Chapter 20.
Two weeks passed. Elena had attended every one of Remus's Defence Against Dark Arts classes, and was quite pleased with her own progress.
She was also enjoying her own classes rather more than she had expected to. Her lessons were only a small part of the school's study curriculum, but all her students seemed to have at least a mild interest in learning the ways of Charmers. Before she had arrived as a teacher in the field, it had been an obscure and mysterious branch of magic to them. Now they were being given the chance to learn some of the secrets of the craft. And she liked teaching them.
Remus was learning too. If nothing else, he was learning the true extent of his own steely self control. He attended nearly all Elena's classes, seating himself with arms folded near the back of the room, shrouded in Dumbledore's invisibility cloak so as to avoid any awkward questions about why Miss Greenstone required his surveillance.
Despite their forced proximity, he had managed to maintain his distance from her for another few weeks. Now that the full moon was creeping closer once more, it was both easier and more difficult sustain his coldness towards her. Easier because his gradually increasing nausea and weakness brought him a welcome reminder of exactly what it was he was shielding her from. But more difficult because the approach of his transformation was always coupled with heightened senses - smell and hearing, mostly, but also wilder instincts which he had to struggle to keep in check.
Having to see Elena every day - moving around her classroom, interacting shyly with her students, observing her oddly fascinating little gestures and habits, sometimes so guarded and closed, other times astonishing in their openness and grace - was difficult enough. But watching her every blush, hearing every whisper of her robes as she moved, scenting the sweetness of her skin every time she turned toward him ... Surely this was torture?
Remus's continued determination to reject her was, of course, glaringly obvious to Elena. She didn't know how to defend herself against the pain it caused her. She tried ignoring him, but it was so hard when he was right there, at her side or in front of her, every waking hour. She had tried being civil to him, but the blatant insincerity of their blandly polite exchanges grated painfully against her yearning heart. She had even tried to be his friend once more, but his cold rebuffs so devastated her that she hadn't the strength to make such an attempt again.
Even when he was shrouded in an invisibility cloak, she could sense his presence and his whereabouts, partly courtesy of her gift as a Charmer, and partly thanks to a her other ability - the one she had never spoken of to any one. Not her parents, not Remus, not even Dumbledore. It made her feel a little safer, knowing that she had kept it a secret. Like she always had one last trick up her sleeve. It had saved her life more than once, after all, and it might again. She had no intention of revealing it without a good reason.
As things stood, though, the past few weeks of more or less unabated misery had taken their toll. She loved him, but he didn't love her. Well, whatever he felt, it wasn't a strong enough emotion to induce him to trust her with his secrets, and as far as she was concerned that was just as bad, if not worse.
So why, she thought fiercely to herself as she cleared the blackboard in preparation for her next class, Why am I making myself sick over this? Over him? He knows what he's doing to me, damn him. He must know. And still he won't even ...
Turning her head, she glared in angry frustration at the back of the classroom. Remus was watching her, the invisibility cloak thrown over his shoulders but his head and the front of his body clearly visible. His eyes were slightly lidded, and his gaze seemed intent, but from such a distance she could tell no more about his expression. Still, he was powerfully attractive, sitting there with his arms crossed over his lean chest and his prematurely grey-streaked hair pushed back from his face. But today, the bittersweet rush of desire only served to anger her further.
He raised his eyebrows when he caught the anger in her stare. They hadn't even been talking - she had been cleaning the blackboard and he had been watching. She couldn't have divined the direction of his thoughts, could she? So what had he done to warrant that look all of a sudden?
A moment later there came the sound of raised voices and heavy footsteps in the hallway, and Remus swiftly pulled the cloak over his head, disappearing from view. The students were coming.
Elena took a deep breath, and turned to greet them. For the first half of the lesson, she succeeded in ignoring Remus entirely, still fuming inwardly with unresolved resentment.
She had set the students a reading, and they were all bent studiously over their books when a hand was raised right at the back of the room.
Walking down the middle aisle, Elena approached Remus then turned, passing within a few inches of him on her way to answer the student's question. Almost imperceptibly, she heard his boots scrape the floor as he moved his legs to ensure they did not touch. For some reason, this tiny movement brought her unreasoning irritation to its boiling point. A terse little smile touched her lips. He wouldn't even brush robes with her, then? Made of stone, was he? She'd see about that.
When she passed him again, she deliberately trailed her hand through the air where she knew he was sitting. Her fingers encountered the line of his jaw, which tightened sharply in response. She wished wickedly that she could see his expression.
Keeping her gaze nonchalantly directed at her students' turned backs, Elena let her fingers drift innocently over the warm, rough skin of his jaw. Her index finger reached his lips. They were full and soft, softer than she had expected. She raised her eyebrows sharply when she felt his teeth nip at her, presumably in warning, but he had been so gentle he had not even marked her skin. She shuddered slightly.
Remus had no idea what had suddenly come over Elena. He couldn't even see her face to discern her expression. Had she lost her mind? Was she trying to make him lose his? Why was she taking these risks? Why was she...? Oh, Merlin, now her hand was trailing lower... A feather-light touch drifted over his neck and reached the skin at the neck of his robes. His hand jerked upwards, desperate to grasp her wrist and restrain her, but he knew he couldn't touch her without running the risk of obscuring part of her body or revealing part of his, both of which scenarios would be very difficult to explain if a student were to turn around. His only choice was to move physically away from her, to put some distance between them.
He stood up, and Elena's hand dropped away, but she didn't move out of his way. He was forced to brush firmly against her just to move to the other side of the classroom. She smiled at vaguely as he passed, but in her eyes he could see a new light - she knew exactly what she had been doing. But why?
He repositioned himself against another wall of the classroom, tugging his cloak around him to be sure that it still concealed him completely. His thoughts were in turmoil, while other parts of him knew exactly what they wanted. He couldn't look at Elena, and didn't notice that the student closest to him had raised their hand until it was too late. Suddenly Elena was back before him, slinking past with exaggerated closeness, and bending at the waist to attend to the student's question.
Blood rushed north to flush Remus's face, then abruptly south as his desire threatened to overwhelm him.
He was struggling to breath deeply, and wondering hazily if he wasn't fighting a losing battle, when a loud chime echoed through the studious silence of the room, signalling the end of the period and Remus's salvation. All the students looked up and began shuffling papers and slamming books shut, waiting to be dismissed. It was the last class before lunch, and when Elena nodded, they cleared the room in twenty seconds flat, becoming nothing more than a fading cacophony of shouts and laughter in the stone hallway.
Ignoring where she knew Remus to be standing, Elena strolled nonchalantly to the front of the classroom and began to gather her own belongings. She sensed him approaching her, his steps heavy and purposeful. She turned just as he came upon her, throwing the cloak aside as he reached out to grasp her shoulders. His expression was furious.
"What was all that about?" he demanded, his usually gentle grey eyes all but shooting sparks.
Elena met his angry glare with an innocent toss of her head. "All what?" she responded airily.
"All that … brushing past and … and …"
"Oh, was that you I brushed against? I'm awfully sorry, I had no idea - "
"Elena." His tone was low, dangerous. Warning.
Elena swallowed, but refused to be intimidated.
"Well, at least it got your attention!" she snapped defensively, her anger bubbling abruptly to the surface, "For someone who is supposedly here to watch over me, you seem to make a conscious effort to ignore me! I'm not inanimate, Remus. You can't go on treating me like I'm not really here. I'm not the kind of problem that goes away when ignored."
Remus gave a hollow kind of laugh, and still did not release her upper arms. "Elena, you aren't even the kind of problem that can be ignored."
"But I am a problem, evidently," she said bitingly. "Just a problem you don't want to deal with."
For a moment he only stared at her, and their gazes locked fiercely. Neither one moved.
"Oh yes," said Remus at last, very softly, "You're a problem. You're a very big problem."
In his eyes, Elena read a deep-burning heat that almost scalded her with its intensity. Her heart, already beating fast, began to pound desperately against her ribs, and his hands burned through her robes until she could have sworn she felt their friction against the skin of her arms. Her anger seemed to have evaporated in the sudden heat.
"Well…" Was it just her, or were their faces getting closer? Her voice shook, very slightly. "What are you going to do about me?"
He was definitely leaning down now. Elena tilted her face upward, her pulse soaring.
There was a long pause, or perhaps it only seemed that way. His eyes closed, and he seemed to fight a terrible battle within himself. Then he spoke, his voice scarcely more than a rasp in his throat.
"Teach you … a lesson?"
For just one moment, one brief, maddening, blissful moment, she felt his lips brush warmly over hers. And then -
"Oh. Do excuse me. I had no idea I was interrupting anything."
Remus and Elena sprang apart like guilty children, both breathing heavily.
Severus Snape looked from one to the other, his expression inscrutable.
Remus was the first to speak.
"What is it, Professor," he said tersely, and Elena admired the way his voice only wavered a little. She was still many minutes away from being able to make any coherent sound at all.
"I only wished to deliever a message," Severus drawled, his tone bordering on insolent, "Quite an important one, in fact, but nonetheless, I can assure you that I would not have dreamed of entering this classroom if I had known - "
"The message, please, Severus," Remus said warningly, almost wearily.
Snape's black eyes darted towards him. "Very well. Your - medicine," he said delicately, "You have been taking it each night?"
Both men flicked glances in Elena's direction, who crossed her arms over her chest and made it very clear she had no intention of leaving just as the conversation got interesting.
After a brief hesitation, Remus replied, "Yes, what of it?"
"I'm afraid it has been doing you little good. One of my herb suppliers has just contacted me by owl to say that his crop must have been tainted, and I should not to use any of his stock in dangerous or sensitive potions. Unfortunately your ... medicine was both. I can not guarantee its effectiveness. You will have to take ... other measures."
Elena looked at Remus. He seemed a little pale at this news, but other than that his expression was impassive.
For a moment, he seemed undecided. Then he straightened, nodded once at them both without meeting Elena's eyes, then strode quickly from the room, leaving Elena alone with Severus Snape.
Just for a moment, she was tempted to ask the dour, black-haired man if he would tell her the nature of Remus's secret. He brewed the mysterious potion for him, after all, so he must know more than she did..
But that would be going behind Remus's back, and somehow she felt that if she couldn't hear a confession from Remus himself, then it was not worth having.
With a long, inaudible sigh, she returned to her desk. Severus Snape slipped wordlessly from the room.