NOTE

WARNING for a graphic traumatic nightmare involving disturbing imagery of rape, pregnancy, birth, and cannibalism. I've italicised it so it can be easily skipped. Additional warning for brief suicidal thoughts.

99. Confession

I woke early with a crick in my neck, and found the sofa empty. I picked up my aching body from where I'd slept unnaturally on the floor, and wandered into the kitchen in search of Remus. The table remained covered in his papers, but he was not there.

I found him in his bed, half-shrouded in blankets, Pouncer curled up by his stockinged feet. He was sleeping deeply, but his face wore no expression of warmth or peace.

I went downstairs and made a pot of tea, then carried it up with two mugs and sat in the chair by his bed. His eyes opened once, prompted perhaps by the scent of the steam. But they closed just as quickly.

I was quite sure he was awake now, but he lay there silently with his eyes closed, clearly wishing to be believed asleep. I granted his wish and sat there in silence, lacking the will even to pour myself a mug once the tea had steeped.

Slowly the pot went cold, and it was as freezing as the ice on the trees outside when the fire rushed downstairs, the unmistakable sound of the floo.

Remus opened his eyes again when he heard it, but he didn't speak or move.

Leaving him in bed, I descended the stairs once again.

It was Poppy and the old, sharp-faced wizard who had come before, making their way down the narrow hallway from the sitting room. I stared at them from the foot of the stairs, and they looked back.

Poppy's face was taut with exhaustion, and I wondered how the past days had treated her. She'd likely been at St. Mungo's, caring for the recovering victims of the creatures. I had questions for her, but the icy presence of the Ministry supervisor kept them trapped in my mouth, unspoken. Her eyes widened slightly when she saw me, and her shoulders seemed to sink, as though I had done something to disappoint her.

My hair, of course.

"You want to be mindful of how you present yourself to the Wizengamot," she said. The man cleared his throat. A flash of anger crossed Poppy's face, but she discontinued that topic of conversation. "Come into the kitchen. I'll look you over there."

I sat under the glow of the lamps while Poppy took potions from her bag and drew her wand. She prepared the eyedrops in a small pipette, and when she came near me she noticed the little scar.

"This one's new," she observed, eyebrows furrowed.

"We need dreamless sleep," I said, by way of explanation. I didn't elaborate, but after a moment of significant eye contact I knew she understood.

She nodded. "I will put in a request."

I tilted my head back while she put the drops in my eye, and blinked until the itch subsided.

The promise of dreamless sleep gave me something to cling to. But there was still the danger that they would bring us weak doses, and I wanted it to be powerful. To be sure that Remus wouldn't have any more nightmares. I knew it was unlikely, but if they would agree to bring the ingredients instead, I could brew it myself and ensure it was strong. Besides that, it would give me something to do.

"Would you ask them to bring the ingredients?"

Poppy put away the eyedropper. "I will ask."

I took the potions she handed me, which I assumed were specifically brewed to speed along my internal healing. I didn't recognise them, but asked no questions. I only wondered with an aching in my chest if Severus had been the one to brew them.

"Do you have proper food, and enough of it?" Poppy asked, once her bag was packed again.

I nodded.

While examining our provisions, she caught sight of the broken mug, its pieces still sitting in the corner on a piece of parchment.

She fixed it with a simple flick and a murmured "Reparo." The sight of magic set my hand hungering for my wand.

Poppy picked up the mug. Its beautiful blue glaze looked like waves. I put it back on the shelf where it belonged.

"Have you been doing the exercises?"

"Yes."

"Good. The pain potions shouldn't be needed past tomorrow, but I'll leave you more in case. Any bleeding?"

"Only spots."

"That's good. Is Remus upstairs?"

I stood in the upper hallway while Poppy and the man from the Ministry went into Remus's room. There was no sound from within, and when they emerged after a minute, Poppy looked grave.

"Stay near him today," she said to me, lowering her voice.

I nodded, and stared at the door as the man closed it. I felt a surge of hatred towards him, the only person stopping me from getting information about the outside world. Poppy might easily have stunned him for a few minutes so we could speak openly, but the consequences would have been harsh.

"I made him a poultice," I told her. "For his hip. But I don't think it helped."

Poppy's stillness made her seem very old. "There are some things even magic can't heal. I can promise that he'll have the Wolfsbane, regardless of the circumstances."

I tried to swallow and found that I couldn't from the dryness of my throat. The wolfsbane treatment would begin on the sixteenth, the day after his trial. An image flashed in my mind, of a dirty flask handed between the bars of a windowless stone cell. My heart thumped with terror.

"Finished?" said the man.

"Yes," Poppy said.

I followed them down to the sitting room, where the man pulled a vial of floo powder from his robes. He was moments from tossing it into the fire when the toy train caught my eye, its separately wrapped carriages sitting on the floor by the sofa. "Wait!"

The wizard turned and regarded me with a deep frown.

"Remus wants Teddy to have this."

"What is it?" the wizard demanded, as though we were staring at a dangerous magical creature, not an innocently wrapped Christmas present.

I didn't even want to answer, I resented him so. But I knew I had to, or my request would be flatly denied. "A wooden train. A toy."

He went to it and inspected it with his wand, checking for suspicious magical properties. It occurred to me that he could destroy it on a whim. Reduce it to cinders, and neither Poppy nor I would be able to stop him.

I stood there full of tension, until he finally pocketed his wand. "Very well," he said, his tone mildly annoyed.

I felt Poppy's body relax as well. The man stood aside and Poppy put a charm on her bag so that the lovingly wrapped carriages could fit inside. I helped her, and we were so very close together that the silence felt deafening. I desperately wanted to ask her if Teddy had returned from Belgium, but I held my tongue.

"Poppy," I said, as she did up the clasps on her bag. "Will you see if they would bring some chocolate, too?"

Her eyes looked into mine, and she nodded her head.

The man snapped his fingers and threw the floo powder into the fireplace. Poppy stepped in with him without another word. I allowed myself a hot glare at the wizard before flames swelled up and erased them from sight.

Loneliness washed over me like a wave on a barren shore.

The train being gone left a hole in me. It was as though I had given up our last solid proof of hope. And even though Remus and I had agreed to hand it over the next time someone came, I felt like I'd done something wrong by doing so.

Escaping the cold stillness, I climbed the stairs again and went into Remus's room.

But the feeling was not eased very much by being close to him.

His eyes opened slightly when I sat next to him, but there was no life in them. Just narrow windows to the tragic scene of his darkness eating him whole.

I reached out and held his hand under the warm blankets. "Poppy took the train. She'll make sure Teddy gets it."

But he didn't respond, and gave no sign of having heard me. He only closed his eyes again.

I lit the candle on the bedside table, hoping the warm light and the flickering might ease his depression. But I knew from experience that there was no cure. It was difficult if not impossible to pull oneself out of such a state, let alone another person–and I had never seen Remus looking this bad before. Not ever.

It was an awfully empty and quiet day.

I stayed with him dutifully, and would have been even less at ease in any other part of the house. I was not immune to his hopelessness, and after a time it had pervaded me also. The stagnance of the place, the oppressiveness of the city outside, and the drear of the season all made my body more miserable than it was already.

The few times he did open his eyes, he did nothing but stare at the scar on my cheek, and I knew he was guilty beyond expression.

I left him only once, to make a little food late in the day, and more tea. I offered him some but he wouldn't respond to me, and I knew that to expect him to eat would have been too far-fetched.

His words from the night before echoed in my mind, haunting me with the increasingly real possibility of Azkaban.

In the late evening Remus fell asleep again, and stayed asleep, his breath shallow and even.

I went downstairs, fed Pouncer, and went through Poppy's exercises by the fire.

With my whole heart I prayed they would send the Dreamless Sleep ingredients. I would go mad if I went on without something to put my mind and hands to, something to distract myself with.

After I had rested on the floor for some time, allowing the sensations in my body to rebalance, I went upstairs again. I checked on Remus and left Pouncer with him in his bed, before going to my own room and taking a sleeping potion, drifting from the grey light into darkness.

I was lying on the moth-eaten rug again, legs pulled apart, Rowle buried inside me like a sword to the hilt.

This time I was the one stripped of my skin, my steaming blood flooding the long valleys of muscle between my ribs. The blood was expanding beneath my raw vertebrae, just as Lucius's blood had spread over the flagstones.

I was a horrific creature out of my own worst nightmares, but Rowle was still thrusting into me, not seeming to care that I was dead, already starting to rot.

A fat black fly landed in the molten crater of my eye socket.

He came, spurting ropes of thick hot seed inside of me, and my torn belly instantly began to swell. He slumped on me, crushingly heavy, like a beast. I knew he was dead. Slowly he dissolved into more blood, leaving my shredded body exposed to the cold black air.

The room was completely silent. No wheezing sound of tormented breath. No expansion in my lungs. Just two deflated fistfuls of lumpy matter sticking to my ribs.

My belly was moving.

Though Rowle had disappeared he had left something of himself inside me, and I wanted it out.

I could feel it wriggling, and tiny claws piercing through the fragile lining of my womb.

I looked down at my arm, skeletal, muscles exposed and dripping blue poison.

My hand still worked. I watched the sinews straining as I stretched the bones of my fingers apart. Then I moved my hand between my legs and reached up inside.

It should have hurt to put my hand up there. But it was just a gaping hole of blood and weak, torn muscle, hanging from my inner walls like pumpkin guts. I reached further, up past my wrist now, and my fingers probed the silk of myself as my belly expanded.

I gripped onto something, and the claws in my womb became sharper. I pulled, paying no mind to the ripping inside; as though whatever was in there was trying to get purchase, begging not to be removed from the heat of its unwilling mother.

I looked between my legs at the long rope of black fur, and continued to pull until the body of a small kitten emerged. It was slippery in my hands, mewling and shivering and matted with blood. Its eyes were still closed, but its claws were outstretched and scratching blindly.

My ears began to buzz, and between my kneecaps a tall dining table grew, Fenrir Greyback seated at its head. His yellow eyes glinted down at the kitten.

'The perfect little thing to complete my table.'

The sound of sharpening knives caught my attention, and I saw Macnair at Greyback's right hand, swathed in black fabric, no part of him visible as he deftly swiped two blades together.

There was a hand dangling over the edge of the high table. It was Severus's hand, awfully pale, almost grey. A single drop of crimson blood ran down his ring finger and dripped onto the floor.

The kitten purred and flung itself out of my grip, running across the blood-soaked rug towards the table. Greyback scooped it up in one hand and tickled the white fur on its belly with long jagged fingernails.

The kitten writhed and yowled in fear. The whole room vibrated, and I felt my bones being jostled from their joints. I did nothing but watch as Greyback lifted the kitten to his face and opened his blood-stained mouth.

Arms surrounded me in the darkness, a hand gripping my shoulder and shaking desperately as I gagged for air.

My body convulsed, squeezing tighter and tighter. Only after an aeon of seizing, my legs kicking like those of one being strangled, did I manage to pull in a ragged breath. My eyes opened, my vision throbbing in time with my panicked heart.

I saw the wide ribbon of light on the floor, and the furry figure standing silhouetted in the doorway. I screamed, my throat raw and hoarse, and hid my face in Remus's warm shoulder.

I clawed at his back, my body quivering, the images possessing me, my inner pain reignited by the nightmare. I was never going to escape this body.

"Kill me," I whispered mindlessly, my eyes pouring tears into his shirt. "Please."

He held me tighter.

I looked up again and saw that the figure in the doorway was only Pouncer, not the kitten from my dream.

My hand began to snake between my legs, under my trousers, needing assurance that this was real–that the world of horror my mind had built from the horrors of reality hadn't come true.

"What are you doing?" Remus said, alarmed.

But I didn't stop, feeling the stiff curls of my pubic hair, pushing my fingertips against my pelvic floor, sinking a finger inside myself. I cried out through clenched teeth, but was relieved to find that I wasn't just a gaping hole of nothingness down there.

Remus gently coaxed my arm away and pulled me against his chest again, his hands rubbing circles into my back. "You were screaming," he whispered shakily.

I sobbed weakly and he rocked me back and forth.

"It felt so real…"

I was drenched in sweat, and I began to shiver, my teeth chattering.

"I n-need– a m-mirror–"

Whether from adrenalin or intense effort I didn't know, but Remus was able to pick me up, and carried me through the shadows into the bathroom. He held me up as he turned on the lamp, and I stared at my face in the mirror–my intact face, the skin smooth, the eyes unmelted, the only disturbance being the red shadows caused by the pulsing of the flame.

He lowered me to the toilet and left me there for a moment, his footsteps hurrying into the other room and back. He brought one of the mugs I'd carried up for tea, filled it with water, and helped me to drink.

I was still shivering, and the movement seemed only to become more uncontrollable and visceral with each passing moment.

"Let me run you a warm bath."

I shook my head. "Sh-shower."

I needed the feeling of the water striking my skin, to feel the filth running off of me, rather than pooling around me and seeping back into my pores.

Keeping one steadying hand on my arm, he reached over to turn on the water. The hiss of it, and the steam, made me shiver harder.

He looked down at me and I saw his face clearly for the first time, harrowed and drained in the throbbing lamplight. "I'll…" he swallowed. "I'll leave."

"No," I whispered, my cold fingers gripping his.

His eyes wandered over my shaking body. "Do you need help?'

I nodded.

His hands held my shoulders. "I won't look, and we'll leave your underthings on, okay?"

I nodded again, and he sighed as his fingers hooked under the wet-through fabric of my shirt. I lifted my arms a bit so he could pull it over my head, and realised with a wave of embarrassment that I hadn't worn a brassiere to bed. I wrapped my arms around myself and hunched in shame, my skin cold and sticky with sweat.

"I'm not looking," Remus assured me, his voice soft. "It's alright."

His hands touched my back and my side as he helped me to stand, and my muscles contracted at the skin-to-skin contact. I shuddered as he untied my trousers and let them fall to the floor. The steam furled out from behind the shower curtain as he pulled it further open.

He held my hand and I wobbled unsteadily, tears running down my face as I stepped into the heat. Then I felt the water streaming down over me and my head emptied.

Remus let go of my hand but remained on the other side of the curtain, speaking quiet, encouraging nothings, his voice sounding distant through the water rushing over my ears. My shivering subsided, the water massaging my scalp so directly now my hair was gone.

I stood there for a minute, then pulled off my knickers and scrubbed myself with soap until my skin felt tight. My head was growing foggy from the heat when Remus asked if I was finished, and I fumbled for the handle to turn the water off.

He was holding out a towel for me when I stepped out, and averted his eyes while I wrapped myself in it. While I dried myself he stepped out again, and returned with a dressing gown for me to put on. It was very soft and as I pulled it over my shoulders I realised I had worn it before. Last January, after I'd incinerated the clothes I had worn to the Malfoy Manor. My hands were too weak to do the tie, and I wept as Remus helped me, pulling the fabric securely over my skin and helping me back to my room.

He pulled the sheets aside while I stood there, but as soon as his hands touched them he recoiled. They were probably still wet from my sweat.

"Let's go to my room," he said.

I let him lead me, feeling frail, and laid down on the dry sheets of his bed. He covered me in the blankets and sat beside me, one of his hands still holding mine, the other resting on my shoulder.

More tears filled my itching eyes. "I'm sorry," I whispered, filled with guilt for waking him up with my screams, needing him to help me through the panic. Begging him to kill me.

He shook his head. "There is nothing to be sorry for."

I'd have said the same to him the previous night, but it felt different now that I was the one reduced to a frail shell, needing saving.

My tears ebbed, my body too exhausted to sustain them. Remus lit the candle by the bed. The base of the flame was blue, the top a pale yellow wavering in the air.

"May I lay down next to you?" Remus said quietly.

I nodded, and he walked around to the other side of the bed and climbed in, easing himself down on top of the blankets. He left space between us, lying on his side and facing me. He rested his hand over my hand, which rested on the ribs beneath my breast. The pressure of his hand was comforting, and I felt my own heartbeat.

His blue eyes watched me, and I calmed.

"Try to go back to sleep," he murmured. "I'll be right here."

Pouncer wandered into the room and hopped onto the bed, purring at our feet.

There were no more words. Just his thumb gently stroking the top of my hand, my knuckles. The room was quiet and safe, and the moment I closed my eyes I was sleeping.

When I woke in the morning his arm was resting across my waist. I had curled in closer to him in the night, and my nose was pressed against his shirt, my knee touching his thigh.

He was so still and his breathing so quiet that I couldn't tell if he was awake or asleep. All I knew was that I didn't want to leave.

So I stayed still, soaking in his warmth.

Eventually his wrist twitched, and his breathing changed slightly. There was a long stillness, and then he whispered, "Morning."

He must have known from my heartbeat that I was awake. I didn't answer back, only shifted a little and held onto him more. There was no shame in it, no sense of disloyalty. There was nothing sexual about it. I just needed to hold him, and to be held. And he obliged.

There was silence for a while, his hand pressed against my back through the dressing gown, which was warm from sleep. "You had another dream in the night," he said. "But you didn't wake fully."

"I don't remember," I murmured. My voice was hoarse and a bit sore. The screaming flooded back, the panic, the shower and how helpless and needy I had been. "I'm sorry," I whispered against his collarbone.

"And I'm sorry for yesterday," he said. "I couldn't… manage."

"I wasn't upset. I understood."

We fell silent again. It was snowing more today than it had done yet, a cold draft oozing in thinly from the window, the air full of white snowflakes.

Today was the thirteenth of December. We had today and the next day. Then Remus would be taken.

The thought made me tremble and as I held him I felt myself retreat into numbness and silence again, out of necessity. After the nightmare, the many sides of reality–past, present, and fears of the future–were too much to hold in myself. I stepped aside as shock reentered me and made me distant.

We stayed there together, and may well have remained in bed all day if the floo hadn't sounded downstairs.

Remus tensed, and held me slightly closer to him. But there was no noise on the stairs, nobody coming to take him away early. The only sound was of faint footsteps downstairs, and the floo being activated a second time. Then, quiet. A clock ticking.

Curiosity pulled me from the warm blankets, and I went downstairs shivering in Sirius's dressing gown.

Sitting at the end of the kitchen table was a hemp sack. Within were tins and bottles and small pouches. I set them out one by one and opened them, inspecting with my eyes as my sense of smell was still inadequate. Each ingredient was here, and there was enough for a healthy cauldronful.

At the bottom of the bag there sat a bar of dark chocolate with black and gold wrapping paper. I took it out and quickly hid it in the back of a drawer.

I remembered there being some cauldrons we had stored in the cellar. I descended the wooden steps through the small blue door and found a heavy copper cauldron of the proper size. I freed it from a shroud of spiderwebs and carried it up the stairs, my heart thrumming from effort by the time I set it in a clear space on the table.

Remus had come to stand in the doorway, and his eyebrows lifted when he saw the ingredients. "What's this for?"

Once again it was difficult for me to speak. I had to swallow and take a deep breath before I could manage the words. "Dreamless Sleep."

He nodded his head, and there seemed to be some measure of relief in his eyes. "That's good."

I frowned as the lack of my wand necessitated some improvisation, and began hunting through the kitchen for something to use as a stirring rod, as well as a burner and a way to prop up the cauldron.

Remus meanwhile collected all his papers, putting them into a stack and removing them to the other room so there was more space.

I managed to set up the cauldron, my mind distracted from everything by the need to problem-solve. Remus helped to light the fire under it, and I poured in water to begin the boiling, bringing a chopping board and the sharpest knife to the table.

"Can I help?" Remus asked.

I nodded, and showed him how to grind the lavender with the mortar and pestle. He followed my technique, and I watched for a moment and nodded approval before rinsing and chopping the valerian roots. I stopped him once the lavender was nothing more than a fine powder, and measured out four thimblefuls, tapping them into the gurgling cauldron and lowering the heat a bit.

I let him take over the chopping, and he took great care to dice the roots to the same size that I had done. I stirred for a minute, then moved on to crushing the Sopophorous Beans.

"You don't need instructions?" Remus asked, after a few minutes of quiet.

I shook my head.

"Did Severus teach you? More than the usual, I mean."

He asked the question as though making a passing remark on the snow, trying to shield its hidden implications.

"I took over his post."

Remus looked surprised. "You did?"

"Only for two months. It doesn't count, really."

"Of course it counts."

I continued to crush the beans, sucking up the juice with a small pipette.

"Wilma, that is very impressive. You must be the youngest professor in Hogwarts history."

I shook my head. "Neville."

There was a moment of tense silence.

"Well… did you enjoy it?"

Remus still didn't know that I had ever been pregnant with Severus's child, and most of the joy and purpose which might have come from teaching had been rather dampened by that unwanted circumstance. But I wasn't going to tell him now, and decided to simply nod my head.

We fell into silence and continued working. A heaviness of unsaid things sagged between us. It was as though Severus was seated right there in the chair across the table, his dark eyes flicking between us suspiciously.

Remus continued preparing the ingredients, following my silent demonstrations, while I monitored the stirring and the clock.

After the tough Moly roots were added, the cauldron had to sit for an hour. Remus prepared tea and an early lunch while I went upstairs to take the day's pain potion and dress in proper clothes.

After another hour we finished the final steps. Normally the potion would be stored immediately in vials. The only vials we had were those we had emptied in the past days. After cleaning them we filled them with the purple potion and replaced the corks. The rest we poured into a wide glass jug, which we stored in the cool, dark potions cabinet.

Time was slipping away, and Remus confined himself to the sitting room, where he continued to write in front of the fire. I cleaned up the table and the cauldron. Pouncer wandered into the kitchen and I gave him his saucer of chicken and some milk, which he seemed to like very much. After he had eaten he sat on the table and purred while I pet him, running my fingers through his fur from his ears to his tail.

"Wilma!"

Remus's voice broke through the quiet moment, and its rising tone made my heart palpitate.

I left Pouncer and hurried into the other room. Remus was standing at the window and I went to join him. His gaze was fixed outside, and when I followed it my heart dropped through my stomach.

I pressed my hand to the window, the cold glass freezing my fingertips and the Ministry's wards sending a low, threatening vibration through my bones. But I paid it no mind.

Severus was standing in the street, his black muggle clothes like a sharp hole cut out of the snow. He was staring just to the side of the window, and I knew he was seeing the cold brick facades of No. 11 and No. 13, our residence thoroughly hidden even to his knowing eye.

Cold snow blew against his face. His eyes were pure volcanic stone in the limited light, and intensely focused; as though he might bring down the wards by sheer will alone.

My Occlumency room appeared in my mind as though it were right before my eyes. I threw the door open wide, begging him to enter somehow. But nothing could come or go, the resistance of the wards giving me a headache as my untrained mind battered against them.

Desperate to give him some sign that whatever path of reasoning had led him to this cobbled street was right, I knocked on the glass of the window. I hadn't expected it to have any effect, but apparently his senses were searching so desperately for some hint, some clue, that he was able to hear it. His face turned in the direction of the sound, but his eyes didn't land directly upon me.

I pressed both hands to the cold glass, my quick breath fogging it so I could barely see him. I rubbed my sleeve against it and twin streams of tears flowed from my eyes.

He stood incredibly still, seemingly waiting for another sign. I knocked again, and it was clear that he heard from the slight tensing of his jaw, his small step forward. His eyes now searched around the small space in the vicinity of the sound, but they never landed on my own in the longed-for illusion of eye contact.

We might as well have been standing in different realities, trying in vain to reach each other across a boundary that had already been written in permanent fire, unable to be crossed or undone.

He stood there a minute longer, his face a tight rictus of hidden agony. I felt each second like a dagger in my heart. Then he turned and I watched him go, soft sobs leaving me as his form became grey, then disappeared entirely into the snow.

My hands weakened and slid down the glass with low, miserable squeaks. Slowly I came back to the room, and realised that Remus had left. I hadn't even sensed it when he'd gone.

Wiping my tears away, I looked out the window again until I couldn't bear the emptiness anymore.

I found Remus sitting in the kitchen. The last minutes had shattered my heart so completely that I would have been willing to cast them off as a surreal daydream. But Remus's face was drawn in such thin grey lines that I was unable to dismiss them as such.

He looked up at me, his eyes full of apology. When he spoke there was something loose in his voice. Unsteady. "You deserved privacy."

I stood there, paralysed by the need to explain myself. All the unspoken things were threatening to bubble up through the floor and flood the house.

He sat there so quietly, his body nonthreatening, his eyes looking between mine, silently begging me to speak. But I didn't know where to begin, and like a coward I turned and fled to my room.

I went through Poppy's exercises with a vengeance. I would walk steadily into my trial, and I would be strong when I did. I went through the list twice and then did more core exercises, things Fred and George would do through the summer to prepare for Quidditch season.

The rug burned into my vertebrae but I gritted my teeth and bore it, obsessed with reclaiming even the smallest particle of control.

I was quite sure my nightmare had been brought on by the sensations woken up during physical therapy. Now with the safety net of the dreamless sleep I forced my body further without fear of the consequences.

The natural ones caught up to me soon enough. My stomach cramped and ached, sweat sprang out across my forehead, and my bones felt weak. I knew I'd pushed myself too hard, and I went shakily to the loo, leaning against the sink and running my wrists under the cold water until I felt less nauseous.

A pervasive anxiety forced me down the stairs. Remus was seated on the sofa, writing. He seemed to know what had happened, and when he saw the pallor of my expression he sat me down and brought me water and chicken to eat. In my sensitive state, the sight of the meat and the thought that it had once been the body of a living thing sickened me. I looked away, struggling to breathe.

"I know," Remus said, his voice firm. "But you need it."

He had been forced to eat rodents, and worse. I mechanically took the plate and pierced a piece of chicken with my fork, washing it down with a stretching gulp of water.

He lingered there and watched me, his gaze forcing me to continue until the pressure in my head had eased, and I felt less faint.

"You can't push yourself like that," he said, more softly than before.

I had been afraid to come downstairs again. But I could feel from his presence that whatever pain he'd felt earlier, he did not blame me for it.

The evening passed like paper burning.

We both sat on the sofa, Remus hunched over the small table at one end, still writing, while I curled up in the corner with Pouncer purring in my lap. The kneazle's weight was stabilising, but there was still a tension within me. I yearned to go to the window, but I knew Severus would not be there. When he turned his back, it was final.

I watched Remus as he wrote, the movements of the small bones in his wrist and hand, the sharp focus in his face as he put down his memories.

The images from the pensieve passed over me like wind over a hill, and I was reminded of a question I'd buried.

"How did you know Magnus?"

He paused in his writing and let out a heavy, quiet breath. He glanced up at me, then away again before I could read the messages in his eyes.

"I was a spy in Greyback's army during the first war. After I left school."

"I never knew that," I said quietly, studying him.

There were many things we didn't know about each other.

Out of the blue I remembered the bar of chocolate I'd hidden that morning, and thought that now was the appropriate time to give it to him. I shifted my hips slightly and Pouncer jumped off, leaving me free to go to the kitchen.

I returned, holding it behind my back, suddenly bashful about the gift.

He lifted an eyebrow when he noticed me standing there awkwardly. "What have you got there?"

I stepped closer and held it out to him. He stared down at it and it suddenly seemed silly. Why would he want chocolate, of all things? "I don't know if it's too rich…"

He shook his head. Before I knew it he had stood up and carefully brought me into a gentle hug, loose enough that I could easily pull away. But I didn't. His hands slowly spread across my back, and I wrapped my arms around him in return, pressing my ear against his heart.

He let me go after a minute, and I watched as he unwrapped the chocolate, the firelight glinting off the gold stripes on the paper. A quiet snap sounded as he broke off a corner, and slipped it into his mouth. He stood there very quietly for a minute, savouring it, a faraway look on his face.

When he next looked down at me there seemed to be a bit more light in his eyes. Nostalgia, perhaps. Or purely a sense of comfort. He extended the chocolate towards me in a silent offer. I took a little piece and let it melt over my tongue as he had done, staring at the fire. The smoothness filled my mouth, but I couldn't taste it.

He sank down onto the sofa again and I joined him, both of us sitting quietly for a while. He'd stopped writing, and the ink and quill no longer seemed to have any power over him.

The snow was even worse now, a fluttering greyness outside the window, making it impossible to tell whether the lights across the street were lit. We were all alone.

"I'm tired," he confessed, at length.

I went to the kitchen and took two vials of dreamless sleep from the cupboard. I was ready for bed too, and though I knew I ran the risk of blocking out possible visions, I doubted I would be capable of having any in my present state. Even if I had been capable, it wouldn't have been worth the risk of more nightmares.

I handed one to Remus, and we climbed the stairs, Pouncer bounding ahead of us.

"Wilma?" Remus said, when we parted ways on the landing.

I turned my head, halfway through my bedroom door.

He seemed to struggle in silence for a moment, before speaking very quietly. "You can say no… Would you… Can we sleep together again tonight?"

Need dwelled in his eyes, and though he tried to conceal it I could see it clearly, even in the shadows.

I silently closed my door by way of answering, and followed him into his room.

"Bottoms up," he said, a weak smile on his face. We both drank down the potions, and put the vials on the bedside table. I rubbed my tongue against the roof of my mouth, but again could taste nothing.

Remus climbed into the bed and shifted to the other side, opening the blankets for me. I climbed in and settled down, curled up with my cheek pressed to the pillow. We kept a certain distance between us, but Remus's warmth still radiated through the blankets, and Pouncer jumped up on the bed, filling the mattress with his purrs.

The feeling of the dreamless sleep in my veins took me back to those weeks when I was first pregnant with Severus's child, and would take it every night in his bed as he wrapped his arm around me. I regretted it now, and the silent greyness of the large room made me think about my other regrets, too. All of the ghosts that haunted me.

The potion, already making me drowsy, was a protection against them. Once I was asleep they would be unable to harm me.

The dreamless sleep was a luxury.

There were no luxuries in Azkaban.

A tight ball of fear formed in my throat, and I stared at Remus as his eyelids drooped, letting his presence comfort me.

But in the end, just before I drifted off, I remembered Severus's face in the snow. A pale mask with two pools of profound darkness for eyes. Deep wells that led to the tortured soul at the bottom. And though my sleep was dreamless, it was not quite peaceful.

When I woke my body was heavy with disorientation and disbelief.

It was the fourteenth.

The last day.

Remus had woken before me and made breakfast. His hands shook as he buttered my toast and poured a mug of tea, insisting on doing it for me.

He could only stomach eating a few bites of toast, and then withdrew to the sitting room where he continued to write. I left him alone for the better part of the morning, but eventually my own anxiety led me into the room with him, and I sat on the other end of the sofa, trying to read to quiet my racing mind.

The chocolate was left untouched.

Remus alternated between silent resignation, extreme focus, and spells of staring out the window, in which he failed to hide his anxiety. I was afraid, too. More afraid than I'd allowed myself to be before. Afraid of the outcome of his trial, but also–childishly, perhaps—afraid to be left in that house alone.

After a time he stood up and silently went upstairs. I remained for another hour until I could bear it no longer, and followed him. I could hear his voice from behind Sirius's door. Talking to himself, or seeking the guidance of a close friend. I resisted the temptation to press my ear to the wood, leaving him in privacy.

I went through my exercises, then climbed up to the attic, sneezing as I made my way up the final dusty staircase.

It was cold and silent, like another world. I looked out at the snow, delicate again, the chimney pots, the white smoke rising to the silver sky. I sat against the wall for a while, staring at the pale light stretching across the creaky floorboards from the oval window.

Soon there were footsteps below, and Remus came in, a need for company evident in his eyes, though he tried to disguise it. I beckoned him in, and he came to sit next to me, his hip popping a bit as he lowered himself to the floor.

Curiosity got the better of me and I crawled over to the abandoned furniture and Christmas boxes in the corner. I dragged one of the boxes over to Remus, and we looked through it together. There was a snowglobe with a Hippogriff inside, a Bowtruckle ornament, and a flying broomstick figurine that I remembered Tonks giving to Harry. Father Christmas sat astride it, a patchwork bundle of gifts on his back.

Anger flared up in me.

"Isn't this Harry's house now? Is the Ministry even allowed to keep us here?"

Remus shook his head, shaking the snowglobe and watching the snow falling over the Hippogriff's wings. "I doubt anyone can get past the Ministry right now."

"Was it like this in the first war too?"

He sighed. "The government has never been free of corruption. But since the Marriage Law, I wouldn't dare them to do anything."

I paused, letting my anger ebb, then spoke with more reluctance. "Do you trust Kingsley?"

A dark look crossed his face. "I don't know."

I let the topic go, and opened a shoebox that contained all of the photographs Ginny had taken, that Christmas of my sixth year.

It was haunting to see the dead, still smiling and moving. Sirius making a toast and winking at the camera. Fred and George, preserved in youth, wearing their latest Christmas sweaters (Fred wearing the one with the G, and George wearing the one with the F, of course). Tonks changing her nose from a reindeer's to a polar bear's snout. I found one of myself, my hair still long and brown, a healthy flush in my cheeks as I shot an exasperated look to the side of the lens.

Remus kept looking through the photographs and I picked up the miniature broomstick again. It had a small wind-up wheel near the footrest. I knew it was silly, but I wished to see it fly again. It probably wouldn't work, but I twisted the tiny crank handle anyway.

When it started to vibrate I gasped a little, and watched as it lifted off my palm to fly in a slow circle around the attic room, the red arm of Saint Nicholas waving mechanically.

"There's still magic in there?" I said.

Remus shifted slightly. "There's always magic…" he touched my heart with two fingers. "In here."

I stared at him, not knowing what to make of the gesture. Then the broomstick touched down on my knee, and I used it as an excuse to look away, searching deeper in the box.

We sat there in silence for a while longer. Then the wind picked up and we went back to the fire downstairs, escaping the cold.

The wind moaned against the window that night, snow sticking to the panes.

"I'll be up in a few minutes," Remus said, when I brought two more vials of dreamless sleep from the kitchen. "There's one last thing."

I climbed the stairs with Pouncer, lit the candle, and curled up with him in Remus's bed. Remus followed a long while later, and when he sat down against the headboard beside me I saw the ink stains on his fingers.

"You'll remember," I murmured, taking his hand in mine. "You'll tell them the truth and that will be enough."

Remus nodded, and put his other hand over mine, enveloping me in a small cave of warmth. "It will be all I can do."

I reached for the dreamless sleep, but he squeezed my hand. "Not yet. I want to sit up for a bit."

Pouncer meowed and crawled to the edge of the bed. I stared at my hand disappearing in the safe pocket of Remus's hands, and shifted closer to him, resting my head on his shoulder. He reciprocated, silently looping his arm around my waist, his chin brushing my ear. I wondered distantly if this was wrong. But my heart shooed the notion away. Giving him the comfort he needed could not be wrong.

"I want you to talk to Teddy about me," Remus said after a long silence, his voice fallen quiet. "Tell him everything. Not just the good things."

My chest tightened and I felt the threat of tears behind my eyes. "Don't talk like that."

He sighed, and seemed about to speak again, but didn't. I drew back enough to look at him. His face seemed more lined, his hair more grey than ever. "Remus. Promise me you'll fight for yourself. You won't submit to them."

He gave a halfhearted nod.

"No, promise me."

He returned my gaze steadily. "Okay."

Conviction rose in my heart and I choked back my doubts. "And when the trial is over, promise me you'll come and stand in front of the house so I know you're safe."

"Okay," he whispered again.

The clock downstairs struck nine, in low, gloomy chimes.

This time, when I reached for the dreamless sleep, he didn't protest.

I set our empty vials beside the candle and blew it out.

I didn't bother keeping my distance this time. His hand held mine under the covers with a strength that was almost feverish, and I pressed myself against him, breathing into his chest. He hesitated a moment, then pulled me closer with one arm, his hand cradling my head.

His body soon relaxed, and I stared at the close fabric of his shirt in the darkness until I followed after.

The next morning was torturous.

Remus was already awake when I first stirred, and seemed unwilling to move.

"I should go make breakfast." My voice was quavering, too high. "Do you know what time it is?"

His only response was the tightening of his arms around me. I could hear his heartbeat against his ribs, quick and fearful. He was sweating through his shirt.

I gave in and kept still.

Eventually he whispered sorry, and let me go. I left him in the bed and went downstairs to check the time. It was just before seven, and the letter had said someone from the Ministry would come at eight.

I made breakfast, my hands trembling. Remus came down and stood at the end of the table. I saw now how stressful my own standing habit must have been for him when I first arrived.

He lifted a weak hand when I offered him a plate, staring unsteadily into space. "Not hungry."

"You need some strength," I insisted, my voice more resolute than I felt. "Just a little."

He took two bites and then shook his head again.

I had to leave him, just to slow my own panicking heart. I paced in front of the window in my room.

The stairs creaked, and I heard the shower start.

I considered for the first time that he would need something presentable to wear. I went into Sirius's room and searched through the chest of drawers for something suitable. The thought of the Wizengamot members preparing for the trial, donning their magisterial robes and wigs, made me nauseous.

When Remus stepped out of the bathroom I presented him with black corduroy trousers and a button up shirt.

"Bad luck," he said, with a shaky, empty laugh. And I supposed it was, to go to trial in the clothes of a man who had spent a third of his life in Azkaban.

But he agreed to wear them.

I stepped out while he dressed, and inspected him when he emerged. They must have been the clothes Molly had magically tailored for Sirius after he'd left Azkaban, when his frame was permanently slimmer from emaciation. They fit Remus, except that the trousers were a tad short. I wished I'd thought of it sooner; then I'd have been able to stitch something together. I remembered how my magic had automatically hemmed a pair of trousers back at Hogwarts. Now I had nothing to give.

I chose not to fret over it, giving Remus a nod and hoping he couldn't see through my armour of false confidence.

We went downstairs again, each step like walking through a quagmire.

We sat in the kitchen, nothing left to do but wait.

Pouncer curled up on Remus's lap, seeming to know that it was better for him to stay still, and purred soothingly. I watched as Remus's thin, pale fingers scratched behind the yellow ears, his eyes staring blankly into the corner.

The long hand of the clock moved steadily towards the hour.

Then the rush of flames sounded in the other room, and sharp footsteps crossed to the kitchen doorway. Two men stood there, wearing the red robes of aurors, looking down at us with masks of dispassion for faces. I recognised them immediately as the wizards who had come to the cottage to search my wand and take me away.

Pouncer jumped to the floor and hissed angrily, his hair rising. He made no move to attack, but remained near the steps, a beacon of disapproval.

Remus stood and shakily leaned towards me. I grabbed onto him, afraid he would fall, and he held me fast. It seemed that the feeling of his hands, one on the small of my back, the other between my shoulder blades, would be stored in my skin forever.

In those last moments of panic every wall crumbled away. "I love you," I told him.

His lips pressed softly against my cheek, his breath chillingly warm against my ear.

"That's enough," said one of the men.

And they took his arm and pulled him away. I watched as they searched him and wrapped a magical cord around his wrists behind his back. I followed as they led him to the fireplace and stood there staring, my body freezing cold.

Floo powder was tossed into the flames, they blazed green, and my last glimpse of him was of his shoulder, before the second man blocked him from view and they were all three swept away.

I sat on the sofa holding my chest.

Staring.

At the deteriorated log. The dying embers.

Only when Pouncer came along, brushing his tail against my calves, did I come to my senses again.

I had to get myself under control.

I went through my exercises, pouring all of my energy into them so that afterwards there was little left for fearing, for crying. I wrapped a blanket around myself and took up my lookout post at the window.

My eyes were fixed on the street all day.

A muggle car drove up and the neighbours came outside to greet their holiday visitors.

Children had a snowball fight on the corner.

A man walked his dog around the square.

Remus never showed.

The light faded and the room grew dark and cold. I felt the weight of grief in my body. An old familiar.

I sat up deep into the night.

Around midnight Pouncer began to meow insistently. I made the fire again, swallowed a dose of dreamless sleep, and lay down on the sofa, with Pouncer curled against my belly.

I spent the next day in the same numb haze.

I pushed up the lid that covered the piano keys and played a few discordant notes, resounding through the empty house.

I found the smallest of Sirius's shirts and pinned the legs of some trousers to my height. I picked out a belt to keep them up, and set the clothes aside to be worn the next day.

Pouncer demanded my attention, not for his sake but for my own, and I cuddled with him. He was trying to replace all the broken parts inside of me, forgiving and warm. He didn't succeed in that endeavour, but the smell of his fur was nice when I buried my face in it, leaving tears on the long yellow hairs.

Late in the afternoon I went to the kitchen and set the kettle on to boil, my hands needing the comfort of a simple task.

I found the letter in the tea cabinet, leant against the bottles of dry leaves.

There was no envelope. Three pieces of parchment folded together, my name written on the front.

Wilma

My heart started beating again.

I took it down, the tea forgotten, and sat in the chair at the end of the table.

At first I was certain I'd forgotten how to read. My gaze slid down over the ink markings as though my optical muscles had gone wobbly. I gripped the parchment harder, the edges crinkling slightly. My eyes focused.

My darling.

This letter is a selfish one, written in no attempt to absolve myself, but with a need to confess the contents of my heart.

What I write here I would never have said to you in our last days. I only write it now because I am certain you will never see me again. Please forgive my cowardice, and my forwardness.

I loved you long before the night I first said the words. I deeply regret not saying them sooner, and more often. I was quick to fall for you, and it was my own fears and doubts that held me back from admitting it. It is far from appropriate to tell you so, but I have continued to love you ever since I first knew it, and I have loved you as much as ever these past days.

Though it may soften the blow to believe my current confessions are merely the result of long months of loneliness, and plenty of time to reflect upon my wrongs – though I am tempted to give you any reason to release me from your heart more easily – I cannot bring myself to lie. Your warmth and gentleness towards me since my return has been more than I deserve, yet will remain in my heart as long as I live. I hope the memory of the better part of me might remain in yours. Even if it is confined to the smallest, least-visited nook, where I am sure it belongs.

You should know that when we slept together on the night of the full moon last January, my aversion to it came from more than the fear that I would become violent. There was a 'mating ritual' discussed among Greyback's ranks when I was there as a young man. Though I find the phrase repugnant given the context, I am sure you will understand the implication.

When a werewolf meets their match ('mate' was the word they used), they and their magic take on the scent of said person. It is rare, and with shameful frequency werewolves (the sort that have earned us our ugly reputation) capture innocents and force the bond. But these bonds are unnatural and the scent is only shared afterward, unlike ours. This is how Magnus was able to discover your scent from my wand, and attempt to track you using it. I assume your pain that night came from my not completing the ritual, whose traditional end would have been to turn you after I had transformed. Magnus knew I had not, and considered it an affront to nature.

I knew in the days leading up to that night that to lie with you would be dangerous, as I had already recognised the changes in my scent. I did not know the particulars of what would happen, but the possibility of any pain for you was the reason I tried to avoid it. In hindsight it is obvious that I should have agreed to be with you in the two days prior, but my fear blinded me to sense, and for that I am eternally sorry. It was also wrong of me to keep this a secret from you, and from those that might have been capable of devising a solution.

My choice to abandon you, however brief I intended my absence to be, was unforgivable. I have paid for it, and I will continue to pay for the rest of my days. I know my leaving you was the first link in a chain of terrible events that brought you pain, and darkened your life as no life should be darkened. I pray not for your forgiveness, but for your healing.

I hope you will continue to do what you love, be it potions or something else. I don't at all mean to imply that you are young in soul. We both know you are not. But you are young in years, and you have many ahead of you in which to change, and find new people to fill your life with. I hope in reflecting on my own life, as you have known it, you might learn from my mistakes.

The chance to start over with you will remain a fantasy. But in that fantasy, I would treat you as I should have from the first, with openness and gratitude, and I would not leave you, not even for a day.

You are waiting upstairs, and I think it best that I stop this now and try, if I can, to give you some peace in return.

My one request of your future self is that, from time to time, you hug Teddy close and tell him his father will always love him.

I am yours,

Remus Lupin

The kettle was whistling when I finished, but I barely heard it.

I pressed the letter against my breast and held it there.

I held it all night long.

All I could manage for breakfast was a bite of toast.

I buttoned Sirius's shirt over my shivering chest, tightened the belt around my waist, and folded the letter into the trousers' pocket. Then I sat waiting on the sofa.

The two men arrived, and Pouncer repeated his demonstration of growls and hisses.

I stood up and submitted to their search. The shorter man plucked the letter from my pocket and set it on the little table. "No personal effects." At least he hadn't thrown it in the fire.

They bound my wrists, which I didn't like at all, but endured.

Pouncer whined. "Will someone come to get him?" I asked.

But my voice sounded out of place, and my question went unanswered.

My body stiffened, but I didn't resist as they threw the silver powder into the fire, and gripped my arms. I held my breath against the strange cold heat of the licking green flames.

Pouncer stood on the rug in front of the hearth, meowing forlornly. Now he was the one left to watch helplessly as magic yanked on my sternum, and I was lost to a howl of soot and blackness.