***Canon Divergence Disclaimer: I will try to put a disclaimer every time I knowingly stray from canon. It's been a super fun challenge for me to try to adhere to the timeline and events of canon, but there are a few teensy things I am altering for the purposes of the story. One of those things is Remus' experience with the Wolfsbane potion. There is no exact date for its invention (unless you consider Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery canon for some reason?) but it is mentioned in PoS that Remus didn't have access to it before his time as a Professor at Hogwarts. It is going to be very important to some events at the end of this story which will lead into its Second Wizarding War sequel that Remus does, in fact, have access to it before then (though it will be a while before you find out how.) Thank you for coming to my TED talk, I'm always down to answer any questions -theo
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Ch. 4 - Upset
Remus leaned up against the little brick wall in front of the house, lit, then furiously inhaled his cigarette. To hell with the tuxedo. Not only was she engaged, she was engaged to a complete and utter prat. McLaggen was a debbonaire trust fund baby who had been two years above them in school and came from a long line of Ministry arse-kissers. He was the very last person on earth Remus thought Emmeline would ever involve herself with romantically, let alone marry. Then again, this whole ordeal had made him wonder if he had ever really known her at all. Perhaps she did fancy those types, and he had simply given her too much credit.
"Remus."
Speak of the devil.
She was relieved that he didn't seem to be leaving, but surprised to find a cigarette between his fingers. "Since when do you smoke?" she asked from the other side of the gate, wisely choosing to give him a fair bit of room. He did not meet her eyes but laughed in response, which frustrated Emmeline. "And what, may I ask, is so funny?"
"Well," he began, expelling smoke from the corner of his mouth, "you haven't exactly been here to find out, have you?" He took another spiteful drag of the cigarette, this time delaying his exhale so that smoke leaving his lips curled around each of his next words: "A lot of things change in a year."
"...It hasn't quite been a year," Emmeline corrected him, folding her arms around herself. She had made the mistake of not grabbing her coat on her way out the door, and the thin silk of the bridesmaid's dress did nothing to ward off the chill in the air. Too late to go back for it now - he might've been gone by the time she came back.
Remus raised an insolent eyebrow. "It's been ten months and eleven days."
Emmeline swallowed her words, speechless that he had kept track, and stared at the ground to avoid his eyes which he now cast in her direction.
"I'm rounding up," he snapped coarsely. If words could bear poison...
"Remus, I would very much like to give you an explanation for why I've been gone, but I hardly think this is the time or place-"
"I hear you've been back for weeks. Would've been nice to know," he cut her off.
"...You're right, I should have reached out to you earlier." She could offer him no excuse, except maybe "I was scared out of my wits to talk to you," and chose to leave it at that.
"Why did you come back?"
As the guilty party in all this, Emmeline let Remus take the lead with his questions, but was finding it difficult to provide him with answers that he would deem acceptable without knowing the whole truth of the matter.
"...Well?"
"...Because Tiberius needed to move to London for work. And he thought since we were moving in together..." She couldn't even bring herself to finish her statement, because it began to sound as stupid and indefensible to her as it probably did to Remus.
He scoffed bitterly, and got right to asking another question he wasn't even sure he wanted the answer to. "Did you run off with him? Is that what happened?"
"What- No! Absolutely not! We weren't...involved until after I...relocated." She was too ashamed to say left without a trace, though that was exactly what she had done and she knew it.
Her response did not soothe or satisfy Remus whatsoever, nor did it vindicate her. He personally felt that under ten months was not a sufficient amount of time to date someone before getting engaged. He had been with Emmeline for over two years, and they hadn't once talked about getting married. Could she really have forgotten about him that quickly?
"Please, Remus, you have every right to be upset but-"
"Upset?"
Remus cracked the hint of a crazed smile.
"Upset!?" he repeated, flicking the cigarette on the ground and stomping on it before letting himself back through the gate. "Upset doesn't even come close. You know, maybe at first, I was upset. It was indeed 'upsetting' to come home one day and find that my girlfriend had just taken all of her things, quit her job, and gone. With no warning. None."
Emmeline said nothing to oppose him and instead let him continue.
"I suppose it was also 'upsetting' when I had to find out not from Marlene, not from Lily, but from Albus Dumbledore where you had run off to, since you were kind enough to write to him but didn't have the decency to inform your own partner or any of your friends. And it's particularly maddening that, after A YEAR of radio silence, my prodigal lover has returned, again without warning, and engaged. To Tiberius bloody McLaggen. Frankly Emmeline, I am beyond upset, I am just plain pissed off."
Remus huffed and puffed at the end of his tirade. Rarely would he allow himself to vomit up everything on his mind like that, and Emmeline knew well that it was usually best to let him get it all out before attempting to proceed. She endured all his words without protestation as she deserved, then once he had settled down enough to pull another cigarette from his back pocket, she couldn't help but give him a small smile. She had missed him, after all.
"You done?"
Remus took a long, therapeutic drag of his newly lit cigarette. "For now."
"...How'd that feel?"
"Bloody fantastic."
"Good. Glad you got it out of your system," She deemed it safe to get closer to him and snatched the cigarette, helping herself to a puff.
"...Since when do you smoke?"
"I don't," she wheezed, coughing the vaporized tar back out and regretting her decision. "I really don't see the appeal. These will-"
"Kill me, I know," he finished her sentence for her, looking mildly amused as he took back his cigarette. He had grown up telling James and Sirius the same thing, but had been willfully ignoring his own advice as of late.
He studied her and noticed that she did not, in fact, look just as he had remembered her. Though uneducated in the minutia of hairstyles, he could tell from the volume of her bun that she had let her hair grow out a few inches longer. Her hair had always been a tad unruly, but she never seemed to mind and Remus assumed that perhaps she liked it that way. It seemed tamer now, or maybe Marlene's hair styling skills had done the trick of subduing it. He didn't think he had ever seen her wear this much makeup before either, and felt as though he was looking at her full lips for the very first time. Had they always looked like that and he'd simply forgotten? The thought saddened him.
"...I do owe you an explanation, but I can't give it to you tonight. Is there somewhere we could meet to talk?" Emmeline asked, thankful that it no longer seemed as though the evening would end in disaster.
"Name the place," Remus shrugged, trying to seem disinterested and aloof after accidentally having stared at her mouth for a bit too long.
She considered this for a moment. "We could go to Florean's. You know, for old time's sake."
"...It's November," he stated, noticing her shivering.
"How dare you suggest that ice cream is seasonal."
"...Alright. Florean's it is."
…
Diagon Alley wasn't nearly as crowded at this time of year since all of the 11-to-18-year-old patrons were at Hogwarts finishing their fall term. Emmeline peered through the window of Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour, but Remus hadn't arrived yet. A few days had passed since the wedding, and she wondered if he had decided not to show up to their meeting after all. She flicked her wrist up to glance at her watch, and was relieved to discover that she was fifteen minutes early. Perhaps enough time to pop into another shop...
Emmeline was convinced that nothing in her life had ever felt as good as coming back to England after so many months away. She had missed Diagon Alley and the smell of the books in Flourish and Blotts. As she nostalgically ran her fingers over the sections of school texts upstairs, memories from various classes at Hogwarts flooded her mind. Advanced Potion Making made her recall the time Marlene accidentally created some sort of cognizant gelatinous mass in Potions, and Professor Slughorn had to bring Dumbledore down to vanquish it. Intermediate Transfiguration made her laugh to herself. In third year, Sirius made a grave miscalculation and managed (quite impressively) to transfigure not his quill, but instead poor Matthew Brown into a sparrow. He had to be sent to the hospital wing in a bird cage. The Grade 5 Edition of The Standard Book of Spells was a good one too; this didn't evoke a memory from a Charms class per say, but instead of throwing it down onto the moving stairs to distract Filch one night when she and Remus snuck out to stargaze.
"I thought I might find you up here," Remus said from behind her, causing her to jump. Emmeline checked her watch again and realized she had been there for twenty minutes. She apologized as they made their way back down the stairs.
...
It should have been exceedingly difficult to talk to each other after all this time, but it wasn't. The conversation flowed so naturally that it was hard to recall what topic had led them on to the next.
"-They had this potion, you see."
"Wait, speaking of potions," Emmeline interjected. "I've been meaning to ask you…" she lowered her voice and leaned across the table. "I'm sure you've heard about the invention of-,"
"Yes." he whispered back.
"...and I know it's expensive, but-,"
"I've been taking it regularly for the last six months."
"Remus, that's fantastic!" she congratulated him in hushed tones, instinctively squeezing his hand before realizing her error and snatching her hand back. "How's it been then?"
"It's been nothing short of a miracle. The...process is still painful, but once I change it's still me in there, not just pure beast, if that makes sense. I'm able to stay home."
"That's great news."
Two topics of conversation that were somehow avoided entirely but burning in the back of Remus' mind were:
a) Why Emmeline left in the first place
b) How the hell McLaggen had managed to wriggle himself into the picture
They had been twirling their spoons in empty bowls for several minutes when he finally asked. "So, you and McLaggen?" He felt compelled to look away as soon as the question left his tongue.
There it was. Emmeline leaned back in her seat away from him. "...Yeah. He erm, he's just been hired by the ministry."
"He's been hired by his daddy," Remus thought indignantly.
"And you said you reconnected in Scotland?"
"We met back up in Edinburgh after…" She cleared her throat uncomfortably. "He thought it would be easier if he was a bit closer to the office, so now we're in London."
"...Oh."
It seemed like that was that. Until:
"It...it all happened so fast Remus I-"
"I see," he interrupted. Going into this conversation, he thought he wanted to know everything about Emmeline's unexplained absence. Now that he was in it, hearing her talk about him was making his chest tighten up. He decided he didn't want to know any more details about McLaggen.
"...What about you?" Emmeline asked, quickly changing the subject. "Has there...er...been anyone?"
...Been anyone? After her? What was she expecting him to say?
Remus looked up from his bowl directly into her eyes, shaking his head. "No one."
To his surprise, Emmeline looked rather shocked by this. "...No one at all?"
"No, of course not. There was only one person I..." He trailed off.
Emmeline suddenly felt as though the ice cream had begun to curdle in her stomach.
"Hi," said the young witch from behind the counter as she approached them. "So sorry to bother you, but we're about to close."
"Of course, we'll be on our way," said Emmeline, getting up from her chair and hastily walking back out into the Alley. It was already dark out. Once they had both left the shop, Remus caught her by the arm.
"You told me you would give me an explanation."
"I know, but not here."
"What?" Hadn't that been why they met in the first place?
She grabbed his hand and they disapparated.
