This chapter is a favorite of mine. Arben is one of those side characters I created on a whim for some stuff later, and then he turned into a whole person that I'm now very attached to. Hope you enjoy. T-1 chapter before we get this werewolf to Hogwarts, stick with me people.

From the playlist:

Oj lulije - Klajdi Haruni, Bruno

Kaba me violinë - Saz'iso

Two Flutes - Xhevdet Lumshi, Hafiz Muka

Liar - Paramore

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Ch. 11 - The Raki Reproval

"So I say to him-"

"Stop! Stop, Arben I'm gonna piss myself-!"

"Wait, wait, wait, you gonna love the end of the story!"

Swiping tears off her brandy-flushed cheeks, Emmeline shook trying to hold back her laughter long enough to hear the punchline.

"So I say, 'I think we are not talking about the same kind of wand here'-"

And then Emmeline was doubled over, clumsily knocking over her emptied shot glass as she wheezed. Fumbling to grab it, Arben set it upright and poured them another round.

Trinkets and memories of Arben's homeland covered the cozy flat, which was probably the reason Emmeline found such solace there. Moving photos of the streets of Tirana, small figurines carved by nimble hands, and colorful icons covered the walls and surfaces of the furniture in such a way that transported her straight into Arben's colorful stories. Someone with a mind for interior decorating might've turned up their nose and said all the memorabilia crowded the space; but if they did, they surely couldn't have understood what it was like to have such a strong sense of identity like Arben. The kitchen cabinets were filled with wonderful flavors and spices he had introduced Emmeline to over the years, and though the flavors were not from her home, they sure tasted like home. His fyell brezi flute sometimes made an appearance after they'd had enough raki to drink. She loved the man, and she loved coming here.

"You're a filthy old bastard!" she chuckled.

Equally ruddy, Arben smoothed some wisps of gray hair down on his otherwise balding head, then shrugged. "What would you have said?"

"Something not nearly as funny, I reckon."

"I can live with being a filthy old bastard, as long as I am also funny."

"You would've made a smashing Hufflepuff."

Arben humphed. "We didn't bother with that sorting muti. At Durmstrang, everybody the same."

"You can shit on Hogwarts all you like, but Durmstrang gave us Gellert Grindelwald-"

"Okay, okay-"

"-so don't get too high on your equality horse."

"You are probably right. More byrek?" he offered.

"No, thank you. It was delicious," Emmeline declined, but the phyllo dough pie was her favorite thing he made.

"…Come on, one more piece."

"…Alright, last one."

Victoriously, Arben snatched her plate and rose with a grunt, plodding back to the kitchen counter and using it as an opportunity to get down to the nitty-gritty. "So, are you gonna tell me why you acting all…"

"…Acting all what?"

Having set down the plate, Arben curled his fingers into claws and bared his teeth.

"More than usual?"

"Maybe a little," he admitted, returning to the table with her byrek and setting it in front of her.

"…I'm under a lot of pressure, with the way the case is going-"

"No, no," Arben wagged his finger as he sat back down. "You were acting like this before the case."

Then Emmeline humphed. "You want the answer I give everyone else, or the truth?" she asked, taking a bite and wiping the flakes from her lip.

"You think I invite you over, make you byrek, and get you liquored up to hear the answer you give everyone else?"

"I assumed you did that to seduce me," she teased.

Arben guffawed. "Oh, Rrush. Maybe if I was forty years younger."

"I'm not opposed to older men."

"And maybe if you were a little less…" He brought the claws up again.

"Hey! I can be perfectly sweet when I want to be-!"

"Quit your stalling." He pushed the shot glass towards her. "Talk to me."

"...Ran into an ex-boyfriend a few weeks ago. Didn't go too well…" she reported. "…It went horribly, in fact."

"The wanker from the Wizengamot?"

"Hah! No, not him…" She began pensively trailing her finger along the rim of the glass. "...The one who promised I'd never see him again."

"...You saw him again-?"

"I saw him again."

"...Oh…Oh dear."

"Yeah..."

Arben waved his hand, inviting her to proceed.

"...Well, you know the first part already," she prefaced. "He disappeared without warning because he thought he would ruin my life. Made my decision for me."

"Remind me why does he think that, again?"

…Even with the few people who knew about him, it was always a bit hard to talk about Remus without giving too much detail.

Arben mistook her hesitation for something else. "Oh-… Can you-?" he started to ask.

"Yeah," Emmeline said quickly. "Yeah, all of that's still intact, I'm just erm…He's got some health issues-"

"Right."

"-that make things difficult for him. It's hard for him to work."

"That's right, it's coming back to me."

"But he knows I know that. I never minded it," she insisted. She always insisted on that.

"So you see him on the street, or what?"

"Not exactly. We crossed paths while I was accompanying the Minister to a meeting off site."

"And was the ex-boyfriend rude?"

"Er…no, actually. Not at that point. But I had something work-related I wanted to discuss with him, so I…" Now that she was telling the story aloud, it was starting to sound properly imbecilic to her. "I invited him over..."

"Then he was rude?"

"Well he came for tea, but we didn't really get a chance to talk…" What exactly made her think any of this was a good idea again? "…That night something possessed me to go over to his to have it out, but I got there and it was…Arben, his living conditions were…" She blinked, trying to un-see the cottage. "...That's not the point. The point is, I just needed to hear him admit what he did was wrong, but he wouldn't do it. I shouted, and then he shouted, which is not very like him…or not how he used to be, at least."

"Ah," Arben nodded, getting the gist. "Then he was rude."

Recalling the end of the row, Emmeline clenched her jaw. "...He just said a couple things that were…pretty cruel…" Her gaze flickered, then hardened. "So now I'm on my own for that work-related thing, I suppose." She concluded the tale unceremoniously before tipping back the raki.

Arben scratched his warty nose in thought.

"...You know, back in my country-"

"At long last, the most anticipated portion of the evening," Emmeline rejoiced, propping her elbows on the table and putting her face in her hands attentively.

"I told you when I was a teenager, Grindelwald terrorized Europe."

"Yeah."

"Didn't matter where you are, and didn't matter who you are. Both wizards, and njerëz jo magjikë. When I finish school, I go home to Albania, and not too long after, we get Mussolini's fascists."

"Right."

"After a few years, they give up on the Balkans, and who do we get next? The nazis. And they was worse. They take all our money and force us to work." He unfolded his arms, and pointed to a photo of Enver Hoxha secured to the wall with a steak knife through his forehead. "Then, the communists kick out the nazis, and at first I think we are saved." He rolled his eyes. "How foolish I was."

Emmeline attributed her ability to track the conversation at all to her father's insistence that she keep up with her muggle history.

But Arben's gaze meandered off toward another photo with a sort of affliction that seemed no less sharp than it had been when it was fresh. "And just when I think everything going to be better, we find Driton in the forest in 1945…"

They'd commiserated about it before; losing people this way. Particularly when they had so much life left ahead of them. Despite the fact that Driton was a muggle, and despite the values that Durmstrang tried to instill, Emmeline had sniffed out early on that he'd been something like Arben's Remus. His murder was a mystery; but with no markings on his body, Arben had known it must've been a wizard.

"We survived the occupations, and the war, and then I lose him and I just…" He got a bit choked up. "It was too much."

Emmeline followed his gaze to the photo of two handsome young men, each with one arm around the other. Even in black and white, she noticed a kind of incandescence in Arben's eyes that was absent from them now, but suspected it had nothing to do with the time that had passed. She had a feeling her own eyes were missing something that had been present in the old Polaroids.

"Anyway. Hoxha turned out to be a tyrant, but people thought, 'at least he is Albanian.' Everyone was tired. The wizards could live untouched again, so nobody stood up."

"... You did."

"...I tried, at least."

The exile was a sore subject.

"...I love my country. Having to leave her was the worst pain of my life," he said with a crackling voice. "Many school friends were dealing with iron curtain, too; but I knew the wizard who defeated Grindelwald was from England. We heard the news in Tirana. So I decided." He drummed his fist on the table. "I'm gonna go there."

"I thank Merlin you did."

"So I arrive at the Ministry, I speak very little English, and things were hard. I could've had better job back home - maybe not better pay, but more respect. Here, I am not treated the same as everyone else. People think just because you walk around with a rubbish bin and you don't always understand means you are not smart."

"I don't think they realize you hear everything. You know more about the Ministry than the Minister does."

"No, I like my job, I do. But I still have accent. I still look a little different. And I still miss home."

"Do you ever plan to return?"

He shrugged. "Last year they elected the Democratic party, but they are not, how you say, out of the woods yet…I don't know. It's been so long, I'm afraid it will be too different. Besides; Driton is not there no more."

"...Do you find it difficult, being older than he ever got to be?" Emmeline asked quietly.

Arben shot back his raki before answering. "Why you think I have no mirrors in here?"

Emmeline hated them too, and wondered if she'd get to that point someday.

"So, okay. You had to listen to my sad story maybe one hundred times now, so I'll get to my point."

"For the record, I could listen to it a hundred more times and not get sick of it."

Taking a moment to prepare himself, Arben fixed his eyes on her. "...You have nice house, no?"

Her nose crinkled at the seemingly arbitrary question. "...Yes, but-..."

…Oh.

…Oh, Emmeline did not like where this was headed.

"...Well I mean, it's a normal house."

"You have your health, and you have your work. These are good things, do not get me wrong."

"Wh- Don't tell me you're on his side," she scoffed facetiously; but Arben wasn't laughing.

"...Rrush, forgive me, but I think maybe you are both wrong, in some ways."

The smile practically dripped off her face like he'd divvied it into the glasses.

"If he see that you are living good, and then you come by surprise and see he is living not so good…Let me tell you, that is hard for a man," he explained.

Emmeline leaned back in her seat petulantly. Arben knew full well that things had been plenty hard for her, too. He didn't really know the half of it, actually. She couldn't tell him about the true nature of those pesky "health issues," or about Remus's connection to Lucy, and those were two key factors in the conversation-

"It's not as if he wants to be in bad living conditions."

"Then he shouldn't have left," she snapped without thinking at all.

…Where the hell did that come from?

"You're saying he deserves it because of what he did?"

"No- No, I-…"

Emmeline didn't rightly know what she was saying anymore. After growing up with Remus, she never imagined she'd be in a position to get rebuked for a lack of sensitivity regarding his situation.

"...I wasn't pleased to see him like that…" she summarized.

She hadn't been. Not a bit. It wasn't as if she'd gone home that night vengefully rejoicing that karma was his interior decorator. In fact, she hadn't gone home at all. Not until the sun was sleepily peeking up over the horizon, and with little else on her mind other than how thin he looked, and that hovel, and why even after what he said, she couldn't stop wishing to take him somewhere else.

…So why had she said that?

"Leaving you with no goodbye, that is not right. Saying cruel things to you is not right. I am not excusing that." Arben's fixed stare rounded into something softer. "But I do not think it is right to ignore that there are very big differences between you and him, either."

"Differences- If he hadn't gone, there wouldn't be differences; I would have made sure of it. That's my point. That's what he won't-"

"But he would still be sick, no?" He inclined himself toward her. "…Emmeline, you are making him play game he cannot win because you two are not playing with same rules ."

This was absurd. Arben should have shared her righteous anger from the moment the story began with "disappeared without warning." Up until now, he had. Any faux pas on her part was dwarfed by the fact that Remus abandoned her.

But Arben was rarely ever wrong about these things. For the sake of his argument, she tried to leave the haze of mild inebriation fogging up her brain and step instead into Remus's head. Not like she used to, not like a perceptive guest - but like a proper tenant.

All this time, he believed that this insurmountable misery he'd put them through was an act of mercy. A benevolent sacrifice. A far better alternative for her than having to live with his demons. And if it was, and he was really such a burden that remaining by his side would've irreparably destroyed her life - which to this day, Emmeline believed to be utter bullshit…

…No. She still wouldn't have done it to him, if the tables were turned. She'd been ruminating on that question for years now. Smothering her with a pillow might've been more compassionate. And having to listen to Remus continue to justify the betrayal made it all the more unforgivable, even with the state of the house. He had no idea what she'd been through.

God, that house, though. The word was too liberal. She couldn't have imagined what state she might find him in when Dumbledore surrendered his address. She, perhaps more than anyone, understood Remus's prospects. She hadn't expected a great neighborhood, or even much more than a simple flat; but that...

The condition of the roof was enough to have the place condemned, not to mention the faint smell of mold. Who knew how it could be affecting his health. She was fairly certain she'd spotted the mattress lying directly on the floor in the bedroom with something that could barely be considered a blanket on it. How long had he been sleeping like that? It was a miracle he hadn't frozen to death in the winter.

…And that very day, he had seen where she lived…

She always felt a sort of nagging shame when Max dropped in and the house was a mess, or she looked a mess. And if she stepped into Remus's shoes…

Oh God.

Arben was right.

The incursion was wrong, and no transgression of Remus's could redeem it. He called his own home hell, and instead of showing sensitivity, she challenged him to a pissing contest to determine who had suffered greater and assumed she could beat the werewolf living in the shack.

She'd been stupid, and ignorant, and horrid.

Try as she might to put herself in those tattered shoes, Emmeline would never truly know what it was like to be him. She'd understood that since they were teenagers; that her empathy was never quite enough to bridge the gap. She couldn't fathom what it was like to spend every day managing what she could only assume was a level of pain that would render a normal person bedridden. Dangers of the transformation aside, that was something she'd just never be able to grasp. Not to mention reckoning with the self-loathing he wore like a second skin. Knowing all of this information didn't grant her the true understanding of what it was like to operate under those circumstances 24/7. But if it were her, and if she could understand what it was like…

Perhaps it was the liquor, but for the first time in eleven and a half years, Remus's decision was beginning to make sense, and that hurt. It prickled in the most unpleasant way.

Loving Remus had been as effortless as breathing, once - and not in spite of all of those things. Though it hadn't been without its challenges, her mother and father never once begrudged caring for Uncle Robert, and that unyielding devotion became a learned behavior. Emmeline knew what she was getting herself into the moment she kissed Remus at fifteen, and she would have, and could have stuck with him through it all. That was something she would never concede. She never wanted to fix him.

But it was becoming clear to her that she blamed him for more than just leaving; her pride blamed him for not entrusting her with his deliverance.

She wanted to fix everything around him, for him.

Merlin Morgana and Mungo.

Remus was right, too.

She'd been the monster that night, not him .

And yet she'd gone and called him a beast? That was the moment she'd been fixating on for weeks now. She, who for years had watched his body mutate and cleaned the wounds and told him none of it diminished the way she felt, had sullied the faith he'd put in her to grant her that intimate level of access to him. She hadn't even meant it that way, but no matter the intentions, nothing could have softened that word's impact.

And Emmeline knew that, in his mind, he'd left before she could suspect what he'd always known about himself. So what had she done? Barged in and confirmed his suspicions with one, careless word. That might've been the worst thing she could have said to him. Stupid, stupid non-existent filter.

As for his reaction to Lucy, Remus had simply done what he'd always done: tried to hurt Emmeline just enough to make her leave on her own accord before he had a chance to hurt her in worse ways, flustered and frightened as he was. Of course Lucy was preemptively extended the same treatment.

The liquor began to sour in her stomach.

"But what do I know, eh? I am old. And a little drunk," Arben tacked on sagaciously, breaking the long silence.

Noticing she felt much heavier than she had a minute ago, Emmeline narrowed her eyes at him. "…Arben, I come here to drink and be consoled; not corrected ," she groused.

The smile returned to his face. "It's nice having you. I'm glad you are here."

How could she possibly face Remus and apologize without allowing him to cut her to the bone again-?

"Rrush," Arben got her attention.

She glanced up at him with penitent eyes, which somehow made her appear younger.

Leaning in again, he laid his hand upon hers. "I am glad you are here," he articulated slowly, and more deliberately.

Emmeline's bottom lip quivered; but only for a moment.

"We have a saying in Albania," he added. "Nuk bëhet orë pas njëherë."

"What does it mean?"

"Time does not turn back."

Ouch. Arben wasn't pulling punches tonight, and god damn it, they were landing every time.

"Take it from me: I think it is time to stop living in that painful past of yours. All you can do is focus on what's in front of you. What's in front of you, Rrush?"

"…Catching Sirius Black," she replied soberly.

"Okay then." Arben poured one final round of raki, then Emmeline followed his lead as he lifted his in a toast. "To catching Sirius Black." He clinked her glass.

"Chin chin."

"Gëzuar."

As that final shot washed down her throat, the burn long since numbed, she considered how grateful she was for Arben; for his company, his stories, and his wisdom - and how she wished it could all be that simple.

Because unfortunately, she suspected she might have to go back to go forward.

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ba-dum-ch. get it?

bonus points if you can solve Driton's murder mystery ?