Remus scratched at his arm as he walked, feeling the almost-healed scab from his last full moon very profoundly, even through his rather thick shirt.
"Have we gone down that way in a while?" Gideon asked, pulling his jacket more tightly around him.
Fabian and Remus both shook their heads and the three of them began down the alleyway Gideon had suggested.
Remus knew that Fabian had been acting strangely for a few days, but he hadn't wanted to bring it up with other people around, even Gideon. Contrary to popular belief, Remus knew that the twins did not share everything.
A prime example was the fact that Rachel Chaplin had been Fabian's friend, not Gideon's. She was friendly with Gideon, but she'd been closer even to the Marauders than she'd been to Fabian's twin. Although they were both a bit quiet, a bit shy in their way, Fabian was definitely the more outgoing of the two. Remus suspected that their quietness was in response to their loud, domineering older sister, but he didn't speak about it with them.
Someone who didn't want to talk about family didn't bring up the family of others.
"I'll be right back," Gideon muttered, frowning as he shined his wandlight down a side street. "I think I see a place still selling food."
"Careful," Remus hissed, watching him go.
"Should we follow?" Fabian muttered.
Remus shook his head, turning back to Fabian.
"Tell me what happened when you were tailed."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that you wouldn't be in this much of a funk if it were a simple matter of Rosier and Macnair outside your flat. You're upset about something. So what really happened?"
Fabian licked his lips in the moonlight, glancing around the streets quickly.
"Have you heard from Rachel lately?"
Remus raised his eyebrows and shook my head.
"Has Dorcas mentioned her to you recently?" Fabian pressed.
"No," Remus said. "Is something wrong?"
"No, not really. It's just, I saw her that day, and we had tea and I…I was worried that maybe something happened, like maybe she was seen with me, or she got…got Splinched or something."
"Oh," Remus said, suddenly understanding. "No, I've not heard anything. Have you talked to Dorcas?"
He shook his head, but Remus didn't push the conversation further.
If Rachel wasn't fine, they would have heard about it, but if it was a minor Splinching Dorcas might have kept it between the two of them. Remus couldn't imagine why it would come up if there wasn't something seriously wrong, so he wanted to tell Fabian to take heart in that, but at the same time Gideon was coming back with food. Remus said nothing.
"On we go," Gideon said, handing a pasty to the other two young men before they continued on their walk. Remus ate his pasty, watching Fabian.
It had been difficult for Fabian to cut off Rachel when they left school, for her own safety he said, even when Dorcas criticized him for it. Remus understood. He'd cut ties with his parents, stopped talking to Rachel and Holly Elizabeth, and hadn't heard from Ophelia or Alodia in ages, although Ophelia's estrangement wasn't entirely Order-related.
"Do you ever wish they'd have us patrol somewhere warmer?" Fabian asked softly. "Like…like Brighton?"
"There hasn't been a Death Eater attack in Brighton," Gideon said reasonably.
"Probably to make us miserable," Remus said, smiling weakly.
It was getting easier to joke about the war every time they did it, but it was still hard. Harder for some than others, of course, as every other thing Sirius said was joke about the war. He went a bit sober when something heavy happened, but otherwise he was our personal wartime comedian.
Sirius was part of the problem with Fabian and Rachel, although he didn't probably realize. Her studies had caused an unintentional rift between them, spending so much time with Sirius when her nose wasn't in a book.
It made it easier for Fabian to cut ties for her own good, Remus supposed. He mused that he would have gotten a vegetarian pasty if he'd bought them, but there was no way for Gideon to know that Remus didn't like eating meat right after the full moon.
"What was that?" Fabian asked, jumping slightly, turning toward a side street.
Remus had heard it too, of course. It was the sound of rope creaking, a sound he had heard before about a year ago.
His hands were already shaking as he stepped forward, following Fabian. Gideon had dropped the last bit of his pasty, all action. The three young men crept forward into the darkness, their wands illuminating just a bit more with every step.
The woman was hanging from a jutting out on the roof, some architectural feature Remus did not know the name of. A pool of blood was on the ground below her, droplets still falling from the tips of her toes into the puddle.
"Mary was barefoot too," Remus muttered, and the twins looked at him, concerned.
No one was there. Whoever had done it was long gone.
"Remus, go home," Gideon said. "We'll clean this up. You just get some rest."
"Should I…?"
"I'll do the report," Fabian said. "Go home."
There was no sense arguing with them. Remus Disapparated on the spot, landing just down the street from his paltry flat, barely glancing around the sparse space as he went inside.
He sank onto the threadbare couch, the springs threatening to poke out of the thin fabric with every slight shift, but he paid it no mind.
His mind was at Hogwarts, on a cold, clear night of patrol, when he had seen and heard the horrific things he'd just seen and heard the first time.
Remus closed his eyes, leaning back on the sofa, rubbing his eyebrows as the memories flooded back. His hands were still trembling, and it all felt so disgustingly close. He swallowed the bile in his throat.
/-/
Remus watched Marlene adjust her scarf before they started their patrol. Her dirty blonde hair bounced around her shoulders as they walked, as always. He thought her hair looked comfortable, for some reason, like it suited her face particularly well. Lily's hair was like that, and Rachel's. He thought Mary's was a bit short some days, but on other days he thought it was perfect. He'd never figured out what changed about it, just that some days it looked too short and other days it didn't.
"Not too many of these left," Marlene said brightly. "Must be really strange for you."
He forgot, periodically, that Marlene had not been a prefect very long. She had filled the spot Lily had left when she became Head Girl. Sometimes, similarly, he forgot that she was a prefect at all. That was rarer, because it had been a very controversial decision, Marlene as Lily's replacement. It hadn't been as big of news as James being Head Boy, but the speculation had centered almost exclusively on whether it would be Rachel or Holly Elizabeth to replace Lily.
Rachel and Holly Elizabeth would have been prefect to begin with, had anyone but Lily Evans been there first. Lily was likeable, which Rachel sometimes had trouble with, and was in perfect health. Perhaps such a thing wouldn't be a problem typically, but with Remus having to take every full moon off, the ill health of both Rachel and Holly Elizabeth had made them lesser candidates than Lily.
And perhaps that was why Marlene had been chosen. Perhaps Remus had been the reason that such a controversial decision had to be made.
Not that Marlene wasn't excellent on her own merit. He hardly knew anyone who didn't like her, and she was nearly as diplomatic as Holly Elizabeth and Lily.
Actually, the girls in his year were just a string of excellent potential prefects.
"I suppose it is, a bit," Remus admitted, following her down the hall slightly. They checked a classroom, but it was empty as it ought to be. In spite of knowing that there were students out of bed frequently, Remus had only ever caught one in all his time patrolling.
Perhaps they were very good at hiding, or perhaps nobody was interested in taking night strolls through the Charms corridor.
"What was that?" Marlene asked, frowning as she turned.
Remus had heard it too, of course. His hearing was greatly enhanced by his condition, and he had heard the strange sound that echoed through the corridor as Marlene had closed the door to the empty classroom.
"Rope?" he said, frowning slightly. "It sounded like rope creaking."
"That's not normal, right?" Marlene asked, her voice a bit higher than usual. "I mean, what would make that sound? Other than rope."
"Does it have to be something other than rope?"
"Why would there be rope creaking?"
Remus pursed his lips together.
"I'll light my wand and go first," he said slowly. "Keep yours ready to hex anything that jumps out at us."
"Do you think something will jump out at us?"
"No," Remus lied. He'd seen enough Muggle films to know that things always jumped out in these situations. "But better to be safe, don't you think?"
"Right," Marlene breathed. "Right."
The two of them crept forward, inching down the hallway, Remus's wandlight guiding them. He could almost hear Marlene's teeth chattering as they went. Or maybe those were his own teeth. It was strange how fear could amplify and magnify sounds, clarifying them and then muddling them all as he tried to process them.
"It's getting louder," Marlene hissed, and Remus turned, holding a finger to his lips.
Of course it was getting louder. They were getting closer. But closer to what?
Remus could hear a faint dripping sound, and he frowned.
It hadn't rained in more than a week, and even if it had, he could think of no reason there should be anything dripping in this part of the castle.
And he pointed his wand toward the ground, looking at the beam's glow intently. He suddenly had a very distinct feeling that he did not want to see whatever was creaking.
It was Marlene's scream that did it. Remus had to look up from the pool of what looked like blood on the ground.
Mary.
It was Mary MacDonald hanging there, from some architectural feature Remus didn't know the name of, but it looked like some sort of arch. There was a rope around her neck, but it wasn't really a noose. She looked unnaturally pale, even for being in the light from the wand. And a trail of blood from her neck tricked down her body, slowly now but Remus could imagine it rushing out at some earlier time of evening, and droplets casually and rhythmically fell from her toes to the puddle of blood.
She was barefoot, for some reason, and Remus wondered where her shoes were. He couldn't imagine her walking around at night without shoes, especially on a cold night like this.
"Marlene," Remus said, touching the distraught girl's shoulder. She jumped, wiping tears from her eyes and tearing her gaze from the hanging body of their friend. "We need to get Dumbledore and McGonagall."
"Right," Marlene muttered, looking down at the blood. "Right."
"You get McGonagall," Remus said. She would be easier to find, and Remus gave Marlene directions.
As soon as Marlene had left, Remus tried to find his bearings, to go as he said he would and find Dumbledore. It wouldn't be hard. He knew where to find him. But somehow, Remus found his legs too wobbly to walk on. He staggered over to the nearest window, a large one that leaned over the Charms courtyard, and he grasped the stone sill.
Mary MacDonald, murdered right in the middle of Hogwarts. It wasn't just news clippings anymore. The war was coming to them, whether or not they were ready.
And he promptly vomited into the courtyard.
/-/
Remus still had the woman's corpse on his mind several days later when he was browsing through Flourish and Blott's, looking for a better book for dealing with magical molds and mildews. It was the unfortunate part of living where he lived, that he had to deal with these sorts of things. His mother had been very good at handling them, in spite of her being a Muggle. She did the research, told her husband which Charms and potions to do, but Remus could not ask his mother.
He rubbed the back of his neck, looking at the latest books. His own book was about fifty years old, and like many other things of this nature, the molds and mildews had changed considerably since then.
"I'd try the one to your right," a familiar voice said behind him, full of amusement.
Remus didn't even have to look at the book to know that the author of it would be Rachel Chaplin. He turned to find her smiling at him.
"Rachel," he said, laughing in a way that was only half-forced as she hugged him. "How have you been, other than becoming immensely important?"
"Important?" she snorted. "I wrote a book on spores, Remus. That's hardly important."
"It is when you have a bathroom overrun with them," Remus teased. "How have you been, though?"
"Fine," Rachel said, although her shrug suggested that something was bothering her, and Remus suspected that it had something to do with Fabian, given Fabian's behavior. "Dorcas and I are living together, of course, but we sort of live our own lives. There's a lot she can't tell me…. But you know that."
He nodded. She was trying to hint at something, and he had a feeling he knew what it was, but he didn't want to let her know how much he knew about her interaction with Fabian, or to make it seem that he knew more than he really did.
"If your bathroom is overrun," she said thoughtfully, turning to the shelf, "you might actually want this one."
She plucked a book with a plum-colored hard cover and handed it to him. He glanced down at it and saw that it was also very much on the cheap side. Her book was about twice the cost. He wondered if she had chosen this book because it would be more helpful or because she knew he had tight finances.
Either way, it was thoughtful, so Remus decided not to take it personally.
"Fabian mentioned he ran into you the other day," Remus said casually. "Were you at the bookstore then, too?"
She laughed.
It wasn't her usual laugh, though. Her typical laugh was loud, booming in a way, filling the whole room. This was a bit reserved, hardly hanging on the air but a moment before it died.
"Contrary to how this might appear, I don't stand around the spore section of the bookstore with a checklist, making sure all my former classmates buy my book."
It was a practiced response, whether she'd used it before or simply prepared it in case she needed it. As Rachel had said many times in school, she was not witty. She also tried to say that she wasn't particularly funny, but Remus knew that she had an incredible gift for self-depreciating humor that he had tried to emulate.
But his flaws were bigger than hers. It made them harder for him to joke about. Perhaps Sirius and James could find something amusing in his becoming a monster every month, but Remus struggled to find the humor in it.
"I suppose that would be a bit ridiculous," Remus said, smiling. "I…I'm sorry about how I haven't seen you in so long. I know it probably doesn't seem like it, but we all agreed you'd be safer if…."
He shrugged.
"Fabian told me," Rachel said with a frown, looking down at the first floor of Flourish and Blott's, at the entryway. "I don't know if you were right about doing it, but I wish you hadn't. I mean, I'm not lonely, and my book would have taken longer if I had…. But I've missed you. All of you. Even Peter."
Remus looked down at the first floor as well. What was she looking at?
Rosier.
Evan Rosier was standing there, looking up at her, and Remus realized what she was dancing around with her words.
Whether or not she had been seen with Fabian was immaterial now. She'd been seen with Remus. There was really no point in their pushing her away now.
Rosier's eyes flashed as he watched the pair and Remus said, "Well, perhaps we can all get together sometime soon, catch up. I'll be in touch. I should watch you go, make sure you're…."
Rachel shook her head.
"I'm Flooing in the back in an hour. It's already arranged."
"All right," Remus said slowly. "I suppose I'll pay and go, then. But take care of yourself, Rachel."
"I will," she said softly. "I…I'll have Dorcas send word to let you know I got back all right, if that would make you feel better."
Remus frowned slightly, wondering why she hadn't done the same thing with Fabian, but he didn't have a lot of time to stand there wondering, and he wasn't about to ask.
"Yes, that's fine," he said. "We'll be in touch."
Remus walked down to the register, ignoring Rosier as best he could. Rosier was doing anything but ignoring Remus, watching from the corner as Remus paid for the book and walked out of the shop. With any luck, Rosier would follow Remus outside and if he went back in Rachel would already be somewhere else inside the shop.
As hoped, Rosier followed Remus, who swallowed, used his knowledge of the alley to dip out of sight between Flourish and Blott's and the stationary shop next door, watching Rosier look for him for just a few moments, enough for Rachel to find somewhere else in the shop to be, and then he Disapparated.