Important, please read: As you can likely see above in the story description, I've swapped the pairings around a little. I did this because apparently I can't write Clay and Elena in any relationship but a romantic one, they really do go together so well, and because I thought fuck it, Harry deserves all the love she can get, and so here we are folks! I've never written femslash before, so it might be a bit shaky in places but I'm going to give it a good go. I will say this isn't going to be a love triangle, I really don't like that trope, so when I say Clay/Harry/Elena I really do mean those three together properly, so that includes Harry/Elena, Clay/Elena, Clay/Harry in a romantic setting together and apart. I also know some people don't like femslash for whatever reason, and so I wanted to give this update rather fast and make the change clear when I realized I was going to change it up for those who want to drop this fic they can before we really get into the meat of this story.
So New Pairings Are: Clay/Elena/Harry, Bill/Draco, Jeremy/Lily, Sirius/Remus, Nick/Hermione.
For those sticking around, here's chapter three, and I hope you all enjoy it!
xXx
Elena Michaels sat at the dining table filled with newly cooked sausages, eggs, bacon, toast, peeled tomatoes, a mountain of breads and cheeses, bowls of fruit and freshly squeezed juices, and although her stomach rumbled and twisted at the sight and smell of the food she hesitated in lifting her fork to her face for that first delicious bite. How long had it been since she could eat without worry of what others around her would suspect?
A year.
A whole year of curbing, dainty portions, and scoffing food in the kitchen in the dead of night while Philip wasn't looking. It felt like longer. A lot longer. A lifetime, really.
In a way it was.
Toronto and Philip, their apartment and bubble of mundane-mortal domesticity, felt a whole world away from the rustic rambunctiousness of Stonehaven.
Jeremy, the Alpha of their Pack, an impressive Werewolf of 6'3 lean muscle with a cascade of black hair that he kept back with a leather throng, large mono-lidded black eyes set above high cheekbones, sat at the head of the long dining table. Raising his own fork, he took the initial bite of a sausage, and at the universal sign only Pack truly picked up on, the rest descended onto the heap of steaming food.
Elena had no other excuse to keep pushing her own toast around her plate now.
"I guess it's a symptom of city living. I've been trying to get my appetite back to the way it was."
Pete Myers, two seats down from Elena, a man perpetually at home in scuffed jeans and a torn shirt sleeves, huffed and crammed a bacon bread roll into his mouth, speaking through the chewing.
"Impossible. I tell the crews I travel with that I have an abnormal pituitary gland. Otherwise, with all the food I eat, I'd be reality-show huge."
Elena smiled and took a cautionary nibble of her toast. The next bite she took wasn't so small or cautionary.
So much for holding back.
This… This was exactly why she couldn't afford to stick around since Jeremy had called her back to Stonehaven a day ago. It was all too… Much. Too effortless. Too simple. Too easy. Elena had spent a year, a whole, horrible, torturous year trying to get her humanity back, piecing human-Elena together from the shrivelled remnants she had left inside. This house, Stonehaven, this Pack, her brothers, her friends, her ex-
It was too easy to slip back into old Elena. Old Elena who had ripped a man's heart right out of his beating chest because-
Old Elena was dead. This new Elena just had to make sure she stayed that way.
"I think it's easier when you're a guy."
Finishing off the toast in record timing, and making her way slowly but surely through the ham and eggs, Elena turned to Jeremy picking through his own breakfast.
The quicker she dealt with the current Mutt problem Jeremy had demanded she return for, the Mutt who had mauled a young girl and, for whatever reason, had dumped the body on Stonehaven property to be found by locals, putting an unprovoked and a much unwanted spotlight on the North American Pack, the quicker Elena could go home to Toronto and away from all this… Temptation.
"So, have you heard from Logan?"
Unlike Pete, Jeremy chewed his food calmly, swallowing before he answered.
"He's on his way here."
Elena skewered a sausage with her fork, the skin popping under the pressure.
"We don't have to wait. I can track now."
Jeremy, however, was having none of it. Maybe he saw it for what it was, as surely Clay did, sitting across from her staring as he was.
An excuse to get done and get gone.
Elena tried hard, very, very hard, not to look at the Werewolf sitting across from her. It wasn't an easy task. Clay was the tallest, pushing towards 6'8, and broadest man in the room, despite hunching in his chair over his plate as he was. He was one of those detestable people blessed with both genius-level intelligence and drop-dead-gorgeous looks. Blue eyes, brown locks, and a rugged face straight out of a magazine. Match that with a powerful body and you have a package that wouldn't go unnoticed in the middle of a Chippendales convention. Traffic-stopping gorgeous… and Clay had all the charm of a pit viper with its tail stepped on.
"You can't change in broad daylight. It's too risky, and going out as a human is not an option."
Elena ignored Clay, didn't even glance his way, wouldn't, and couldn't, give in so easily. Instead she kept her gaze locked and loaded on a silent Jeremy.
"Then send the guys with me. I can still track as a human."
Gently, Jeremy, Clay's adopted father and, in a way, the worst way, Elena's too, lowered his fork to his plate with a soft, clinking tink of silver on bone China.
"Elena, you've been away from the Pack for a year. Why don't you take the time to refresh your memory about the Mutts. All your files are downstairs just where you left them. We're going to go over my plans for this evening when Logan gets here."
One last try.
"And until then?"
Jeremy smiled softly at her. She almost hated him for the kindness and understanding she could see shadowing his dark eyes. All this, wanting to be anywhere but here, would have been so much easier if Jeremy wasn't-… Wasn't Jeremy.
Elena could fight against Clay's obstinate intransigent personality, with his darlin's and his long, hard looks, but she couldn't fight against Jeremy's compassion. Not with the way she typically could with everything else, with insults and brush-offs.
"Eat and rest up."
Coming to a stand, Jeremy left it at that, heading for the kitchen door, likely making his way to his study not too far away in the house. Antonio, Nick's father and Jeremy's best friend, was quick to follow the Alpha out.
They'd be spitting plans over Jeremy's desk for the next hour, Elena suspected. Going over who would go where, what spots in Bear Valley might be housing a Mutt, who could be behind this attack on the Pack.
Which left Elena alone with tweedledee, tweedledum, and the big bad wolf in plaid.
Fantastic.
Nick, boyish, grinning Nick with his dark hair and bright blue eyes, Clay's oldest friend and perhaps the closest thing Elena had to a brother, took his chance when he saw it, grinning at her with a cocked brow.
"Ready to 'rest up'?"
Elena scoffed and downed half her glass of orange juice in one. She felt… Wired. Cramped. Her bones felt slightly too big for her body, pressed in flesh and muscle and constrained into something human.
She needed to get back to Toronto.
"I don't need to rest. I have work to do."
Pete, of course, decided to jump in with his two cents.
"Clearly she's out of practice. Take it easy on her."
Elena chuckled, knowing exactly what they were trying to do, to distract her, to release some of their own pent-up energy, to change the focus from the unknown of a Mutt having enough balls to try and frame the Pack for murder, to something easier to swallow.
Leave a group of Werewolves alone in a room, and you can bet a fight, playful or not, would breakout within the hour.
Elena knew exactly what they were doing, and she still fell for it all the same. Maybe a good fight would get her head on straight, stop the humming in her blood and the howling trapped in her ribs.
"I don't need you guys to take it easy on me."
Nick flicked his fork at her with a cheeky grin.
"Okay. Prove it."
Elena's chair squeaked as she pushed it back, squaring Nick with a daring look. God, she had missed this. She had missed this, and she hated it. All of it. Every single thing. She hated, hated, hated, hated-
Loved it. She loved it and she hated herself for it because this wasn't the way it was supposed to be, this wasn't who she was anymore, this wasn't-
Perhaps old Elena wasn't as dead as she had previously thought, and that was a terrifying thought.
"Five minutes. Back patio-"
From the hallway the sound of the doorbell ringing echoed. Elena huffed. It was likely another would-be-hunter asking for permission to sweep Stonehaven for the elusive wolf. They wouldn't find it, no matter how long or hard they looked.
It wasn't that kind of canine, and a gun wasn't going to take it out.
"I'm up. I'll get it."
Nick chuckled as he sipped at his own juice.
"Oh, I see. She's afraid she's going to lose-"
Elena swivelled by the door, grinning over her shoulder.
"Ten minutes, and you're getting your ass kicked."
Nick and Pete laughed but Clay didn't say a word. Not one. He simply watched and waited, and Elena couldn't meet his eye. There was once a time where he would have known what she was thinking even from another room, a time where she would have been able to see beneath that cobra colours he wore to the man beneath.
And then Elena, a year ago, had killed Jose Carter, a man going around trying to give out information on Werewolves, a man who carried a lopped off, half transformed arm in a cooler to sell to the highest bidder. She'd ripped his heart out, thought she had been protecting the Pack in the heat of the moment, and then the guilt had rushed her seconds after.
Elena had killed a mortal man.
She hadn't wavered.
She'd just… Done it.
Elena left a week later. Packed her bags and ran to Toronto. Clay hadn't followed. Whatever they had before, it was long gone, dead as Old Elena. Maybe that was best for both of them. Her and Clay, they were like fire and smoke. They burned bright, they burned hard, and in the end they had nothing left but ash.
The problem, Elena now knew, was they had nothing to ground them, no oxygen to keep fuelling, nothing to bridge the places where they couldn't meet, two mates who weren't… Complete.
He knew it, she knew it, and it-
It didn't matter anymore.
Elena had Philip, and Toronto, and her dreary domesticity now. That was enough.
That was enough.
xXx
Elena swung the front door open just as the bell rang again, only to be greeted by something she had not been expecting to greet her at all. The person on the other side of the door was definitely no hunter, no rifle strapped to back in its carry case, no camo in sight, and neither was it a police officer, here to take notes, again, on how exactly Jeremy had found the body of the Mutt victim, where and what time and who had been traipsing across the, now, crime scene. No, this wasn't a hunter, and it wasn't a police officer after a big break so they could get a detective badge in a small town that, previously, only had minor shoplifting by rebelling teens as its biggest felony.
It was a woman. A young woman. Mousy looking with her pallid skin, brown bobbed hair, brown eyes, average height-
Average in everything, really. Elena's nose curled at the waft of brick dust, wet grass, and something like damp plaster coming from the girl.
Average. Typical. A run-of-the-mill mortal.
Completely forgettable, Elena would later say.
And the woman was smiling at her from the stone steps of the front patio, grin half obscured by the scarf she wore around her neck.
"Hi, sorry to be a bother but I was just driving through to get to Ithaca, and my car broke down just over your hill. I was wondering if I could use your house phone to call my brother to come pick me up? I promise I won't take too long. I'll be out your hair before you know it."
Huh, a Brit. You didn't get many of them around these parts. You didn't get many passers through at all, in truth. It was part and parcel of the reason, generations ago, the North American Pack had set up home here, in quiet, provincial Bear Valley. More space and less eyes to spot the unnaturally large wolves lurking in the woods.
Something tickled at the back of Elena's neck, a sensation of prickling awareness, just as a frown was beginning to settle between her blond brows. Seemingly, the woman must have known what she was thinking, strange for a mortal or a Werewolf, the only person who had ever been able to read Elena's face before had been Clay-
Who went around without a cell phone in this day and age?
Still, the woman slipped a hand behind her, shuffling in her coat as she dipped a hand into her jeans and produced a black screened phone that she wiggled jovially in Elena's direction.
"My cell died about an hour ago. Honestly, I'm awful at remembering to charge it."
Elena glanced behind her, into the still and silent house.
No doubt Jeremy had heard the entire conversation from his study, and if he wasn't coming down to talk to the woman himself, it meant he didn't mind her coming in, and Clay, Nick and Pete were out back already, far away from scaring off the young woman.
And why Elena suddenly cared about scaring the woman off at all was beyond her.
The prickling sensation deepened until it tickled, until it itched, until it screamed. Look! The wolf inside was practically baying in Elena's chest. Look! Look! Look! But look at what, Elena thought? It was merely just some young woman with a dead phone and a dead car looking for a ride home. So Elena ignored the instinct, ignored the wolf, even when it felt like it was trying to batter against the metaphysical cage inside with incessant Look! See? Need! almost, surprisingly and inexplicably, ecstatically.
Yes, Elena ignored it all, and when she turned back around from glancing inside the house, she was smiling amiably.
The poor woman just wanted to get home, and Elena could understand that. She didn't need whatever mind-fuck Elena's inner wolf was trying to pull.
"Sure, come on in."
Leisurely, the woman breached the door well, wrapped up tight in a blue peacoat and scarf, and sidled passed as Elena shut the door behind her. She saw the woman's nose scrunch a little in the middle, a tiny wrinkle, sniffing as the smaller woman passed by.
Colds.
Mortals got them all the time, and it was flu season. The woman likely couldn't smell much of anything by the way her gaze, deep and brown, darted over to Elena with an almost surprised raise of her brow.
"Huh…"
The woman snapped out of it, shaking her head and smiling.
"So which way?"
Elena gestured with a sweep of her arm, taking the lead as the pair ambled for the living room, the woman's sued boots echoing her steps nearly to perfection. Good at sneaking, a natural at it, Elena thought. Hiding! Her instincts shouted.
And Elena brushed that thought off cleanly too.
What the hell had gotten into her?
As Elena led the smaller girl into the living room where the house phone sat on the side table by the fireplace mantle, the woman had unwound her scarf from her thin neck and held it primly in her hands. Elena offered to take it silently, not quite trusting her voice to come out entirely human, which she did when the woman wearily handed it over, slinging it over the back of a coach as the woman went to dial a number on the phone. Yet, that wasn't before Elena got a sly sniff in on the scarf. Brick, grass, plaster. Human. Definitely, blandly, achingly human.
Then what had set her wolf off?
The house phone didn't ring for long, and the voice on the other end was low and deep, bristled in English, but indistinct enough through the crackle of the connection and the low timber that Elena couldn't hear much more than tone and accent.
"Hey Deran, can you come pick me up? My car's knackered out at the bottom of the road at…"
The woman expectantly looked her way, waiting. Elena shook her head, smiled and replied.
"Stonehaven. There's a sign on the way into town for the turn-off. You can't miss it."
The woman turned back to the phone, aiming her back towards Elena until all she could see was coat and curls. Her wolf didn't like that.
It didn't like it one bit.
Look! Look! See! See me! See me!
Well… That was new. New and weirdly frightening. Usually her wolf, Elena herself too, didn't like being seen. They lived much better in the shadows, as all Werewolves did. For her instincts to be suddenly screaming otherwise-
Maybe she was coming down with something. Maybe coming back to Stonehaven had confused herself, blew up old emotions and older hurts. Maybe she just needed a good run to get a grip of herself.
"Stonehaven. Yeah, my phones dead. I know you keep telling me-… Fifteen minutes? Yeah, that's grand. I'll be by the car. Don't forget to ring the tow-truck so we can get it to a garage. Cheers. See you soon."
The phone hung up with a click. The woman swivelled to face Elena, smile not quiet reaching her eyes, and that, too, scratched something fierce in the back of Elena's mind. It seemed almost-
Almost wrong.
Terribly wrong.
She should be smiling properly, truly, as it should be-
"Thanks for that. I would have been stranded otherwise."
Whatever this ache was, this strange, strange need to see a smile, whatever her inner wolf, which was really just her own animalistic instincts and impulses garbled up into one salivating psychological creature, was trying to say, Elena knew she needed it to stop. Now.
As she needed to get back to Toronto and back to human Elena with her nine-to-five and her world that made sense. The young woman, with her way of somehow, impossibly, without meaning to, inciting the wolf within Elena, needed to go away.
Notwithstanding said wolf screaming for something completely opposite.
"No problem. Do you want me to walk you down to-"
But the woman was looking at the mantle of the fireplace, eyeing the myriad of framed photos Jeremy had placed across the surface in disjointed angles. She gestured to the first one, cutting over Elena with an easy-breezy sweep of a question. Normally, Elena would bristle at being side-stepped, flouted, overridden. Normally, Elena would have diverted the conversation back to what she was saying, ignoring the cut across. Normally, the prospect of getting a stranger to go far, far away from her was something to cheer and celebrate, having never really been a 'people' person even before getting bitten.
Normally.
None of this, clearly, was normal, and the thought, just the thought, of the woman walking away, down the hill and back to her car and her life… Felt… Wrong.
Everything felt wrong.
"Your family?"
Elena strode over sluggishly, as if her limbs had been dipped in resin and were slowly hardening to amber, and glanced at the photo the woman was pointing to. This close, her scent was unambiguous. Brick, plaster, grass-
Wrong.
It was wrong. It was all wrong. Why was it wrong?
The photo itself was one of the last ones Elena had been in, taken around two years ago. Nick, Antonio, Jeremy, Clay, Elena, Logan and Pete all stood at the front gate, smiling, as one-
A photo from a different time and a different Elena.
"Yeah… My family."
The woman nodded as if she had expected just that answer.
"Seven of you? Wow, that's big. I only have two brothers… And my adopted fathers, of course. Soon it's just going to be me and my brother Deran. We're going to University, you see, and it'll be the first time we're away from home-"
The woman's quasi-smile and distractingly idle chatter faltered when she swept the line of photos with a scanning glance. The last one on the far end caught her gaze and held it there like a butterfly pinned to paper. Her steps resonated as she was ostensibly dragged towards it. Elena froze where she stood. The woman lifted the photo frame up, held it between her two pale hands, and stared long and hard at it. Elena peeked over her shoulder to get a glimpse, and recognized the image immediately.
It was the oldest photo on the mantle place, taken from the Pack's younger days before Elena was bitten and turned and knew of the existence of Werewolves. Jeremy stood with Antonio on their home patio, some others dotted around the veranda too who used to be here and now weren't, dead or banished, and standing beside him were three men, one with messy black hair and glasses that sat wonkily on his face, the other looking as comfortable as sin in his Queen band shirt and ripped jeans and devil-may-care grin, the other looking tired and riddled with scars-
And a single woman. Red haired, pretty, almost devastatingly so, with bright green eyes that made her beaming smile from beside Jeremy all the more brighter. A summer heatwave draped in human-form. That's what the woman reminded Elena of. Amber evening skies, and green grass, and lazy gilt freckles like sunlight coming through the clouds.
Jeremy and she stood side by side in the photo, and they had their arms around each other, leaning in close. Intimately close.
Elena had seen the photo before, saw another, this one just of Jeremy and the woman, much in the same pose, on his study desk. Elena had asked him before, once, only once, who this mysterious red-haired woman was. Jeremy had never answered her question. He had merely smiled sadly and walked out from the room. Elena hadn't asked again. She knew, despite the oddity of her own existence, that women couldn't turn. They died from the bite, and they certainly weren't born, and there was only one reason Elena could think of that would make Jeremy smile so tragically.
Death.
The redhaired woman was likely a tragedy from Jeremy's past. One best left there.
"Is everything alright?"
Elena turned at the question coming from a new voice in the living room, having caught Jeremy's scent long before he spoke up at the door. She smiled at the older wolf. Still, she went through the motions of pretending he hadn't heard their entire conversation from the stairwell or, perhaps, even from his study.
There were human ears around to fool, after all.
"I was just about to walk this woman to her car. It broke down on the road and she needed a phone to call her brother to pick her up-"
Elena caught sight of the woman beside her from the corner of her eye, rolling on her heel, spotting Jeremy between the hall and room, locked in the doorway. Her nose sniffled, and her face washed white.
A beat.
Two.
The woman kept staring blankly. The fake smile on her face withered, her features laxed to placid waters, still, reflective, indecipherable… And then there was a deafening snap.
The photo in her hold caved in, glass and wood shattering between white knuckle strained fingers.
"Shit-"
The woman ignored her, spinning to slam the broken frame down on the mantel, stumbling a little, bolting for the door. For the exit.
"Sorry, just remembered I left the engine running and-… Got to go. Thanks for the phone."
Jeremy tried to smile welcomingly.
"I can walk you down-"
But the woman was deceptively fast, already storming through the door and into the hallway, passed Jeremy, aiming for the front door.
"Got to go."
Jeremy took a step to follow, likely confused and worried for the mortal as Elena suddenly was, but he hesitated a moment as the breeze caught up as the woman blew through, frowning darkly, black straight hair framing his fox-like eyes.
That was when Elena smelled it too, the scent that caused Jeremy to fix in place.
The front door slammed shut, the back open, just as the nerves in Elena's brain began to quick speed fire in alarm and confusion and need-
Clay, Pete and Nick ambled into the room, having likely heard the recent commotion from the back garden.
"What's going on-"
But Clay stopped in his tracks as Nick's question faltered, nostrils widening, and his gaze landed on the mantle. He stormed over, and picked up the laid down forgotten, smashed photo frame.
The photo frame with a smear of blood from a cut thumb across the glass face.
The scent of heady water lilies, sweet-spice, oakmoss and something a little like burnt honey assaulted Elena's nose. It reminded her a little of Jeremy's scent, the same woodsy smell of moss and honey, but less on the smoke and patchouli that fragranced the Alpha's own.
There was also one apparent similarity and variation hiding in the smell abruptly burning new pathways through Elena's mind, grinding itself in deep and hard and irretrievably. The distinctive, unmistakable earthy aroma of female wolf.
"Who was that?"
Elena blinked, and dazedly blinked some more at Clay's question. Yet, he could smell what she could, surely, smell it and hold it and-
It suddenly, maddeningly, achingly made sense.
Wrong.
The smell, the brick, the plaster, the grass, had been wrong. This smell was right. Too right. Right-
There was only one other time Elena had reacted so to a scent. Just one, and it was the worst. Clay.
Look! See! Mate!
Fuck.
"I-… I don't know. I never got her name."
Jeremy finally came too, still staring down the hall the way the woman had dashed, and with one word, just one, he bolted for the front door.
"Lily."
The woman was already gone by the time the Pack tumbled out the house. There was no car at the bottom of the hill, no brother coming to pick her up, not so much as a footprint left in the grass, the only thing left behind was a scarf.
Well… Elena was the best tracker this Pack had seen in centuries. She'd found Mutts with less.
xXx
"Definitely wolf. Merlin… She was ripped to ribbons. What kind of degenerate would do that?"
Slinking out the back door of the mortuary, fixing the shattered lock with a flick of a hand and a glimmer of a spell, Draco Malfoy and Bill Weasley straightened out before slipping around the side of the brick building to take them through the back alleys that had let them get in undetected.
"You got that swab?"
Draco nodded, patting his blazer pocket.
"Right here. Do you think-"
Whatever he was going to say would forever be forgotten when, unexpectedly, from around the corner onto the main street, a blur came barrelling towards them.
It took Draco longer than reaching for his stashed wand up his sleeve to recognize the mess of the face coming at him.
Brown bobbed hair was unfurling before him, lengthening, curling, darkening. The pallid skin was rippling, morphing, tightening and flushing in places, cheekbones raising, speckled with tawny freckles, and the brown eyes were widening out, curling-
Bill dashed forward, grabbed a quickly wearing off Polyjuice Potioned' Harry from the street by the collar of her coat and heaved her into the shaded alley way.
"Circe, Harry! You're going to out us!"
Draco's gut churned.
Harry didn't fight off the hand wrapped in her coat, neither did she do much about being backed up against the brick wall, or crowded in on in the cramped space.
Something was wrong.
Something was terribly wrong.
That's when he smelt it. Water lilies, oak moss, spice and wolf.
He glanced down to the right hand peeking out her coat, slack and limp. The red coated hand that had once, recently, despite Harry's impressive regenerative abilities, been bleeding.
"Bloody hell! I thought you said you weren't going to get cut!"
At his exclamation, Bill followed Draco's startled glance, his senses a little less sharp than the two full Werewolves in the alley, or whatever it was that Harry was, and swore.
"Fuck. Did they start something-"
Harry blinked, head shaking, the last drop of Polyjuice sloshing off her face as she lengthened out to her, becoming lithe and lethal.
"I did it. I cut my finger on a photo frame… I was… I thought-"
"What the hell were you doing with a photo-"
Draco cut Bill off, more astute than the lanky ginger.
"Harry."
Bill snapped to silence, and still, Harry stood staring vacantly with her back against the wall.
"Harry… What's wrong?"
Harry shuddered, and when her face settled, morphed back into her own, Draco saw her eyes.
Summer green.
Oh dear-
"I uh… That… I-"
Green met silver, and Harry's laugh was long, loud, and lost.
"I think I just met my father."
Next Chapter Teaser:
Harry laid on the king-sized bed in the middle of the dingy motel room, face to the ceiling, eyes closed, limbs strewn wide, still glistening from her shower, dressed in one of Bill's old T-shirts and a pair of boxers she had clearly nabbed from somewhere at some time. Bill slunk over and slipped on top of the covers with the younger girl, nestling his head across her arm.
"You want to speak about what you said in that alley way yet?"
Harry's green eye peeked open before snapping shut again, and Bill had to fight back the urge to chuckle at the stern twist of her mouth and the resolute way she kept her face to the ceiling, pretending he wasn't there at all.
"Nope. I was wrong. Clearly."
xXx
Bill watched her fist clench in the covers, fingers threatening to rip the thin material apart.
"I have to be wrong because if I'm not Remus and Sirius knew the truth and they didn't tell me. Instead they kept me locked up in Grimmauld Place for four fuckin' years wondering what I am, if I was some abhorrent mistake because it was too dangerous for me to go anywhere near my old friends, because I was too dangerous, wondering if I was cursed or… They knew and they didn't tell me. They let me think I was alone, something different and wrong, all the while they knew someone, anyone, was out there just like me, that I had a-… They knew, and now their gone, and I can't-"
"You can't ask them to explain it away."
Bill squinted further up the damp stained ceiling, and the mark looked less Hagrid and more Umbridge from this angle.
"I can't speak for Remus and Sirius, but if… If you were right, then I do know that whatever choices they made, they did it thinking it was for your best protection. I know that sounds shitty because it is. It's a rough fucking hand to hold, and it doesn't excuse the decisions made, but it might put some perspective in place. Remus and Sirius… They love you. I think that's important to remember, come what may."
Harry's head cranked over to his, neck lolling so her eyes could meet his in the dark.
"I'm so fuckin' mad. I'm angry, and I'm hurt, and fuck, I'm confused, but most of all… Most of all I'm just fuckin' tired. I'm tired of the lies, and the secrets, and trying to outrun things I don't know I should be outrunning. I'm tired of performing in a game I don't know the rules or the players to. I'm… I'm so bloody tired, Bill. Just… Tired."
It's the most honest Harry's been in months, maybe years, and she doesn't speak in anger, there's no bite to her voice, just plain, bone-deep exhaustion, and Bill's heart broke a little right then and there. Sinking into the covers and Harry's side deeper, resting his cheek on top of her curly damp head, Bill sighed, sounding as tired as Harry clearly was.
"I know, Harry. I know. But you're not alone. You have me, and Draco, as much use as the blond bint is. We'll… We'll get through this."
A.N: I'm sorry for the confusion over the pairings, and changing it up after the fact, but this just feels more natural to write. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut lol.
Thank you for the follows and favourites, and please, if you have a moment please do drop a review. They let me know if there's an actual audience for this fic or whether I should be concentrating on something else.
