NOTE

Content warning: a conversation about a sexual situation with dubious consent.

10. Pansy

The curtains were still closed around Remus's bed when I awoke. It was snowing outside, but more gently. Late-morning sunlight glowed through the soft white snowflakes. My bed was warm but the room was cold. I dressed quickly, and resisted the urge to check on him before sneaking out of the room.

Only two people were still at breakfast, Pansy Parkinson and Astoria Greengrass. Their conversation quieted to whispered laughter when I arrived. Out of habit I sat at the Gryffindor table, and filled a plate with what was left of the fruit and pastries.

I didn't realise for a minute that Pansy was looking at me, and glanced up mid-swallow. She was smiling–but not quite genuinely. "Come over and join us," she said. "Houses don't really matter anymore, do they?"

I sensed some sarcasm in her voice, and imagined that she thought she was inviting me to the Slytherin table out of the charity of her own heart. Still, I didn't scorn her. People who grew up in pureblood families faced challenges I would never understand. Besides, it felt awkward to pretend they weren't there, and so I carried my plate over and sat near them.

I noticed a crooked white scar on Pansy's forearm where the dark mark had once been. I realised that Severus must have the same scar, but he hid it underneath long sleeves, whereas Pansy seemed to bear it with a kind of spiteful pride.

"So," she said. "As I was saying. On the first night, we go up to Lucius's bedroom, and he starts one of those sexy green fires. He went to the decanter and told me to get undressed. I gave him my usual lip, how I like, and he said I was an insufferable cunt and slapped me. I told him he was going to have to do better than that. Then he threw me onto the bed–really–and ripped off my knickers. He's a powerful man. He was rough, you know, cursed quite a bit. He has the perfect body. It was very good. I came twice."

Pansy took a long drink from her goblet, looking proud of herself. I gulped down my feeling of horror, for I sensed that beneath her pride was something she hadn't yet admitted to herself. As different as Pansy and I were, I doubted she really enjoyed being pushed around and slapped, especially by a man like Lucius Malfoy.

I glanced at Astoria, who was unable to hide her embarrassment. Pansy saw it too. "I don't blame you for not wanting to talk about Draco," she chided. "He's probably quite lame in bed."

I put the pieces together and realised that Draco had not been "at liberty" to accept my hand because I was muggle born, and he had to marry a pureblood. Despite the war being over and all the loss it had caused, the old prejudices still remained.

"But you can tell us," Pansy said, looking at me for camaraderie I wouldn't have known how to provide even if I'd wanted to. "Has he got a good cock?"

Astoria blushed heavily, tongue-tied. "Ah!" Pansy laughed. "He has, hasn't he!"

Awful was the only word to describe how I felt, hearing Pansy speak that way. I couldn't imagine myself talking about Remus like that. Despite the circumstances being less than ideal, what had happened between us had been extremely vulnerable and private, and I had no desire to exploit it to anyone else.

I prayed that Pansy wouldn't turn her attention to me, but of course she did. And there was a bitterness behind her eyes.

"While Greengrass sorts out her story, why don't you tell us about Lupin? I bet he's a rough lover. Seems like he would be, since he's a… well…" She laughed, and leaned forward slightly. "Does he bite?"

With a sharp movement towards me, she pretended to bite my neck with an exaggerated growl. I flinched, and stood up. I wanted to give her another chance, but it seemed that at that moment that I wasn't even talking to a real human being.

"I don't think it's right to talk about that," I said, hiding the trembling in my voice.

She smirked. "You're the same as always, old maid Wilma."

"Pansy…" I said, wanting somehow to make her stop pretending, to melt the shield of cruelty she'd put up. But I knew it would have been a waste of effort. I shook my head, looked apologetically at Astoria, and walked away.

We all met in the courtyard a half-hour later to be assigned our tasks for the day. I stood next to Remus and felt Pansy looking at me, but refused to meet her gaze.

Today it was McGonagall's turn to stay at the castle and try her hand at fixing the clock. Flitwick said he would stay with her to see what he could do. Remus was still unwell, and Minerva suggested that he spend the day in the library, and see if he could find any clues about the beings we had seen in the woods near his cottage. Poppy, of course, would remain in the hospital wing in case of any emergencies. The rest of us would be divided into two groups, one going to Hogsmeade to search the train, and the other going to the Forbidden Forest.

Hagrid and Sprout were certainly going to the forest. Pansy and Astoria requested to go as well. That left Seamus, Neville and Luna to investigate the train alone, and McGonagall said that Severus should go with them.

He must have seen my face as I realised that they wanted me to join the search of the forest, for he quickly intervened. "I would rather the Forest than the train, Minerva," he said.

"Then Wilma will join Finnigan and the Longbottoms in Hogsmeade," said McGonagall.

No-one had detected that Severus had covered for me. I tried to catch his eye to silently thank him, but he had already joined the Forbidden Forest group, and promptly disapparated.

I was worried about Remus spending the day by himself in the library, but knew that Poppy would probably check on him at least once or twice. I watched him hobble up the steps in his cloak before Luna called to me and I turned away.

Hogsmeade was almost completely deserted. We only saw an old couple sitting by the fire in one of the houses, and one wizard, with a long and tangled beard, leading a group of goats through the muddy, snowy lane. "Good day, Euphemius," Luna called to him, and he grunted as he passed.

The Hogwarts Express sat like a ghost train on the tracks. It felt like a defilement of a sacred tradition to step onto it now that it was grey and dark, rather than golden and whistling with spirit as I had always known it.

"What exactly are we doing?" I asked, as the others began casting silent charms around the first carriage. They checked each compartment, paying special attention to the luggage racks overhead. Luna seemed to believe there were Doxy eggs in the cushions, but when Seamus inspected it he shook his head.

"Have to check for any funny business before we try to get it running again," Neville told me.

I felt absolutely useless, as my magic refused to budge and I could only follow behind them like an unschooled child. I enviously watched how well Neville and Luna worked together, how balanced their relationship seemed. Neither of them already had a child to raise. Neither of them had to worry about their partner turning into a werewolf every month.

"Don't worry Wilma," Luna said, as we passed from the first carriage into the second. "You're not completely useless. You have a very pure energy. Keeps the nargles away."

I suffered through one more carriage before stepping out to take a minute of fresh air. I didn't feel too guilty about removing my assistance in the nargle department. I had grown so tense and upset from holding my wand and silently urging it to work–to no avail–that I was sure I was attracting them, if anything.

Snow fell softly onto my shoulders and my hat as I sat on the platform bench. Hogwarts was faintly visible in the distance through the snow. I wondered how Remus was, and whether he'd found any useful information in the library. My mind drifted to how Severus had volunteered to take my place in the Forbidden Forest.

I recalled the dark trees, the dark sky full of night and smoke and dark magic. How I had stared at it for what seemed hours before finally losing consciousness from the cold and the shock and the loss of blood. How I had awoken the following evening, when the battle was already through, and Voldemort defeated, and had been able to raise my voice just enough to attract the attention of the small search party.

I held my wand in my hands and studied it. It had done me no good that night. Perhaps it was in my head, but I thought the wood had actually grown darker. How long would it take for my magic to come back? Would it ever be as it had been again?

I returned my wand to the pocket of my coat, and paced up and down the platform to escape my thoughts. Out of pure curiosity I tried the front door of the red-trimmed house. To my surprise, it opened easily. It was quite cold inside, and my breath clouded in front of me as I looked around at the furniture.

No sooner had I closed the door behind me than a thick dark blackness surrounded me. It was like smoke, like the sky that night, but it was everywhere, and deep black. I couldn't see my own hands, or hear my own voice, or feel my own skin as it went cold as death. All I knew was a distant screaming voice that came from all around. Screaming my name from far away, but I couldn't tell where it was, or how to get to it.

I stumbled around in the darkness until I bumped by chance into the door. By feeling alone I found the doorknob, tumbled outside, and slammed the door shut behind me. Only then did I feel the tears on my face, the racing of my heartbeat. I looked in the window but could see nothing.

The others were just exiting the train. "There's a boggart in there," I said.

Seamus paled and stayed well away from the house. But Luna and Neville went in bravely. They emerged two minutes later, Luna wiping a few tears away, and Neville looking grim but capable. They carried between them a locked trunk that jostled violently as the boggart struggled to escape. "We were lucky," he said. "It was a weak one."

We all took turns carrying it back to the castle. It was early in the evening and snowing heavily by the time we crossed the bridge. McGonagall was taking her turn with the clock in the entryway. "We'll send it down to the ministry," she said. "Or perhaps we'll store it in the dungeon to be used in future lessons."

I recalled how Remus had taught us how to defend ourselves against boggarts (it was a third-year lesson, but the fourth years had been woefully behind thanks to Gilderoy Lockhart), and excused myself from the conversation to visit him in the library.

He was hunched at the table, surrounded by a mountain range of books, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. A lamp hung from the hook overhead, and flooded the table with wavering light. It seemed a lonely way to spend a day, especially knowing he was still in pain. His face was drawn from hours of deep focus. But his thirst for knowledge and understanding seemed to have numbed him to the worst of the full moon's aftereffects, and when he saw me he immediately started to tell me what he'd discovered.

"Have a seat," he said. I was strangely transported to how it had felt to be invited into his office, back when he'd been my professor. The thought was a bit awkward given our present circumstances, and I swept it out of my mind as I sat in the chair across from him.

"I think it's fair to assume that they particularly target people who are grieving. They act like boggarts, but the opposite. Rather than showing you what you most fear it shows you what you most love. In that way they're like a cross between a boggart and a Veela. I found this here…"

For the next hour we were tucked away together, debating the likelihood that certain stories and accounts from some of the oldest books in the library could have any connection to the beings we had seen.

Since I had proved useless on the train, I stayed in the library doing research with Remus for the following week. He slowly but surely recovered, and was soon back to his usual self. His pain ebbed, though he still had a limp sometimes. He pushed me away when I offered him my help, and that hurt a bit at first, but then I got over it. At least he'd shed his short temper.

After a week, he felt well enough to want to leave the castle, feeling that the research he had done was as much as he could gather from the library's limited resources.

Our last day was the same one that the others began the challenge of restoring Gryffindor Tower. It looked impossible. The rubble of the tower had come crashing down over everything, much of it escaping into the chasm, and the rest of it filling the empty spaces inside. All wands were required to even begin clearing out the debris so that the skeletal damage could be assessed. Even Remus joined in.

I stood by with Poppy, who was there to help in case someone was injured.

"I can give you a list of simple remedies if you like, for his pain," she said to me, after we'd been watching their slow progress for some time.

"I would like that very much," I said.

"The simplest you can make very easily yourself. You'll only need Chamomile and St John's Wort–"

Look out!

It was Fred's voice, shouting a warning, and on instinct I looked up to see a massive stone tumbling towards Luna's head. Without thinking I stood, drew my wand, and shouted, "Arresto Momentum!"

And it worked. Only for long enough for Luna to hurry out from under it before it crashed the rest of the way to the floor. But at least it had worked for a few moments. My heart was racing, and relief filled my veins as the others turned towards me. My magic wasn't completely dead.

Remus was looking at me with surprise, and when I saw him he smiled. I smiled back, but then suddenly had to leave. I fled to an empty stairwell and, wrapping my arms around myself, cried brokenly. That had been the first time in a week I'd heard Fred's voice.

All through dinner I stared into space, remembering Fred. I still hadn't properly grieved. The Marriage Law letter had jostled me out of my denial into a new crisis, but I hadn't taken the time, as the other Weasleys had, to properly process the fact that he was gone.

Remus noticed my absence of mind, and gently pushed my plate closer to me. "You should eat," he said. "At least a little."

I looked up at him blankly, and then stared back down at the table. Taste of your own medicine, I thought bitterly, remembering how he'd shoved off my offers of help over the past week as he regained control of his body. But I quickly felt guilty for my response, and took a few bites of food before drifting off again.

It took a visit from McGonagall to bring me back again. "Pardon my intrusion," she said, as she sat on the bench beside Remus. "Remus. I wanted to implore you to make a habit of taking the wolfsbane again, as you did when you were teaching. I spoke to Poppy and–"

"Yes, Minerva, I know."

"Do let me finish, Remus." There was concern in her eyes, and Remus nodded. "Severus has said he would be glad to brew it. Kingsley has made the ingredients less expensive, and we all know it would be no waste of anyone's time."

I sensed eyes on me from another table, and glanced over at Severus. I could tell by the way he was watching the conversation that he had put Minerva up to it, knowing that if the persuasion were to come from him, Remus would be less likely to listen. Severus glanced away quickly though, listening to something Trelawney was saying, so that Remus would not catch him looking when he glanced over.

"Thank you Minerva, but–"

"Please. Come back to the castle the week before the moon. Put yourself to good use, and meanwhile take the potion. You'll be doing everyone a favour."

I realised that I was subconsciously nodding my head in agreement, and Remus shot me a halfhearted glare. I met his eyes bravely, though. I had only had two glimpses of his new injuries, but knew it would be better for him to sleep through his transformations than whatever horrible thing had happened during the recent moon.

"Alright," he agreed in the end. "I'll come back the week before." I couldn't be sure whether he really would, or if he was only saying it to appease her. But knowing McGonagall, now that he'd said it, she would find a way to hold him to his word.

"Thanks very much for defending my wishes," Remus said under his breath, once Minerva had left.

I raised my eyebrows at him. "People are just trying to protect you."

"From what?" There was a cynical bitterness in his eyes. "Myself? Nobody can do that, I'm afraid."

"You're being ridiculous. It's what you turn into. It's not like you have a choice. You wouldn't hurt yourself like that if you had a choice. It's not yourself they're protecting you from."

I covered my mouth, though, when I realised what I'd said. I had never really talked with Remus about how he viewed his condition, and had no right to make assumptions about how something so personal impacted his identity.

"Isn't it?" he said, darkly.

"I'm sorry. I overstepped."

"Yes, you did," he said.

Thoroughly mortified, I was about to stand up when I saw Severus walking towards us. I'd thought he would avoid us for the remainder of the evening, and let us slip away quietly the following morning. Yet here he was.

"I hope I'm not intruding," he said.

"Not at all," answered Remus, with a heavy note of sarcasm.

It was hard to reconcile the Severus I'd once known with the one standing before us now. His presence was no longer arrogant, no longer suspicious. At least I'd seen him a few times since the war–I couldn't blame Remus for still suspecting him of hidden malice.

"I don't know where you plan to go now. But I thought I would propose an option. Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. We've been planning to send somebody to search it, clean it up. Minerva and I thought you would be the right choice. It would take about a month."

I almost shut my eyes for fear that my own conversation with Remus would make him strangle Severus at the implication. But he only took a drink from his goblet, looking calm. The mention of the old Order Headquarters had erased the offensive thing I'd said. I saw in his eyes that he was actually considering it.

"I would understand," continued Severus, "if you decided against it. I know the place contains… painful memories."

Remus nodded.

"But if you would like to–"

"Thank you, Severus. I would."

"Very well."

"Best make an early night of it," Remus said, and left the table without looking at me again. I watched him go, feeling immensely guilty. I couldn't imagine how I would have the gall to sleep in the same room as him later. He hadn't made the impression that he wanted to see me again, at least not while our argument was fresh.

Severus was still standing there in his black robes, his melancholy gaze turned on me.

"The books we discussed will take a while to reach the castle," he said. "But I will have them by the next full moon. I do hope you plan to return."

"Thank you. I think I will."

I didn't know what else to say. I felt a great respect for him, and watched him leave the Great Hall.

I lingered a minute to say goodbye to the others. "Going so soon?" Hagrid said.

"I'll come back," I promised, because especially after speaking with Severus I knew that I would. I'd thought that returning to Hogwarts would be too difficult, but now I saw it was a place for people who needed purpose. And I knew I would need plenty of that in the time to come.

"Be safe, Wilma," said Neville.

"Yes," said Luna, with a serious look in her wide eyes. "Watch out for nargles."

I went up to the Ravenclaw tower and was surprised to see that Remus was awake by the common room fire.

"Not nearly as cosy as Gryffindor," he said.

Relieved that he seemed open to making amends, I crouched near the indigo flames to warm myself after the walk through the freezing corridors.

"I really shouldn't have said that, Remus," I confessed. "I know I don't know anything about… I had no right to make any assumptions."

"It's still me, you know," he said. "When I transform. I consider it to be me. It's not a part of myself that I like, particularly, but I can't pretend like I'm completely separate from it."

I couldn't really argue against that. I didn't think that Remus had anything in common with the dark creatures I'd read about in the books upstairs–but in the end, he did.

"I still don't understand," I said. "But, if you ever want to talk about it…"

"I don't."

I kept my mouth shut. That was clear enough. There were plenty of things I hadn't told Remus about myself, and likewise, there were plenty of things I couldn't expect him to tell me. We were still strangers, really.

I stood up from the rug and walked towards the stairs. He was still staring into the flames and I figured he wanted to be left in solitude.

But the sound of his voice stopped me.

"I'd like you to come with me," he said, when I was on the first shadowed step.

"Really?" I said. "I thought you'd rather me go back to the Burrow."

"No," he said. "Not unless you want to. I don't know if I can do it alone. All the work, I mean."

But I knew he meant that it would be too difficult to face such a heart-heavy place without another person. I didn't know why, but I felt I owed it to him to be at his side.

"Okay," I said. "I'll go with you."

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

He turned his head and looked at me, the firelight stroking his old facial scars. There was a look in his eyes that I hadn't yet seen. "Thank you," he said.

"Good night, Remus," I whispered. And climbed the stairs to bed.