The following morning, Helene woke up and with eyes closed became simultaneously aware of both the crick in her neck and the fact that someone was watching her.

Her eyelids fluttered open to find a still-naked Remus gently brushing his fingers through her long blonde hair, smiling nervously at her as she stirred.

"Good morning," he whispered.

"Morning," Helene sighed, taking his free hand and kissing his fingertips. He beamed at this act. "Did you sleep well?"

"Wonderfully," he said, kissing her lips shortly. "I was worried about you, though. I thought I might have crushed you."

"You were fine," Helen laughed. "More than fine," she added, smiling shyly. "I actually rather liked feeling your weight on me."

She watched him swallow and bite his lip, feeling his cock twitch against her leg.

"I should take a shower," she sighed with feigned innocence. "Sort out my hair."

Helene scrambled up from the rug, walking as normally as possible in spite of her soreness, knowing that Remus's glowing eyes watched her as long as they could, right up until she reached the hall.

She then limped the rest of the way to the shower, albeit quickly, aware that a hot shower would help sort out her stiff neck and…other soreness.

Grateful there were no clothes to mess with, Helene turned on the water straight away, adjusting the temperature quickly and a clambering straight in, not bothering to look in the mirror or anything like that. She stood still for a moment, letting the warm water cascade over her aching muscles and soothe them. Then, when she felt sufficiently revived, she reached for shampoo, lathered up, and mentally planned the order of events for her shower.

Helene was certainly glad of the body-hair-removal charm that had been all the rage at school in Australia. It had stung all over for a few months, but Helene was sure it was worth it, no longer having to shave her legs or armpits. She giggled a little, running her hands down the smooth skin of her legs with shower gel and thinking of how different were the sensations the same motion produced with Remus's touch.

After washing up, conditioning her hair, and finger-coming the worst of the tangles, Helene got out of the shower, turned off the water, dried off, carefully drying and combing her hair before wrapping a towel around herself and scurrying across the hall to her bedroom.

She cracked open the window slightly to let in the sea air. Then she put on her favorite underwear subconsciously, along with a breezy blue cotton sundress that it was perhaps a tad cold for outside, but it was her favorite dress, so she hardly cared.

Helene then looked in the mirror and considered her hair before sweeping it to one side and putting it in a low ponytail over her left shoulder. She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and nodded approvingly at her reflection before heading out into the hallway.

The sound of the shower running was heard through the door to the bathroom and she knew Remus was in there, naked and wet and soapy and…

She moaned slightly and hurried down the hall to the kitchen before she did something silly.

When she reached the kitchen, Helene found that Remus had made breakfast while she had been in the shower and had laid it all out on the table for her.

With a smile, she buttered her toast and began eating, waiting anxiously for him to return from his shower.

Helene was about hallway through her tea when Remus strolled into the kitchen whistling merrily, which was something she'd never heard him do.

She laughed.

"Somebody's happy," she teased.

He grinned at her.

Once he settled into the kitchen, however, Helene was relieved to find that next to nothing had changed between them. Their daily routine had become enhanced with kisses and touches and closeness and endearments, but otherwise was unchanged. She still scoured files and Remus searched in vain for work.

Helene was also pleased that Remus, that night, pulled her into his bedroom rather than allowing them to sleep alone after such intimacy. Despite the fact that nothing happened between them the first night she spent in his bed, it was good to be near him, surrounded by the feel and smell of him. There was something warm and comforting even in his scent.

So a new, adjusted routine began, with shared bed, often shared showers, lap sitting during nightly chess games that were unfinished increasingly often. Kisses were shared throughout the day and nights held at the very least the possibility for incredibly intimacy.

Thus it was several nights into their new arrangements when she had instigated their activities.

When they were both sweaty and spent, Remus rolled them onto their sides, burying his face in her hair and breathing in deeply. She smiled to herself when she thought of how much more genuine this felt than her previous similar encounters.

"Good night, beautiful," he murmured somewhere near her ear.

Her heart swelled at the endearment and her mind began to race again, wondering if this could be love.

She thought it must be, and she wanted to tell him so, but the timid part of her wanted him to say it first. But Remus, she reasoned, was far more timid than her in many ways. Despite boldness that came with age and experience, there was every possibility that he was waiting for her to say it first, to validate his own feelings.

Helene chewed her lip, staring at the moonlight through a crack in the blinds. Perhaps…perhaps she ought to say it first. Perhaps she ought to say it now.

She swallowed and had just opened her mouth, courage summoned, when she heard him snore softly, already fast asleep.

Helene sighed, half disappointed, half relieved, as the words died in her throat. It hadn't been the right time after all, she decided, and it was better not to have said it at the wrong time.

"Good night, Remus," she whispered instead, settling into his arms a little more comfortably, lacing her fingers in his has he snored on softly, happily and peacefully oblivious to the anxious battle of love-or-not-love still raging in her head.

She was troubled, and she knew that falling asleep while troubled was not the path to a good night's sleep, but her eyes were getting very difficult to keep open and she knew it was only a matter of time before she was unable to stay awake.

Her last thoughts before she fell asleep were about how happy she was to be home, and then she fell into the land of dreams.

/-/

Helene wandered through a familiar house, searching for Remus. She was vaguely aware that there was something wrong with the idea of Remus being in this house, but she kept searching, walking through semi-familiar halls, glancing into old rooms that had fallen into disrepair.

"Remus?" she called, her voice echoing strangely in the rotting walls. The floorboards creaked with every step and she could smell the sweet scent associated with death and decay all around. Something nagging at the back of her mind said it wasn't just the walls.

With shaking hands, she rounded the corner into the kitchen to the first of many horrific sights.

Hillary was sprawled across the floor, not fully decomposed, a cockroach crawling out of her open mouth. Helene gasped and took a step back as the insect scurried out of sight.

Helene looked at the table, where her father was spread out…literally. From the looks of his remains, he'd been magically drawn and quartered, tortured for information or simply for the fun of it. She would never know. She could see where his fingers had been broken, and she felt her eyes sting with tears.

Stepping over Hillary, Helene crossed to the dining room, where the sting of forming tears turned to tears streaming down her face.

Ely was there, the blonde ringlets longer than Helene had remembered them. Helene reached down to pet them and withdrew her hand quickly when the scalp separated from the skull, falling to the floor, leaving that strange, pouting skull staring up at Helene, pleading with her.

In the next chair was Heidi, fingers gripping the edge of the table, jaw open in what was surely a scream. She had leaned forward, it seemed, in an attempt to block the high chair, as if that were really a productive final action. Helene kissed the decaying forehead of her favorite sister and whispered, "I'm so sorry."

Leon was there in the high chair, a sinister-looking baby skeleton, the only one fully decayed. Helene touched the brittle bones of his little fingers carefully, not wanting to damage them as she had done with Ely's hair. The hollow, eyeless baby skull seemed to look at her with knowingness not present in the others. Helene shivered and took her hand away, moving to the other side of the table.

Charlie sat there alone, and guilt welled up most strongly in her stomach at the sight of him. She'd never gotten his coat. She felt a sudden urge to retrieve it from the front closet, if it wasn't completely destroyed by moths after all these years.

"Once I find Remus," she told herself. "I'll get the coat when I find Remus."

She wiped her eyes and blinked to clear her blurred vision as she moved out of the dining room to the back hall and up the creaking, moaning staircase, praying she didn't hit a rotten board and fall through. Helene made it to the top all right, though, glancing in the empty bedrooms as she passed them, counting the untouched, dust-covered trunks as she went, her insides squirming with guilt.

At her old room she stopped at Virginia's trunk, with her initials carved ornately just above the left latch. Helene blew away the dust and ran her fingers along the letters, smiling sadly to herself.

With an unsteady hand she undid the slightly rusty latches and carefully pushed back the lid.

She let it drop again, however, and rushed back to the hall when she saw that a family of rats had created a nest inside and had looked none too pleased at the disturbance. As she closed the door and stood, trembling, in the hall she reasoned that they must have chewed through one of the sides at some point. Deciding it was better not to touch the trunks, Helene resumed her walk down the hall, her search for Remus.

Helene reached the final room in the hall and looked in to find the last two bodies: Virginia and their mother.

The shock of the rats had worn off and Helene felt tears stinging her eyes again. Her beautiful, charming sister was half-decayed on the floor beside Charlie's open trunk.

"You knew," she whispered sadly to the corpse. "You knew it might come to this. I bet you never imagined it would be this gruesome."

Helene nibbled her lip and turned to look at her mother, who was lying on the bed, also drawn and quartered, her jaws open in a terrible scream.

"Oh, mother, I'm so sorry," Helene sobbed.

For the very first time it occurred to her that all of this was her fault. If she had learned her Chinese more quickly, if she'd not dragged her feet in packing, perhaps they would have already left the house, maybe even the country. Maybe she would have lived out a happy life in China with her family until the war was over. Maybe she could have returned to England, finished at Hogwarts, reconnected with Remus years sooner. Perhaps she'd be married, have children…

Remus. She was looking for Remus.

There was really only one place left to look, she mused, leaving the room and going down the front steps to the closet – her closet – to see if Remus was waiting for her there. Besides, she'd promised Charlie that she'd get his coat.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, the door to the closet was hanging open ominously, creaking slightly as it moved open a bit more on its hinges.

The coat was half-eaten by moths, lying on the floor in a dusty, holey heap below the lone hanger, still clinging to the bar by its claw. Helene bent over to pick up the coat and felt a wand being pressed against the back of her neck. She froze.

"Turn around," a sinister, commanding, and somehow familiar voice said.

Helene could feel her heart pounding in her ears as she straightened and turned slowly to find a masked, cloaked figure pointing a wand between her eyes.

"You thought you could escape. You thought you could escape the Dark Lord. But we always knew you'd come back. Time to join your family!" He laughed. "Crucio!"

Helene felt pain and heat searing through her body, but she tried not to scream, not wanting to give him that satisfaction. She could see cockroaches, moths, rats, all coming out from underneath the tattered coat and they began crawling all over her writhing body as the masked man laughed.

She could hear screaming as he took off his mask and she knew she must be the one screaming. When the mask was off she screamed even harder.

It was William.

As the laughing and screaming continued Helene could hear someone calling her name, someone from a long way away. But they couldn't save her. No one could save her this time. She would die in the closet that had been her salvation all those years ago.

The pain subsided and she saw William raise his wand again, a cruel smirk on his perfectly shaped lips as he muttered the curse. Exhausted from all of the pain and fear, her eyes rolled back in her head, but not before she saw a blinding flash of green light.

/-/

"Helene!"

Her eyes flew open and she was covered in cold sweat, Remus's face above hers full of frantic concern.

"You were screaming and thrashing," he said hoarsely.

"I'm alive," she croaked, stunned.

Remus blinked at her.

"Of course you're alive," he said gently, stroking some sweat-soaked hair off her face. "It was just a bad dream, darling. You're safe."

She sat up a bit, shaking and embarrassed, with an urge to shower.

"What time is it?" she muttered, rubbing the heel of her hand into her left eyebrow, which twinged with a headache.

"Five."

Five in the morning. She groaned, feeling her headache increase with the vibration.

"I need a shower and a pain potion," she sighed. "My head hurts."

"I'll get the potion," Remus said, kissing her forehead. "Are you hungry?"

"A little."

"I'll start on breakfast, too, then."

Helene nodded and stumbled out, across the hall, into the bathroom where she took a quick-but-thorough shower. She could still feel the rats and cockroaches on her skin.

Perhaps the pain potion would help.

When she got out to the kitchen dressed in her most comfortable clothes, Remus had laid out an impressive spread of food for breakfast, a large pot of tea, and a pain potion vial. She sat down beside him, downed the vial in one, and rested her head on his shoulder as he poured her tea, waiting for the potion to kick in.

As they ate she told him all about her dream, every gruesome detail she could recall. She cried and shivered all over again, and Remus wrapped her up in a warm, comforting hut as she sobbed.

"But it was just a nightmare," he said softly when she finished.

"Was it?" Helene asked absently.

"Helene, your family was buried and the house was sold to a family of Muggles," he said gently. "You've been looking at too many pictures in those files. They wouldn't have let it get like that."

"But am I actually safe?" Helene sniffed. "He's been getting more active, Remus, you've said so yourself. I have nowhere to hide. I'd have to leave the country again -"

"You have here," he said firmly. "You have here and you have me for as long as you want both, and if here doesn't work Albus can find another safe house easily. You don't have to leave the country and I'd be very offended if you did." Helene gave a weak smile and kissed his cheek. "And your adoptive brother may be many things, but I really doubt he's a Death Eater."

"No," she chuckled weakly. "I'd say that's a rather safe bet."

"Good," Remus replied with a smile, kissing her nose. "Now, finish your eggs and we'll take some steps to keep you from having more of these."

"Not Dreamless Sleep," she whined, cutting her egg halfway through the yoke.

"I'd never make you take something addictive," Remus replied, frowning. "No, I had nightmares for months after the war, and I finally saw a psychological Healer about it. There's a lot of practical steps you can take to avoid as many triggers as possible, and that's what we're going to do with you."

She nodded and scarfed down the rest of her food, watching Remus clear the table. When they'd washed the dishes, he pulled out the box she kept her files and notes in, ignoring the morning paper, which was sitting on the counter. It had probably arrived when she was in the shower.

"Now," Remus sighed, "we can't totally shield you if you're looking for this Death Eater, but we can remove the graphic pictures from the folders. Those don't do you any good in your search. I'll do that. Why don't you read the paper out loud while I work?"

Helene nodded, pulling the paper in front of her and reading each article in turn.

They passed the morning like that, thinking of things they could do, avoid, or even brew to help her deal with the possibility of nightmares.

"Cheering Charms and Calming Draughts on alternating weeks," Remus had muttered, scribbling them down on his list.

Planning properly and keeping a written schedule for things was important, he'd explained, to keep her going before it became habitual.

He paused while they ate lunch, frowning.

"Do you take any Muggle medicines?" he asked. "Some of those could increase nightmares, or interfere with the magical things."

"Like what?" Helene asked, curious.

"Anti-depressants," he listed. "Mood stabilizers, contraceptives -"
"Oh!" Helene cried, blushing. Remus raised an eyebrow. "Oh, no, I'm only taking a multivitamin, but I just realized…I've not been using a contraceptive."

"You've just realized…?" Remus asked, confused.

She blushed even brighter.

"I mean, Muggle, magical, Contraceptive Charms…. We're not using anything."

Remus's eyes grew wide and his face paled.

"You…you don't think you're -"

"I don't know," she admitted nervously. "I…I should test, but we need to remember to fix that."

"Yes," he agreed hoarsely. "Or I'll be the one with nightmares."

Helene laughed awkwardly at his referring to being a father as a nightmare, but she knew what he meant. There was no knowing what his condition might mean for a child, and it seemed like an unnecessary risk, finding out.

"Yes," Helene said. "We'll make sure to fix it. Don't worry."

He seemed surprised and relieved by her response to the statement, but she knew it would have been insensitive to react any other way.

Once they'd finished lunch they weighted their options and agreed that a Contraceptive Charm would be best for them. Remus then went to get a pregnancy test patch, which eased their fears by confirming that she was not, in fact, pregnant.

With that relieving news, Remus insisted they spend the rest of the evening relaxing as much as possible, and distracting her from any triggers. After a few rounds of chess, and Remus massaging her sore neck and shoulders (which she vowed to find a way to get a repeat of, somehow), Remus read out loud to her, from a book of Muggle fairytales Lily had left in the house at one point when she, James, and Harry had hidden there.

Helene fell into a peaceful sleep listening to the soothing, familiar sound of Remus's voice.