Outside, puddles over slick cobblestones. It is possible she is crying.
Later she will not be able to say when it had started. Rain soaks her hair, runs down her back, her face, the front of her blouse. She does not think to put her collar up or tuck her scarf around her neck. Passersby raise their umbrellas, glance at her and then at each other.
Her head is chock-full of fragmented images: this morning's raid, the hidden tripwire, a sudden explosion. Finlay's hot blood peppering her face before she could even close her eyes. Her robes covered in the fleshy red of him.
She steps off the curb and forgets to look. A taxi squeals, rubber on wet pavement. And then his hand is on her arm, pulling her back onto the sidewalk and into an alley. Silver and faintly wolf-like, Remus' patronus scampers away with the words I've found her on its tongue.
And when she startles awake in the pitch dark that night, heart pounding, he is there. It's alright, he reassures, a careful hand on her shoulder. Polite. The leather couch in the drawing room of her ancestors' house is cragged under her cheek. Sirius has lent her his bathrobe and the sleeves, rolled three times, are surprisingly soft.
But her wand hand won't stop shaking, so Remus makes them some tea, and they share a piece of chocolate from the pocket of his cardigan.
Rain against the window pane, that soft, kissing sound.
Darkness in the front hallway, and the carpet swallows the sound of their feet. She guides him up the stairs and into the bedroom on the second floor. Remus is bare to her even before she tenderly removes his funeral clothes, soft tweed beneath her hands.
When she guides him under the covers, he pulls her with him onto sheets that smell like her.
Dora, he whispers, and the bedsprings mourn beneath their weight.
His sorrow emanates from him in waves. It is a tangible thing against her, compressing one budding heartbeat and the next. Low in her stomach, it settles and unravels. She holds on tighter as he fumbles with the buttons of her blouse.
Sirius' room, across the hall, empty and cold. She wonders if his trousers will still be slung over the bedpost, his glass of whiskey half-empty on the nightstand. She wonders who will see to putting them away.
The moonbeam crests silver across cotton bed sheets. Old walls absorbing hollow cries, their bodies pressed flush, the sheet fishtailed by his feet.
Sharp exhale. His palm sliding up the back of her thigh, pushing her knee up, up, driving into her harder. She curls herself around him, eyes squeezed shut, head raised off the pillow, mouth open against his temple. Her sternum aches and she doesn't care. Remus has one lean arm circled around her waist, the other braced against the headboard, keeping them both steady.
He makes a sound like it is painful, face hot in her hair. Says her name again, the one that's now for him alone, and punctuates it with a slow, deep push of hips. She holds him tighter, lips pressed to his ear in that moment before he comes. I'm here, she breathes, and then he's shuddering against her, his tears salt water on her tongue.
Quiet, in the aftermath. His thumb brushes soft against her cheek, his lips gentle along the slope of her shoulder.
And he falls asleep with his hand resting over the healing bruise in the middle of her chest, purple testimony to her aunt's wretchedness. He is troubled in his dreams. She stays awake, keeps watch over him, tries to soothe the furrow in his brow with quiet assurances.
What she feels is powerful, and what she feels is fiercely protective, irrevocably attached. She wants to shield him from other people, from questioning gazes. Simultaneously, she marvels and worries at his ability to stitch himself back together for public consumption. Tomorrow they will meet Harry at King's Cross, and she is quite certain no cracks will show.
Midnight hours in the old house: long shadows, his breaths, her own inner heartbeat.
Acrid, antiseptic scent. In the hospital wing, he will not look at her.
She pauses a moment longer, perhaps to give him one last chance. And then she can't stand to feel that pain, so she turns and stumbles out the double doors. Salt in the back of her mouth.
She goes to the lake, an old familiar spot. Tiny pebbles beneath her boots, white moonlight shimmering over waves.
Knees pulled up to rest her chin. She suddenly feels she's at the bottom of a deep well, the whole world up above her, pressing down. But the breeze is nice, and as it plays with her hair it whispers you're alive, even as others are laid to rest.
Dumbledore, whom she had never once imagined could be gone so soon. Mere months after Sirius. She tilts her wet face up, seeking out that bright, bright star.
Eventually, he comes to her. The back of his hand brushes softly up the slide of her cheekbone. I do love you. So much I can hardly bear it.
In the mess of her room at the inn, there are reasons to move slowly. His mouth travels over her skin, apology, benediction. His lips and tongue on her neck, over her breasts, between her legs.
Soft sounds.
And then her hand on his shoulder as she pulls him over her. Arms caressing the muscles in his back, foot sliding along his calf. The weight of his body, the coarse hair on his chest brushing against her, the familiar way he smells: all of it makes her feel overwhelmingly full as he moves against her. When she comes, the pleasure washes over her in waves, and for a moment there is only heat and velvety black behind her eyelids as she shakes and shakes. His weight on his forearms, hands holding her rosy face. He kisses her lips, her cheeks, her forehead.
Later, and it is nearly morning. She stares down at Remus as she moves on top of him. His breathing rough now, close, and his hands tighten on her hips. She reaches down to cup his face in her palm. For everything they have lost today, it feels now like something is just beginning. Afterwards she rests against him, legs intertwined. He takes her hand, laces their fingers and brings them to his lips. Breathes against her: Marry me.
There is salt in the corner of her eyes as she lays her cheek against his bare chest, pressing kiss after kiss into the hot skin there. Yes. Yes, yes.
For a long time, he does not let her go. Fingertips along her spine. That glowy violet light through the window.
Midnight, and from grassy patches near the fence, crickets like live wires. Her husband beside her, pale and exhausted. The moon will be five days yet, but she knows how his bones must ache. And he has come back empty-handed, Alastor's body nowhere to be found.
It means they've got him, she whispers. Humid air in the Weasley's back garden. Clenched fists. Those bastards. They're alone outside, and light from the windows casts long shadows on the outline of trees, flower pots, defeated shoulders. He pulls her into his side.
I'm so sorry, love, he breathes, against her hair.
Acid taste in her mouth, and she thinks she might vomit, the morning sickness creeping back now the adrenaline has gone. They'll stay here tonight, in the bedroom Molly has made up.
The creak of the stairs as they retreat quietly to the second floor. This room must have been Bill's, or Percy's in another life, and though there are posters and picture frames covering the walls, the sheets are clean, the floor tidy.
She licks her lips. Tastes the salty sweat and grime.
The bathroom is just across the hall and nobody else will be up to bed yet. It will be a while, she knows, because Arthur had just begun dispersing whiskey into glasses when they'd come through the kitchen. Maybe just something to settle her stomach, Remus had murmured, and Molly had brewed the blue antiemetic herself.
But he locks the bathroom door behind them just in case, casts a silencing charm. Reaches past the home-sewn curtain to turn the shower on as she leans against the sink. Perhaps, she thinks, he goes to these lengths because he expects her to cry.
Fingers careful as they undress, mindful of bruises and scrapes and sore ligaments. A reproachful sound in his throat when he sees the wound on her shoulder where Bellatrix's curse had just barely grazed her. Narrow strip of skin nearly black with the bruise of it.
In the shower, gentle hands wash away the blood. He's got it pooled on his neck and shoulder, where George's head had leant. When she's soaped it all away, she steps into his arms and they hold each other close under the hot spray. Cognizant of what could have happened; what almost happened. His heartbeat against her ear.
What now? She can't help but ask the question as she slips into borrowed pyjamas. The order has lost another leader and she'll go with Remus anywhere, and he's always seemed to have the answers.
He looks at her and his eyes seem so tired. Her poor husband. She wishes she could lift the weight of the world from his shoulders. We'll sort things tomorrow, he says, quietly, drawing the blanket over them. They are exhausted, it's true. Purple under his troubled eyes. He shifts closer and they lie on the bed like two spoons, quidditch posters slumbering above them. His hand comes to rest low on her stomach, on that spot where the slightest swell is just starting to show.
Below, the muted hum of voices seeking solace in mulled wine. Somewhere above, the children are walking around. But she slides her hand into his and finally succumbs to exhaustion, trying desperately not to think of Alastor and that long, long fall through the sky.
Minutes or hours later, when the house is quiet and still, she wakes and turns in his arms, strokes her thumb softly over his cheek.
It's going to keep happening, isn't it, she whispers.
What, darling? His voice, rough with sleep, a quiet murmur by her ear in the darkness.
People we love are going to die.
He doesn't offer an answer. Only wraps his arms around her tighter, holding her impossibly close.
Kneeling on the floor, her face buried in Andromeda's lap. March has brought ivy all around, white honeysuckle blooms, little daisies. But it has taken her father.
Mum, she mouths, and coherent thoughts refuse to take shape. Whatever this is, it spills from her from somewhere deep inside, near that primal place where her own baby is nested. It cries Mum, please, help me. But Andromeda herself seems lost, sitting still and silent on the couch, staring through the fireplace mantle as tears glisten on her cheeks.
And Remus, pale and stricken on the carpet next to her, strokes her hair over and over while she cries into her mother's skirt.
Distantly, like tiny thunder, their child rolls over inside her, pressing a tiny elbow or knee or foot against the skin stretched beneath her ribcage. Her husband's hand, warm, shifting lower on the cupola of her stomach.
Outside, rain upon the spring flowers.
A/N: Thank you so much for reading. Title from the poem by Mary Oliver.