Tie Your Heart at Night to Mine, Love
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Special thanks to teheminator for beta-work, and to AquiViva for alpha! You guys were great! I was worried all the going back and forth in time would be too confusing, but they saved me from having to cut five paragraphs from Remus POV.
The very moment the Monument's structure meshed around them, concrete and fire swirling to become something else, somewhere else, Remus caught wind of it – and found he couldn't stop from deeply inhaling.
It wasn't, of course, as if he'd never sensed it: he had gotten a whiff of Hermione's bedroom before, at Number Twelve. He could still remember: it had been a passing, guilt-ridden, barely accurate occurrence, driven by Remus' need to feel her fragrance and not that of Ronald Weasley and food enshrouding her all the time. Food, for the boy had spent all his time gobbling something up and loitering around her as they waited for Harry to be brought to Grimmauld Place, and the boy had nothing but his growth spurt to thank for not gaining the pounds as quick as he was swallowing them.
Despite that, Remus' stop at her bedroom had been completely mad, utterly inappropriate, and, ultimately, futile. His excuse had been a half-arsed one, and Ginny's confusion understandable, as he dropped by their shared bedroom to loan Hermione a book. Something that wouldn't sound unthinkable if not for the fact that all the occupants of Number Twelve knew Hermione spent her free time at the Library, writing letters to Harry she couldn't send or editing run-of-the-mill replies for herself and Ron instead. And as reckless acts are never timed right, Remus had arrived a moment too late: the room was immersed in Ginny's spicy perfume, recently splashed, with nothing but a hint of Hermione thrown in the mix. He'd done it because he hadn't seen her for over a year before she arrived with the Weasley's earlier that week, not since that night in the Forbidden Forest.
The house had been a mess, with dangerous items scattered at every corner, still Crookshanks had found his way as if he'd lived there his entire life – the orange cat had entered Sirius' room that afternoon, moments before the twins-induced ruckus started downstairs, and hopped on Padfoot's lap. When Remus whispered her name, the animal turned his flat face to him. Dark, vertical pupils immersed in orange stared unblinking at him – an assessment of sorts, almost as if it saw right through him. If the half-kneazle was half as smart as Sirius had claimed, it would deem him undeserving and chase him away as it had done with Peter. But it leaped down and weaved between Remus' legs before twitching its tail and leaving.
Not the cleverest of cats, as the man it had approved of spent that evening – and the following week – drowning the grief and shame of envying a fifteen year old boy – one of his former students, no less.
It would sound insane, he supposed, to believe that a time such as that had closely resembled happiness for him, but it had. For the longest time, happiness came in small, twisted doses to him, if at all, and what else could he call his mate and Harry's presence, along with that of an alive and innocent, if not pleased Sirius, and other members of the Order, all gathered in one place and under Dumbledore's lead? Bleak though it was, the Black's house couldn't be safer – Remus had checked and rechecked the protective spells, and they were powerful enough to make for an unreachable, almost impenetrable headquarters.
Until Kreacher's betrayal, and Sirius' and Dumbledore's deaths changed everything. After that, the ones still there had left at once, leaving the house to decay. He, too, had stayed away – the house was far from safe, as Snape could not only divulge the street's location but had effectively become one of the Secret-Keepers for the house. Moody's Tongue-Tying curse could prevent him from saying the location, but what would prevent him from writing it?
He had wanted to find her, to make sure the Trio had escaped and found a safe place after the attack during Bill and Fleur's wedding, but the Ministry had fallen and they were being watched. Over a month later, when the underground became more familiar than the outside, he returned, expecting to be met with a house that, much like his resemblance of happiness, reeked of mildew and was tainted by death. And though it did reek of mildew and was taken by dust, there was just the slightest hint that she had been there. And he had kept coming, betting against the odds that she would return.
Now, however, a much different assortment of scents engulfed him, as hard wood replaced the softer grass under his feet and walls closed all around them. Unsurprisingly, most of Hermione's bedroom was redolent of paper – old and new, her books lined the shelves and piled atop her desk in organized chaos, accounting for the mishmash of must and freshness. Unlike any library, however, a captivating sweetness tinged the air.
Amortentia would never smell like chocolate again, and Remus couldn't say that he mourned the loss. Any of his losses, in fact, for he had now lost all the battles, posed no further threat to the bond he had warred with the wolf for years to suppress.
In Remus' surrender, it abandoned him.
The maddening drive of only an hour before left him. The instinctual, animalistic tendencies he had grown used to fight, to oppose, were no longer there to determine his actions. It was at once freeing and void and for a second – for he wouldn't admit any length of time longer than that – he worried the wolf inside had died.
No. He was fairly certain it didn't, but as it lay peacefully, the man was left with far, far scarier things – his feelings, one feeling that was entirely his own. His throat grew thick. She was too smart, too beautiful, too lively… too young. She might not feel the same, likely couldn't, his foot tapping the floor of its own accord as he struggled to classify her behavior and failed to come up with anything more than that of a confidant.
That of a friend.
Like a pathetic teenager, Remus knew not what to say, feeling rather too tall and stupid and stiff as he kept a proper distance from her.
Most of all, he tried his best not to glance at her bed. Therefore he was left to look over to the dress she had left hanging at the back of her chair, the no longer decaying wallpaper, and the forgotten glass of water in her nightstand before meeting her gaze, feeling the need to fill the silence, and though hundreds of questions danced in her eyes, she refused to pose a single one – a ludicrous thing if he had ever seen one, and he wanted to beg, to plead—
"You need rest," although the words were absolute, her fingers on his wrist were unsure, "Between the two of us, I'm sure we can over-analyze every single aspect of this," and with an unrelenting look usually aimed at her best friends, she added, "Tomorrow."
He chuckled at her bossy concern, and the rumble of his own laughter along with her ill-suppressed smile undid some of his anxiety. Every single thing about the day had been impossible. For her to have found the truth, from his lips – a werewolf on the verge of losing control – and not run. Moreover, to worry over his well-being, ask him to stay, and lead him to her bed, as she was now doing, knowing as little as she knew about a bond he'd kept from her… It was trust and care he hadn't earned and couldn't possibly deserve. As they lay together in bed, facing each other but not touching, there wasn't an instant in which he needn't admonish himself for wishing he could kiss her. For wishing he could trace the bridge of her nose with his finger, caress her face along the line of her jaw… Not once in his life, despite all the self-loathing, had he been able to truly believe he was greedy for wanting the things he did. Not until then, not until her.
And though greed was rarely rewarded, his was, for in between the drowsiness of the early morning and the faint, almost suspended light coming from the window, he opened his eyes to find her head resting on his chest, one arm draped around his stomach – Hermione was half in his arms. And so he allowed himself to be dragged back to slumber, back into the dream in which they simply belonged.
Like clockwork, Hermione's eyes snapped open. Years of waking up early for classes and to review her homework one last time, just to make sure it was as complete as bibliographically possible, followed by months of keeping watch, foraging for food, and resetting the protective spells in the woods had set her body into a disciplined routine, regardless of the part of her that wished to remain snug and oblivious for an hour more.
This time, however, the reason behind her awakening was quite different. Nightmares had plagued her during the war, some during the night, others not dreamt at all. She would wake from the former, her body still as it tried to contain her racing pulse.
Yet the images this time didn't concern Voldemort or his followers. They weren't atrocities at all.
They were memories: clear to her mind's eye in a way they had not been to her own when they happened. All of which she was sure had happened as portrayed, except for one. One she couldn't attest to having happened at all, a delusion, perhaps, half-imagined and half-dreamt.
The morning light seeping in from the curtain she forgot to draw played with Remus' dark blond hair. It made him look years younger and more peaceful than she had ever seen him, with his lashes resting against his cheek, spared of any evident concern. Warmth coursed through her. There was something thrilling and utterly illogical about being allowed to look at him – her mate. It was a short-lived feeling – for years, he had been alone. There could not have been a rush of excitement for him, trapped by a bond he never asked for, tied to someone he hardly knew. Someone who only recently had become of age. And what of the earlier years? Fear and disgust must have permeated the word she now toyed with like a silly teenager scribbling "love" on the corner of a parchment page.
Hermione averted her gaze. She disentangled herself from his arms and slid out of bed, but Remus didn't move a muscle – a testament to his exhaustion.
Once on her feet, she reached for a half-empty glass of water forgotten on her nightstand.
It was a stretch, really. An attempt likely doomed to failure. But the images kept coming to her in her dreams, and she risked losing the real ones to her hazy, unconscious imagination, so she cast Engorgio on the glass and defied her knowledge in Transfiguration.
The water stirred. Taking it as a good sign, Hermione led the tip of her wand to her temple, suspending the blue, tenuous fluid of her memories until it reached the makeshift pensieve. Unlike the real one, diving into it wasn't an option – she would have to content herself to watching the events play on the water's surface.
The first memory was that of the train.
Her much younger self answered Ron's question, perhaps a bit too matter-of-factly, "Professor R. J. Lupin"
"How'd you know that?"
"It's on his case."
She waved past the following memories: his classes, Harry's comments about him, hours comparing lunar charts and checking out werewolf books from the Library. Innocuous interactions, all of them, until she reached his transformation.
Their fear was palpable. The first time she had watched from afar, powerless to change most of it despite the three turns on her Time-Turner, her pulse had raced. She had been a mere viewer, privy to what came next as one is while watching a suspense film, yet just as unable to warn the main characters.
Different eyes looked at it now. A heavier heart, too, as she contemplated the moment Remus' wolf chose her.
The time gap from that to the next time Hermione met Remus had seemed irrelevant to her before. She had thought of him sparsely, though with fondness, throughout her fourth year amidst Victor, the tournament, and Harry and Ron's antics. A length of time Remus had spent with the knowledge he had found his mate in a fourteen year-old girl. Hermione's 'Hello, professor' in the drawing room of Grimmauld Place seemed lacking and inadequate now.
The memory shifted. Rather than a continuous image, only fragments showed, as if illuminated by a blinking lamp. It took her a moment to realize it wasn't because it was half-forgotten, but because the Hermione in the memory was drifting in and out of consciousness.
There was a chin covered by a ghost of stubble, strong arms, lights… And a familiar ceiling. She was being brought into the Hospital Wing. By Remus. She tried to recall it, searched her mind for the exact moment it had happened, and came up empty.
The low buzz echoing through the memory turned into words, "And Mr. Potter? The others?"
"Harry will be fine. I don't know about the children. Just save her, Poppy."
Another blackout came. Although the urgency was no longer in their voices, something else replaced it, "The Order should have prevented this."
"We tried. Sirius… Sirius, he…"
Comprehension dawned: their blind, beguiled attempt to save Sirius at the Department of Mysteries, which Hermione had always deemed as Voldemort's most heinous attack against Harry's mind and heart. It had been just as heinous to someone else, someone who had lost everything to Voldemort, in one way or another, and had stayed by her bed as if his survival hinged on nothing else in the world but her.
Her eyes stung with barely contained tears.
"I thought I'd find you surrounded by books," Remus' hoarse voice addressed her from the bed, and her heart gave a slight jump that thankfully didn't translate to her body.
Hermione waved her wand, unwilling to make him relive the memory, setting the next scene into motion.
"I, uh, I thought I could bother you for some recommendations," there was a brittle quality to her voice as if her throat had forgotten how to properly work and was spewing stifled word-like sounds instead, but her tears didn't fall. Hermione looked upward in an attempt to dry them, "Of all the books I've read on werewolves there was never a chapter on mates. Not even a single footnote, to be honest."
"Hermione, are you all right?"
Before she could answer, memory-Remus spoke.
"You're leaving." It was a statement.
Her image jolted back, away from the clothes she had been packing for Harry, "Professor! I—"
Memory-Remus narrowed his eyes, and her younger self bit her lip. She had always wondered how he had known, when not even the boys had.
"Yes, we are. Please don't try to stop us, professor. This is something we have to do."
"Where to? The three of you shouldn't be alone. You should take an adult—"
"I'm not at liberty to say. And I AM an adult, sir, I'm seventeen. I can take care of Harry."
There was a pause. The corner of his mouth took on a grim twist, and his gaze weighted like he had lived a thousand days in the last hour, "I never doubted that, Hermione. But who will take care of you?"
"Your memories?"
Hermione nodded. It changed again, this time to the dark kitchen of Number Twelve. And she remembered the row between Remus and Harry.
"You're back."
It was memory-Harry who answered, "Not permanently, we haven't finished—"
"Let me come with you."
"No, Remus, Dumbledore gave us this mission. If he wanted anyone else to know—"
"AS IF I CARE!" Remus stood, and what was left of the dusty china rattled in the cabinet behind him, "Dumbledore trusted Snape, and now he's dead. He was not all-knowing, Harry. Powerful yes, but he was not God. You need protection."
Hermione hadn't noticed before, but the gold was there – flaming in his eyes along with his wrath. This was the most bewildered she had seen him, as well as the most hopeless.
Before they left, her memory-self offered him a sad smile, "We're doing fine, professor. The Order needs you."
Remus sat on the edge of her bed and put his hands in his pockets, "You were always so much more than capable, Hermione, you're a brilliant witch. My sanity hung on that thread, the last shred of sense based on that knowledge. Not much more was left."
Before she could respond, the image dissolved and yet another, one she hadn't been expecting, showed.
"Help! Somebody help!"
The words snatched Remus attention and she followed his gaze.
"Expecto Patronum!"
Hermione watched the blurry image playing in the water and offered, "Our Patroni."
Remus frowned at her, "I never conjured a Patronus that night."
She could feel herself grimacing, "I might have conjured yours."
A/N: Here's another chapter, I hope you enjoyed it!
Let me know what you think! :)
Obs.: Updates are going to be a little tricky until October comes along, but I'm not abandoning this story, so don't worry about it. Meanwhile, you might want to check out my other fic called Trapped (it's a Remione Fluff/Humor oneshot).
Obs.2: I recently discovered that the website sometimes skips on notifying me when a new person started following or added the story to their favorites. So if you notice I didn't put your name on my thank you list, let me know and I'll do it in the next chapter :)
Huge thanks to:
My reviewers: Chantal9, SereniteRose, l'amour perdu, Martionmanswife, Guest, lex, beautyandthewolf, PaigeAdams5972, MissTFelton625369, RAV3N R1PP3R, vamp1987, rosesnblueberries, aed05409, and AquiViva.
To Fine Mournings, puppygal27, AquiViva, Cristina Richardson Siccardi, TonksLupin06, lena.l, gothiccountry2223, Angiiee-Cullen, aed052409, TranquilSapphire, TheLadyMarauder23, FrenchNeko, gemstarlet, MaliceDawn, WobblyWallyIsInLove, CoruscusLuna, Elengessner, ljmckenna82, friki-girl-22, RedFuryanDireWolf, QueWest, readingmakesmesmile, sleeplesslilly, upsidedownkpopfreak, beatlemania2, differentcrusadeexpert, Witch with the Cat, MissTFelton625369, baldy110162, Jams67, LadyWelbury, The Evo Girl, alilmagic101, , Kalliope-Korinna-Klytaimnestia, lorraineb, Lu Yee, rustywindowpane, Danglingfeet, MrsMorgan813, Argin, beautyandthewolf, Kkaime, ryu crisis, Miss-Potterhead17, brokendreamer49, MC-lothiriel, Vampire Academy Rules, WolfLover1997, IreliaLuna, jessbb27, kyliehb, myprimuslune, and Angel Cauldwell for adding the story to their favorites.
And to 1 TTP, Vampire Academy Rules, MurtaghLover24, Amaugustine, puppygal27, AquiViva, Cristina Richardson Siccardi, rebecca c buis, lena l, strangeyouths, MudBloodLove, Shadow werewolf54, amxliapond, aed052409, Fangirl5678, Kmo3321, Kareninas, briana0513, tamerofdragons, gemstarlet, sleeplesslilly, Casandrian, vamp1987, MaliceDawn, CoruscusLuna, WobblyWallyIsInLove, Elengessner, ljmckenna82, Sammi96, friki-girl-22, caity heck, Cori1891, CrystalViolet, Flutterbytink, babygrootislife, The Griffindor Hatstall, readingmakesmesmile, Katoris, upsidedownkpopfreak, MythicalMystic, beatlemania2, dhmpage1, differentcrusadeexpert, ROXN, Mandarin80, Mathematical Dragon, chocolatetheif, cloepaynter, Dragon4928, Witch with the Cat, MissTFelton625369, xxxkimmixxx, LadyWelbury, skaaraecks, Imwaiting4myAliceandEdward, janaenr, volleyballxchic7, HACullen, alilmagic101, lesemma, Orrery, lorraineb, larahsong, thegirliknow, Flavia Jackson, HopelessDramatic, rustywindowpane, RavenPythium, Sarawr Smiles, beautyandthewolf, katetastic, Argin, ryu crisis, soniclovegood, Green Cat Claw, Innervoice91, Miss-Potterhead17, Nala Moon, CatsCuriousity, WolfLover1997, jlove34, and ughnotthis for following the story.
Wow, that's a lot of people! You guys are amazing!
To Guest: I've been trying not to rush things between them, it's great to know it's working! Thank you for the review!
To lex: In the end, it took me a really long time to update again, but I hope you'll continue to follow it! Thanks for taking the time to review! :)
Bye, guys! Please review! (Reviews are like written hugs: they keep me writing :))