Chapter 93: Tuesday, April 9, 2002

"I'm a fan of the truth...even if it's painfully hard to accept."

-Dan Brown

The sound of movement coming from the floors below roused Hermione from sleep. It had taken everything in her not to protest when Remus said he needed a second to organize his thoughts, and Harry showed him to the drop down ladder that led to the attic. He had spent the last six months alone and after the most soul-quaking kiss she had ever experienced, he withdrew completely.

"I'm sorry. I just...this is a lot."

He wasn't wrong. It was a lot to take in. She had so many questions for him, namely—how the hell did he even remember her? She had been incensed that Dumbledore insisted on finishing the memory potion. But, once the shock of being back in her own time wore off, she was thankful that he had. Who knows what would have happened if anyone remembered her? It had certainly made Dolohov's interest in her, from sixteen on, make a lot more sense. It was even possible that Bellatrix had remembered her, and perhaps that was why she was so adamant that Hermione was lying the night she was tortured.

These questions, however, were easily answered. Dumbledore would not have tracked down the Death Eaters to administer a memory potion, especially not once they had gone into hiding. But, Remus? Remus should have no recollection of her—something that had hurt her deeply on more than one occasion, but she had come to terms with it.

She pulled herself from her small bed and grabbed her wand from the nightstand. It was the early hours of the morning, and chances were the sounds coming from downstairs was simply Mrs Weasley padding about the kitchen. Molly never slept well these days and it wasn't unlike her to be up at three or four in the morning preparing for breakfast.

"Thought you'd be up."

It was Draco's voice that met her when she entered the dining room. She could smell the espresso wafting from his cup as he took a gulp of it, looking back down to a stack of parchment.

"Why are you awake this early?" she asked.

"Well, if we have a werewolf to worry about now, I thought we might need to work on brewing some Wolfsbane, and since moonflowers can only be harvested at night…" Draco made a vague gesture with his hand toward a basket on the end of the table.

"You're going to brew Wolfsbane?"

He looked up from the parchment, deadpanned. "Yes."

"Thank you."

"It's not for you, Granger. Personally, I'd rather be working on a way to send him back to his own time. But, seeing as we have at least thirty days before that's possible and seeing how I'm not particularly fond of being ripped apart come the full moon…"

Hermione glared at him.

"You have to admit," Draco sniffed, "even to someone who doesn't thirst for human flesh once a month, I look delectable."

Hermione snorted and shook her head, "Well, thank you anyway."

He set his mug back down and summoned another from the kitchen, the contents sloshing over the sides as it skidded to a halt in front of Hermione. "Your god awful excuse for a coffee."

"You made me one?"

"I figured you'd be awake," he said simply.

Hermione took a sip of the espresso and smiled to herself. Say what you will about Draco Malfoy, and while true he could be an absolute arse, he cared enough to make her espresso the way she liked it.

The silence that settled over the two of them in the dining room, hours before sunrise, was odd. Draco often filled the quiet with chatter. It was something that had driven her insane before, but now she found comfort in his sarcastic and often foul-mouthed musings. So, when he didn't say anything snarky, or make a comment about how bad her hair looked or the bags under her eyes, she felt uneasy. She watched as he continued to scratch notes into the parchment, flipping through pages and pulling his brows together from time to time. Finally, once her espresso was finished and she was sure his was cold, he set his quill down and looked up at her.

"You fucked up, Granger."

Hermione blinked. "What?"

"You. Fucked. Up."

"I need you to elaborate," Hermione grumbled.

He sighed, rolling his eyes. "You were gone for what, two years? I mean, it was maybe forty five seconds here, but for you…" he shook his head. "It doesn't matter. You spent two years galavanting around the early eighties with Potter's parents and their friends. You brought nothing back with you except a werewolf, apparently. You show up with this potion but have no idea how it works or what it's made of...I'm not saying you did nothing while you were there, but you have very little to show for it."

She felt like she had been punched in the gut. Leave it to Malfoy to cut her open with brutal honesty.

"I tried to find answers!" she groaned, rubbing at her eyes in frustration. "It was a mess when I got there. There was no structure to anything the Order did back then—they just gave orders and everyone followed them without question. There was no planning on their side, just blind faith. What was I supposed to do with that?"

"Come back and sort it out from here. Not fall for the pretty boy professor you've fancied since you were fourteen."

Hermione narrowed her eyes. "It wasn't like that."

"Yeah, I'm sure," he snorted. "I'm not Potter or Weasley. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that love solves the world's problems—because it doesn't. No matter how much I love Red, it isn't going to stop the war from happening. It isn't going to save her life if she gets hit with a killing curse. You need to sort out your priorities."

"Love has saved people from the Killing Curse before," Hermione muttered, petulantly.

"Person."

"What?"

"Person. Not people. Person—one. Love saved Potter from being murdered, and that's the only time it's ever happened. Your love for Lupin isn't going to save you, it isn't going to stop the war. We are still fighting, there are still people getting captured and killed. If he's going to be here, for however long, he needs to make himself useful. You need to be useful."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"It means, Granger," Draco drawled, shuffling his parchment into some semblance of a neat stack, "that for the last six months we've allowed you to cry yourself silly and haunt the place like some pathetic version of Moaning Myrtle. That ridiculous shit ends today. You got your werewolf back, now get your mind together—we don't have the luxury of another six months of sitting still."

Hermione pressed her lips into a thin line and stared at Draco while she chewed over his words. She wanted to be angry with him—to yell and tell him to mind his own business. But, he was right. And Merlin, if she didn't hate when Draco Malfoy was right. She knew she had been absent the last six months. She could barely bring herself to get out of bed most days and she knew that everyone had been working around her, giving her space and letting her grieve. Harry had gone above and beyond to be understanding. Draco had tried to get her to come to her senses. Even Ginny, Ron and Blaise had made attempts to drag her from the depths of darkness she had fallen.

She had allowed herself to be pitiful—she had essentially given up. What was the point, if she didn't have Remus here with her? But now, she did. And she wouldn't waste time moping about like she had done for half a year.

She sighed and shoved a hand through her hair, wincing as her ring caught on a tangle of curls, "You're right."

"I think that—wait. What?"

Hermione chuckled and shook her head, giving a weak shrug. "You're right."

"I want to know exactly why you think that, but I also want to savour the moment that Hermione Granger admitted to someone else that they were right."

"You're pushing it."

He laughed. "Yeah, well it's not everyday that I get to hear that you think I'm right about something." Draco shot her one of his signature smirks, and she could see the warmth behind his icy eyes. "I'm glad you're back, Granger. And, even if it's bloody weird that you went and fell for a Professor—"

"He's not a Professor," she whined. "Well, not yet, anyway. Technically speaking—"

"Doesn't matter, it's still weird," Draco said, tapping his fingers against his mug. "Even so, if he helps you get your head on straight so we can figure out how to stop these curses from being used, I'm okay with it. You really didn't find a countercurse or an antidote while you were there?"

"No. I was attacked and almost died, and we think the separation of my soul from my body is the only thing that kept me alive." Hermione slumped her shoulders forward, leaning onto her forearms. "But, the curse was gone when I woke up. Can't really go around nearly killing every muggleborn that gets hit with it though, can we?"

"It's not ideal, no."

"They were all just kids. Following orders and going blindly into whatever Dumbledore said."

"We were just kids once, too, you know. Barely adults now, really."

Hermione made a noncommittal sound of agreement. She hated this—all of it. The war, the loss, the fear…

She had longed for a life where she wasn't running and fighting. It was the reason she had decided to stay in the eighties, had wanted just a little reprieve from the chaos with Remus. But, it hadn't worked out how she'd hoped. Hermione stood, taking her mug from the table.

"Thank you," she said quietly, stopping in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. Glancing back, she saw Draco angling his head towards her, not bothering to look up from his parchments as he replied.

"For?"

"I don't know...talking some sense into me?"

Draco laughed again and shook his head, "I'll take the thanks, but I'm not sure anyone can talk sense into you, Granger. It's kind of your...modus operandi."

After a short doze in the library, Hermione woke to the sounds of footsteps on the stairs. She checked the clock and saw that it was still early—only half seven—but the rest of the inhabitants of the Shrieking Shack were beginning to rouse. She pulled herself from the sofa and stretched, her back stiff from the lumpy cushions, before heading to the hall and up the stairs to the main sleeping quarters.

In the back corner of the long room was a slightly enlarged bed. Harry had taken it upon himself to make the single bed a bit bigger once he and Blaise had become nearly inseparable. Hermione felt a bit of relief when she realized Harry was alone, sitting against the headboard with a folder propped open on his knees, his hair wilder than usual and glasses slightly askew.

"Morning," Hermione said.

Harry looked up and smiled at her, "Morning."

She climbed onto the mattress and shuffled around to sit next to him, her legs stretched out in front of her and crossed at the ankles. She leaned her head on Harry's shoulder and looked over the parchments he was reading.

"Are those from the Ministry?" she asked, noting the MoM seal on the bottom of the page.

"Yeah. Penelope swiped them from the archives last week. It's a list of everyone who is a known muggleborn that hasn't been captured," he pointed to her name a few spots down, "Looks like they're going to try and round them all up again."

"If Dolohov is using those curses again, I don't doubt it. He'll need someone to experiment on…" she trailed off, her face pulling in distaste.

"I reckon you're right," he said.

They sat in a comfortable silence for a while, Harry's cheek pressed to the top of her head and arm wrapped around her shoulders. She had missed this—the closeness of her best friend. She loved James, Lily, and Sirius, but no one could replace Harry.

"Can I ask a favour?" Hermione said, finally getting the courage to get to the reason she had sought him out.

"Anything."

"Could you talk to Remus?"

Harry pulled away from her, turning a bit to look at her properly. "Me? Why?"

"There's a lot he doesn't know about what happened to him—to everyone. He still thinks Sirius betrayed your parents. Still thinks Peter was innocent...I think if it comes from you, it might be a little easier to swallow. I lied to him so much—"

"Well, it wasn't really lying, was it? I mean, you had to keep things from them."

"Omitting truth is still lying, Harry. You know that better than most."

"What do you want me to tell him?"

"Everything."

Remus could hear the rustling of people floors below as they began to rise and get themselves sorted for the day. He had been lying awake, staring up at the cobweb covered rafters in the attic for hours now, and hadn't had the motivation to face anyone yet.

Coward

Sod off.

Moony had been getting his jabs in all night, seemingly frustrated with Remus' existence at this point. But, he needed time to think things over. To sort his feelings and try to make sense of everything that had happened in the last day, week, months. He was a swirling mix of anxious lovesick anger, and he didn't want to say the wrong thing. Plus, there were so many new faces, people who looked like people he once knew, and it was confusing and stressful and hard to wrap his head around.

There was a soft knock on the trap door that pulled his attention away from his own thoughts. It creaked slightly when it opened and he saw a mop of messy black hair peek through the sliver.

"Prof—Remus?"

"Harry?"

That was still weird to get used to. Seeing Lily's eyes stare back at him from James' face. Harry pushed the board open and pulled himself through, clambering to his feet and dusting off the knees of his jeans.

"Alright?"

Remus sat up, swinging his legs over the camp bed and nodded. "Yeah. You?"

"Yeah." Harry stood awkwardly in the center of the room, his hand pressed to the back of his neck, "Look, I think maybe we should talk."

Remus nodded. He had been preparing for this since last night. "It's okay. I erm...I'll just get my bag and find somewhere to stay. I know you lot are full up and I don't—"

"No," Harry said, stepping further into the room. "No, that's not...I'm not asking you to leave. There's just some stuff I think you should know about if you're going to stay and help us."

"Help you?"

"Well, yeah. You don't have to if you don't want to, of course. But, we would really appreciate the help."

Remus sat back, the springs holding the thin mattress groaning under his weight. "I wasn't expecting...I—erm... yeah. Yeah, I'd like to help."

"Yeah?"

"Yes," Remus confirmed.

Harry smiled at him, "Brilliant. So, I think you should know—"

"I'm dead," Remus said, meeting Harry's gaze. "In this time, I'm dead, aren't I?"

Harry shuffled forward, pulling a dusty old chair from a desk that looked as if it had seen better days, and took a seat directly across from Remus. "Yeah, mate. You are."

"How did it happen?"

Harry sighed, "I don't know exactly how. Just that it happened at the battle at Hogwarts in 1998. We lost around fifty people then, most of the Order, really. Hermione is the one who saw your body with the rest of them so I don't know any of the details, only that you were killed."

Remus took a slow breath. He had known. The second he got to the cabin in Yorkshire and saw the state of it, he had known. It had only further been confirmed by the look on Mcgonagall's face and by Molly's words, but to hear it stated so plainly still felt like a punch to the gut.

"There's more though," Harry pushed on.

"Okay."

"You need to know about what happened with Sirius."

"He sold your parents out."

"No," Harry shook his head. "No, he didn't. Peter did, however. He had been working with the Death Eaters for years, by the look of it."

"No," Remus insisted. "No, that doesn't make sense. Peter...he wouldn't."

"But Sirius would?"

There was a defensive tone to Harry's voice and Remus recoiled slightly. "I—I thought…but, Sirius was the Secret Keeper..."

"Everyone did," Harry said, sadly. "And they changed it, last minute. Sirius thought he was too much of a target, said he thought Peter would be the best option, seeing as no one would suspect him."

"But, Peter is so...Peter. He could barely cast a body binding jinx!"

"Could cast a hell of a Killing Curse, though." Harry challenged.

Remus bit into his cheek and closed his eyes. "No, I don't...I just can't see it!"

"That's the beauty of it, isn't it? No one could. He was an idiot, and you all knew that. Apparently, he was smarter than anyone gave him credit for."

"I'll kill him. The bastard, I'll—"

"He's dead," Harry said. "Died by his own hand trying to kill me a few years back. Same night Hermione got that scar on her arm."

"Fuck," Remus breathed.

Harry chuckled, "Yeah. Fuck."

"So if Sirius was innocent, he must have gotten out. Is he here? Can I talk to him?"

"No," Harry looked pained for a moment before continuing, "He died in 1996."

Remus felt all the air leave his body, and his head spun. "How?"

"Bellatrix."

A strangled sound, a cross between a laugh and a dry sob, pulled from his chest. "And Bellatrix?"

At this, Harry smiled. "Molly Weasley killed her in 1998, at the same battle you died in."

"Molly?"

Harry nodded, "She threatened Ginny—Molly doesn't take too kindly to her kids being threatened."

"Wow. Yeah, I'd say not."

"Listen," Harry said, leaning forward to place his elbows on his knees, "I know this is strange. It's bloody weird for me too, but a lot has happened since 1982. Voldemort's dead now, for sure this time, killed him myself. But, there's still a load of his followers out there making life hell for everyone. We just want it to end. And Hermione is brilliant, we need her here. You can stay as long as you need to, but you can't take her back with you."

"That's a lot to ask of someone you don't know," Remus said, bitterly.

Harry raised his chin, a slight smirk on his face. "But I do know you, Remus."

"You know who I was—or will be. You don't know me now. You don't know what I've been through for her."

"You think you're the only one who has sacrificed for the cause, but you're wrong."

Remus clenched his teeth as he stared at Harry. He was right, and Remus hated it. Remus had spent so long feeling sorry for himself, he had forgotten that he wasn't the only one who had felt the loss of the war. Still, it was more than just puppy love when it came to Hermione. She was his mate, living without her was like living as a shell of himself.

"You don't know everything about the situation."

"So, tell me," Harry said, simply. "We can't do anything to help you if you don't."

Remus sighed, pushing a hand through his hair. Apparently the need to help and make things better had not died with James, and Remus suddenly felt extremely guilty.

"It's complicated."

"Okay," Harry said. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

Remus nodded, murmuring a quick "thanks" before watching Harry rise to his feet. He put the chair back at it's place beneath the desk and gave Remus another friendly smile. "Molly's making breakfast, should be done soon. Oh, and Draco is working on Wolfsbane for you. It'll be ready by the time—"

"Wolfsbane?" Remus interrupted, his brows pulling together in confusion.

"Oh," Harry said, his eyes going wide before his smile overtook his face. "Of course! You wouldn't know," Harry chuckled awkwardly, stuffing his hand into his pockets and shrugging his shoulders. "There's a potion to help with your transformations. They'll still happen, unfortunately, nothing we can really do about that. But, Wolfsbane keeps your head about you."

Remus stared at him, unblinking. "When you say 'keeps my head about me'...?"

"You'll have control of your own mind."

Out of all the information Harry had relayed to him in the last fifteen minutes, Remus nearly cried from the knowledge of a potion that would keep him in control during a transformation. He sucked in a deep breath and nodded, swallowing back the lump in his throat.

"Thank you."

After Harry made his way back down to the lower level, Remus changed his clothes and made an attempt to make himself a little more presentable. Huffing in irritation at the unwillingness of his hair to obey, he snatched his wand off the desk and made his way down the ladder. He could hear chatter coming from the main floor and followed the sound of clinking glasses and the scraping of silverware on plates to the dining room.

The room was crowded with about a dozen people sitting shoulder to shoulder at a large, rectangular table. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits as they laughed and talked, reaching over one another to grab jars of marmalade and pass plates of eggs around. He watched as a tall, red haired man flung a tomato at an irritated man with horn-rimmed glasses and matching hair.

"George, stop throwing food! You're an adult, for Merlin's sake!" The bespectacled man hissed.

"Sorry Perce, slipped out of my hand."

It was an odd sensation, seeing George and Percy Weasley as men older than he was now. And, as he looked around the table, he made guesses that the remaining red heads were the rest of the Weasley bunch. Although, by his count, there were a few missing. He wondered if they were dead, or if they were simply out on an assignment or living elsewhere.

As his eyes scanned the table, they landed on Hermione and he felt his heart stutter. He felt foolish for the way he had sped off the night before. God, she probably hated him now. But, when her eyes pulled away from the attractive dark-skinned man she was speaking with, she flashed him a beaming smile and he felt himself relax.

"Ron, budge over, would you?" she asked the man on her other side, giving him a playful shove into the empty chair next to him.

"Yeah, alright." He acquiesced, giving a half-hearted smile in Remus' direction. "Hey, mate."

"Hi," Remus greeted, with a small wave.

"Oh, Remus! You're up! Good. You look like you could use a proper meal," Molly said from behind him, pushing past him with a platter filled with even more rations of bacon. "Well go on, then! Tuck in!"

"Thanks, Molly."

She waved him off and bustled back to the kitchen, shouting something about pitchers of pumpkin juice over her shoulder. Remus squeezed past the row of chairs to sit next to Hermione. She pushed up from her chair, ghosting her lips against his jaw in a quick peck.

"I love you," she whispered, lacing her fingers through his. "Are you okay?"

It was a loaded question—to ask if he was okay. But, with the weight of her palm in his, her scent filling his nostrils and her eyes bright as she gave a hesitant smile—for the first time in six months, he could answer it truthfully.

"Yeah, I'm okay."

.

.

a/n: From here on out, we'll see things from both Hermione and Remus' perspectives! I hope you enjoy the shift as much as I enjoy writing it!

Also, I wanted to give an enormous THANK YOU to every person who voted for this story in the Granger Enchanted Awards! While it did not take an award, to be nominated and then make through all three rounds of voting was phenomenal and I would have never expected it! I am so humbled by the love you guys have shown this story, and I just honestly can not thank you enough. Every review, favorite, follow, etc makes me soar. Like, honestly, update days are the highlights of my weeks, and it's all because of you absolutely wonderful people. Thank you so much.

xoxo

Mimi