the poor man until Lyall thought he could hardly bear it.

The tiny prick of uneasiness grew, winding its way through his churning stomach and further up into his throat in the form of bile. It felt awkward and unsettling to be calling upon Hope for reassurance and comfort in the middle of the night, yet he found himself pushing it away, lest he lose his courage.

Yet, he needed the reassurance, if it was only but to see her face again, even if Miss Howell was fast asleep right now. Yes, that alone would be more than enough, he knew.

Though the moment his knuckles nearly contacted the wood of the door in order to knock to announce his presence, a tiny sound, muffled and faint, though it was, it was a sound he had become familiar with all too well tonight, in just the span of a few short hours, he knew Miss Howell's voice, he thought he would recognize it anywhere.

Quietly, and as gingerly as he could, his left hand curled into a fist as he twisted the brass doorknob, the door giving a faint creak as it swung open, and Lyall peered inside of it.

As soft light from the hallway light above his head was the only light to emanate and spill its way across Newt and Tina's tiny little spare bedroom, the cut of his figure now the only darkness to mar it, Lyall found Hope's bed in a true state of disarray. The blankets were tossed about in almost violent twists.

She'd been thrashing in her sleep, from the looks of things. Her wavy dark chocolate locks were thoroughly disheveled from her restless slumber, flying about her face haphazardly, spilling across the pillow.

Her small, bandaged hands clutched desperately at what bed sheets she could still reach with violently shaking fingers. Yet, it was her face that shattered Lupin's heart.

Hope's face was twisted and contorted with fear as tears poured relentlessly from her lids that were squeezed tightly shut, as though Miss Howell was afraid to open her eyes, flowing across her pale cheeks and down the gentle slope of her temple. The delicate skin of Hope's brow was pulled firm and taut across bone in her greatly disturbed slumber, her expression wrought with a horrible potent mixture of pain, horror, and heart-brokenness that broke Lyall's heart.

A sure result of secret dreams he could not glimpse for himself. Her breaths hitched and caught in her throat in uneven intervals, sending violent, wracking sobs along her slender, bruised frame, and pitiful mewls of fear and denial tumbled from her shaking lips as she thrashed in her sleep.

A single word found its way into the air of the bedroom, pleading with an unknown force, but it was enough to render Lupin speechless, his eyes widening in shock.

His name. Hearing it tumble from her lips, to hear Hope speak it in such an agonizing, crushing tone was the final straw that very nearly caused his own heart to cry out.

He leaned forward with the utmost caution and rested the back of his hand along her cheek, wiping away a tear.

Hope flinched away violently, her dark chocolate eyes flew open wide in fright and alarm and a hoarse scream on her lips. Her clothes, a tangled mess on her body, both from the thrashing in her sleep while she suffered through some unseen nightmare, as well as from her sudden movement, slid off her left shoulder to expose the pale skin underneath, and Lyall flinched and ducked his head in shame, thinking that he had no right to see her in this way.

Lyall turned his head to the side so she could only make out his shadowy profile, hoping he'd not seen the worst effects of that stranger's Stinging Jinx, though he knew it was only a matter of time, and there was a large part of his mind that feared what she would think of him when she laid eyes upon it, if she would think him to be a monster.

Hope's breast rose and fell in rapid succession, her breaths catching in her throat now even worse than before.

She sat there, her curly hair disheveled and askew, amidst a sea of rumpled heated blankets and sewn quilts.

His calloused hand hovered still on her cheek, though Lyall could not summon the strength to move away from Hope. "Y—you were dreaming, Hope. A nightmare," he offered quietly, forcing his eyes away from Hope's figure.

A wave of guilt wracked his form as his trepidation returned in full force and he was reminded yet again how forward and perhaps inappropriate Lyall had been in coming to check upon her this late at night after the rough night that she had. What Hope needed now most was sleep.

And he was depriving her of that. He'd woken her up. Silence filled the night air, hanging like a weighted curtain between the two of them, though neither one spoke at all.

Hope merely blinked at him, once, twice, three times, but made no move to heave herself up over the mattress's edge towards where Lyall stood or his hand, staring owlishly instead at the figure there standing in front of her.

Lyall cringed, feeling guilty for having come and woken her, especially with his face still swollen from being hit.

Yet, after several moments of the awkward silence lingering between the two new acquaintances, with neither one wanting to be the first to break the silence, and of no positive sign from Miss Howell that she wished for Lupin to stick around, he turned on his heels to go and made to remove himself from her bedroom, thinking that he'd been a blind and bloody fool in coming, and to let Hope sleep.

Though the moment he turned his back on the young brunette Muggle woman, there was the fluttering of what sounded like the rest of her bedsheets haphazardly being kicked off Newt and Tina's spare bed, and a muffled grunt of surprise. Lyall paused, turning around, shifting at the waist slightly just in the nick of time to see Hope Howell scramble across her mattress, only to fall to one side, due to the twisted, disheveled state of her clothing, caught in the bedsheets.

Lyall immediately launched forward in Hope's direction, offering his hand outstretched to her in help. Hope stretched out her left hand and latched onto Lyall's hand quickly, using it as leverage to pull herself upright and then blindly launched herself at Lyall's chest.

"Don't leave," she whispered desperately against the column of Lupin's throat. She nestled further into him, her small arms wrapping tightly around his middle, fearful. "I—I'm sorry for how I reacted earlier, Mr. Lupin, i—it's just that…this is all a lot to process, magic being real," she breathed, as though she was still having trouble believing it herself. He watched, awestruck, as Hope's dark chocolate eyes widened and she gave her head a shake, a brown curl tumbling in front of her face as she did so. "But…I—I really do like you, Lyall. I like you a lot, and…I—I don't want to hurt you. I—I'm sorry, Lupin, for earlier. Will you…will you forgive me, Lyall? Can we start over?"

She hesitated, pulling back slightly to study his face. She winced.

Lyall flinched, but only because Hope did so the moment her shaking hand reached up to allow the pads of her fingertips to just barely graze along the horrible contusion along his brow, her brows furrowed in fear.

Hope paused for a moment, processing the man's sudden resistance to being touched. She moved slowly, feeling for any kind of resistance as her hands grazed along the surface of his face, her eyes widening at seeing his face.

His eyes slowly opened, and then locked with Hope's own, the intensity of his light hazel stare almost making her blush. She blinked, and then in the darkness of her bedroom, Hope's eyes slowly adjusted to the rest of his face. The first moment was shocking, she admitted, though his face quickly averted from her as Lyall looked to the floor.

He did not want to look into Miss Howell's eyes and see the shock and the fear.

Lupin could hear Hope hitch in a nervous breath and he desperately fought against the urge to turn on the heels of his shoes and quit the bedroom as soon as possible, thinking that the young Muggle girl had suffered enough, and the wisest thing for him to do would be to go, but Hope had practically begged Lyall not to go.

Hope let out a hiss of breath as her eyes wandered the length of his face that had been affected by the Stinging Jinx.

"What on earth…" she whispered, horrified. "Wh—what happened to you?" This was unlike anything she had ever seen before in her face. Hope tried not to stare at Lyall Lupin's face, she really did.

But considering his handsome face had been ordinary several hours ago, and now this, well, it was hard for her not to, and she hoped he didn't blame her. Part of his forehead was jutting out over his right eye, his nose had gone exceedingly large and rather misshapen, and Lyall's left eye was practically swollen shut.

The intensity of Hope Howell's stare burned Lyall, seared his skin, and the young Ministry employee and Non-Spiritous Apparitions expert feared at any moment he'd be reduced to nothing more than ash with how Hope stared.

Lyall didn't know how long he stood there, rooted to his spot in front of the young brunette Muggle woman, completely unable to move at all. He hadn't stopped looking at the hardwood floor beneath his shoes and he didn't plan to.

Hope hadn't run from the bedroom screaming in terror, for Newt or Tina to help save her, but he figured it was only a matter of time before it happened.

She was merely frozen in fear. It was the only plausible explanation for why Hope Howell hadn't run away yet… But then… that moment for him never came, and Lupin very nearly jumped out of his skin when Hope spoke up.

"D—does…does it hurt you?" she breathed, Hope's innocent question drifting through the air like a lullaby.

Lyall froze, feeling his breaths catch in his throat, unable to help but to bring his eyes up to meet her questioning gaze. There was fear at the sudden change in his appearance, as Lupin had anticipated there would be, but also something else, something that Lyall didn't recognize.

What on earth did she mean, 'did it hurt him?' Did it hurt him that he'd allowed that stranger in the woods to get one over on him, that he had been so preoccupied with thoughts of keeping Hope safe and returning back here in one piece to try to make amends that he'd neglected his own safety, and more to the point, that of Newt's as well?

Hope sensed Lupin's confusion and swallowed down hard past a growing lump in her throat and pointed. "I—I mean your…your…your face, Lyall," she whispered softly.

Yes, it did give a painful little twinge every couple of minutes, but another half hour or so, and Lupin felt confident the jinx would wear off, and his face would once again be returned to normal, and he'd no longer frighten her. He could only hope so.

"N—no…" he began nervously, painfully wringing his hands together out of a horrible warm nervousness that seeped into his chest as a fiery warmth, warming his chest and spreading to his cheeks, flushing them high with color. "Only if it hurts you to see it, Miss Howell. It's only a Stinging Jinx. It will be gone in the next half hour or so. Forgive me, I—I shouldn't have come to see you. I—I don't know what I was thinking," he croaked, dropping his gaze to the floor.

But much to his complete and utter astonishment, Lyall was taken aback and caught off his guard when a cool and soft, creamy hand gently touched his cheek and tilted his face back up, forcing Lyall to look into Hope's dark eyes.

Hope's dark eyes like rich, pure chocolate were still wide, but Lyall could detect not a hint of fear in him as they poured over every detail of his face, before settling on his eyes and locking his gaze with hers.

"It doesn't," Hope whispered shyly with a little white smile before blushing.

Lupin blinked owlishly at her, unable to believe what he was hearing. It was truly something he could not put into words, indescribable, the wave of emotion and relief that washed over his bruised body.

The tide that carried him out into the sea, a sea of, well, Hope, and promise.

Hope saw him, saw his face, the result of the man's Stinging Jinx, what he had done to her. She had processed the fact that he was a wizard, and she had not run away nor dismissed him.

She was right here, in front of him. Hope was right here. Bruised. One-eyed, until his vision returned to him, that is, and very much a pure-blooded wizard, and Hope stayed.

To her, it didn't seem to matter, and it was more than Lyall could bear as Hope gingerly pulled her hand away from his face, Lupin felt an overwhelming urge to catch her hand before she could retreat back within herself, to grasp it within his own and kiss her knuckles in gratitude. But he managed to refrain himself from doing it.

Instead, Lyall felt the last of his strength leave his body, sapped of energy, as he fell to his knees in front of Hope Howell as a heavy burden was suddenly lifted from his heart and shoulders.

All of the emotion from the taxing events of a single night were proving to be entirely too much for Lupin to comprehend, and for the first time in his adult life, the pressure of his shame at what he was left Lyall's chest.

Hope's eyes widened in shock and surprise. It took all of her willpower not to back up several steps the moment Lyall fell to his knees in front of her. It had been unexpected of him and she was still quite a bit on edge.

Her mind felt like it was reeling. Everything made sense to her now. All of it. The fact that he had been so close by in the woods, as a…a wizard, he must have sensed her presence somehow, and he'd not wanted to reveal that fact to her until he was ready. It was perhaps why he was so shy.

And whatever another wizard had done to his face when he and Mr. Scamander had left his home to search for the man in the woods that had tried to attack her earlier tonight, why he'd not wanted her to see his face.

It was out of shame. Yes, while it was true, the first few moments of when her eyes had adjusted to the darkness upon waking up and seeing Lyall's slim, towering silhouette standing in front of her bed, and she'd seen his swollen face, the horrible contusion over his browbone was a bit of a shock.

And his light hazel eyes felt so much fear, so much pain, fear that she would turn him away again and reject Lupin.

Hope was quite sure she'd never seen anything like it before. The tormented intensity, and yet, at the same time, there was a hidden wisdom deep within the depths of Lyall Lupin's eyes.

Open windows to the young thirty-year-old's heart and soul. Lyall held her gaze only for a split second, but it was long enough for something unspoken to pass between the two of them, a connection to form, of sorts.

A connection Hope knew she had been waiting to form for a very long time. Janey was sure to be ecstatic for her coworker come Monday when Hope told her what happened. Was she frightened of this realization. No.

Did the fact that Lupin was a magical wizard make her think any less of the man who had saved her life, not just once, but twice tonight? Most certainly not. She did not feel disgust or hatred towards Lupin for what he was, though she could tell by the way he carried himself, the way his head hung in shame, that he believed her to be afraid.

Only overwhelming pity filled Hope's heart as the feeble corded muscle gave a pitiful little quiver as she looked upon the kind man still kneeling on his knees in front of Hope.

Hope felt an intense desire to erase the dark pain that lingered in the man's light hazel eyes as he sanguinely lifted his head, though he still adamantly refused to meet her eyes. She wanted to replace the pain in the man's eyes with a happiness that she felt Mr. Lupin had deprived himself of.

She was not going to allow the fact that the man was a magical wizard with powers of his own get in the way of the gratitude and appreciation she felt for Lyall and the friendship, and maybe even in time, a relationship, that she wanted with the handsome young man who'd found her lost in the woods tonight and had tried to escort her home.

Without any hesitation, before Hope could lose her courage or resolve, Hope knelt on the floor and placed her hand on the man's forearm, giving it a light, reassuring squeeze.

Hope cringed, not anticipating the obvious flinch and startling jump of surprise Lupin gave from her touch and Hope almost convinced herself to pull her hand away, though something within her heart fought against this urge.

Lyall, she concluded, was not a man used to being touched by a young woman. After giving the wizard a moment or two to compose himself, Hope gingerly tugged on the sleeve of the man's slightly worn, weathered brown jacket in an attempt to pull the young man up to his feet.

Lupin obeyed her gentle pressure and persuasion without even thinking about it, clumsily rising to a standing position, but still, he was refusing to look Hope in the eye.

That was going to have to change if he still wanted to get that cup of coffee with her over her lunch break on Monday.

"Lyall, please…I—I'm not upset with you, please look at me," Hope pleaded, biting her bottom lip, trying to coax the thirty-year-old wizard into feeling more comfortable around her.

She couldn't explain it, but from what little Jacob had managed to tell her when he'd met Newt Scamander and Tina in New York City all those years ago, was that non-magical beings and No-Maj's or Muggles, were what the wizarding community called people like himself and Hope with no magical abilities in their blood, weren't especially supposed to intermingle, let alone date.

At least, that was how it was in New York, but Hope wasn't sure what their kind's laws here were in Great Britain, much less throughout the rest of Europe itself.

For a moment, a surge of anger welled within her chest at the possibility that their magical government, if Lyall's kind had one here in Great Britain, would impose such a horrible law that would prevent a wizard or witch from dating or marrying someone that wasn't exactly like them.

Though Hope was pulled from her thoughts as very slowly, she watched as Lyall raised his light, kind hazel eyes to hers, and this time, the man held her intense stare. Lupin parted his lips open to speak, longing to stay something to her, anything to her, but when he tried, nothing came out.

His lips felt numb and tingling, and it felt to Lupin as though Hope had stolen away his voice. She was, it seemed, not the only one who had been shocked into silence. But Hope continued to smile softly at Lyall in a show of support and held out her outstretched hand for him to take.

"Stay," she pleaded. Lupin looked, dumbfounded, at Hope's waiting hand for a moment as if unsure what to do.

Slowly and cautiously, as if he were afraid she would somehow just…magically vanish from his line of sight, Lyall exhaled a shaking breath and reached out, taking Hope's hand.

Though her skin was almost cold to the touch, it still felt to him as though a sudden ripple of heat had spasmed its way up his arm at rapid-fire speeds and pricked at his heart, the feeble quivering muscle in his chest, sending it furiously pumping blood to his veins just as it had when he'd first laid eyes upon Hope after rescuing her from her boggart in the Welsh forest earlier tonight.

Feeling as though it would be highly inappropriate and wrong for him to hold onto her hand for too terribly long, Lupin reluctantly dropped the hold he had on Hope's soft hand and let his arms rest awkwardly at his sides again, though he instantly missed the heat her hand gave off.

"Y—you're not…afraid of me?" He finally asked, having regained some small measure of control over his voice, by some miracle of Merlin or God Himself indeed.

Hope quickly shook her head. "Afraid of what, Lyall?" she questioned, with just the slightest hint of a teasing tone to her otherwise sweet voice that was like music to his ears.

Lyall did not bother to stamp down the small, shy smile that graced his features as she made it quite plain that his status as a wizard did not matter to her. Though Lyall couldn't guess for the life of him how that could be, considering the truly horrible night in the woods she'd had.

The look he had given Hope in return was just enough to make her want to throw her arms about his neck and hug the man for daring to have the good graces within himself to accept her apology for her despicable behavior.

It just made everything else not matter as much anymore. His fear of seeing her again after she'd yelled at him, at Hope seeing the Stinging Jinx's effects that mauled his otherwise handsome face…his worry of hurting her…

It was all gone. And in its place, stood Hope, quite literally, as well as figuratively as the fiery warmth of the emotion continued to spread throughout Lyall's chest.

"Y—you should sleep," Lyall murmured softly as she slowly slid herself back underneath the quilted coverings.

"Will you stay with me?" Hope breathed in a faint voice as she smiled and snuggled closer into her soft, satin pillow.

"Yes," he answered without any hesitation on his part.

It was as if all that the expert on boggarts and other apparitions had known had stopped around him and held Lupin captive there for a moment. Even though he'd seen before, it felt as though he had been blinded until just now.

Though he felt, he was numb until he'd touched Miss Howell's hand, so soft, unblemished skin against his own.

What…what was this feeling residing in his chest? He stood there a moment longer as Hope situated herself, before spotting the chair that Newt Scamander had sat in earlier this evening when he'd first addressed Hope and thought that more sufficient, crossing over to the room and sitting down in it, folding his arms across his slender chest.

As he watched the slow and steady rise and fall of Hope's chest as she slept, he allowed his mind to drift and mull over the thoughts of how his evening had gone, and what it was that he'd just felt for Miss Howell a second ago.

Her beauty, the way she had smiled at him, rendering him feeling weak in the knees and his heart sent into irregular palpitations within his chest until he thought it just might grow wings and escape.

It was unlike anything Lupin had ever seen or ever known. He would have to ask Tina.

The feeling was sweet like decadent chocolate, soft like pigeon feathers; warm like the sun, and shocking like a sudden bolt of lightning, and that said lightning was now in his light, kind hazel eyes as the realization dawned on Lyall.

It was in Miss Howell's bedroom as he kept true to his promise that he began to understand what was happening.

Not very clearly, considering this feeling was quite foreign and brand-new to the lonely expert on boggarts. But it was more than enough.

Lyall Lupin was beginning to fall in love with Hope Howell.