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A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who's reviewing. It makes me so very happy. To those of you who have been reading and not reviewing, I'm very glad you're reading, but please review. You can imagine me making pathetic puppy eyes at you, if it'll make it easier. Even if it's just something simple, like, hey I read it, I'd really like that. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and appreciated. J

Chapter Eight: Midst of the Storm

Callum had yet to sleep through an entire night. It was now halfway into August and still he woke up every night, shaking and sweating, just short of screaming. That, at least, he'd managed to learn to control. He sat up in his bed now, staring around him, nostrils flaring at the wolf within him re-established his location. He was in his room, in his bed. He could smell the mostly dead embers smoking dully in the hearth, hear the music still playing from the small harp on his nightstand. The music hadn't helped for long, and he didn't know why.

What he did know, however, was that he didn't want to wake Remus. He knew the man was sleeping, and felt guilty over how rare an occurrence that had become since his arrival. But. He also didn't want to be alone. He wasn't entirely sure where that need had come from, that desperate fear of being alone. He had spent most of his childhood alone, for one reason or another; Heidi had usually been at school or with her friends, often his friends hadn't been able to come visit, his parents had had better things to do with their time, and they certainly weren't going to allow the house elves to play with him.

He slid out of bed and padded silently out of their chambers, listening carefully to make sure that Remus didn't stir. Remus had wolf senses, true, and had learned to use them very well during his life, but he was also tired, and Callum was coming to learn more and more about the demon inside. Safely out in the hall, he breathed a sigh of relief and headed towards the infirmary. Ginny had given him the password to her rooms a few weeks before, when she'd come back from a long study session with Madam Pomfrey to find him dozing outside her door. He knew she was usually up fairly late, though he didn't know why.

"Bedbug," he announced quietly, just in case she was asleep. The statue of the sphinx blinked lazily at him, then nudged the door with her tail, making it swing open. He tiptoed in, smiling at the beautiful music that surrounded him once he emerged from the doorway's silencing charm. Ginny sat in front of a dark piano pushed against one wall, her eyes half closed with pure, relaxed pleasure as her slender fingers moved over the keys.

The beast growled deep in his mind, but strangely, it seemed to be one of contentment, subsiding and leaving his mind almost blissfully clear of the darker, animal thoughts. He stood across the room, just listening, feeling the peace wrap around his very soul.

"Couldn't sleep?" Ginny asked, without opening her eyes or ceasing her playing.

"How do you always know when I'm here?" he complained, coming to sit next to her on the bench.

"I just do," she shrugged. She laughed at the indignant look on his face. "All right. Do you remember my twin brothers, Fred and George? The pranksters I've told you so many stories about?" When he nodded, she smiled. "You can't grow up in a house with those two and not learn to recognize when there's someone else in the room. It's called simple self-preservation."

He nodded again, and they sat in companionable silence until the song ended. "Why doesn't the music we play for me at night make me feel like that does?" he wondered.

"The music you play at night is made by magic," she answered easily. "It hasn't a soul, to it, no emotion, no passion, absolutely nothing to make it comforting rather than empty. Music needs that." She stretched her fingers and began another song, this one sad and haunting. It was punctuated by the shushing sweep of rain and the deep, booming rumble of thunder, occasionally shattered by a sharp crack of lightning.

He closed his eyes and leaned against her, letting the music take him where it would. He didn't think he would mind if it failed to bring him back. Deep within his mind, the wolf howled, but it was not a cry of control, or of fury. His instinct gave him the name: pack song. Wolves hunted and lived in packs, and the wolf within him, the pure animal caught in the perpendicular, was crying out for a pack. Remus and Ginny are our pack, he told it, never mind that Ginny wasn't a wolf. She was pack enough for him. He shivered when the song was over. "What's that one called?" he whispered.

She glanced down at him, her warm brown eyes unreadable. "Did you like it?" she asked.

"Very much. We both did."

She smiled at his inclusion of the beast; sometimes she wondered if that was the proper way to go about it, making a truce with the creature. It wasn't, after all, actually separate, no matter how much one might want it to be. "It's called 'Ah, My Love, the Moon'," she told him quietly. His eyes widened as he stared at her. "It was written by a werewolf during the eighteenth century. Some people found it in his things when they stumbled across his body, but no one ever knew who he was."

Callum's gaze wandered over to the window, watching the white flashes streak across the dark sky. Before his first transformation, Remus had likened it to standing outside in the middle of a storm. Ginny's eyes followed his, but he was surprised to find her smiling.

"It's a gorgeous storm," she murmured.

"It's a storm. Storm's are dangerous."

"So is the sun if you get too much of it," she answered. She looked down at him thoughtfully. "Perhaps you've just never seen one the right way," she mused.

"What do you mean?"

"Come on," she said instead, sliding off the bench and taking his hand. "I'll show you."

Mystified, he let her lead him out of the rooms and through the silent castle, out to the main entrance of Hogwarts. She pushed open one of the doors and pulled him to stand immediately in front of her, keeping her hands on his shoulders. "Don't think," she leaned down to whisper in his ear. "Just be."

He took a deep breath. The wind blew all around them, tugging at his pajamas, his curls, wrapping around him before sliding away. The rain fell in billowing sheets before him, the wind casting some of the spray into his face, but the overhang of the doors protecting him from most of it. Gray waves rose and fell through the air, undulating before they hit the earth in splashes, forming puddles that steadily grew in size and depth. Now, so close to it, he could feel the thunder in his very bones, echoing in the stone beneath his bare feet. The lighting was so bright it hurt his eyes, so close he could feel the hairs on his arms raise. He knew instinctively he was safe, that Ginny would not have brought him out here if he could get hurt.

His nostrils flared and he could smell the scent of the rain, the tangy, slightly unpleasant smell of ozone. He could almost taste the crispness of the air when the lightning flashed through it. The wolf was feeding him as much information, as much pure sensation, as the boy, and he savored that harmony. For the first time since he had been bitten, he felt like he was in control, not because he had wrested it from the wolf, but because they had silently agreed that it lay somewhere between them. He felt Ginny's grip tighten slightly on his shoulder, and sniffed the air again. Someone was there, behind them, a scent he recognized and a presence he could identify without any thought. "Remus," he said, turning around to look.

With a wry grin, Remus came closer to the door, standing behind them both and glancing out at the weather. "I thought we'd agreed that you were going to let me know when you left."

"I didn't want to wake you up," he explained reasonably.

"But you didn't mind waking Ginny up?"

"It's hard to wake up someone who isn't asleep," she pointed out, and he looked directly at her, realizing the truth of it.

And quickly looked away. For some bizarre reason, both she and Hermione had worn their old school uniforms today, and it had made for some very uncomfortable thoughts. From the sour look on Severus' face at dinner, which he'd finally persuaded the boy to start attending, he gathered the Potions Master hadn't exactly been thrilled either. Standing behind Callum, her long red hair and pleated grey skirt whipped by the wind, she looked liked anything but a student, despite having only graduated two and a half months previous. "Why are you out here, of all places?" he asked, congratulating himself on breaking a silence without saying something inane.

"We're watching the storm," Callum replied, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

"Watching the storm," Remus repeated. Well, so much for not sounding stupid. He opened his mouth, but his young charge shook his head.

"Don't think," he instructed, echoing Ginny's earlier words. "Just be."

Bemused, Remus glanced at Ginny, who had already turned back to her contemplation of nature's fury. He had never really been all that fond on storms. Nature held a great deal of powerful magic, much of it coming out in storms, and the primal energies tended to bring the wolf more to the foreground. He regarded Callum thoughtfully, not missing the expression of wonder and awe on the boy's face, wondering what was going on internally.

"You're thinking too much," Ginny murmured, not looking at him. "Just let it go."

"How?" he whispered back.

"Stop fighting him," she answered simply, and he knew what she meant. "Just let him breathe."

He was extremely reluctant, but he found Callum watching him expectantly, and he couldn't help but feel the need to try. Closing his eyes, Remus took a deep breath, hesitantly allowing all of his senses to partake in it. For a moment, he was almost overwhelmed by the satisfaction the beast took in the storm. It was something that nature cowered from, but embraced. The human part of his mind only looked at the damage storms like this caused; houses were damaged, flooding occurred, fires could start from the lightning…people died in freak accidents, it was an inconvenience. He realized that the wolf knew better. The storm was necessary. It brought the rain, brought the spark of life and magic back into a parched area. It flooded out the lowlands, weeding out those who had placed or built their homes foolishly, keeping only those with the better survival instinct to pass it on to their young. The fires destroyed the build-up in forest floors, clearing the way for new, healthier life to grow. The wolf knew, and the wolf respected it.

He opened his eyes in wonder, staring out at the storm just beyond the overhang, and both Ginny and Callum smiled at him. "You see?" she breathed into his ear. "Nothing to be afraid of."

The scent of vanilla and cinnamon washing over him made him not so sure she was right in that.

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They stayed watching the storm for almost half an hour, and though Callum protested when Remus said it was time to go to bed, the truth was he was starting to feel a little tired. They walked together back to Remus' chambers, Callum in the middle holding on to both of their hands. They settled him into his bed and he soon fell asleep, a contented smile on his face, still hearing the rain just hitting the outside walls.

Ginny and Remus went out into the living room, and she toed off her Mary-Janes before curling up on the couch. Remus was having a hard time looking at her. Her white shirt was un-tucked and partially un-buttoned, the sleeves rolled up and the red and gold Gryffindor tie loose, but that only served to make the image a little more wrong. He knew, though, that he couldn't blame it entirely on the uniform. He'd been reacting to her this way since that kiss, which had been neither repeated nor addressed.

"Tea?" he offered.

"Yes, thank you."

He padded into the tiny, mostly useless kitchen and made them some tea, taking the time to pour it mugs (he hated the traditional delicate cups, they reminded him far too much of Divination) before having to go out and face her again. She accepted the mug from him with a murmured thank you and wrapped her hands around it to warm them, blowing gently on the hot liquid.

"You look like hell," she commented abruptly.

He blinked owlishly. "Beg pardon?"

"I'm serious, Remus, you need to get some sleep. Why don't you ever try and rest during the day?"

"I don't want Callum to get bored, or feel guilty," he replied.

"He already feels guilty, and if you're truly worried about him being bored, send him to me," she answered, mildly amused. "He told me that he had wanted to be a healer; I can start teaching him some of the simple things. Merlin knows, it would be helpful review; my first level examination is coming up at the end of the month."

"You're sure you don't mind?" he asked hesitantly, well aware of how wonderful it would be to just sleep.

"I wouldn't have offered if I minded." She calmly took a sip from her tea. They sat in an only slightly awkward silence, each lost in a different world. Ginny set her mug down on the floor and leaned her head back against the couch, closing her eyes. She willed all the tension from her body and just listened to the storm, occasionally punctuated by the dancing crackle of the fire that absorbed Remus' attention. Her hands cradled loosely in her lap, she gradually drifted off.

Remus smiled and leaned back further in his chair, taking advantage of the opportunity to watch her. He had expected her to look younger when she slept, but she didn't. The seeming openness that lit up her features while awake was gone, replaced with a pained wariness that tugged at his heart. Peaceful, but resigned. He wondered where that resignation came from, if it had come from Tom Riddle's possession of her or simply come as a natural result of being so heavily involved in a war. She had been one of the best D.A. members, taking over Harry's position as leader when he'd graduated, although Voldemort was gone. It had always bemused him a little to see the mischievous, ebullient Ginny Weasley training them so fiercely.

Remembering his own lesson of the night, he took a deep breath and allowed the wolf to come slightly forward, to assess the sleeping girl with its own senses. Her smell was already imprinted in his brain, in his soul, but he was still surprised at all the things the wolf noticed. Her fingers twitched while she slept, almost seeming to form something in the empty air. Her breathing was deep and even, but every now and then, it hitched a little, as if she had to remind herself not to let herself go completely. He was still looking at her with the wolf's eyes when he saw her start trembling.

Concerned, he moved over to sit next to her on the couch, watching closely. He didn't think she was cold, but perhaps…he gently touched her hands and jerked back; they were like ice.

"No," she whispered deep in her throat, not allowing the word to emerge fully formed. Her eyes squeezed tighter shut, and she turned her face deeper into the old, soft leather of the couch.

"Ginny?" he asked cautiously. "Are you all right?"

With a strangled gasp, she pitched forward and would have fallen off the couch had Remus not caught her. She stared around her with panicked eyes, closing them against the unfamiliar surroundings, and suddenly became aware of arms around her. She took one deep breath, then another, forcing her breathing to calm, and realized who it was. Ginny listened to his breathing, used that to pull her out of the grips of the dream, and when she was still again, she opened her eyes.

He watched the entire process, a little awed by her control. It was the same thing he had learned to do, to repossess yourself after waking up, but it had taken him years. It took her years, too, probably, he realized. They'd started her first year at Hogwarts. He wondered how she had ever survived in the dormitory like that. "Are you all right?" he asked quietly, and she nodded.

"I will be," she answered breathily. "Just give me a moment."

"Was it Riddle?" The wolf snarled in the back of his mind.

"Isn't it always?" she replied, lips quirking in a wry smile. She picked up her cold tea and performed a warming charm on it, settling back into position on the couch. "Thank you for catching me."

He nodded and debated about returning to the armchair. In the end, he simply stayed where he was. "Are they always that bad?"

"That bad?" she repeated, genuinely surprised. "That was hardly anything, really, not to sound like I'm bragging. I woke up too soon."

His hazel eyes widened and he openly stared at her. "How are you so alive during the day?" he whispered.

"You are, too," she pointed out. "Well, usually, anyway."

"I'm twice your age and have been hiding the effects of my lycanthropy since I was six."

"And I've been hiding things from my brothers since I was old enough to walk," she shrugged. "It's what you're trying to teach Callum, isn't it?"

"Well, yes, in a way, but-"

"But he'll never exactly be the cheerful little Hufflepuff," she finished for him, and they both grinned at the thought. "He'll learn, though," she added. "He's starting to, at any rate."

"When did you get so wise," he laughed, and she smiled.

"Can I blame it on hanging out too much with Hermione over the years?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. That brought another chuckle from him and she contentedly sipped her tea. They trailed off into silence, but it wasn't as heavy this time. Ginny set her mug down again and stretched out, slipping on her shoes. "I should get to bed," she explained when he looked questioningly at her. "Thank you for the tea."

"Anytime, you know that." He stood and walked her to the door.

"Good night, Remus."

"Good night, Ginny."

She kissed his cheek, and he watched her until she disappeared around a dark corner, still able to hear her quiet footsteps ringing in the stillness. "Dream sweet," he whispered.