At twenty-four, Helene 'Little' had finally garnered enough courage to apply for an international portkey.

She was going home for the first time since fleeing England.

Packing had been a depressing venture for Helene since childhood, and it was with very mixed emotions that she closed her trunk, magically adjusted so she could pack all her things.

She was never going back to Perth.

That wasn't to say that she hadn't enjoyed her time there. The boys had been wonderful, and the Littles had done everything they could for their adopted daughter, but they could not give her all she wanted.

They could not give her closure.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" asked William, watching her with an unreadable expression.

But Helene did not need to read his expression to know that the twenty-eight-year-old was hoping she would show some hint of doubt.

Helene knew that her adopted brother was in love with her. It had nothing at all to do with anything about her, and had everything to do with the fact that she looked remarkably like him.

Indeed, Helene had grown up very pretty, with soft blonde hair and sea-green eyes. Her skin was slightly tanned, with a few delicate trails nose. She had a petite frame, her head reaching only to the height of William's armpits. And it was often said that they would make a beautiful couple.

Perhaps they would have, had Helene been able to see him as anything but a brother.

In spite of her desire to find her Death Eater, to thank him, Helene had not gone back to England when Harry Potter defeated He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Lily and James were dead, and Sirius had been convicted as a brutal mass murderer. She'd found that impossible to reconcile with the kind, caring man she'd been rescued by, but who would listen to a little girl?

She stayed with the Littles because it was still very dangerous in England, and Helene really had nowhere to go.

In fact, she had almost gone back nearly two years ago when Mr. Little died, but Sirius Black broke out of prison and Mrs. Little was in such a fit of distress that Helene decided she ought to stay in Australia.

But Mrs. Little had been dead and buried for a month and now only William was actually opposed to her leaving, albeit selfishly so.

"I have to," Helene said, glad the other boys had taken the goodbye well. "I need to find him."

"He could be dead," William said gently, putting his hands on her bare shoulders and running them down her upper arms. "Or in Azkaban."

William always said these things as if she didn't know perfectly well that they might be true.

"I just need to, William," Helene sighed, letting him entertain himself by resting his head on the back of hers, breathing in deeply, probably smelling her hair. Everything he did was so theatrical. "I don't belong here."

"You belong with me."

Helene rolled her eyes, hoping he wouldn't be sappy enough to try to kiss her today.

William let her shift so she could carry her trunk out to the kitchen, where the portkey was waiting, although he followed her out.

"You'll write, yeah?" he asked as she poured herself a quick glass of juice.

"A bit," Helene said with a shrug. "I imagine you'll forget all about me in a few years anyway."

William gave a nervous chuckle and she looked up at him with surprise, raising an eyebrow in question as she drank her juice.

"I want you to marry me," he said firmly, as if the chuckle hadn't happened.

Helene nearly dropped her half empty glass, but she drank the rest without pause to buy a sliver of time.

This had all gone too far.

"William... I'm a bit young to get married," she reasoned, although she really didn't believe this, and he knew it.

"People get married at seventeen every day," he countered. "You've been out of school for seven years. You're hardly a child."

Helene sighed.

"William, I'm going to England. It's half a world away."

"Yes, but when you find your closure," he said hopefully. "When you come back to Australia..."

His pretty blue-green eyes shone at her and she couldn't help thinking of how romantic this would be if there were any real emotions in it.

"I'm not coming back to Australia."

William just stared at her for a long moment.

Thinking about it, she had never actually said as much out loud, although she thought the matter was strongly implied by the fact that she had packed all of her belongings and had her funds transferred to a vault in England. Phoenix, Jake, and Luke all seemed to understand, but somehow William, living in his fantasy world, had missed all the rather obvious signs.

"Oh," he finally said pathetically as she rinsed her cup and put it in the sink. "Right."

She would have felt terribly sorry for him if she only had the time and energy for that sort of thing.

Instead, she kept glancing nervously at the clock and the bit of string on the table.

Missing her portkey would be more than disappointing and frustrating now. It would be downright awkward.

Helene checked the clock once more and her hand grasped the bit of string, knowing that her portkey would leave in less than a minute.

As she always did when catching a portkey, Helene closed her eyes forcefully. William, perhaps purposefully forgetting her custom, touched her cheek.

He was going to try and kiss her before she left.

Helene held her breath, trying to move her face away from his without alerting him to what she was doing.

Thankfully, before his lips hit hers, she felt the tugging sensation behind her navel and clutched her trunk even tighter, trying to focus on landing on her feet, not wanting to be embarrassed when first landing on British soil.

The landing was rough, but she did land on her feet, and the Ministry wizard who greeted her pointed for her to toss her string in a bucket, which she did.

"Name?" the man prompted.

"Helene Rosaline Abramson," she replied firmly, and the man put a tick mark by her name.

"Country of origin?"

She blinked.

"Well, I was born in England, but I've just come from Australia."

The man scribbled something down, then directed Helene to the Apparition point.

Once she got there, she realized that she really didn't know where she was going to go. She waited in line for a moment. She smiled because she recalled the little house by the sea. Closing her eyes, fixing her childhood memories in her mind as she turned on her heel, feeling the sensation of being through a pipe, she Apparated.

She landed and stumbled slightly, still barely a wave of what was happening.

IT was then that she felt a wand at her throat.

Helene looked into a face that had been so degraded with age that she very nearly didn't recognize it, but at seeing those familiar amber eyes...

Remus.

"Who are you?" he growled. "How did you find this place?"

"Remus," she breathed, eyes wide. He frowned at her.

"Who are you?" he demanded again.

"H-Helene Abramson," she said, still staring at him. "I-I'm back. From Australia. I-I couldn't think of anywhere else to go."

His eyes searched her face for a long moment before recognition dawned on him. In that moment he put his wand away and grasped her shoulders, tears welling up in his eyes.

"You're alive," he murmured. "We all thought... I mean, I thought... When you didn't come back..."

"I'm alive," she assured him, smiling. "And as it happens, I'm also starving. You wouldn't happen to have any food on you?"

Remus laughed and led her into the familiar kitchen, where he began making breakfast.

"I can't believe it's you!" he laughed, putting a plate of eggs and potatoes in front of her. "How is Australia?"

"Oh, it was lovely," Helene said, pouring herself some tea with a smile. She told him all about the Littles, and school in Australia, and her job as a maker of magical household objects.

"I - I have to ask," she said slowly. "Sirius..."

Remus hesitated for a long moment. Then he put down his silverware and said, "Sirius is innocent. I didn't believe it at first, but he was framed by someone else, someone we'd thought was our friend. We even captured him, hoping to get Sirius his freedom, but Peter got away."

Helene felt quite sad at this, more so than when her adoptive parents had passed away.

"So he's still on the run," she sighed. "For a crime he didn't commit. How tragic."

"Yes, it really is," Remus agreed somberly.

They sat eating in silence for a while as Helene looked around the room, marveling at how little had changed.

"So, you live here?" she asked casually.

"Yes," Remus replied, blushing slightly. "Yes, I am lucky to get a job, and I rarely keep them long, so Albus lets me stay here to cut down on my expenses."

She saw that his clothes were shabby, worn through, and in desperate need of being replaced. She supposed he must be hard off indeed, to not be able to afford new clothes even when not paying rent.

"Forgive me," she said, unable in her curiosity. "But why so hard to get work?"

He looked down at his plate, smiling wryly at it as though sharing some unfortunate joke with the cutlery to which she could not be privy. Then he said, "I'm a werewolf."

At first, Helene was shocked and repulsed, but then she reasoned that he was really only a monster once a month, and the same had been said of her. Not to mention he seemed to have already suffered quite enough for it without adding her own initial reaction to the mix. So she covered his hand in hers empathetically.

"But never mind that," Remus said with a forced smile. "Have you ever heard anything about the Triwizard Tournament?"

Helene, in fact, had not heard very much about it, so they went over the fascinating details that had thus far transpired.

When they finished Helene frowned and said, "Something just feels... oh, I dunno, bleak and wrong about it all. Do you know what I mean?"

"Yeah," Remus said with a small frown. "I've been thinking that for a while, too. Sirius sees omens in everything, but I'd like to think we're all just paranoid from fighting a war for so long."

"Except," Helene said solemnly, "except that I thought it as well, and I didn't fight in a war."

They exchanged dark looks and then got up abruptly to wash the dishes, falling easily into a perfect symmetry, his washing, her drying.

"Wine?" he asked when they'd finished putting the plates in the cupboard.

"Yes, please," Helene sighed, sitting down again when he poured the wine, handing her a glass with the air of someone who'd done the same motion hundreds of times. "Past life as a bartender?" she joked, clinking her glass with his.

He smiled sadly and said, "Sort of. I ran drinks at the parties in school because I felt it was my duty as a prefect to have the power to cut people off when they'd had too much." They both laughed. "So, why come back to England? Why now?"

Helene gave a wry sort of smile and shrugged one shoulder.

"I've been thinking of coming back for years, but Mrs. Little couldn't stand the thought, so I waited until she died. But I want to find the Death Eater who saved me and thank him."

Remus nodded at her thoughtfully for a moment before saying, "Well, I suppose you haven't got much to go on, do you? Where do you plan to start?"

Helene was relieved that he didn't start by telling her it was impossible, or that she was being childish.

"Ah, I'm really not sure, actually," she said with a nervous laugh. "I think the first step will be figuring out where I'm going to stay."

Remus's eyes grew wide and he said, "Oh, you've nowhere to stay? Don't be silly! You can stay here! You must stay here! I can't imagine making you pay for a bed while there are plenty here!"

"Well, I suppose there's that taken care of, then," Helene teased. "You know, I'm not sure what to do next, but I'm sure it will come to me sooner or later. Hey, maybe we could see the Final Task!"

Remus gave her a tired smile.

"Perhaps we could," he assented.

He told her that she'd quite outgrown the pretty bed she'd stayed in as a child.

"You can have Sirius's old room," he said with a smile that looked as though it was trying to decide whether or not to be a truly happy smile.

"I always liked that room," Helene offered, trying to brighten him up.

"Let me put your trunk away," Remus offered, hopping up and carrying her things before Helene had a chance to even half-refuse the chivalrous action. She moved over to a little brown book, leather-bound, sitting on a side table. Just from the wear of the cover Helene could see that the book had been regularly and amply handled. It was an album of old photographs, the earliest ones clearly from Remus's early Hogwarts days, the most recent just months after she'd fled the country. A few were even from her stay with them, playing with Snuffles, Sirius, James.

"Oh," she said hastily replacing the album when Remus walked in. "Sorry. Curiosity."

"It's all right," Remus insisted with a tired smile, sitting down beside her and glancing at the album. "I really don't mind. You know my biggest secret, so I don't see the point in hiding anything." After a short, embarrassed pause, however, he said, "So, what was school like in Australia?"

Helene proceeded to tell him about her awful classmates, Lauralynn Miller and Amy Taylor, and how Professor Isabelle Hall gave Helene regular detentions.

"I doubt it was really because you were the only one who could properly prune a flutterby bush," Remus laughed skeptically.

"No, it was!" Helene insisted. "Every three months like clockwork! She would have called me in during holidays if she could have gotten away with it."

In return, Remus regaled her with the tales of the youthful Marauders and their many shenanigans.

"And then he dumped Johanna Carter for Kiki Turner-"

"The girl who tried to slip him the love potion?"

"No, no, that was Melissa Stewart. Ravenclaw, batty as they come. She tried to drug him with a virus once, too, so she could nurse him back to health Professor McGonagall was livid."

Helene shook her head, imagining the look on the matronly professor's face as yet another law was broken because someone wanted to see Sirius Black starkers.

"Was he really that attractive?" she mused aloud. "I mean, really that special? I don't recall wanting to snog him senseless."

"You were twelve," Remus reminded her, an amused smile turning up the corners of his mouth gently. "Most girls seemed to think he was. Even Lily admitted once that he was unfairly attractive."

"I dunno," Helene said with a frown. "My adoptive brother was like that. A bit too perfect. Too good looking..."

"Some people would call you the same," he replied so solemnly that Helene actually flushed.

"My point is, I prefer real men," she insisted quickly. "You know, ones with flaws, ones with a bit of roughness. I don't want to shag plastic."

Remus turned pink so slightly that Helene had nearly convinced herself she'd imagined it when he spluttered, "Well, he's not flawless anymore."

"No," Helene said slowly, sadly. "Azkaban."

She'd seen the pictures of the mad, gaunt, waxy face that still hinted at the handsomeness it once was. It was still so hard to believe that the crazed photograph was her Sirius, the kind man who cried when she had to leave England.

"Twelve years is a long time to waste away slowly," Remus said, as if answering her thoughts. "I'm honestly not sure where he is at the moment, but hopefully somewhere he can eat well. Being on the run has been an improvement for his health, but Azkaban cannot be shaken off easily."

"No," Helene whispered. "I can't imagine it would be."

She wondered, setting down her long-empty wine glass, whether her Death Eater wasn't rotting in a cell in the North Sea, looking a lot like Sirius's photograph, wasting away, skin stretching over an eerie, animated skeleton and eyes so dead and dull that it was hard to be sure if they were dead or alive. She shivered a little as Remus cleaned and replaced the wine glasses.

"I suppose your hours are off," Remus said slowly, concentrating hard as if doing maths in his head. "Is it nearly bed time for you?"

She did feel tired, and she realized he was almost certainly right.

As if to prove he was right, a yawn hit her at precisely that moment, answering the question for her and prompting Remus to usher her down the hallway, hands shaking excitedly as he ushered her into Sirius's once-bedroom.

"A nap will do good," Remus insisted. "I hope you're comfortable. If anything's wrong I can find you another room-"

"I'm sure it's lovely, Remus," Helene cut off sitting down on the bed. "Really, there's no need to fuss. I'm perfectly fine."

Remus eventually left her alone in the half-strange room to kick off her shoes and stare at the ceiling.

She thought, for a moment, about William, who had probably already forgotten his cheesy proposal and was searching for someone else to complete his image of himself.

Helene then turned on her side and breathed in the lingering scent of cologne. It took her back to twelve years old, hugging goodbye Sirius Black. IT was an almost-familiar, spicy scent that she couldn't quite recall the name of. His gray eyes flashed in her mind and she smiled slightly, forgetting that those beautiful, expressive eyes would now be haunted by the deadening horrors of Azkaban.

England had changed more than Helene had really been able to realize. Not just hat it was no longer at war, which she had clearly known, but it also that it had changed for her.

Harry Potter, the boy she had seen only briefly when he was a baby, who had seemed to her twelve-year-old self to be so unspectacular as to be barely worth notice, was fourteen and fighting in a dangerous tournament. Helene shuddered when she thought that Virginia had died at fourteen.

Remus fluttered across her mind, then: the kindness he still showed her, the comfort of his presence, the generosity of giving her a place to stay. Helene invented in her mind that he had kissed her cheek as they'd said goodnight, despite knowing how absurd the very scene was.

Then she thought her usual vague thoughts about her Death Eater. Was he living in prison, surrounded by only his worst memories? Was he living in luxury, perhaps weaseling out of his sins as so many had? Was he living at all?

She'd spent years trying to recover the memory of his smooth voice, but it was never quite right. Usually this failure distressed her, as the voice was really the only clue Helene had. However, this night she found herself a bit too tired to really analyze her own dismay or disadvantage. Instead, she breathed in deeply the comfortable cologne of Sirius Black and dreamed, happily, of Snuffles.