Author's Note: Dear readers, I badly need corrective eye surgery which I will hopefully be receiving later this summer. My eyes no longer focus properly, and I am having serious trouble catching my typos. Please forgive them if you find them; I am doing my absolute best under the circumstances. I shall overcome.

Special thanks to Gueniviere for updating, and of course for featuring Brevity in her latest update. Special thanks also to tutucute4u, and to brokenblackangel for first-time reviewing!

And of course thanks to Lala5, Purgurl, DeltaGammaLiv, PinkTribeChick, Nynaeve80, and hey-meredith for reading reviewing, and generally being excellent.

Honestly.

Finally, this chapter references the first part of this story arc, my one-shot called Fearless. It's a quick read, but it'll help the last bit make a little more sense.

Enjoy!

!Menolly

Chapter Nine: Beast

Lupin stood, stricken, watching as Hermione slammed her bedroom door in his face. His ears were still ringing from Tonks' tearful jibes, and he wasn't feeling very well to boot. He stood outside of the door for several minutes, running one nervous hand through his silvering hair. "Hermione? I want to talk to you. Will you come out, please? Please. Let's handle this like adults."

Nothing happened. He almost wished she'd throw something at the door, or come out and rage at him, just so he'd know she was listening. That wasn't like Hermione, though, he thought. She wasn't prone to temper tantrums.

And if she did come out, what would he say? She'd taken him completely unawares when she'd come upon him talking to talks in his room, and he'd been too startled by her sudden arrival to school his expression or mask his thoughts the way a mature, experienced wizard like himself should have.

The moment he'd left her bedroom that morning, still tingling from the kiss they'd shared, he'd begun to feel the beginnings of the inevitable shame and consternation. Hermione had never been supposed to know the inexplicable way that he felt about her, or how her desperately he'd been battling with himself not to give in to those unacceptable emotions. When he'd thought he was going to lose her, he'd let his guard drift, so overcome by emotion that he hadn't been paying enough attention to how dangerous his relief for her was. Now it was all over. She knew the truth, she knew what his concern for her safety, and his shudders at her touch all meant.

"When I ask you, you tell me that you're too old, too dangerous," Tonks had taunted him bitterly he moment she'd managed to get him alone in his room to talk. "But you're not too dangerous or too shabby for little Hermione Granger, are you? You're a lying, double-crossing, pedophilic beast," she'd screamed, and then flickered away into the flames, leaving Lupin's heart somewhere far below the pit of his stomach.

It wasn't Tonks' anger that had thrown him. He'd known that something like this was bound to break at some point. She'd never understand that he simply couldn't return her affections, no matter how hard he tried, or that he saw her as a little sister, rather than a desirable woman.

What had shocked Lupin was how true Tonks' heated insults really were. He hadn't changed as a person, and everything that was true for Tonks was just as true for Hermione. Lupin was thirty seven years old, unemployed, a member of a peril-seeking anti-Voldemort league, and, of course, a werewolf. For him to think that he was in any position to sue for Hermione's affections was preposterous, and for him to let her know how strongly he felt about her was nothing less than cruel. He could hurt her, he could even kill her, and he had the audacity to think that he could love her.

He hated himself. He'd been sitting in his bedroom, listening to Tonks, and thinking about just how awful a situation he'd put Hermione into, when she'd walked in. When he'd seen the shock and horror on her face, he'd known that she loathed him just as much as he loathed himself, and although he almost wanted her to hate him, it was a blow to his heart that, on top of all the blows he'd taken in the battle, he didn't need.

"Hermione," he said again, his voice surprisingly calm, if rather faint. "Please, come out and let's talk this over."

Lupin waited. He thought he could hear footsteps behind Hermione's bedroom door, and, after a moment, the doorknob turned, and Hermione pushed the door open. She stood and looked bleakly at him, her mouth slightly open, her eyes narrowed.

"Look," he began, before she could speak, "I don't think it's going to matter. We don't ever have to speak of it again. It was just…a mistake. We all make them. I'm sorry." He really was sorry. He couldn't' tell if she'd been crying. Her eyes were red, but not at all puffy, full of emotion, but none that he could satisfactorily name.

"A mistake," echoed Hermione dully.

"Yes," agreed Lupin, "a mistake. I think you should try to forget it ever happened. I don't want-!" Lupin stopped. He had wanted to say that he didn't want to lose her, but that sounded terrible, under the circumstances. "I don't want this to affect our working together, or our relationships within the Order."

"No," agreed Hermione, "no, that…that would be awful." There was something bitter in her tone that Lupin didn't understand. For some reason she was even more annoyed with him now that he'd tried to disavow those affections that had scared her so much. For one brief moment, his eyes met hers, and he wondered, desperately hopeful, if she wanted the moment they'd shared to have been more than a mistake.

But that didn't matter, he insisted to himself, forcing those incessant rays of hope back down into the depths of his frustrated heart where they belonged. It didn't matter if she entertained a schoolgirl crush, or even if she'd enjoyed it all. It was wrong, and he was wrong to try and make her-!"

"It wasn't a mistake," said Hermione quietly. "You don't make mistakes, Professor. You're too careful for that."

"We all do," repeated Lupin, a bit too forcibly. Hermione raised an eyebrow at him.

"Am I really that repulsive?" she asked him, still cold. "I really never thought that I'd ever see a man look at me like that, or be so ashamed of kissing me that he'd look at me the way you just did. I really can't believe that I'm that horrible. I don't understand what made you change your mind."

Lupin blinked. "That's not-!" he started, and then stopped, frowning, trying to figure out how to say this to Hermione, who'd faced more menace in her short life so far than almost any other with or wizard her age. "You're not repulsive," he insisted gently. "I almost wish you were, Hermione, but it's not right."

He expected her to ask him why it wasn't right, or to put up some kind of heated protest. Instead, she looked at the ground, and asked shrewdly, "do you love me?"

Yes, thought Lupin immediately. "No," he said. Hermione closed her eyes as if she was in pain. "That is to say," he continued, cursing himself, "yes. Of course I love you, you've always been an excellent student, a wonderful friend to Harry, to the people I care about. I'm very fond of you, Hermione."

"I didn't ask you if you were fond of me," she insisted. "I asked you if you loved me."

"You're a little girl," murmured Lupin, willing himself to keep his face calm and collected. "You're seventeen. It's normal for girls your age to feel…to feel like they care about older men, but this has gone too far, and I can't allow it to continue."

Hermione looked very thoughtful. She bit her lip, looking anywhere but at Lupin as she spoke. "I don't know what being in love really feels like," she said. "I guess that's normal for a 'little girl.'" She spoke those last words without bitterness, but with an unmistakable emphasis. "I imagine that love feels a lot less awful if it's returned. Don't you think, Professor?"

Lupin couldn't take his eyes away from her face, even if she wouldn't look at him. She meant every word of it, he realized, and she meant all of the things that she hadn't put into words yet as well. She really did genuinely think that she loved him. It should have felt warm, but it still felt wrong, felt forced, as though he'd drawn this out of her with trickery.

"I'm a werewolf," he reminded her. "I almost tried to eat you in your third year at school, when I was loose on the Hogwarts grounds with Sirius. You remember?"

Hermione nodded. Very slowly, she turned her eyes back to his, and then reached up, and pulled aside the collar of her robes, revealing a corner of white neck, and shrugging. "Whatever will happen, will happen," she said.

Lupin stared at the patch of skin she'd revealed, as if offering it up to him to bite, to taint, and to disfigure. He felt sick. "No," he whispered, backing slightly away from her, shaking his head, still staring at her bared neck. "It isn't okay."

Hermione took a step towards him, put her hand on his arm, and he jerked it away from her abruptly. She dropped her arm back to her side, her eyes reproachful. "Go back to your room," he said huskily. "You…should be in bed, resting. I'll go and get your mother."

"I don't need my mother," Hermione called after him, but Lupin wasn't listening. He hurried away from her, down the stairs, and towards the kitchen, all too aware that she was watching his back as he went. You're an idiot, a small voice said loudly in the back of his mind. You've thrown away the thing you've been craving for longer than you're willing to admit, and now you've hurt her, and you won't get it back.

Well, he reasoned with himself, that was probably all for the best.
But both of those voices in his head were wrong. Before he'd even managed to get halfway down the stairs, Hermione's arms were around his shoulders, and she was holding on to him, preventing him from going any farther.

"I'm not afraid of you," she told him.

Lupin laughed darkly. "I thought I told you years ago that no good can come from trying to be fearless."

"You did," agreed Hermione. "I ignored you. Sorry, Professor."

She stepped around him, so that she was standing just below him on the stairs, and, tilting her chin up and standing on her tiptoes to reach him, she kissed him.

Lupin closed his eyes. Hermione reached up through his sleeves so that she was clutching his bare arms, gripping them tightly as she leaned farther into the kiss. She was such a slight thing, he thought, even as his mind numbed to the sensation of her lips against his. He could dislodge her without the slightest effort, and yet he couldn't bring himself to move her. He'd never known Hermione to be aggressive before. Assertive yes, courageous, certainly, but not aggressive.

"Live and learn," she whispered, as if reading his thoughts. "I have to protect myself and my own best interests. There isn't always someone there determined to protect them for me."

For the first time, Lupin allowed himself to realize that she wasn't a little girl anymore. Young as she was, she was hardly a child, and she was more emotionally mature than most of the witches and wizards his own age that he knew.

One of them was trembling, and he couldn't be sure if it was him or Hermione. Perhaps it was both of them. He rested his head on her shoulder, kissing her collarbone, and then, in one decisive movement, swept her up off her feet and into his arms. Hermione let out a small squeak of protest, but when he stopped, worried that he'd unsettled her, she kissed his cheek, and tightened her grip on his arms to regain her equilibrium. He felt himself starting towards Hermione's bedroom, almost unconsciously, but now she did struggle, and he released her, letting her feet hit the floor and relaxing his hold on her waist.

"Mum and dad," she said, in a small, apologetic voice. She sounded just a bit more frightened than she had moments ago.

Lupin nodded. His heart was pounding very fast, and Tonks' head kept appearing in his mind's eye, screaming at him. "You beast," Tonks kept saying in his head. "You lying beast."