Disclaimer: Still not mine. If it was, Book Six would have come out a whole lot differently.
A/N: Okay, so this is the chapter that never ends. Happy Full Moon, and please review! I'll give you imaginary cookies and milk if you give me reviews, and then we'll all be happy.
Chapter Fifteen: Bite Me
"Help me," a voice pleaded desperately.
"Ginny, she said no."
"Remus!"
The man glanced over the stack of fifth year essays he was grading, his hazel eyes mild. "Poppy would have my hide, and you know that."
Ginny huffed and sank back down into the pillows, her fingers twitching restlessly against the bed sheets. It had been a week since she'd first awoken, and she was going slowly crazy. Too weak yet to do anything on her own, though she had finally managed to feed herself without too much difficulty, she was forced to stay in the loathsome bed in the loathsome infirmary getting nothing but loathsome rest. Needless to say, she had been in better moods in her life.
Remus had mostly recovered, despite a small setback with the full moon the week before, and he regarded her plight with sympathetic amusement. Even without the wolf singing in her blood, he knew she was not the sort to sit around doing nothing. He reached over to the bedside table and handed her a Chocolate Frog, which she took with an extremely disgruntled expression. "She said she'd release you to your own rooms tomorrow afternoon," he soothed. "You'll at least be able to play your piano."
"Just outside," she begged. "Someone could carry me, and we could just sit by the lake. Not strenuous, not stressful at all, and not capable of exacerbating my injuries."
"True. And then she'd kill me as soon as I set foot back in here for aiding and abetting."
"Also true." She sighed, the light fading in her amber eyes.
Thoughtfully, he watched her fidget over the tops of his parchments. A quick glance told him that Poppy was in her office with the door locked, taking advantage of everyone being at lunch to have a half hour of rest uninterrupted by injuries. His Marauder's mind was working, flitting from problem to problem and working out solutions. "Thirty minutes," he said finally.
She looked back at him, almost not daring to hope. "Say what?"
"I can give you thirty minutes outside," he told her firmly. "No more, or Poppy will know."
"Thank you!" she cried, grabbing his hand and kissing it fervently. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!"
"Ssh," he whispered, his shoulders shaking with laughter. "She'll hear you." Hiding the essays under her bed, he carefully scooped her up into his arms, feeling his muscles strain with a slight protest. She didn't weigh all that much, especially not after so long a time unconscious, but he was still recovering himself.
Draping her arms comfortably around his neck, she laid her head on his shoulder as he walked out of the hospital wing, keeping an eye out for anyone who might tattle to the mediwitch. They passed no one, and very soon, Ginny was reveling in the first fresh air she'd had in five weeks. Sure, the infirmary windows were open in the nicer weather, but it just wasn't the same. Remus laughed at her, out of obligation of course, but he understood.
Remus drew near the lake, and Ginny directed him to a little clearing within a stand of willows, neatly hidden from the view of anyone who might look for them. They settled down on the thick grass, and when the man made to move her from his lap, she held squeezed his neck in silent warning.
He let her stay in his lap.
"We really should talk about this," he added.
She was silent for a moment, listening to the waters of the lake shush softly against the bank. "All right," she agreed quietly.
"I'm too old for you," he began, and she made a face.
"The Headmaster is seventy six years older than Professor McGonagall," she refuted. "You're only twenty years older than me."
"Twenty-one."
"Yes, because that one year makes all the difference in the world."
He frowned at her, wanting to see her face, but it was hidden behind a veil of red hair. "I'm being serious, Ginny. I'm too old for you." His hand rose to rub her back in slow circles. "I've lived and fought through two wars, Ginny, and having lived through one yourself, you know how that ages people. And I'm realistically not going to live to the full potential of a wizard." He braced himself for the protest he always got when he told people that, but she made no sound, only a slight movement in the curtain of hair indicating that she had turned towards him a little bit. "The lycanthropy is slowly killing me," he told her, voice low. "The body isn't meant to be forced into a change like that, isn't meant to be constantly fighting itself. It's taken literally years off of my life. You'd be a girl saddled with a much older man, then a very young widow. I can't allow that to happen.
"I love you, Ginny, I admit that, but I cannot simply allow you to ruin your life like this. You have too much potential, have too much life to waste it. You are so eminently lovable. You'll always have someone, and you'll be able to forget about me." He was speaking faster now, the words rushing over themselves as he fought to get them out. "And I can't trust the wolf," he whispered. "I know you have your Animagus form, but it's not the same, nowhere near the same. I'm a Dark creature, Ginny, I'm in textbooks as a thing to avoid! I can't risk another episode like five weeks ago, not with someone I love. Gods, Ginny, I could have killed you, or bitten you. You could have been dead, infected, or crippled and disfigured for life. I couldn't live with myself if anything happened to you."
The need to see her face became too great and he gently pushed her hair back, heart clenching at the absolute lack of expression. "Ginny…"
Silently, she shifted out of his lap and sat in the grass a few feet away, her entire body trembling with the effort. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the slender, curving trunk of a willow.
"Ginny."
"I think you should go."
"I can't do that."
"You're desperate to do that," she corrected harshly, not opening her eyes. "Just go."
"And just how do you plan to get back?' he demanded, starting to get a little angry. He'd told her the truth; couldn't she see that?
"Hermione will come get me," she answered dismissively.
"And she'll know where you are how?"
"When she sees me not in the infirmary, she'll check her map." There was a short pause in which he tried to figure out what map she meant, and the young woman sighed. "She got sick of having to explain her reasons to Harry every time she asked to borrow the Marauder's Map, so she studied it and figured out how to make her own copy, with a couple of tweaks. She'll check that and come get me."
"The Marauder's Map doesn't cover the grounds."
"Hers does, now will you leave?"
Shaken, he nodded and walked slowly away.
Ginny waited until she could no longer sense his presence before she let the tears come in a hot flood.
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Hermione did indeed check her map. After being passed in the hall by a frantic Poppy Pomfrey, the young woman ducked into an empty classroom and pulled the precious map from its hidden place within her robes. She had kept it mostly the same, though she'd added a few modifications that made the map even better for her usual purposes. "I solemnly swear I am up to no good," she whispered, tapping it with her wand. It came to life, almost every dot and name clustered into the Great Hall for lunch.
Her gaze fell on the tiny drawing of a faery in the top right corner. "Find Ginny, please," she told it, and off it went, zooming through the depicted halls until it came to the very outer edge of the map, by the lake. "What is she doing down there?" Hermione muttered as the faery went back to its corner. She tapped Ginny's dot with her wand and a small picture hovered above the map. Ginny was crying.
On instinct, she looked to where she knew Remus' office to be, and sure enough, there was a small dot pacing restlessly back and forth across the small space. The tip of her wand hovered over the dot, and small letters floated into the air to spell out "Remus Lupin-upset". Two tiny modifications to an already incredible map, and she knew all she needed to know about the situation.
"Mischief managed." She wiped the map clean and tucked it back into its safe place, walking a little faster than was truly dignified until she got outside, where she broke into a full run. When she reached the small cluster of trees, Ginny's tears had stopped, though her face still showed the signs.
Wordlessly, Hermione sank down onto the grass next to her friend and pulled her into a gentle embrace.
Ginny clung to her fiercely, nails digging into her shoulder. "Why?" she whispered.
"I don't know."
They sat together in silence, both understanding perfectly what the other didn't say.
Finally, Hermione glanced at the other girl from the corner of her eye. "So what do you suppose happened to the one step forward?"
"It was followed by the two steps back," Ginny answered humorlessly. She fidgeted with the knot on one of her bandages, forcing herself not to scratch where the healing skin was itching.
"So what are you going to do?"
"I don't know," she sighed.
"Really?"
"I'm tired, Mione," she admitted, her voice barely audible. "I'm tired of fighting, tired of getting hurt…I'm tired of getting hurt. I'm tired…" She shook her head and left it unfinished, but Hermione knew her best friend far too well.
"Out with it, Gin," she ordered.
Ginny turned white under her freckles, and she stared through the thin screen of trailing vines into the lake. "I'm tired of Tom laughing at me," she breathed, closing her eyes against the pain.
"Oh, Ginny." Not knowing what to say, Hermione simply held her a little too tight.
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They watched the sunset through the leaves, until they started shivering despite Hermione's Warming Charm. The older girl pulled off her heavy robes and draped them around Ginny, ignoring the other girl's protests. "I'll have to levitate you," she informed her. "I'm not really strong enough to carry you all the way to your rooms."
Ginny nodded and they floated her just enough that Hermione could safely carry her. They took little known hallways and kept to the shadows, protecting them from the inquisitive eyes, and more importantly the gossiping tongues, of students until they reached Ginny's chambers. "Bedbug," she whispered, and the statue of the sphinx swung the door open for them.
Hermione settled Ginny into her bed, wondering belatedly why she didn't take her back to the infirmary, and tucked her in, making a quick check over her injuries to make sure none had torn. "Would you like something to eat?"
Shaking her head, Ginny sank back into her familiar bed, staring at the ceiling. "No thanks. I think I actually just want to be left alone, if you don't mind too much."
"Of course." Smiling, Hermione reached into a pocket and pulled out a Galleon, performing the Protean Charm on it. She set it on the pillow next to Ginny's hand. "If you need me, call me. Got that?"
"Got it," Ginny agreed with a weak smile.
"All right." Hermione twitched the blankets one last time and left the younger girl alone. She stopped briefly in the infirmary to tell Madam Pomfrey the whereabouts of her patient, imparting also the fact that she was resting, and then let her feet take her back to the dungeons. There was a Head of House meeting, so she knew Severus wouldn't be in the lab, but she went there anyway. She didn't pull out any ingredients, didn't pull out her notes, didn't even pull out a book, just sat there at the high counter with her chin in her hand, staring down at the black marble surface.
That was how Severus found her when he returned from hearing the new rules concerning Hogsmeade visits, her brown eyes lost in the distance. Tears trembled on her eyelashes, occasionally shivering down her face. He walked silently up behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders, but she didn't flinch. "What is it?" he asked quietly.
"The stupid berk hurt Ginny again," she mumbled through her fingers. "I just don't understand why he keeps doing this."
"Perhaps he is simply trying to protect her," he said carefully, his thumbs rubbing gently at the tension in her back.
"From what?" she demanded. "From the wolf? Ginny knows the wolf as well as she knows Remus, she is a wolf. I swear he doesn't remember anything about his friends becoming Animagi for him. Our forms want to be used, they sing in our blood as surely as the werewolf cries in his. We simply retain our control more often. Whatever his fears, he has no right to keep hurting Ginny. He has no right to tell her he loves her when he has no intention of being with her." Her voice was starting to choke, the tears coming faster, and she shook with the effort of keeping it inside. She knew Severus hated weeping females; the girls in his House had long ago learned not to go to him weeping.
Strong arms wrapped around her, and she felt his breath warm against her ear. "Cry, Hermione," he whispered. "You need to."
"You don't like being around people who cry."
"I don't like being around people who cry for stupid reasons," he corrected. "You're crying for the pain of your best friend; that's not a stupid reason."
So wrapped in the comfort of a man she'd had a schoolgirl crush on since fourth year, Hermione cried for Ginny. Severus waited patiently through the storm, letting her cling to him and soak his black robes. When it had passed, he gravely produced a handkerchief and wiped the tears from her face, earning a watery chuckle from her. And he resolved to talk to Lupin. This had gone on long enough.
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When the sun set and Ginny still hadn't returned to the infirmary, Remus was very tempted to go back out to get her. He even went to so far as to grip the door of his office a few times, but each time, he saw her face telling him to go, and he let his hand drop. Finally, too frustrated and confused and angry to do anything else, Remus Lupin did something he very rarely did.
He drank.
Several years back, he had been given a bottle of very fine Firewhiskey by Tonks, nad not being a drinking man, he'd never opened it. He did so now, barely suppressing the urge to forgo the glass and drink straight from the bottle. The first glass burned all the way down, and the second glass screamed. The third, however, he barely felt, and after that, it might as well have been water for as much as he could taste it.
Severus stood in the doorway, slightly shocked, staring at the very drunk man clutching the three-quarters empty bottle of booze. He tried to think back, remember if he'd ever seen his colleague even slightly inebriated, but short of a single glass of spiked eggnog at an Order Christmas party, he couldn't identify a single occasion.
It took a while for the wolf senses to wade through the flood of alcohol in his system, but Remus finally recognized the fact that there was another person in the room. He blinked blearily at Severus, the form swimming in front of him. "Whozere?" he mumbled through his thick tongue.
"You disgust me," Severus snarled, his silky voice dangerously low. "Why that girl wants to waste her time with you, I'll never know."
"Get out."
"What you do to yourself, Lupin, is your own business, and I assure you, I couldn't give a damn, but you are hurting Miss Weasley, and you are hurting Hermione, and I will not allow you to do this any longer."
"Get out!" Remus bellowed, lurching to his feet. The bottle fell from his fingers and shattered against the floor, the smoking liquid seeping out. He stared at it mournfully, his anger forgotten. "Oh," he lamented. "It's all gone."
Furious beyond words, Severus grabbed the man's collar and slammed him into a wall, the pain cutting through some of the alcohol haze. "Grow up, Lupin," he hissed venomously. "Your selfishness is hurting people who haven't done anything worse than try to love you."
"Don't deserve it," the man slurred.
"No, you don't," the irate potions master agreed, and Remus blinked. "Who does? Everyone has skeletons in their closet, fleabag, but it is not up to us to condemn ourselves."
"Where's Severus?" the thoroughly sloshed man asked bemusedly. "You can't be Severus. You sound hopeful."
For answer, he slammed him back against the wall again, even harder. "Lupin, there is a wonderful, intelligent, beautiful girl sitting in my laboratory crying because you're hurting her best friend. She is one of the very few people I have ever met who can acknowledge the brand on my arm and still want to be around me. I have done nothing to deserve that trust, but there she is. Miss Weasley loves you enough to be willing to die to keep you from doing something that would destroy you. She didn't have to transform that night, she didn't have to nearly die to keep you from the remorse of having your students' blood on your hands."
"She was protecting the students."
"She was protecting you!" Severus roared. "I had never before pegged you for an idiot, Lupin, but I see I was wrong!"
"You're not Severus," he said again, still blinking stupidly. "You just said you were wrong."
Severus Snape was a very powerful wizard. Despite his disdain for 'foolish wand waving', he could perform nearly every curse, jinx, or hex he'd laid eyes on, and it was sorely tempting to use each and every one of them on the man before him. He was, however, also fairly fond of his job, and didn't think Albus would be very pleased if he lessened the school roster by one Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. So he did the next best thing: drawing his arm back, he slugged the man across the face.
He watched dispassionately as Remus slumped to the floor, then gingerly rubbed his knuckles. It had been awhile since he'd resorted to such means, but it certainly felt good. He just hoped the werewolf would remember it come the morning.
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Ginny whimpered in her sleep, turning over to try and escape the whispering laughter in her mind, the last remnants of a living nightmare that refused to die. "You're weak," it hissed at her. "Why would he want to be around someone so weak?"
She was shaking, her entire body trembling with the old fear, the old fury.
"You couldn't even kill them properly," Tom's voice reminded her. "You cried over the roosters, you pathetic little girl!"
Tears leaked out from under her closed eyes. She wanted to scream out at him, but her lips were sealed., teeth clenched firmly together. It didn't help her to know that she hadn't wanted to kill them, that crying over something as small as the murder of a rooster showed that she was a good person. But Tom wasn't interested in a good person, he was only interested in torment. His diary was gone, his future self thoroughly destroyed, but his voice and his words remained, and in her weakened state, she couldn't even bring herself out of sleep.
She was entirely prey to him, and the wolf part of her nature, the glorious missing piece she'd discovered in her sixth year, howled with rage at their helplessness.
"You nearly killed the Mudbloods, Ginny," he whispered at her again. "You nearly killed your friends. Why would he want someone who tried to kill their friends? You even attacked a poor, defenseless cat."
Pushing everything she had into a single, final effort, Ginny bit down as hard as she could on her lip, tasting the blood in her mouth as the nightmare released her, and she flew out of the bed to land hard on the unforgiving stone floor. She could feel herself bleeding, feel the blinding pain from her injuries. She knew she had done further damage in her thrashing and she knew she should call Hermione, get help.
She didn't reach for the coin.
For the first time in her life, Ginevra Weasley simply wanted to give up. It was sorely tempting to just remain on the floor, see if she could manage to bleed out before someone came to look for her in the morning. She heard Tom's voice every time she slept, heard him in the quiet moments when she was awake. She just couldn't get him out of her head.
It was that thought, though, that made her struggle through the pain, searching in the disarrayed bed sheets for the coin. Ginny was a fighter, as her Animagus showed, and she wasn't about to let Tom be right. Her hand was slippery with blood, but she finally managed a grasp on the coin, squeezing it tightly and praying that it would be enough activate it. Her wand was still in the infirmary, locked in Poppy's office so that she wouldn't try to perform magic before her body was healed.
Her body wasn't in the need of the most healing, though.
Her fireplace came roaring into life, and Hermione tumbled through, eyes wide with fear. "Ginny?"
"Here," she managed through her bleeding, swollen lip.
Hermione swiveled sharply and focused on Ginny, the color draining from her face. "Oh, God, Ginny, what happened?"
"Tom…"
Carefully picking her up, Hermione flew back towards the fireplace, kicking in the entire jar of Floo Powder because she didn't have a hand free. "Hospital wing," she cried, and stepped into the green flames. They emerged near Poppy's office, but without any patients in the infirmary, the mediwitch was in her rooms, sleeping the sleep of the just. "Poppy!" She yelled, setting Ginny down gently on a bed. "Poppy, it's Ginny!"
A moment later, the barely awake witch stumbled out of her room, tying an apron on over her dressing gown. "What is it, child? What's happened?"
"She had a really bad nightmare," Hermione explained, bringing the lights up in the room so they could all see. "I don't think she could wake herself up."
Ginny laid back and absorbed the sounds over her head. Her strength was fading, she couldn't really make them out into separate words, but she felt Madam Pomfrey's cool hands on her forehead and she relaxed, knowing she was safe. If nothing else, she would get a Dreamless Sleep Potion out of it, and Tom hadn't yet been able to defeat those.
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It was a very confused man that woke up to the glaringly bright morning sun on the floor of Remus' rooms. He couldn't remember how he'd gotten there, and the entire left side of his face was a throbbing mass of pain. It hurt to move, and his stomach protested with a wave of intense nausea when he attempted to get to his feet. Bit by bit, things were coming back to him through the blur. He winced as he remembered the things Severus had told him, though he still refused to acknowledge most of them as true, but try as he might, he just couldn't remember how he'd ended up on the floor, and couldn't think of why his face would be hurting.
A small sound of disbelief, as good as a shout in his pounding head, brought his attention to one of the inner doors. A very small figure was standing there, a haze of color against the grey stone, individual features absolutely lost to him at the moment. "Remus?" It whispered.
"Callum," he groaned. Not someone he wanted to see him like this.
"Were you drinking?"
"Yes," he answered honestly. He sat up and braced himself against the wave of dizziness, watching Callum gingerly approach.
"You don't smell too good," Callum told him from ten feet away.
"Thank you."
There was a loud knock on the door two feet to Remus' right and he groaned again, his head sinking down into his hands.
Callum opened it to see the Headmaster standing there, the twinkle gone from his blue eyes. "Headmaster," he greeted politely. "Is there something I can help you with?"
"Yes, Callum, I need to see Remus."
"He's indisposed at the moment, but I can tell-"
"No, Callum," Albus interrupted, but not unkindly. "I must speak with him now."
The boy looked thoughtfully at the Headmaster, and it brought the merry gleam back to the old man's eyes to see the clear affection the child had for Remus. He knew Remus must be tired; Hermione had very clearly said that Remus hadn't been there when Ginny had had her nightmare. Then the world, or at least that small space of it, came crashing down around the man's fond hopes. "He's drunk," Callum informed him bluntly.
"I am not drunk," Remus corrected weakly. Callum looked at him blankly and he shrugged. "I'm hungover."
"You, Remus?" Dumbledore asked in amazement, hand already reaching into his voluminous robes to produce a small vial of hangover potion he kept with him at all times. He handed it to the younger man, whose hands were shaking violently, and watched him down it, grimacing at the taste. "What on earth were you drinking about?"
"It's not important."
"How dare you!" Callum cried furiously, and both men turned to look at him, nonplussed. "How dare you say she's not important!"
"Ah," was all Dumbledore said, but Remus knew he understood everything.
"Callum, sometimes when someone says something's not important, they actually mean that they just don't want to talk about it right at that moment," Remus translated, but the mutinous expression remained on the boy's face. "Albus, why did you need to see me?" he asked, his head clearing almost instantly with the effects of the potion.
"Miss Weasley had a nightmare last night," he began. "I am given to understand that she has been having them for some time, due to her possession in her first year. I'm afraid I was so caught up in defeating the present Tom that I hadn't realized there were still lingering poisons from the past Tom. You are my Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, and I need your help to get rid of these nightmares. Miss Weasley has been suffering them long enough, and if ever she's in as weakened a state as she is now, she may cause serious harm to herself."
"What do you mean?" he demanded, the now familiar fear settling into a hard knot in his stomach.
"Miss Granger informed me that the girl couldn't wake herself up and thrashed about a great deal, causing extensive damage to her injuries. She finally woke up by biting nearly all the way through her lip."
Remus sighed, passing a hand through his mostly grey hair. "Albus, this may not be the best idea in the world," he replied. "Severus would actually be a much better choice."
"Nonetheless, it is you who will go." The Headmaster's voice was mild, but Remus knew it would be more productive to clean the Great Wall with a toothbrush than it would be to argue with that tone.
"Let me shower and change into some clean robes," he sighed again.
Albus smiled down at him and left, leaving the pair in a heavy silence.
"You were an idiot again, weren't you?" Callum surmised flatly.
"Callum!"
"Weren't you!" he yelled. "Why do you keep doing that! You're hurting pack!"
"You're only a wolf three days a month, Callum, you need to not think like that the rest of the time."
"You're wrong." He met his guardian's puzzled gaze calmly, but the wolf was rising closer to the surface in rage. "I have a wolf inside me every single day. I am a wolf and human in one body for every moment that I breathe. I can separate out the thoughts and impulses, the desires, the instincts, but I cannot separate the wolf from the human. They are forever intertwined, and I don't see why you haven't recognized that fact in the thirty-three years you've had the wolf inside you! But the wolf isn't the problem, Remus, the wolf isn't the one that keeps hurting Ginny. That's you. That is the part of you that is completely human."
"No, Callum, it's not."
"Yes, it is," he insisted. "You forget that I can sense the wolf, just like you can sense me. The wolf would never push away its mate. A mate is for life, to depend on for everything, to be there for. It's the human that hurts her and pushes her away. It's the human part of you that's being such an idiot, and you have no right to hurt her!" he yelled, hands curled into fists at his sides.
Remus stayed leaning against the wall, neatly stunned. He'd never seen Callum this worked up, even with the initial terror of nightmares and transformations, and part of his mind growled in approval. Protecting pack, the wolf whispered to him. Good cub.
Boy.
"Why are you hurting her?" Callum muttered, looking away.
"Because I'm not the right one for her," Remus answered quietly. "Better that she hurt a little now than spend the rest of her life hurting."
"And she doesn't get a say in this?"
"Callum, she's eighteen years old. She doesn't know what she wants yet."
"She wants to be a mediwitch and eventually step into Madam Pomfrey's position here at Hogwarts," he answered immediately. "She wants to have a small family, only one or two children, and she wants to always be best friends with Hermione. She wants to one day write down everything she and the others did while they were students here, once they can't get into trouble for it anymore. And she wants you. It sounds to me like she knows what she wants."
"Callum, you are nine years old-"
"Why do you keep bringing age into this?" Callum interrupted loudly. "You're thirty-nine; do you know what you want! When was the last time you made a decision about what you wanted, Remus? I may be only nine but I have eyes and ears. You always did what you were told to do, and when you were in school, you just went along with whatever your friends were doing. You say you love Ginny, but you don't seem to want her, even though I know you do."
Callum dropped down to one knee in front of his mentor, his surrogate father, and ducked his head to hide the flush of emotion on his face. "You keep telling me that the people who love us despite our lycanthropy are to be treasured and held most dear. You keep telling me that being bitten isn't the end of the world, or the end of my life. You keep telling me that we're not evil, that we're still good people, and good people are worthy of being loved. So have you been lying to me?"
"Callum, no!"
"Then why don't you believe it? Why have you been telling me things that you don't believe!"
Remus had no words. He stared at his charge, hazel eyes wide, and tried to find the words to say, but there were simply none to be had. There was no argument he could give, no truthful reply he could make. He hadn't wanted Callum to give up hope, but he himself had given it up so long ago that it hadn't occurred to him that he was being a hypocrite. He was the way he was; he just didn't want Callum to be alone.
For the first time in six months, he felt like a parent; he had been surpassed by his child. Callum understood things that he'd been groping for his entire life, had accepted things he'd been fighting tooth and nail since they'd come upon him. He felt swamped by the enormity of these realizations that Callum had shoved down his throat, and he knew, with a terrible and utter certainty, that they came too late.
"I can't fix this," he croaked, voice rasping.
"She loves you," Callum answered simply. "And you love her. Start from there."
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Hermione looked up purely out of habit when she heard the footsteps enter the infirmary, her mind already preparing to dismiss the new arrival and focus back on her injured friend. She did a double take and shot to her feet, visibly bristling. "Get out," she ordered.
"Hermione, Albus told me to come," Remus informed her, hands held out in front of him in a calming gesture.
"I don't care if the old coot told you to fly to Venus, get the hell out!" she snapped. "I'm not letting you hurt her anymore."
"I'm here to see if we can't find some way to end these nightmares."
"Hermione."
She glanced over her shoulder at Severus, who rose smoothly from his chair. "Please don't say what I think you're about to say," she pleaded.
"Albus wants this, and I think we all know that he's going to get his way eventually. Better to give in gracefully now so you can catch him unawares later," he told her, laying a hand on her shoulder. "Come. Poppy tells me she needs more Dreamless Sleep and Fever Reducer. We should get started on those."
Very reluctantly, Hermione allowed herself to be led away. She balked a moment at the door, but Severus gripped her hand and pulled her gently over the threshold into the hall. A small shiver ran down her spine when he didn't let go. They made the long walk down to the dungeons in silence, but rather than leading her into their laboratory, Severus led her into his living room and sat her down on the couch.
"Let it out," he told her simply.
She stared at him for a moment, then took a deep breath and started shrieking. He waited patiently through the tirade, rather impressed by her command of the more impolite range of language, as she called Albus Dumbledore and Remus Lupin nearly everything she could think of. When she started running out, he helpfully suggested several more, until she was laughing so hard she couldn't draw breath to yell. Pulling her into his arms, a gesture he was learning to be more and more comfortable with, he smiled into her hair. "Did it help?" he murmured.
"Yes, it did," she chuckled. "Funny how I never thought of doing that before."
"There are times when I firmly believe Albus to be absolutely off his rocker, but we both know that things generally work out in the end when he has his hands in it."
"Optimism? From you? I'm certainly glad I'm sitting down."
"Miss Granger…" he warned.
She smirked up at him, her eyebrows rising mockingly. "Funny how you only call me that when you're miffed," she noted.
He kissed her.
It was something he'd been thinking about doing for some time, but he hadn't been entirely sure if their flirting was substantial or something she did as habitually as she breathed, which it sometimes seemed to be with her and Miss Weasley. When she didn't pull out of his arms, he decided that it was time to let her know how she'd wormed her way into his black old heart. He half expected her to recoil and slap him, or at the very least freeze up, but she moved into him and deepened the kiss, welcoming him in. It was not a kiss of passion, or hunger, but one of sweetness and promise.
Lots of promise.
She gently pulled away and looked at him for a moment, her face soft, before she smirked, a mirror image of the one he usually wore. "Well, if that's the way you respond when you're miffed, I'll just have to irritate you more often."
"No, miffed is the kiss," he corrected gravely. "When I'm irritated, I scowl."
She laughed and laid her head on his shoulder. A fleeting thought streaked across her mind, the wish that Ginny could have everything work out so well.
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Remus stared at Hermione and Severus as they left, and it didn't escape his notice that the potions master took his apprentice's hand. He knew Hermione was fiercely protective of her friends, and indeed, he'd seen flashes of it once or twice before, but her fury had been completely unexpected. They were gone from sight, though, and he had to do what he'd come here to do.
Silent footsteps brought him closer to her bed, the same one she'd occupied for the past five weeks. She was still, sleeping or unconscious he couldn't be sure, her eyes closed and her sweat-streaked hair fanning about her on the pillow. He could see the thin scar on her lower lip from her healing, and the bandages were spotted with blood despite being fresh. He reached out a trembling finger and stroked her flushed cheek, feeling the heat that burned beneath the skin.
"Funny," she murmured. "I seem to remember Hermione telling you to get the hell out of here."
Neither sleeping nor unconscious, then.
He sank down into the chair Hermione had vacated, watching her face closely for any sign of reaction. "I have a healthy fear of Hermione, but not enough to make me cross Albus," he answered lightly.
"What are you doing here?"
"Two things, actually, one of which I'm sure you heard."
"Tom's as much memory as possession now. The dreams aren't going to go away," she stated dismissively.
"There was one night you didn't have them," he countered, thinking back to the wonderful warmth of her in his arms.
"Yes, well, I can't exactly count on that, now can I?"
"Ginny, please look at me."
Slowly, she opened amber brown eyes and turned her head to look at him, and he shrank back from the infinite pain and sorrow in those eyes. "What do you want, Remus?" she whispered.
"I want to say I'm sorry." He closed her mouth with two fingers gently against her lips. "Let me finish, please." Taking a deep breath, Remus looked her in the eyes, his voice soft. "I don't expect you to forgive me, because I know that's asking too much. I've hurt you too badly. I've been an idiot, and I've been selfish, and I know that now. My concerns were valid, but I forgot that it wasn't my place to decide what was best for you. I will never understand how I ever became worthy of your love, but if I still have it, it is a gift I will be thankful for each and every day. You've seen me at my absolute worst, and saved me from becoming even less. Being around you makes me happier than I can ever remember being, even more so than when I was at school with James and Sirius, because you complete me. When I'm with you, I can forget myself and just be, when I allow myself that luxury.
"I love you, and I want to be with you. I have demons, Ginny, but you've seen them. I can't promise that they'll get fixed, but I can promise to try. And I can't promise not to hurt you. All I can do is tell you that I love you more than I know what to do with. I can tell you that I will die before I knowingly or willingly cause you any pain. Is there any way I can have another chance?"
She stared at him, silent and still beneath his fingers, and he could almost see the wheels turning. "Bite me," she whispered finally.
He recoiled violently, almost tipping the chair over with the sudden movement. "What?" He gasped, his heart seizing.
"The next full moon, I want you to bite me," she told him gravely. "Because if the only way you'll allow me to be near your demons is to have them myself, I'll take them gladly. If that's what it'll take to let me be with you, then I will get down on my knees before you and bare my throat, and I will do it gladly."
"No, Ginny," he said firmly, squeezing her hand. "That's not what it'll take."
"Then what will it take, Remus?" she wanted to know. "Because I love you, but I'm tired of fighting a losing battle. Just tell me that I'm fighting for something worthwhile, and I'll fight till Fenrir heralds Ragnarok, but I have to know that it's worth the battle."
He didn't know what else to do, what else to say, so he kissed her, letting it say what his words couldn't. The kiss was gentle, the intensity with which he gripped her hand anything but, and the combination between the two sent her reeling. She smiled up into his eyes when he pulled slightly away. "So, yeah, the battle's worth it," she noted easily.
His entire face lit up and he kissed her hand fervently. "I promise I won't muck it up this time."
"Really?"
"Well, at least not for another few days," he amended.
"Yeah, that's what I thought." She arched an eyebrow at him. "You know," she commented casually. "If you wanted to bite me anyway, while you were human, that might not be entirely a bad thing."
Remus just laughed, his heart light, and squeezed her hand again.