a/n: this goes out to my dearest, darling friends who left for college this past week. Best of luck to you all.

Chapter 31: When You Were Young, Your Heart was an Open Book

Remus sat at the dining table, staring at Tabitha in shock. This was not quite what he had had in mind when he suggested a romantic dinner at his flat while James and Sirius struggled through their Auror examination. It had started out as he had had in mind. Good food, candlelight, soft music. The incredibly nerve-racking sensation of the small velvet box containing a small diamond ring lodged in his trouser pocket. They had chatted over nothing and everything, and sometimes had not chatted at all. They had merely sat comfortably together in a silence that neither created and neither minded.

After he had swished his wand and whisked the dishes into the kitchen, he had stammered, and stuttered, and got down on one knee as he was supposed to have done. She gasped and began to cry as he had heard females typically did. But then she said something that he didn't expect.

"Remus . . . I'd love to. But I really can't. I wish I could. But I can't"

He felt rather foolish kneeling on the floor like that, as he was supposed to do, when her answer was not one that a man typically heard when proposing to a woman. So he stood up, sat back at his seat, and waited for her to continue.

"It's not because you're a werewolf, or because I don't love you anymore, I do! I don't think that you even begin to realize how much I love you. It's just . . ."

"What?" he had asked, not quite understanding why her answer was can't, when it seemed to him she could, and she seemed so crushed that she apparently couldn't.

"You know about our job. Mine, and Lilly's, and Gretchen's, and Alice's. But, there's a part you don't know. A part that they don't know. I'm the Watcher."

"A watcher? Well, neither you nor I have ever said much, but . . . I don't think I understand this properly." Remus stated, shaking his head miserably.

"No, I suppose you're not." Tabitha had replied, shaking her head sadly. "I'm not A watcher, I'm the Watcher. It's my job to watch the rest of the Elementals. Study how they control their power and how they live with it. To learn and know everything that they know, and their surroundings. Basically, I have to know everything about them. Then, I have to stay alive."

"Stay alive?"

"It's not in the nature of an Elemental to live for very long. We constantly put ourselves in danger. But one of us always has to live. To teach the next generation. To carry on the powers and the legacy."

"So . . . you can't get married?"

"So . . . I have to leave soon."

Shaking himself from his shock, Remus sat bolt upright. "Leave? You have to leave?"

"Voldemort has started targeting us with all of his strength. He hurls all of his Deatheaters at us that he can. The best thing to do now is to disappear. Disband the elementals and seemingly scatter. He'll think he's defeated us, but in reality, we're all still fighting in the Order, right? At least, Gretchen, Lilly, and Alice are. But, as the Watcher, I have to leave." She sighed, wiping a tear from her cheek. Her voice was poisoned with bitterness as she said, "I have to run."

Remus stood and went to Tabitha, taking her hands and pulling her up gently.

"But you don't have to leave forever. You will come back, right?"

"Yes, but I have no idea when. Only when the next generation is revealed."

Opening the tiny box, he slid the beautiful, if simple, ring onto the typical finger for an engagement ring. He then kissed her hand, and kissed her mouth.

"Tabitha, I love you. I'll wait for you. That is . . . if you'll wait for me."

Smiling gently, Tabitha blinked, her long lashes sliding over her starry violet eyes. She nodded once, before kissing him gently.

Later that night, Remus sat on the roof of their flat building, gazing ruefully at the waxing gibbous moon. It seemed to Remus that everything in his life was centered around time. The time of his life before the Wolf. The time of his life before Hogwarts. The time of his life, in Hogwarts. He had spent his whole life obeying the moon in its oblong orbit. And now his relationship with Tabitha was a ticking time-bomb. He could quite literally count the minutes they had left until she was forced to leave, and he was forced to live without her again. Remus' and Tabitha's relationship was quiet, with very little fanfare. Perhaps, to others, this made it seem dispassionate or not as significant to them as certain other's relationships. But Remus, in the year that he and Tabitha had been dating, had forgotten how to function without Tabitha by his side, the wind constantly stirring her raven hair gently. Her presence that seemed to tame the Wolf inside him, whatever the moon's phase.

Lilly and James' wedding. That was their deadline. She had been given until then to enjoy and savor her friend's and loved ones company. And then she had to leave. Vanish with the wind, not to be seen until another young girl stole it from her.

"Remus?" The man in question spun around, to see Tabitha standing in the doorway from the stairs. Her pale legs protruded from the shirt he had worn earlier that evening, her thin hands clutching at the extra large neckline.

"Please" she whispered. "Don't waste it."

He didn't intend to.