Chapter 15

Remus sat at the table in the sitting room with the second volume of Teren de Vânătoare lay unheeded in front of him. Despite the deadline that was approaching, he had been unable to force himself to finish reading. Every sentence seemed to contain the words soţie adulteră, as his mind rewrote the text to include the fears that were running through both his conscious and unconscious mind.

The worst of it was that he couldn't make her tell him the truth. As he watched her crooning softly into the ear of her dog, he clenched his teeth in anger. He wanted to drag the truth out of her. Why had she done this to him? If she hadn't truly loved him then why stay? Why lie to him? Had she thought he would turn violent like her father? Remus had never shown her the least hint of violence. Had she been using him for some reason? Remus clenched his eyes shut and tried to gather his wits. He could not lose control now. He simply had to see this through. In fact, Edwina couldn't tell him anything and they would both have to live with that.

He closed the book, pushing it away from him as he turned to look at her once more. The dog was blissfully rolling around on the threadbare rug as Edwina rubbed the dog's belly. Remus squinted at the dark lines of the design on the rug. As the last male Lupin, Remus had never thought that there would ever be another child living in the cottage, but in another seven months there should be a new baby playing on the old rug where he and Rom had learnt to crawl more than three decades ago.

So there was no hope for it. He would have to take on that muggle job after all. It paid well for unskilled muggle labour and nothing would be reported to Inland Revenue, therefore nothing to the Ministry either. He had only barely earned enough for subsistence before his marriage, but it wouldn't be nearly enough to raise a child. The small sum he earned by ghost writing for Tomasso Vismara would hardly buy all the things that a baby would need. Even the rare opportunities that Birgitta sent his way to review papers for Københavns Magiskartikelbasen would not bring in more than twenty galleons in a year. In order to legally sell to the wizarding public, Edwina would have to procure a Herbarium and Glasshouse License and submit to Ministry regulation. This would mean that she could no longer grow for Severus' potions and therefore the Order, so there was no hope for extending the income from Edwina's conservatory until there was no longer any need for secrecy.

Remus stood and reached into his left front pocket for his tobacco tin. It wasn't there. He looked around the room and saw with surprise that he had left it on the mantelpiece. He must have left it there the night before. He crossed the room to pick it up, stepping carefully around where Edwina and Blackie were playing.

"What time is it?"

Remus turned around and glanced at the various positions of the intertwined metal bands of the moon clock on the table. "Nearly half past seven."

"I thought so. I had better go move the Wentwistle compost over."

Remus watched as Edwina stood and pulled from her pocket a large silver hair slide. He leaned against the mantle packing the clay pipe tightly and watched her carefully bind her hair in preparation for her work. He said nothing as she smiled nervously at him. After she realised that he was not going to say or do anything further, Edwina walked from the room with Blackie faithfully following behind.

Remus lit his pipe and began to pace the floor. The anger and frustration that had been building for a week had finally grown to the point that he could no longer contain it. After the healers had once again cast diagnostic spells that had done nothing to resolve the mystery, Remus had brought Edwina back to Hatishall Cottage. He had been trying to give her some privacy and time to sort out what she wanted to do, but there had been little progress. They had been living together in an awkward truce.

Of course there was still no question what he wanted. He wanted her and was willing to pay the price to keep her, which was likely to mean his acceptance of both what she had done and what had been done to her. But as Remus continued to walk the floor of the sitting room, he felt the rage exploding in his head and an irrational desire to destroy something, destroy anything. Suddenly he turned on his heel and threw out his wand hand toward one row of bookcases. The books immediately flew into the air and swirled around him as he swept his wand in a large circle around his head. Then he shoved his wand outward towards a china bowl that was on the old mahogany table. The bowl burst into four large pieces in a satisfyingly loud pop before the books fell with a thundering crash. But as Remus stood in the middle of a pile of very old, musty books with his wand arm still extended to begin another incantation; he felt a sharp burning sensation on his back. He immediately dropped his arm and looked around the room with a panicked expression. He stumbled backwards and leaned against the green leather chair.

Which part of himself had tried to draw out the taină? He couldn't have been about to do that, not after all this time. As he stood propped against the chair, Remus began sending the books back to the shelf one at a time with his wand. He closed his eyes and continued to gesture with his wand from the floor to the bookcase, sending books flying to the shelves as he tried to focus on stăpânire. His fingers were aching and he could feel the tips of his ears itching as he realised that he could now hear the door to the conservatory bang. Edwina was running back to the cottage.

Remus dropped his arm and concentrated all of his energy on stăpânire and on pushing the taină deep, deep down. He focused on listening for Edwina and was relieved to hear that as she got closer, her footsteps did not get louder. It was buried again, but only just in time.

"What happened? Are you alright? I heard a horrible crashing sound."

Remus opened his eyes and turned around to face her. "Yes, everything is fine. I'm sorry that I worried you." He turned slightly so he could return to sending the books back onto the shelves. "Did you finish your work?"

"Not completely. Are you sure you are alright?" Edwina moved closer to where he was standing, but he stepped back quickly.

"Yes. Did you want to eat soon?"

"What happened, Remus?"

"I would rather not discuss it, Edwina."

Edwina looked at him and pressed her lips together angrily. "There seems to be a lot that you don't want to discuss. We have hardly talked about anything real since that first day you brought me here."

"What did you want to talk about, Edwina?"

"Why are you so angry? I'm the one whose memory was wiped clean. I'm the one who is pregnant. It is a lot to take in all at once, but I don't get a choice. I just have to accept it, don't I? I mean, I must have wanted this baby before, but I'm not sure I am ready to have a baby or that I want your baby. I'm sure I loved you and we were happy and everything was lovely, but it doesn't really matter because everything has changed, hasn't it? I liked you so much before, but this week I'm just not sure. You're just so distant and weird and unapproachable. You seem like you hate me one minute and then the next you act like I'm too good to touch. I don't know how much longer I can take any of this."

Remus gestured angrily with his wand, so that a large brown book hurdled towards the bookcase and hit the shelf with a loud thwack. However when he spoke his voice was almost calm, "I know that this is hard for you." He turned around so that he was facing Edwina and continued softly with only a slight tremor in his voice, "I do know that Edwina. But I also have real reasons for being angry. It isn't just one or the other of us that is suffering."

"What is upsetting you?"

"I have already talked to you about some of it, Edwina. It is not easy to lose someone so precious to me without any idea if I can get you back. I know that you don't know if you want to be with me. That is entirely understandable, but it doesn't change my feelings for you."

"Something is making you angry though. I can tell because you look at me like you hate me sometimes. I can see you looking at me."

Remus spoke through tightly clenched teeth, "I don't hate you, Winnie. I don't think that I could ever hate you."

"Yes, you love me. I've heard you say so, but I can't suss you out. Why do you love me? If we are to have any future relationship there has to be something there. We have to have more than just a baby to keep us together. Nothing seems real. We didn't just sit around the house and avoid each other before, did we? Did we have friends? Did we go places? Did we spend nights talking? Did we have pet names or special jokes? What was our relationship like, Remus? How are we going to remake it? I don't understand."

"Do you expect me to treat you like before? Do you want me to pretend that nothing has changed and just return to how it was before, Winnie? Because I don't see how we can do that. Yes, we've got to begin again, but how that's going to work is more than I can predict. I have no bloody idea how to start. I wish you would tell me, Winnie. Tell me what you are thinking or what you want."

Remus took another step away from Edwina and tried to catch his breath. Never before had they argued like this. It had always worried him how Edwina kept her feelings hidden at times. He always suspected that her eagerness to please had led her to suppress her own desires, which he had never wanted. But since they had never done this, he had no idea what to expect from her.

"Well you know me, but I don't really know you. All I know is who you were at school and this last week. I liked you at Hogwarts, but you scare me now."

"I scare you? I would never hurt you, Winnie. I promise you." Remus stepped closer to where Edwina was standing and reached out his hand to touch her shoulder.

Edwina did not look up at him. She had seen the feral expression on his face when she had entered the room, so she was not so sure how safe he really was.

Remus wearily rubbed the back of his hand along his forehead and sighed. "I don't know how we are going to handle a baby either, Winnie. This was not planned, so I have to figure out how we are going to make this happen. We will sort this out, but we will need to work together and I don't think it will be easy."

"Do you think..." Edwina bit her lip and allowed herself to look up at him. "Did I want a baby before?"

"Yes. You had told me several times how much you wanted a child."

"Do you...did you want a child?"

"Yes, but I was worried about how hard it might be for you, Winnie."

"That is all you were worried about?"

"No. There have not been many werewolves who have had children with non-werewolves after The Bite."

"Oh! You mean the baby could be a werewolf or something?"

"That belief is superstition, not fact. In truth there are several cases of unusual birth defects when both parents were werewolves who mated during the full moon, but I have not found any evidence that wizard werewolves and fully human witches would have anything other than a normal wizarding child."

"But you don't know."

"No, I don't know."

"Then wasn't it irresponsible and risky to have gotten pregnant? What if our child is a werewolf or has fur?"

Remus, who had been so concerned about this exact issue that he had spent some of their very limited funds to purchase twenty ampoules of contraceptive for Edwina and had convinced a very unwilling Sirius to perform the most effective infertility curse they knew on him every week of his short marriage, had no ready answer to her question. "You had laxorica root, Edwina."

"Oh."

"We were trying to prevent pregnancy, alright? We weren't just ignoring all the risks." Remus chose his words very carefully, so he would not have to lie to her. It was possible that she had purposely not been taking the laxorica so that she would get pregnant. She had been too willing to accept the risks before. "Perhaps Ellison's sold us an old supply."

"Perhaps."

"I'm sorry Edwina. I don't have any answers."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I have found a job, which I will start soon."

"And us? What is going to happen?"

"Perhaps we need to start at the beginning. Reintroduce ourselves to each other."

"You already know all about me."

"I know what you told me before, but that doesn't mean I know everything."

"What does that stupid thing say the time is? Is it really 8:10?"

Remus turned to read the bands of the slowly spinning moon clock. "No, 8:30."

"Oh! I have to go put the solatia lunaris seedlings in their new pots or they will be dead within the hour!"

Edwina turned and ran quickly from the room, leaving Remus staring after her.