Hello everyone! First off, let me say that I never update this quickly. EVER! The first chapter had been written for quite some time for another website, and I just now posted it on fanfiction. Thanks to all those who put this story on their alert list. And a HUGE thanks to Tatiana K for being the first and only person to review the first chapter thus far! I really appreciate every review. Feedback is a big deal, and it only takes a second to write something. Any questions or comments you might have is valuable to me as a writer. Well, I believe that is enough talking. Let's get on to the chapter!

" I can feel you all around me . . .

You said you would never leave me"

"All Around Me" by Flyleaf

Chapter Two:

Glistening beads of sweat trickled from every pore of Remus's body as he sat upright in his bed. His eyes darted left and right, taking in the space around him. The chilled, dense forest transfigured into a small crapped bedroom. "It was just a dream," he spoke to no one other than himself. Limbs slowed their shaking, and his breath was again under his control. Heavy eyelids sealed his world in darkness. It was just a dream that haunted him for the past twenty-one years, every night since the last time he had seen Elaine. Every painful memory from that night echoed through his subconscious.

Moonlight from a nearby window illuminated the man's face. Shaking scarred hands brushed the perspiration from his face. Within his mind, he saw her. Every detail from the cold bumps covering her bare, pale arms to the twigs captured by the thick mess of curls framing her face was as clear and vivid as ever. "Remus!" her voice resounded around him. Not aware of his own movements, Remus's hands moved to cover his ears, as if that would silence her screams. Behind closed eyelids, he watched the memory play out.

Elaine's father gruffly tore her out of his grasp. "What the hell do you think you're-,'" her father's words were suddenly cut short. Translucent, silver moonlight filtered through the limbs of the woods and cascaded across her trembling form. A small river of sparkling red blood trickled down her neck. With her upper arm gripped in a death hold, her father drew his wand and pointed it at the teen boy. The anger and resentment painted upon her father's face made his blood run cold. "How dare you!" Her father shouted.

Elaine fought as hard as she could to try and pry herself from her father's grasp. "Please, let me go." But her pleas fell on deaf ears. Her father was too intent on staring Remus down.

"You filthy animal, how dare you do this to my daughter!" he screamed. His wand hand quivered with rage.

"Daddy, please." Elaine was still relentlessly fighting against his grasp. "I love him."

Suddenly, she went limp. A loud snap was heard as the dead weight of her body along with the firm grasp to her upper arm combined, making her arm snap and break. "What did you do to her?" Remus questioned daring to take a step towards them.

"She's none of your concern anymore." For a moment, her father's gaze flickered away from his. "If you ever come near my daughter again, I swear it will be the last thing you ever do." Without another word, they apparated out of the forest.

If only he had been of age to use his magic, maybe then they could have managed to get away. He could have apparated them far away, and they would never have been found. Remus slowly shook his head. There was no point in beating himself up about something that had occurred two decades ago. "You didn't even try to find me, did you?" Elaine's voice whispered in his ear.

Have I not suffered enough! Remus wondered. A cool breeze slid across his hands which were still clasped to his head. "Remus." Someone squeezed his hands, making his eyes shoot open. "Remus," the voice repeated.

In her youth and dressed in the same clothing as the night she had been taken from him was Elaine. She stood next to his bed staring at him. Her usual bright, laughing eyes were puffy and red rimmed. Pale lips were spread in a smile that brought familiar moisture to his eyes. His voiced cracked as her managed to speak her name. "Elaine?"

She moved slowly and sat before him on his bed, her face inches from his own. This is it, Remus thought. After all these years, this is my answer to what happened to you. For twenty-one years I hoped - As though not to startle him, she slowly raised her hand nearly touching his face.

A sudden knocking froze his thoughts. As though caught in falling mist, his vision of Elaine grew blurry, and before he could blink, she was gone. He glanced towards the entrance to his home. Once again three evenly spaced knocks echoed through the hollow air at a higher tempo than those that came before. With a sigh he threw away the sheets, stood, and slipped a moth eaten bathrobe over his pajamas. Each step he took a moan from the floor beneath him followed. What would Elaine think if she could see me now? He wondered as he neared the door. The small kitchen table had become a mound of unopened bills and unread newspapers. What would she think? With one hand in his pocket holding tightly to his wand he called through the door, "Who is it?"

"Remus, its Tonks." His grip slackened. "Are you ready to go?" Suddenly, it hit him. In a few hours, wizards from all over the world would be gathering at Hogwarts for Dumbledore's funeral. "I'm afraid I am not quite ready," he confessed. "Give me just a moment."

Without opening the door, he dressed and prepared himself for the day. His mind gradually wondered away from the task at hand and the young woman who waited outside his door. Elaine, why do I continue to dream only of you? He wondered. Over half of his life had been spent thinking or dreaming about his first love. No, the only girl he had ever loved.

"Sorry about that," Remus stated as he joined Tonks on his front lawn.

"No harm done." The young witch flashed a halfhearted smile for a moment, but her companion was too immersed in his subconscious to take notice. Without a word, she wrapped her arm around his. In a muggle blink, the couple disappeared with crumpled grass being the only witness to their presence a moment before.

Hundreds of miles away, crowds of witches and wizards dressed in their finest robes entered through the ancient metal gates of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. With a pop, two more joined the multitude. Remus and Tonks followed the current of saddened souls to the rear of the school where the ceremony was to take place. Remus allowed his gaze to wonder to his alma mater as unchanged as the day he had graduated. What Elaine would have given to be standing where he was now, he thought studying the stained glass windows as they continued with the crowd towards the Black Lake.

Elaine was from a prominent pureblood family tracing back to before the founders of Hogwarts. Remus smiled remembering her enthusiasm when her elder sister would return home from school for holiday. She would always beg to hear about each and every spell or potion that was being taught. Despite her love for the craft and her impeccable pureblood lineage, she had been born a squib. She would never be able to perform anything more than simple charm spells, if that. He couldn't help but wonder if things would be different if she had been at Hogwarts. Being a few months older than he, if she had been born an witch, she would have been able to apparate them out of the woods that night.

Stop it! He ordered himself. I cannot change what happened in the past. Not even magic could do that. But no matter how much he told himself no, she would always come back to him. He wondered if it was a side effect of what had passed between him and Elaine before she had be ripped from him.

"Remus." A hand gently squeezed his. His gaze wondered to the pink haired witch sitting next to him. They had walked across the grounds and sat before a white marble tomb without his notice. "Are you alright?" She asked searching his face.

"Yes, fine." He replied. His voice came out cold and harsh. "I'm sorry. My mind is elsewhere."

Tonks simply cast him a quick smile and gave his hand a light squeeze before turning her attention to the white tomb. The ceremony was about to start, and all Remus could focus on was the coolness of her hand and how it seemed too small, like a child's.

The entire ceremony became a large blur with Remus struggling to keep his mind focused on what was happening. Thankfully, it did not last long. He was anxious to return home, but, before he could begin his walk back to the edge of the grounds, someone called out to Tonks. He recognized the woman to be an employee of the Ministry. The young witch who had yet to release his hand looked up at him. "Do you mind if I go say hello?" She asked.

He merely nodded his head, and she quickly left his side.

His gaze wondered over the multitude that had turned out for Dumbledore's funeral. Being in such a crowd made him uneasy.

Then, Remus's heart clenched as though the wild beast within him had it in a death grip. Lungs stopped breathing. There she was. No, I am just imaging things again, Remus insisted. Honey brown eyes shifted but always landed on the same subject. Before he could reason with himself, his feet carried him not a foot behind her waiting for a break in her conversation with two other witches.

"Excuse me." He dared not touch her for fear she would vanish just as she had in his room earlier that morning. It seemed to take her a millennium to face him. He did not know how she was there, but she was standing before him. Then, like falling from a dream, reality took a hard kick to his stomach. "I'm sorry. I mistook you for someone else." The woman who now faced him had the same straight nose and dark honey waves, but the eyes that stared back at him reflected not the evergreen leaves of the forest but the dark brown of the earth with thin lines stretching from their corners.

Well, it has finally happened, ole boy. Remus thought to himself. You have officially fallen off your rocker. Approaching women that resembled Elaine was madness.

"Remus?" His attention was thrown from his inner turmoil and back to the woman before him. "Remus Lupin?" She asked squinting her eyes as though he stood a great length off.

"Yes," he replied hesitantly. She was obviously not Elaine, but her face was unfamiliar to him.

"Oh Merlin's beard!" She exclaimed placing a perfectly manicured had over her heart. The more excited she became the more uneasy Remus became. Who was this woman? "It's me, Aggie Garrison. Well, it's Aggie Sarazin now." She smiled at him waiting for the memory of who she was to hit him, and it did, like a steam train plowing through his mind. Agatha, who hated her proper name thus the nickname Aggie, Garrison, was Elaine's elder sister. Unlike her sister, Aggie graduated Hogwarts with top honors. She was one of the best witches in her year. "How are you?" She asked pulling Remus once again from his thoughts.

He could do little more than shrug. "I am alright." How is Elaine, he wanted to scream. Was she alright? Where was she? A million more questions jumbled inside his head threatening to burst out his ears. "And yourself?" He politely responded.

Pale pink lips spread to reveal a dazzling white smile. "I am well. Here with my husband." She pointed behind him. Remus turned to see a exceedingly well dressed wizard talking with the new minister of magic. The wizard caught Aggie's eye and gave her a quick wink. "I can't believe it has been so long," Aggie breathed turning Remus's attention back to her. "It must have been at least twenty years?"

"Twenty-one, actually," he mumbled. And roughly nine months, he added within his mind.

"I'm sorry?" She seemed to not have heard him.

"Oh, nothing." A moment passed by. Then, the question he had been longing to ask filled his mouth. "Aggie, what happened -"

"Remus," a voice called to him. Not two seconds later, Tonks was once again by his side. "I was wondering where you had gone." Then, she noticed the other woman standing before them. Before she had a chance to speak, Aggie took charge. "Hello, I am Aggie Sarazin," she said as she extended her left hand for Tonks to take, plainly displaying her wedding rings. The old werewolf could barely contain a chuckle at his past friend's behavior. Same old Aggie, he thought. "Remus and I attended school together," Aggie informed the younger witch. "I taught him everything his knows about being the perfect prefect." Tonks merely nodded her head. "Have not seen him in- What did we decide twenty-one years?" Her deep brown eyes locked with his for a moment. "That's a lot of time to catch up on." Aggie broke eye contact for just a moment. "I'm sorry, but it appears that it is time for me to be going."

Remus's heart rate increased tenfold. I can not let her walk away without at least finding out if Elaine is alive and safe. He opened his mouth to speak.

"Remus, how about I send you an owl sometime, and we can catch up. Relive the glory days," she suggested. "And talk about old flames." With the look in her eyes, there was no doubt in his mind that she was meaning anyone or anything other than Elaine. All he could do was nod for if he had spoken he was unsure what would have come out. "It's settled than." Giving her no more than a tilt of her head, Aggie wished Tonks farewell. As she walked past Remus to her husband, she gave his shoulder a reassuring touch as if to say that everything was going to be alright. She hoped. The moment her back was to him, her smile faded. Her lips formed a single thin pink line. "I know what that look means," her husband stated, wrapping his arm around her shoulders as they began their descent back to Hogsmeade Village.

"I am just ready to go home." Aggie had always been the steady ground, the level head. Her mind dissected every emotion and every new question that poured into her head and filed them away as they neared the edge of the grounds. Taking her husband's hand firmly within her own, they disapparated.

Half a moment later, they reappeared in the family room of a large and spacious two story house. Everything around them symbolized the wealth that they shared. "Abigail! Valerie! Your father and I are home," Aggie called up the deep auburn stairs leading to the second floor.

"Okay!" Two female voices shouted back neither showing themselves.

Aggie shrugged. They had been forced to return home after Dumbledore's death. Obviously, they were still sour about it.

"Aggie," another voice called from down a hall, "The girls helped me put together some stew. It's on the stove still if you want some. Didn't know if you would have any appetite after the funeral." With each word the voice became louder and clearer.

A smile slowly spread across Aggie's face. She hoped it did not reveal her inner sadness not for the legendary wizard that had lost his life but for the woman before her. She was middle aged and just beginning to show her age. Light lines barely peeked out from her deep emerald eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Her lips were the same shade and shape as Aggie's in a small pleasant smile not revealing her teeth. Chocolate waves cascaded to her collarbone. Her robes were of the finest material Aggie could get her hands on, and she sat in a well cushioned dark wood chair with two large wheels coming to her hips.

"Thanks, sweetie," Aggie said keeping her voice as void of emotion as possible. "I might have some a little later." She felt the sudden urge to cry, but she refused to let herself feel sorry for the woman for she knew it would only upset her. The woman sitting before her held more courage than any Auror and more strength than the Dark Lord.

She began to roll away back down the hall where she had come when Aggie called to her making her swivel to face the elder witch. I should tell her, Aggie thought. But she has grown so strong. Would what I tell her undo it all? After a pause that seemed too long to be natural, she spoke a simple, "I love you."

The woman peered down the hall at her and smiled the same smile and replied, "I love you too, big sis."

Please review! It only takes a moment of your time. Thanks!