Falling Leaves

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

September 1976

Remus had never borne witness to anything quite like it. Then again neither had he ever met anyone quite like her, so how else could he have? Hermione had plans and contingencies and addendums and little vials filled with a wispy white substance she kept on cataloguing. All while she spun in a flurry of seamless, resolute actions, half-muttering observations throughout, to accomplish the goal once her mind had set.

There was a breathtaking quality to all that. When paired with the reason behind it, her actions further veered towards mind-boggling. He tried not to think too much about it. He failed.

Because not once had he felt this unmoored, as though the tether holding his beliefs was let loose and he had drifted away from everything he'd known, forcing him to stare at the world anew. Dark waters and sea monsters awaited up ahead, and yet… Well, Hermione seemed to have decided several lighthouses were in order, and she would conjure them herself if she must, by nothing more than sheer will and foreknowledge. She felt centuries, not decades, ahead of him. There was this impossible air of certitude and resolve about her, clear in the crease of her brow, in the set of her shoulders. On that note, everything about her seemed rather so - not only six things before breakfast, she made for an entire Wonderland of impossibilities, turned solid to his hands and arms and lips.

Sometimes it was hard to tell whether he had drowned or merely fell into that deep of a rabbit hole it appeared never-ending. While Remus was still reeling from her declaration of affection—no, love Hermione had called it, and the word kept snagging his blasted heart over and over and over, never mind how gob-smacking the notion—here she was, a dozen pieces of parchment, one open ink pot, and two quills - one in hand and the other securing her hair in a bun - as she tried to devise the steps to save the world. Remus had arrived, after careful consideration, at the conclusion that he may be somewhat dim or that James' late bouts of stupidity were catching. And though he preferred to avoid drowning at uncharted seas or losing his way in a mad world, he had no such objections as to doing both in her, losing himself in her assuredness, drowning in the tilt of her smile.

If only his mind would allow it. Because thoughts, those thoughts, they refused to cease. They nibbled at him, chewing at the corners of his logic, eating away any semblance of peace. Because perhaps, they whispered, perhaps it fell to him to be the grounded one, realistic in a harsher, more self-sacrificing manner while Hermione rushed ahead trying to bend the world into the shape of a happy, sheltered haven for Remus John Lupin, a werewolf who had little to his name other than a handful of close friends, his parents, and Amra. He was the king of managed expectations and lowered hopes after all, because how could he not be? His father lived in fear of his lycanthropy being found out, of the same Ministry he had worked for dragging his son to the registration; Amra, however well-intentioned and caring the elf was, had thought him capable of murder; not to mention one of his only friends had almost used him as weapon to commit one. The only one to temper his disillusion was his mother, both soothing and encouraging him at every step, and he loved her dearly, but he would've been crushed by wishful thinking long ago otherwise.

And now he could no longer even be sure of his status as a wizard, as it was contingent on his secret remaining safe, which, given Hermione's knowledge of his condition, he very much doubted. He had heard the tale of how Hagrid had had his wand snapped for raising dangerous beasts, what would the Ministry do when faced instead with a dangerous beast capable of weaving one? It was a lot of bleakness for him to grasp, both the things Hermione had hinted at and the ones concocted by his thoughts as they ran away from him, and it raised the question: were he in Hermione's shoes, wouldn't Remus run as fast and far as he could go away from it? Away from him? His instincts never quite ran on fight-or-flight, mostly on flight-or-overthink-the-matter-to-exhaustion, terrified one slip would be the end of it. It made him a rather lousy Gryffindor, and terrible at standing up to the other Marauders, his disagreement to some of their vicious pranks always manifesting in a delayed fashion, once his brain had managed to overcome the tingling, cold bodily awareness of danger and his rabbiting heart and thoughts had finally settled.

Hermione didn't seem to even entertain flight as a valid option, he had seen, and she wore it beautifully, that defiance, but… Perhaps it fell to him to save her, though not quite as intricately as she set out to do for him. No planning required - words alone, though wielded as knives, would suffice. He ought to tell her that the two of them couldn't be anything more, shouldn't, that her feelings weren't returned, that he was a werewolf, for Circe's sake, and what hopes for a future could there be that weren't already quashed in her time anyway?

The blade would draw blood from both of them, perhaps a tad more so out of him, for all those sentences rang true except for one. And therein lay the matter: they shouldn't be together, he had no hopes for the future, and he loved her, desperately, despite it all. Her feelings weren't merely returned, they were compounded by streaks of longing and yearning, almost a craving, of the likes he'd never felt.

He couldn't rush, so he quietened. Did it make him more monstrous to covet her love, he wondered. Made him more of a beast, fueled by greed, getting his paws on something much too precious for the likes of him, something he'd done nothing to deserve? Or was there some measure of redemption, small as it were, to be found in his longing for it?

Did he care?

It was exhausting, living the way he did. The transformations were horrific, the wolf, abhorrent and shuddersome. And had it been his nature, with no conscience to plague him about it, had its viciousness been all he knew and all he was, there would have been… not contentment, but a sort of passivity born from inevitability: a beast knew not its actions. Yet the softer, conscious parts were there as well: the humanity, he thought, or, more singular still, the things that made him Remus Lupin. The very things he'd made sure never reflected his maker. Where Greyback was feral, Remus was poised, spite and kindness diametrically opposed, one the perfect foil to the other. He'd crafted it himself, his essence. And it was perhaps that fact that engendered the debate, one that arose as he aged, as he slowly, painfully became cognizant of what his condition meant: were these soft parts a mask? A cloak he'd wrapped around himself to deceive others, a veritable sheep's clothing to draw people closer to a wolf?

He closed his eyes. If so, what for? So as to give them a false sense of security and turn them into creatures, too? Or something less heinous, more mellow and melancholy, along the lines of loneliness, mayhap? Had his personality - his tastes and passions - always been a falsehood or, by creating them, were they his?

It was a constant companion, this conflict. Ongoing inside his mind, still waters during the day, hidden underneath the surface of normalcy, so much so that he could almost believe–but then the mantle of night would force it to rear its ugly head, turning the water like a predator on the hunt, and sleep would elude him. In his grimmest, most gruesome moments, the answer to that last question tended like a pendulum towards the former.

Remus Lupin: the fraud. Smokescreen and disguise to a dangerous monster.

And yet.

Couldn't he, for once, not think? Or, at least, not take into account any of it, his accursed existence and its continued secrecy, the hundreds of pitfalls that ran constantly through his mind, and instead make a decision based on freedom? If he could choose for himself, if fate could allow it just one time, pivotal as though it may be…

He let out a sigh, feeling his skin, rib cage, and muscles weigh against his lungs like a heavy blanket. Was the die truly cast? He'd borne the burden of lycanthropy - not graciously, he thought, but resignedly. Yet to shoulder the responsibility of protecting others from his non-lethal parts, too, was too much.

And any distance he'd imposed, Hermione had traversed, any wall put on she had cracked, any chink she'd found. In the end, every defence he had surrounded himself with had crumbled, except for the very last one. His heart, which, he found, he'd surrendered to her himself, offering her the spoils gladly, entrusting every little piece to her gentle care. She just didn't know it yet.

That day, when she had told him of her feelings, Remus hadn't even gotten the chance to say the words back. At first, he hadn't mustered the nerve to admit them due to the niggling, lingering fear that it was all a dream. That he would wake up at any moment to the reality of her absence, wake up to a world to which she had yet to be born. A world made all the duller and darker for it.

Or, worse still, for dread that the dream would transmute, mangling into a gnarly, yellow-tinted nightmare. His did, at times. It wasn't hard to picture, the way Hermione's lips would twist into a mockery of a smile. She'd scoff at the idea that he was deserving of anything more than scraps of friendliness, unwittingly given by those who either didn't know what he was or couldn't comprehend it fully if they did. He would wake up in a cold sweat, repeating to himself that no! It wasn't her, not really…

But reality asserted itself every second she had stayed enveloped in his arms, drawing beautiful, invisible patterns over his shirt, the sweetness of her scent so close and the etching of her smile mirrored on his face inuring him to the cool hardness of the floor they were sat on. All of it proof that it could never be a dream because he had dreamt of her before - pleasant, inane little things - and his imagination's conjurings had proved too feeble and far too inept at recreating everything that made her.

So it was real. She was there, and knew, really knew, precisely who and what he was and was still every bit determined to love him. And he needed no further assurance that she would do so to the best of her ability and Remus had known her long enough to learn that her abilities were nothing short of extraordinary. But, at that moment, when his lips and mouth and throat had settled into working together to say the most meaningful three words he could ever utter, she had been the one to speak first. And not only speak but claim she would save even more of him than she already had, to a degree that far outweighed any previous knowledge he possessed of love. Because risking one's life for a loved one was an immense gesture, but to endanger time continuity itself? Not just her life, but any traces of her existence in the first place, her reality in its entirety?

It was immeasurable and insane and dizzying and could he really—If it was true, could he, any version of him, really be deserving of it?

Remus had fought a losing battle to process things since then, trying to wrap his head around her short and vague recount of what his future would hold. It sounded unthinkable yet not - if he thought about it, Remus could recall with perfect clarity his long string of loss. Early on, too much so, he'd been robbed of the belief that his parents could always protect him, that the monsters that dwelled at night could be driven away by hiding under the blankets and leaving a switched-on nightlight. His naivety - that had been bitten out of his skin and left to fester, bringing misery henceforward: a childhood no longer carefree, a body and mind he couldn't control, not always, interminable suffering. His actions one night a month weren't his, but the overwhelming fear and disgust over any possible consequences were. If life had seemed fit to rid him of all of that thus far, why not the people he loved, too? They were the only things left to take.

And such endeavour - that of thinking, of comprehending her words and the weight of her offer - was made so much more difficult by the kisses she had bestowed upon him then. They rendered him completely daft, his mind devoid of thoughts. Hermione didn't seem nearly as affected, merely a tad mischievous and daring in between being aflutter with theory and planning and researching and just as Remus became worried he would fail half his classes due to his lack of attention concerning anything not half as important as her (even his friends had claimed he was giving far more credence to the nickname Moony as of late), Hermione would gather him into a hug, care for their plants, and talk as though his sombre future had been averted already.

And he would have told her, he thought, declared the nature and depth of his feelings for her then and there, except he couldn't. Not as such, not without knowing whether to send her away instead.

"She told me she loves me." The words tumbled out of his mouth in a single breath. It was the first he'd spoken of them and it felt somehow like confessing a secret out loud in a large room just as the crowd around had hushed.

"Sabnar The Tall did?"

Remus froze and his head snapped up. "What?"

"I've been reading the feats of Sabnar The Tall to you for the past five minutes!" Lily whisper-shouted, lowering the History of Magic book to the table they were occupying, her head tilted to the side. "So unless you've time-travelled, that was an odd segue."

"No!" The denial came out far too emphatic, but then again, so was the gelid dread swirling in his stomach at those two words being so carefully thrown out. Madam Pince narrowed his gaze at him from her spot behind the circulation counter, a pinch to her lips. There went his borrowing privileges.

"Of course not," Lily readily agreed, "The Giant War she fought in has been over for more than five centuries and she'd sooner club you over the head than tell you she loves you." Her gaze turned concerned. "I was just pulling your leg, you're never this distracted."

The two hadn't been patrolling this time, but rather in the middle of a study session, something his other best friends just 'didn't do'. Turns out he wasn't that great a study partner either, his brain refusing to focus. "Sorry… I've got some stuff on my mind." It was one way to describe it, albeit a poor one.

"I noticed." Lily returned his contrite smile with an amused one. "But that's wonderful news, Remus. Isn't it?"

"It is," It was too hasty an answer, but it felt…right that he could share it, that someone could get excited for him about that. His cheeks heated even though he tried to keep a full smile from blooming. Then he sobered. This would be wonderful had he been just a wizard, had she been just a witch, but wasn't it belittling to their situation to treat it as such? He couldn't tell. What she was offering… "I believe she would spare me all the heartache and suffering in the world." And therein lay another matter: could she? Was it even feasible to alter time on such a scale? Was he destined to suffer regardless, except with prior warning?

"It would be brilliant, wouldn't it? Like having a personal guardian angel." Lily chose not to comment on his mercurial moods, and Remus was grateful for it. "I think it a bit far-fetched, truly. How could one person manage it? But that she would be willing to try and do all that she can… I say she passes muster."

Her smile was rather on the cheeky side, and a twinge of guilt pulled at his chest. This was Lily. The light-heartedness of the conversation was shrouded by so many secrets… Remus could never share with her his true worries - the lycanthropy, for one, Hermione's realm of possibility to protect him going quite a way beyond what was usually conceivable for another. The entire thing threatened to sour on the tip of his tongue like a bad-flavored Bertie Botts Bean, bitten back but just barely. But then, there was a reason for his secrecy, several in fact. No longer only his selfish wishes, but Hermione's safety. Any word of her time traveling eventually falling in the wrong hands could prove deadly. So he pushed the guilt aside and allowed his friend's words to settle his mind somewhat. 'Passing muster' indeed... Remus let out a small chuckle. "I'll let her know she's earned the Lily Evans' seal of approval."

His friend tipped her nose up in the air and shot him a condescending look. It was eerily akin to the one that lived on Narcissa Black's face, though the playful grin she was failing to suppress belied its haughtiness. "Ensure that you do."

He shook his head, sagging against the back of the library chair, a sliver of hope warming his heart. Not everything could be fire and brimstone, he pondered. Or, at least, not everything should.

It was rather anticlimactic, the way it actually happened. The scenarios he had built up and the words themselves had held such power in his mind.

Yet 'I love you' sounded humble on his lips, the atmosphere lacked solemnity, even the weather outside was quite tame. There was no storm, no howling winds, no crackling tension to cut through - just the languid chirrup of fieldfares and redwings filtering through the windows and the drowsiness of a Friday afternoon softening his confession.

The corner of Hermione's mouth curled, forming an unhurried half-smile, a glint of something in her eyes. "I suspected so when you didn't run away, Remus. But I'm happy to hear it all the same."

Their kisses were languid, too, spelling I love you's back and forth.

There was no storm, no howling winds, no crackling tension… Love wasn't about power, he found. Love was about finding home.

It was perfect.

A/N:

Uh...hi?

I know, I know, it's been nearly 3 years since I've, for all intents and purposes, fell off the face of the earth, but I'm alive! Life just got really heavy for a really long while and I simply couldn't write anymore. Truth is, I wasn't happy enough to manage it. A lot of shitty things happened and depression and anxiety followed them like a specter. I'm not sure how many of you will still be there, if any at all, but I've never forgotten all the support you've given me as I wrote this story and Tie Your Heart as well.

And even with everything that was going on in RL all this time, the one thing I kept on doing was reading fanfiction. Mind, this is not me saying it cured me or anything equally stupid because we all know that's not how it works (and I'm not really cured of anything, just in a much better place now), but isn't it amazing how a story can transport you, even for a moment or two (or a thousand), to a whole new place? A setting in which your troubles don't exist or, if they do, they are manageable, where everything always has a way of working out. Fanfiction is that for me: a respite. And that's why I'm back here, to provide that respite or at the very least some entertainment to you all.

I hope you can forgive my absence, it wasn't deliberate.

As for updates, I won't be able to maintain the weekly writing rhythm I was keeping before, but I'll update Falling Leaves once a month till it's finished (there's still a while to go, and to think this was meant to be a one-shot!) then move onto Tie Your Heart until that one is completed as well.

A full-hearted thank you to all of you who, even for moment, have joined me for this ride.

You guys are awesome :)