Author's Note: This chapter concludes GOF and we are heading into a new summer, now. Things are taking a turn, here, I hope you will bear with me and enjoy the story!
On the heels of Dumbledore, Snape and McGonagall, Remus and Emeline ran to keep up to get to Harry in time. They heard Alastor's pained voice: "when I've silenced the great Harry Potter once and for a-"
"-Expelliarmus!" Dumbledore shouted, bursting open the door and revealing Mad Eye over Harry, wand at his chest.
He took him against the desk and Severus poured a glistening liquid down this throat as he fought them.
"Are you Alastor Moody?" Albus shouted.
"No!" Came the cry as he desperately fought the potion.
"Is he in this room?"
Emeline looked up at Remus and nodded. He furrowed his brows as she tilted her gaze to the old latched chest in the corner. The other professors watched as she did so and Mad Eye looked to it frantically. They screamed for Harry to move as Severus opened it with a wave of his wand.
To their horror, the true Alastor Moody was lying at the bottom.
Emeline grabbed Remus' cloak and he moved to stand slightly in front of her protectively as the fake transformed to Barty Crouch Jr. He looked down on his daughter who Severus appraised curiously.
How had she felt this?
•
When they were asked to leave the room as ministry officials arrived, Severus pulled them both aside.
"My classroom, now, Miss Lupin."
Emeline glanced at her father who nodded toward Severus for her to continue and he fell in step behind her, his limbs beginning to ache with all of the intensity of the day, despite it not being a full moon.
When they arrived in the Potions classroom, the door slammed with a flick of Snape's wand and he turned to face them dramatically.
"When, pray tell, were you going to let me in on your little mirror-ing charade?"
"M-mirror-ing?" Emeline asked. "I'm not sure what you mean."
"Oh, please. You don't form a connection like that without knowing it is happening. Curiously enough, it seems you have your own instincts about you in addition, Miss Lupin. How would you know where Moody was?"
She swallowed thickly and glanced at Remus, who was silently awaiting her response, nearly as curious as Severus.
"Professor, I have every doubt you'll ever believe me, but I haven't the slightest clue. Something was amiss with Mad Eye- er, Barty rather, all year. I felt it."
"Ofcourse you did." He seethed, stepping closer to her. "How precious. Lupin's little pup not afflicted but certainly wolfishly perceptive."
"Don't call me that!" She responded angrily, stepping back and accidentally into Remus, who grabbed her shoulders to steady her.
"We haven't got time for this, Severus, please."
"You will make the time. Do you have any clue what mirror-ing is capable of?"
"What is he talking about?" She asked, exasperated. "I thought we could just sense eachother sometimes."
Severus sneered. "It goes much deeper than that. Not to mention the fact that I've seen a new animagus registered this year. Frolicking with your old man in the moonlight? How very haphazard of you, Lupin."
"She's an animagus to avoid anything haphazard, Severus, she's perfectly safe."
"Tell yourself that whilst you leave her mind wide open. She is a danger to herself and the other wolves who can sense her are a danger to her. One thing I never took you for was dull, Moony."
Remus opened his mouth to respond but Emeline beat him to it.
"You're saying my dad isn't the only one who can tap into this?" She asked, her stomach lurching.
"Your connection is very unique, that may be true. While no one can mirror you the way you and your father do, other wolves with these instincts can sense you and they will destroy you if they get even a whiff of disloyalty. You need trained and quickly. How couldn't you be aware?" He turned back to Remus, who looked painstakingly ashamed.
His daughter may not have inherited the full wolf, but he had still put her in a position of risk and it made him ill.
"Are you capable of training this, Severus?" Remus asked. For the first time there was a small glimpse in his voice of speaking to an old friend.
"More than capable. I'd like to start immediately through the summer."
"The summer? Why do I need this?" She looked at her father, panicked.
Severus took a deep breath.
"Mirror-ing takes three main facets, Miss Lupin. One is silent communication, which I assume you two have noticed. Be it conversation or emotion, that is specific to you two and you two alone. It can be perfected and honed to the point of full conversation and very deep feeling; it can be unnerving but once honed, it is normally voluntary." They nodded slowly. "Two is a wolf specific sense. You will be able to sense others and they will be able to sense you. This exposes you to a myriad of threats seeing as your father is not pack- oriented. He's very mild compared to them, dare I say it. They will tear you apart for disloyalty; further more they can seek you out specifically for the purpose of infection. You must close your mind to this."
Remus' grip on his daughter's shoulder tightened and she swayed slightly with dizzying anxiety. The fear she felt, though, was not her own. She reached her hand up to hold his on her shoulder, attempting to calm the wall he was building in shame of putting his daughter in danger like this.
"Third is perhaps the most unsettling."
Emeline felt the flood of her father's emotions again, her stomach dropping.
"The final facet is physical, Miss Lupin. Mirror-ing follows in death."
The color flooded from Remus' face and his grip on her loosened as the room spun
"What do you mean by that?" He choked out.
"I mean," Severus addressed Emeline. "You will mirror one another in death. Physically." He stated, for the first time gaining no enjoyment from Remus' distraught appearance.
"I don't understand." Emeline asked meekly.
"I mean if he dies, you die, Miss Lupin."
She sucked in air that seemed to cut her throat. Silence blanketed them and she couldn't bring herself to face her father. She could feel his emotions enough, feeling horribly for him and fearfully confused for herself.
"H-how do you close that facet, Severus?" Remus asked desperately.
"Simple, really." Severus said quietly. "The third facet is null and void if both family members are werewolves."
Emeline could feel her soul nearly leave her body at this statement. Her father stumbled back slightly and she turned to him, searching his eyes, which she had never seen blank.
"Dad-"
"-No!" He choked out. "You're lying! You lying arse!" He pushed Emeline out of the way and grabbed Severus by the shirt front, pinning him against the wall. "Finding your enjoyment in this, Severus? Is the game over yet!"
Severus kept every calm about him, wrapping his hand around Remus wrist and pulling it off forcefully. They didn't break eye contact and Emeline found herself falling backward to sit in a nearby desk.
"I mean it with sincerity that I wish, for Miss Lupin's sake, I was exaggerating. But there is no mother way, Remus. I will begin her lessons immediately on the first two facets, but the third," he glanced at Emeline with the first look of pity she had ever seen in his eyes. "Well, that choice is between the two of you."
He left the classroom, then, Emeline and Remus finding themselves alone and silent in the eerie darkness. He avoided her gaze at every cost and she remained quiet, staring ahead and fixating on an object to try and calm herself.
To Emeline, this news was not the worst in the world. She wished she feared werewolves more, but her love for her father and oblivion was enough to keep her accepting. She hadn't many qualms about becoming a werewolf if it aided her in evading death, but she wouldn't dare speak that to her father now.
To Remus, this was life ending, world crumbling news.
He would never let her willingly become a werewolf. Certainly, never infect her himself!
Thus, the weight was his to bear: if he died, his daughter died with him.
She wasn't sure he would recover from this.