Disclaimer: All the characters belong to J.K. Rowling; the plot is my own creation.
Chapter Two: Down to Earth I Fell
Remus did not expect to be affected this badly.
His head swam with overwhelming nausea, but not much from ideas and thoughts and emotions as from the alcohol in his bloodstream.
He never could hold his alcohol very well.
Just then, the bottle slipped from his clumsy fingers, cracked against the floor, sending a spray of Ogden's Old Firewhisky across the wooden panels. The whisky soaked the bottom of his trousers and his socks, and he wouldn't have sworn if not for the sudden lurch of sickness in his stomach. The world spun around him dangerously, and stumbled, catching a hold of the nearest object – a doorframe – and emptied the contents of his stomach onto the carpet of the room he was leaning into.
Remus fell to his knees ungracefully, not even able to register the painful twinge in them from the fall over the heavy cloud in his mind. He heaved in deep, shuddering breaths, leaning against the doorframe for support, clutching it almost brutally. If he had looked, he would have seen bone-white knuckles in a terrifying death grip. But he didn't look.
He managed a single coherent thought: I'm going to have one hell of a mess to clean up when I'm sober again.
Remus briefly wondered how long that would take. He felt – as if such a small word could even justify the drastic change at all – worse than before. His head was pounding; it felt as if all the thoughts and feelings in his head were going through a torrential storm, sloshing about in the tempest-tossed sea within the walls of his brain.
Simply put, it was not a pleasant feeling.
Remus managed to stagger to his feet, the little pride he had appalled how he even found that a difficult task to accomplish. With shaky footsteps, routine falters, and occasional grappling, he made his way to the coffee table in the opposite direction. He reached down, gripped the smooth wand within his fingers, and almost tumbled forward, but miraculously held an upright stance. Remus aimed the wand at himself, slurred a sobriety spell, and immediately felt a tingle rush through his body – then suddenly realized he felt frighteningly awake to the world.
He took a few languid steps and collapsed backwards into the sofa. He longingly wished the cushions would pull him in, smother him, do something to end the intense flood of guilt and shame inside of himself. But nothing happened.
There were so many things wrong with what he had done, with what he let her do. So many things wrong with how amazingly beautiful it felt to have her lips on his, how unbelievably wonderful if was to feel the heat of her skin against his own, how much he wanted her – needed her? That was worse. So much worse…
He felt the back of his eyes sting, flooding them with a hot wetness. It trickled off, sticking to his eyelashes, but never enough to fall off of them. Remus wiped the wetness from his eyes with a sleeve, took in a shaky breath, and rested his head against the small arm pillow at the corner of the sofa. He lay there for a long time, willing sleep to override his mind, but it stubbornly refused to come, and Remus realized with a pang of anger and sadness that he could not make it.
But there were spells and drugs that he could easily send him to a blissful unconscious state.
Yet he couldn't use either one. Remus felt more so that he deserved to be plagued by these demons in his head, to be mocked and berated and slashed at until he bled them to sleep like a peaceful child in the arms of oblivion.
He didn't deserve peace, he thought. He didn't deserve it at all.
Now long he lay there he couldn't even remember when he got up. He did know that it was raining, though. Powerful, heavy rain, pounding against the building in a steady onslaught of beat after beat after beat, going so fast that his mind couldn't comprehend them individually. Remus walked over to a window, flipped the latch, and pulled it open. The wind was not blowing in his direction, so the water didn't suddenly fly through the opening to his flat. But it fell as thick as a waterfall outside.
Remus reached out his hand, palm upward and cupped, to catch some of the falling rain. For the duration that his hand was outside, his sleeve became soaked, and finally he pulled it in, splashing the water on his face. It trickled down his chin, fell onto his shirt. It was freezing. As Remus pushed the window back down and latched it to, his nerves shook slightly.
Her tear-stained face would not pass from beneath his eyes or out of his memory.
Did he really have to push her away?
As soon as the thought came, he banished it from his mind. Remus couldn't think that way. Of course he had to push her away. He had not other choice. No other choice was allowed. He was the grown-up here; it was up to him to lay out the rules, to know the difference between right and wrong. If Hermione didn't, Remus had to.
Otherwise…well, Remus really didn't know what otherwise was, in all honesty.
Wrong constituted an opposing party to the said situation, but who was opposing it besides him? And he wasn't even wholeheartedly opposing it, though he was in some ways. There were certain feelings, certain emotions that thought it was a wonderful idea – perfect, even. They needed each other, didn't they? Who else did they have left? Who else knew, to the extent, of what they knew about what happened?
Who else understood the loss?
Who?
With an overwhelming wave of longing, he realized that only she did. Only he did. No one else. No one else left alive that already had the necessary bond he and Hermione already had. No one.
He didn't only need her, though.
He wanted her.
Remus admitted it to himself, though very reluctantly.
Merlin, she wasn't beautiful, but she was. Remus couldn't really explain it. Then there was her intellect, her personality – so much of it which reminded him of himself when he was younger. All these lovely things, thrown together in one young girl who used to sit in his class with her hand first to shoot up in the air as he beamed knowingly, the answer on the tip of her tongue. He closed his eyes at the memory, wanting to shut it away. Remus was able to see that she was a different person now, but it was so hard separating her form the eager schoolgirl he taught way back when.
Way back when? Jesus, Moony, it was only five years ago.
It almost sounded like Sirius' voice in his head.
Almost.
It was only five years ago. Maybe that's why it was so hard. He hadn't had enough time to separate them. But did you ever really separate anybody from a person they used to be?
James was always the same James.
Sirius was always the same Sirius. Even when he had supposedly murdered James, Lily, Peter, and a street full of random Muggles. He was still fun, lovable, mischievous Sirius.
Peter was…always the same Peter. Even when Remus hated him with every fiber of his soul, he couldn't forget the stumbling blonde-haired boy he grew up with. Peter was always still Peter. Even when Remus hated him; even when Remus saw him die.
Hermione would always be Hermione, then, wouldn't she? Of course she would. Just because his feelings toward her had changed, didn't mean she was no longer Hermione. There was no escaping that.
But why was he so afraid?
Well…he honestly didn't know.
Maybe she didn't really want it, and he did.
That definitely scared him.
If he gave in, if he collapsed, she'd wake up in the morning, thank him – because good, righteous Hermione would always do that – and just get up and walk away. She might actually come back a few times, but what would make her stay? She probably wouldn't be able to withstand his company after something like that happened between them.
All the reasons he'd conjured, all the guilt and shame, all the strength it took to push her warm body away from his…all lies. All lies all brought forth because she had the power to break him and it frightened him. He knew it all along, knew he should have been careful, but he just wasn't careful enough. Hermione had him drawn tight across the board and he was splitting. She didn't mean it intentionally. No, she didn't. But there he was…and what could he do about it?
Besides stay away from her?
That was just as equally hard, though.
Remus wanted to go find her, search for her, tell her he didn't really mean what he said, that he was really just afraid. But he didn't know where to look or where to go, and he didn't think he yet had the power he needed to do such a thing.
And should he?
The rain pounded heavily against the building in answer to his inner turmoil.
Remus sank to the floor, back against the wall, burying his face in his hands, raking them through his hair.
Why did it all have to be so hard?
The rain continued to fall, and Remus just sat there, reeling with his thoughts of worries and dreams and wishing one of them would just win already. But nothing happened and nothing changed. The scenery remained, and no great question was answered for him in the splendid throes of an epiphany.
The rain simply fell.
Remus briefly wondered how deep the puddles were outside by now.
A knock sounded at his door.
His head jerked up. Remus stared at the solid wood, almost willing himself to see through it. Another set of knocks came, rattling the door.
His breath caught in his throat.
It couldn't be.
It just couldn't be.
Remus clambered to his feet. He hurried over to the door, his fingers closing around the handle, turning, pulling. All in a flash. His heart felt like any moment it would burst from his chest because of the excitement flooding through his veins, replacing his blood.
The door almost swung open, but he managed to make it look like he wasn't too eager to answer the sudden call at his door, though he was beyond being just eager.
Yet all of Remus' hopes were dashed with a rough blade when he saw an unfamiliar face standing at the open entrance to his flat. It was a Muggle, a man about his own age, dressed in a suit and very refined despite the fact that his clothes were partially wet. Remus noticed the umbrella at his side. The man had a strained look on his face, as if he wasn't happy being where he was. Remus tried not to register how disappointed he must have looked.
"I'm looking for Robin Spencer," the stranger said. "She's supposed to live on this floor, but I don't know where."
Remus nodded. He pointed down the hall to his left. "She's in Number 5," he told the Muggle.
The portly man nodded in a curt but short manner. "Thank you," he said briskly, turning to go the way Remus had pointed him.
Remus slowly shut the door to. He pressed his forehead to the cool wood, fingers still gripped tightly around the handle. Remus sighed deeply, feeling like punching his fist and breaking the solid boundary currently holding him up.
He didn't consider himself a violent man. Ever. Hell, he was always the peacemaker.
But the present situation was not one he had ever been in before, and Remus had to bet that it was a great deal responsible for his recent divergence from character.
What would Sirius tell him to do?
Stop wasting your life, Moony. Be happy for once even if it kills you. You might as well die happy anyway – not as some sniveling little weasel licking his wounds, you complete daft imbecile.
Remus couldn't tell if the thought was his or if Sirius was really speaking to him.
Imbecile wasn't a word Sirius would use, though, was it?
Shut up, Moony, or you'll get it.
Remus faintly smiled. He still couldn't tell whose words they were, but it didn't really matter.
"That's why they need to stop, Hermione."
He didn't know why those sudden, fateful words he had spoken earlier came back to him then, but it was like a abrupt awakening to him to reality, a sudden realization of what needed to be done. Because this was wrong. All this hurt was wrong, and it needed to stop. Remus stood from the floor. He had to find her; he had to end this chaos. He had so much he needed to say, so much he needed to tell her, and--
"You're right," she said. "They need to stop."
Remus froze, his fingers tight on the collar of his jacket hanging by the front door.
Something felt very, very wrong about those words. Something about them chilled his bones with the power of ice.
What had she meant?
Remus searched back to the rest of the conversation desperately, needing to find their meaning, needing to understand the unheard depth lingering in the words when she had spoken them. There was something there he didn't catch the first time, something wrong, something ominous…
"Everything that happens in this godforsaken world is wrong! … Every goddamn thing in this world is wrong and they still happen! They happen and they happen and they just won't stop--"
"That's why they need to stop, Hermione."
"You're right," she said. "They need to stop."
The bottom of Remus' stomach almost fell out.
He nearly tore the jacket off its hook, grabbed his wand, and left the flat in a mad rush of overwhelming fear and wild desperation.
As he sprinted down the hallway and stairs, he realized how she had come to him, hoping to learn one last thing…
Remus didn't think that one last thing would be suicide.
A/N: I hope you are enjoying so far:) Please read and review!