NOTE

Warning: Wilma is acting mostly on instinct and trauma throughout this chapter. I know this loss of control can feel triggering. If you're in a stressed state of mind, perhaps leave this one for a bit later. There will also be one mention of cannibalism, and a few moments of negative thoughts and self-image.

74. The Captive

I looked at Ginny blankly.

All of the blood in my body rushed to my head.

"What?" Severus said.

I was standing up. Beads of water ran down my legs and trickled from my body into the tub. Ginny was speaking, but I couldn't hear her through the blood vibrating and fluttering in my ears.

My long button-up shirt lay on the floor, and I picked it up, pulling it over my arms. Every movement felt slow, as though I were trying to accomplish it in the centre of a deep ocean, as wave after wave of delirium and confusion pummelled my belly. The buttons seemed to grow and shrink, making it impossible for my fingers to push them through the buttonholes. Yet after only a few seconds they were done up, as though they'd done themselves.

Ginny had left, her footsteps pounding somewhere distant, and the doorway was empty. I heard my breath and my heartbeat, and the walls contracted in my vision as I took a step forward.

Severus's hand tightened around my wrist. His touch was restraining, but not violently so. A plea for me not to run ahead of him.

I couldn't look at him. I couldn't move my head. My mind was set on one thing and one thing alone. Downstairs. Beach. Walking up the beach. Walking up the beach. My head buzzed, and for an infinite and infinitesimal moment in time, I stood there motionless.

Then I was running.

Severus didn't let go. He hurried after me, not trying to hold me back, but not letting me get away. I tore through the bedroom like a small tempest, and threw myself at the narrow wooden stairs. My legs were weak and my hair was dripping water everywhere. Halfway down the stairs I tripped and stumbled and my heart entered my throat as Severus kept me from falling, pulling me up by my waist. For a millisecond I was dizzy, half-pressed against his abdomen. Then I kept going, pushing the heel of my hand against the bannister, my knees shaking.

The front door had been thrown open, and Ginny's red hair was just disappearing from the frame of grey light, sand and sea beyond. It might have been the door into the afterlife. Nothing would or could stop me from passing through it. My feet stumbled over the rug, over the threshold, and then contacted the sand. Wind threw my wet hair over my face, my eyes and mouth–and only then did Severus ensnare me in his arms, keeping me from going any further. My shoulder ached as he pulled backward on my wrist. His hand twisted my body around by the waist and he held the back of my head, pressing me into his chest. He held me there, and I heard his heart hammering.

His body vibrated as he shouted something over the wind. I didn't hear the sound at all, but I felt it. I couldn't move. He had stopped me, and now I was as paralysed as I'd been upstairs, my heart behaving very strangely, humming rather than beating.

For a second, he waited.

Then he released me, and I heard his footsteps, ghostly, running over the sand. In the distance there were people's voices, people shouting.

My shaking hands struggled to get my hair unstuck from my face. Finally I could see. Severus was disappearing behind the dunes which blocked the rest of the beach from view.

I followed, my heels slipping in the sand, the cold autumn wind gliding around my naked legs and making them feel invisible, matterless. I was not completely here. My heart was still not beating. I was something less than a body–a lost soul struggling against the wind.

The waves were frightening, tall and rolling in diagonally. The sky over the horizon was smeared with blue and the wind ripped at my shirt. I was gasping. Maybe I wouldn't make it. But my body could not be stopped by anything–not even itself. I had to get to Remus.

I ran, weakly, stumbling, down the beach.

Then I passed the barrier of the dunes, and saw him.

My view was obscured by the people slowly but surely surrounding him, wands raised, voices raised in shock and suspicion and confusion. But I saw him as the moon sees the earth. With nothing and no-one in between.

The whole beach, the whole ocean, the whole world seemed to be tipping to one side. I could not move any closer, struggling to simply remain standing up.

He was dirty. His clothes were threadbare. His face was deeply lined, and his hair almost completely grey. His limp was worse than ever. He was crying, his face exhausted and his whole narrow body trembling as he said something over and over, his hands shaking in front of him. But no matter the differences, no matter the circumstances… he was Remus.

The struggle from the bathtub to the beach felt like a dream.

But this was real.

My heartbeat returned, and stabbed and stung me with each palpitation.

It's him. It's him. It's him.

In the few moments I was running, it seemed I was moving the fastest I'd ever moved in my life. Faster than flying. Faster than a dream. My body was a blade, meant for slicing through the wind.

But then something stopped me. It was Bill's arm. He was standing at the edge of the group, and he caught me mid-stride, his arm so powerful that it knocked the wind out of me.

"Stay back!" he said, urgently and quietly–the first distinct sound which had cut through the overwhelming hiss of my blood in my ears.

Just ahead of us, past George and Ginny, I could see Severus approaching Remus, his wand drawn, Arthur close behind him. I tried to rush forward, but Bill had wound his arm around my waist and wouldn't let me go. "Wilma, you should be in bed…"

I strained against him, gasping. "Let me– Let me–"

Though my lungs were pushing air out violently, I made barely any sound.

Bill hushed me sharply and pulled me away, nearer the dunes. I was forced to look on from there. Only the sound of the crashing waves and the wind filled my ears as the voices died out.

Remus… Remus... collapsed to his knees, his hands pressed into the sand as his body shook. It looked as though he had been walking for aeons; for lifetimes.

Severus stood over him a moment, his wand pointed down at the top of Remus's bowed, grey-haired head. His body was tall, with the posture of an executor.

Then his shoulders relaxed slightly, and he turned to speak to Arthur. Arthur lowered his wand as well, and went to Remus, kneeling beside him and touching his shoulder. I was suddenly sure that they'd asked a question, and he'd answered it correctly.

There was no more doubt. It was Remus.

Remus. Remus. Remus.

My resistance doubled against Bill's arms, but he held me back tightly. I was still very weak. But strong enough to call his name.

"Remus!"

My voice was just loud enough to cut through the sounds of the wind and sea. His face turned and for a moment, we looked at each other. His eyes were like the ocean, and I was dragged under at once, into a dark depth of emotion. Panic. Fear. And… awfully… love. After all this time.

I sat there in the sand, Bill's arms awkwardly sharp and firm around me, and stared at Remus breathlessly, without a single thought in my mind. Bill's grip relaxed slightly as my body lost all strength. My only purpose was to sit there. To look.

I watched his face grow more desperate for a moment as he looked at me. Then he turned back to Severus, trying to explain something. Then George and Ginny and Arthur went to him, and their collective voices grew and changed, and I lost sight of him.

Molly broke away from the others and crossed the sand to us. There was a look of strain in her face, and I could see the stages of stress, relief, and pity repeating themselves in her eyes, like raindrops on the surface of water. She bent down as she approached and I clutched Bill's shoulder with both frail hands, struggling to form words. "Where is he… How is he…"

Molly took hold of my shoulders, her hands warm and firm, and looked into my eyes. Wanting me to understand something. She spoke slowly and clearly.

"It isn't him, dear."

I felt my knees in the sand. My ears were ringing with confusion as the wind tugged on my hair. I pressed one hand into Bill's shoulder and the other against my thumping heartbeat.

Molly's eyes were warm and hard at the same time. She saw that I didn't understand, and continued to explain. "Severus used Legilimency. It's an impostor."

I became deliriously faint. I made a confused sound and tried to lift myself to my feet, to walk forward to the small huddle of Weasleys, with Remus and Severus at the centre. But my knees buckled before I was even completely upright, and Bill caught me, bracing me against his hip and looking at Molly desperately. "Help her in, Bill, darling," she said. "Quickly."

Bill tried to take a few steps, supporting me at his side, but I was too limp to walk, my body constantly trying to twist backwards, to see Remus again. So after a moment of hesitation he picked me up, with a hard grunt of effort, and carried me back up the beach towards the cottage. I clung to his shoulder and looked over it at the group of people, escorting Remus over the sand. He was walking slowly, still limping.

My eyes did not leave his thin, worn frame until they were forced to, cut off by the door and the walls of the house. Bill carried me into the kitchen, following Molly, and set me down on the nearest wooden chair.

No sooner was I seated than I tried to stand again. My body was some lawless thing, disconnected from myself, and its only desire was to go to Remus. To see him closer. To touch him.

But Molly pushed my shoulders down. Bill stepped away, panting, and just then there were footsteps in the hallway and Arthur entered. "Wilma," he said when he saw how Molly was holding me. His voice was measured, sounding almost stern. "Wilma, you need to understand, and you need to believe that that is not Remus Lupin. It is Phoebe Elson. Severus says she was one of your students. She has been forced to take Polyjuice Potion. It is very important for now that you do not speak to her, and you do not touch her. Do you understand?"

I stared at him for a moment. My mind wasn't racing to catch up; it was permanently caught behind in the mud and quicksand. Outside there were sounds as the group approached the cottage.

"Don't look, dear," Molly said, but I twisted against her arms and clutched the back of the chair as I watched Remus being helped through the front door and quickly ushered into a separate room. Just before he disappeared, his eyes found mine again; and in this light I could see his scars more clearly. I didn't understand! It was him!

But then he spoke.

"Professor Weasley?"

It was Remus's voice, tremulous as it was, and my insides ached with nausea at the sound.

But he never would have called me that.

He never would have known…

A sound, halfway between a sob and a scream, bent my body like a flower in a winter wind. I pressed my hands and face into the table and cried in panic and brokenness, my head vibrating with stabbing pain. Arthur was still speaking, but I covered my ears with my hands. My whole body was shaking as though I was about to be violently ill. How could this happen? It had been him… his eyes… his body… his voice…

It had been like a dream.

And the dream had not shattered after Molly and Arthur's news, but had morphed… into a nightmare.

Remus was alive.

He was alive.

But he was not here.

He was being held somewhere. Kept. Used for a dose of Polyjuice Potion… swallowed by Phoebe Elson.

Greyback.

I expected to faint, and pressed my temple as hard as I could into the table as my breath came in croaking gasps. Molly had put her hand on my neck in a soothing gesture, but I couldn't hear what she was saying. The buzzing in my head reached an uncontrollable level.

This was worse than anything I could have imagined.

How long had he been held captive?

From the very start?

Had Magnus found and captured him during his first transformation after leaving me? Months ago, in January?

Had he been planning to come back to me?

My whole body shuddered with unshed sobs as I realised that my awful suspicions, about my patronuses hovering in front of a man who had no way to answer them, were true.

The last patronus he'd had from me, then, was when I'd snapped at him. After hearing his voice, beside the forbidden forest. It must have been him… it must have been real… his real voice, his real consciousness, sending its plea to me across the distance.

Oh, GODS!

My whole body went numb and for a moment I could produce no sound. It was a moment of smallness, of shrinking and becoming dense. The moment before everything explodes.

Molly patted my neck again. "Would some tea help, dear?"

"I DON'T WANT TEA!"

I was certain that the scream which followed was the loudest I'd ever produced. The cottage was deathly still in response, but a ceramic jar of flour broke into pieces where it sat in the centre of the table.

A puff of tiny white flour-dust surrounded the broken pieces.

And as my throat was stretched beyond its limits, the scream ceased, and there was quiet again. My heart ringing out a steady flat note along with my ears.

"Wilma!" Molly whispered, in shocked surprise.

I looked down at myself. I wasn't holding my wand. I didn't even know where my wand was.

I stared at the broken flour jar.

I had done that.

Molly was looking down at me in complete disbelief.

This hadn't happened to me since I was a child, before Dumbledore had visited the orphanage and given hope to a girl who had begun to believe she was mad. This hadn't happened to me in ten years. It never happened to trained witches and wizards…

Frantic fear twisted around my belly and my throat. The scream alone had been unlike me. But this…

I was out of control.

My magic, the part of myself which fundamentally defined me in this world, was out of my control.

My body was a marionette. I was just barely conscious of what it was doing and how it was doing it. It stood from the chair at the table and carried me into the sitting room.

My wand was sitting on the end table and my hand picked it up, gripping it and holding it close to my chest. My fingers were insensate to anything and everything beyond the feeling of the wood. Otherwise, perhaps, my wand's emotions would have held a clue to the inexplicable thing I'd just done.

Everyone else was in this room. Ginny. George. Bill. Arthur. Watching a closed door beside the staircase. I went to the door and was stopped by no-one. Not even Molly, who had followed me from the kitchen.

I stood in front of the door, my eyes scanning the grain of the wood, as though all of the answers were hidden there. Then I put my ear close to it, listening.

For a very long moment there was nothing. Then Severus's voice spoke. I couldn't make out what he was saying, but he seemed to be explaining something. There was a silence, and then Remus's voice came. It really was his voice… and despite what my logical mind had understood–that this was not the real him; that it was Phoebe Elson in disguise–my body behaved as though it were really Remus behind the door. My hand unconsciously gripped the cold brass doorknob and turned it… but the door was locked.

Footsteps sounded behind it, and the door opened just enough to show Severus standing there. "I need–" he started.

Then he looked down and saw me. There was a hesitant pause as cold eyes bored into desperate ones.

"I need a glass of water," he said, his voice quiet but intense.

The door was open just wide enough for me to look past his shoulder at a sliver of the window on the far wall of the room. But his chest was completely blocking any view of Remus. "Now, please," he said, a bit more sharply.

I hurried at a run to the kitchen. My hands were remarkably steady as I opened a cabinet and took out a glass. I held it and cast "Aguamenti" with my wand.

But nothing happened. My wand seemed to stutter a bit, as though there was something blocking it from performing the spell. "Aguamenti," I said again, sensing the broken flour jar behind me, and all the immaturity and lack of control that it implied.

My wand stuttered again, and no water emerged from its tip.

I had no time to process what this meant. I was not unfamiliar with the feeling–for months after the war my original unicorn hair wand had been fitful and difficult to use–but was unable and unwilling to even think that the same might happen with this wand, in the middle of such a dire conflict, when I needed my magic most desperately.

Defeated, but still desperate to help in any way I could, I carried the empty glass out of the kitchen and into the sitting room.

The door had been shut again, but this time I could hear the voices more clearly–or, rather, the voice. It was no longer Remus's, but that of a young girl, weeping and pleading.

I knocked firmly and Severus opened the door again, allowing me to step inside. It was, indeed, Phoebe Elson. But never as I had seen her. She was still clad in the oversized clothes Remus's body had worn, and her face was as dirty and exhausted and thin as his had appeared. My heart guttered like a candle flame.

My hand started trembling around the empty glass and I turned to Severus, momentarily unable to look at her for shock and disappointment.

"I need help," I said, my voice rough and almost silent.

With a wave of his hand the glass was filled with water.

I clutched it tightly and looked at Phoebe again, approaching her slowly. She was curled into a ball on the floor, sobbing into her knobby knees. Remus's trousers completely concealed her feet, and his shoes were left empty on the floor in front of her; she'd immediately slipped out of them as she'd shrunk. "Miss Elson," I heard myself say quietly. "Phoebe…"

She looked up at me, her small face and her eyes a startling contrast to Remus's. I felt my belly twist and grow heavy. I don't want you! I want Remus! But I swept the thoughts away forcefully, hating myself for them.

"Professor," Phoebe sobbed. I knelt down and set the glass of water on the floor. Phoebe crawled forward, her body brittle and unsteady in the baggy clothes, and she wrapped her skinny arms around my neck and sobbed into my shoulder.

My nose was forced into the fabric of Remus's shirt. Underneath the vile odour of earth and death, was the faintest scent… the most unmistakable scent. Of him. It set my body on fire with pain.

Phoebe was frightfully thin from starvation. I recalled the vision in which I'd seen her in Greyback's cave. How the captives had been forced to eat one of their own, after Greyback had slain him as an example. The reality of the forced cannibalism, and the immense trauma this child had suffered, made me understand why, once she was holding on to me, she seemed unable to let go.

I had to work past layer upon layer of selfish grief in order to hold Phoebe and be glad that she was here, and not there. In order to stop wishing she were Remus. Still, within seconds, I was stroking her hair as though she were my own daughter, hushing her and rocking her back and forth.

Urgency still rushed through my veins, though. Phoebe needed protection and comfort, but it was impossible to forget that she was also the shiny new key to figuring out where Remus was.

"Did you ever see him?" I asked her, as I stroked her hair soothingly, unable to forgive myself for the demanding edge in my tone. "The man they used for the potion?"

"I don't know," Phoebe said, forcing her small, shaking voice out of her hunger-ravaged body. "Probably in another cave, on… on his own. They s-sometimes talked about another w-w-werewolf who was kept separately from the r-rest of us."

"There's no need to question her," Severus said from behind me. I'd forgotten about his presence and my body stiffened at the sound of his voice. "I've searched her mind. She never saw him." His voice grew louder then, so that everyone gathered outside the open door could hear. "She came here by portkey, and was ordered to throw it into the sea. We need to be quick–we may be able to trace its origins."

My instinct was to stand up and hurry out to the beach at once. But Phoebe, sensing my urge to move, only tightened her grip on me. "I'm so sorry," she said, repeating it again and again through her sobs.

I looked up urgently as Severus strode out the door, leaving me alone. But then Molly appeared, and I knew from the steady, practised warmth in her eyes that she was here to take over comforting Phoebe. My ears began to ring again as Molly introduced herself to the crying girl and gently put herself in my place, embracing Phoebe as she helped her to sip from the cup of water.

My body recognised its freedom and I stood up, shaking as I ran out the door and onto the beach after Severus and Arthur. The waves were even taller and the wind more violent. It felt like the end of the world.

Arthur had begun to summon the portkey from the sea, aiming his wand towards the blue, white-tipped waves. Severus turned, his hair blowing in the wind, and caught sight of me. I saw his eyes flicker down to my bare legs–which I'd forgotten about–and he lifted his hand in the direction of the house. I turned to see my trousers hovering out of the door, flapping in the air as they came towards me. I caught them and pulled them on, the sand on my bare feet rustling against the dry fabric.

Not a word was spoken between us. I buttoned my trousers and stood a fair distance from him as he watched me. I couldn't read his eyes. Not whatsoever.

But I knew what he was thinking.

His deepest and most heartfelt question over the course of our marriage had been, What will you do if Remus comes back?

Now we both knew.

I would run to him, casting caution and all rational thought to the winds.

Severus stared at me for a moment and then turned, looking out towards the waves, waiting for the portkey to appear.

An old bicycle wheel hovered out of the water some distance from the sand, and floated towards Arthur, dripping. He used his wand to direct it onto the beach and I followed, keeping just slightly back, as Severus went towards it to aid Arthur in casting tracing spells.

I watched from between their shoulders as tiny golden dust seemed to rise from the wheel, and slowly moved in the air above it to form a map. A thin, clear golden line appeared, and traced up from the location of Shell Cottage to the origin of the Portkey. Around the lakes district, however, the line dissipated, and the dust spread over the general area of the north of England; Cumbria and Northumberland.

"Damn," Arthur said. "They made it untraceable."

"It's traceable enough," Severus said. "We've been searching too far north."

"Our biggest problem," Arthur said, his hands on his hips, "is that they know where we are. Shell Cottage isn't safe anymore."

"How would Greyback–" I started.

"Malfoy," Arthur interrupted. "He must have joined up with Greyback after you and Severus attacked Rookwood in the Cairngorms. Perhaps he didn't join him permanently, but long enough to tell him about this place. And he would know about it. He's tracked our family for years, trying to be threatening… The point is, the house is no longer safe."

Severus waved his wand over the bicycle wheel and it disintegrated into grains of sand, blending in perfectly on the beach. "Our cottage in North Yorkshire," he said. "It's close, and no-one knows about it."

It was true. No-one had known. Not even Arthur. I felt as though some precious secret had been cracked open, like the jar of flour on the kitchen table. And I unconsciously took a small step back from Severus, heels sinking in the soft sand.

"We need to go at once," Arthur agreed.

The two men began walking up the beach, and until that moment I had never felt a larger gap between myself and the other sex. I felt the trousers Severus had summoned for me, the fabric cool on my legs, and the sensation made me dissociate. I wanted to just sink into the sand and never breathe again. But then the wind roused my soul to just enough life that I was able to follow my adoptive father and my second husband up the beach towards the cottage, my legs trembling from effort as I walked over the sand.

When I reached the front door they had already delivered the news to the others. "I will take Phoebe directly to the Burrow," Molly was saying. "And I will stay with her there until this mess is over."

"Will we need her?" Bill asked.

"No," Severus said. "I have seen all we need. We all need to apparate immediately. Molly, take the girl now."

Molly gave Arthur a gentle kiss on the cheek before going to Phoebe, who was sat on the couch, still dressed in Remus's clothes, still shivering. I looked at her and tried to force my face into some semblance of a reassuring expression, but judging by the blank look Phoebe gave me in return, I was unsuccessful. Molly took Phoebe's arms firmly in her hands, and after a moment of dense silence, apparated out of the sitting room to the Burrow.

Severus held his wand in the air horizontally and conjured a map, pointing at the location of our cottage, so that everyone could apparate there.

I tightly held my wand against my chest. I was still unable to sense the scope of its emotions, just as I was unable to feel my own. My body was exhausted and I knew I should have been resting. But rest was impossible now.

My mind had put up a firm wall against everything that had happened in the past few days; everything before the arrival of Phoebe on the beach. Now all I cared about was what would happen in the coming hours and days. What we would do in order to find the captives; to find Remus.

My one goal now was to rescue Greyback's captives before the full moon. If we failed, then they would all be turned. And Merlin knew what Greyback would force them–and Remus–to do, if that happened. Probably Remus was being kept close to the main cave I'd seen in my vision. If we could only find it…

I gave no thought to the consequences his return would have on my own life, and on Severus. I only yearned with my whole body, my whole being, for him to be safe again.

The others had begun to disapparate, and Severus was watching me closely, as though struggling against a compulsion to read my mind. With significance, he held his hand out to me, offering his help. I knew I could not apparate alone–not after the catastrophe with the flour jar in the kitchen, and my inability to cast Aguamenti. Numbly I stepped closer to him, and laid my fingers over his own. I looked at our hands, where we were connected. I could hardly feel it.

He brought me in closer to his body, his arm wrapped firmly around my waist, and I held my breath as he apparated.

We landed in the apple orchard, and I gasped as my ankle rolled slightly, making my knee ache and tremble. I realised I'd landed on a fallen apple, soft and rotting on the frosty, snowy ground. We never did pick the apples. We had forgotten. The trees were barren for the winter now, and all the fruit had gone to waste.

Severus's arm was still wrapped around me, frozen, as though he were unable to move. I squirmed a bit until he received the message and his arm loosened enough for me to escape. I stared at the dead apples on the ground. After everything he had watched me go through, I felt disgusting in his presence, and was sure he saw me just as I saw the fallen apples. A waste. I was something to be tolerated; a burden to be borne.

The others were approaching. Arthur from further up the hill, Bill from the oak tree at the side of the house, George from the garden and Ginny from the black pine woods. A group of black birds rose from the trees behind her, their small black shapes backlit by the dark silver of the cold November sky. Ravens.

I winced sharply as I felt a sudden pain in my lower belly. Severus looked at me. "What?" he said quickly.

"It's fine," I heard myself answer.

I pressed my hand into my lower belly and waited, but I felt nothing else. Just a faint twinge of pain. I started walking towards the others, towards the front door of the cottage, and as I moved the pain faded. I realised it was probably just a side-effect of the apparation.

We all went into the cottage, melting the snow and frost from our shoes in the entryway. I walked into the kitchen, silently leading the others. The space felt very small with so many people in it, and so much tension. I quickly took up position at the window, looking out at the forest and the hills. I didn't want to wait another minute before starting the search. But I knew a meeting, at least a brief one, was necessary. We had not yet heard all that Severus had learned from searching Phoebe's mind.

We gathered around the table. No-one sat down.

"Severus," Arthur prompted, after everyone had stood coldly and silently for a long moment.

I listened, focused on his voice but looking through the cold windowpane at the snow on the hillside as he spoke. "She was sent with a message. Greyback is planning to stage a werewolf attack on the night of the full moon. We'd already gathered this. The real message seems to be that they have Lupin. No doubt she was sent under the disguise provided by Polyjuice Potion in an effort to lure… one of us… into Greyback's camp."

"My patronuses," I said quietly. It was obvious which one of us they'd intended to lure. But I understood now that they'd only known I would have gone anywhere with Remus without hesitation because of my frequent patronuses, which usually contained some confession of love. "They must have seen at least some of them," I said.

"Why would they want Wilma?" Ginny asked.

"She would be someone from our side," Arthur said. "Someone with knowledge that they could manipulate… But if that is what they are looking for, I don't see why they wouldn't simply use Lupin." The rest of the thought remained unspoken, but was clear to all of us regardless. They've surely already broken him enough.

Severus shifted slightly. "Perhaps they were planning to use her in a different way," he said, his voice very dark, low and inexpressive. "To force Lupin into something he's refusing to do."

Silence fell over the room. I felt my heart lifting into my throat and thudding painfully there.

"Kingsley needs to know about this," Bill said.

Arthur conjured his patronus and I stared out the window as he explained the situation. Under the sound of his voice, I heard water being poured somewhere behind me. In the glass of the window pane was the reflection of Severus approaching me. His hand pressed into my shoulder and he held a glass of water in front of me for the taking.

I stared down at it for a moment, and then looked out the window again, feeling weighed down by the firmness of his hand. He moved in front of me and I was forced to look up at him. His eyes were forceful, as though there was no question of my obeying his silent demand to drink. I shivered inwardly as I remembered the dream I'd had. "You will do as I say, Miss Weasley… Or are you too fragile?"

My eyes flickered away from his again, but I took the cup in both hands and sipped very slowly from it. He stood there a moment longer, his presence tense and overwhelming, and then silently went along the table again, to the opposite end of the room.

Arthur finished sending his patronus and there was a minute of silence while we waited for Kingsley's response. Soon the blue lynx appeared over the table and seemed to prowl along it in thought as it spoke.

I watched the patronus, Severus standing with his arms crossed in my peripheral vision as Kingsley reviewed the information we needed to keep in mind as we moved forward. The Carrows and Rookwood were the only Azkaban escapees to be caught. That left, in order of priority, Greyback, Malfoy, Rowle and Macnair, Dolohov, and Lestrange. Meanwhile a small group of aurors had begun to hunt down the Baddocks. There had been even more attacks by the creatures, and the situation was increasingly urgent. The whereabouts of Draco, Pansy and Astoria Malfoy were also unknown. Our task remained to locate Greyback's hidden lair, as soon as possible.

The lynx wished us fortitude before disappearing, and there was only the briefest moment of silence around the table before Arthur spoke.

"We must make a plan for the next few days. We have to find the lair and take control of the werewolves, while also protecting the hostages who have yet to be turned. And we must accomplish this before the next full moon."

"When's the next full moon?" Ginny asked.

"The twenty-third," Severus answered.

I glanced at him for an almost-tearful moment before lowering my eyes. He knew this because of our requirements with the ministry. I remembered Poppy's orders, no intercourse, and wondered again how the Ministry would respond to the news of my two miscarriages. Would anything change? But I shook off this concern–there was no time for it.

"Today is the tenth of November," Arthur said. "So we haven't much time. Not much at all."

I realised then that George had remained very silent, and I stared at him. He glanced back at me, and his gaze was as empty as my own must have been. He looked numbly away.

I shifted my attention to the others, and felt my anger flaring up as I listened to them talking. It was just sound. Meaningless sound. We knew what we had to do! Why weren't we doing it now?

"We will need to tell Pomfrey about this," Severus said. "So that beds are prepared in St. Mungo's for the injured."

"But what can we do about the ones who have already been turned?" Bill said.

"They may already have sworn allegiance to Greyback," Arthur said. "If that is the case… I do not know what we will do."

"We can figure that out later," I said suddenly. "But now we have to find them." I trembled slightly as I spoke. I was furious that I'd been forced to take the dreamless sleep. I might have had a vision about this, and then we'd have had more time.

"What about the muggle captives?" Bill said. "Obliviate them, perhaps? Put them into muggle hospitals?"

My ears began to buzz as question after question was posed, and meanwhile the only clear fact in my mind kept circling through it. Remus was going to transform in less than two weeks, and we had no idea where he was. If we did not get to him…

Their voices seemed to rise and well into an incoherent babel, and my impatience swelled up inside of me much as it had done earlier, when Molly had asked me if I wanted tea.

"We don't have TIME!"

A small bowl of sugar shattered on the shelf above the cooking range and sprayed ceramic shards and white grains across the room. Ginny gave a quiet shriek and I wrapped my arms around myself, staring at the scattered sugar in shock. My wand was still as heavy and still as a stone in my hand.

I looked up at Severus on instinct and his eyes were piercing into me. Everyone else was staring at me wearing similar expressions as they realised the sudden explosion had been my doing. Or, at least, my fault.

My voice was shaky as I continued to hug myself, trembling in shock. "Can we please just go now? We need to start now!"

The room was very quiet in the wake of the outburst of uncontrolled magic. Arthur silently waved his wand and the sugar bowl repaired itself, the small white grains disappearing from the floor and the table, the ceramic lid setting itself down in the proper place with a quiet sound.

Severus was still staring at me, and he crossed the room with long, gliding strides. He held his hand out to me. "Give it to me," he said quietly, concealing me from the others with his body. He spoke softly, trying to keep the moment private. "Wilma. You can't control it."

"It's not because of my wand!" I whispered indignantly.

But his hand remained there, expectant. I glared at his chest as I handed it over, and he pocketed it.

Arthur cleared his throat, and I forced myself to breathe and stay calm as he began to divide us into two groups to search the woods–one beginning now, and one beginning later tonight.

I needed them to trust me. And I needed to trust myself. I couldn't let my hormonal anger drown the parts of me that were strong–that were built and trained for just this kind of chaos and uncertainty. My hearing came back to me as I breathed, as well as the confidence and alertness I'd acquired during the war.

So far, Severus and Bill would be departing at once, and Ginny, George and Arthur would leave at nightfall. Arthur looked at me. "Wilma…" he began.

"I'm not staying here," I said firmly, before he could continue.

Severus stepped closer to me again, and spoke quietly, as he had done before. "You need to rest."

I stepped back and looked up at him, my eyes fierce. "I am not staying."

Heavy tension hummed around the table as we stared at each other, his eyes black and stern. Finally there was a singular softening in his face, so slight it was barely noticeable. I knew he had bent to my will, knowing that I would find a way to join the search whether he liked it or not; even if I had to go alone.

I looked down at my wand in his pocket, my eyes burning. I wanted to have it, even if it didn't work. It wasn't his. It was mine.

"Give me my wand," I insisted.

Wordlessly Severus took it into his hand and gave it back to me. I wrapped my fingers around it firmly and kept it at my side.

The silence in the room grew heavier.

"Alright, then," Arthur said. "Wilma, Severus, Bill–you're first shift."

"We will start at the northern end of Windermere lake," Severus said. "From there we will go into the forest."

Bill nodded, and promptly disapparated.

Severus offered me his hand and I took it resentfully. I didn't want to have to rely on his body, his magic. I wanted to rely on my own. But I knew that that was impossible at present. Giving in to Severus was the only way.

He pressed me against his chest rigidly, and my fingers dug into his back like claws as we were torn away.

NOTE

Apologies to those who were hoping for and expecting the real Remus (you were on the same page as Wilma), but I promise we are finally on our way to his actual return…

The delay (absurd, given where I left the story… I am so sorry) was due to travel. I am certainly not alone, but in these times I wish I could simply floo. Sigh.

It may be another few days until the next update.

Thank you so much for your perseverance and your patience. Your support means the world, and I am so grateful.