Ch. 5 - The Truth

He opened his eyes to find that they had apparated to a large, sleek penthouse apartment with a view of the London city center and the Thames. Remus could hardly believe what he was seeing as he took everything in - the high ceiling, the panoramic window, the great, marble hearth - then, he watched as Emmeline set down her satchel and hung up her coat.

"...You live here?" he asked, astounded.

"Well, we do now. We've just moved," she answered casually, motioning to some un-opened cardboard boxes in the corner of the vast sitting room. "Make yourself at home. Tiberius won't be back for another hour or so."

Remus continued to ogle at her, searching her face; but she carried on, nonchalantly flicking light switches and tidying up stray books on the coffee table. Finally, he hung his head and looked down at his shoes, a resentful chuckle escaping his lips.

His laugh took Emmeline by surprise, and she stopped what she was doing to puzzle at him. "...What?"

"...I understand now," he muttered, lifting his gaze to glower at her bitterly.

Emmeline hadn't the faintest idea what he could have possibly just "understood," as she hadn't really told him anything yet. "...What are you talking about?"

He plucked his hands from his pockets to gesture towards the lavish sitting room before them, taking a few steps past her to observe the extravagant furniture. The coffee table alone was probably worth more than his condominium.

"...Remus, I'm not following. Please, sit down, I need to tell you-"

"This is all really lovely. I hope you two have a marvelous life together," he spat, cutting her off. He then turned on his heels and intended to disapparate home, but Emmeline grabbed his arm.

"Hey! What are you on about?!"

"Oh well it's obvious, isn't it?!" His sudden outburst caused her to flinch and she staggered back.

"Enlighten me," she bade him, quickly regaining her nerve and squaring off with him again.

Remus' eyes found her ring. "That's a sizable diamond, how much did that cost?"

When she realized his meaning, Emmeline's brow furrowed in disgust. "How dare you Remus Lupin."

"Please, I'm not daft! I had been racking my brain trying to come up with why McLaggen might be of any interest to you, but now it all makes perfect sense!"

"You have no idea what you're talking about," she insisted, her mouth twisting up as the words left. She pushed past him so that he wouldn't see her begin to cry.

"Don't I?!" he called after her. "Because I'm finding it hard not to draw conclusions when you seem to have upgraded from our shoebox apartment to a bloody palace!"

"Remus, please," she pleaded, still not facing him. But he was hardly listening.

"Well if it isn't his money then what is it?!" He was finally ready to hear her answer to his last, festering question. "Is it..." He had to pause for a moment, as he could feel his shaking voice starting to betray him. "Is it because he isn't...is it because he's normal?"

Upon hearing this, Emmeline turned around slowly, giving up on hiding her tears from him. "...What?" she breathed.

Remus lowered his voice and tried desperately to swallow the lump in his throat. "Because if that's the case-"

"You think I left because of your lycanthropy?"

"...You never gave me any answers, so that was my most logical guess." A stray tear fell from the corner of his eye. Damn it. He wiped it quickly.

Emmeline covered her mouth, drawing in a shuddering breath as she looked at him, aching. "That isn't...I would never..."

He raised his voice again to mask his pain with his anger. "Damn it Emmeline, then please put me out of my misery and give me a reason, because I have spent the last year thinking you couldn't handle my disease anymore!"

"I was PREGNANT!" she snapped.

Remus felt as though the word knocked the wind out of him.

They stood still for a moment, both afraid to move for fear of crumbling. Finally, Emmeline slumped onto the ground and sobbed into her hands. Remus did not hesitate in bolting to her side to throw his arms around her, and she grasped them tightly as she tugged herself into his embrace. They remained there for what felt like a lifetime.

Eventually, he gained the courage to quietly ask:

"What...What happened?"

Emmeline pulled herself up to face him, but had to take a few extra seconds to streamline her thoughts. Remus waited patiently. The tears and redness in her eyes amplified the green outer ring of their hazel - an unfortunate precondition for them to look this brilliant.

"I found out at the end of December, a few days before I left…" Emmeline continued to cry softly as she spoke. "We had just finished school, and we both started working for the Order, and then there was the war...it felt like the world was crashing down around us and we were so young and I was...I was so scared." She took a few shaky breaths. "So I didn't really think, I just got up and ran like an absolute coward. But I swear Remus, I was certain you would move on and find somebody else."

Remus stared at her, flummoxed. In their year apart, he thought he had come up with every possible scenario as to why Emmeline might have left. This was not one of them. He had always thought they had been pretty careful when it came to that sort of thing...not careful enough, apparently.

"Who else knew?"

"I didn't tell anybody. Not Lily, not Marlene, not even Dumbledore in the letter. Tiberius doesn't know either." After a few moments and a few more tears, she spoke again, this time with more urgency. "Remus, I'm so sorry for what I did, I'm so unbelievably-"

"Emmeline," He took her face in both of his hands. "I should have come after you, I thought-"

"I never wanted you to think that I left because I thought your condition was a burden, never." She began to weep again. Remus cracked a small smile through his own tears, and pulled her back into his arms.

Then something occurred to Remus - and since he didn't see any baby clothes or furniture around the flat, he was afraid to ask.

"Emmeline?"

"Yes?"

"...If you were pregnant..." But he never got the chance to finish his question. He stopped when he felt her shudder against him.

She let out an excruciating whimper against his coat: "I miscarried four weeks later."

Remus' jaw hung open, and he tightened his grasp around her. "You should not have tried to do that all by yourself. You should have come home."

"I was too ashamed to come back at that point. I couldn't face you. And then Tiberius, he was there for me, and-"

"Emmeline…" He cupped her face again, his lips desperate for hers, when the front door swung open:

"What the hell is going on?"

As if she had summoned him, there stood Tiberius in the doorway, his chest puffed out like a stout bear. He wasn't a particularly tall bloke, but he was handsome in a well-groomed, expensive-wardrobe, my-watch-is-worth-more-than-you sort of way.

"Tiberius," Emmeline exclaimed, rising unsteadily to her feet. Remus shot up as well.

Tiberius squinted at the pair of them. "...Lupin?"

"McLaggen," he groaned in response.

"What exactly are you doing in my house with your arms around my fiancée?" He strode towards Remus menacingly, but Emmeline stepped out in front of him.

"Tiberius, wait-" She attempted to stop him, but Tiberius walked right past her and jabbed his wand against Remus' neck. The wand had to be pointed upward as Remus was quite tall and had four or five inches on McLaggen, but this did not deter him. Remus did not fight back, and simply held his hands up in the air, surrendering.

"Don't do anything stupid Tiberius," Emmeline pleaded frustratedly from the sidelines. "I was upset and he was only trying to console me."

Tiberius shot her a livid scowl, then brought his focus back to Remus. "I don't much like it when people come into my house and try to take what's mine."

Remus raised an eyebrow and glanced back at Emmeline, who by the looks of it hadn't much cared for this possessive statement either. He could have assured Tiberius that this was not what he was doing...except for the fact that it sort of was what he was doing. He had been about to kiss her, after all. He could have pointed out that she had been with him first, but that would probably result in a nasty hex or a punch in the nose. So instead, he just said: "She isn't a thing to be owned, you know."

Remus quickly realized that this was also not the right thing to say, not to Tiberius anyway. McLaggen wound back to cast some sort of spell, but Emmeline caught his arm. He elbowed her off, giving Remus enough time to draw his wand, but before any jinxes were thrown Emmeline managed to produce her own wand: "Accio!"

Both mens' wands flew out of their own grasps and into Emmeline's hand.

"Stop it! Both of you!" she screeched, thrusting herself between them. She shot Tiberius a contemptuous look, withholding his wand from him. She then turned to Remus, her brow softening, and handed his wand back gently. "You should go."

Go?

But they had so much left to discuss.

Would they see each other again?

This was all wrong.

This penthouse was wrong.

The ruddy coffee table was wrong.

He was wrong.

"Come with me," Remus' eyes pleaded silently.

But Emmeline said nothing. Behind her, Tiberius was growing impatient. "...Any day now Lupin."

To prevent himself from following through on the curse he wanted so badly to deliver, Remus offered her one last look of defeat, then disapparated.

When he was gone, Tiberius strode around to face Emmeline, who gazed dismally at the spot where Remus had just been in a semi-catatonic state. "Would you like to tell me what the hell that was about?"

"I don't see the sense in trying to explain it to you while you're so angry," she responded in a monotone voice, her eyes still fixed on thin air.

Tiberius scoffed. "Did you have a good snog for old times sake then?"

That brought her right out of her trance, and she turned back to him with a caustic glare. "No. I just...I had to tell him why I left."

"Must have been a fairly intimate conversation."

Well, it sort of had been as a matter of fact, but she didn't have much mental energy left to concede that. "You knew I was hurting when you and I started seeing each other and that I had never given him a proper goodbye. We needed closure." She stuttered through the word "needed," almost neglecting the past tense. They had hardly achieved closure; if anything, she had only ripped the hole wider.

Tiberius was as unsympathetic as he would have been towards a toy that someone was trying to take from him on the playground. "Well I've never seen 'closure' that looked quite like that," he fumed, throwing his coat back on. "Since you'd rather talk this through right now, I'll be at the pub. I need a drink." He stormed back out the door with no protest from Emmeline.