***Canon Divergence Disclaimer: It's been a super fun challenge for me to try to adhere to the timeline and events of canon, but there are a few teensy things I am altering for the purposes of the story. One not-so-teensy thing is Remus's experience with the Wolfsbane potion. There is no exact date for its invention but it is thought to have been developed in the "latter half of the 20th century." It is mentioned in PoS that Remus didn't have access to it before his time as a Professor at Hogwarts, but a) for reasons that will later be revealed, if the potion came about in, say, the 1960's or 1970's, I don't think that makes sense, and b) it is going to be very important to some events at the end of this story which will lead into its Second Wizarding War sequel that Remus does, in fact, have access to it before then. Thank you for coming to my TED talk, I'm always down to answer any questions.

From the playlist:

Lonesome Loser - Little River Band

Home By Now - MUNA

Yesterday - The Beatles

Ch. 4 - Upset

Remus leaned up against the little brick wall in front of the house, lit, then furiously inhaled his cigarette. Sod the tux, and sod her.

Not only was she engaged; she was engaged to a complete and utter wanker. McLaggen was a debbonaire, trust-funded, posh scumbag who had been two years above them in school, and came from a long line of Ministry arse-kissers. He was just about the last person on earth Remus thought Emmeline would ever involve herself with, let alone choose to marry. Then again, this whole ordeal made him wonder if he had ever really known her at all. Perhaps she did fancy those types, and he had simply given her too much credit.

"Remus."

Speak of the devil.

She was relieved that he didn't seem to be leaving, but surprised to find a cigarette betwixt his fingers. "Since when do you smoke?" she asked from the other side of the gate, wisely choosing to give him a fair bit of room.

He did not meet her eyes, but chuckled spitefully in response.

"And what, may I ask, is so funny?"

"Well," he began, expelling a puff from the corner of his mouth. "You haven't exactly been around to find out, have you?" This time when he took a drag of the cigarette, he delayed his exhale so that smoke leaving his lips curled around each of his next words: "A lot of things change in a year."

"...It hasn't quite been a year," Emmeline corrected him, folding her arms around herself. She made the mistake of not grabbing her coat on her way out the door, and the silk of the bridesmaid's dress did nothing to ward off the chill in the air. Too late to go back for it now - he might've been gone by the time she returned.

Remus raised an insolent eyebrow. "It's been ten months to the day."

Speechless that he had kept track, Emmeline swallowed her words, and stared at the ground to avoid his eyes which he now saw fit to cast in her direction.

"I'm rounding up," he jeered coarsely, returning to his cigarette.

"Remus, I would very much like to give you an explanation, but I hardly think this is the time or place."

"I hear you've been back for weeks. Would've been nice to know."

"...You're right, I should have reached out to you earlier; much earlier." She could offer him no excuse, except maybe "I was scared out of my wits to talk to you," and chose to leave it at that. "Can we just agree to go back inside and put on a brave face for James and Lily, please?"

Remus glared at her contemptuously, tapping the cigarette. She didn't get to make him out to be the unreasonable one; not when she'd lost all privileges to a moral high ground. "Why did you come back?" he questioned.

As the guilty party, Emmeline let Remus take the lead with his interrogation, but was finding it difficult to provide him with answers that he would deem acceptable without knowing the whole truth of the matter.

"...Well?"

"...Tiberius wanted to move to London for work, and he thought since we were moving in together, we might as well..." She couldn't bring herself to finish, because it began to sound as stupid and indefensible to her as it probably did to Remus. Her right hand moved to cover her ring.

He scoffed bitterly, and got right to asking another question he wasn't even sure he wanted the answer to. "Did you run off with him? Is that what happened?"

"What- No! Absolutely not! We weren't...involved until long after I...relocated."

Her response did not soothe or satisfy Remus whatsoever, nor did it vindicate her. He personally felt that under ten months was not a sufficient amount of time to date someone before getting engaged, especially at nineteen. He had been with Emmeline for over two years, and they hadn't once talked about marriage. Could she really have forgotten about him that quickly?

Emmeline shuffled her feet to keep her blood flowing. "Please, Remus, you have every right to be upset, but-"

"Upset?"

Remus cracked the hint of a crazed smile.

"Upset," he repeated, flicking the cigarette on the ground and stomping on it before letting himself back through the gate. "Perhaps at first, I was upset. It was indeed upsetting to come home one day to find that my girlfriend had just taken all of her things, quit her job, and gone; with no warning. None."

Emmeline said nothing, and instead let him continue.

"I suppose it was also upsetting when I had to find out not from Marlene, not from Lily, but from Albus Dumbledore where you'd gone, since you were kind enough to write to him, but didn't have the decency to inform your partner or any of your friends. And it's particularly maddening that, after a year of radio silence, you've returned, today of all days, again without warning, and engaged to Tiberius f-" He stopped himself short. "…To Tiberius sodding McLaggen. Frankly Emmeline, I am well beyond upset. Upset doesn't even come close."

Remus huffed and puffed at the end of his tirade. Rarely would he allow himself to vomit up everything on his mind like that, and Emmeline knew that it was usually best to let him get it all out before attempting to proceed. She endured all his words without protestation as she deserved, then once he had settled down enough to pull another cigarette from his back pocket:

"...You done?"

Remus took a long, therapeutic drag of his newly lit Rothman. "For now."

"...How'd that feel?"

"…Bloody fantastic."

"Good. Glad you got it out of your system." She snatched the cigarette, helping herself to a puff.

"...Since when do you smoke?"

"I don't," she wheezed, regretting her decision. The smoke left her mouth in little puffs as she coughed. "I really don't see the appeal. These will-"

"-Kill me, I know," he finished her sentence, looking mildly amused as he took back his cigarette.

He studied her and noticed that she did not look just as he remembered her. Though uneducated in the minutia of hairstyles, he could tell from the volume of her bun that she had let her hair grow out a few inches longer. Emmeline's hair had always been a tad unruly, but she never seemed to mind, and Remus assumed that perhaps she liked it that way. It seemed tamer now, or maybe Marlene's styling abilities had done the trick of subduing it. He didn't think he had ever seen her wear this much makeup before either, and felt as though he was looking at her full lips for the very first time. Had they always looked like that and he'd simply forgotten? The thought saddened him.

"...I do owe you an explanation, but I can't give it to you tonight. Is there somewhere we could meet to talk?" Emmeline asked, thankful that it no longer appeared as though the evening would end in disaster.

"Name the place," Remus shrugged, trying to seem aloof after accidentally having stared at her mouth for a bit too long.

She considered it for a moment. "We could go to Florean's. For old times' sake."

"...It's November," he reminded her, noticing that she was shivering and shedding his jacket before handing it off.

"How dare you suggest that ice cream is seasonal," she rebuked him, accepting it.

"...Alright. Florean's it is."

"How's tomorrow afternoon? Say, three?"

"Fine, I think."

"Fine."

They heard twinkling on the piano again, perhaps Chopin or Schumann, and looked in the window to find that Sirius had commandeered it.

"Oh good, the band's arrived," Emmeline quipped.

"I always forget he can do that."

"It's nice."

"It's nice now, but once he's good and drunk, he'll undoubtedly move on to Queen, and any attempt at that high note in Bohemian Rhapsody will peel the new paint."

Her laughter put another lovely little pang in Remus's chest.

"...It's good to see you," he admitted softly, and against his better judgment.

Emmeline met his eyes, trying not to smile. "Yeah, it's good to see you too."

…

Diagon Alley wasn't nearly as crowded at this time of year since all of the 11-to-18-year-old patrons were still at Hogwarts finishing their first term. Emmeline peered through the window of Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour, but Remus hadn't arrived yet. Given a day to think about it, she wondered if he'd decided not to show up to their meeting after all. He certainly wouldn't have owed it to her. She flicked her wrist up to glance at her watch, and was relieved to discover that she was fifteen minutes early. Perhaps enough time to pop into another shop…

Emmeline was convinced that nothing in her life had ever felt as good as coming back to Diagon Alley after so many months away. It was unfair to say, but she'd felt so uprooted since she left, and where "home" was seemed so nebulous now. She'd missed the smell of the books in Flourish and Blotts, and already felt a bit more herself as she stepped through the door frame. As she ran her fingers over the sections of school texts upstairs, she was inundated with nostalgia. Advanced Potion Making made her recall the time Marlene accidentally created some sort of cognizant gelatinous mass, and Professor Slughorn had to bring Dumbledore down to vanquish it. Intermediate Transfiguration made her laugh to herself. In third year, Sirius made a grave miscalculation and managed (quite impressively) to transfigure, not his quill, but instead poor Matthew Brown into a sparrow. He had to be sent to the hospital wing in a bird cage. The Grade 6 Edition of The Standard Book of Spells was a good one too; this didn't evoke a memory from a Charms class per say, but instead of throwing it down onto the moving stairs to distract Filch one night when she and Remus snuck out to stargaze.

"I thought I might find you up here," Remus said from behind, causing her to jump. He tried to look austere, but was actually pleased that he'd predicted her patterns.

Emmeline checked her watch again and realized she had been there for twenty-five minutes. "Merlin, sorry," she apologized as they made their way back down the stairs. "I didn't mean to keep you waiting."

"I was beginning to think you'd decided not to come…"

Emmeline felt the sting of the comment, but reminded herself that she'd thought the same thing about him just minutes ago. "Well, I'm here."

"...That is, until I wondered, 'if I were Emmeline Vance and I had my pick of all the shops, where would I be?'" He'd walked past her so she couldn't see the corners of his mouth turning upward.

...

It should have been exceedingly difficult to talk to each other, but the conversation flowed so naturally that it was hard to recall what topic led them on to the next.

"-because they had this potion. It was so silly that I hadn't just thought of it in the first place," Emmeline giggled, concluding an anecdote.

That jogged Remus's memory. He'd been worried that she would have all these wonderful new things to talk about while he wouldn't have much to report, but there was one thing…He deemed it safe to tell her.

Remus leaned across the table and lowered his voice. "Actually, that reminds me; I've er…got some news."

"...Okay," she responded in his same hushed volume, her smile fading.

"...There's a potion in development - well, really, it's been developed - that relieves some of the symptoms of my condition."

The whites of Emmeline's eyes seemed to grow larger. "Really?" she uttered. She'd anticipated him saying something else entirely.

"Yes. I've been taking it for the last six months."

"Remus, that's fantastic," she congratulated him quietly, instinctively squeezing his hand before realizing she'd done it, then snatching her fingers back. "How's it been then?"

"It's been nothing short of a miracle. Bloody expensive; but worth every penny. The process is still painful, but after the transformation it's still me in there, if that makes sense. I'm able to stay home."

"That's such great news…What is it?"

He checked around them before whispering again, but they were the only ones in the shop. It was November, after all. "It's called Wolfsbane."

Emmeline suppressed a pained expression. "...They couldn't've picked a slightly less conspicuous name?"

He couldn't stop himself from chuckling. "That's what I thought, too."

"What are you supposed to do?" she whispered, "Pop down to the apothecary and ask for the wolf tonic?"

"Not exactly. I have a supplier."

Beaming, she lightly jabbed his shoulder. "...I'm so happy for you."

"It's not a cure, but it's certainly made things easier."

Up until this point, two topics of conversation that were somehow avoided entirely were:

Why Emmeline left in the first place

How the hell McLaggen had managed to wriggle himself into the picture

They had been twirling their spoons in empty bowls by the time he finally grew a skin thick enough to ask. "So, you and McLaggen?" He felt compelled to look away as soon as the question left his tongue.

There it was. Emmeline leaned back in her seat away from him. "...Yeah. He erm…he's just been appointed to the Wizengamot."

"He's been appointed by his daddy," Remus thought indignantly.

"He's their youngest member."

Remus's lips pursed, almost involuntarily. "Very cool," he choked out.

"Yes…"

"...So while you were up in Scotland, you two…reconnected?" His too-vivid imagination began filling in harrowing mental images.

"We ran into each other in Edinburgh…you know, one thing leads to another…" Emmeline cleared her throat uncomfortably. "He wanted to be in London, so…now we're in London."

"...Ah." Going into this conversation, he thought he wanted to know everything about Emmeline's unexplained absence. Now that he was in it, hearing her talk about him was making his chest tighten up. He decided he didn't want to know anything else about McLaggen.

"...What about you?" Emmeline asked, quickly shifting the focus off herself. "Has there...er...been anyone?"

...Been anyone? What was she expecting him to say?

Remus kept his eyes on his empty bowl when he shook his head. "…No." But after he'd said it, he looked up to gauge her reaction.

To his surprise, Emmeline looked rather shocked by this. "...No one…at all?"

"No, of course not..." He trailed off.

Emmeline suddenly felt as though the ice cream curdled in her stomach.

"Hi," said the young witch from behind the counter as she approached them. "So sorry to bother you, but we're about to close."

"Of course, we'll be on our way," Emmeline assured her, getting up from her chair and hastily walking back out into the Alley. They'd been talking for so long, it was nearly dark out.

Remus caught her by the arm. "You told me you would give me an explanation."

"I know, but not here."

"...What?" Hadn't that been why they met in the first place?

She grabbed his hand and they disapparated.