Chapter 134: October 1998
"Sometimes the answers you are looking for are the same answers another person is looking for. Two people searching together are always better than one person alone."
-Shannon L. Adler
"I can't find it," Remus said, tugging his hands through his hair in frustration as he sat before one of the bookshelves, surrounded by teetering stacks of books.
"Can't we just start somewhere else?" Mika asked, kneeling before the adjacent shelf, pulling more books off one by one. She looked curiously at the spine of a particularly ancient volume before shrugging and tossing it over her shoulder. Remus scoffed and scooped it off the floor, checking it to make sure it hadn't been damaged by the careless handling.
"No. We have to find the journal. It would be pointless for us to come here and not find it," he said, plucking another book from her hand just before she could toss it aside, "and stop chucking my books about. Some of these are older than me."
"Well, that's impressive. How'd you manage to get a book that's over a hundred and forty?" Mika smirked. Remus rolled his eyes and huffed out a breath, going back to tug at his hair as the books on the shelves dwindled. Slowly, Mika reached out, grasping his wrist to stop him from pulling a clump of hair from his scalp. "Where did you last see it?"
"I don't know," Remus groaned, miserably. "I know she left it behind when she went back to her own time, but I haven't seen it. I knew about it when Moony saved me and I came back here after the Battle, but…"
He trailed off, feeling like the idiot his wolf always accused him of being.
"I didn't look for it that night—I didn't think to. There was so much going on—so many things swimming in my head that I couldn't concentrate on one thing. I should have looked for it then. I should have—"
"Okay, okay," Mika scooted closer, leaving her hand to rest on his arm in comfort. "Let's think here…did she use it in her own time?"
"Yes, four years from now. But, I believe that's because she came back to retrieve it."
"So, if she came back to get it, she wouldn't have come back to the cottage until when…? Two thousand and two?"
Remus pulled his brows together, trying to do some quick mental math and he nodded, "Yeah. Yeah, that sounds right."
"Okay, so it has to be here. It's a journal. It's not like it grew legs and walked off, Remus," Mika paused, tilting her head to the side. "Actually, maybe it could have?"
Remus let out a humourless snort of laughter and shook his head, "No. It wasn't sentient."
"I don't know what that means—"
"It doesn't matter—I know that obviously it didn't just walk off. I just don't know where it could have gone. I think the last time I saw it and really looked at it…" Remus trailed off, closing his eyes as he tried to think. His stomach plummeted as the realisation hit him, "it would have been after James and Lily…"
He swallowed, trying to ignore the twist in his chest that always presented itself when he thought of James and Lily and carved pine and the dirt left beneath his fingernails as he tossed a handful onto their graves. Mika gave his arm a gentle squeeze and Remus covered her hand with his own, grateful for the grounding she was trying to offer.
"It was sitting on the table," he recalled. "Clearly, it isn't there now. And from what I remember it should be, as well as a few other things."
"Well, what do you think may have happened to it then?"
"Merlin, I don't know," He let out a long breath, "When I came back after the battle, there were some birds nesting in the master room. Some animals may have gotten in and—"
"And what? A swotty squirrel came and took your book?" she laughed.
"No, Mika. Obviously, I don't believe a squirrel came in and took my book. But something had to have happened."
"Maybe you misplaced it and you don't remember?"
Remus sighed, "I don't know—I feel like I would've remembered moving it."
"Well think harder, then. It has to be in here somewhere—we'll find it," Mika began reshelving some of the books in the piles, "What's so important about this bloody book anyway? It's not like you don't have a million others lying around here."
Remus slumped forward, digging his elbows into his thighs, "It's got everything in it. Every spell, every curse, every potion that the Death Eaters created. It's the compendium of insanity that they're going to rain down on the Order."
Mika shifted and chewed on the inside of her cheek, looking as if she wanted to say something. Remus raised an eyebrow at her and she smiled sheepishly.
"I don't know what a compendium is."
Remus breathed out a laugh, "It's like a…collection or a catalogue of sorts. It holds all of the details that we need."
"Like an encyclopaedia?"
"Sort of, not as in-depth though."
Mika nodded, "Alright, so what's in the journal that we can't just get from other sources. Aren't you the one who said cross-referencin' is key?" she ended the question with a mocking, stuffy tone and Remus couldn't help but laugh.
"I do not sound like that," he said. "But, it's everything they've been spending years planning and creating to use against us. Things we can't find in other books because Dolohov and Voldemort created them. Horrific things—curses that boil people alive and turn their insides into their outsides…"
A nauseating memory of Seamus Finnegan swam to the forefront of his mind and he shuddered, swallowing down the acidic taste that had begun to creep up his throat.
Mika's face wrinkled in disgust, "That sounds like an awful time."
"That's not even the worst of it," Remus mumbled.
"Okay, so it gives us a leg up on what the spells are—"
"It's not just—it has countercurses," Remus said, finally bringing his eyes to Mika's. "Hermione found the book in her own time. When she realised she didn't have everything she needed to make the antidote for the Dementors, she began reverse engineering the other curses one by one. Not all of them have counter curses, not all of them have cures, not every potion has an antidote but…" Remus trailed off for a moment, taking a few slow breaths to calm himself.
"Hermione…she broke the majority of them down. She was able to figure out most of them—just a few she hadn't been able to work out yet."
"Like the Dementor's one," Mika said.
"Exactly," Remus agreed.
"Say we find the journal. What next?"
"We get the information to the right people. We see if Nikolai has any information, see if he's been paying attention. Maybe they've written new ones."
"We give the journal to the Order."
"No," Remus interrupted, shaking his head. "No. We give them the information—not the journal. We cannot give them the actual journal. Hermione has to find the journal on her own when the timing is right."
Mika groaned and tapped her forehead against one of the low shelves a few times. "This is giving me a bloody headache. We can't do anythin' to help, but we can't sit around doing nothin'. But anythin' we try to do can fuck everythin' up. But everythin' is gonna go to shit anyway and we have to just sit by and watch it happen."
Remus let out a long exhale, "That's the gist of it."
"Oi, what a mess."
Remus began reshelving the books, one by one. What a mess, indeed.
There was a part of Remus that sat low beneath the layers of hurt and grief that wondered what his life would have been like had none of this ever happened. If Hermione had not turned up in 1979, would he have spent his entire life alone? Would he have gone through life making the same choices he had that seemed to lead him back to her even if it was an unconscious decision? He liked to think that maybe he would have spent more time with his dad before he inevitably passed away. Maybe he would have actually paid him back the hundred Galleons he'd given him but then again, had it not been for Hermione's interference in his life, he wouldn't have borrowed the money in the first place.
And that's what bothered him most on days like today—when he was frustrated with his inability to solve a problem. When he got into this…mood, there was a bitter part of him that couldn't help but feel like she had been an interference. A hiccup. Another unsolvable problem that wormed its way into his brain and ate at his sanity.
"Stop it," Mika said, cuffing him around the back of the head as she leapt up from the floor.
"Stop what?"
"Being all…broody. It doesn't suit you. You're too old for it, honestly. It's embarrassin'."
Remus took in a controlled breath through his nose, slowly blowing it back out through pursed lips. "I'm not brooding."
Mika flopped onto the couch and raised an eyebrow at him. "Aren't you? Sure looks it to me."
Remus shelved the last of the books and moved to fold himself into the oversized armchair by the window. "I'm not."
"Okay, well I'm not going to sit here and argue with you about how you're absolutely being a broody cunt, so, why don't you just tell me what your problem is and maybe we can work somethin' out?"
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Moony barked a laugh.
"My problem," Remus huffed, giving in to his frustrations, "is that all hell is about to break loose in a month and I have the means to help but can't locate them. I know events that are going to happen but not when, and there's a world of sick curses that are about to be unleashed and I have no idea how to get the information to the right people." Remus stood up from the chair and began pacing, shoving a hand into his hair as he stomped across the living room floor.
"I've spent the last decade trying to keep myself alive and I finally manage to die only to be brought back, to live through more chaos that I can't do anything to stop. I can't exactly just show up at the Shrieking Shack and alert The Order that I'm alive and know where their headquarters is. I can't keep track of anyone without giving myself away and…"
Remus trailed off, halting in his tracks as his ranting mind slowed down a tick.
"Oh, are you done now?"
"Shut up," Remus snapped, trying to latch onto the images swirling in his head.
Mika sat up, moving to the edge of the couch, a look of glee on her face. "Oh, you've just thought of something, haven't you?"
Slowly, Remus nodded.
"Share with the class then, Professor!"
He turned to look at Mika, gnawing on his lip. "When I was in school, James, Sirius, and I created a map."
"A map…?"
Remus nodded, "Yeah. It was charmed—magical cartography was a bit of a hobby of mine as a kid."
"Nerd," Mika snorted.
Remus glared at her before continuing, "It was…interactive. It tracked everyone in the school—showed where every person was on the grounds. When I went to Hermione's time, I recreated a version of that map for The Order. It was so we could track each other and keep an eye on everyone during missions—so if anyone else was captured, we'd know where to find them."
Mika grinned, "So, you can make that map again?"
Remus shrugged, falling back into the chair. "I used blood magic then, to make the map specific to certain people...I would need a sample of everyone's blood again to do the same thing."
Mika's face twisted in thought and she slowly shook her head, "Not necessarily. You said you made one for the school, right? I don't think you got everyone's blood in the school—and if you did, that's a very weird thing to do for a kid and you should maybe seek out some professional help, mate."
Remus rolled his eyes, "No, I didn't. It was a complicated string of charm work. An amalgamation of tracking charms and find-me spells we strung together with an old world ritual involving dust from the foundation of the castle and a few slightly illegal ingredients."
"Let me get this straight—as a kid in school, you and your friends made a map that required you to make up your own spells and rituals to get it to work and you expect me to believe that as an adult now, with all the swotty knowledge in your head, you can't figure out how to make another one?"
"The last one I made for The Order took me nearly a year to complete."
Mika shrugged, "We've got a lot of time on our hands."
Remus shook his head. "We might have a lot of time but they don't. I can figure out how to find the journal and get that information to them, or I can make a map. I can't do both."
"Maybe you can't," Mika agreed. "But, we can."
The letter came from Nikolai on Halloween.
It was written in hurried scribbles on a scrap of what looked to be the back of a takeaway menu. It was delivered by an angry, old owl that bit Remus' finger until he bled and wouldn't let up until Remus shoved a sickle in its beak and sent it on its way. When he unfolded the scrap of paper, it had only five words written on it.
14th November Ministry of Magic
Remus closed his eyes and crumpled the shred of paper in his fist, his breath shaking as he blew it through tight lips. This day was already hard enough on its own—he didn't need another worry sinking into his gut just yet.
"You alright, mate?" Mika asked around a mouthful of crisps.
Remus blinked a few times, only just having realized he'd been staring out the window since the owl took off.
"Just a rough day."
"Wanna talk about it?"
"Not really, no."
Mika hummed, folding up the top of the bag and tossing it onto the counter before wiping her greasy fingers across her jeans. "I figured as much," she stood next to him, bumping her hip into his. "But, it might help."
Remus swallowed, his throat suddenly tight. "It's Halloween."
"Mm, it is. You feelin' left out since you're clearly too old to dress up and beg strangers for sweets?"
Remus felt a swell of laughter puff through his lips, "No. It's not that. It's just…it's been seventeen years since they died."
Mika slowly wrapped her arms around Remus' waist, forcing his own to drape over her as she wormed her way closer to him. "I'm sorry."
"Me too."
Mika tugged at the crumpled paper in his hand, "What's this?"
Remus stalked over to the table, smoothing the wrinkles from the letter before falling into a chair and passing it to Mika. She frowned as she read it.
"The fourteenth?"
"Yeah."
"They're planning it for the ceremony."
Remus looked up at Mika, brows furrowed. "What do you mean?"
She skipped away from the table, rummaging around the living room for a minute before returning with a recent copy of The Daily Prophet. Remus had reinstated his subscription to both The Prophet and The Quibbler as well as a few potions and charms journals the other day. He thought he'd be able to keep an eye on current events, try to find anything concerning or anything that would trigger a memory from something Hermione had told him. So far, it had proven to be useless besides teaching Mika a bit more about wizarding politics, Quidditch and crossword puzzles.
Mika tossed the paper to him and pulled out a chair, getting as close to him as she could without being in his lap. She pointed to an article halfway down the front page.
"They're doing some sort of ceremony on that day to honour the people that fought in the battle against Voldemort," she said. "I read about it the other day. Oh, and look—" she pulled the paper from his hands, flipping open to the fourth page to show a list of names "—you're being honoured. I mean, they all think you're dead so it doesn't really count, but it's a nice thought, I think."
He saw his name printed amongst the list of the dead being honoured. In parentheses beside it, it read (Order of Merlin: First Class). Remus felt his breath catch in his throat, his eyes growing wide at the honour bestowed upon him.
"First class," he whispered, still staring at the words in disbelief.
"That a big deal, I'm guessing?"
Remus nodded, "There's never been a werewolf to receive an Order of Merlin, let alone first class. I didn't…I don't understand why I would be…I wasn't that important. I didn't do anything—"
Mika immediately slapped a hand over his mouth, "If you keep sayin' something stupid like that, you're gonna force me to knock you."
"All I did was—"
"Work tirelessly for your entire life for their fuckin' cause, and you're still doin' it! Let them honour you. Even if they think you're dead, they should be kissin' your fucking shoes."
Remus bit the inside of his cheek but didn't argue the point any further. His eyes scanned the rest of the recipients, dead and alive, and he realized quickly that the Ministry would be packed with people that day. News reporters, civilians, students…the war had affected everyone. There wouldn't be a single person who didn't go to pay their respects and give their praise to Harry and everyone else who would stand in front of them to accept the honour.
"Fuck," Remus jumped up from the table, pacing as he tore his hands through his unkempt hair. "Fuck. They're going to take down the Ministry that day."
Mika sat back in her chair, mouth hanging slightly open as she watched what was left of Remus' sanity unravel.
"I have to figure out the map," Remus rambled. "It's the only way I can keep track of who is where and get information where it needs to be. But how the fuck am I meant to do that? We used blood magic last time, and in school, we used a half-arsed ritual and I think it only worked because Sirius tinkered with some ancient bullshit he knew about…fuck. I have no idea what—"
"Okay," Mika stood up and wrapped her hands around Remus' elbows to keep him from pacing a rut into the floor. "We don't have a way to make the map right this second, but we can work on it. We need to figure out how to get the information to them I could try and track down Harry again? He seems to frequent that cafe…"
Remus shook his head, "Harry isn't an idiot. If you've tracked him there once, he may not return for fear of you finding him there again."
"Well, what else can we do?"
Remus sighed, stepping out of her grip to put the kettle on. He needed to think and he always did it best with a hot cup of tea and something to scribble his thoughts out on. He made his way into the living room to grab a notebook and a pencil, silently thanking Hermione for her insistence on proper writing utensils in the house, and tossed them onto the table.
Another owl rapped at the window, a thick parcel strapped to its thin leg. Mika let the bird in, untying the package and handing it a knut from the small bowl on the ledge and a bit of bacon left over from the morning as payment. She unrolled it as the owl took off and studied the front while Remus pulled mugs from the cupboard.
"What the fuck is a plimpie?"
"What?"
She handed the magazine over to Remus, "A plimpie. Is that like a chicken?"
"I have no idea, a fish I think," Remus mumbled, looking at the bold, purple text that spelt out The Quibbler across the top of the page.
A thought struck him and Moony howled with approval in his mind.
Lovegoodthe wolf chanted.
A memory surfaced of Hermione explaining to him what everyone's roles in The Order were.
"Luna and her father get us information from an array of sources. We don't ask and she wouldn't tell us even if we did. Whoever it is, they're reliable."
Remus sat at the table, ignoring the high-pitched wail of the kettle as his mind reeled.
.
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a/n: Thanks for reading! I just wanted to give a heads up that time is gonna start moving at a quicker pace here in the next few chapters. We've spent a long time with Remus and Mika, it's time to get our fave couple reunited, don't you think?
as always, comments are so very appreciated. Thank you for all the support and love.
xo
mimi
