Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Nope, not me.
A/N: Just because I know you all want to know what's going on with Severus at the mo… I've done you a Remus chapter! *evil laugh* However, I like it because it gives us a bit of a deeper look at Aemilia…
I'm going away for five days starting tomorrow, during which time I won't be able to update. However, because I'm such a nice person, what I'll do is this: later on today, I will post a whole five chapters - the updates for Monday through to Friday. Now, if you're smart, you'll read one chapter a day, but I know you won't!
…and just because lots of chapters are going up at once doesn't mean you get away from reviewing! You will review every single chapter, won't you, nice people?!
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"Come and have a cup of tea," Remus invited Aemilia when they left Dumbledore's office about fifteen minutes later. Ah, tea, he thought, that medicine that cures all ills!
Aemilia still looked slightly shell-shocked. "All right," she answered numbly, but she did not move.
In the end, Remus took her hand and almost pulled her along behind him. She did not resist, but her dark eyes - usually flashing with some emotion, whether it be anger or laughter - were deadened.
"Solaris," Remus said to a portrait of a jolly-looking man with red cheeks.
"Got a lady-friend, eh?" the portrait replied.
Bloody portraits, Remus thought.
Aemilia, however, did not seem to notice. Blindly, she followed Remus through the portrait hole.
"Sit down," Remus told her. He made sure she was actually sitting before he began to make the tea.
Aemilia seemed to be examining her hands with great interest. Her dark hair was falling forward over her face.
"I've only got teabags," Remus told her in an attempt to get her to think of lighter matters, "I hope that's all right."
Aemilia didn't answer.
"Aemilia?" Remus asked. He crossed the room and knelt down in front of her. "Aemilia…"
She was crying, but silently. Silvery tears traced salty tracks down her cheeks, creating tiny splashes on her robes. She made a furious attempt to wipe them away. "I'm sorry, Remus -"
"Don't be," he told her. He took out his wand. "Accio teacups!"
The teacups sailed lazily through the air. Remus hoped that too much didn't slop out into the saucer.
He handed her a cup of tea - thankfully largely intact - before taking up his own and sitting on the sofa beside her. She was still crying.
Remus did not think there was anything he could say. Instead, cautiously, he put his arm around her and drew her back to his body in a kind of one-armed hug. "Shhh, Aemilia," he said soothingly.
She sniffed and smiled through her tears. "I don't know what you must think of me," she said. "I feel so… stupid…"
"Aemilia, you're not stupid," Remus reassured her. Putting his cup of tea on a small side table, he used his other hand to turn her face to look at him. "Listen to me. It is perfectly fine to be upset. Perfectly fine."
More tears welled up in Aemilia's eyes and she buried her face in his shoulder. "It's just - " she sobbed into his robes, "it's just that - that wherever I go, or whatever I try to do - I can't get away from him. He's everywhere. Everything at work revolves around what Cornelius Fudge wants. Then, at home, till I left, everything there seemed to revolve around what Cornelius Fudge wants. Remus, I don't like my father! I hate him! I saw what he did last year! He's so - stupid, and thick-headed, and autocratic - and - and it's his fault that your life got made even worse. He tried to totally destroy Harry last year, and because of him, Sirius is stuck behind the veil in the Department of Mysteries… all because he was too damned stubborn to believe Dumbledore. And because he was too much of a coward to believe that - that You-Know-Who might be back… everything that's gone wrong is because of him!"
Remus knew that there was nothing he could do to stop her tirade. But he knew equally well that Aemilia needed someone to listen to her. Just like she had listened to him, only a few nights ago. "I'm here, Aemilia," he said simply.
If anything, Aemilia buried her head even deeper into his shoulder. "And - and I can't go anywhere, or do anything without people going - 'Oh look, there's Cornelius Fudge's daughter!' It's never, 'Oh look, there's Aemilia!' Aemilia doesn't seem to exist in most people's minds. There's only Cornelius Fudge's bloody daughter! I hate him controlling me! He tried to control - who I was, who I would be - even who I would marry, for Merlin's sake! He doesn't care about me at all - he only cares about what benefits I can bring him!"
Remus wrapped both arms around her and held her tightly. "It's all right, Aemilia," he murmured into her hair.
"And - and the ironic thing is that it's worked." Aemilia looked up. Never had Remus seen her dark eyes look deader. 'Even though I've distanced myself from him, it's still 'Cornelius Fudge's daughter - they had a fight.' He's stolen my identity, Remus. And the court case… it's the final nail in the coffin. It's not a battle of two lawyers. It's not Cornelius Fudge versus Aemilia. It's Fudge versus daughter. I can never amount to anything, no matter how much distance I put between myself and my father. I'll always just be Cornelius Fudge's daughter."
"That's not what I saw in you," Remus told her gently.
Aemilia pushed some of her dark hair back from her face with shaking hands. "What did you see in me, then?"
"Let me," Remus said, and delicately, he tucked the flyaway strands of hair behind her ears.
"Thankyou," Aemilia told him.
"Aemilia," Remus told her tenderly, "we haven't been friends for almost twenty years just because your father is Cornelius Fudge."
"I know, but -"
"Let me tell you something," Remus interrupted her gently.
Aemilia sniffed. "All right."
"This is the story of the first time I ever met someone who accepted me for who I am," Remus began, holding her close. "It was on the train on the way to Hogwarts in our first year of school." He sighed. "You know my childhood, Aemilia - you know it was hard, particularly with my mother. I remember -" he smiled a little at the recollection, "- that I was sitting in a carriage at the end of the train all by myself. I felt very out of place - everyone else seemed to know each other and everyone was talking amongst themselves. I never had friends when I was younger - my father thought it was too dangerous to let me go out. I thought my life at Hogwarts would be more of the same. And then, when I had finally given up any hope of making any friends, a girl walked into my carriage."
Aemilia nestled her head on his shoulder. "Go on," she said, her voice scarcely more than a whisper.
"This girl was very pretty," Remus continued, stroking her hair. "She had long dark hair, but it was pulled back and braided down her back. And she had these eyes - gorgeous eyes. They were dark and deep and they sparkled when she laughed." He smiled. "This girl - she plopped herself down across from me and stuck out her hand. 'Hello, I'm Aemilia,' she said to me. 'Who are you?'"
Aemilia laughed a little. "I remember how taken back you looked as clearly as if it were yesterday."
"I'd never had someone just accost me like that before, you see," Remus went on. "Everyone in my village - well, they knew what I was. Even if my parents had let me out to play with them, I would have been shunned. But then this dark-haired, dark-eyed little girl sat herself down opposite me and asked me who I was. It was the first time someone had unconditionally accepted me as a person, and not a werewolf."
Aemilia smiled a little and burrowed her head deeper into his shoulder.
"Over the next few years, we became friends, this dark-haired girl and I," Remus carried on. "Not as close friends as I would have liked - we were in different houses, you see, I in Gryffindor and she in Ravenclaw. I had my own set of friends, and she had hers. But still, we managed some time, at least once a week, to have some form of conversation, even if it was just studying for Transfiguration together."
"I remember those study sessions," Aemilia said into his shoulder. "You turned me into a fox and couldn't turn me back once, and I had to go to Madam Pomfrey. I was so angry with you."
"But you forgave me," Remus said gently. "That was the important thing, you always forgave me." He cleared his throat. "In our fifth year, this dark-haired girl and I both became prefects, and this meant that we spent a lot more time together than we had in the past. It was around this time - what with James falling head over heels for Lily and Sirius falling head over heels for nearly every girl in the school at sometime or another - that I came to realise that I felt a lot of things for this dark-haired girl. A lot of things indeed."
Aemilia smiled up at him. "And did this dark-haired girl feel these same things back?"
"Well, I wasn't sure at first," Remus replied, smiling back, "because it took me a lot of courage to ask her out. I was never sure where James had got his courage from - he asked Lily out at least four times a week. I felt like such a coward - he could do it so often and it seemed to cost him so little, and here was I, screwing up my courage for one attempt. But, about halfway through my sixth year, I finally did it."
"And what did she say?" Aemilia's dark eyes were soft.
"She laughed at me," Remus answered, "and asked me why it had taken so long to ask her." He sighed. "I loved her well, my dark-haired girl, but I kept a terrible secret from her, and, about a year later, we broke up on terrible terms."
Aemilia did not say anything, but her hand sought out his and she grasped it tightly.
"I could not bear being without her, so I tried to distract myself from her," Remus went on. "I threw myself head-first into the life of a certain sixth-year girl called Regina, whom I loved better than everything in the world. But then, when she disappeared, my heart was broken once again. So it seemed that every person I ever got close to and loved died or was hurt." He sighed again. "I spent twelve very lonely years. During this time, my dark-haired girl and I began to talk to each other again, but it was a shallow pretence. Gradually, our friendship became such a farce that all we would ever do was snipe at each other."
"I'm sorry," Aemilia murmured.
"Don't be," Remus replied softly. "It was my fault as much as yours."
Aemilia smiled tentatively at him. "Thankyou."
"But then, when everything was wrong for me, when I was at my lowest ebb, when everything and everyone I cared for seemed to be gone - my dark-haired girl drew me out of my despair," Remus whispered, brushing black hair back from her face tenderly. "And - what is most important - she forgave me once again." He took a deep breath. "Now the slate is clean and I don't know what is going to happen for me and the dark-haired girl, but what I do know is that I will always be standing right behind her, waiting to catch her if she ever feels the need to fall."
Aemilia laughed, and this time she sounded more like herself. "That is such a cliché, Remus."
"But it's true, you know," he told her, laughing too.
"Well, I'll try not to fall too hard, then," Aemilia said, a wicked smile lighting up her face. "I might be too heavy for you to catch with those scrawny arms."
"Who are you calling scrawny?" Remus said, pretending to be indignant, and began to tickle her mercilessly.
They laughed together over old times and new all through the night. Remus's cup of tea sat forgotten on the side table, and, as the sun rose the next day, it was a new tomorrow for them both.
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