After a few hours of practicing Gouging Spells in the empty Transfiguration classroom, Hazel and Remus were fairly certain they'd got the hang of them and knew how to control them. That was at least until they'd started talking about Sev. Remus brought him up constantly nowadays, asking Hazel why she was friends with him if he hung out with all of those "future Death Eaters" and why she thought he was any sort of redeemable. It was after a particularly venomous retort that Remus turned a little too quickly, hitting her instead of his target. "Ouch, Rem!"
She dropped her wand, now trying to stem the flow of blood with a handful of her robes. "Oh Merlin," he breathed, jogging through a maze of desks to where she stood dripping blood. "Oh my god, I've hurt you."
"It's fine," she said, digging through her bag for some bandages. "I'll be fine, you didn't hit me too hard."
"That's not the point." He helped her clean the cut off and wrap a couple of bandages around it. "Are you sure you don't want to see Madam Pomfrey?"
"I'll be fine. Evanesco." With one word her robes were clean, Hazel finally looking back to Remus. "It's okay."
"No it's not! No matter what I do - I try to reign Sirius and James in, I let them go, I get close to you, I stay away from you… no matter what I do, I end up hurting you or someone you care about." He dropped her hand, starting to pace the empty classroom in frustration. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do! I can't keep doing this anymore!"
Hazel sat down on a desk, thinking it was better not to get in his way. She'd seen this argument coming for a while, a couple of smaller rows leading up to this moment. She'd known, at least since his birthday. "Rem, if this is really about Sev -"
"It's not, well, it kind of is," he confessed, turning to look at her in the moonlight. "I nearly killed him. Everyone says I didn't, but I know that he thinks I was willingly involved. He hates being near me, and I make both of you miserable any time the three of us are together. I don't like his friends - Rockwood and Mucliber and Avery and all of those blokes - and I don't like the things they're pulling him into."
"Sev's not like that. Besides, the things your friends get into -"
"That's not the same!" He was quick to protest. "Rockwood's been practicing the Cruciatus Curse on McGonagall's rats! And how many times have you given them detention for bullying the first years?"
Hazel's voice was low, measured, deadly. "James assaulted him, plain and simple."
Remus wouldn't be stopped. "And Wilkes! And Rosier! I at least tried talking to James and Sirius after that, when have you ever -"
"Sirius tried to kill him!" she hissed, the memory still fresh, the memory of a battered and bruised Sev appearing in the library, still trembling as he told her everything. And of Dumbledore, who refused to punish Sirius with anything close to what he deserved.
"He went out there knowing that -"
"He had his theories, but he didn't know he was going to run into a werewolf! He wanted dirt to get his bullies expelled! He wanted to know where they snuck off to! He didn't know what he was going to find in the Shrieking Shack!"
"You think I could've stopped that? I didn't know!" He slammed his hands down on one of the desks, looking at her with cold, angry eyes. "Besides, this is just more proof that I'm too dangerous for you, too dangerous for anyone!"
Hazel hopped to her feet and crossed her arms tightly, paying no mind to the stinging wound on her finger. "I'm just saying that you're friends with people who are capable of horrible things too! What has Sev - not his friends - what has Sev himself ever done to you? Why do you seem to hate him so much?"
"I don't hate him."
"You sure act like you do!" She too started to pace, unable to contain the anger, the nervous energy that coursed through her veins.
All of the nerves, the jealousy, the insecurities, bubbled up again. "Maybe it's because my girlfriend fancies him!"
"I do not!"
"Oh really?" He raised an eyebrow, his voice suddenly icy. "How come I see you two on the map, hiding out with each other in Astronomy Tower after you've left me? How come he trails after you like a puppy? How come you smile at him so much?"
"Oh get off it -"
"How come you call me 'Sev' in your sleep?! I swear you think about him sometimes when we're -"
"Rem, that's ridiculous." But the knot in her stomach told her otherwise. How does he know? I'd just wondered… that's normal, right? Right? "Sev's just -"
"No. You two are clearly more than friends. Or at least he wants to be, and you've been thinking about it too," Remus said with finality as Hazel approached him. "I keep hurting you. No matter what I do, I seem to find a way. I think it's better if we… if we end this now, before one of us really gets hurt."
Her lip trembled as she came to a stop in front of him. "Rem -"
"I'm sorry. It's better this way."
"Rem, please…" She could feel the tears tracking down her cheeks, but she didn't care. "Remus, please, we can do better, we can try to be better. I love you."
"I love you too, which is why I've had to think about this for so long and why this is going to hurt both of us, but it's for the best. Deep down you know it too." He gave her a gentle kiss, Hazel more than anything wanting to reach out for him, wanting to keep him from going anywhere. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight," she nodded, taking a deep breath, grabbing her bag, and leaving. As soon as the door closed behind her, she froze. Where do I go now? Not back to Ravenclaw Tower, not now. Everyone will be out working. They'll see and they'll know and I don't want to talk about it. Soon her feet carried her to the only place she knew she could go to find solace: Astronomy Tower.
Sev was up there working on transfiguring one of his textbooks into a potted plant and back again when the door burst open. "I had to find you," Hazel said, clearly out of breath.
"What's going on?" Sev stood, immediately noticing that she had been crying. Her face shone in the light of the half moon, even though Astronomy Tower was fairly dark.
"Remus and I… this huge fight… it's over," she managed, pulling him into a bone-crushing hug. Sev stood there awkwardly. Finally he decided to gently put his arms around her, letting Hazel sob into his chest. "It's ridiculous… he tried saying I was the mad one for… he's the one with friends like that! I know, I've tried… that's why I still try to keep you -"
"Me?" he asked. "Wait, your massive row was about me?"
"Yes," she hiccuped. You can't tell him the truth. You can't tell him everything. He can't know. "Kind of. He told me I shouldn't be friends with you because of Avery and Mulciber and Rockwood and all of them, and I told him how he shouldn't be friends with people like Sirius and James because he knows what they're capable of and he never once tried to actually stop them... and he said I never try to stop Rosier and Wilkes and that lot, but... The worst James Potter would do to him is throw him in the lake, or hoist him up in the air by his ankles, because he's not going to actually hurt Remus, since they're friends, but Rockwood was practicing the Cruciatus Curse on some of Professor McGonagall's rats and if I ever tried to stop him bullying the first years - I'm afraid of them, Sev. Of course I'm not going to stand up to them like he could stand up to James and Sirius!" She took a deep breath, still holding onto him.
They stood like that for a moment before she let go, apologizing profusely. "It's alright," he finally managed, trying to process what had happened. Hazel sat down against the wall, Sev sitting next to her. Transfiguration could wait. "Maybe you could tell me all of that in more than one big sentence."
"Remus and I were leaving the library and we passed by Sirius taunting this first year," she lied, staring into the night sky. She'd stopped crying, but the pain in her voice was clear. "I asked him why he was friends with people like that. They hurt people who've never done anything to them. James Potter started it in first year, this blood feud between you two. Marlene told me a while back," Hazel clarified. He wasn't about to stop and ask questions anyway. "So Remus asked me how I could be friends with you, when you called Lily... what you called her, and I told him you'd grown up hating the only Muggle in your life and then you'd been adopted by Lucius Malfoy and his crowd. So then he asked how I could say anything about him not standing up to Sirius and James when I can't stand up to Mulciber and Rockwood and all of them. I told him about how Rockwood's been practicing the Cruciatus Curse on the rats we use in Transfiguration and - it's a whole different kind of thing to stand up to that. Sirius and James wouldn't curse him if he told them to shove off every time they were bullying people. And then he said you were going the same way as Mulciber and Rockwood and it wouldn't be long before you were torturing rats... and people too. I told him he was wrong, that you just think all of that stuff is interesting and that you were so sorry about what you'd called Lily that you camped out in front of Gryffindor Tower to apologize even though she kept egging James on and... It's not going to work. It can't work. He refuses to stop being friends with them, and they almost killed you. And I refuse to stop being friends with you."
"You broke up… over me?"
She nodded, reaching for his hand. She turned it over in her own, looking at the scrapes and cuts he'd picked up from making potions. "And over the fact that he thinks he's too dangerous for anyone." Sev's face darkened as he thought of his fateful encounter with the werewolf. "I know you two don't like each other, but it's been getting worse for a while now. This… I've been wondering about this for a while now, and I guess he has too. I thought we'd be fine, but… I guess not."
It was Sev's turn to pull her into a hug. "I'm sorry. I… I know you two really did love each other. I know… no matter how I feel about him, I know he made you happy." Hazel nodded into his shoulder. It felt good to be hugging him, like everything in the world would be okay. For his part, Sev thought it felt right holding her. Why is it you two only end up hugging when she's crying? That could change. It's way too soon, but maybe one day. "I'm sorry you had to lose something that made you so much happier."
Meanwhile, James, Sirius, and Peter were sitting in the Gryffindor common room, debating the curious scene they'd watched unfold on the Marauders' Map. Hazel and Remus were in the Transfiguration classroom together, clearly studying. But then they'd begun pacing and Hazel had left for Astronomy Tower, where a little label that read "Severus Snape" had been sitting for a while. They watched as Remus seemed to freeze in the Transfiguration room before slowly heading back to the tower. "Moony, what's up? Something wrong?" Sirius called as the portrait opened. "Oh." His face fell as soon as he saw Remus, whose own face was red and tearstained. Sirius got up to give him a hug, followed by James and Peter.
"It's over," he said into the group hug. "Hazel and I… it's over. Merlin, I love her. But it's over."
They would stay up late talking in their dorm just like Hazel and Sev stayed up late talking in Astronomy Tower. Both Hazel and Remus left out some of the details about their massive row. Remus didn't mention Snape because he knew the others would hunt him down if he did. Hazel didn't mention that part of the argument to Sev because she was terrified of how he'd react.
When he finally went to bed, Remus lay awake, staring at the spot where Hazel would usually be the morning after a full moon. He would never have that again, that wonderful comfort of her lying next to him, telling him that everything would be okay. He held one of his pillows to his chest, trying to keep himself from crying again.
Hazel crept into her dorm in Ravenclaw Tower, trying not to wake Pandora or any of the other girls. She didn't want to talk about it, not yet. So she drew the curtains around her bed quickly, allowing herself to cry again as she held onto the stuffed wolf that sat on top of one of her pillows. She'd never be able to hold onto her real wolf again. Not yours. Not anymore.