A/N: This is the kinda smutty chapter. Still a T rating…but I know some readers may be uncomfortable!

"You weren't a disappointment. They didn't know what they were missing. Susan sounded just plain mad to be honest."

"Well, you won't be alone if you feel any…hesitation. I know you're going to go through with this – just know I understand if you get upset or disgusted with me."

"Never. Well, if you leave the toilet seat up or something like that then I might be upset. I will never be disgusted with you. I've seen your scars after your transformations."

"But…could you ever…could you imagine…" He blushed and then went silent.

"I can imagine a lot of things, Remus. All of them involve you."

He was still uncomfortable, Hermione could tell. He was crossing his arms protectively over his chest and was avoiding her gaze. A man twenty ages her senior acting like a nervous teenager. That was what the lycanthropy had done to him. It was much more the physical. He recovered from the physical pain. He couldn't recover from the mental damage. Every day something remind him of what he was. Of how he wasn't equal to everyone else. It had happened so often that now he had come to believe that.

"You are perfect. Susan, Emily, Laura…they didn't know what they were missing."

"You don't know, Hermione….you…you haven't seen all of the scars…One…One of my more recent acquisitions I've been hiding. Small glamour charm that lasts through the transformation. It's not powerful enough to cover up all the scars…but…."

"Show me." Hermione was over at his chair in a second, her hands at the top button of his shirt. He pushed her hands away.

"Don't, please, Hermione. Just let me have this secret."

She started undoing the buttons on his shirt. He saw it all flash again in his mind. Susan, doing the same thing until she was reeling back in disgust. He was worse now. He had more scars on his chest. On her arms. Running across his face.

Hermione had pulled the shirt off his shoulders. She was pulling out her wand, muttering counterspells. Remus waited. Any second. Any second she would get that look of terror and run. Run just like the others.

"Remus! When…when did…Merlin…when did you…who did this?"

"Greyback. On one of my Order missions. He…he doesn't like to lose a member of his pack."

Scrawled across his chest, in huge, scraggly letters, slightly raised where the skin had been ripped open and then mended was "MINE."

"Greyback was rather insistent that I remember who I belong to. He bit me. He made me what I am. That makes me his."

" No it doesn't. You aren't him, Remus! You will never be like him. You aren't his. You belong to the Order. You belong to the Marauders. You belong to me."

Hermione started tracing each letter. "You – are – mine." She was running her hands and fingers up and down his chest and broad shoulders. "This is mine." She leaned over and kissed him, gently biting his lower lip. "These – these are mine."

He hissed slightly as she lowered herself onto his lap, twisting her head to deepen the kiss.

"Hermione – you don't…not this close to the full moon. I…my control…"

She ground her hips into his again and smiled when she heard his intake of breath. She stayed pressed against him but moved her hand down from his chest and into the waistband of his pants.

"Hermione…"

"This is mine now," she whispered in his ear.

She grabbed him by the waistband of his pants and dragged him into their bedroom. Hermione shoved him onto the bed.

"When are you going to realize that I love you? That you are always enough for me?"

She started running her hands tentatively across his face as if exploring it; trying to ensure that she knew every single facial feature. She traced his entire face, starting from the forehead, sweeping his hair away from his face, and then outlined his cheeks with her fingers until she moved down to the slope of his jaw. Just those simple movements and goosebumps were already running up his arms. Hermione moved to trace the rest of the scars that framed 'MINE". Her hands were lazily rubbing and caressing his skin. His body was at the mercy of her hands. They were wandering, toying, exploring, rubbing; testing his limits. Her hands that were roaming over his exposed skin, seeing every scar, every imperfection, and thinking nothing of it. She did not flinch. She never hesitated. There was no look of disgust that Remus had dreaded.

If anything, Hermione's movements got bolder, getting firmer, faster, progressing from tentative flutters to embolden movements. He closed her eyes waiting for the dream to end when he reopened them. He opened them and she was still there. She had moved from her fingers tracing to her lips lightly tracing over each letter, her hair falling across his face and brushing across his chest. Hermione moved up further on the bed, brushing her lips against the side of his face until she was bent down across my body, her mouth barely an inch from my ear.

"I never want to hear you say you're not good enough or attractive enough. Ever. You are mine."

She started to move her hands back down past his waist. Remus grabbed her wrists and flipped her down on the bed underneath him. Her deep brown eyes meet his amber ones.

"I am yours."