Chapter 67: Monday, March 23, 1981

"Apologies aren't meant to change the past, they're meant to change the future."

-Kevin Hancock


Hermione stared into the hallway that Remus had just disappeared down. Her breath caught in her chest, her heart somewhere on the floor behind her and her hand covering her mouth. The tips of her fingers were cold and wet from the tears that still fell down her cheeks. She had never been in a situation where she could physically feel her heart break into pieces. Sure, when she and Ron had split, it was upsetting. It had changed the dynamic of their relationship so drastically and it was obvious that it wouldn't easily be put back together. Even when she and Theo ended their short tryst, it had been painful—she had genuinely liked Theo, afterall.

But this?

This felt like she couldn't breathe; as if Remus had taken all of the oxygen from the room when he stormed out. When he waved his hand and shook his head and muttered "I need a minute" with the most gut wrenching look of despair on his face…it was as if he had physically removed her heart from her body and took it with him.

She wasn't sure how long she stood there, staring down the hall, trying to collect herself enough to take a step forward. Her knees felt stiff and her lower back was beginning to ache from standing frozen in the same spot for so long. Finally, after her vision had gone blurry at the edges from shallow, numb breaths and lack of blinking, she took a deep, gulping inhale and pulled her weighted feet forward.

She paused outside of their bedroom door and listened. The absence of sound would be more telling than any sound that came from beyond—if he was angry enough to put a silencing charm in place so he could work out his frustrations privately. When she could hear the squeaking of the bed as Remus moved on it, she sighed in relief and knocked lightly on the door. After a few seconds without an answer, she twisted the handle to find that it was unlocked, and gently pushed it open.

"Remus?"

She poked her head into the room and was met with the sight of Remus sitting on the edge of the bed, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

"Remus, are you—"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

The strain in his voice caused her throat to tighten again, her emotions swelling in her chest and her eyes burned with even more tears. She crossed the room and sat next to him on the bed, being sure to leave some space between them. She pulled her feet up from the floor, crossing her legs in a pretzel shape and clasped her fingers in her lap.

"I wanted to."

"Did you?"

She took another shaking breath and shook her head, "No. No, I didn't want to tell you. Because how am I supposed to tell you that I'm turning into a soul-sucking monster and I have no idea how to stop it? That I've been trying for over a year to fix it and I can't."

"You took the curse on purpose, before you had a plan to rid yourself of it."

Hermione nodded, "I did. There was extenuating circumstances that I would—"

"You know, everyone tells me I need to take better care of myself," Remus began, speaking over Hermione. "You've said it, Lily is constantly telling me…hell, even Prongs, Pads, and Wormtail has told me at some point. But, you're all a bunch of...a bunch of fucking hypocrites, aren't you?"

Hermione looked up from her lap, her brows pulled together, "I don't…what are you talking about?"

A puff of humorless laughter fell from his lips and he shook his head, tearing both of his hands through his hair. "You willingly took this…this insane curse, knowing there was a good chance it would consume you and—"

"That's not true." Hermione said, "I thought we had a cure. I thought there was a potion and I just needed the damn instructions and—"

"That's bullshit and you know it. You can lie to me. Hell, you've been doing it for the better part of two years now, but don't lie to yourself. You're too intelligent for that, and you have to know that I'm not stupid enough to belive that any of that is true. You knew how this could end, how it would probably end…and...and you came here anyway. Why?"

"Remus, we needed answers. When the Order reformed…I…" Hermione sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, opening them back up to land on the swirling green and amber of Remus'. "We lost a lot of people—a lot of information. There were things that happened that we could have prevented if we just knew what to expect, but instead, we were kept out of the loop. We weren't given the tools we needed to win a war and we've been fighting it for so long! We were...I was...desperate."

"Desperation makes people stupid," Remus said.

His voice was cold as ice, his tone biting into her and sending a nauseating flip to her stomach. Hermione bit back the acrid taste that burned in the back of her throat, the constricting of her chest nearly choking her as she nodded, wordless confirmation that she was indeed desperate and stupid.

"So, you go back, you turn into one of those things and then what? You just…spend the rest of your life haunting other people's souls?"

Hermione shrugged, a pitiful half-sob coming from the back of her throat. He was angry—worse than that, he was hurt. She had decimated him, dragged his emotions through the mud and took a metaphorical shit all over them.

"And when you leave, you're going to wipe yourself clean from everyone. Just pretend as if you never existed here, like I never even fucking mattered to you?"

She blinked rapidly, her eyes feeling raw from crying. "I have to live the rest of my days knowing that I left you behind, Remus."

"Okay, and that's what? Thirty days, if you're lucky, once you leave? Thirty days you have to go knowing what you did. Meanwhile, I have live an entire fucking lifetime never knowing that I had this. That I had you. I'll live the rest of my miserable fucking life thinking I'll never find my mate, I'll never find someone I want to share this part of myself with, someone who accepts all of me... the scarred ugly bits and the brilliant bits and the fun bits that can lick you until your screaming on the bed."

"Remus I…I don't know what to tell you…"

"It's fine. You have your thirty days of heartache. I'll have a lifetime of it, I'm used to it now, really."

Remus stared straight ahead, his jaw set tight and his lips pressed in a flat line. Hermione watched him from her peripheral vision and saw his eyes as they moved back and forth, likely trying to follow the conversation he was having in his head with Moony. They sat in silence that changed from charged tension to something far more somber as the weight of the last two hours worth of arguing settled over them, leaving a hollow feeling in Hermione's gut.

She felt defeated and empty, sitting on the edge of her bed, wishing that more than anything, she wouldn't have told him. That they could have just basked in the afterglow of the the most amazing sex they had ever had and sat curled together on the sofa reading Potion's Journal United and Transfiguration Today and eating biscuits and drinking milky tea like and old married couple.

Because she would give anything for that. She would give up her entire life to have Remus wrapped around her for eternity. And he seemed to think it was her choice to leave, to turn into a fucking Dementor, to betray everyone she's ever cared about and to destroy him.

Hermione startled when she felt Remus' palm fall into place on her thigh, his long fingers caressing the inside of the muscle through the comfortable cotton pyjama bottoms she had on. The warmth of his hand permeating through the fabric and leaving a glow of comfort imprinted on her leg. Her hand covered his, fingers brushing over his scarred knuckles, and she gave his hand a brief squeeze.

They sat for what seemed like hours, although Hermione was certain it was only about twenty minutes. She banished all tumultuous thoughts from her head and focused on the present: the here and now. She focused on the heat of his palm, on the slight hitch of his breath, the smell of his shampoo, soap, and cologne. The way he shifted every so often, a tell-tale sign that his hip was bothering him again, or how he stretched his right leg out every few minutes to try and alleviate some of the ache in his knee. She knew so much about him—about the little things, the moments no one else knew, the things that had been lost as he got older.

The heat from the back of his hand burned into her palm. She never wanted to let go, never wanted to be thrown back into the cold. But she had towhy couldn't he just understand that?

Remus took in a shaking breath and cleared his throat, "You know I would have done anything to find the answers, don't you? If you would have just told me sooner…I could have helped you. I love you."

"I love you too, Remus, but—"

A pathetic, dry sounding chuckle escaped his lips. "But…there's always a but. Hermione, I would rearrange the stars in the sky and drain the waters of the Earth for you, you know that, don't you? I would do anything for you. And I can't even get a simple 'I love you' without the stipulations on the end."

"That isn't fair!" Hermione said, her voice breaking as exasperation overtook her. "You know that isn't fair!"

"Yeah, well, life's not very fair, is it? You know, I was dealt a really shitty hand. And then you show up, all pretty brown curls and chocolate brown eyes— like they were made just for me. You waltzed in, fucking gorgeous, and funny, and bloody brilliant… Then, for some absolutely barmy reason that I still don't understand, you wanted me—me—of all people! And finally, fucking finally, I felt like I had an ace in my pocket! And now…" A sad chuckle interrupted him and he bit into his lip, swallowing hard before continuing, "Well, now I look at the table and it's all red—every single fucking card is red."

Hermione took a slow inhale, begging her already raw, burning eyes to not spill any more tears. The pain in Remus' voice was tearing through her soul, shredding it to pieces by way of soft spoken words and poker metaphors. She couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye, because she was certain when she did, it would break the remainder of her resolve and she would dissolve completely into pieces before him. Remus shifted slightly on the bed, stretching his knee out again and heaved a deep sigh.

"And you're a spade," he whispered, his voice cracking as he pushed the words forward.

Hermione's head snapped up and she couldn't help the gasp that escaped her, as if she had been doused in water from the Black Lake in the middle of January. She turned to look at him, and her stomach dropped from the bloodshot brightness of his eyes and the wetness of his cheeks. He gave her a sad smile and his head bobbed a few times, chewing on the inside of his lip. Remus stood from the bed and moved directly in front of her, he leaned down slightly to cup her jaw and rubbed the top cheek with his thumb and then he pressed a kiss onto her forehead that lingered a few seconds longer than it normally would. Once he pulled away, he turned around and began moving toward the door and Hermione jumped up from where she sat, frozen in heartache, and reached out to grasp his wrist.

"Where are you…where are you going?" she asked.

"I need some time to think."

Hermione dropped the hold on his wrist and pulled her lip between her teeth as Remus gave one last watery attempt at a smile. She watched as he walked out of the room, leaving the bedroom door slightly ajar. She could hear as he padded around the house, pulling his cloak on and the muffled winces of pain as he bent to pull his trainers on. She heard the scrape of cypress against the walnut coffee table as he grabbed his wand, the soft whooshing sound of the front door opening and when it finally snapped shut, Hermione blinked heavily several times and let out the breath she didn't even realize she had been holding.

She turned to face the bed and took two steps forward before her knees buckled and sent her to the floor in a miserable heap, sobs wracking through her body.

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a/n: I know this one is much shorter than my usual, but it just begged to be ended there. I've seen a lot of worry in reviews and I do want to clarify, this story is HEA, I promise. One of my absolute favorite lines from canon says "You're gonna suffer but you're gonna be happy about it." and I tend to adopt that in my writing, if you haven't figured it out. So there will be a happy ending, ye of little faith lol

xo