He had slammed the door, and that was her first indication that something was wrong. Remus Lupin, by nature, wasn't a door-slammer.
Torn between going to him and asking what was wrong and ducking in her room to hide from whatever had made him so angry, Dea held her ground and sat at the kitchen table, fiddling with a long-since cold cup of coffee she'd managed to brew.
She missed Starbucks. Even a woman on the run could find one every city block in a place like New York.
He slammed into the kitchen with as much fervor as he'd treated the front door with and her hand jerked, sending the tepid liquid spilling over the scarred wood of the kitchen table. "Hello again," she said lightly, raising an eyebrow at his uncharacteristic theatrics.
"You're a bloody idiot," he exclaimed, gripping the edge of the counter and keeping his back to her. He couldn't look at her, not just yet, not with Snape's accusations circling in his head and the moon only hours away.
Surprised, Dea sat back in her chair. "Well, I've certainly never thought so, but I'm bound to be biased."
He whirled on her then, mossy eyes alight with anger, fear, and something she couldn't identify. "Let's forget all about the sly, clever little remarks. Let's just abandon those entirely for a few moments of frankness, shall we?" He stared at her intently, noticing that she'd changed into casual clothes, a pair of Muggle-made jeans and a white button-down that looked very much like a man's. "You're not going to see Malfoy."
"And you're not the boss of me," she said, lilting it like a child, but her ire was close to rising. "I take it Professor Dumbledore… Albus… brought you up to speed?"
Up to speed. The unfamiliar phrase bounced around in his head, but he was sharp enough to judge it by context. "He told me what you'd planned. There are other ways," he insisted, planting both hands on the table and looking down at her. When she turned large, dark eyes up to his, he nearly flinched.
Do you really fancy yourself in love with her?
"There are no other ways," she said, wondering what had gotten into him. "I don't wish to argue about this, Remus."
"I do, but fortunately for you, the time is a bit inconvenient," he said, his voice sounding strained. Why now, when he had to do all his thinking, when there were important things to consider? "I must go."
He walked out of the kitchen and she could hear his worn boots stomping up the stairs to his room.
~~~
She had nearly read over all of the pile of research Hermione had given her, her eyes crossing and doubling many of the words as evening wore into night. She heard nothing of Remus, which made her marginally nervous. There was a wolf in the house and she had no idea where. But because she trusted him, she didn't worry.
Her mind began to wander as the pile of parchment grew thinner, and she wondered what had gotten into the lycanthropic wizard. He had never struck her as the overprotective type before, or the type who would fly off the handle at nothing.
Her first reflex was to blame it on the full moon, but the more she thought about it, the more it made perfect sense to her. The man had, after all, lost his two closest friends to Death Eaters. He was bound to be a bit unnerved by the entire experience.
That was her last conscious thought as she laid her head down to her arms, promising herself she'd only rest her eyes for a moment.
Come on, come on…
Her dreams had always been vivid, sometimes frighteningly so, and she thought this one was no exception. Someone was insistent, tugging her hand with a sharp pressure and making her follow, to wander through the darkened, empty halls of the Black House. In her dream, the lamp on the table had blown out, its light replaced by the moon shining its pallid light in through the single kitchen window.
She maneuvered the stairs sluggishly, reluctantly following her leader up them and down the hallway to the room she normally slept in.
Nothing here for me to see, she thought, but her hand was released. Figuring she may as well rest while she was there, she laid down on the bed and resumed sleep seamlessly, never having looked once at her guide.
At the side of the bed, a large, silver-coated wolf gripped the witch's shoes in his teeth, pulling them off one by one.
~~~
When she awoke the next morning in her bed, she thought little about how she'd gotten there or what had happened the evening before. After showering, she went downstairs, her mind starting to puzzle again over Remus's behavior of the evening before even as she craved the cappuccino she'd never get.
He was already awake when she got downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table with a pair of delicate-looking wire-rim glasses perched on his nose as he looked through the papers she'd left strewn over the table. At her quiet entrance, he looked up from his reading, making her step falter just a bit.
The glasses, she thought, were nice.
"Ah… early riser," she commented awkwardly, muttering a hopeful Accio coffee. Though she had to pronounce it distinctly and make the wand movement precise, it was a simple enough spell that she could do it correctly, though she did it with little hope.
It seemed as though no one in England liked coffee.
But to her surprise, a single steaming mug made its way through the kitchen doors, wobbling only slightly. Shocked, she snagged it from midair and looked at him. "You made coffee?"
"I had plenty of time this morning." It never seemed as though he needed much sleep in his wolf form. The evening before had been spent curled up next to his bed, looking out the window at the moon and thinking everything through. The only conclusion he'd been able to come to was that no matter who had been right in Dumbledore's chambers, which accusations had held water and which hadn't, Amadea's idea had merit.
"So what comes next?" he asked, setting down the parchment and removing the reading glasses. "After you stage your family reunion, assuming Malfoy doesn't kill you, what's the next move?"
She sat down across from him and trailed her fingers over the parchment, wondering how she'd come to be such a part of things in only a matter of months. An invisible girl with only one friend, strange parents and orphan siblings, a drifter and a runaway. She'd been many things, but she'd never been so closely tied to a unit, to a team.
"The next move is like shooting a gun," she said quietly. "That's where these come in." And for the first time since the idea's inception, she weaved the whole thing together.
~~~
"A gun?" Arthur Weasley looked confused as he peered at her across the table. "One of those Muggle things that flings metal at people?"
"We're not using guns," Dea said patiently. The idea had gathered steam until she was presenting it in front of the entire Order. The timing was becoming crucial; Severus's information was that Voldemort was planning a move, and soon. "It's a metaphor."
"A what?" The two oldest Weasley boys chorused together.
Minerva McGonagall winced. "I always suggested we should have a class where proper English is continued to be taught."
"Forget the gun." Glancing at Hermione with a smile, Dea continued speaking. Her audience, she had to admit, was rapt. Every member of the Order was staring at her in confusion, wonder, disbelief, or a patent mixture of all three. Only Severus's face was unreadable.
"Hermione did the research for me, and I'm fairly certain this is possible. Harry discovered just how powerful memories can be when You-Know-Who's wand started spewing its history. So I figured we could bank on that."
The idea was fairly simple. When the Death Eaters were tearing their time between seeking Dea and preparing for an offensive move, Harry would confront Voldemort, accompanied by several other members of the Order. Each of their wands and their minds would be loaded with memories of love and the people who had died for their love of another or their love of the cause.
James's face and Lily's eyes. With her love so powerful and inlaid into her son, Dea was banking on the fact that Lily would still be, as Remus had put it, appallingly good.
And when the evening was over, only one person's opinion mattered.
"I'll do it," Harry said bravely, his hair falling into his eyes. He thought of Sirius, hidden behind a veil which no one could ever move, and knew that Sirius would have done it. His father would have done it. "Just tell me when."