Disclaimer: Yes, it's all mine, every single bit of it, and I'm telling you this from a room with padded rubber walls.

A/N: I know this is a very short chapter, but it just seemed like the right place to stop it. Enjoy Book 6! I know I certainly will. J

Chapter Twelve: Here Goes Nothing

Hermione was holding her breath again. It was a bad habit when one was working with potions; some things took longer to react than others, and if she held her breath waiting for them all to occur correctly, she'd be passing out long before many of them were done. However, no matter how many times her apprentice master tried to convince her that it was an absurd thing to do, she still did it.

She let it out with relief as the potion stilled to a pale, shimmery silver, thin curls of smoke wafting up from it. It looked a little like the Wolfsbane, though not quite as thick, and it didn't steam quite so heavily. "I think that may be it," she whispered.

She flinched violently when he spoke from immediately behind her. "We'll just have to give it to the fleabag to find out if it works."

"Do you have to call him that?" she complained, leaning forward to ladle the mixture into a goblet.

"Yes."

"Fine, then go tell the fleabag that his potion is ready."

Smirking, he swept from the dungeons and went in search of his colleague. Hermione hadn't realized it when she'd said it, but she had given him ample fuel for goads and insults. He might have to remember to thank her later. He found the DADA professor sprawled out under a tree by the lake, Miss Weasley between the circle of his legs, her back against his chest, studying from a medical text. She looked up at the same instant as Remus, sensing the approaching presence.

"Hello, Professor," she greeted politely. "Did you need something?"

"No," he answered simply. "Simply passing along a message."

"Playing errand boy now, Severus?" Remus asked with a grin. "Not something I'd ever pictured you doing."

"Miss Granger told me to 'tell the fleabag that his potion was ready'," he relayed with a positively wicked smirk. He swooped away, chuckling silently, at the indignant, insulted expression on Remus' face.

It didn't help Remus that Ginny was giggling. "It's not funny," he pouted. "She called me a fleabag. I knew she was spending too much time with him."

"Oh, calm down, Remus," she chortled. "Knowing Hermione, she was probably repeating the greasy git's words just to get him to deliver the message. Ron used to trap her in that all the time."

"You mean Severus and Ron have something in common?" He appeared absolutely delighted with the prospect; he also knew that Severus would be horrified.

"Don't you two ever grow up?" she sighed.

"Not if we can help it. Ow!" He rubbed his shoulder where she'd smacked him. "That wasn't very nice, now was it?"

"Come on," she ordered, snaking to her feet. "I want to see this new potion."

"Do they really think it'll work?" he wondered wistfully.

"I guess we'll find out."

The two walked side by side, and several minutes of warring with himself, Remus reached out and took her hand in his, gently rubbing his thumb against the inside of her palm. She smiled up at him, and they continued on in silence.

They couldn't be said to have progressed at all since the last full moon, although they hadn't backpedaled, either. She had made the silent decision not to start anything, not to push, not to hint, not to imply, desperate for him to come to some kind of realization. At this point, even finding out that he didn't want her would be preferable to hot and cold he'd been vacillating between. For his part, he was clueless. He had his fair share of dating experiences, but not with anyone who knew that he was a werewolf, and he'd never gotten close to any of them. He had absolutely no idea how to proceed, what to do, what to think. Then, too, there was the nagging voice in his brain that reminded him that she was twenty years his junior (less an issue in the wizarding world with the greatly increased lifespans, but still), she was his former student, she had been almost like family, and he knew for a fact that if anything actually were to happen, he'd have six brothers, a father, and a loving dragon of a mother killing him horrifically for touching the Littlest Weasley.

He was scared to death.

He dropped her hand when they passed some students, and she moved slightly away for the rest of the trip down into the dungeons. To his surprise, she merely gave the password and walked in to the laboratory. "You know the password?"

"Hermione gave it to me."

"Is there anything you two don't tell each other?"

"I assume so," she answered calmly, though the answer was truthfully a resounding no. Even when it was too much information, the best friends shared every bit of knowledge, emotion, gossip, and anything else that came to mind. Remus really didn't need to know that, though. It wasn't a thing that most men were prepared to understand.

"It's about time," Hermione greeted them.

Ginny raised an eyebrow at the scene that greeted them; seated on the counter, Hermione rested her chin on her hand, beyond tired, and the potions master stood very closely behind her. His hand soothingly rubbing the small of her back. Hermione shook her head very slightly. Later, she mouthed.

It had better be good, Ginny decided, barely nodding in agreement.

Severus didn't miss the silent communication, though he did miss the cause, and he reached out to pass the goblet to Remus. "You'll want to take your previous precautions with that," he informed him. "All we have, after all, is theory."

"Does it have to be the Shrieking Shack, though?" Hermione wondered. "Couldn't we lock him up here in the dungeons so we could watch with a mirror to see how the potion reacts?"

Remus winced, but Ginny was well used to the purely academic side of Hermione. It was sometimes a little insensitive, but she embraced knowledge so fully that she didn't always seem to realize when she was being callous. "If you wish," he murmured.

Ginny squeezed his hand briefly before letting it go again. "What about Callum?"

"We'd like to test it just on Remus, first," Snape replied. "Keep the boy on the Wolfsbane as a form on control."

Ginny nodded; that she understood. "Speaking of which, I need to go talk to him. Poppy wants me in the infirmary tonight; fights always break out after the Halloween feast." She winked at the other girl, who smiled. "Congratulations if it works, and even if it doesn't. It's still a step."

"Followed by-"

"Hush."

Hermione laughed and shook her head at her friend. They'd talked extensively about everything that was going on, and her cynicism occasionally got at the girl's frayed nerves. "See you at dinner?"

"Sure." Ginny inclined her head to the potions masters and left, Remus' eyes following her from the lab.

A long silence followed her departure. "So," Hermione said finally, clearing her throat. "Are you going to drink that or aren't you?"

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Callum stretched out on a thick rug he'd put in his room for transformations. Remus had promised that the next time there was a full moon with no students at the school, they could go out to the Forbidden Forest. The wolf had been sharing instinctual images with him, the thrill of a hunt, of the pack song, and he wanted to taste it, wanted to run and stretch his legs for the first time since he'd been bitten. It was almost sunset, and Ginny had already explained to him that he would need to stay there for tonight. It was the third night, thank Merlin, although the previous two nights hadn't been too bad. But, Heidi had said she might be able to come by on All Saint's Day, and he was looking forward to the possibility.

He curled up, staring at the ceiling, and waited.

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Remus drank down the potion and paced the walls of the dungeon cell he'd been locked into. He didn't like cages, small spaces, and he knew it was a reflection of the beast, but it still bothered. High on the wall, a single mirror provided the only decoration in the room, and he knew that Hermione and Severus were watching from the connected mirror in the lab. There were no windows, but he could feel the moon inching slowly above the horizon. Soon, the wolf would be clawing its way out.

He felt it begin and gave into the pain, dragging himself up onto his paws when it was done. Something was wrong, he realized. He was there, in the back of his own mind, but the wolf was furious, maddened past anything else. It wasn't the simple fury of being denied freedom, it was something new, something worse. His heart sank.

The potion hadn't worked.

He had no way to control the beast.

He assumed that something in the potion was enraging the creature, and he could feel pain through his entire body, something utterly repellant. Lost in the agony, Remus tumbled back into nothing but a spectator.

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"What's the matter, baby, you scared?" the boy crooned.

She shook her head, trembling head to toe. "What if someone comes?" she hissed.

"They're all the Halloween Feast," he soothed, stroking her hair. "No one's going to come. No one's going to know."

"All right," she agreed reluctantly.

He pulled out his wand and pointed it at the door of the abandoned dungeon room, formerly a classroom. "Alohomora." The lock slid open and he pushed at the door, smiling at her reassuringly.

She screamed as she met the eyes of a fully grown, fully wild werewolf.

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"SEVERUS!"

At Hermione's shriek, the man raced back from his supply cabinet, staring over her shoulder into the mirror. The room was empty, the door standing open. "How-" His mind raced. "Students. I have to tell Albus. We have to keep all the students in the Great Hall."

The two raced from the room, flat out sprinting through the halls, and their stomachs knotted in fear when they heard the second worst sound they could possibly hope to hear that night: laughter. Ringing through the halls, conversations echoing and magnifying.

The students had been released from the Feast.