Worth the Wait

Chapter Three: Lupin

Summary: Hope met her soulmate, and it was almost right out of a fairytale.

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Hope Lupin (née Howell) had always loved fairytales ever since she was a little girl. Stories about girls daring to go off on an adventure (whether willingly or not), and finding their way back home. Sometimes the same girl, sometimes different and changed, but still fundamentally the girl that was brave enough to go in the first place. She had always wanted to be brave enough to be that girl.

Aside from light-hearted teasing from her friends, no one really bothered her about her fascination and obsession with fairytales and magic. When she learned about soulmates and what the gray vines and flowers on her arm meant, she secretly hoped her soulmate was a fantastical wizard, ready to magically sweep her off her feet with a spell when they would finally meet.

(When she found out that Lyall actually was a wizard, and that he actually had used a spell during their first encounter to fend off a boggart, she did a remarkable job keeping her cool in front of him—so much so that he almost thought that she had been exposed to magic before. It was the best acting Hope had ever done in her life.)

Meeting Lyall Lupin had been like a dream. He was charming and handsome (all tall and strong lines and dark hair)—like the princes of fairytales. But he was also funny and considerate and kind and he listened to her. And she couldn't remember the last time a man she dated had actually listened to her. She had a tight feeling in her chest that told her falling in love with Lyall Lupin was inevitable.

Somewhere along their six months of dating, Hope had started to notice little specks of color filling in the vines and flowers on her arm. Though they made her smile, Hope resorted to wearing long sleeves after that. She didn't want Lyall to know, and she didn't want him to feel any sort of obligation to her. It was enough, she figured, for her to just love him and enjoy his company. Fairytales were never about love, after all. They were always about the girl. And in her own story, Hope would be that girl.

It was around month eight that Lyall had finally decided to show her his forearm. He had always worn long sleeves ever since they met. After finding out about magic, Hope had always assumed it was a difference of fashion between his wizarding world and her ordinary one. She had almost cried when she saw that his right forearm was filled with different blues and tiny, moving flashes of different sea creatures.

"Since when?" she asked, chewing on her bottom lip and wondering if now was also a good time to show him her arm.

"Ages ago," he answered. "I didn't want you to feel as if you had to like me back. You might not, even! I don't exactly know how this works. No one does, really, not even the Grand—"

Hope pulled him into a soft kiss. She always knew when he was about to ramble due to his nerves, and while she found it endlessly endearing, now was not the time for that.

"Lyall, oh Lyall," she whispered. She pulled back the sleeve of her cardigan and showed him her own garden wall of flowers and vines.

"Oh," he spoke, almost in reverence. He lifted his fingers and gently traced the lines on her arm. He placed a gentle, chaste kiss on her cheek before nuzzling into her neck, which elicited a giggle from her. "I had hoped," he said, "that when you started wearing sleeves all the time, this would be the reason."

"It was," she confirmed, threading her fingers through his hair while he placed tiny kisses on her neck. Her heart thrummed with pleasure and an almost unbearable lightness. She felt like she was seconds from drifting off from the park bench and into the night sky had it not been for Lyall's comforting weight holding her down.

"Would you want to marry me?" he asked her, almost so quietly that she didn't hear him.

"Are you proposing to me, Lyall?" Hope could feel her heart start to beat faster. The rest of her life spent with Lyall Lupin. Could she imagine that? She breathed in the night air, lightly scented with wildflowers that surrounded them. She could, she realized, as her joints ached with want. She could spend the rest of her life with this wonderful man she had met.

"No," he said as he lifted his head up from her neck, a faint red smudged across both his cheeks like something out of a painting. Hope could feel something starting howl in her gut as she thought about monsters in fairytales.

She knew Lyall had seen that something was bothering her because he took both of her hands in his, thumbs rubbing across both sets of knuckles. There was a tender smile on his face, and Hope thought about wolves in sheeps' clothing.

"When," Lyall stressed, "I propose to you, I want to it to be sweeping you off your feet perfect. Think of this as a pre-proposal."

Hope collapsed forward into Lyall's chest and laughed with relief. She could feel him gather her more comfortably in his arms, kissing her lightly on her head.

"You have a horrible sense of humor," she told him, and she could feel the telling vibrations in his chest that meant he was laughing.

"Got you to laugh though," he said.

"Horrible," she repeated, with a smile.

"I'm sorry," he said as he kissed her. "I love you."

"I know." Hope rolled her eyes and felt her skin tingle as if she had been dipped in fairy dust. She took Lyall's face in her hands and looked at him. She took in the strong line of his wide jaw, his dark eyebrows that provided such a nice frame for the rest of his face to follow. She loved his eyes—a shimmering honey brown, bright and full of adventure. His long nose split his face perfectly and rested on top of his smooth lips. A sudden sense of longing and clarity ripped its way through her, and she said, "Marry me."

"Yes," he answered before she had even finished and leaned forward to kiss her.

"Oh my god." Hope shuffled back along the park bench, face tilted upwards at the sky and laughing. "I can't believe I just proposed to you!"

"Can't take it back now," he joked, kissing the palm of her right hand.

Hope groaned. "Worst proposal ever," she said, eliciting a full, deep laugh from Lyall. She could feel her toes curling in her shoes from happiness. Her pinky finger on her right hand twitched against Lyall's hands. Her heart was fizzing, as if it was a tablet of citric acid and sodium bicarbonate dissolving in a glass of water, and she wondered if this was what it felt like to be standing at the intersection of love and magic.

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Truth be told, Remus Lupin, though he loved stories (especially the Muggle fairytales his mother told him), had never really been invested in learning how to read and write. He knew the basic Welsh alphabet, and on particularly good days, would also remember the English alphabet and its corresponding sounds. It helped that there were some common over laps between the two. But since his mother usually read him bedtime stories and would always be there when he wanted her to read a book to him, he figured he could delay sitting at a boring desk and learning for a little while longer. There were more interesting and important fun to be had, after all.

His opinion quickly changed upon seeing his soulmate's nice handwriting in English.

"Dad!" he shouted when his father came home from his weeklong trip after his mother had cleaned him up from their painting session. "Dad, dad, dad!" He ran at Lyall with his arms up, knowing he'd be picked up.

His father laughed as he picked up Remus and hugged him close, planting a sloppy kiss on the boy's cheek. "Did—" Lyall started to ask, but was quickly interrupted by his son.

"Look look!" Remus shoved his left arm towards his father's face, accidentally hitting Lyall on the nose. He could hear his mother laughing behind him as she came over to them.

"Oomphf." Lyall pulled his head back slightly to get a clearer view of the arm, marked with a black "Hi" and a smiley face below it. He shot Hope a puzzled look, and she pointed to the vines and flowers on her arm, mouthing the word soulmate. "Oh," he said, turning back to Remus with a smile.

"They like me," Remus whispered, acting like it was a very important secret. Lyall could see Hope smiling as she leaned against the couch in their living room. Lyall's heart warmed at the sight.

"Who wouldn't like you?" Lyall asked his son fondly, right hand moving so he could run his fingers through Remus's hair, making the little boy giggle.

"I need to learn how to read and write." Remus's face scrunched up at the thought, wrinkles forming around his nose and his lips puckering outward. "In English!"

Lyall let out a laugh and placed a kiss on Remus's nose. "It's not so bad. I promise."

"We can start tomorrow," Hope said, moving closer to the pair and placing a kiss on Lyall's cheek and Remus's head. "It's someone's bedtime now."

"Yeah, Dad, go to sleep!"

Lyall snorted and shuffled Remus around in his arms, earning squeals of laughter from the boy. "I'll tuck him in tonight, yeah?" he told his wife and quickly kissed her before walking towards his son's room.

Once Remus was snug underneath his covers, he turned to his dad. "Can you tell me when your arm started to turn blue again?" He rubbed his eye and could hear his father chuckle somewhere above him. He could feel his father settle in beside him on top of his covers, and Remus closed his eyes. His father's hand gently combed through his hair, lulling him to sleep. As his father recounted a story Remus now knew by heart, he wondered what his own meeting with his soulmate would be like.