From the playlist:

Trail of Evidence - Tommee Profitt

I Know Your Secrets - Tommee Profitt, Liv Ash

Halloween - Phoebe Bridgers

October - George Ogilvie

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Ch. 23 - Old Dog, New Tricks

"Prefects, escort the students of Gryffindor back to the Great Hall at once," Dumbledore instructed, speeding down the steps with his colleagues at his heels. "Professors McGonagall and Snape, please fetch the other heads of house and have them collect their students from their common rooms. Professor Lupin, gather the teachers and have them meet in the staffroom."

Obediently, Remus split off from the students fluttering fearfully down the stairs and strode toward some of the offices along the fourth floor. He was much too distracted by his own thoughts to notice the second set of footsteps behind him; not until Snape rounded on him, blocking his path.

"You may have everyone else fooled, but I am not so easily deceived."

"Severus, whatever this is, it is a waste of our time-"

"I find it extraordinary that Black could successfully breach both the dementors' defenses and the castle walls without assistance."

So much for that magnanimity.

"And you suppose I'm the one assisting him," Remus concluded. "I think you've got our former loyalties confused, Severus. It was your old boss he sided with, was it not-?"

"Careful, Lupin."

"How could I have helped Sirius if I was at the feast, same as you were?" Remus reasoned.

"I am determined to figure that out."

Right now, there was nothing he could say to convince Snape otherwise, and the clock wasn't going to wait for him to come up with something. "This bickering gets us no closer to finding him," Remus decided, stepping around him and continuing down the corridor.

He knocked on the doors of Professors Burbage, Babbling, Binns, and Vector, as well as Filch's office on the ground floor. By the time he joined them in the staffroom, Flitwick had sent Trelawney and Sinistra down. Madam Pince, Madam Hooch, and Madam Pomfrey had already been alerted as well. Hagrid, Snape, and Sprout joined them a few minutes later.

Hypotheses were flying back and forth across the room.

"I don't understand! What is the point of having these infernal dementors around if they can't-?"

"Do you suppose he flew in-?"

"A Disillusionment charm might've-"

"He must've been wearing a disguise-"

While the other teachers speculated, Remus sat in the far corner with his fists clenched so tightly on his knees that his knuckles were pale. He could feel Snape's beady eyes on him, and perhaps secluding himself wasn't helping his case; but his mind was racing so overwhelmingly fast that it was making him delirious. He couldn't operate much more than what he was getting by with now, and that meant sitting in silence.

Shortly thereafter, Dumbledore entered.

"Are the students alright?" Professor Burbage questioned, clutching her cardigan around herself.

"The students are safe, but we must conduct a search of the grounds," Dumbledore spoke quickly and decisively. "I have sent Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick to the seventh floor. Professor Sinistra will take the Astronomy tower, and Professor Trelawney will clear her own classroom and office. Professor Babbling may take the sixth floor, Professor Vector the fifth, Professor Burbage the fourth, and Professor Snape the third. Professor Binns will search the second floor, and I'd like for Professor Madam Pince to walk along the first floor. Madam Pomfrey will report back to the Hospital Wing. Mister Filch will search the ground floor and the Dungeons. Madam Hooch, please comb the Quidditch pitch and the locker rooms. Professor Sprout to the greenhouses, and Hagrid to the boathouse. Professor Lupin will accompany me to the Forbidden Forest. I will have to speak to the dementors. Should any of you encounter Black, detain him immediately."

Immediately, everyone scuttled out to assume their posts. Remus took hold of his wand and followed Dumbledore.

If he'd known he'd be doing this tonight, he'd have worn a better jumper underneath his robes. The highland chill permeated every layer of his clothing in a matter of seconds - though he wasn't sure it was responsible for why he felt so shaky.

They walked without speaking - which was actually a bit unnerving, on top of everything else. Remus wouldn't necessarily describe Dumbledore as a talker, but he usually had something to say. It wasn't until they'd passed the greenhouses that he finally broke the silence.

"Do you know why I've brought you with me, Remus?"

"I assume there's a reason you didn't assign me to a section of the castle."

"I do not believe Black is still in the castle," he revealed, "though I cannot rely entirely on a hunch where the students are concerned."

"You want me to search for him out here," Remus deduced.

"Precisely. You may be our greatest asset against Black. To know an enemy is to understand them."

Remus's heart was pounding so ruthlessly, the blood pressure was starting to give him a headache.

"I will have the dementors sweep the Forest," Dumbledore continued. "Anything outside the tree line, I will leave to you."

"Understood."

"Remus." Dumbledore brought their march to a halt and looked him in the eye. "Believe me when I tell you that I realize how difficult it is to confront an adversary who you once regarded as a brother."

"Yes, sir," he replied, anxiously squeezing and releasing his wand within his grip.

"I trust that you will make the right decision when the time comes."

"I'll do what must be done," he said - another nail in the coffin.

Dumbledore nodded, then turned and continued on to the edge of the forest. Veering off to the left, Remus strode briskly toward the mangled branches of the Whomping Willow peeking over the horizon, still fidgeting impetuously with his wand.

Precisely twelve years ago, Sirius Black had betrayed James and Lily, then mercilessly slaughtered Peter. The man had taken everything from Remus.

So why in God's name wasn't he doing everything in his power to get him back behind bars?

There was something that had gone unspoken during his and Emmeline's meetings. He hadn't thought about it. He hadn't let himself think about it. To think about it was to acknowledge it, and to acknowledge it was to acknowledge that he was not only complicit, but spineless. Before tonight, it hadn't mattered; because Emmeline was going to catch Sirius, and he was going to be sent back to Azkaban, and he wasn't supposed to have gotten this far already.

Remus assumed that, perhaps, in the jumble of Emmeline's fractured memories, she'd forgotten. She had to have forgotten. Her every decision; her every breath reverberated with an obsessive need to see Sirius apprehended, and if she'd remembered, there would've been a second drawing tacked next to all the wanted posters. Right now, he figured he was the only one who knew.

And if he was the only one who knew, that meant the blame weighed heaviest on his shoulders.

What was he to do if he actually found Sirius?

Bind him or petrify him, and send both Dumbledore and Emmeline a patronus, of course.

…Right?

Though the last time Sirius had been arrested, they hadn't even deemed him worthy of a trial, and Remus wanted answers.

Really, Remus wanted him dead. He wanted Sirius to have to look not him - but James in the eye, and explain his treachery.

As he stalked past the Willow, he didn't catch the pair of eyes staring out at him from the gap in the roots.

So he checked around Hagrid's cabin. Nothing.

Nothing by the gates to the village.

Up the drive? Not a damn thing.

Absolutely nothing around the west side of the castle.

Even more of nothing by the lake.

It was nearly four in the morning by the time Remus trudged back into the Entrance Hall, dead tired and savagely sore. He suspected Black he was far away from the grounds by now, and Remus couldn't traverse through an entire forest full of dementors to go after him. He still wasn't sure how Sirius had managed to…

Just before he'd reached the stairs, something tugged at his heart, and he instead turned around, diverting to the Great Hall. He pushed the door open a crack, and was met with bright red hair.

Percy whipped around.

"It's alright, it's just me," Remus whispered, settling him.

"Everything okay, Professor Lupin?"

"Yes, I just…"

Glancing past Percy, he picked out the head of disheveled jet-black hair splayed messily over the purple sleeping bag like spilled ink. His eyes were closed. Without thinking about it, he also located the little head of bobbed hair.

"…I just wanted to check on things here before heading back up to my office."

"I have everything under control, sir."

"I'm sure you do, Percy. Thank you."

"Goodnight, Professor."

But as much as he would've liked to crawl into bed, Remus's night was nowhere near over. As soon as he'd put enough distance between himself and the Hall, he drew his wand, silently conjuring a wisp of silver mist.

"I need to speak to you urgently. I'll be there in ten minutes."

The wisp grew into an amorphous silhouette, then disappeared. He hoped it would be sufficient warning.

…

"What happened?" Emmeline clamored before he or the cane had even set foot out of the fireplace.

"He broke into Hogwarts. He was trying to get into the common room, to get to Harry-"

"What!?"

"We've been searching for him all night."

"He shouldn't have made it that far already," she inveighed, pointing her wand towards the staircase.

As he was reaching for a Milky Way from the bucket of sweets left on the sofa, Remus had to duck to dodge the great pile of maps and folders which zoomed down the stairs. They crash-landed on the coffee table, spilling haphazardly over onto the floor like they were melting.

"Damn it-"

"Here." His increasingly inflamed knees prickled unpleasantly as he set the cane aside and knelt to help her. "Let me-"

"I've got it-"

"There." He straightened out the papers and set them neatly on the table.

His neat pile was all for naught the moment Emmeline began rifling through the stack, spilling some of it onto the floor once more. "You should've sent word earlier," she scolded. "I was already up. I would've come."

"I thought it unwise to broadcast that the two of us are working together," he said roughly as he reached for the cane, trying not to wince so obviously as he lumbered up. "Snape thinks I'm the one who helped him into the castle. I didn't want that to reflect badly on you." He worked the Milky Way wrapper open and popped the chocolate in his mouth, still feeling a little clammy from being in the vicinity of the dementors.

"Well Snape can eat my shit."

Remus choked on the Milky Way a little, and coughed.

Having located the largest map, Emmeline tore it open and shoved it down on top of the other papers, staring down at it in bewilderment. "... How?"

The chocolate felt like it got stuck going down his throat. "...Emmeline-"

"This changes everything. I don't understand how he got to the school so fast."

"He travels faster as the dog," he blurted before he could convince himself not to.

Emmeline swayed a little.

Taking a firm hold of the cane, Remus braced himself for the onslaught that was sure to follow. She might beat him over the head with it, honestly. Surely, keeping this to himself was a betrayal above all others. He couldn't even claim ignorance as an excuse, for surely, the lack of information the Ministry had put out was enough to incriminate him. "I didn't realize you'd forgotten" wasn't going to cut it. Not even a little bit.

But she didn't so much as steam from the ears. Instead, Emmeline slowly came around the table and placed a hand on his arm - not so much a compassionate gesture as a concerned one.

"Have you told Dumbledore?" she asked.

"No."

"Why not?"

"...Because of a very foolish, very selfish reason," he prefaced ashamedly, unable to escape her piercing stare. "If I tell Dumbledore, I'd be admitting that I led James and them along with me while I was at school. I completely betrayed the trust he put in me when he admitted me to Hogwarts."

"And that's the only reason?"

His eyebrows bunched together.

...Hang on.

She hadn't forgotten.

She hadn't forgotten at all.

"...Why haven't you told your team?"

Straightening up like a soldier, Emmeline took her hand back. "...Keeping that information to myself gives me a better chance of getting to him first."

Remus's jaw fell open.

"…I've been looking for him on my own-"

"Are you mad-?"

"-on nights when I'm not overseeing patrols-"

"-Emmeline, that is- madness-"

"It should be one of us that gets to do it, not a fucking dementor," she slurred. He got a whiff of something on her breath then.

Was she drunk?

Remus's eyes drifted past her into the kitchen. It was much less homey-looking in the duskiness of the early hours, especially with the sad, solitary candle on the table. Its flickering weakly illuminated the pallid green glass of an empty wine bottle, several chocolate wrappers, and that old stationary box of photos like the dreariest still life ever painted.

He beheld the scene on the table, mortified. Even after everything that had happened tonight, seeing this made him feel as though someone had dumped a bucket of freezing water over his head. He'd been so busy feeling sorry for himself and for Harry, he hadn't even considered Emmeline.

Following his gaze, she promptly strode into the kitchen to pitch the bottle and the wrappers in the rubbish bin, as if doing so now would hide how her night had gone. She returned to the table to pack up the box, but one of the polaroids made her pause. From where he was standing, Remus couldn't see which one it was, but she started running her thumb over its surface.

"One of the things I'll never be able to forget is the way their kitchen smelled that night we found out…" she murmured.

"I- I should've-..." he stammered lousily. "...I should've-"

"I'm going to the forest," she cut him off, striding back through the front room.

Remus snapped his mouth shut, huffing a sigh through his nostrils. "I really don't think that's a good idea."

"If he's already made it to the castle-"

"Why don't you wait until the rest of the Department has been informed and bring your team along-?"

"That'll take too long," she decided, passing him briskly on her way to the stairs.

Against his better judgment, Remus followed after her. "Emmeline, the forest is teeming with dementors. I really must insist-"

But the moment her foot hit the first step, she stopped, realized something, and broke into a sprint. Then he heard the retching.

Remus stared up at the landing, not wishing to intrude, but feeling bound by the laws of decency to make sure she'd at least made it to the toilet. He owed her that, especially tonight. Cautiously, and a bit reluctantly, he crept up the stairs one by one, gripping the bannister of dear life.

He knocked lightly on the doorframe of the hallway bathroom, "Emmeline?" he called, a little out of breath. She had, in fact, managed to make the toilet.

"I'm fine," she asserted, gagging again.

Despite his knees, he was already propping the cane on the sink and kneeling beside her, gathering her hair back into his grasp. Surprisingly, she didn't protest.

When she seemed to have gotten everything out, she reached up to flush and rested her head on the seat, peering up at Remus. "What time is it?"

He checked his watch, then brushed one more strand of hair off her forehead. "Nearly four-thirty."

"So it's not Halloween anymore?" she asked in a sort of childlike voice, wiping her mouth.

"…No," he assured her. "It isn't."

She exhaled in relief, shutting her eyes.

He was having to reason with his instincts, which were telling him to do and say things the Auror would deem unacceptable.

"…Why don't we get you into bed?"

"I can't. I have to sear- hic," she hiccuped, "search for him."

"You aren't fit to apparate," he gently pointed out.

Emmeline glared at him insolently.

"Have I got that wrong?"

"...No."

"Then you can either sleep it off here, or sleep it off in your bed, and I think you'd prefer the latter."

He expected to have to fight her on it, but apparently, the Auror had clocked out for the night. Emmeline nodded.

"Okay. Bed it is." Getting his feet back under him and pulling a face as he stood, Remus slid his hand into hers, then wrapped the other around her back and helped her off the floor with a grunt. He kept hold of her for a moment, just to make sure she wouldn't lose her balance - but Emmeline wouldn't take a step. He inclined his head down to her, his cheek accidentally touching her forehead. "Do you feel like you're going to be sick again?"

"...You used to smell different," she muttered, probably unintentionally.

The Auror was not going to be happy about this come the morning; but Remus…

Remus could have stood there in the acrid stench of the bathroom with her leaning against him until his legs gave out if she would've let him. Something about the drunken embrace was steadying his heartbeat, after hours of it racing within his ribs.

Be that as it may, it wasn't fair to keep Emmeline from her bed any longer just to calm himself down, so Remus guided her into the hall.

"Is this one your bedroom?"

"Mhm."

"May I…?" he checked, reaching for the doorknob.

"Mhm."

The twin sized mattress with heinously pink pillows didn't really scream Emmeline.

"Er…I think I've got the wrong-"

"S'okay. I'll sleep in here."

He abided by her wishes, sneaking a peek around the room as he led her towards the fluffy pink comforter. On one wall, a pristine set of pointe shoes tied together in a neat bow hung next to a reproduction print of a Degas painting. On the other, posters and drawings of dinosaurs and dragons covered the wall. It felt improper to trespass in a student's room; at their home, no less…however, given who the particular student was…Well that made it worse, didn't it? Perhaps it didn't. He really wasn't sure.

Emmeline flopped onto the bed and hugged one of the pillows to her chest.

"Is there anything I can get you?" Remus asked.

She shook her head.

He returned to the bathroom anyway and filled a glass next to the sink with water, then brought it back and set it on the nightstand, taking care not to incur too much as he sat on the edge of the mattress.

There was still the matter of Sirius.

"I assume they'll call you in today."

"That's a safe assumption," she grumbled. "Amelia's going to rack me in the atrium…"

"...Are you going to tell them?" he questioned timidly.

"...Can we talk about it later?"

"Yes, of course," he agreed as his heart rate began to steadily climb again. If she did decide to, he would have a lot of explaining to do back at school. "I'll come back in the afternoon after we've both had some sleep."

"Remus?"

"Yes?"

"...Thank you."

About seventeen different things he could have said popped into his mind, but he settled for: "You're welcome," then pushed himself off the mattress and treaded quietly towards the door.

"Remus?"

"Yes?"

"Can you…?"

"...Anything," he offered preemptively.

"…Can you smuggle me one of Pomfrey's good headache relief solutions?"

"…Sure."

Emmeline shut her eyes, and even though he knew he shouldn't, he lingered in the doorway for a minute or two. Just in case she needed to vomit again after all, he told himself. It was only right.

He glanced around the room a bit more; at the spines of the books on her shelf, and at the drawings on the wall closest to the bed. They weren't bad, actually. Probably better than he could manage now as an adult. A dainty snore from the mattress snapped him out of it, and he reached for the doorknob to shut the door. He wasn't sure why a piece of paper at the top of the equally pink rubbish pail caught his eye, but it did. Another drawing of a dragon, a big green one, and one that she hadn't thought worthy of the wall.

He wasn't sure why he folded it up and stuck it in his pocket on his way out.