NOTE:

Thank you everyone for your patience in waiting for updates for this story! Pandemic-wise I've been hanging in there, supervising three kids for e-learning including kindergarten. All three are in video calls near-constantly!

As for the eye condition, I have a 'cluster' of floaters in one eye which causes a dark spot in my direct field of vision which, until it dissipated a bit, made writing distressing (I can see it *all the time* even with my eyes shut if there is enough light behind my eyelids. I can't escape it.)

I am planning to participate in NaNoWriMo this November with a YA Fantasy story which is a twist on the tale of Rapunzel. In my story, Rapunzel is actually a young man, he's trapped underground, and his hair becomes the valuable mineral his parents stole to prompt his adoption by the loving Goddess he grew up calling mother. The protagonists are twin teenage girls, and they don't stop at saving Rapundude- they save the world.

Chapter Eleven: Incarcerous

As soon as she heard the sliding panel door close, Elodie covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes wide with shock. She didn't regret her impulsive words to Sirius, but she'd surprised herself, and more than that, she wasn't certain she'd done the right thing.

Elodie had not expected to be so thoroughly right in her assumption that Sirius had set her up to hear Remus say he did not love her. His blinding confidence that Remus had said exactly that was deeply concerning to her, because the friendship between the two men was a driving force behind not only her love of the source material, but of the harmony in their household. If Sirius was that wrong about something so fundamental, was there something deeper out of balance with Phoenix House?

"Of course there is," Elodie said out loud. "How could there not be?"

"'How could there not be' what?" Sirius asked, behind her.

Elodie flinched in surprise, falling back against the wall of the hallway.

"I didn't mean to scare you!" Sirius said, coming over and standing awkwardly nearby, his hand hovering as if he wanted to touch her in reassurance but didn't want to startle her further.

"I didn't expect you to come back so soon," she said, resisting the way her body wanted her to curl around itself protectively.

"I stood in the kitchen thinking about everything, instead of going to find Mad-Eye," Sirius said. He walked a few steps and turned to face her, dropping shoulder-first against the wall. "I have this habit of focusing on one thing. Always have. In Azkaban it was escaping, and that kept me sane. I spent a full year learning the movements of the few guards they had, another year testing every part of the cell in every sort of weather, as a dog and as a man."

"Weather?" Elodie interrupted, surprised.

Sirius threw his hair out of his eyes with a jerk of his head. His eyes evaded hers. "The prison was built before glass windows became popular. The bars on the windows and door were about as ancient as you'd expect." He made a face. "Straw rot is a smell I will never forget. My cell was on the windy side of the damned place, and there was only a small spot that didn't get soaked when it was rainy."

Elodie turned so that her body position was a mirror to his, looking up at him.

"Stop making that face, this is supposed to be a long-winded apology!" he said, a flash of impish humor lighting up his eyes for a few seconds. "I was saying- I fixate. It's been useful. I wouldn't have escaped otherwise, because as soon as I saw Peter in that newspaper, I was determined to try, and I know I would have tried even if I hadn't spent ten bloody years figuring out how. After that I fixated on trying to get to Peter. Then, the motorbike. When that was finished, it was Harry."

"I noticed," Elodie said softly. Sirius had paused to close his eyes after saying Harry's name, and she just knew he was taking those seconds to relive a memory he'd shared with his godson.

"There's a point, I promise," Sirius said when he opened his eyes again. "I didn't fixate on you or Remus."

His expression was sincere, and Elodie didn't know what his point was, so she stayed silent.

"When I'm obsessed with something, I look at it from every side, but not this. That's what I'm saying. I fucked up because I didn't get obsessed." Sirius looked directly into her eyes, now, his own grey ones illuminated by the beam of light from the grungy window on the outside wall.

"Did you time this conversation to coincide with the angle of the sun?" she asked him.

His brows furrowed. "What?"

"You're practically sporting a halo," Elodie teased. "I can picture you at twelve, standing closer to the window because you'd have been shorter, using the power of sunlight to persuade your brother to do something naughty."

Sirius threw back his head and laughed. "Wrong! Reg never let me persuade him to be naughty, for one, and for another, I never fixated on places like that. I've always hated this fucking house." He let the amusement fade from his expression and reached down to brush the tips of his fingers through her hair. "You don't have to offer me a chance to change the subject. I want to tell you this."

"All right," she said, leaning into his touch.

"I didn't fixate on the two of you, individually or not. I didn't feel like Remus would appreciate the attention and as hypocritical as it seems, I could tell he'd subconsciously claimed you, even if he didn't." Elodie opened her mouth to respond, and Sirius moved the hand that had been playing with her hair to seal her lips with a thumb across them. "I know. I know," he repeated, shutting his eyes for a second. "I've never pretended not to be selfish. What I'm saying is that some part of me always recognized that claim." The brush of his thumb as it lifted away was incredibly tender.

"And today, if you'd have heard him tell Moody his plan couldn't work?" Elodie asked, hating herself a little for her calculated phrasing.

"With his werewolf hearing, Remus probably would have actually heard the burden lift off of my shoulders," Sirius said, letting his hand drop to his side. "I'm lying to you, just a little. I didn't dare to think he'd reject the idea of loving you. I just thought he'd be so vehemently against a Triad that you'd get that impression."

Elodie felt a wave of nausea rise in the depths of her stomach. From this day, she would have to lie to both men- to Sirius about what she'd heard, and to Remus about the marriage. The burden Sirius had joked about lifting had installed itself firmly and permanently onto her own shoulders.

Though her tongue felt like lead, she forced herself to speak. "So what would you like to do, then?" Without letting him answer, she added, "With the foreknowledge that Remus's behavior patterns in the past mean that he'll probably avoid us like the actual plague for the rest of the day? Making today the 'safest' to do it, I mean."

"You think he'd suss out something was different? If, say, the two of us disappeared and came back disgustingly cuddly and joyful?"

"Can… I mean, this is probably a ridiculous question, but, could he, could a werewolf actually sense specific magic spells cast?"

"Binding spells, you mean? No, I don't think so. Might be able to sense the claim from the tattoo, though."

That made her bite her lip in worry. Elodie really wanted to do the tattoo. Not just because it would help her know for certain Sirius was safe, but also because she was hoping against hope that having it might finally bind her heart to Sirius instead of splitting itself so perfectly in half emotionally.

"What if I wore a bracelet or a cuff or something?" she asked.

Sirius looked at her as if seeing her as serious about her plan for the very first time that day. "You're really determined to do this, aren't you?"

"Everything's lining up," Elodie said, shrugging her shoulders almost defensively. "Though, I suppose since Moody is the key to everything-"

"I'll handle Moody," Sirius said firmly. He grabbed her left hand and pressed a fervent kiss on her wrist. "And we can both handle Moony, even though I can tell you weren't going to say anything. Remus's wolf has dealt with far worse, and without Wolfsbane." He let go of her hand and started back toward the stairs.

"Remus has been in love before?" Elodie asked, not realizing her guilty phrasing until after Sirius had stopped to look back at her. "I mean, I assume that would be worse than this. He did say that he would never allow himself to be in a relationship because of Moony," she said, hoping that the blush that she could feel heating her face wasn't visible in the dim spot she was standing.

"He's been interested in a few bir- girl- err, women," Sirius fumbled. "He always cut himself off from them. Ruthlessly."

Elodie remembered what Moony had told her from the cage, that if Remus knew what they had done, he would leave. The obvious question hung between them in the hallway.

If he'd always run before, why not now?

"They probably weren't friends first, or something," Elodie said, forcing a tone of casual indifference into her voice that sounded incredibly fake to her own ears.

"I'll go find Moody," Sirius said.

"Wait, how do I get out? Is there a trick? Does the door have magical weight sensors to know you're there and open?"

"Weight sensors? What, can Muggles only go places if they're fat enough?" Sirius asked, clearly horrified.

"No! They're calibrated for human weight," she laughed.

"Oh, yes. That makes sense. You and Alastor Moody are clearly the same size!" Sirius said, rolling his eyes before heading off down the hallway yet again. This time he was whistling.

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As she'd expected, Elodie didn't see Remus at Grimmauld after she came down from the hidden areas of the house. She even asked casually after him to the few Order members still around in late afternoon, but no one had seen him since just after the meeting. It seemed that no one knew where Moody was, either, but when Sirius walked in on Elodie clearing shelves in the library, he told her he'd sent an Owl.

"I remembered something about the tattoos," he said. "They use a potion as a catalyst, and as a way to choose the color. Your fancy book probably doesn't have directions, but some book here probably does."

"Oh! That's something I could do while we wait to hear back, then," Elodie said, taking out her wand to spell the feather duster away. The library at Grimmauld Place was not a safe place to use magic to dust near the books.

Sirius refused to let her look for the potion book by herself, muttering something about not trusting the motives of some of the more autonomous Dark books in his family's collection. Finding one with the recipe didn't take long, and Elodie kissed him goodbye before she took the floo home to Phoenix House.

She decided that the noise of her arrival was enough to warn Remus of her presence, so there wasn't a need for her to go find him just to let him know she'd come home early. Elodie did duck into the bedroom to change into something she wouldn't mind getting substances required in the brewing of an 'Indelible Ink' potion on, however. After putting on her black trousers, she spent a good ten minutes looking for the shirt before she remembered that she'd spilled something caustic on it and none of the magical remedies she'd tried had made it wearable yet. With a smile, Elodie decided that her soon to be husband probably wouldn't mind if she borrowed one of his, given how many black shirts he had.

The first shirt she pulled out had too much of a design on it for her to want to risk ruining it in the same fashion (though, while 'Indelible Ink' did threaten to be magically indelible, the previous potion had included ingredients that most Muggles would have confined to very specific laboratory conditions with laws governing what to wear when interacting with it!). The second had very thin silver lettering on the front that seemed to read, 'Wearwolf shirts: take a BITE out of your wardrobe!'

Elodie stared at it for a full minute before laughing hysterically. She couldn't figure out where Sirius could possibly have gotten it, until she remembered that the Weasleys had visited Grimmauld extensively during late summer. She was certain she would have noticed Sirius wearing it had he done so around her! The black of this shirt was much darker than most of the other second hand ones, and Elodie persuaded herself that Remus was going to stay away from her anyway. She put on the shirt.

Remus was nowhere to be seen as she walked through the house to the basement brewing room. She even touched her fingertips to his chair to see if he'd been seated there. It was cold.

Once downstairs, Elodie immersed herself in the joy of brewing. She checked on the two Wolfsbane cauldrons, and as she had expected, they were unchanged from when she'd checked them that morning. The book she'd gotten from the Black family library said that having a shield up between the Ink potion and other projects were a good idea, so she set up the spell it suggested and tested it by flicking water from her wand onto it from various angles. It worked exactly as described. Donning the dragonhide gloves that she'd purchased on a recommendation from Horace, she started the potion.

It was the kind of potion that was all preparation and no maintenance- a 'brew and forget,' as Horace had joked. She was cleaning up the squid ink required for brewing when she heard footsteps on the porch upstairs. Given that she hadn't heard the door open first, this probably meant a visitor, which was highly unusual. Sure enough, a few seconds later, Elodie heard the door open, which meant Remus was home after all. They kept the door locked nearly always, since the only time they used the door tended to be when tending to Buckbeak, when one of them took a walk, or, more rarely, stormed out.

Elodie didn't have much time to wonder who their visitor was. The fourth unneeded sac of squid ink chose the moment she was trying to listen for the sound of voices to explode. She stood and watched it splash like a complete Muggle at first, which meant she had much more to clean up afterwards. That was how she came to be on her knees with her wand in hand shining an incredibly bright light onto the floor's surface as she cleaned up her mess.

As she'd learned the hard way under Horace Slughorn's tutelage, one simply did NOT cast 'liquid lifting' spells in a brewing room.

A brisk tap on the door startled Elodie. She looked up just in time to see the door swing open despite no response from her. A thin, pinch-faced man in ministerial robes stood in the doorway holding a notebook. Behind him, Remus's face was displeased, and he mouthed a quick apology when he saw her looking at him.

"Excuse me, miss-"

"Mrs., actually," Elodie said coldly, getting up from the floor. She crossed her arms over the wording on her shirt, wishing in retrospect that she actually had gotten some of the ink potion on it.

"Oh, of course," the man said, scribbling something into his notebook.

"You… do know how dangerous it is to burst into a brewing room?" Elodie said as the scribbling continued with no further comment. That earned her a blank look from her visitor, who lifted his quill from the notebook mid-word.

"Most Potions Masters of my acquaintance have Wards on the doors leading to their brewing rooms," he said in a dull monotone.

"I trust the man I live with not to startle me while I'm brewing, actually," Elodie said acidly.

There was more scribbling on his notebook after that.

"This is Mr. Parker from the Ministry," Remus said. He was still trapped in the basement room, as Parker remained directly in the doorway.

Elodie's first instinct was to ask if his first name was Nosey, and it took a herculean effort (and some time spent looking at the floor and scrubbing at nothing) to regain her composure. Rowling's naming conventions apparently applied to characters that were never seen in the books, which Elodie supposed made sense.

"How do you do, sir?" Elodie asked the man after she stood up. She offered her hand to the man despite the fact that her hands were wet with spilled squid ink, but he nodded to her with cold politeness and didn't take the bait. There was no way she wanted to see what Remus's expression was after seeing her do that, so she didn't try. After a few spellcasts she was neat and tidy again, and she walked back over to stand in front of the Ministry official.

He looked at her shirt, and she resisted covering it up. As expected, his face twisted and his eyes shot up to meet hers.

"Are you under the impression that this shirt is… appropriate?"

"Well, no," Elodie said, deliberately altering her voice to sound like she was talking to a person of limited understanding. "That's why I'm wearing it to brew with. My usual brewing shirt melted, you see, so I had to pick something else I didn't mind getting ruined."

Behind the man, Remus had his lips pressed to a thin line, but his eyes were wide and amused.

Parker spoke to her as he turned, likely to head back toward the stairs. "I'm here to conduct separate interviews of each of you. If you'll follow me up to the kitchen, Miss, I'll-"

"Mrs." Remus corrected with a cheerful voice that reminded Elodie of his behavior at the restaurant. He remained in the doorway without making way for the official. "Mrs. Lupin."

"Of course. If you'll follow me to the kitchen, please."

Remus moved, but she could tell it was with reluctance. As she walked past him, he reached out and snagged her hand to squeeze it. She felt reassured by that simple gesture well enough, but on the stairs Elodie was hit by the memory of his conversation with Moody at Grimmauld. He loved her. She knew him well enough to know that speaking it aloud was merely a formality. Everything in his language, body and verbal, had broadcasted the fact.

He loved her, and he was forced into a position to pretend to be her husband, all the while watching her love his best friend.

And still he was encouraging. Caring. Gentle.

Elodie's heart was so full she was surprised she fit through the doorway at the top of the stairs.

"Excuse me please. Follow me, Mr. Lupin," Parker said, leading Remus out into the living room. In the kitchen were two chairs set about a foot apart from each other beside the dining room table, but Elodie sat down across the table, instead. She couldn't help but notice the parallels to Sirius's proposal.

Her attempt to rile the official up seemed to have no effect, though. Parker came in, sat down, and held up a vial of blue liquid to show her.

"This is a mild truth potion. Its effects do not last for more than twenty minutes. Multiple doses have been known to be hazardous. Prevarication in your answers will cause me to require you to drink a second dose. Please drink it now." He held it out, and when Elodie took it, she was surprised at how heavy it seemed.

Elodie remembered the diagnostic spell performed on the liquid in the fake Alastor Moody's vial and wished she had the guts to do the spell on the vial in her hand. Then she thought about how she'd already changed so much from the books as to be Harry Potter's guardian.

She drank the contents of the vial.

"I will now ask you a series of questions. For the purposes of my inquiry, any 'he' referred to during these questions will be regarding Remus John Lupin. When referring to 'your husband,' I am only referring to the wizard named Remus John Lupin. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Elodie said, feeling the word leave her lips almost without her permission. It seemed that Moody had not been exaggerating the suspicion the two of them would be under! The direct implication of his statement about her 'husband' was that they were willing to suspect that she would deceive them by having a husband who was not Remus. Given how close she'd come to that very situation, Elodie was now very nervous about the interrogation.

She wished she had her notebook and a quill because this situation was begging for a list. At the top was to find out exactly what she'd been forced to drink and whether it was even legal. It had been completely tasteless. She reminded herself that a truthful answer that she and Remus were not legally married could be explained away by stating that they had not engaged in a magical union.

"Question one," Parker said, looking up impassively to see if she was ready. "How long have you known your husband?"

"Just under eighteen months," Elodie answered automatically. She winced inwardly, though. She'd known about Remus for years before that. The official didn't give any indication that her answer was suspicious, and the speed with which she'd conjured the information told her that the potion was working.

"Question two: how long have you known he is a werewolf?"

"About eighteen months?" she answered, forcing the uptick in her voice to add the question mark even though her potion-driven instinct was to answer with the same flat affect that Parker himself showed. That was as close to a rebuke of the questions as she could manage.

"Explain the discrepancy," he said, leveling a look that would be bored on anyone else but managed to be downright demanding in comparison to his prior behavior.

"I was asked to brew Wolfsbane for him prior to our meeting."

Parker scribbled on his notebook. Elodie successfully avoided rolling her eyes.

"Question three: have you ever feared Remus Lupin, either as a human or as a werewolf?"

"Never," Elodie spat out. This time her personal response was completely in line with the prompted one.

More scribbles.

"Question four: have you ever felt in any way threatened by Remus Lupin, either as a human or as a werewolf?"

"No." She refused to look at Parker.

There was silence in the room for a full minute, and Elodie started longing for Parker's scribbling to return. After thirty more seconds, she started to worry that he was deliberately delaying to force her to require a second dose. She finally looked over at her interrogator and saw with a chill that he was staring at her. It seemed that he was waiting for her to look at him before he continued.

Elodie's initial dislike of him grew to near-hatred.

"Question five: is your relationship with Remus John Lupin genuine?"

"Of course!" Elodie blurted out. Her potion-prompted answer pleased her and vexed her at the same time, because she worried about what conditions satisfied the 'truth telling' properties of the damned thing.

"Question six, then," Parker said, sounding slightly agitated, which touched up a tiny spark of fear in Elodie. "Do you love each other?"

"Yes. I'm in love with a werewolf. He's perfectly capable of being loved and loving in return. Is that somehow astonishing?" Elodie asked, sliding to the edge of her seat and glaring at Parker.

"Do you need a new dose?" Parker started rummaging in one of the pockets in his robes.

"No. Keep asking questions. Not liking my answers doesn't make them untruths."

"Fine. Question seven: do you know the location of the escaped convict named Sirius Orion Black?"

"No," Elodie said, breathing out a sigh that she hoped sounded frustrated instead of relieved.

"Question eight: would you tell me if you knew the location of the escaped convict named Sirius Orion Black?"

"No!" Elodie said, too quickly to do anything to stop herself.

"Why is that, Mrs. Lupin?" Parker demanded, no longer reading from his list by rote.

"Because I don't know you. I don't trust you. If I wanted to report an escaped convict, a bland middle-manager type is the last person I'd call. You're about as far from an Auror as anyone I've ever met outside of primary school!" Elodie said, the words flowing as if she'd scripted them.

In an action that was quite chilling, Parker smiled.

"Question ten: if you became pregnant, would you carry Remus John Lupin's child to term?"

"I would be honored to," Elodie said. The response had again come before she'd even fully understood the question. If she had, she would have reacted with much more vehemence against the exact phrasing. The official had reverted back to his initial dull expression, and he stood, gesturing to her.

"You will follow me, and you will not speak."

Elodie stood up unsteadily, thrown by Parker's sudden intensity over the last few questions, and his swift reversal once they were completed. He had been such a bland, unemotional jerk until that point that she felt very uneasy about the transformation. The official pulled a second vial of truth potion from his robes and set it on the table where Elodie had been seated, presumably for Remus. That he'd chosen to place it there instead of the chair he'd initially chosen was a minor victory, but she didn't take much comfort from it.

She followed Parker into the dining room and suddenly understood the nature of his questions on a completely different level.

Remus was seated on what had to be a conjured chair in the middle of the living room rug. He was bound by Incarcerus, and by the expression on his face, he'd heard every word that had been spoken in the kitchen.

"Finite!" Parker cast, and Remus's bindings disappeared. He stood quickly, and for a frightening moment, Parker and Remus were staring at each other with mistrust. The two men were of a similar height, and Elodie had a strong sense that the question about Sirius wasn't about her at all.

"You will follow me into the kitchen and drink your vial. Hers will wear off momentarily."

Elodie was so wrapped up in her mental re-examination of the questions Parker had asked her with the context of Remus overhearing them that she simply sat in the chair and waited for her Incarcerous. She didn't look at Remus at all. The specter of the final question and what Remus might have thought upon hearing her response weighed on her like a mail shirt.

Was the Ministry trying to break up their 'marriage?' Test it and find it wanting? Would she be able to handle hearing Remus's answer to that same question?

All too soon, Elodie heard Parker's voice from the kitchen instructing Remus on the parameters of the questions.

"Question one: how long have you known your wife?"

"A little less than a year and a half," Remus said, his response coming in that almost too fast way that she recognized as stemming from the potion.

In the seconds between hearing Remus's answer to the first question and Parker asking the second, Elodie remembered that Sirius could come home at any moment. She knew that Remus had a signal related to the curtains on the main window, but Parker's spell had immobilized her head and she couldn't turn it. Her peripheral vision wasn't enough to tell just how wide the gap was in the curtains.

"Question two: how long have you been preying on non-werewolf women?"

"I don't understand the question," was Remus's swift response. Elodie felt a surge of satisfaction at what Parker's expression probably looked like.

He'd asked the question to trap Remus into the kind of answer that incriminates a person no matter how they answered. Remus's instinctive, truthful confusion was essentially the only defense.

"Why not look for a mate among your own kind?" Parker pressed.

"I have never looked for a mate."

There was a loud noise that Elodie hoped was simply a hand slammed onto the table in anger.

Parker's tone was recognizably angry now. "Do you need a stronger dose in order to tell the truth?"

"No, sir. Due to my lycanthropy, I have never actively sought out relationships."

"Quite right," Parker said snidely. Elodie wanted to punch him in the face. "We might come back to that. Question three: have you ever endangered Elodie Laurel Merriman?"

"Yes. My condition is inherently dangerous."

Elodie's heart spasmed for Remus. Ironically, his self-hatred was likely both satisfying and infuriating for their interrogator.

"I'll rephrase question four for your situation, Mr. Lupin. How is it, if you do not seek out relationships, that you came to be involved with Elodie Laurel Merriman?"

Elodie wished she could cover her face with her bound hands, or that she'd been able to Muffliato before being bound for Remus's own comfort, but that thought was not enough to prevent her from hearing his answer.

"She pursued me, and ultimately I could not resist her."

Remus's voice was quietly distressed, and she knew that was because of her. He was aware she could hear him. She couldn't believe how thoroughly Parker had tricked them into thinking he was a box-checking, boring official. Her face burned with embarrassment. She'd flat-out told him he was as far from an auror as a person could be! No wonder he'd smiled.

"Question five: do you honestly believe that she loves you?"

"Yes."

There was a sound of furious writing, and Elodie could picture Remus's pained expression as he likely watched Parker making notes. Though he wasn't bound, his responsibility to Harry was as much of an Incarcerous as Elodie's own bindings.

"I'll deviate here as a follow up," Parker said. His monotone sounded forced, as if he were trying to repress a stronger emotion from being expressed underneath it. "What is your evidence that she loves you?"

Fuck you, Parker! Elodie railed in her own head.

Dutifully and automatically, Remus answered. "She tells me she loves me. Her behavior is loving in large and small ways. Before we were even friends, she cast a spell to accelerate her brewing of Wolfsbane so I wouldn't have to endure the transformation, even though it cost her dearly."

"And you're capable of loving her?"

"Yes."

"Your relationship is genuine?"

"The most genuine I've ever known."

Elodie started to cry.

"Did you enter into this relationship by the direction of Albus Dumbledore to fraudulently obtain guardianship of Harry Potter?" Parker's voice was rising in anger and volume.

"No."

"Do you honestly believe that the two of you are the best guardians of The Boy Who Lived? A werewolf and his mutt American wife?"

After the first few questions, she'd been struck by the possibility that Parker was a protegee of Dolores Umbridge. Now, Elodie was sure of it.

"I'm convinced that Elodie and I are the best possible guardians of Harry Potter, yes."

"I should make you drink three more vials of this and ask you each question again! Your lycanthropy has clearly helped you reject their truth-telling properties."

"The potion is working as intended," Remus responded. The words came too quickly for them to have been anything other than potion-induced. All Elodie could do was listen, her face wet with tears.

"You clearly think you are a respectable member of society!" Parker shouted. She pictured him leaning over and yelling at Remus from across the table.

"I don't." Remus's truth-dragged response was quiet and restrained. "I'm incredibly grateful for the people in my life who have made my current life possible."

Elodie wanted to send the memory of the entire experience to Remus's coworkers at Orion's Belt in the hopes that they'd write some sort of scathing take-down of the Ministry of Magic. She wouldn't, of course. That would further hurt Remus, and she felt keenly responsible for everything he was experiencing in that moment, even if logic told her that was ridiculous.

From the kitchen, the sound of scribbling cut off, and in its place came a chair scrape, a gathering of papers, and a muttered spellcast.

"If Albus Dumbledore thinks he's made the right choice, let's see what he'll say when he hears the two of you were attacked in your own home by an unknown wizard looking for Harry Potter!" Parker snapped.

Then, she heard the unmistakable 'pop' sound of Apparition.