I would like to thank my kind, loyal reviewer Bri007. It is so nice to know that someone is enjoying my story!

Also, once again: I am not JK Rowling, nor am I associated in anyway with Bloomsbury or Scholastic. Everything that is written herein is purely for pleasure and not for profit.

Chapter 16

Remus could see himself clearly, kneeling in front of the fireplace, refastening the nearly broken buckle of his brown shoes. He told himself as he watched that those shoes probably only had another few weeks left in them. He saw himself look around the sitting room of Hatishall Cottage and frowned at how unappealing he looked with his prematurely greying hair sticking to a slightly sweaty forehead and overly thin hands that were now brushing ash from a very old robe.

"Edwina?" He called out tentatively and looked behind him at the small brass familia ball on the mantle. She was home, so he called out once more, "Edwina?"

He didn't know why he felt so nervous. She could easily be out in the conservatory. He walked out of the sitting room and down the hall to the bedroom. He paused to lay his cloak on the chair by the bed and then walked down the hall to kitchen. Suddenly he knew that it was the werewolf's senses that were telling him that something didn't smell right. Something smelt of fear and aggression. In fact, he realised that he was smelling both her and Blackie's fear. That could not be good.

Now thoroughly alarmed, he held up his wand and spoke two words urgently and waited. After a moment he felt a tug and followed his wand in the direction of the conservatory. He ripped open the door of the kitchen and ran across the stone path toward the storehouse and the small conservatory. The door to the glasshouse flew open at his command and he could immediately see Blackie was guarding something near the far wall of the small building. With a harsh cry that hadn't been aware he had made, he leapt over the short table near the door and knelt down by the crumpled heap on the black stone floor.

Now Remus could feel himself thinking, "Nothing, nothing, nothing. They will not tell me a bleeding thing." He had to wait as they administered the antidote and monitored her status. It might be an hour before he was allowed to know.

Her face had been so white and he had not felt any pulse, so he had feared the worst. But then he had heard her shallow rasping breath. Blackie had started howling just as Remus had begun to apparate with Edwina, and the newly reawakened taină had urged him to throw back his head and join in the lamentation. Now, as he sat on the uncomfortable chair in the third floor hall, he could still feel feral urges jostling inside his head for primacy. There was no hope for banishing the wolf now; he had to hope for just basic control.

He knew that they thought he had done something to her. He wanted to make them understand, but there was nothing he could do. He was no more welcome in Healer Allonby's surgery than he was anywhere else. The dingy hallway, populated with sleeping portraits, was good enough for a filthy werewolf. When the Healer had first examined her and proclaimed that Edwina had somehow ingested or been exposed to agriotita leaves, he had suggested to the Healer that one of her plants could be the culprit. However, the Healer had assured him that it would require an Epidex license to grow agriotita, so she could not have been growing it since she only had the Simplex.

The accusations behind the Healer's questions had not been immediately obvious to him. His mind could not process the situation and it was taking all of his energy just to understand what was being said to him. But then he remembered the gash on her arm that he had seen when he lifted her and he knew. It was his fault that she had nearly died. She had seen him using the skylos balm on his arm. She did not know that it was for animals and part-humans only, that even he got quite ill if he used the skylos balm at any time but the three days following the moon.

The look of complete disgust on the healer's face when the possibility of poisoning from skylos balm was mentioned even shocked Remus as he watched it happen. Remus was far too used to prejudice, but such an extreme reaction from a healer was strange. He knew that he could not afford to antagonise the man who might save Edwina's life, no matter how hard it was to sit and do nothing, so he accepted the restrictions placed on his involvement in Edwina's treatment.

Now Remus saw himself holding a light pink piece of parchment in his hands as he stood frozen with shock by Lunessa's cage. Even as he watched, Remus felt his heart pounding and another wave of panic washing over him. He was supposed to collect her at 2 and it was only 11:30. How could she already have left? Had he been supposed to collect her earlier and had simply misunderstood the time? She wouldn't have got angry and left for that reason. He tried to force himself to read the entire note, but getting past the first few lines took all of his concentration. She was sorry. She did not know what she wanted, but she had to think of the baby first. What was that supposed to mean? She would contact him soon. How soon? She wasn't even telling him where she was going. How was he supposed to trust that she was safe? None of it made sense. What had happened to make her suddenly flee from him now? What had Allonby told her that made her feel the baby was in danger from him? That minging old sod had mistrusted him on sight, which had deepened into hatred when he learnt of the lycanthropy. As Remus watched himself collapse with a low moan to the floor, pink parchment clutched in one tight fist, he reminded himself that there was still one full bottle of muggle brandy left. When that was finished, he would make himself stay with Sirius.

Remus stared down into the old, tarnished pensieve jar and sighed. The memories were intact, so he could replace the lid and put the jar in the cupboard for now. Perhaps with those particular memories gone, now he could sleep. After three nights with no sleep and four days of near constant drunkenness, he had to do something. Living like this would destroy him even worse than his monumental binge those weeks in Targu Secuiesc after Grimelda had left him. If only Sirius would leave him alone then he could allow himself just one more day with the bottle.