Note: So a lot of this was already written and in my mind I'd already posted it? So I was genuinely shocked when I saw that this story was on chapter ELEVEN and not TWELVE, and it was left on a cliffhanger.
Folks, I'm so sorry!
In other news, I think I've been convinced about the logic of something a lot of you have asked me to do with the relationships in this story, so stay tuned (more than once a year, argh) for that! I really think it'll be great. Given that decision, having this chapter mostly pre-written and in the dock was a stroke of good luck.
So... surprise!
Chapter Twelve: Rescue is Only Step One
Under the Immobulus spell, Elodie couldn't speak. The horror of that overtook her for a few minutes. She sat and sobbed silently, miserable and desperate for the simple comfort of holding herself while in distress. It was less about being trapped, because she trusted Sirius and the Order not to let her and Remus essentially disappear without investigating why. Most of her agony had to do with Remus. His sense of privacy and judicious secrecy had been violated in the worst way, and those truthful answers only laid bare why her having overheard them would be so destructive.
It was difficult to slow down the freight train of her emotional breakdown, but after a period of time, Elodie started to take deeper, longer breaths.
She started a list in her head, choosing to start with the bad things about the situation, limiting herself to five.
1. The two of them were likely both trapped by Incarcerous and Immobulus, so until the latter wore off, they couldn't communicate at all
2. If Remus had managed to use the signal to warn Sirius not to come home, neither of them were in a position to disable it
3. Their interrogator was likely an Auror who was prejudiced against werewolves (and, given that he'd called Elodie a 'mutt' and she was a half-blood, and was also probably a blood purist)
4. He was clearly anti-Dumbledore and likely in league with Dolores Umbridge, given what Elodie knew about her behavior after the fifth book
5. His questions seemed designed specifically to distress each of them individually
A few deep breaths later, she was ready to make her positives list. It took a while to come up with five.
1. They would definitely get rescued before the full moon, and almost certainly before 24 hours, because Sirius/the Order wouldn't let them disappear for so long without investigating
2. Ironically, thanks to their predicament, Remus had time to himself in silence to deal with what he'd been forced to reveal to her
3. Sirius hadn't been home and thus hadn't been recaptured
4. She hadn't said or done anything to jeopardize Sirius's safety
5. By attacking them at the beginning of Harry's 5th year, the operatives in the Ministry had given them the benefit of advanced knowledge. In the books, such attacks didn't happen until well into the sixth book, that she could remember
The longer Elodie thought about that last point, the more worried she became, however. The attack that had killed the Dursleys had been genuinely horrific. She realized now that she'd allowed her dislike of them to color her view of their deaths.
The escalation had already begun. It had likely been prompted by her meddling.
Her rescue of Alastor Moody had allowed a deranged, desperate Death Eater to influence his compatriots for a full half-year. The attack that prompted her hospital stay at St. Mungo's was probably a direct result of that influence. Was it any wonder that the people caught in Barty Crouch, Jr.'s web of insanity then chose to directly attack Harry's blood relatives, the only ones who could protect him during the time he wasn't at Hogwarts?
And now, one of their own was in a position to hurt him there.
At least she knew some of what Dolores Umbridge had planned for Harry, and had put in motion a plan to thwart it. Now that she was trapped with just her thoughts to ramp her into an emotional frenzy, Elodie was seeing all of the flaws in her past actions. The plan to remove Umbridge from her post in time for Bill Weasley to be her successor would put her in the exact same position Crouch Jr. had been in.
Almost as soon as she'd thought of it, Elodie rejected that conclusion. Yes, the madman Crouch had done more damage outside of Hogwarts than from within, but Umbridge was a deadly poison no matter where she was. Her influence there would encourage some students to behave cruelly, prevent every student in the school from learning proper Defense Against the Dark Arts for that year, and torture Harry. She and the other Order members were essentially powerless to prevent her behavior from impacting the students, but were there things they could do to stop her from influencing the Ministry once she went back there?
Umbridge's policies would eventually affect all magic users in the country, and it seemed unconscionable to allow her to start that process any sooner than in the books. However, taken to its logical conclusion, that argument was saying that it was better for her to hurt the children in her care than be allowed to start helping Voldemort take over the Ministry- and that wasn't conscionable either. Elodie knew which she'd rather be a part of: the campaign to stop Umbridge that did not place vulnerable children in her path as a means to slow her down.
The lists helped Elodie calm down, but being unable to communicate with Remus made for tenuous peace of mind. She was grateful for the studies she'd made under Moody, including the typical periods of time that certain offensive spells lasted. Immobulus lasted around three hours, but Incarcerous stuck around for a very long time.
Because of the stiffness that came with the spell, Elodie couldn't even fall asleep to pass the time. She took to methodically running through the known events from book five (up until a… certain point) to put this moment into perspective. After what felt like six hours but was almost certainly only half that, she felt the rigidity in her jaw start to slowly ease.
Waiting for everything to unclench took far too long for her comfort or her sanity. It was only when she'd licked her lips and tasted salt that she remembered how hard she'd been crying. Because of their separation, there was a good chance that Remus didn't know she'd been crying, but she knew him well enough to understand that he would have spent his time in a similar emotional hell. Elodie had planned to say something as soon as she could, since she had a feeling he might not be willing to speak first.
Except, what should she say?
She gasped as a horrible thought occurred to her. The spell she'd heard could have been something deadly, killing Remus slowly while she sat frozen and unknowing. Even if that weren't the case, they were into the full moon week now, and the sun had already set. If they weren't rescued by midnight, that would be another missed dose, two cycles in a row. Given Moony's volatile reaction to her last month, she knew that Remus would be particularly concerned about her safety.
"Remus?" Elodie said, her voice sounding gravelly and disused. She cleared her throat as quietly as she could in case he made only quiet noises. When Elodie heard nothing, she spoke again. "Remus, if you can respond, I really need you to. My mind knows that he probably just cast the same spells on you as he cast on me, but my heart is afraid you're in there dying and I'm stuck here unable to do or say anything to help you!"
Tears started welling up in her eyes and she blinked rapidly, biting the inside of her lip just hard enough not to break the skin.
"I'm still here." Remus sounded tired, but Elodie slumped in her bonds in utter relief. "No other spell."
"Thank Merlin!" she said, trying on the phrase instead of 'goodness,' which was starting to fade as a primary oath as she spent more time with wizards than Muggles. "Did you adjust the curtains before our visitor came down to get me?" she asked, careful to be oblique about the 'safe/not safe' signal for Sirius, just in case Parker had left behind any surveillance spells.
"Yes."
Something about the quality of Remus's voice seemed off, but she couldn't tell what it was. She supposed hers was probably every bit as strange-sounding after what she'd gone through.
"I don't suppose there's a spell to put them back the way they were, not that either of us could probably cast it right now," Elodie sighed.
"No spell, no."
A trickle of suspicion pushed its way into Elodie's mind. "Moony?"
"Ellie. You're not hurt?" The response was a deflection and a confirmation all at the same time. Her mind raced through the possibilities, and latched onto the most obvious (and less fraught) explanation.
"Were you trying to break through the bindings?"
"Not strong enough. Can't protect you."
Oh, Remus, she thought. "That's about the person who cast it on you, not you, you know that, right?" Elodie told him.
"Could come back and do worse," argued Moony. "I should have killed him. Remus stopped me."
Elodie started shaking in shock and distress, so much so that the bindings tightened painfully around her. She knew she had to talk him down from that kind of reaction or Remus would never get a moment's peace during the full moon week, Wolfsbane or not.
"Moony, listen to me: killing him would have hurt me, Harry, and Sirius far more than doing nothing. That Auror was probably hoping you would attack him. If you had, they would have traced him here, seen that there was a werewolf in residence, and put Remus in Azkaban. They would take Harry away and put me in Azkaban-" a groaning sound of frustration sounded from the kitchen as she said this, but Elodie continued. "-Sirius would probably go on a suicide mission to kill everyone who so much as touched us!"
"Love you, Ellie," Moony said.
Elodie was speechless. The circumstances that had brought Remus to admit, twice, that he had feelings for her that day had been extreme. Yet, here was his lycanthropic self coming out and saying it so easily. Is it easy, though? Moony was in a situation every bit as dire to him as an interrogation, she realized. He felt responsible for her safety and said that he felt he'd failed her.
"I love you too," she told him, meaning it. She wasn't in love with Moony, but she loved every part of Remus, even the parts he hated.
Time stretched out both behind and before her, and they both fell silent. Elodie avoided casting her wandless Tempus spell, knowing that there was no way to do so without Moony overhearing it. Realistically, nothing she could say would ease Moony's mind. If he was in charge, Remus had to be utterly wrecked. She only hoped that Remus wasn't fighting for control.
Elodie spent so much time listening for any noises he might be making that when she heard something in the basement below her, Elodie was instantly on her guard.
She hoped it was Sirius, but the sound cut out immediately, and she would have expected Sirius to call out for them and clamber up the stairs. Elodie wondered if he'd shifted into Padfoot. Her excitement was thickly tinged with fear, something she knew that Moony could sense, but she couldn't master either emotion. Most of her body was still stiff and slow, and her legs remained completely frozen.
Without warning, the air around her turned opaque. Terrifyingly, the white, odorless mist seemed to also have sound-dampening properties. This clearly wasn't Sirius coming to rescue them. Was this her death scene? What would happen to Harry?
Elodie stared in the direction of the kitchen doorway. She flexed her toes, glad her shoes were the sturdy leather ones with grippy soles. With nothing to lose, she planned to throw herself like a weighted obstacle toward any figure that appeared out of the mist. Her wandless Protego was flawless by now, after all. At least her attacker would have as much trouble seeing as she did.
Bile rose in her throat. Something had to be happening, and Elodie was afraid that the 'something' was Remus tearing the throat out of an attacker with his bare hands. If so, there was a chance they'd lose him to miserable, fetid guilt for the rest of time.
Her eyes watered from trying to keep open. She blinked as quickly and briefly as she could, but between one blink and the next, she saw a shape materializing out of the mist.
With all the strength she had, Elodie shouted Protego and threw all of her weight sideways. The chair tipped ever so slightly to the left, anticlimactically, and Alastor Moody rushed over to steady it.
"Alastor, holy shit!" Elodie swore, gulping much-needed air with great, heaving breaths.
"You're safe, you're fine, what an effort! That chair might as well be made of lead, you know!" he chuckled. The chuckle faded when she glared at him, jerking her head toward the huge coils of conjured rope holding her to the aforementioned chair. "Soon. I had to check on ya. Let me go through the whole house and then we'll get Sirius in here to-"
"Mad-Eye, get me out of the blasted chair!" she said, watching incredulously as he backed away from her.
"It's got to be Black that releases you, lass," Moody said. "For the wolf's sake." He turned and started for the hallway that led to the bedrooms.
Elodie hoped he walked face-first into a wall. His mist was just as disorienting to Moony as it was to any possible attacker. There was no reason to make her wait any longer in her bindings, especially if Sirius was close enough to come help!
"Come back, you unmitigated git!" she yelled. The ache of the scream was disproportionate to the amount of magically dampened sound that made it to her ears.
Elodie stewed in her fury, planning all of the ways she was going to destroy the old man in a duel to end all duels. She saw his shadow make its way back into the kitchen and realized that if she hadn't seen Remus come to find her, that meant Moody had left him tied up too.
Minutes later, the mist began to dissipate. It was still swirling in eddies only a foot high by the time she heard the basement door slam open and saw Sirius rush into the kitchen. Only a moment later, after hearing the two men speaking in low voices, Sirius came rushing out to free her.
Elodie got up as soon as he broke the Incarcerous, but after having been trapped in the same position for hours, she was unsteady. Sirius caught her, his arms as tight if not tighter than the conjured ropes.
"I'm safe," she promises. He'd buried his head into her hair. His fierceness made her heart ache, and she nuzzled at his arm, his shoulder, tugging until he kissed her. Only after they broke apart, panting, did she see that Remus -no, Moony, his golden eyes were bright and obvious- was watching from the doorway.
For a split second, she was afraid of what his response might be, but because Moony could sense her emotions, he shook his head, just once. Then, he nodded at Sirius, looked down, and turned away to walk into the kitchen.
Sirius was facing her, so he didn't see Moony's reaction. It wasn't much, but if she'd read Remus's wolf correctly, he'd just recognized Sirius's claim.
Damn you for being right, Alastor Moody!
Sirius took Elodie's hand and she let him walk her into their bedroom. There, as they wrapped their arms around each other on the bed, he told her his version of events. Sirius had seen the 'unsafe' signal at the window and became alarmed when he'd returned hours later to see no new lights lit in the rooms, and the signal still displayed. Moody had been waiting at Grimmauld thanks to their earlier plans- and on hearing this, Elodie buried her face in Sirius's chest and told him she was sorry she'd ruined them.
"Oh, sweetheart," Sirius said. He drew back away from her and cupped her face with both hands. His grey eyes were sincere as he brushed his thumbs across each cheek. "I will spend the rest of my life saving you from any number of things, but I can only marry you once. Tell me, which one should I practice?" Before she could respond indignantly, he kissed her. "I know what you're about to say," he whispered against her lips. "-but have you been paying attention to your life since we met? You're always getting into and out of something!"
Sirius Black was truly the most outrageous, amazing person she'd ever met, Elodie decided as he kissed her again. His worldview was exhausting.
"So you went to get Moody?" she prompted, many kisses later.
He nodded. "He circled the house a few times, cast a few detection charms, and saw there were two people inside. We decided it was probably you and Remus, so I Apparated him into the basement brewing room. I waited there in case he got into trouble, and he cast that mist spell"
"I learned a lot about Aurors today," Elodie said ruefully.
She told Sirius about misjudging Parker and how that had led to them being blindsided by the man's interrogation tactics. She told him that the questions seemed designed to upset or worry the 'spouse' that was overhearing them, but didn't go into detail about what they were. Elodie hated being evasive like that, but there was something profoundly intimate about the revelations she'd heard from Remus today, not just at Phoenix House.
In that moment, wrapped up in Sirius's arms, Elodie decided it might be worth asking Remus if he wanted her to erase those memories. The offer would be empty in some ways, given her earlier eavesdropping, but the peace of mind he might gain from it could be valuable.
She couldn't ask for at least ten days, though. Remus would be able to sense her prevarication. The last thing she wanted to do was clue him in to the fact that she'd known some of those things before Parker had dragged them out of him.
"Lost in thought?" Sirius asked.
Elodie groaned in embarrassment. "I'm sorry!" she said.
"Don't be," Sirius said, scooting up to rest his back on a pillow against the carved beauty of their headboard. "I can't imagine how tough that must have been. On both of you. Mad-Eye said Moony was in charge, looking more than wild around the edges." He tossed his hair out of his eyes and looked at the ceiling. "Going to be a rough week, I think."
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Elodie woke up very early the next morning. She left Sirius sprawled out on the bed, messy-haired and loose-limbed in his sleep. Despite knowing that Remus's hearing was heightened, she paused outside his bedroom door with her ear hovering a hair's breadth from the wood. She heard nothing; there were no breathing sounds, no rustle of papers. Elodie didn't worry about it, choosing to start the process of baking some Hollyfield-style chocolate bread. She'd slept 'like the dead' at many points in her life, though most of them had happened after arriving in this universe!
Elodie was still wearing the black 'Wearwolf' shirt, thanks to being lazy and exhausted and unwilling to change clothes the night before. There was something very satisfying about wearing the thing and getting flour and cocoa powder all over it in the same kitchen that Parker had tried to break her spirit. They'd left the chair he'd conjured in the living room, despite her distaste at the idea. Sirius wanted Moody to take a look at it and see if he could tell who 'Parker' really was.
When she couldn't find a specific measuring spoon for the non-Gâteaufidél chocolate cookies she'd decided to make alongside the chocolate bread, Elodie decided to check the brewing room. As she walked down the basement stairs, she chastised herself for neglecting to check the room the night before. Sirius had told her he and Moody had both been in there. There wasn't a snowball's chance in Malfoy Manor that Sirius Black had been able to stand still and wait in a room without touching something, after all.
She almost fell down the last few stairs when she saw that there was a figure inside the cage. There was only one person it could be, given that the human-repelling charms were always active.
"Remus, oh my gods!"
His head lifted a fraction before dropping back down onto his outstretched arm. "Glad to see you're well rested, but you'll forgive me for skipping saying 'good morning,'" Remus said in a voice full of grim humor.
"You slept down here?"
His silence was eloquent, and Elodie's face flushed from the unspoken rebuke. Of course he had, because he was nothing if not self-flagellating.
"I need to check on the Wolfsbane, so don't get your hopes up that I'm actually listening to you," she said, her voice brisk and tart.
"I'd never dream of that," he retorted. He sounded utterly exhausted, but the tinge of sheer Remusness in his tone made her heart soar.
She pushed the door open and left it ajar, hoping that he would choose that moment to flee upstairs to a comfortable bed (or the floor in his bedroom, for that matter. It wasn't hard stone, at least) to avoid her. There was a bit of a mess in the room, but as she took it in, Elodie realized that Sirius wasn't the culprit.
Moony was.
The metal goblet that Remus usually drank his Wolfsbane from was on its side on the floor, crushed. Around it was a mostly dried puddle of liquid that she guessed was the sparkling water she usually gave him to cut the taste. He'd obviously poured it out rather than Vanishing it, which felt like a personal insult. Her heart in her throat, Elodie walked over to see the cauldrons that held the Wolfsbane. She'd not bothered to ward them against any kind of sabotage, because she'd never thought there would be a need to.
The batch that would need to be used for next month was unchanged, as far as she could tell. The spell she used to monitor it for contaminants during the first two weeks of brewing was represented by an altered Sneakoscope charmed for that purpose. It sat unclouded on the table beside the cauldron.
This month's batch was another story.
The cauldron itself was ruined. Moony had manifested his frustration in being mastered by Incarcerous on the cauldron itself. He seemed to have bent the round lip of the thing in at multiple points like a closed flower bud. The final indignity was that he'd set it back on the table upside-down, allowing the precious liquid to drain out of the thin gaps left from warping the cauldron's shape. Thankfully (because Moony would not have cared, at the time), the potion was no longer volatile in its end stage, and it simply puddled just like the tonic water, calcifying in place after hours of exposure to air without the heat of the cauldron to keep it viable.
Elodie felt numb, as if a lingering effect of Incarcerous was in frozen emotions instead of muscles. The destruction of the potion was not about her, not really. It was about Remus and the ways that he'd chosen to control Moony. While Wolfsbane had been around for at least a decade, she doubted Remus had gotten access to it before his job at Hogwarts. After two years of repression, it was only natural for Moony to be upset.
She sighed. Parker was right.
Elodie would have to ward the door to her brewing room.
Without touching any of the mess, she walked out into the main room of the basement. Remus was in the same position he had been when she'd left him.
She bit her tongue and just stood there, waiting. Elodie knew that no matter how still and despondent Remus seemed to be on the floor, he would be a fool not to sense her emotions. The big question was whether or not he remembered what Moony did when he had control. Remus had remembered (and was horrified by) Moony's response to seeing Sirius's hickey on her neck. Remembering appeared to be related to Wolfsbane. They'd spoken about its effects on his memory early on in their friendship, but Elodie couldn't remember them clearly. She would ask, eventually, but for now, she would wait.
After just two minutes, Remus lifted his head to see where she was standing. Upon seeing her simply watching him, he sat up but remained on the floor. She kept her breathing steady as much as she could, but his deep confusion began to amuse her, and from his visible confusion, he could obviously sense it.
"Did you actually go inside?" he finally asked, his brows furrowed.
Elodie nodded.
"Did Sirius dose you with something last night, and it hasn't worn off?"
She walked closer to the cage, tipping her head to the side as if also confused. "No, why do you ask?"
Remus got to his feet with surprising ease for the miserable pile he had seemed to be in when she'd first come downstairs. He walked over to the bars of the cage that separated them and put one hand in his pocket, leaning his upper arm of his free hand against the bars at his own forehead height.
"I didn't expect you to be so calm," he finally said, after they stood in silence looking at each other.
"You mean after I saw that Moony destroyed not only tonight's dose of Wolfsbane, but the entire month's worth, and the cauldron?" she asked, crossing her arms.
He winced and nodded.
"I got the sense that he connected the potion to his inability to fully break free in enough time to stop Parker. In the end, though, I'm not the one that will bear the consequences of having no Wolfsbane this week, so a little bit of a mess and the cost of a new cauldron is not the end of the world," she said, truthfully.
"He doesn't deserve your understanding!" Remus snapped, finally breaking free from his amused guilt. "I know how hard you work to have two cauldrons' worth of such a difficult potion-"
"And you managed to stop him from destroying both, am I right?" she interrupted.
"I- Yes."
"Thank you," Elodie said, offering him a tiny smile.
To her surprise, he pushed off from the cage and stomped over to the other side, slamming both hands on the bars with so much force that the sound echoed around the room.
"What did I do?" she asked in a small voice. She had a suspicion, and it made her feel both a surge of affection and sympathy for him. Best of all, he could definitely sense that.
"You shouldn't be thanking me!"
"Why not? Because it would make you feel better for me to be angry? Sorry to be such a disappointment," she snapped at him, ignoring her own guilt at pushing back on someone in such clear misery, however misguided.
"Sometimes I can't help but feel that I take too much of the care and affection Sirius needs from you," he whispered, bowing his head.
"Well, you're wrong. If you're worried about it, the person to speak to is Sirius, not me." Elodie wanted to add that she had enough love to go around, but that sounded an awful lot like what Moody had said to her at Grimmauld. "Not that it would change anything, mind you," she added defiantly.
Now he turned his head to look at her. "Did Moody talk to you yesterday?"
She maintained eye contact, gathered up her courage, and said, "About a Triad? Yes, as a matter of fact. He spoke to Sirius and I together. Stormed out very angrily after we made some salient points about how such an arrangement could not possibly work, even if it didn't require you and Sirius to have a romantic attachment as well." At this, she saw that Remus's entire body went tense, and he dropped his eyes. Her knowledge of him told her it was more guilt, but its relevance was beyond her.
"Well, go on," he said tersely.
"Well, you should know," she bit her lip, and as if Moony's aborted claim on her had left the werewolf physically attuned to such an action, Remus looked directly from the floor to her mouth. To keep focus on what she was trying to say, she looked away from him to finish the thought. "Sirius even implied he wouldn't mind a Triad if it weren't for Moony's inevitable jealousy. That sounds like good evidence that he would have responded differently if he thought you were taking anything away from him, don't you?"
At that last statement, Elodie looked back over at Remus and saw that he'd turned around to face her. He was breathing heavily, and looked quite wild-eyed.
"You should go."
"What about you?" Elodie asked, raising an eyebrow. She was pretty sure what the answer would be.
His eyes were still ringed with gold as he answered. "I have some things to work on."
"You're planning to stay down here, aren't you?" she accused him. "How long? Until the full moon? Afterwards?"
"I know what I'm doing, Elodie," he said.
"How will you eat?" she asked, letting her incredulity make the question sound insolent.
His jaw dropped. Somehow, his surprise was the last straw for Elodie's temper.
"You actually think I'm going to take food to you, a grown adult wizard with a job and a family -in case you've forgotten that our son is at boarding school- while you sulk down here in an actual cage?" she hissed at him. "That's not the kind of care you need, Remus Lupin! And don't think you can trick Sirius into doing it either. He'll listen to me. You know he will."
"It would be better if the two of you stayed at Grimmauld for the next week anyway," Remus said, tucking his hands into his pockets as if they'd just come to some sort of perverse agreement.
"What, so you and Moony can destroy the rest of the house?" she threw out. Immediately, Elodie regretted it, clapping her hand over her mouth. Remus walked up to the bars of the cage and nodded almost triumphantly at her.
"Yes, that's exactly the problem. You don't trust me anymore. You shouldn't: thanks to his failure to protect you and without the Wolfsbane, he's even more volatile than normal! You need to be safe. I need you to be safe. You know why."
Elodie walked up to the cage on her side, so close that her chest brushed the bars. "I'm sorry I violated your privacy with my answers to those questions. The only thing about you that I don't trust is your judgment right now. I don't understand why, if you can remember what happened yesterday when Moony was in control, you could ever think I wouldn't be safe in the house with him!"
Remus grabbed the bars on either side of her head. His whole body was trembling, and he shut his eyes and grunted with effort, but when he opened his eyes again, they were clear of any gold.
"Alastor spoke to me yesterday, too." Remus spoke quickly, as if he were afraid he couldn't maintain complete control for very long.
"About a Triad?"
"Yes. And he talked to Moony about it."
Elodie blinked in surprise. She'd been there for Moody's conversation with Remus. She'd been able to see both men, and Moony hadn't been in control as far as she could see. The only time she knew of where Moony and Mad-Eye had been in a room together was while the auror was checking the house for danger. She hadn't been able to hear or see anything with the mist, but…
"You need to go to Grimmauld. Both of you. After you put a ward on the brewing room door, that is."
Remus's urgency and certainty about her safety sparked alarm, despite how certain Elodie was that he wouldn't hurt her. But she couldn't help remembering the way Moony had said he would 'enjoy the chase,' the way he said he would 'make you ours.'
"Finally," Remus said. "If you two stay here, I stay here," he told her, letting go of the cage with one hand to slap against the bars with it.
"But your cooking is terrible," Elodie said sadly.
Remus's head hit the bars with an audible 'thunk.' "Stop it," he whispered, a reluctant smile curling at the edges of his lips.
"Stop what?"
"Knowing exactly what I need and giving it to me."
"Never." She grinned. "How about this: we'll stay at Grimmauld, but twice a day I get to stop by and maintain the potion, ensure you're eating properly, and pick up a change of clothes. Sirius is afraid he'll end up stuck there somehow, and I refuse to even hint at the possibility. 'Until the full moon' is probably enough to keep his anxiety at bay, but swapping clothes out daily should also help."
"Eight in the morning and evening would work," Remus sighed.
"Perfect. He won't even know I'm gone in the morning, I bet."
"Who won't? I definitely noticed, Love, I was just too arsed to get up. Bed's comfy," Sirius said from across the room.
"Hey, Padfoot. I'm banishing you two to Grimmauld, but Elodie insists on making sure I eat for some reason," Remus said. He turned to face Sirius, and the hand still holding the bars slid down, but didn't let go. To Elodie, his voice sounded strained in its joking familiarity, but Sirius, mid-yawn and stretch, hadn't seemed to notice.
"I get it. Just until the full moon, yeah?"
"Make it at least a day and a half after, say, the fifteenth?" Remus asked. His grip tightened on the bar, and Elodie reached out to brush comfort onto his hand with a brief squeeze. Faster than she ever could have imagined, his thumb came up and trapped her hand against his. It was too tight, but she got a sense that, far from being upset, Remus (or more likely, Moony) was touch-starved, and didn't want to give her up easily. As if to confirm this, his hand kept adjusting its hold on her incrementally as he and Sirius talked about the plan to send the two of them to Order Headquarters.
"Moony? Don't be too hard on him this week, all right?" Sirius said, walking around to put his arm around Elodie.
She realized she was so focused on their hands that she hadn't seen the change in Remus's demeanor. Elodie looked up and saw that Remus's eyes were now full gold.
"You should stay," Moony said. He held on when she initially tugged to pull her hand free, but when Sirius leaned over to help, Moony let go immediately.
"The time will go quickly," Sirius said awkwardly.
Elodie's heart was being tugged in multiple directions. "I made chocolate bread! I didn't get to the cookies, but-"
"Perfect," Moony said. He backed away from the bars, nodding respectfully at Sirius. Elodie felt like the way Sirius made a show of taking her hand and leading her away from the cage was a bit much, but she at least understood his instinct.
"Can Remus clean up the mess in the brewing room?" Elodie called out behind her.
"Remus made a mess in the brewing room?" Sirius asked, sounding alarmed.
"No, Moony did. He-"
"-ruined the Wolfsbane for this month, didn't he?"
Elodie nodded. Sirius actually picked her up when they got to the stairs. "Put me down, what on Earth are you-"
"Establishing dominance," he said. He actually looked serious.
"He recognized your claim, I saw it in his eyes when you canceled the Incarcerous charm," she told him as he set her down in the kitchen. "You didn't have to-"
"I did," Sirius said. He reached down and picked up her hand, the one Moony had been holding onto. Gently Sirius kissed it, and then held it up for her to see.
Oblong purple bruises in the shape of his fingers were already blooming there.
"I've known Remus and Moony for a long time. One of the things James used to get on his case over was that by refusing to have even casual sexual relationships, Remus was fucking himself up for teaching Moony about what was normal for humans. They used to have rows about it," Sirius said, walking past her and throwing himself onto the couch. He looked over at her. "What?"
Elodie could feel a blush creeping up her neck. "Nothing." She started tidying up the living room, staying away from the corner of the room where someone had mood the chair she'd been bound to.
"Out with it!" he commanded.
"It's just, he… well, you remember the meadow. That wasn't- I mean, there was actual skill-" Elodie covered her burning face with her hands.
"Oh, he wasn't completely celibate, especially not right after graduation." Sirius cleared his throat, turning his head away and touching a hand to his neck for a few seconds. He swallowed a few times and went on. "He had a bad experience with a pushy witch. 'Wolf Chaser' is a tame version of what she was. She showed up right before the full moon, and if it weren't for myself, Peter, and James… Well."
"So when you say 'normal relationships,' you really mean normal relationships," she noted, coming over to straighten the end table.
Sirius barked out a laugh. "Yes, exactly. James finally told him that he should go find a den and at least teach himself what Moony would think was normal, so he knew what he was preventing. A week later, Dumbledore asked Remus to reach out to a few packs, see whether they were being courted by Voldemort."
Elodie sank into Remus's chair, a cold feeling of horror overwhelming her ability to speak.
Sirius saw her expression and nodded. "Remus was convinced James had gone to Dumbledore about it. I was sick of hearing the two of them bitching about it so this time, and I refused to be the go-between. Remus went anyway." He tossed his hair out of his eyes and leaned his head back against the back of the couch. "They never made up," Sirius said bleakly.
"So now what?" Elodie whispered.
"Now we have to somehow show Moony what is normal, without triggering whatever jealous rage that has him bruising up your hand and freaking Remus out enough to send us away for a week."
