Author's Note: Revised as of January 2020. Has not been beta read yet, but that is coming.
Chapter 18 ~ Condemnation by Choice
"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you."
Jean-Paul Sartre
ECOTS
Some would believe that they had been condemned by fate, others that they had been condemned by choice. In the long run, those who believe that freedom can only be found by the choices one makes with what they have been given, are closer than either extreme.
Those who had cared for the dead and dying during the Bubonic Plague, risking exposure so that others could be spared, made the best choice they could with the dire circumstances life had dealt them. And though more than three centuries had passed since anything of similar proportion had struck civilized society, history would soon repeat itself.
Bathed in the inky hues of darkness, upon the shores of the River Liffey, a man with a fishing pole smiled into the moonlit sky. The rain had long since let up, and he basked in the early dawn's fragrant scent, enjoying the spray of the river splashing against the shoreline.
He would soon be the first to succumb to the world's greatest plague.
He did not know this, not that early morning as he sat upon the dewy grass, eagerly anticipating the morning sunrise he had awoken so early to see. He could not foresee this anymore than he could foresee that his wife and three children would be the next to succumb, leaving their once vibrant home devoid of laughter, love, and life.
They would all be dead within seventy-two hours.
ECOTS
Neville... Dean...
Beneath a thick, dark veil of russet toned strands, two dark eyes fluttered blurrily. The visual centers of her brain were not ready to receive the signals traveling across her optic nerve. The pain signals were still far too overwhelming.
Despite this the girl's eyes fluttered open, peering into her new hell.
A fuzzy, rectangular outline, the color of a finely aged manuscript's pages...it rested besides where she lay, her body feeling unnaturally whole upon the smooth satin sheets. Somehow she was left with the lurking sensation that everything should not be quite right...with what though...for certainly her skull was whole.
The girl's brilliant mind felt somehow...violated. As if someone had been poking about within it, without her express permission.
As if someone had been searching through her most cherished memoirs...
Again the names came to her, hitting her with the force of a heavily muscled serpentine tail.
Her pleasant delusions born of slumber were shattered, her lips parting with an indrawn gasp as the foreign, fuzzy room fell into focus, as did the woman resting within the high backed chair, legs elegantly crossed, a cruel, taunting expression stretched taunt across her lips. And like a predator stalking its prey, the woman's eyes were purposeful, triumphant, and locked upon her own.
Somewhere in her recovering mind the girl realized that the woman was intent on stealing her innermost secrets, and what better moment to do so than within one's waking moments, when their defenses were the lowest.
Voldemort' ranks were cruel and calculating, containing master tacticians whom she both admired and loathed with every fiber of her being. Yet despite this admiration, she would die before allowing them in.
Silently she swore this, and in the dimmed room the girl did the only thing she knew how to.
She fought.
As the woman's arrogant laughter filled the room, for the girl was no match for the woman's training, a crucial mistake was made, for in that one moment of underestimation the Mudblood was able to push back, catching sight of what the woman was really after.
Lord Voldemort was in the room, unseen to the girl's eyes, and the girl suddenly understood that she was the bait that was to lure in the true prey.
Hermione Granger began screaming for her best friend to block out everything Voldemort showed him.
A cruel light cut through the air, and as the girl fell defenseless to the Cruiciatious curse, passing into another pain induced slumber, Harry Potter tossed violently within his own.
ECOTS
Tonks gaped. She gaped like a fish.
There was going to be a plague, it was being unleashed on Muggles, and Voldemort was trying to start a world war.
And Harry was out in it! Unsupervised, like always! She was honestly beginning to wonder if they were actively trying to get him killed, or if it was just honest denial.
They couldn't just sit here!
With a frustrated growl Tonks spun and stormed towards the door.
She didn't make it.
Later she'd be pretty pissed off about it, but for a half second she was mildly impressed.
Regulus anticipated her attempted flight and side-stepped into her path, body checking her in a rare display of physical aggression.
And he did it all while managing to look bored.
Big, bad Auror or not, Tonks was still of small stature and still got knocked to the side like a little girl.
By her cousin.
The small of her back smacked into the backboard of a chair – Regulus had at least flicked his wand and given her a landing pad – but all she could do was let out a startled grunt. A lady-like grunt.
"Do stay awhile, Nymphadora. I would hate for you to miss the next part."
In quick order she cursed the laws of physics, her mother's genetics, and the Amish.
One of the portraits on the wall made the mistake of asking why.
Tonks happily told them.
Physics because size really did matter; any woman who had ever had sex could attest to that. Not to mention those morons claiming that small women could take out very large men if they were just skilled enough had never brawled with a three hundred pound, six foot eight ogre, and she would know! She had last winter! It didn't matter if you could do a fancy parry and punch combination that you'd learned in Auror academy; a hit to the mid-section was still a hit to the mid-section, and if the not-so-hypothetical ogre got you then you still went flying and your internal organs started debating their structural stability by doing not-so-nice things like hemorrhaging profusely and making St. Mungo's Auror trainees start screaming. As such, her smaller size had made it rather easy for Regulus to knock her over, because he was bigger than her. Ergo, she blamed this on the laws of physics. Nasty things.
She'd get Regulus back in his sleep.
Moving on….
Her mother got cursed because frankly she blamed the Black family genetics for Regulus' mere existence. She wasn't certain how one went about exacting revenge on a double helix of DNA, but she'd find a way. Witches lived a long time; surely she'd figure it out by the time she was eighty, and she'd figure out a way that didn't entail a blood curse that could also bite her in the ass.
The portrait had nodded sagely at this and exchanged a look with a tired old man hung besides it. "My family had a blood curse. She's right to be concerned."
Tonks had huffed agreement, then added her final point about the Amish.
The fucking Amish.
Last summer Dumbledore had gone on and on and on about some short trip he'd taken to the United States, where he'd visited this quaint little community that had tried to sell him on 'women's education ending in something called the eighth grade' before selling him hand-made office furnishings, so she could hazard an educated guess that those people were the ones responsible for constructing this infernal chair that she'd just been knocked into. It didn't even have the courtesy to break!
After her tirade she tried to leap out of it, only for ropes to appear out of nowhere, binding her wrists.
Dammit.
"She always was prone to overreactions," Regulus stated, sending her the sort of look ordinarily reserved for fleas.
She contented herself with sending her dear, soon-to-be-re-departed cousin a black look. A black, Black look. She'd seen the patented Andromeda death glare before, and right now she drew upon that experience in spades. With luck, it might send Reggie running.
It didn't.
Regulus looked at her and gave a disdainful sniff. "Good Salazar you radiate impatience. Do calm down, cousin. It'd be a shame if you ran off all half-cocked and got yourself killed. The breeding stock in our blood line has been running low as it is. We might, unfortunately, need you."
The portrait of the old man looked scandalized. "What do you mean the Black family blood line is running out!?"
Ah, that must be another one of her infernal ancestors that her mother had never gotten around to telling her about.
Well, at least that one was dead, unlike the one she was sharing office space with.
She was going to kill him. Really, she was giving honest and serious thought to androcide. Between Regulus, Kingsley, Remus and even Dumbledore, she was getting a bit sick of the men in her life. She'd be good though. She wouldn't just kill all men. She'd leave some breeding stock left to ensure humanity's survival, but she'd just ensure that all those pesky Y chromosome possessors were just heavily sedated. She might even let Harry live, once she dragged him back to the safety of the castle by his literal ear.
Perhaps she shouldn't have mentioned this plan of hers out loud, but the mind of Nymphadora Tonks was a scary place.
Now all the portraits were looking at her strangely, and Regulus rolled his eyes, flicking his wand and tightening the bonds on her wrists.
With an angry sound she shrunk her wrists down, her ulnas and radiuses shriveling down to the size of a child's, and the ropes fell loose.
Ha!
This time she thanked her genetics - morphing abilities were bloody useful – and then she jerked her hands out of the bindings, snared her wand, and pointed it straight at her infuriating cousin. She didn't even leave the chair. She just smiled sweetly at him.
"Reggie, be a good ghost and move, or I'll turn you into a eunuch and blood line survival will be the least of your worries."
Regulus let out a long suffering sigh.
Tonks grinned and began to incant something suitably foul-
"Perhaps," Dumbledore interjected far more calmly than she would have, "we could cease the displays of force? I promise that there is indeed an explanation, Nymphadora."
She added her mother and father to the list of things she'd have to hex later. That infernal name….
"Okay," she said, "explain why he just body checked me and you just stood there and let him tie me up." There. That was a nice, easy request. She stood up, walked right up to Regulus, and jabbed him in the chest with her wand. "You're both refusing to allow me, a bloody Auror in case you forgot, to retrieve Harry when you both just admitted you know where he is. We can't just leave him out there when there's a bloody madman looking for him."
Regulus scoffed loudly, receiving a swift kick in his unprotected shin.
Ignoring his grimace and failed attempts at dignity she continued adamantly, "Dumbledore, one student has already been killed, and if Harry is out there alone he-"
"He is not alone."
She closed her eyes, drawing an annoyed breath between her teeth. "Oh?"
Dumbledore seemed vaguely amused by her reaction. "Of course not. He is with another student."
Tonks blinked, flabbergasted. Suddenly she was having a very hard time separating her sworn oath as an Auror to do all she could to protect the innocent, with her oath to the Order to trust its membership and its founder. Particularly when that same founder had just finished informing her that he had known the location of three of the missing students all along, yet had failed to inform the Ministry officials and Order members scouring Hogsmeade of that apparently miniscule fact.
"A student...and who would that happen to be?" she muttered, choosing to put it simply.
Dumbledore removed his spectacles, polishing them gently. "Kalliandra Kaylens."
Her eyes widened in hopes that she had misheard. "What?!" she nearly shouted. "She's practically a Muggle!"
Dumbledore cast a curious glance her way. "Sometimes you may be surprised at what non-magical people are capable of."
Regulus sneered. "Oh yes, I'm sure they are naturals at evading the Unforgivables of the Dark Lord's servants."
"Of course you'd know all about that wouldn't you Reggie?" Tonks snapped hotly. She ignored the disapproving look Albus shot her, then turned her hot temper directly on him.
"What in the name of Merlin were you thinking?" she questioned shrilly.
"You lot are being awfully loud," came a muffled voice from behind the closed office door.
Tonks ignored the eavesdropping doorknocker and continued to shout. "You've allowed half of the Order to think that Harry is missing, Albus! But you're okay telling the ex-Death Eater the second everyone is out of earshot?! What on-"
"I'm in earshot!"
"Shut up!' Tonks and Regulus shouted simultaneously. Regulus strode across the room, pressed his wand to the closed door, and unleashed an electrifying hex. The entire thing rattled.
Crusantheus, the door knocker, could be heard swearing violently on the other side.
"Tonks..." Dumbledore said, sounding slightly amused, "I have my reasons for doing things."
Regulus' eyebrow arched so high Tonks swore he must have stolen Snape's patented look of smugness.
"Allow me to venture a wager..." Regulus interjected snidely, looking pointedly at her. "But I am guessing that Dumbledore does not trust everyone in this little bird society you have both spoken so adamantly about tonight."
It was ludicrous.
"Isn't it a shame, Nymphadora," Regulus continued, "when you cannot even trust your fellow bird watchers with the whereabouts of the baby chicks?"
She scowled and turned back to Dumbledore, only to find that he had busied himself with fountains of literal ink. They were spraying up out of his desk like drinking fountains, feather quills flying in and out of the vibrant colors, before spinning around in mid-air and diving down to write.
Four different quills finished scrawling missives on four different scrolls, the papers rolling themselves up in quick succession, the ink already fading on each, and this all happened in the blink of an eye.
Tonks blinked a few more times, and just for good measure pinched herself.
The disappearing ink was something the Order used, but they only used it when utmost security was needed. Someone clever had spelled the ink so that it disappeared, and only someone with the counter spell would be able to make it re-appear.
She shook herself.
"Dumbledore," she said, "please let me retrieve Harry. As an Auror you have to understand that I can't bloody well stand aside and let Harry and that girl be put in danger." She paused. "Hell, that girl is a danger. You've basically put Harry with an obscurus waiting to happen!"
The Headmaster made a contemplative sound.
She strode straight to the window overlooking the castle grounds. Dumbledore stood beside this same window, an odd look deepening his already lined features.
"Headmaster," she said, eyes shining with urgency, "you know better than anyone what kind of people are after Harry. Just tell me where he is at, because wherever he is he could get-"
"Killed?" Dumbledore supplied, tearing his eyes from the dark scenery. "Tonks, I understand your concern. Yet if we never allow Harry to survive on his own how can we expect him to survive this war?"
She frowned, her silence his answer.
The Headmaster nodded solemnly. "The time when we could protect the children from the horrors of war has long since passed. Now all we can do is hope that we have prepared them well enough."
Tonks sighed sadly, watching as the quills began inscribing the names of the addressees upon the rolled papyrus scrolls. Harry's name was amongst them, but not Remus.
"Besides, my dear, I thought you were a proponent of giving Harry – ah, how did you put it? – a longer leash?"
She made a face. "Of course I am. But there's a difference between letting him wander around Knockturn Alley alone or letting him duel one shopkeeper alone, and leaving him to the entire Death Eater squad."
A comforting hand touched her shoulder, Dumbledore's twinkling eyes again holding a sense of hope.
"Harry has taken on Voldemort himself, Nymphadora. I do believe that he is more than capable of handling a few rogue Death Eaters."
She hissed a breath, annoyed. "You have no idea how much that bothers me."
"Oh, I dare say I can hazard a guess."
"So this…leaving him where he's at without help? That's some kind of bleeding test?"
"Voldemort has come after him often enough already. I dare say the time has come when he will want to be in the Order, and if we are to reach agreement on that I dare say that we must be able to tell the others that he has proven capable of handling himself on more than just a handful of occasions, don't you?"
Tonks made a sputtering sound and Dumbledore actually laughed. She opened her mouth to say something, but a loud snore from Kenneth cut her off.
Dumbledore chuckled. "Perhaps we ought to move them to my private quarters. I dare say they could possibly be more comfortable there."
She nodded vaguely, and within minutes was levitating the Irish President in a very undignified way, his arms and legs hanging slack as he sleep danced through the highly arched doorframe, leaving the office of the Headmaster and entering Dumbledore's private study.
Regulus followed behind, Emily in his arms, and the most peculiar expression upon his face. He rather looked as if he had drunk sour milk containing the elixir of life. Regardless the expression vanished as he placed her upon the couch besides her father, a look of relief overtaking him as he rid himself of the seven year old burden.
"Nympahdora?"
She'd been in the process of clumsily tossing a blanket over Emily and Kenneth – a task she was failing at given she was fairly certain that a blanket over the face might result in suffocation – but at Dumbledore's voice she paused and glanced back at him.
Emily batted at the blanket sleepily.
Tonks was alone in the room. Both her cousin and the Headmaster stood just outside the threshold. Albus looked resigned, while Regulus just looked annoyed.
"I am sorry Nymphadora..." Dumbledore's voice floated through the doorway eerily. "But there is something I must do, and I have a feeling that Regulus may be the only one willing to stand witness without protestation."
"Ritual?"
Tonks realized what was happening as soon as the door to Dumbledore's private study began to swing shut.
"Shit!"
She bolted; she practically flew across the room, her eyes catching sight of the papyrus scroll clutched within Dumbledore's aging hand, its addressee forever burning into the young Auror's mind.
Tom Marvolo Riddle.
It was only then that it dawned on her: Dumbledore was bleeding insane.
She tripped, falling flat on her face, and with a grown jerked her head up. She had just enough time to see the ceiling of the Headmaster's office.
On the tower's conical ceiling were ancient words of power that absolutely should not be there, and they were the last sight she had before the study door slammed shut.
Lying stunned on the floor her thoughts faltered. She knew what was happening now. The words of power, the parchment…
There was an ancient oath those words of power were used for. It was rare, but they'd studied it in the academy. Moody had made her memorize every rare oath and ritual there was! And if he had those words on the ceiling…
It meant he was casting a protection spell, so he could go and meet with an enemy to begin negotiations. It was used by ancient magical tribes when they would meet to exchange prisoners of war: a life for a life.
Tonks pounded a fist on the ground and practically screamed. Beneath the door a fiery tendril could be seen.
The blood bound ritual had begun.
ECOTS
In the thick of night lightning flashed.
A storm was coming.
Shadows streaked across the ground, illuminating the dark clearing where the two teenagers slept. Branches of ancient trees danced in the wind, each successive flash sending skeletal shadows crawling over their forms. Dreams, both haunting and beseeching, plagued them both, the girl listlessly turning within the arms of Morpheus.
Yet something far more solid than the purveyor of dreams clung to the girl, smoothing away the gooseflesh rising upon her frigid skin, for even as the man she leant against dreamt his promise to safeguard was being unconsciously kept.
In his arms the girl failed to hear the oncoming storm, only awakening from her chilled slumber as the calloused hands around her tightened, the man's steady breathing falling and rising erratically, for REM was suddenly failing to suppress his voluntary muscular systems.
Something had changed.
Kally was flung to the ground with a start.
That definitely woke her up.
Panic seized her and she scrambled away on sheer instinct. She'd been attacked enough in her life; running from perceived assault was now an ingrained reflex. But as she shoved herself back on the ground, the first droplet of the oncoming onslaught catching her in the face, she sucked in a startled breath as she realized….
There was no attack.
There was only Potter.
Thunder rumbled overhead.
Kally froze, blinking back the dregs of sleep, her mind finally processing what had happened. Standing there with the wind whipping bitterly around her, the rising air chill seeping through her inadequate clothing, she laid eyes upon her unwilling assailant.
Potter.
The mind numbing confusion that befell her, the kind that always seemed to accompany his presence, returned as she watched him. His bright eyes were closed against the brewing storm, his face contorted, and even from where she stood she could see the frenzied peaks and valleys his heaving chest made.
He was dreaming.
It was happening again, that thing she'd glimpsed that night in the common room, before falling victim to it within the torch-lit corridors...
Without rational thought she ran to him, the one she barely knew, who had foolishly saved her life on more occasions than she cared to count. Dropping besides him, her knees sinking into the damp mud, she felt her fingers stall, uncertainty gripping her chilled form.
Something was wrong here. There was a sensation, an uncertainty...it was foreign and fleeting.
Though life's cruelties had once taught her the demons of inaction.
She ignored it. She gripped his shoulders, calling his name as loudly as she dared. In the quickening breeze the blanket that had sheltered them billowed out, tumbling with the wind to lay sprawled across the wet ground.
"Potter!" she tried shouting, but it came out a stammer. The cold had crept into her voice, the wind stealing her words for its own cagey purpose.
Potter's lips moved in a silent dialogue to which she was not privy, and the distressed look on his face…
It was frightening.
His shoulders went rigid, a terrifying intensity radiating from him as the rain began to fall in thick torrents, rainwater splattering upon his sweat dampened brow.
When the life giving water reached his unsightly scar, a sizzling rose into the air.
Lightning criss-crossed the night.
One-one thousand.
Gingerly her fingertips reached up, tracing his brow, brushing along his matted hair. That scar… Kally hadn't even realized she'd been burned before her hand was recoiling. The pain registered a nerve impulse later, a repressed cry of pain caught in her throat.
She stared at her hand, but in the dark she couldn't see the mild burns.
But they were there. She knew they were there.
Two-one thousand.
Potter's body bucked, the back of his head striking the tree, and panic re-claimed her. She grabbed at the back of his head to protect it and screamed at him, her voice oddly constricted, but it didn't help. She shouted again, but it was like being in a contest to be louder than the roar of the wind and she was losing. Kally gripped his shoulder, shaking his already vibrating form, and she was pretty certain that the half plea to wake up was coming from her.
Potter's Adam's apple rose and fell, as if he too were roaring at someone in his dream.
Three one-thousand.
"Potter, what the hell is happening to you?" she demanded, aware he wouldn't hear her. He'd stopped shaking and she sat there, on the rapidly wettening ground, and she tried to simply think.
All she could do was sodding look at him.
Four-one thousa-
Thunder shook the sky, a carnal howl carrying upon the wind from a distance far too close. Her eyes flew to the forest, but she couldn't see in the dark, so she saw nothing.
God Remus. where are you? He'd be able to see in the dark.
Unconsciously her fingers coiled around Potter's shoulders, the same ones that had kept her in a protective hug not moments before, and strangely she felt better. The protection his proximity brought her was…gods…
It was something she liked far too much.
She couldn't wake him.
Teeth chattering she began a silent mantra.
"One-one thousand."
Within her ears the steady rhythm of her heart pounded achingly loud, and further howls cut through the night on each gust of wind. It sent a current running through her chilled veins.
"Two-one thousa-"
The sky split open, rumbling as if hell itself were fighting to break through, and as if in some cruel unison with the sky, pain erupted around her slender, unclothed arm.
Tight fingers now clenched callously around her wrist, her free hand slipping from Harry's shoulder, clutching at his fingers, the non-witch trying to pry them away from the crushing force of his strong hands.
But she couldn't; he was stronger than her.
In the eerie light of the storm she struggled with him, his sleeping figure writhing against her as if he were fighting some invisible foe and she just happened to be in the way. Potter's throat made a strangled sound, Kally's own constricting with pain as he refused to let go of her.
She slumped back on the ground and tried to pull her wrist away yet again, failing. "Damn't Potter," she implored breathlessly. His grip didn't waver, and it tightened every time she tried to pull, so she stopped. She simply sat there and stopped, the pain in her wrist intense, the ground growing muddier and muddier. "Please," she begged, "come back."
Thunder clapped across the expansive sky, her breath coming out in ever clearer clouds. "You're insufferable..." she gasped through clenched, chattering teeth. "Potter please... this hurts so much..."
Somehow, despite the howl of the wind, her frightened pleas finally broke through, and Morpheus released his sadistic vice grip on the King of Idiocy's psyche.
In one short, sharp spasm she was yanked against him, thrown across his legs as he jerked awake.
Frightened and cutting jade eyes flew open, staring through the cold rain at her, not fully seeing...
Yet pain and guilt swelled within them.
Kally lay slung across him and coughed, her breaths heavy and shaken, that upwelling of fear for him still very real and present. She coughed again, winded. "What," she gasped, "happened?"
At some point his glasses had been flung to the ground, and Potter blinked the water out of his eyes. It was like he was looking at her, without really seeing.
Then his voice came out in a hoarse rasp.
"Kaylens," he said, "he's got her."
"Of course," she said dryly. "Yes, that explains everything." With a wince she moved, getting off his legs and collapsing into the mud next to him. She was covered in it.
Potter just sat there, breathing heavily, but his hand shot out and grabbed onto her arm, a silent request for her not to leave.
After being grabbed by him before, she nearly jumped out of her skin. He said nothing, just loosened his hand, his head dropping back against the bark of the tree as rain pattered down onto him.
He said nothing for so long she wanted to scream.
"Potter, what just happene-"
He cut her off. "Don't make me lie to you," he croaked, and it sounded oddly broken. "I won't. I can't. Just…please."
Kally sat there, legs curled beneath her, the mud squishing between her fingers. "Alright," she said, voice so quiet it'd be a marvel if he heard her at all. The wind roared past, sending her hair wild. She didn't know what to do.
Potter, apparently, did.
His fingers flexed deeply into her skin, the sensation good and painful and something she sodding wanted all at once. With a light tug he pulled her back to him, the tree branches overhead blocking out at least some of the rain. Her skin was slickened with mud, whereas his was just wet, and Potter moved to shield her from the elements, apparently not giving a damn that he was getting covered too.
He pressed her back against the tree and shifted until he hovered over her, looking like he wanted to do something. But he didn't; he just blocked the rain.
He held onto her and breathed raggedly.
It was protective; it was kind; it was terrifying.
"Potter..." she murmured, just looking at him.
He shook his head, his gaze clenched, his jaw set, but she ignored all of this.
Kally reached up and touched his arm, words firm. "Potter, just sodding tell me: who has who?"
That reached him.
Harry's eyes flickered open, and the sharpest jade in the world locked onto her own, his voice like hardened flint.
"Voldemort," he said. "Voldemort has Hermione."
A shiver went up her spine.
ECOTS
Remus staggered from the bowels of the Forbidden Forest, from where he had been dragged and left.
"You're services are no longer required blood traitor. Our Lord shall summon you when our services are again...needed."
Lucius' words were chilling. Though not nearly as much as his deeds this night.
He remembered everything…
Even now the blood lust taunted him, alluring him with its putrid aroma rising from his tattered clothing.
Ron's blood.
Before him loomed Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardy, his slow gait leading him past the ragged looking Ministry officials.
He was just another injured bystander to them and was paid no heed.
On the grounds a dusty crème tent flapped in the violent wind, Mediwizards roaming around the opening in the canvas. Within its illuminated interior he glimpsed haggard parents lining up with their children, bags in tow, as they waited for Ministry transport away from the scene of today's crimes.
No one would chance a walk to Hogsmeade, not now, not even with Ministry protection.
With staggering steps Remus made his way to the castle. He had a report to make, and a sin to beg penance for.
ECOTS
The certainty swimming within his eyes was astounding. Even in the dark of night, as he hovered above her, Kally recognized that. Her lips parted, a silent question unspoken as his illogical assumption settled in, and then they snapped closed.
How the hell could he possibly know that?
They couldn't. He couldn't. And yet...
She believed him.
They'd left Hermione and Neville in that bathroom with Dean.
The rain pattered down, increasing in intensity, only the tree branches blocking them from the worst of it. The things in her head didn't make sense. When Potter had that episode before, in first the common room and then the hall, right before he'd attacked her, he'd said Voldemort knew who she was now.
Somehow Potter had told that monster her name, even though he'd been nowhere nearby.
It should have scared her.
It didn't.
They were stranded, for now, but she wasn't afraid. In the past Potter had been illogical and brash, at times downright violent, but he'd also been protective in a way she couldn't articulate. He'd saved her, multiple times now, and every single awful thing he'd ever done to her, every single harsh word they'd exchanged…
It all came down to her not knowing what to say, to her giving him the wrong impression, to her having lied about who she was and why she was there. It'd been the indirect result of her secrecy, of her perpetuated lies.
Even she couldn't blame him for thinking what he had.
She could blame him for yanking out her hair though.
Potter hovered there, rain hitting his back, and all she could think was that he'd yet to give her a reason to doubt him.
Potter was exactly what he was, and he didn't claim to be anything else.
Somehow she believed him, and she didn't even question it.
Blinking the rain from her eyes she took a chance.
Her first chance.
"So...what do we do?" she asked.
His silence was palpable. The cracking of breaking boughs in the forest, their tumultuous descents to the forest floor, and their final soggy smack against it were all she heard above the wind.
His jaw remained slack.
"Potter?" she whispered, knowing he now read her lips, for her soft reply was inaudible.
His wet hair swayed as his head was shaken, slinging water on her as his muddy hand curled around her arm. "You believe me."
It was a statement. Not a question.
Shivering, the bone deep chill taking over, she nodded. "Shocking, I know."
His solemn regard studied her, eyes moving to where his hand lay. A perplexed expression broke his silence.
"Did I hurt you?"
His tone carried a note of self-disgust, yet the corners of her mouth tugged gently upwards at his concern.
"Couldn't if you t-tried," she stammered, the cold sinking in.
A hollow chortle escaped his throat, his hand rising along her arm, smoothing away the gooseflesh rising along it. "Good," he said, and his voice was gruff, "because we have to leave. Now."
Her face scrunched up, her blue-tinged lips no longer felt by her.
"How?"
Grasping her with both hands he assisted in up-righting her, rubbing her arms vigorously. She shivered under his touch and that just prompted him to do more of it, but not once did he stop talking.
"We walk," he said. "Run if necessary, and hope that nothing eats us."
As if on cue, from the depths of the forest's shadows, a wolf emerged.
Her shaky breathing froze, and Potter took one look at her and instantly knew. His hands went dead still, his intuition alerting him of what she already knew.
"Run."
ECOTS
Water dripped from his torn clothing, and Remus walked down the castle hall like a condemned man.
He hadn't reported into Dumbledore. He hadn't alerted the Order of his return.
No, for there was something he had to do first.
He pushed open the hospital wing door, leaving a muddy imprint where his hand had been.
Silence greeted him within the candlelit infirmary, the only respite the sound of distant thunder as the storm rolled South, away from Hogwarts'. At the wing's far end there were three curtained off areas, and he could practically smell the blood.
His eyes slittened, the wolf threatening…
He fought it back, though the coppery taste of blood had risen upon his tongue. The bloodlust…
It never left, but as long as he remained in human form…he could fight it back. But the smell of blood, of freshly torn open veins and arteries, their stringy thin walls hanging out of open wounds…
It did not help.
Remus Lupin breathed in deeply, the stench of disinfectant and bowels and blood mixing in the air. The hint of a flowery perfume lingered, no doubt from one of the mothers hovering over their child as their nicks and scrapes were healed, but Remus closed his eyes and sniffed.
He found the scent he was looking for, and he followed that path.
He found Ronald Weasley in the last curtained off section, the wizard set as far away from the other occupants of the room as humanly possible. The boy sat upright, gazing out the window at the sliver of quarter moon that peeked through the storm clouds, and upon seeing that…
Remus' stomach twisted rebelliously.
With a grimace he cast a silencing charm around them, dead set on giving Ron whatever privacy he might still have. The curtains whipped around the bed, blocking their view of everyone else.
Ronald didn't even look at him as he spoke. "Here to talk then?"
Ron knew. He knew that he was the one responsible for biting him. Ron would hate him, as would Harry. He couldn't blame either of them. Remus had always hated Greyback. On a psychological level it was purely logical. Despite their ability for higher reasoning, human beings, at the end of the day, were animals, and like animals they would lash out at anything that caused them pain, be it psychological or physical, and Remus…
He had now caused young Ronald Weasley both.
Remus Lupin stood up straight and met Ronald's eyes. He was filled with guilt and shame and remorse, but he stood on that surgically clean white floor and met the wizard's eyes. He owed him that much.
And then he waited for whatever hateful words would come.
None did.
Ron just kept looking out that window, staring at the moon. His leg was stuck out at an odd angle, it wrapped in tight bandages, as was part of the wizard's torso.
Remus could taste the blood on his tongue, closing his eyes and hissing a breath in a decidedly Tonks-like manner. He would have killed the boy had that girl, Luna Lovegood, not stepped in. What she had done was remarkable, knocking them back with a silvery shield, before drawing runes in the air that had made the shield permanent.
She'd even spun her wand around her head, looking like a small child, but it had extended the silver-coated wall out around them, effectively boxing them in.
After that the silver-haired girl had sat down on the forest floor, crossing her legs, and she had applied pressure to Ronald's wounds.
Remus and the other wolves had been long gone by the time help had come.
Remus Lupin grimaced, distinctly uncomfortable, ashamed. "Ronald..." His voice came out thick and gravely, articulateness abandoning him. "Whatever you ask, this is the second time I've endangered you and I..." He faltered. "I am sorry."
Lightning illuminated the room, filtering in through the hospital wing windows, and Ron set his jaw. Remus waited, internally cringing as he waited for it…
Ron shrugged. "You didn't mean to bite me, so don't worry about it."
Thunder rolled, vibrating the tiles beneath his soles.
Remus stared and blinked, entirely caught off guard. "Ronald," he said carefully, "I bit you."
"Yeah, so?"
The one time professor's stomach plummeted. The Weasley boy didn't realize did he? Had he really done such a poor job in his short time as a teacher that he'd failed to explain just what a werewolf bite did to someone?
His throat constricted. "Ronald….when you are bitten by a werewolf-"
"I get fluffy too. Yeah, I know."
Of all the reactions he had expected, this had not been in even the top thirty.
Remus Lupin made an attempt to say something, but all that came out was a choked sound, rather like how James had sounded so long ago, the first time Lily Evans had actually said yes to one of his many attempts to ask her out.
A particularly loud clap of thunder shook the room, many of the children squealing past the curtains. Ron even cringed, and Remus felt a stab of pity. The wizard was obviously unaccustomed to the sudden amplification of all surrounding sounds.
Such was the effect of becoming a lycan.
As the thunder diminished, his former pupil frowned pensively. "For the first time in my life Professor, I'm different." The teenager extended five of his digits, frowning. Remus could imagine what he was thinking; there was an abnormality lying just beneath the surface, a virus that caused lycanism. "From now on," he continued oddly, "it's going to be different."
Shame nearly sent Remus tumbling to his knees. "All because of my recklessness... again...you could have been ki-"
"So could have you," Ron cut in sharply, "yet that didn't stop you from doing your duty, Professor."
In the moment of silence that followed, the youngest Weasley male did something completely unexpected. A strange expression crept across his features, and then Ronald Billius Weasley looked him directly in the eye.
"Whatever the reason was for sending you out to cavort with those other..." Ron swallowed hard, "werewolves...it had to be important, otherwise you wouldn't have been there. Yeah?"
Remus remained silent. He would not give into his own self-deprecating desire to turn and flee. He owed the new werewolf more than that.
"This is a war. Before you bit me I had no real talent to offer." The young man's words were slow, and for once, painstakingly thought out. "To everyone I was just...a hindrance, just another mediocre wizar-"
"You were never mediocre," Remus interjected with a frown.
Ron snorted, his fingers scrunching the stark white of the hospital sheets. "Yeah right. Look, it doesn't matter now. What I mean is, before there wasn't exactly anything that I could do, that the others couldn't already do better than me. A lot better. But now..."
Light blue eyes looked up. "But now Professor..."
"I haven't been your Professor for some time, Ronald."
A peculiar expression touched Ron's mouth. "Well," he said, flexing his fingers, "that's gonna have to change isn't it?"
That was when Remus saw it: the bedsheets Ron had been clutching in his fist now lay shredded.
Shredded into six strips.
Where Ron's fingers should be, were claws.
Cold comprehension dawned on him.
He'd bit him; he had turned Ronald Weasley into a werewolf, but whatever Voldemort had done to that potion, to that vial that had given Remus his own both bloodlust and the ability to transform at will, it had been transferred to Ron as well.
Remus looked at Ron for a long, long moment. The boy could transform at will, clearly, and yet the bloodlust that he felt pumping through his own veins, the bloodlust that was making him want to tear out the throat of every bloodied person he had passed…
He saw that nowhere within Ron's blue eyes. All that lay there was a dangerous glint.
"My friends are out there, and I intend to find them," Ron avowed. "So..."
A carnal quality edged into the young Weasley's voice.
Blue, ovular eyes, met his own.
"So what do you think, Lupin? How'd the Order fancy a second set of ravenous fangs?"
