The Deep Dust of Years - with DVD commentary

Signs of the times are everywhere. In the first place, James and Lily's son is old enough to be married (he's not getting married, but one of his best friends is, and it looks like the other may be right behind her); but while that's certainly alarming to someone who still doesn't think of himself as old enough to have friends getting married, it's not properly evidence that the world has really changed. But that evidence is all around. Hermione Granger's in-laws don't appear to be any more troubled that she's a witch than her own parents were when she was a child. Severus Snape is hand in hand with Harry Potter in public -- the real surprise of which is that the reconciliation of such mortal enemies does not appear to be any cause for comment among the wizards in attendance. Most of the wizards in attendance; I admit I still find it startling, even after four years, to see them so comfortable together.

This was the hardest to begin of anything I've written. (Or, I guess, of anything I've finished. Because there's plenty of stuff on my hard drive that's so hard to begin that I, you know, haven't begun it.) These first three paragraphs went through more revisions than most of the rest of the thing combined, and I'm still not bananas about them.

For some reason, this is not something I choose to bring up with Bill Weasley, though I have the sense that a conversational opening would be welcome. All morning, throughout the reception, we have been circling around each other. It seems that he's drifting towards me, inching a bit closer every time he shifts his weight or tilts his head and trying to be subtle about it. I suppose I shouldn't be too critical, however, as I'm doing the same. But one of us will have to find something to talk about -- with each other, rather than with various other wedding guests -- if we're to move beyond the eye-contact stage.

Before I can come up with such a comment, though, I feel a hand on my elbow and Harry appears at my side. "Excuse me, sorry," he says, smiling at these new relatives-in-law of Hermione Granger. "'Fraid I need to steal these fellows away from you, sorry." He continues to smile winningly through the delighted-to-have-met-you and perhaps-another-time, and when they've gone he winks at me and looks up at Bill. "'S not quite true," he admits with a grin. "I didn't need to steal you both. Charlie's been looking for you for a bit, Bill."

"Has he? Did he say what for?"

"Nah. But he's wandering about asking people if they've seen you."

I don't know why Charlie is looking for Bill, either. Probably he has to give back that McGuffin he borrowed.

"Better go find him, then." Bill sighs and glances at me. I smile -- reassuringly, I hope -- and he smiles back. It changes a great deal about his face, but he still looks a little bit careworn. Not that I'm in a position to -- that is, I'm sure I look the same, if not more so. Bill claps my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. "Cheers, Remus." He seems sorry to go.

It's only when I feel the bump of a shoulder against mine that I realize I've been rather blatantly watching Bill walk away. Harry grins at me. "Enjoying yourself, then, are you?" I smile and duck my head in acknowledgement, but I will not allow myself to blush.

For a moment his brow knits and he looks in the direction Bill went himself. "Listen, not that I think there's a chance of it or anything," James says, "but you've never slept with Snivellus, have you?"

I turn sharply to look at him. It's Harry who catches my arm before I overbalance, and my mind supplies 'Severus' as I blink at him for several seconds. "No," I say finally. "No, I haven't."

His grin broadens. "Just wouldn't want to be surprised," he says. "Small world, ours, you know." I can think of a number of ways in which this is true. Harry is silent for a moment before he speaks again. "Me and Severus," he muses. "Who'd have ever thought, eh? What d'you think Sirius would say if he was here?"

I can answer that easily. If Sirius were here, he'd say Harry and Snape -- dammit, Moony, what would James say if he were here? And the only thing I'd be able to say is But James -isn't- here. Only of course Sirius isn't here, either. I say nothing.

This bit, from Remus hearing Harry say "Snivellus" instead of "Severus" through "of course Sirius isn't here either", was in my head for weeks. I don't think I ever got it out quite the way it was in there, but I think it's close. The sense of weirdness in time that Remus is feeling here is difficult to communicate without visuals.

"I think we're off soon," Harry says, hugging me quickly with one arm. "Got to make sure I say good-bye to Hermione. But I'll see you at Christmas, all right?"

"Christmas?" I am puzzled by this, and unable to hide it. For several years, Harry and Severus have traveled to the Burrow on Christmas Eve and not returned until Hogmanay. Severus always makes a great show of reluctance and always goes anyway, and very likely enjoys himself. I, on the other hand, spend the holiday at Hogwarts, keeping company with students who would otherwise be, I suspect, a little lonely. When I am able, that is. Of course there are some years I must spend the holiday alone myself.

Hogmanay = New Year's Eve, in Scotland.

"Yeah, Molly's not having a do at the house this year. Charlie's going to Cassandra's family, I guess, and Ron's spending the holidays with the Borgias, and that just leaves Bill and Ginny and the twins at the most, so it seemed like why make a lot of fuss if the whole family weren't coming home. So Hermione'll be off with Eric and his lot, and Severus and I are planning to come up to the school. You'll be there, won't you?"

His brow knits just slightly, and I can see that he is trying to work out in his head whether I'll be there or not. This makes me smile. I save him the trouble; he has no reason to take particular note of the night sky. "Of course I will," I promise. As he is still obviously thinking, I remind him: "Last weekend. I'll be fine at Christmas."

Harry appears genuinely pleased. "Excellent. See you then!" And he disappears into the crowd. I can hear him and Hermione exclaiming their farewells as I scan the room for Minerva.

She is at a small table, three or possibly four sheets to the wind, firmly entrenched in an apparently hilarious conversation with an equally sozzled Muggle, cackling like -- well, like a witch. She looks up when she sees me approaching and immediately tilts her head to one side, as if her neck can't hold up its weight. "I suppose you've come to take me home," she says, trying to fix me with that gimlet stare of hers but not quite able to focus properly.

Oh, alcoholic!Minerva. Poor thing, what I did to her. There was a throwaway joke in Best Man about her calling "Yoo-hoo, Severus!" and Snape thinking it was a mistake to let her have more than one mimosa. But then when I was writing this, the idea of her being drunk struck me as less funny than sad.

"Are you ready?"

"Nearly. Nearly." She pushes herself to her feet, steadies herself with a hand on the table, picks up her glass and holds it at eye level. "Enough for one more toast before we go, I'd say," she declares, nodding to her Muggle friend. "You'll join us, won't you, Jennifer?"

"Jessica," the other woman says.

"That's right. That's right. Jessica. I'm sorry. Remus! You haven't got a drink," Minerva cries, leaning dangerously far to snag a glass from a passing waiter's tray. "Take this one, boy, so you can drink --" she pauses, rather theatrically -- "to absent friends."

"To absent friends," Jessica repeats, raising her own glass.

Minerva looks at me over the rim of her spectacles. She won't drink until I've joined the toast, and she won't leave until her glass is empty. I can see the stubbornness in her eyes; but I can also see the sorrow, and I know, given the shape she's in, that it is genuine. It is as important to her to drink to the memory of Albus Dumbledore, of Rubeus Hagrid -- of James Potter, Lily Evans, Sirius Black, Perseus Weasley, hundreds of others -- as it was to drink to the future happiness of Hermione Granger. I lift my glass. "Absent friends," I murmur.

I love the idea that Percy's name was Perseus rather than Percival.

Minerva's eyes shine, and she knocks back the last of her final mimosa -- who can tell how many she's had -- as I take a sip of the champagne cocktail she's pressed into my hand. It's not bad, but when she puts her empty glass down I set my mostly-full one next to it and pointedly offer her my arm. She rolls her eyes, slips her hand into the crook of my elbow, and assures everyone we pass on our way out that it was lovely to meet them. She's still chattering at me when we reach the empty bicycle rack that is our Portkey; we lay our hands on it, and all is quiet when we return in the corridor between our offices at Hogwarts.

The second or third day of the new moon is always the worst day of the month for me.

Actually the full moon isn't too bad. I imagine that's the worst for those who know me, but I never remember a thing. It leaves me physically weak; but when the sun rises and as the moon wanes I begin to feel strong, knowing I have -- again -- not let it defeat me. But when the moon waxes I feel the whisper of despair.

I suppose there's a part of me that's still hopeful enough to think, when night comes and the moon does not appear: Maybe, this time, it won't come back.

Then the crescent moon appears in the sky, and it breaks my heart every time.

And these. These little moon snippets. They kicked my ass, and it was all because of this one. I had to have this bit.

Christmas is a festive affair, as usual, and my bleak mood is slightly improved by the company and the spectacle. There are seven students at dinner this year, in addition to an assortment of staff and their families, and they -- plus Hobb the caretaker's two youngest -- have put together a sort of pageant, as one of the Ravenclaw first years did in her Muggle junior school. They wrote the thing themselves, and charmed and transfigured their own props and costumes. Rather sweet, really.

"Amateurs," Severus mutters. He leans against the back of his chair -- Severus Snape would never actually slouch -- and folds his arms across his chest, getting a good start on a glower that will probably last him for the duration.

"Children," Harry replies mildly, giving Severus' knee a fond pat and turning to wink at me as I take the seat on his other side. "It'll be excruciating," he whispers. "But never mind."

It's not quite excruciating. It demonstrates a distinctly incomplete familiarity with the traditional Christmas story, but it's as enthusiastic as any other pageant, and the students enjoyed preparing for it, which is the main thing. Something to focus on other than the fact that they couldn't spend the holiday with their families.

Later in the evening, the lone Slytherin finds a sprig of mistletoe and levitates it over Severus' head. He glares at her and bats it out of the air, but she makes the thing follow him no matter where he goes.

"It's refreshing for him to be the one getting all the attention," Harry says frankly, glancing over at Severus from our position near a window. "You've no idea how sick I get of being Harry Potter. At the hospital the patients don't recognize me. I'm just that bloke who comes and reads to them. And here --" he gestures with his glass -- "you lot are the celebrities. I'm just that bloke who's here with Snape." I start to disagree, but he's so comfortable in this misconception that I change my mind.

I think this was an idea that was going to be bigger, but then I didn't need it so much. I can use it somewhere else, though. I like this grown-up Harry; he's got a good head on his shoulders, but he's still mistaken a lot of the time.

Severus defeats the mistletoe; I try not to think about how many House points he takes, or threatens to take, before the student backs down. He comes over to join us. "Insufferable girl," he mutters.

"Fourth year?"

"Fifth."

"You suffered her admirably," Harry grins. "Every year you complain that your students are the worst lot ever, and every year you come out in one piece after exams. Ooh, which reminds me," he says, "Hermione's coming up next week, and Ron as well. I'm telling you now, in front of witnesses, so you can't say you didn't know about it."

"Am I to understand that there are houseguests in my future?"

"Nah." Harry slides his arm around Severus' waist and shifts in such a way that, though Severus does not appear to have moved, his arm ends up draped over Harry's shoulders. "Eric can't stay in a place that's not Muggle-accessible, so he and Hermione have booked a room somewhere near Pitlochry. And Ron could sleep on the sofa, I suppose, but I expect he'll stay at the Three Broomsticks with Bill."

For an instant I can feel my pulse race in my wrist, and I know I tighten my fingers slightly on my glass. "Oh," I say. I take a sip of my drink and fold my arms in front of me. "Is Bill coming as well?" What an idiot I am.

Harry raises a quick eyebrow at me, but does me the courtesy of pretending he thinks I'm just making polite small talk. "He's got loads of clearances, from his work as a curse-breaker, so the Ministry are allowing him to get Eric through all the Muggle-deterrents," he explains. "They'll be able to take the Express, if Eric can get through the barrier to Platform Nine and Three Quarters, and that will save them all sorts of time and effort trying to get a Muggle bus in from Dunkeld."

"Lucky Bill was free."

"Oh, he offered to give them a hand. They could have applied to have Eric waived in, now that he's married to a witch, but knowing someone makes it a lot easier. Inside track, I suppose. And when they get here, he'll have no trouble seeing the castle -- which is sort of the whole point of the trip, to see Hogwarts and Hogsmeade."

Severus has been very quiet during this exchange. I look carefully at him -- as carefully as I can look without being obvious, that is -- and see that his sneer lacks its usual enthusiasm. His eyes show sadness, hidden poorly behind a layer of scorn.

Before I've had time to wonder about this, though, I hear Minerva calling for a toast. "Charge your glasses!" she cries, and I can see on Harry and Severus' faces the same resignation that I feel. "Does everyone have a drink?"

Someone assures her that everyone is ready, and we all raise our glasses and repeat after her, in unison. "To absent friends."

The transformation is actually a constant process; it only becomes visible one night out of the month, but it's always in motion, just as the tide is always rising and falling whether you can see the moon or not. The fuller the moon gets, the more I can feel the ache in my jaw, the creaking of my joints, the twisting in my stomach as my whole body strains and shifts to take a new form. The pain regularly drives me to my bed for two or three days at a stretch around the full moon.

As the moon diminishes, the pain recedes to a dull throb I'm not even always consciously aware of. But it is not remotely the case that I am a man for twenty-seven nights and a wolf for one. I am always, always both.

The moon has already risen when the carriage comes round the lake on Friday, bringing our visitors; it's only the middle of the afternoon, but it'll be full dark in scarcely more than an hour. I'm outdoors absorbing what will likely be the last sunlight and fresh air I'll have for some time. The moon will be full on Monday, but I'll be in my room before then -- possibly as early as Saturday night.

The thestral slows to a walk and stops short of the castle, snorting but pawing placidly at the road. The carriage door is flung open and I hear Hermione Granger Bennett's voice cry "Remus!" scarcely a moment before the woman herself is tearing towards me.

I have time enough to brace myself before she flings her arms around my neck, as if I hadn't seen her at her wedding less than a month before. I return her hug and pat her back and wish her welcome home.

"I didn't think we'd get to see you," she explains, disengaging and beckoning to the carriage with a wave. Her husband and Bill Weasley emerge and join us, and the thestral whickers and trots off back toward Hogsmeade. "You know Bill, of course --" Bill's smile is nicer even than I remember, and he shakes my hand and keeps hold of it for just an instant longer than I expect -- "and my husband, Eric Bennett. Remus Lupin."

I hesitate to offer my hand, but Eric Bennett grabs and shakes it enthusiastically, apparently either unaware of or unconcerned by my -- by me. "Delighted to see you again," he says. "Never got the chance to really talk to you at the wedding. Not to anyone, eh, Hermione?" He slings his arm easily around her shoulders as we turn toward the castle.

Poor Remus -- he's still in a biggish werewolf closet, even in the narration.

"Not really, no. Though we wouldn't likely remember much of anything we'd talked about, if we'd been able to talk about anything, anyway."

"Quite right." He nods in agreement and turns to include Bill in the conversation. "I just moved through the day in a fog of adrenaline. Can hardly remember a thing, except that it happened."

"That must be why you need witnesses," Bill says with a wink.

"So it's nice to actually be able to spend some time with people we didn't have a lot of time for then," Eric continues. "Only Hermione tells me we won't have a lot of time with you, will we, Remus?"

I feel a twinge between my shoulderblades. I wonder what precisely she's told him. "I'm afraid not. I'll be away, and you'll have gone by the time --"

"Remus, don't be silly." Hermione is impatient but sympathetic. "There's no need for euphemisms among friends. I'm surprised to see you out today, with how full the moon is getting. How are you feeling?"

I duck my head to concede the point; my neck cracks in three places, rather emphasizing it. "Coarsely ground," I admit. "But I'm still walking upright, so on balance, things aren't too bad." Hermione and Eric make sympathetic noises, though they don't fuss.

Bill cocks his head and says, "Just let us know when you're ready to be chained up. We're here to help." And he winks again and stands aside to allow Hermione and Eric into the castle first.

Eric's eyes go wide and his face breaks into an astonished grin. The exterior of the castle must have looked like every other preserved building he's ever seen. But in the entrance hall, children rush about laughing and practicing their charm work (another sign of the times -- that never used to be allowed); a staircase makes a shuddering sound and swings from one landing to another; and two ghosts float by, nod politely, and sail through the wall. One of the nearest portraits says "Ahoy there!"

Hermione begins to introduce Eric to the artwork. I hang back, and Bill drifts around to join me. He smiles hesitantly. I consider and discard, unasked, several inane questions about his job, his family, the journey up (god help me); he seems about to speak when Hermione calls to him.

"Bill, they can't hear him."

"Sorry?"

"The paintings. They can't hear Eric."

"Keep telling me 'Speak up, boy'," Eric chimes in, giving a creditable imitation of Lord Boveril, whose portrait is at the bottom of the stairs.

Bill knits his brow. "You can hear them, obviously. And they can see you? You can see him?" he asks, addressing a painting of a girl in a blue dress and indicating Eric with a nod of his head.

"'S right there, inn'e?" the girl says.

Bill taps his chin thoughtfully for a moment before his face clears. "I know what it is," he says. "Same reason you had to book your hotel. Eric's a Muggle -- magical objects don't respond to his voice." A chorus of protests comes from all the art within earshot. "Of course you're not objects," Bill assures them. "But the pictures are. May I continue?" After a moment of grumbled assent, he turns to Hermione. "I can't help you with that, I'm afraid. That's not a curse or a charm or anything I can break. It's just the nature of magic. You'll have to interpret between them."

Hermione rolls her eyes, but smiles and thanks Bill and takes Eric by the arm to resume the introductions. "Apparently he did folklore at university," Bill tells me, "and he's read all about us in, you know, ghost stories and that sort of thing."

I've read some of the sillier fictional representations of witchcraft. "This visit'll change his impressions, then."

Bill shrugs. "He always believed, I think. Or he knew enough to have a sense of what was real and what was shite. Excuse me." I nod for him to continue. "Once he met her, especially." He narrows his eyes, and his face draws into a grimace. "He's not to talk about us at all, you know," he says. "Condition of being allowed in. He can't tell any Muggle we're here who doesn't already know."

I'm familiar with the proportional relationship between prevention and cure -- I doubt there is anyone more so -- but there are necessary precautions, and reasonable ones beyond that, and then there are absurd, hysterical measures that benefit no one and can, actually, cause harm themselves. "That seems unnecessarily careful," I say.

"Stupid, is what it is. Bloody paranoid and stupid. Course I had to agree to it as well."

I feel my eyebrows rise. "You're more restricted than --"

He waves a hand, annoyed. "Technically it's the same as always, individual's discretion, et cetera et cetera," he says. "Only I had to re-affirm that I'd consider Special Circumstances Calling For The Un-Deceiving Of Muggles the exception rather than the rule. Before I could get the clearance to break any charms and let him in. Hermione did, too."

I have no idea what might be an appropriate thing to say. It has quite simply never occurred to me that a wizard wouldn't want to keep magic hidden from Muggles. Particularly not a son of Arthur Weasley, who's spent so much energy protecting them from stray spells' ill effects. But it seems Bill Weasley considers it a very important issue indeed. Interesting that Hermione Granger, who's always been so egalitarian and proud of her Muggle upbringing, doesn't -- because I know we'd have already heard about it if she did. "It doesn't seem to bother her as much."

Bill snorts and shakes his head. "She doesn't know any different. Parents are Muggles, aren't they, so all she's ever had is Special Circumstances." He looks at Hermione and Eric for another tense moment before shaking his head again and turning to me with an artificially bright smile. "Well," he says. "This has been a fun little chat. Sorry, I don't mean to get --"

"No, I don't mind at all." Which is true; I know more about Bill Weasley than I did five minutes ago, which would not at all have been the case if we'd talked about the weather or something similarly harmless.

"It's just that --"

"I understand." But I don't, actually.

Not yet.

I'm in my office for the rest of the afternoon, preparing lesson plans so my classes will be adequately covered no matter who takes them for the first three days of term. It's not much of a surprise that I'm the last one in to dinner.

Ron Weasley has arrived, while I've been cloistered away, though the Borgia girl he's been seeing seems not to be with him. Severus and Harry are in as well: Severus is listening seriously, giving an occasional nod, to Minerva; Harry looks up from his conversation with Hermione and Eric and Ron, grins at me, and winks, and I know it's because of him that the only empty place left at the table is next to Bill. I raise an eyebrow at him. He'll know it's in thanks.

"Good evening," I say as I take the seat.

"Oh, good," Bill says, glancing up from pouring a glass of water. "Thought you might not be joining us."

"Not quite that time yet. First I have to leave three days' worth of lesson plans for seven years' worth of students. Then I can lock myself away in my room."

Bill makes a face. "Enough to drive you to it, I imagine."

I smile and help myself to roast chicken. "The trouble is that my classes will be taken by whomever has the time free to do it -- and some members of staff could step into my place with no brush-up at all, of course. But some others have barely considered defense since their own school days."

"Fortunate few."

"Yes. But they need more detailed instruction if they're to fill in for me, you see. So all the plans have to be fairly particular."

Bill is looking at me with a curiously thoughtful expression. He glances around the table, considers Minerva for a moment, and turns back to me again. "Why don't I do it?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I'll take your classes. Save the rest of the staff the trouble of covering for you, eh? I know enough about the Dark Arts to teach defense against them for three days. Especially if the lessons are handed to me in advance." He grins. "'Cause what I don't know much about is teaching."

I frown and set down my cutlery. "But I couldn't ask you to extend your stay," I say. "I'm sure you've obligations in London once you leave here."

"Actually not," he says lightly. "I've transferred back up to the Hogsmeade branch of Gringott's for now, so I can use the school library. So I'm here for quite a while. Cauliflower?"

"Thank you. I suppose -- that is, it's certainly all right with me if you don't mind taking my classes while I'm -- for a few days. It'd have to be arranged with Minerva before anything else, of course."

"Of course."

We both look down the table at Minerva. She's in better form than I've seen her in for a while, actually. Severus lacks the grim expression he often wears when, as Harry says, "Minerva gets how she gets". Sybill Trelawney seems not to be near tears. Harry is nodding and laughing at something Eric Bennett has just said.

Hermione and Ron, though, appear concerned and confused. He does a better job of disguising it; she looks as though she might at any moment call for an end to the foolishness, or demand to know what happened to the old Minerva. She won't say anything, of course, but if her brow knits any tighter her eyes will cross. I'll have to be sure to speak to her later.

I turn back to Bill -- his face is pained. He swiftly changes his expression to one of a sort of puzzled curiosity, but the eyes are a dead giveaway. I'm sure he'd rather I ignore this. "Probably better to wait and ask her tomorrow," I say.

"Looks that way. Is she -- how is she?"

I sigh and shrug and resume my dinner. "It's been hard for her, in different ways than it's been hard for all of us. She's all right. Only it's better to catch her earlier in the day." Bill nods. "So tomorrow'll be fine."

"Right."

We eat quietly for a few minutes; then a student across from Bill asks him if it's true he works with goblins, and the conversation is about non-human magical beings for almost the rest of the meal. Bill does try to draw me in with some talk about Dark Arts as considered against Dark Creatures, but it's hard for a student to have a teacher lecturing away at the dinner table. I mainly listen.

Minerva calls for a toast, as usual, as everyone is finishing. A few of the students roll their eyes, but they fill their glasses despite their exasperation. "You'll come to expect it," I say to Bill, as Minerva fills glasses at her end of the table, "if you're here at mealtimes. What are you needing the library for, by the way?"

"To absent friends," Bill says, raising his glass. He looks back at me, and I'm surprised to see that the pained expression has returned. "Some research I'm doing," he says. "I'm trying to break the Fidelius charm."

I don't sleep well. On nights around the full moon, I'm jittery and impatient; around the new moon, I'm unhappy and ill at ease. If there were any justice, the half moon would bring balance and I'd be able to rest; but then, if there were any justice, I wouldn't have to pay heed to the phase of the moon at all.

"I appreciate the offer, gentlemen --" I can tell Minerva is thinking 'boys', but being careful not to say it; Bill appears to be able to tell the same thing -- "but I'm afraid it's not possible."

"I'd like to help you out, Professor," Bill says. "If you need to cover Remus -- Professor Lupin's classes for three days, your staff are going to be spread quite thin. I do know a good deal about defense."

"I know you do, Mr. Weasley. More than some of the teachers here, I dare say. But unfortunately, you are not a member of staff -- a distinction that is objective in a way that any assessment of your qualifications is not. I cannot allow someone who is not a member of Hogwarts' staff to be in charge of Hogwarts students; their parents and the Board of Governors would never stand for it."

Sober enough to make a decision that never occurred to Albus Dumbledore, apparently.

"That's --"

"And if I make an exception for you, I set a precedent that could eventually lead to who knows what sort of wizard or witch teaching lessons for weeks at a time and by any sorts of methods -- no, I'm sorry, but we'll have to handle this, as usual, with the staff we've got."

"That's perfectly understandable," I say, when I can get a word in. "And as always, I'm sorry to cause so much inconvenience."

"Not at all!" Minerva is horrified. "If this is the cost of having you on staff, we shall bear it and gladly." She clasps my hands. "I think you know that it is slight compared to the cost of some others we've had in your position."

I nod. "I've heard. Thank you. We won't take up any more of your time," I say, gently drawing my hands from hers and rising from my chair. Next to me, Bill stands as well. "Good morning, Headmistress."

"Good morning, boys," she says, a little sadly, as we leave her office.

We walk slowly. Neither of us speaks for a few moments; Bill is the first to break the silence. "She seems ..."

"Yes," I agree, when he's unable to settle on an adjective. "She had a rough war. There are barely any of us who didn't lose someone, but she lost so many. Every casualty had a different family, I mean to say, but huge numbers of them had the same teachers."

"I hadn't thought of it that way. She may not have been hit as hard, but she was hit more often."

I nod. "And she's not a young woman. She's past eighty now. So when -- I suppose it was when Albus died that she finally lost that little bit of her grip. She's not mad." I'm surprised at how defensive I've suddenly become.

Bill blinks. "Of course she isn't."

"Who's not?" Ron Weasley joins us from around a corner. "Hiya, Bill. Hi, Professor -- Remus. Came up here looking for you. Who's not what?"

Bill and I glance at each other. "The Headmistress isn't mad," Bill says. "What did you need Remus for?"

"Lunch!" Ron says. "Harry and Hermione and I are getting together for lunch today, and it'd be great if you'd come along and join us. You, too, Bill, if you like."

Bill smiles. "Thanks, kid, but I'll need to stay up here and get some work done."

Ron shrugs and turns to me. "Pr-- Remus?"

"Er -- well, thank you, Ron. That would be lovely."

"Excellent!" He smiles warmly and turns to his brother. "So what's this about the Headmistress not being mad? I wondered, actually, after the way she was--"

Bill sighs and scratches the back of his neck. "Remus was just saying she had a tough war. She's had more to get through than a lot of other survivors."

I nod. "She's just -- she's old, I suppose, and tired, and dealing every day with tremendous pain and grief."

"Hmm." Ron cocks his head and thinks for a moment. "D'you think it's possible to make it a little better for her? Just -- a very weak memory charm, if she'd agree to it --"

"No."

Bill and I have both spoken at once, and we look at each other, surprised -- but Ron does not notice. "But it could, listen, if -- Obliviate, say at half strength, could remove the memory of how many people she'd lost in the war. I mean, look how she's drinking, and that hasn't seemed to help."

In the original draft, Ron wasn't in this scene; it was Bill who suggested the weak Obliviate. Either Ellen or Resonant, or both, had biggish concerns about that -- a Bill who had the issues with secrets I've given him, and for the reasons this Bill does, would be unlikely (to the point of throwing a person out of the story) to suggest erasing someone else's memory, didn't I think? And they were right. Trouble was, I was completely committed to the scene, to what it tells us about Remus and to where it gets Remus and Bill. So I totally wanted to keep it. Enter Ron.

"Absolutely not. It'll never --" My heart is racing. I close my eyes and take several deep breaths before continuing. When I open my eyes again, Ron and Bill both look a little startled and a good deal concerned. My fists are clenched and my knuckles are white; I must have snarled without realizing it. I flatten my hands against my legs and speak very carefully. "In the first place, I don't think she would agree to it. But even if she did, it wouldn't work -- it doesn't work like that."

"All right," Ron says slowly. "Just a thought. I'll, er, see you at lunch then. And -- later tonight, yeah, Bill?"

"Yeah." Bill ruffles Ron's hair and smiles a bit. When Ron is gone, though, Bill turns back to me immediately. "Remus," he says. "How do you ..."

I nod. "Half strength, just like you're saying. It didn't take away the pain -- just the memory of what caused it. And even that didn't last. So I was still in very great agony of spirit, but I didn't know why; and then I remembered, and it was as if it had just happened again."

"What was it?" Bill asks, and lays his hand on the library door.

I hadn't noticed that I was following him all the way to the library. I look around me as if I've never seen the place before. "You don't want me to keep you from your work," I say.

Bill takes his hand off the door, leans back against the wall next to it, and folds his arms. I look back at him for a long moment, but he doesn't look away.

"I was young," I finally begin, leaning against the opposite wall, "and stupider than I am now. I fell in -- into a new relationship, late one summer. We were quite -- we made a real effort to be carefree, because the world then -- they were interesting times.

"And then three months later, in one night, I lost everyone I cared about." I close my eyes, swallow against the tightness the memory still causes in my chest. "It was a Saturday, and we'd spent the whole afternoon in bed where it was warm." I remember it like it was yesterday: the draftiest flat in the history of everything, and outside the wind was howling. Foreshadowing, I suppose, but not that I noticed at the time. "And he went out to get us some dinner, because he hadn't any food in the house -- and he never came back. And by morning, of course, everyone knew that he'd betrayed James and Lily, and killed Peter and a whole lane full of Muggles, and I --"

Bill doesn't speak when I stop. I open my eyes, but I look at the palms of my hands instead of at him. "What I wanted was to forget that I'd ever known him. But that was far too dangerous, trying to tease out one strand from that many years' worth of memories. Instead I asked to forget that I'd ever loved him.

"The spell was -- I remember it felt like a very brisk thump on the center of the forehead. Your eyes cross for a minute, and the room goes a little wobbly, and when everything's sorted -- well. Like I said, I was still sick with the shock and the grief -- and of course everyone I knew was still very sympathetic -- but I had no idea what had caused any of it. And I knew I should, do you see? I'd thought that morning when they were gone was the worst day, but the first morning I woke up after being Obliviated was ten times worse. You can't imagine the relief when it wore off and I knew again it was him."

"I can try," Bill murmurs.

I finally look back up at Bill. He hasn't moved. "So you see why I don't think this is a good thing to suggest to Minerva."

"Yes," he says immediately. "Yes, I do. I'm sorry to have made you think of it -- forget I ever mentioned it." His eyes widen in horror. "I mean --" I am unable to stifle a laugh. Truthfully, I don't try very hard; laughing makes my ribs ache, but it feels wonderful. Bill grins helplessly. "Sorry about that."

I wave down the apology and shove my hair out of my eyes. "So, while we're on the subject," I say with a wry smile, "why is it you're trying to break Fidelius?"

His face falls. He tries for the neutral mask, and almost achieves it, but again there's that pain in his eyes, and he finally looks away from me. What exposed nerve have I just touched?

"I can't tell you," he says after a moment. "And that's why."

Ordinarily, I'd walk to Hogsmeade. After all, I walked there and back every month for seven years, didn't I. But my joints are creaking today; I whistle for a carriage.

I arrive at Cafe Ordinaire at the same time as Ron. "Hiya, Remus," he says, shaking my hand. "Glad you could make it." He claps my shoulder.

A shock of pain shoots across my back and down my spine. I arch away from Ron's touch and stagger until I lean against the doorjamb, doubling over when the spasm ends and bracing my elbows on my knees as I catch my breath.

"Remus -- my god." Ron crouches down next to me. One hand flutters for an instant before he decides not to lay it on my arm. "I'm sorry! What can I do? Are you -- do you need help getting back to --"

"I'm fine," I gasp. "But you can help me get to the table." I look up at him; he still looks terrified that I'll collapse extravagantly within seconds. I smile to show him I really am all right and extend my hand to encourage him to help me straighten up.

He takes my elbow and pulls me upright, bracing an arm behind my back and making sure I've got my balance. I hold onto his arm like an old man all the way to the table where Hermione and Eric are already seated.

Hermione, unsurprisingly, looks at me with sympathetic alarm. "Remus, what's --"

"Nothing," I interrupt with a smile and a raised eyebrow. "Everything's fine. How's your visit been?"

I have asked Eric precisely the right question. He launches into an excited report of everything he's seen and everyone he's met in the past twenty-four hours. He's still explaining the differences between the Muggle concept of a curse and the actual wizarding curses, hexes and jinxes when Harry rushes in -- close to half an hour after we'd expected him.

"Good thing you live closer to here than anyone else," Ron says.

"Sorry I'm late," Harry says, sliding into a chair and picking up a menu. "I ... had something to take care of back at home."

Ron snorts, and Hermione rolls her eyes. Eric glances at me; I shrug slightly.

"Did you." Hermione grins. "And how is he?"

The tops of Harry's ears flush pink. "Fine, thanks."

"I'll bet he is now," Ron laughs.

"He does realize, doesn't he, that Bill isn't actually coming to lunch today?" Hermione asks. "So there's no need for him to get, you know, how he gets?"

"Who, sorry?"

Poor Eric. "Severus, they mean. How does he get?" I ask, a little cautiously. Given that Harry has not, I notice, removed his scarf, I'm not sure I want to know quite how Severus gets. But I can't ask what I do want to know, which is what Bill has to do with it.

"It's not --" Harry begins; but Ron cuts him off.

"Whenever one of Harry's --" Ron looks significantly at Harry, and Hermione giggles -- "long list of exes is in Hogsmeade, Snape gets ... what would you call it, Hermione?"

"Needy," Hermione says without a pause.

"Attentive," Harry suggests.

"Needy," Ron agrees. "Which means that whenever Justin is in town, or Ernie Mac, or --"

"Or Zach Smith," Hermione puts in.

Ron nods. "Right, or really any of the Huf--"

"I get the idea," I say. And I do: or Bill.

"Right. So nobody sees much of Harry, is what I'm saying. Snape keeps him a bit to himself."

"But Bill's not here at all," Hermione says. That girl always could over-explain anything. I pinch my temples between one thumb and forefinger. "He's up at the school today, I thought, so even though he and Harry --"

"They get it, Hermione," Harry says. "Thank you. That's enough about me, I think."

"What's Bill doing up at Hogwarts?" Ron asked. "Now that you mention it."

"He's researching the Fidelius charm," I say, without looking up, without thinking. "He wants to break it." Complete silence greets this. When I do look up, all three of my former students are looking at me, surprised; Eric Bennett is looking at Hermione, expectant. "Perhaps I shouldn't have told you that," I say.

"Nah," Ron says with a wave. "If he hadn't wanted you to tell anyone, he wouldn't have told you." He dunks a crust of bread in what's left of his soup.

"Not much for secrets, then, is he?" I ask, as casually as I can.

Ron shakes his head. "Never has been. He was the lad if you needed advice, when we were kids, but you just knew if you were dying to tell someone something but they couldn't tell another soul, you went and talked to Charlie."

"Not very brotherly, is it," Eric says, "betraying everyone's confidence?"

Ron shrugs. "Didn't betray anybody, because we didn't expect it from him in the first place. Used to tell us, Bill did, that a secret was only a secret if nobody else knew it."

"That's a point," Harry murmurs. He is turning a spoon around and around in circles on the table, looking at it with unfocused eyes. "If you could break the Fidelius charm," he begins; but he does not finish the sentence.

I can vaguely hear Ron and Hermione explaining the Fidelius charm to Eric, but I'm not needed for that conversation and I don't really listen. I watch Harry watching his spoon. How would his life, and mine, be different if there had been no Fidelius? There's nothing to say Voldemort wouldn't have found James and Lily anyhow. We'd have been spared, though, the particular horrors we did suffer -- without Fidelius, there would have been none of Peter's treachery, and Sirius wouldn't have lain all those years in Azkaban.

But Bill hasn't said he's trying to make Fidelius obsolete. He wants to be able to break it; but it's the easiest charm in the world to break, as Peter demonstrated so ably. I narrow my eyes and look at the remains of Harry's scar. Any Secret Keeper who cares to can reveal the Secret in his charge to whomever he chooses. There's nothing binding him, so there's nothing to break, so --

So Bill must not be a Secret Keeper himself.

I sit back in my chair and consider this. If Bill is not himself a Secret Keeper, but has an interest in breaking Fidelius, it's got to be because there's a protected secret he wants told. It could be his own secret, guarded by someone else -- but that seems unlikely, I think, given Ron's description of Bill's attitude toward secrecy. But similarly, he's not the type to want to break Fidelius in order to get someone else's secret out of a Secret Keeper who won't talk.

This can only mean he knows someone else's secret, and wants to be able to tell it. What else could he have meant, now that I think about it, when he said I can't tell you, and that's why? But what could such a secret be, and how can he know it if he's not the Secret Keeper? And why is it so important to him to be able to tell it -- I mean to say, his manner hasn't been simply that of a man who disapproves of secrets on principle.

At least I think it hasn't. I don't, of course, know him as well as I'd -- I don't know him very well. I'd had no idea, for instance, that he had any sort of past with Harry. (It occurs to me, briefly, that this may be an indicator of how well I also don't know Harry, but I leave that be for the moment.) There must be a great deal about Bill that I don't know, since what I do know is so little.

"Hermione's right, as usual," Ron says. I have no idea what he's talking about, but all three of the boys are laughing and Hermione is trying not to. I smile at her as we all push our chairs back and start wrapping up in coats and cloaks.

"I'm glad we got to see you again before we go," Hermione says, standing on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around my neck. "Let us know how Minerva's doing, will you?" she whispers.

"Absolutely."

Her eyes shine when she smiles, and then she and Eric are gone, taking Ron with them after he shakes my hand and tries again to apologize for before.

Harry is still here, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched forward, looking up at me sideways. "Didn't realize you didn't know," he says.

"Sorry?"

He holds the door open for me and we step outside. "'Bout me and Bill. It surprised you, when Hermione mentioned it."

I duck my head and glance at him. "A bit. No reason I should have known, really."

"Not yet, maybe." He smiles quickly. "Wouldn't have sprung it on you, that's all."

"Everyone has a history, Harry." I scratch the back of my neck. "But thank you."

The mind struggles just as much as the body, as the moon waxes. It actually changes, of course, just as the body does, in both form and function -- which means there are splitting headaches in the last couple of days, along with all the joint pain and muscle aches and sickness to the stomach. Also moments -- thankfully, usually brief -- of disorientation. I know people think of me as even-tempered and calm. I doubt there are many (if any at all) who realize that a lot of the time when I appear placid, I'm actually just confused.

The pain wakes me up Sunday morning. It's as though I can feel each muscle, each organ, stubbornly trying to shuffle round and fit together differently. It's not time yet, but that doesn't matter. I curl up into the tightest ball I can and try to keep still long enough to fall back asleep.

I am not a werewolf, but there have been a couple of times I've been sick enough that the only thing I could do was curl up and try to think myself to sleep. I expect that when I wrote this I was thinking of the time I had a sudden kidney infection. Nothing but pain.

When I wake again, I am face down lying sideways across my bed. Experimentally I lift my head and push up onto my elbows. Everything aches, but it's bearable at the moment. I have evidently been through several (or several dozen) other positions before finishing where I am -- the blanket is wound around one of the pillows, and the sheet has come away from both top corners of the mattress.

The light in the room is different, as well. I'm sure when I woke before it was bright, coming along on midday. But now, while I can tell the sun has risen, through the window I can see that the western horizon is still a little misty. It's earlier than it was the last time I woke up -- which means, I finally realize, that Sunday's been and gone.

I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling until I can muster the energy to drag myself to the bath. Bathing and shaving and dressing exhaust me enough that I have to lie down again. I hear the clock strike eleven. I know I need to move. I haven't eaten in thirty-six hours. I need at least one meal before moonrise -- a meal and a dose of Wolfsbane.

There was also a time I had a thing that was very like mono but actually something else. I'd sleep for fifteen hours, and when I woke up I'd shower and have to lie down for a nap before I could get dressed.

I sit up so suddenly I get a cramp in my side. I was supposed to take the Wolfsbane on Sunday. I force myself to get up, find a robe, find my shoes. Frozen hells. How could I have -- tired is one thing, but how could I have slept through a whole day when --

It occurs to me that I haven't yet found my shoes because they're set neatly together next to the nightstand. An idiotic place for them -- I always kick them off and leave them more or less side-by-side by the foot of the bed. Which means someone's been here; which means Severus broke in while I was sleeping in order to administer the first of this month's Wolfsbane.

I lie heavily back down, my adrenaline spent, and press one hand to my forehead. I don't remember it at all. He needn't have broken in, I suppose; if I was conscious enough to drink potion, I was conscious enough to unlock a door. I suppose I was still a little insensible from Sunday morning's pain, at the time. In any event, a whole dose of Wolfsbane would account for how groggy I am now.

Night falls early at this time of year. If I lie here much longer, Severus will bring me today's potion as well. That's fine on days when I'm too ill to go and get it from him myself; but I can do it today. I have almost no strength, but I'm not in too much pain to walk: I'll walk.

It takes me twenty minutes to get to the dungeons, walking slowly so as not to exert myself and stopping for a breather when I get winded. Severus' door is shut and locked when I reach it, but I know he'll be here before he goes up to lunch. I lean back against the door, in the corner with the doorjamb supporting my shoulder, and wait. My right knee wobbles once, and I think of sitting down -- but if I do, getting back up again might be too difficult. And Severus won't give me a hand up, that's for certain. I close my eyes.

Some few minutes later I hear Severus snort. "The first day back is always the hardest," he says.

I smile weakly. "It's good to know I can always count on your sympathy, Severus," I say. "I believe you have something for me?"

He unlocks the door, and I follow him inside. "I'd have brought it up to you," he grumbles. He sets down a stack of essays -- Wayland Smith and all his swords and horseshoes, only Severus Snape would set essays due the first day of term -- and moves to a cauldron.

Ah, Wayland Smith. I was trying so hard to think of a mild exclamation for Remus that wasn't "good lord" or "for the love of pete" or anything like that; I picked Ellen Fremedon's brain and she came up with Wayland Smith, which is an anglicization of the name of a Norse blacksmith god, I believe.

"I know you would." I lean against the nearest counter, making no effort to appear to do so casually. "But I was well enough to come down --" Severus snorts again and looks at me sideways -- "and I know you haven't got much spare time."

"You can't expect me to thank you as if you'd done me some favor," he says, handing me a ceramic cup.

"Certainly not when I haven't," I agree. The potion steams and stinks. There is nothing that can make it not taste terrible. I take a few deep breaths and then drink it all, trying to pour it directly down my throat, so as little of it as possible touches my tongue. My eyes sting when I set the cup down. "Thank you," I wheeze.

He raises one eyebrow and sets the cup in a utility sink. "Severus. Really. Thank you." He gives a slight nod, covers the cauldron, and takes his essays through to his office to set them on his desk. I lean against my counter; I haven't the energy to follow him, even if I were invited. "I hope I wasn't difficult yesterday," I call.

"Oh, no," he scoffs, "you were a model patient. Took your medicine like a good boy, and I tucked you in again afterwards." He comes back through the doorway, leans against a counter across the room from me, folds his arms. I meet his gaze and don't look away. "You fought me," he says, without much inflection, after a moment. "Well -- you were still asleep, really. But you struggled. I had to hold your nose."

In addition to my grown-up Harry, I like this quiet non-central-character Snape.

I close my eyes at this, but quickly open them again. "I appreciate your doing this, Severus."

"I don't do it for you." He pushes away from the counter, heading for the door.

I take this as my cue. "I know that," I say, as I follow him out.

The sunset -- what I can see of it -- is quite beautiful. It even makes the bars outside my window gleam a sort of rosy bronze, instead of their own cold iron. There is no position I can curl up in now that will ease the ache in my bones, and this despite the fact that the potion I've taken includes rather a strong analgesic. A group of students run by outside. I'm several floors up, but were it not for Wolfsbane I'd try to leap out just the same.

My arms are braced on either side of the windowpane when I hear the knock at the door. I call "Come in" over my shoulder without bothering to turn.

"Blimey, how theatrical," Bill Weasley says. I do turn sharply, then, and wince. "Isn't this a bit trite? Though I suppose it's normally the princess who's locked in the tower, rather than the monster."

"This is a great deal more fair," I say, stretching my neck. "Though it's less theatrical than practical. My back is killing me, but for a few moments I'd taken some of the weight off it."

"It's getting late," Bill says. "I thought you must be feeling it -- I was going to bring your potion, but when I stopped down at the dungeons Severus said you'd already been." He has a notebook in his hand, and taps it against his leg. "So I thought I'd come by and see -- and say good night." He smiles that sad smile of his. "I'm just on my way up to the library, myself. Get some work done before dinner."

"Finding anything?"

"More about what we don't know than about what we do. But it's progress."

"What will you do if --" I do not finish the question. He can't possibly know the answer, any more than I know what I would do if a cure for lycanthropy were found tomorrow. Go out and look at some real moonlight, for a start -- but I'd have no idea how to resume living an ordinary life. I've spent too long without one.

Bill is looking at me steadily. I look back at him. He cocks his head just slightly and moves toward me; I open my mouth to speak, but he lifts a hand and I hold my tongue. Bill takes another step.

I can see the pale varied green of his eyes, flicking back and forth as though he were reading my face like a printed page. His hand comes to rest on my breastbone, and he looks at me for another moment before he leans in close and our lips meet.

I can smell him, and I can taste his breath. He shifts a tiny bit closer and my hand instinctively goes to the center of his chest, but I don't push him away any more than he does me. I tilt my head and he opens his mouth and my other hand clenches tight into a fist with the effort it takes me not to growl.

I can feel his heartbeat under my fingers.

My tongue slides against his easily. I suck very gently at his upper lip, and he licks at the stubble on the front of my chin. He nips at my jaw, just drags his teeth against it, really, and my hands tingle, and I kiss his cheekbones and his forehead and his nose and his eyelids and the corner of his lip before he manages to turn his face to the proper position to catch my mouth with his again.

A sound -- of approval? of anxiety? -- comes from his throat. He licks my palate, the inside of my cheek. His lips taste of wine and salt.

His left hand pushes a lock of hair off my forehead and settles where my shoulder meets my neck, and mine is on his elbow where it is bent between us. Our mouths separate; we both come back for one more kiss, soft and quick, and one -- one more, before we actually draw apart, but we do not let go. Bill's eyes are wide and anxious. My chest rises and falls against his hand.

I think this was the first scene I wrote. I really like the image of Remus and Bill kissing but hardly touching each other except for that; their hands are on each other's chests, keeping each other from getting too close, but they're kissing anyway, only the minute each touches the other with his other hand, they break the kiss. I think they both feel like they know it might be the worst idea ever, but they can't -- and these are two guys with pretty strong wills -- they can't resist.

"Remus --" I don't interrupt him, but Bill cuts himself off anyway. I know I am stroking the inside of his forearm, under the crease of his elbow, with my thumb. I don't even try to stop. Bill speaks again; his voice shakes a little. "It's getting late," he repeats.

I nod. "Any minute now." The words rasp in my throat.

"Then I'll see you ..." He makes this a question.

"Wednesday. Lunch time."

"All right." He squeezes my shoulder with his left hand and pats my chest gently with his right, then glances at the window, steps back and away from me, picks up his notebook (which I hadn't even heard him drop), and reaches for the door. He closes it almost completely behind him, but turns back just before pulling it to. He leans against the doorjamb for a minute, looking at me, looking like he wants to say something, or run away as far as he can, or stay.

That sentence was added in a second-or-later draft, after Ellen suggested that the thing was lacking something. I'm very pleased with it.

I look back at him. But from the corner of my eye, I can see that the orange light of the sunset is gone from my window. There are only a few minutes of dusk; soon it will be night. "You'd better go."

He lifts his chin before he nods. "Good night," he says; and then the door is closed. It's several moments before I can hear him fastening the locks on the outside.

They warned me it wouldn't work. Evidently every young werewolf gets the idea in his head, and none has ever been able to sustain it. Of course I tried anyway. Just before sunset on the evening of the full moon, you Apparate to the other side of the planet and wait the night out in daylight. Then, when the refuge of that daylight turns toward night, you Apparate back home again just after sunrise.

The thing is, it does work. But it's not safe to go so long without allowing the transformation to rotate through a complete cycle, and besides that, it's exhausting. It's so much more exhausting than staying put, and really it only hurts a little less. I managed it for four months, July through October, before Lily insisted that I stop. "You'll end up dead before your time," she said.

After the first one, with the crescent moon breaking Remus' heart, this is my favorite of the moon snippets. The four months in question, of course, were the last four months before James and Lily were killed. We already know, from the conversation in the library corridor, that Remus was with Sirius during that time -- in fact they got together at Harry's first birthday party -- and the fact that Remus disappeared during the full moon rather than undergo the transformation probably made Sirius suspicious.

Tuesday's dawn makes my stomach turn. I huddle in the corner and try not to heave, with my first hour or so of wakefulness; then I haul myself up to the washbasin, try to rinse my mouth and splash a little water on my face, and stumble to my bed. I curl up, my arms over my ribs, hoping, I suppose, that the warmth will eventually cause the stomach cramps to subside. It's always like this on the first morning.

I don't know how long I sleep. I wake when I hear the locks on the outside of my door being unfastened, but I can't see enough out the window to tell how high the sun is in the sky. I roll onto my back and try to sit up; I get my elbows next to my ribs and push, but only my chest and shoulders rise, and only a little. I can't lift my head quite yet. I keep trying.

Severus' familiar footfall approaches. I look at him; the angle distorts my vision until I see him doubled, overlapping and translucent around the edges. I try to wish him good morning, but my voice is hoarse and useless.

"Sit up."

I renew my effort.

"Oh, for --" He sets the cup with today's dose of Wolfsbane in it on the nightstand so he can take me by the shoulders and maneuver me into a more or less sitting position, propped against the headboard. "Haven't got all day," he mutters. But I know he'll stay until he's seen me drink the potion.

He talks a good game, that Snape, but he's really very patient when he needs to be.

"Thank you," I croak, and I reach for the cup.

I can only see a corner of it, peripherally, but I find it and bring it around in front of me without spilling a drop. I swallow a couple of times in preparation before raising it, in shaking hands (both hands; I'm not proud -- well, not very), to my lips. I have to sort of prop the bottom of the cup on my sternum and lay its rim against my lower lip, and then carefully tip it up and catch the potion in my mouth. I can only take it in small sips today.

"Stop that," Severus barks after only a minute. "It does none of us any good if half the bloody potion runs down the side of your face. Put it down."

I stop trying to drink, but I don't move the cup far; I'd only have to lift it again. "In hospital I believe they give you a drinking straw," I say, catching my breath.

"Wolfsbane would melt a Muggle drinking straw," he says, curtly, as he conjures a chair to sit in by the side of the bed. "Here." Severus slides one hand behind my neck and holds my head up, and with the other hand steadies the cup so I can lift it and drink properly.

Even with this help, I need to take the potion slowly. When I try to take the second swallow too soon after the first, I choke a bit; I can feel the burn of the potion in my sinuses. I lean back and gasp, absurdly glad to have Severus' hand there as a headrest.

"Thank you for bringing this up today," I say when it's a little more than half gone.

"I didn't --"

"You didn't do it for me. I know." I nod for the cup, and Severus braces my head and gives me another gulp of Wolfsbane.

"I was going to say, actually, that I didn't have time to wait and see if Weasley would come down and get it for you."

"He did tell me he'd been by yesterday." Severus does not reply, but gives me the cup again. "If I'd known he was planning --"

"Lupin, every word you say is time spent not drinking this thrice-cursed potion. Despite all appearances to the contrary, nursemaiding you is not my preferred way to spend an afternoon, so will you be silent, damn you, and finish it?"

All right, then. I don't know what in particular is bothering him today -- it's often not easy to tell, with Severus -- but I let him help me drink the last of the Wolfsbane. Only when he is satisfied that the cup is drained dry does he take it away and remove his hand from the back of my neck. (He must hope I don't notice that he sets my head gently against the headboard before letting go.) "Give Harry my regards," I say.

He stops halfway to the door and turns his head, but does not look at me. "When Weasley does come to the dungeons for your potion," he says after a moment, "I'll just send him up here, shall I?"

The resignation in his tone -- not to mention the statement itself -- takes me utterly by surprise. "Er -- that is --" is all I am able to say.

"Just --"and now Severus does look me in the eye -- "mind you treat him well, Lupin."

If I'd been Sirius, or James, I'd have drawn myself up to my full height and demanded to know what the hell he meant by that. What I do is cock my head and say, "I beg your pardon?"

It's a moment before Severus answers. "Because I didn't," he finally says -- and before I can respond in any way beyond a baffled stare, he's gone and shut the door behind him.

I am awakened by the awareness that I'm not alone. I keep still for a moment, trying to determine how far from me the other person in the room is. Very near, and not moving. I do not open my eyes; if I can seem unconscious though I am alert, I will be in much less danger. I feel whomever it is push my hair off my forehead.

My thoughts lurch back to reality, and I open my eyes to see my room, dim with evening, and Bill Weasley sitting next to my bed. He brushes my forehead again, then, seeing me awake, withdraws his hand.

For a long time I had a note at the beginning of this bit to put in a dream sequence later. But once I'd written more of the thing, I found I didn't need to show the dreams themselves.

I begin to review my dreams, as one does upon waking safely -- but almost immediately, I realize that Severus' caution to treat Bill well, his admission that he had not done so, was no trick of my mind. Bill and Severus were lovers -- was this before or after Bill's relationship with Harry? I remember Harry asking me, less than a month ago, if I'd ever slept with Severus. At the time I couldn't imagine what could have prompted the question. Now I have to stop myself from asking Bill just how well he knew Sirius Black. "I didn't expect to see you today," I say instead.

"You did say tomorrow lunch," he concedes. "But I knew you'd need a dose of Wolfsbane today." He smiles. "Missed again. I went down to the dungeons, but Severus said he'd brought it to you earlier."

I know my face must have shown some reaction to his mention of Severus' name. Bill knits his brow and scrubs the flat of his hand on his trouser leg. "Let me get you some water," he says. "Do you need help sitting up?"

For the second time today, I allow myself to be tugged into a sitting position. Bill tucks a pillow behind me before I lean back, and then goes to the basin and returns with a glass. "I'm sure you'd rather have whiskey," he says. "Sorry." He places the glass in my hand, curling my fingers round it before letting go.

I try to sip the water, but I'm still quite shaky. My head falls back against the headboard with a thunk that nicely demonstrates my frustration.

"Easy, now," Bill says.

"Speak for yourself."

"I'd no idea it was like this. Shall I -- can I help you?" Bill reaches hesitantly toward me, tucks a bit of hair behind my ear, and eases one hand behind my head as carefully as if I were an infant. "Just -- that's it," he says, flexing his hand just slightly -- and his hand is in the same place Severus' hand must have been, earlier, but I can feel Bill's thumb and his fingers, now, cradling my skull, and the warmth and strength of his palm just at the hairline. His other hand is gentle around mine as he brings the glass to my lips and lets me drink.

My mouth still tastes of Wolfsbane, but the water is cold and sweet and I drink deeply. Soon Bill is tilting the glass away from me. "Slowly," he says. "Don't forget to breathe." I nod. "If this were a hospital, you'd have a straw to drink through," he says.

I manage to swallow quickly enough that I don't spit the water out when I laugh. I lay my head back and push the glass away. "Thank you," I say, nodding.

Bill is looking at me curiously. He takes the glass and reaches across himself to set it on the nightstand; he does not remove his hand from behind my head. I roll my head a bit to one side so I can look at him. "Bill," I say.

"What do you need?"

"No -- nothing -- Bill," I begin again. I can feel his thumb stroking back and forth through my hair.

It makes sense to me that someone with Remus' physical issues would be very conscious of his body.

"Still here. You hungry?"

I hadn't been, but now that he mentions it, I'm famished. "What's the time?"

"Past time for dinner, but they won't have knocked off in the kitchen. Want me to call for a house elf, or d'you think you can make it down there in person?"

"Not by myself, but if you help me walk," I say.

"Course I will." He winks and leaves the bedside again to fetch me a dressing gown, and I leave my questions be. I can ask him about Harry and about Severus later.

We reach the kitchens in about a third of the time it would have taken me to get there by myself. I handle the walking quite well, actually, but I lean on Bill's arm on the stairs. "It's this one, with the bowl of --" But he's already tickling the pear before I can even point to the right painting.

He grins and winks as the frame swings open. "Mischief managed," he says.

Well, Fred and George had to learn it from somewhere, didn't they? :-)

All I can do as we step through the doorway is stare at him. Fortunately (perhaps), I don't have a chance to do much else, because no sooner are we in the main kitchen than a swarm of house elves are rushing up to us, practically knocking one another down in their eagerness to serve.

"Professoremus is not well!" one elf wails. "We must be fetching something to make poor professor strong again!"

"Cakes!" cries another elf. "Cakes and butterbeer, bring his color back, hurry, hurry!"

"Meat, Professoremus needs meat, sir, there's roast left over from dinner, come sit down --"

It's quite dizzying just trying to listen to them all. Bill catches me before I start to sway. "Ease up, lads," he tells the house elves. "Bit late in the day for a five-course meal. Still got some of that soup? That ought to do it."

Five or six elves scurry away and are back in seconds with hot potato leek soup, good red wine, and about a third of a French loaf. They all dance back and forth until we take everything they've brought us. We set it on the counter; the table and chairs they keep trying to lead us to are elf-sized. Bill finally manages to convince them we don't need any more food, and they go back to whatever their business is on the other side of the swinging doors ("But Willy Wheezy must tell us, he must, if we can help make professor well again!"). I lean against the counter as he shoos the last house elf away.

I had this whole scene so I could have the elves call Bill "Willy Wheezy". :-)

The swinging doors are mentioned here because it made Resonant anxious to have Remus and Bill get busy a little later before the doors are even mentioned. Felt, apparently, like they were making out in front of all the house elves.

I can't hold the soup bowl in one hand, but I draw the line at allowing Bill Weasley to feed me with a spoon like an invalid. I summon the tiny table and one of the chairs and cast augmento on them twice to enlarge them to a size I can reasonably use. Bill smiles, but says nothing, when I brace the bowl against my free hand; after a moment, he enlarges another chair for himself and sits backwards in it, sipping a glass of the wine the house elves brought us as he watches me eat.

The soup is thick and good, and I have the idea that I can feel it warming my tired limbs, strengthening my shaking muscles. I'm sure it's doing nothing of the kind, not so quickly, but the feeling is helpful all the same. Within minutes, it's gone, and I'm scraping the sides of the bowl with my spoon. "Want some of the bread?" Bill asks, starting to get up and fetch it. "Get at the last of it, there?"

"No, thank you." I leave the spoon in the bowl and lean back in my chair. "That may have been the best soup I've ever had."

Bill grins. "I'll never forget the first bowl of Mum's ham and lentil soup after I'd been in Egypt six months."

"Probably a similar feeling." I can't help but smile. We sit quietly for several minutes.

I stand up slowly, feeling ten times as strong as I felt when I sat down. Bill gets up and reaches for my soup bowl, but I wave him away; he raises his hands in surrender and says resilio over the table and chairs as I carry the bowl to the counter myself.

I lean against the counter again and watch him send the re-shrunk furniture back to where I'd summoned it from. He turns, when he's set it down, and sees me looking at him, and I feel my pulse strongly in my wrist for a couple of beats; then he smiles, a sort of cautious smile, and I don't look away, and he shoves his hands in his pockets and comes over and faces me, ducking his head a bit.

I reach for him, but I hesitate. My hand curls up, my fingers fold over the palm; but I have to touch him, I can't stop my hand -- the heel of my hand and the knuckles of my fingers, this thing that is not a fist -- from coming to rest on Bill's side, resting on his ribs, in the crook of his elbow, as I lift my chin and kiss him.

I can see his eyes close. He makes a quiet sound and seems to tense just slightly. In the next instant, though, he opens his mouth. I choose to consider the sound one of surprise. His lips are warm and a little scratchy. They press against mine, slip and press between, part and press around my lips. I could kiss him for hours. I am vaguely aware that his hands are no longer in his pockets.

It takes a lot of thinking to analyze a kiss, but the last few moments before a kiss, particularly someone you've never (or almost never) kissed before, often stand out.

It's not clear to me whether it's something I do or something he does, but between one press of lips and the next, this kiss goes deep. Or -- deeper. I taste his lower lip, I feel his tongue on mine, and my hand on his side -- I wind my arm around his waist, flattening my hand so I can press it against his spine as I pull him closer to me. And Bill slides his hand behind my head; it's the same solid warmth I felt upstairs, with his thumb stroking through my hair, but the water I was drinking was so cold -- and I open my mouth wider now, to taste more of Bill's mouth, and it's sweet, like the water was, but so hot --

With my other hand I reach for the back of his neck. I want to touch the skin there, feel how it changes under his hair and under his collar. His hair is caught in a ponytail at the nape; I tug impatiently at the tie. I can smell it as it spills free, a clean, uncomplicated scent. I leave his lips and slide my mouth down his jaw to his throat, around to the side where my tongue on his neck makes him gasp and I can feel the smooth warm fall of his hair against my face.

I lick behind his ear, and the sound he makes, oh god, and his hand on my head tightens, and his other hand is clenched around a fistful of my dressing gown, and his chest is solid, and his arms are strong. The stubble on my chin drags against the stubble on his. Our mouths meet again. I can't get close enough to him, though I hold on as tight as I can. I want him -- I want him now, so badly my legs shake with wanting him.

There's always stubble. I cannot deny that I have a very serious weakness for scruff -- less than about two or three days' worth of growth. I'm unusual among women of my acquaintance in that area, I think. Yes, I do get beard burn, but you know, I don't mind so much. ;-)

Of course I can't have him now. To begin with, the kitchen, one swinging door away from who knows how many house elves, is hardly the place for -- and besides that, I haven't asked him about his evident past with Severus, not to mention with Harry. To say nothing of the fact that there's a very real chance what's actually making my legs shake is exhaustion; I've been on my feet far longer than I should, so soon after the full moon.

Bill pulls back, gentles the kiss and draws his mouth from mine. He leans his forehead against mine, then straightens up and looks at me. He unclenches his fist at my side and smoothes down the rumples in my dressing gown; he lowers his eyelids, will not meet my gaze for a moment, but then looks back up again. I slide my hand out from under his unbound hair.

"Remus, you're --" he begins.

"Bill." What else can I do but interrupt him? There are a number of things he could have been about to say, some of which I'd rather not hear. And I have things to say myself.

What I don't know is the best way to ask the question. Or what, specifically, the question really is. I can't quite credit the notion that Severus could have treated anyone as ill as it's possible to treat a lover -- but he did say he hadn't treated Bill well, and he must have meant something. Perhaps that's it, then. "Bill. I know -- I beg your pardon. I understand you've been treated badly. In the past."

"I -- what?" His fingers stop moving in my hair, and he looks at me, plainly confused.

This is frankly the last response I would have expected. "Haven't you?" I relax my arm around his waist, stepping just slightly away. I lay a hand on his chest, near his shoulder; I don't actually want to break the contact. "It sounded like --" I sigh. There is no graceful way, is there. "I've been led to conclude that you and Severus had ... had something in the past, and that it didn't end well."

Bill closes his eyes and turns his head away before I've even finished, giving one quiet mirthless laugh, stepping completely out of my arms. "Ah." I have no response to 'Ah', so I wait for him to speak again. His next words take me completely by surprise: "He blames himself more than he should."

"But if he -- did he hurt you?" Whom else should he blame?

Bill has pushed himself up to sit on the counter and found his hair tie where I dropped it. He twists and untwists it around his fingers. "Hurting me was never his intention," he murmurs. It's obvious he's repeating something Severus had said to him. I force myself to keep silent.

Suddenly Bill looks up at me again. "No, hold on," he says. "That's not what you mean, is it. You think he hit me?" Now he really does laugh, though he sobers quickly. "No. Never. Can you imagine?" He plays with his hair tie some more. "We did have something, though, yes. And it didn't end well." He looks at me, knitting his brow. "Does it bother you? That Severus and I were lovers twenty years ago?"

I suppose it does bother me a bit. I'd be an idiot to say so. "A bit. I know it shouldn't." Bill's eyes crinkle when he smiles, but he still looks sad. "And he left you -- it would have been right before you went to Egypt," I guess.

He shakes his head. "It was right before I went to Egypt," he says. "But I left him." He hops down from the counter. "Ready to head back up?"

"Almost." He's reaching out to get my arm over his shoulders so he can help me walk; I stop him with a hand on his elbow. "What happened? It's obviously something that still causes you pain. Won't you talk about it?"

"Remus." Bill looks at me with misery in his eyes. "Why on earth do you think I'm trying to break the Fidelius charm?"

I always wake up, the first night the moon is waning. Whether I intend to be or not, I'm awake in the middle of the night, just before the moon sets. I know it has scarcely changed from the night before -- so it's the closest thing to a full moon that I'll ever see.

The stars are still twinkling in the enchanted ceiling when I finish breakfast. Not for the first time, I wish the charm could be adjusted by a few hours in the winter; the students might be a little less bleary-eyed for their first lesson if they had their breakfast under a sunny sky. They're stumbling in, two and three at a time, as I leave the Hall and head for Minerva's office.

"Haversacking" is her password, and she hasn't changed it in years. We finally charmed the staircase to require that students attempting to use the password give it in an exact rendition of Minerva's accent. As a staff member, I am exempt from this requirement -- fortunately, as her accent is beyond my ability to imitate. I climb up to the outer office; the door is shut, of course, but there is no response to my knock, and when I open it the office is empty.

It's late for Minerva not to be at her desk. Not just because I need to speak to her, although I do -- but the first lesson of the day will begin soon. The Headmistress needs to be in her office. I lock the door and descend the staircase, trying not to worry.

At the door to Minerva's rooms, Sybill Trelawney answers, her hair in more than its usual disarray. "Remus. Thank goodness."

I find myself sympathetically smoothing my own hair down. "Morning, Sybill. She's not up yet, then?"

Sybill breathes a quiet sigh. "She was a disaster at dinner last night, so I knew I'd have to come by this morning. Are you teaching today?"

I started with the sympathetic, non-crazy Sybill in Credulity and Conviction, and I was pleased to give her more to do here. But I didn't want to give the impression that she and Minerva were a couple. Bad idea to sleep with her boss, for a start.

I blink. "Well -- yes, I am," I say. "Is there --"

"Do you think you can take my classes as well? At least until she's in shape to hold office hours?"

"I don't know, Sybill. I never took Divination --"

"Doesn't matter. Just as long as --" I hear Minerva coughing in the second room. Sybill sighs again. "Excuse me. Or -- come in, but -- you know."

I love Sybill admitting that it doesn't matter if he never took Divination, he's still qualified to teach it.

I follow Sybill into Minerva's little sitting room and stop by the open bedroom door. Sybill goes through, and I can hear her stop after only a few steps. "Good morning, Headmistress," she says, pitching her voice low and soothing.

Minerva is at her sober worst, evidently. "Never mind what sort of morning it is," she says. "I haven't got time for chit-chat."

"Of course you haven't," Sybill agrees. "You'll be wanting to get to your office. Remus is here to speak to you, by the way, when you're ready. Shall I bring you a set of robes?"

"Remus Lupin? At this hour?"

I pinch my temples. It's much later than she realizes, but it's still far too early in the day. "Yes, Minerva," I say over my shoulder. "How are you this morning?"

"Wretched," she snaps. "Get -- I beg your pardon, Sybill, but I'm perfectly capable of walking across the room. What do you want, Remus?"

"I know you are," Sybill says. "I just didn't want you to trip."

"I stopped by your office and you weren't in yet," I say.

"Will you leave me be? I'm not an invalid."

"All right. I'll be right here. Remus, do you think Bill might be able to cover my classes?"

I'm surprised by this question. "Not likely," I begin.

"Cover your classes? Bill Weasley?"

"Yes, I thought I'd stay with you in case you need me --"

"I don't need you here; I need you teaching your own lessons."

"I haven't seen Bill this morning," I say pointedly, "and anyway he's not a teacher."

"And why should Remus know what Bill Weasley might be able to do anyway?"

What I was going for here was three conversations happening simultaneously. This scene used to be longer, but it got tedious and I cut a good deal of it -- primarily from what follows.

I hear Sybill hesitate. "I was under the impression that Remus had been seeing rather a lot of Bill recently," she says.

Minerva scoffs from a different place in the room than the last time I heard her. "Can't help seeing a lot of the Weasleys," she says. "They're everywhere."

"Really --"

"It's not a matter of how many of them there are. I just thought that Remus had --"

"Fifteen years, we were never without a Weasley. At least one."

"I taught five of them at once," I agree.

"Well, that was most of them, wasn't it?" Minerva said. "How many were there -- seven? Eight?"

"I thought seven."

"I'm sure it was eight -- seven boys and a girl. I've known that family since before you were born. Let me think."

"There were four boys here, when I got here, and two more who'd left. That's six. And the girl."

"That's how many I remember as well."

"Oh, aye, it was so long ago, you mightn't remember, either of you. There was another boy ... what was his name ..." I'm so surprised that I turn around and look at her. She looks like hell, but she's dressed and her hair is up, thank god. "Robert, that was it." I glance at Sybill, who looks as bewildered as I feel. "Robert was between Charlie and Percy, but nobody knows what happened to him, poor lamb."

I follow her when she shuts her door and starts back down the corridor to her office. "But nobody's ever spoken of him."

Minerva stops and gives me a withering, pitying look. "My dear boy, what would anyone say?"

My day is such that while I do not forget about Minerva's shocking revelation, I am not able to give it any serious thought -- even when I see Bill across the table at lunch and across the room at dinner, I have other things on my mind than his mysterious missing brother.

I have an office hour after dinner, in concession to the fact that some students can never visit me during my regular daytime ones if their schedules don't allow it. I've spoken to two Gryffindor second years about homework and agreed to write a reference for a Ravenclaw seventh year's university application when there's another knock at my door. Or at my doorframe, as the door is standing open.

"Wondered where you'd got to," Bill says, leaning against the doorjamb with his arms folded. "I thought I'd catch you after dinner, but you hurried off."

I gesture to my desk. "Professional duties, I'm afraid."

"So I see. It's too bad -- thought you might join me in the library, now you're up and about. Wouldn't mind the company, I mean." Half a smile.

"Of course," I say, probably too quickly. "That is -- I've got to be here another quarter of an hour, in case the students need me. But after that?"

"Meet you up there, then?" he suggests, straightening up. "I'll be the red-haired bloke at the table by himself with a load of books."

He grins and heads up to the library on his own, and I watch the clock for another fifteen minutes in which, naturally, no students come by. I pick up the next two weeks' worth of lesson plans and the form for my seventh year's reference letter -- it won't do to just sit and look at him, not when he'll be trying to work and there will still be students in the library -- and lock my office door behind me before walking to the library without, I hope, a noticeable spring in my step.

Bill glances at me and smiles when I arrive, but turns quickly back to where he's marking a spot in one book and flipping through another looking for a cross-reference. I watch him for a moment; he reads a couple of pages in the second book, turns back to the first, goes back to the second again, picks up a quill and scribbles a note on a scroll of parchment that hangs over the edge of the table and onto the floor. While he's writing, he reaches without looking for another stack of books and pulls the second volume from the top towards him. He doesn't seem, after that first smile, to be aware I'm even there. I settle in a relatively clear space across the table from him, and for the next couple of hours draft my student's reference and prepare my lesson plans in what I have chosen to consider a companionable silence.

What would a person be looking for, who was looking for a way to break an unbreakable charm? Precedent, probably, but what specifically is in those books Bill is looking through, I have no idea.

I look up when I hear Bill breathe a faint defeated sigh. He pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand and closes his book with the other; I am about to ask how serious a setback he's just run across when he tips his head back to stretch his neck, and my mouth goes dry.

His eyes are closed. He reaches back with his hand to rub out the knots in his neck and shoulders. He straightens up and rolls his head to one side, and then to the other; something gives way with a muffled pop, and Bill's brow relaxes as he exhales with relief. I cannot look away.

He must feel my stare on him. He opens his eyes and looks immediately into mine. I hold his gaze, then turn my eyes to the library door for an instant and back to his again. He lifts his chin a fraction of a centimeter, and after a long moment -- in which neither of us looks away -- nods once, briefly, and we both stand up.

It's not a long walk to my rooms. We don't speak, on the way, and we don't touch; it's late, but there may be students still about, and there are always ghosts and portraits and others who needn't concern themselves with our business. Bill walks beside me, and my fingertips tingle.

I like that they don't speak and don't touch, and nevertheless completely understand each other. There's so much talking in a lot of what we write -- and I've never been very good at writing that sort of talking anyway (either the talking before or the talking during sex), but here, I really think it would interfere.

I unlock and open my door, and he follows me inside. I close and lock it quickly so I'll lose as little time as possible before pulling him into my arms, before kissing his mouth, before backing him up against the door and feeling his body against mine, under my hands. His hands touch me, too, his palms a warm pressure along my spine, around my ribs. Bill slides one hand up to push my robe off my shoulder, and the other down to nudge at my hip. I make that slight shift and I can press my leg between his, feel him arch against me, pull me closer.

He tugs again at my robe. I shrug one arm out of it, the side he'd already started on, but he's so warm and so good -- I don't want to let go of him. I wind my arms around him and kiss him and stroke his hair and my robe hangs half on the floor behind me. I almost don't need to breathe; one kiss feeds the next, and Bill is here and holding me tight, and my god, he's beautiful.

We start on each other's shirt buttons at almost the same moment. I can't tell who begins first, but it takes us a long time to finish, kissing instead of watching what we're doing. I pull Bill's shirt open and curl my hands around his sides, slide them up to his chest. I want to wrap my arms around him, between his shirt and his skin, but he keeps me back, pressing gently against the inside of my elbow when I try. He doesn't stop kissing me, but I understand the signal. I stroke my hands over his ribs again and open my mouth wider.

Bill brings his hands up to cup my jaw. He pushes away from the door and turns us around, shoving my robe off my other arm, urging me back against the door now, my robe twisting around our ankles. He tugs my shirt open, gets it off me, and I pull at his until I get it untucked and it falls to the floor.

His skin is so warm. His back and his shoulders, in my arms, under my fingers, I want it all, I want to touch him with my hands and lick him until he moans and feel him, oh god, pressing against me. He's holding me firmly against the door. His knee is between mine, and his hips are rocking steadily, have been for a moment now, and he smoothes his hands down the side of my face as he lets go and reaches for my trouser buttons.

We do break the kiss, resting our foreheads on each other's shoulders, for the minute it takes us to get both my trousers and his undone and down to our knees. Then Bill kisses me again, fiercely, and presses me right up against the door, and his cock is so hot, and mine is so hard, and they rub together and I see white light -- but I can't get closer, I can't get our legs the way I want them. I try to lever my feet out of my shoes and kick my trousers off without losing my balance, but Bill pulls away suddenly. He places a hand in the center of my chest and looks hard at me for two or three heaving breaths. When he lets go, we both get our trousers the rest of the way off, kicking our shoes away, as quickly as possible.

Bill is done a second before I am, and sinks to his knees. He runs his hands up and down my legs, guides me back to lean on the door again, opens his mouth and breathes hot breath on my cock. I am straining toward him by the time he takes it in his mouth.

He sucks me so sweetly, stroking my legs with his hands, his eyes closed. My hands are buzzing, and my wrists. I can feel the throb all the way up my arms to my elbows, getting stronger. Any second now, I'm going to come harder than I've come in years. I reach for Bill, but I don't want to put my hand in his hair -- don't want to pull too hard and hurt him. I brace my hands at my sides and scrabble until I find the doorframe, clutching hard at it as the orgasm hits me, as it slams my head against the door and shakes my body wildly, easing my grip so that I finally touch Bill's forehead as I go limp.

His face is as unmasked as I've ever seen it, when he releases my cock and watches me as I catch my breath and kneel in front of him. His eyes are wide and clear, looking at me, and there's no sense that something complicated is going on behind them. His lips are full and red and relaxed, not actually smiling, but ready to smile at any moment. The grooves in his forehead, the lines between his eyebrows, are gone. He reaches for me, and I take his head in my hands and kiss his mouth until he lets go.

Bill maneuvers me until his cock is pressed where he wants it, against the inside of the ridge of my hip. His breath catches and his head hangs back. I hold onto his shoulders and kiss his neck, kiss his jaw, as he rocks against me and the grip of his arms around me tightens and relaxes in rhythm. When he comes, he holds my body tightly against his, breathing through his mouth; when it's over, I slide my hands behind his head, urge him gently to straighten his neck, and kiss him again.

We're pressed together, still on our knees, and we can't seem to stop kissing. The kisses are gentler and shallower now than before; we lean into each other and manage to stay wrapped up in each other's arms as we shift and lie down, pressed together, in a sort of nest of our clothes, just inside the door. The bed is barely ten paces away, but it seems we're neither of us bothered not to be in it just now. Bill lays his head on my chest and the palm of his hand over my ribs, and I stroke his hair and hook our legs together, and the last thing I'm aware of feeling as I fall asleep is his warm, regular breaths against my skin.

It is of course a complicated issue that we all deal with, the politics of a slash couple. Who's on top, and who's on the bottom, and are these literal designations or conventional ones or even metaphorical ones, and is who does what to whom somehow connected with who's bigger or stronger or older or (god help us) "more masculine", and on and on. I don't deny that sometimes these questions are relevant; a lot of the time the story is about power imbalance, and so matters of who is in control of what are directly related to the main plot. That's not the case here -- so I tried to be careful not to make either Remus or Bill conspicuously the "weaker" person. Bill is more or less in charge of the actual sex, here, but he falls asleep with Remus holding him rather than the other way around. And so on.

I'm forty-three years old, for god's sake.

Bill is -- well, I don't know how much younger he is, precisely. He was several years behind us at school, so he may not have hit forty yet -- but whether he has or he hasn't, he can't possibly find the floor any more comfortable than I do.

I'm a big fan of highlighting the ridiculous in what is often romanticized. Who sleeps snuggled together on a hardwood floor when there's a perfectly good bed practically within arm's reach? Not two early-middle-aged guys, I bet.

He's tracing shapes on my skin when I wake. I open my eyes because the weight of him is gone from on top of me; his leg is still thrown over my knee, but he's looking down at me from where he's leaning on one elbow, his head propped on his hand, and with his other hand he's touching me. I wish I didn't have to make him stop.

But I catch his hand. "This is lovely," I whisper -- it's still the middle of the night, probably only about one o'clock, and speaking out loud seems wrong somehow -- "but I'm --"

"Yeah, me too," he whispers, smiling. "But I didn't want to wake you."

We get up, my shoulders and hips protesting every inch, and move together to the bed. We kiss, briefly -- but Bill flops back onto the bed with a grateful sigh, burrowing into the pillows and pulling the blankets around him. I crawl in after him and settle, daringly, on top of him and astride his legs. He grins up at me and reaches up to push my hair off my forehead; his hair is spread over my pillow; my heart thuds heavily in my chest. I lean down and kiss him, slowly lowering my body onto his, and he wraps his arms around me.

It's so nice, in bed; we move easily and smoothly together. His mouth is warm, and his neck tastes the way sand smells. We hold each other and kiss for a long time, and I'm lying comfortably, drifting again toward sleep, when I feel Bill's fingertips on my side. His hand moves back and forth, down over my hip, down my thigh halfway to my knee: he is tracing my scars.

I open my eyes and start to sit up, but Bill presses me gently back down. "This is the bite," he says, touching the old puncture-scars on my leg. "But all this ..." He runs his hand over the gash-scars that make up the left side of my body. I look up at him; he raises his eyebrows.

"A wolf is bigger than a dog," I tell him. "More than a match for a six-year-old."

He hadn't known how young I was. "Six?"

"He knocked me down when he bit, and the claws are quite dangerous as well," I said. "Would have mauled me to death if my mother hadn't managed to get me free."

I originally had Remus say "if my father hadn't managed to get me free", but then I thought about it, and I changed it. In the first place, I feel like fiction in general has the physical defense of children disproportionately undertaken by their fathers. (Not that fathers never physically defend their children, of course; but always? The fact that it was my first instinct made me mistrustful of it.) But then, more importantly, there's a thread -- through HP canon and through this little series of mine -- of mothers going to great lengths to protect their children. Narcissa Malfoy ... doesn't exhibit particularly maternal instincts, fair enough, but she knows perfectly well that they have to hide Robert Weasley and hide him well or else Molly Weasley will come and tear the house apart with her hands to find him; Mrs. Crouch went to Azkaban to spring Barty Jr.; and of course Lily Potter gets in front of a killing curse to protect Harry. So it made sense to me that it be his mother who saved Remus from the werewolf. (She was not herself harmed. I have decided this for myself. Scratched up a bit, sure, but not as badly as Remus here, or as Bill in HBP. She certainly wasn't bitten.)

Bill lies down next to me and covers his eyes with his hand. "Six years old," he says. I push up onto one elbow and look at him, but I don't touch him. He lies still for a long moment. "I had a brother," he finally says.

Ah. "I know."

"He disappeared when he was six. One day, just --" He makes a flying-away gesture with the hand that had been over his eyes, and looks at the ceiling. I do not speak; this is not a tale that needs prompting.

"Disappeared," Bill says again. His face is blank, but his eyes are as revealing as ever. "And we never knew -- I could never tell what had happened to him." His eyes flicker toward me for an instant -- I almost miss it -- before looking back up at the ceiling and then closing tightly.

I gasp. I can feel my eyes widen, and my vision blurs a little before refocusing. I lay a hand on Bill's belly. He twists his fingers into mine and holds on, and from the pressure of his grip, I know this is it. This is the secret; Bill Weasley knows what happened, all those years ago, to his brother who disappeared.

I meant to have that moment -- Remus coming to a conclusion and knowing from Bill's expression that he's right -- later, and I still do have a variation on it later on, but I couldn't avoid using it here.

It is a common assertion that what we do not know -- and, by extension, what we cannot see -- cannot hurt us.

If only that were true.

Bill has not awoken when I get up in the morning. It takes me twice as long to dress as it usually does, since I keep catching myself just standing and looking at him, watching him sleeping in my bed, and I have to remind myself to hurry.

As I'm turning my collar down over my tie, I turn to look at him again and see that his eyes are open. I have no idea how long he's been watching me. He holds my gaze with his, but he does not move. I find my jacket, look back at Bill while I shrug into it; find my robe, give it a shake.

The sheet is drawn up under Bill's elbow on one side, shoved down past the curve of his hip on the other. It drapes, being just a sheet, in such a way that even where it covers him, I can see the shape of his body. I want to go to him, to lie down alongside him, to touch his warm skin with my hands and push his hair away from his sleepy eyes so I can see him smile when we kiss.

I hang my robe over my arm and meet Bill's eyes for one more long moment before I have to go or risk being late for Ravenclaw fourth years, who are smug and insufferable enough first thing in the morning when one hasn't missed breakfast.

For the first time all year, I find that I'm glad of my Thursday schedule. I have three classes before lunch, which has always seemed a bit much; but that means I only have one after, so by half-past two I'm done for the day. I head up to the library to see if Bill is there. But he isn't -- and just like that, my free afternoon has become a long afternoon with nothing to do.

Just like every other Thursday, in other words. So if I'm not to have a lazy afternoon with Bill, I've time in which to try to get something constructive done before --

Two minutes later, I'm settled in a corner of the library with a stack of old Prophets, trying to find out what I can -- what Bill can't tell me -- about his missing brother.

It takes me a long time with a quill and parchment, working out sums and scratching out figures, just to guess when the missing brother -- Robert, Minerva had called him -- must have disappeared. Between Charlie and Percy, she'd said; and Percy would have been in his late twenties now, about twenty-seven or twenty-eight; so Robert would have been at least twenty-nine or thirty; which means he was six years old no less than twenty-three years ago. (Well, if he disappeared after the autumn of that year, I know the Prophet didn't cover it, as from the first of November onwards it was full of nothing but James and Lily, Sirius and Peter, Voldemort and Harry.)

How far back do I need to go, though -- I've no idea how old Charlie Weasley is. I don't even know precisely how old Bill is. I do know that Charlie hadn't started Hogwarts yet when we left; that's something. So the oldest Charlie can be is about thirty-six; Robert cannot have been six years old any more than twenty-nine years ago.

I'm left with a six-year span, more than two thousand issues of the Daily Prophet in which there may or may not be an item somewhere about a missing child. Just the idea of reading all of them makes my head ache. There must be a way to narrow things down.

"Accio articles on missing children," I murmur -- but within seconds of flicking my wand at the stacks of newspapers, it is clear why the summoning charm is not in wide use in libraries. In rapid succession, each stack lifts itself and flutters as though being rifled by an unseen (and very large) hand. No sooner has the last stack settled back down on the table than papers slide out from each stack, dozens of them, and fly towards me, striking me in the face when I fail to catch them, landing in a disorganized heap on the table in front of me (and in my lap, and on the floor around my chair).

The whole operation has taken scarcely a minute, but a minute is a long time, in a library, to be responsible for noise one can't stop. I am acutely aware of the scrape of my chair against the floor as I push it back to collect the newspapers at my feet. I don't need to look around to know that Madam Pince and very likely several students are glaring at me.

I stack the accio'd papers in front of me, quietly banish the rest to the next table, and open the first issue expecting -- well, expecting, evidently, that what I'm looking for will leap out at me much as the newspapers did and hit me on the head. Of course I can't possibly be so fortunate. What I've got now is a much smaller set of Prophet issues, perhaps six hundred of them, each of which does contain an item about a missing child. But I don't know where in any issue the item will appear, I now realize -- and come to think of it, I've no reason to suppose that each of these issues will have just one such article.

I rub disconsolately at the back of my neck.

There's a series of specialized search charms used by scholars, the details of which I always forget and have to look up. The charms are indexed in a little book and cross-referenced by purpose, incantation, and wand movement; a copy of the book is attached, wisely, to each library table. I consult the book, write "missing child" in the air with my wand, draw a box around the glowing words and the newspapers, and cast the charm -- exquireo, in this case. The papers ruffle again, as if a stiff breeze had blown by the table. Then the wand-drawn words and box disappear, and as they fade the papers begin to glow softly instead. I flip through an issue; on page seventeen, an incandescent headline draws my attention to an article about a child who went missing from a school outing in 1978.

I figure there's got to be some sort of cataloguing system a little more complex than shelving things alphabetically by subject, which is what we see in SS/PS.

That missing child wasn't Robert Weasley, but at least now I'm getting somewhere.

Somewhere unspeakably depressing, I discover over the next several hours. I'd had no idea how many children went missing in an average week. I read article after article about children who simply vanished: sometimes in the company of an adult, sometimes not; often with no clues to help track them down, or with insufficient clues, leading too slowly to the cold end of a trail; only occasionally ever found again, and then rarely alive. I read through all the illuminated articles in fifty issues of the Prophet, every word of them, almost without a pause, before hearing the clock strike seven and looking at the stack of glowing papers I haven't even touched and realizing I don't have the time, much less the stomach, to read each piece so carefully.

So many missing. And not even artificially elevated numbers because of the time period, either; it was the height of Voldemort's power, the time span I'm looking at, and his Death Eaters terrorized whom they chose, but they didn't generally leave any mystery as to their victims' fate, nor target children, nor operate anonymously -- they killed people who opposed them, and then they bragged about it. The overwhelming majority of the stories I've been reading are of perfectly ordinary disappearances, which of course makes them a great deal more terrible.

I rub my eyes, hoping -- absurdly, I know -- that there will be half as many papers remaining when I look up as there are now. I rest my elbow on the table and my forehead in the palm of my hand, blocking the light of the library and everything it's showing me, just for a moment.

A loud thump and the shaking of the table make me sit up quite suddenly and strain something in my neck. Bill is looking down at me, amused, from the other side of the stack of books he's just dropped next to my head. He's half-sitting on the edge of the table, hair slipping out of its tie, arms folded across his chest, legs crossed at the ankles -- he looks fantastic. I glare at him.

"If you're falling asleep now, there's not much chance of my having any fun with you later, is there," he grins.

"Wasn't asleep."

"Okay. But you know, skipping breakfast and dinner both is no way to keep your strength up." He picks up a paper off the top of one of the stacks, taps me on the head with it, and starts turning pages looking for the source of the light. "What's this?"

"Prophet. Research. I've been --"

Bill has found the highlighted article and read the headline, and looks a little puzzled. He flips through three more papers and reads three more headlines, his brow knitting tighter by the second, and then looks back at me.

Something in his eyes makes me want to reach for him -- but something else in his eyes scares me half to death. He looks at me for a long moment; glances at the stacks of newspapers; closes his eyes and smiles a brief, sad smile, pinching the bridge of his nose; and leans down to kiss me, once, softly, his hand lying warm along my jaw. "It was nineteen seventy-nine," he says. "The ninth of November."

"Was it ever in the --"

"I think so," he says, hefting his stack of books and going round to the other side of the table. "But Prophet or no Prophet, that was the last day."

"All right." I flip through the little reference book and wave my wand at the stacks again, and all the Daily Prophets from November 1979 reassemble front and center as the rest stack themselves off to the sides.

There are sixteen issues in front of me.

The first is dated 12 November, and I turn to the marked article and glance up at Bill. He's looking at me, tight-lipped, but after only a second goes back to the work he's got in front of him. I read the 12 November article. It includes very little detail. (Summary: One of the Weasley boys is missing; he has red hair and green eyes.) The articles from the next three days aren't much deeper. Their tone is still optimistic -- contact this office with information, that sort of thing -- but by the 17th, the optimism had begun to flag.

"Robert Weasley, 6, the missing son of Ministry official Arthur Weasley and his wife Molly, has still not been found. He was last seen at home on 9 November, wearing dark grey corduroy trousers and a green wool jumper, in the charge of Miranda McKinnon, 20 [see related article], along with his three-year-old brother Perseus. The younger boy does not appear to have been harmed in the incident he describes as a 'visit' from two men with masks, in which Ms McKinnon also disappeared. It has been speculated over the past several days that Ms McKinnon was associated with the masked men and involved in the abduction of Robert Weasley; but her body was recently discovered on a Northumberland hillside, so she must obviously now be considered a victim rather than a suspect."

The article goes on for another couple of column inches, but the name of the babysitter has rung a bell. I remember Miranda McKinnon (just a year ahead of us in Gryffindor), and I remember when her body was found, with her hair chopped off and her arm scraped raw and her throat not just cut but dug out, a gaping hole in her neck. I'd seen her. They'd murdered her whole family a few months before, and somehow she alone had been spared; most people believed she'd escaped, but some thought she'd been in on it, even once she turned up dead. I remember all of this -- how could I not have remembered that she'd been minding two children when she disappeared?

"Death Eaters," I say.

Bill looks up from his notes and nods.

"Who --" He won't be able to tell me who. I scratch my forehead. "Do you know who it was?" He can't answer this either, but I can see that he does.

Death Eaters, specific ones whose identities Bill knows, snatched Miranda McKinnon and Robert Weasley from the Weasleys' home. How will I work out which Death Eaters they were? If the Fidelius keeps Bill from telling me, nobody else but the Secret Keeper will be able to either. I'll have to get enough information to piece it together for myself, then, and get that information from someone who knows a great deal about the Death Eaters --

Snape. Severus Snape was a Death Eater in 1979. I jump up and snatch my robe off the back of my chair. "I -- I'll be right back." And I hurry away to see Severus as soon as possible. He certainly won't want to talk about it with me, but I'll have to make him see that he must. He seems to feel he owes Bill some debt, after all.

It's not until I'm halfway to the dungeons that the real possibility occurs to me. My god -- Snape could be one of the Death Eaters who kidnapped Robert Weasley.

I am sick with the idea that Severus was one of the abductors by the time I pound on his office door. He does not answer; of course, it's late, and he's probably gone home. I take a deep breath, try deliberately to slow my pulse. The moon is only seventy-two hours past full, and I feel my nostrils flare, feel my mouth water ever so slightly. My hands are fists at my sides. I uncurl my fingers, but I cannot relax.

There's a possibility Severus may be in the staff room. It takes me only a few moments to get there, and I find only Sybill Trelawney and Pascal Vector talking quietly together. An irrational surge of anger at Severus' absence causes me to stalk across the room to the hearth, grab a handful of Floo powder and fling it sharply into the fire, and duck my face into the flames almost before they've completely changed color. I am, despite my ire, careful to pronounce "Severus Snape" perfectly clearly; I close my eyes rather than watch the spinning and flashing that's inevitable before Severus and Harry's flat comes into my view.

Severus is marking essays; the man probably assigns more written homework than all the rest of us combined. Harry is stretched out on the couch, an open book face-down on his chest, reading one of the student papers Severus has already finished with. Both look up, startled, when my head appears in their fireplace.

"Evening, Remus," Harry begins -- but I ignore him and look pointedly at Severus.

"Did he leave you because you murdered his brother?" I demand.

Severus does not appear to be surprised by the question -- in fact, he looks as if he may have been expecting it. In the silent moment before he answers, my stomach turns. "You know perfectly well I'm not going to answer that question," he finally says.

Never gets any less smug, does he. I could strangle him, if my arms were with me. "Two men in masks took that boy from his own house. Were you one of them?"

"I can't tell you that, Lupin."

"Damn it all, Severus, you betrayed the Death Eaters twenty years ago, and you still won't --"

"I said I can't tell you, you idiot." Severus glares at me. "Which isn't to say I would if I could, but that's beside the point, isn't it." He stands up and straightens his robe on his shoulders, pushes his chair under his desk. "I refuse to have this conversation with your disembodied head," he says.

"You'll talk to me about this, you miserable worm --"

Now he steps closer, folding his arms and raising one eyebrow. "So if you'll kindly remove your face from my grate, I'll join you where we can discuss what I presume to be your actual question like civilized people."

Severus never crouches to speak to someone in the fireplace. But of course to speak from the fireplace, it's necessary to get low enough to put one's face into the flames. The options are therefore limited, and all in some way less than ideal: twist around trying to look up while kneeling or bent at the waist, and get a crick in the neck for your trouble (uncomfortable); turn over and lie on your back with your head on fire, and conduct the whole exchange upside-down (undignified); or resign yourself to looking at Severus' boots while he looks imperiously down at the top of your head (humiliating). I note, dispassionately, that the strategy is nearly as effective now as it's been ever since he adopted it -- I do feel subordinate to Severus. Rather than feeling chastened, though, I'm even angrier than I was before.

I roll my eyes. "Fine. I'm in the staff room. I'll expect you shortly." I look past Severus' right leg and nod to Harry. "Sorry to barge in, Harry. Excuse me." And I back out of the fire, stand up, and dust off my left knee, where I'd knelt in the ashes.

A minute later, the fire flares brightly and Severus steps out. "You may begin by telling me what in the name of --"

"I'm not your student, Severus. I'll begin where I please." I can't hear Trelawney and Vector anymore. I glance over; they've stopped their conversation and are looking at us with undisguised concern. Sybill raises her eyebrows.

Severus folds his arms. "If what you intend is to ask me about my shaded past in order to ease your romantic future, you'll not speak to me as though I owe you an answer."

"To ease my -- you unspeakable --" I clench my fists again. I can't help it. I can hear our colleagues get up and quietly leave the room. "I'm asking you about your shaded past in order to ease your former lover's suffering, you heartless bastard. If it's so important to you that he be treated well, you do owe me an answer."

"I won't deny that I owe him a great deal," Severus says. "But you, I owe nothing. Did he spend last night with you?"

"That's none of your business."

"And it's none of your business why he left me. Now that we understand each other, shall we begin again?"

I glare at him. "Are you the Secret Keeper?"

He sighs. "No. So you'll need to ask the right questions, won't you."

"I don't need to ask any questions, Severus. You know what it is I want to know. Tell me what you can, will you?"

Severus gestures toward a sofa, but as he makes no move to sit down, I sit on the back of the thing and lean on my hands at my sides. He paces while he speaks. "When the Dark Lord tried to kill Harry," he begins -- "No. I must go further back.

That there is a shout-out to Col. Brandon, as played by Alan Rickman. :-)

"In the late nineteen-seventies, the Dark Lord was obsessed with immortality."

I snort. "Everyone knows that."

"If there were anything everyone knew, Lupin, you wouldn't be bothering me right now." He raises one eyebrow. "May I continue?" I bite the inside of my cheek and nod for him to go ahead. "He went to considerable effort and expense, as did a number of us who served him, to try to become deathless -- not just in the sense that he would never die, but in the sense that he could never be killed. This project took on some urgency when he learned that the wife of James Potter was pregnant." I can't imagine what this has to do with the disappearance of Robert Weasley, but if I ask, he'll never tell me. I raise my eyebrows to show interest. "He believed that Potter was dangerous to him, and wanted him dead, and he wasn't pleased when Potter conceived a child." He spits these words out harshly; surprising, given his devotion to Harry, but perhaps the bitterness is retrospectively directed at Voldemort himself.

I think what Remus perceives as Snape spitting the words out harshly is Snape intending to pronounce the words with emphasis to draw Remus' attention to them. Remus misses it, of course, so he doesn't work out the answer as quickly as he might have.

"He collected -- and by this of course I mean he directed us to collect -- ingredients for a potion that would render him unique and untouchable. Fossils, rare minerals, thousand-year-old pine bark, that sort of thing. How much do you know about the human larynx?"

This time, I can't school my reaction. "About what?"

"The larynx is the voice box. It is located at the middle of the neck --"

"I know that much," I say, waving my hand.

"Above it, at the base of the tongue, is a bone called the hyoid. This bone is said to float -- it does not connect with any other bones. It is the only human bone of which this is true. You may be aware that potions containing human ingredients are generally more powerful than potions without --"

I make the connection. "Miranda McKinnon."

Severus raises an eyebrow. "Yes. The Dark Lord called for the hyoid bone from the throat of a pureblood witch, and that was the day young Miranda's luck ran out."

My fingers are curled tightly into the back of the sofa. I struggle to keep my voice from shaking when I speak. "Did you kidnap Miranda McKinnon and bring her to Voldemort?"

"Of course not. I was busy brewing potions." I close my eyes, momentarily weak with relief. "The honor of procuring the final ingredient belonged to Lucius Malfoy."

Another clue that Remus doesn't get right away.

There's a tap on the staff room doorframe, and I glance up to see Bill looking at us with that tightness around his eyes. "Severus," he rasps.

Severus' sneer has disappeared. "William."

Bill turns to me. "I didn't know if you were through with those papers or not," he says, "but I've stacked them with my things so they won't be disturbed."

"Oh. Thank you."

"So I'll see you tomorrow," Bill says, and claps his hand against the doorjamb.

"Excuse me." Severus steps around back to the hearth and grabs a handful of Floo powder. "I trust you've no more need of me? Good evening, then." He tosses the powder into the fire, steps in after it, mutters "Home", and disappears in a flash.

I look at Bill. "You're going back to the pub?"

"That's where I've got a room," he points out.

"You could stay with me." I stand up from the back of the couch and shove my hands in my pockets in order not to fidget.

"I could. If I were invited." The corner of his mouth twitches for a second. I want badly to kiss him. "And if you're not busy. Which --"

"You see that Severus just left --"

"-- you seem not to be anymore, as Severus has just left." Now he smiles for real, but the sadness in his eyes remains. "I didn't want to presume."

There are about seven steps between us. I take three of them. "I'm not busy," I say. "And I'd like it very much if you would stay with me tonight."

He nods. "Right, then."

I lead him back to my rooms, and then he leads me back to my bed. We touch and kiss for a long time, undressing each other without hurry, and I lay him down and look at him, stroke his skin, taste his shoulder and his ribs and the inside of his knee.

He turns me over, straddles my legs, and licks the insides of my wrists -- my arms go boneless, as he knew they would -- before pinning them over my head. I shiver, try to kiss him, hear a gasp from my own throat; Bill only licks my lower lip and then moves down to my neck, to my belly, and over to my scars.

I lie still for as long as I can. But the sensation of Bill mouthing at my web of scars is so oddly different from anything I've ever felt. I push myself up onto my elbows to look at him.

I can't quite feel it. I can feel something -- but it's like listening to a Muggle phonograph with my head underwater. There's a slight difference between his tongue and his lips and the stubble on his chin; and every couple of moments he wanders over an edge and onto unscarred skin and I can feel the smoothness or the warmth or the rasp in addition to the pressure. I reach down to touch his cheek. He kisses the palm of my hand and goes back to the scars on my ribs, my hip, my leg. I push his hair back so I can see his face.

When he turns to my cock, he reaches up and lays his hand on my side. I grab onto his wrist while he's sucking me, and my back arches, and he keeps his hand there when I come and when he crawls back up to kiss me and when he begs to be allowed to fuck me and when he does.

Back to the top/bottom politics again. For some reason it pleases me a great deal to have the top -- in a relative sense, this time; the fucker, rather than the fuckee -- being the one to beg.

I was going for a kind of metaphor or symbolism, here -- something about the similarity between Bill's secret and Remus' scars, how each got this burden unwillingly and can't talk about it, but of course Remus could talk about it, and maybe that's Bill's thing; he wishes what he had were like what Remus has, because it's no less painful and lifelong, but Remus is allowed to talk about it (capable of talking about it, even), and Bill is maybe just a little bit jealous.

I wrote this before HBP had come out -- posted it literally hours before the Big Midnight Release -- and so I had no knowledge of Bill's canon experience of getting scratched up but not bitten by that other werewolf. I personally? think it's totally workable into the universe I've got here; couple of juggles I'd have to make wrt Fleur D. (whom I killed in the war aaages ago) and Bill's previous knowledge of werewolf-related injuries, but I think it works in this context anyway. Yay.

Later, I hold him while he sleeps; but I lie awake for a long time, trying to make sense of what Severus has told me.

In fact, of course, moonlight is no different from -- nothing but -- sunlight.

Why, then, does it have such power over us?

I spend days replaying my conversation with Severus in my head. A couple of things stand out from his strange tale of Voldemort's quest for immortality. One, James Potter had conceived a child. Yes, and the man that child was now shares Severus' bed, so the venom with which Severus spoke of Lily's pregnancy still puzzles me.

And then, Lucius Malfoy.

Telling me that it was Lucius Malfoy who kidnapped Miranda McKinnon -- and, of course, must therefore also have kidnapped Robert Weasley -- represents possibly the only instance in my memory of Severus providing information without having been asked for it. Did you kidnap her, I'd asked him; no, he'd said, Lucius Malfoy did. There must have been a reason for his volunteering this.

That is, Remus knows or can reasonably conclude that Miranda and Robert were taken at the same time -- three-year-old Percy had said so to the reporter -- so whoever took him, took her. And the taking of her was not covered by the Fidelius charm, so Snape was able to answer that question without impediment.

There are two ways Bill answers questions about the secret he cannot tell. If the answer does not reveal anything covered by the charm, he gives it; if not, he simply looks at me with those sad eyes, and after a moment I realize he's not going to answer and that must mean the answer is yes.

So I know more than I did, but not as much as I need. Why, I keep wondering, did Lucius Malfoy want to kidnap a Weasley?

If it was Robert in particular that he wanted, for some reason, we'll never know. Bill doesn't know why Robert was taken and Percy spared that day; his voice thickens when he speaks of it. "I think Percy's the first one I'd have told, if I could," he says.

This surprises me. "Not your parents?"

He shrugs one shoulder. "I might ask them if they want me to tell them, if I ever break this thing. Or how much they want me to tell them. It's quite comprehensive, this secret." He gives a grim sort of half smile. "But Percy was there, you know? He was -- they came and took Robbie and Miranda and left Percy. They pretended it was a game of hide and seek."

My stomach twists. "My god."

"My father came home and found Percy shouting 'olly-olly-in-free' from the first floor landing. They'd been gone for hours by then, and it was Robbie that was hidden, not just the place where he was. When my mother got home and tried to scry him out she got nothing. And his hand on the clock was --" Bill coughs for a moment and scrubs his hand over his face. "It was spinning round and round in circles. It just never stopped. Charlie finally broke it off." He spins a spoon on the table. "But I always -- or, I mean, once she told me the secret, which was a couple of years later, I always understood why Percy was how he was. And if I could have told him that I knew what he remembered, he might -- not have been so unhappy."

Poor Percy. He needed some therapy, is what.

She -- who? I realize I've never asked. "Hang on -- who is the Secret Keeper?"

He presses his lips together. "Was. It was Alcyone Malfoy."

Damn.

I suppose if I'd given it any real thought, I'd have admitted that there was no chance of persuading the Secret Keeper to tell me what she told Bill. (Although it wouldn't have hurt -- whom else could I have told?) But Alcyone Malfoy is dead -- so unless Bill can successfully break the charm, nobody else will ever know the secret.

Still, knowing she was the Secret Keeper may help me puzzle out the clues I've got. "Alcyone was the elder daughter, wasn't she?"

Bill nods. "A year behind me at Hogwarts. Seeker. Head Girl. Quite the model pupil." He makes a face.

"And the younger is Lacerta --"

"There's a boy in between them," Bill says. "A Squib. I don't think anyone really knows where he's got to. And Lacerta, yeah. In Azkaban."

I have Plans for all the Malfoys. Where, indeed, has Rastaban got to? Is Lacerta still in Azkaban, even now, after the war? Where's Draco? Where's Narcissa? Where's Lucius. Hahaha. Stay tuned.

"Right."

Why would Lucius have made Alcyone his Secret Keeper, I wonder. She must have been just a teenager at the time; it'd be a huge responsibility for someone so young. I've never known Lucius well, but my impression of him is that he only placed that level of trust in a very few people. Lord Voldemort, possibly. Severus Snape, perhaps, at one time. Narcissa, certainly. So there must have been a compelling reason for Lucius to have chosen his daughter rather than his wife --

Of course, of course: she was keeping the secret for both her parents. She'd be loyal to them as a pair, rather than to one only by association with the other. It's a bit of a surprise, though, that Lucius decided a girl was the best choice among his children. Rastaban, the elder son, is a Squib, which would disqualify him even if his parents weren't pureblood chauvinists; I suppose Draco, the younger son, was too young to --

I shake my head. I must be getting tired. "Stupid of me," I say with a chuckle when Bill raises a questioning eyebrow. "I was trying to think why Lucius wouldn't have made Draco his Secret Keeper, but of course he couldn't, could he -- Draco was in Harry's year at Hogwarts, so he mustn't even have been born until the next year."

Bill's breath catches, and his quill snaps in his hand.

"All right," I say slowly. "I'm getting warmer, evidently. It's something to do with Draco, then, is it?" Bill does not reply. "Does Severus know the secret as well?"

Bill swallows once. "I think he knows what I know," he says.

"How?"

Bill simply looks at me with those clear, sad eyes.

Working out what they could say and what was going to get blocked by the charm was difficult. It couldn't be, obviously, that they couldn't speak of the matter at all in any way. The existence of Robert Weasley hadn't been hidden behind the charm. I think I ultimately decided that the secret was something like "Lucius Malfoy, assisted by Mr Travers, took Robert Weasley from his house and used him as the final ingredient in a Paterfiliorum potion brewed for him and his wife Narcissa by Severus Snape"; so Bill could talk about the fact that Robbie disappeared, but not who took him, and Snape couldn't talk about having brewed a potion, etc.

I must be very close to the answer. There's a particular sort of impatience that comes with knowing the solution is just around the corner, but not how to get around that last corner to where it is. Albus Dumbledore used to counsel us to be sure we were asking the right questions. But of course if I knew what the right questions were, I wouldn't need to ask them.

I knock on Severus' office door. Harry answers, and we are both mildly surprised. "I've come to meet Severus for lunch," he says. "Expect he's tearing into some kid he kept after class. Poor bastard." He smiles. "He'll probably be along in a moment. You're welcome to join us."

"I don't want to spoil your plans. I just need to ask him a bit more about --"

"He didn't murder Bill's brother." Harry's smile has disappeared.

Grown-up Harry is still loyal to a fault, of course.

I feel myself start to raise an eyebrow, and try desperately not to respond to Harry like a teacher. "How can you know that?"

"He didn't murder anybody."

"Harry."

This little sequence popped whole into my head, and I felt compelled to write a scene around it. Now that I think about it, though, I wonder why I didn't have Harry say "He didn't murder Ron's brother". Bill is the contextually relevant Weasley, but Ron is Harry's best friend so he's sort of always the relevant Weasley. Maybe it has to do with the fact that Robert was older than Ron, so he wasn't Ron and Ginny's brother the way he was the others'.

And I can tell he's struggling not to respond to me like a student. "Well, but it was a war. He was on the wrong side, and he -- a lot of people made bad choices, but he came round, didn't he? If I can forgive him, why can't everyone?"

"Yours wasn't the only loss, Harry, or even the worst, in the --"

"That's not what I meant. I didn't mean because of my parents." His face has gone white; I believe him.

"Anyway, everyone isn't in love with him." Now his ears go red. Poor Harry. "And forgive is not the same as forget." He looks unhappy, but he cannot disagree. "Not what Severus did, necessarily, but what was done. The rest doesn't matter to me."

"I don't want you to accuse him."

"It is not, strangely enough," Severus says from the doorway, "the most baseless accusation that has ever been leveled against me." He heads for a storage cupboard and locks away a few vials he'd taken with him to his morning classes. "It happens that I am not guilty in this instance, but of course it is nonsense to pretend that I am not guilty at all."

Harry and I are both speechless at Severus' self-criticism. In the absence of any response, he continues. "You are aware, Lupin, that I cannot tell you what you want to know. I cannot even tell you what I do know. What I have already told you is the extent of --"

"It can't be," I insist. "You must be able to tell me what you had to do with it. Somehow."

"He didn--" Harry begins; but he cuts himself off. "He had n--"

Harry is literally unable to declare that Severus wasn't involved, and his eyebrows rise. Only one thing could magically prevent him from making such a statement: if the fact of Severus' involvement were protected by a Fidelius charm. "But what," he whispers. "You didn't kill him. You've said you didn't kill him."

"I did not kill Robert Weasley," Severus agrees. "And I didn't know that--" He's run up against the charm as well, and has to reconsider his words. "I didn't know he was in danger."

"So you weren--" Harry tries again, with no more success. "Severus --"

Another thing, though, is that if the Fidelius only stops you saying what is true about the protected information, then you could agree to lie and then say "Lucius didn't put Robert in a Paterfiliorum potion" and, like, wink, and solve the problem. The charm has to somehow be sensitive to a person's intention, but not completely, as we'll see later on. It has to know some things about discourse, I suppose, is the ultimate thing. Hey, it's magic.

In any case, it is true that Snape didn't kill Robert, and that fact isn't protected by the charm, so he is able to say it. But he can't say "I didn't know that Lucius planned to use him in a potion", because Lucius did plan to use him in a potion, whether Snape knew it or not. Snape is good at finding ways around it, though.

I worry about the formatting here. I think it's hard for people to see the difference between a word that's interrupted with an em-dash and a sentence that's interrupted with one. In the first instance, the em-dash occurs right up next to the word, and this is meant to show the charm stopping the speaker from finishing; in the second, there's a space between the word and the em-dash, and this is meant to show the speaker stopping abruptly, whether because someone interrupted him or whatever. I sort of always wish I'd found another way to spell the charm at work.

Oh, god. I've got it -- "Potions," I say. Harry and Severus look at me. "You were busy brewing potions, you said. More than one."

"He's been busy brewing potions since nineteen-seventy-eight --"

"Harry." Severus' voice is barely audible. He looks at me for another instant, then turns and meets Harry's gaze. Their eyes lock, and after a moment, Severus nods ever so slightly.

I think this is the only time in any of my HP stuff that Snape calls Harry by his first name (in second or third person).

Harry's eyes widen in horror. He takes a step closer to Severus and reaches for his hand.

This. This, I'm the proudest of. At the very first, I had Harry take a step away from Snape; and then when the scene wasn't working, I thought, but, no, this is why. Yes, of course it's absolutely horrifying for Harry to discover that Snape was involved, by brewing a potion, in the disappearance and death of Robert Weasley. But he knows Snape well enough now to understand that it's been eating at him for all this time, and he loves him well enough a) to believe him when he says he didn't know how Lucius meant to finish the potion and b) to be horrified for him more than by him. I love this moment.

"Then one of the potions you were busy brewing was for L--" I cannot finish the sentence, and I stagger backward, catching myself against a work table. "Oh my god," I whisper. "My god. Severus. What did you do?"

Remus, on the other hand, is not in love with Snape, and does back away.

Severus speaks in a low voice, neither sarcastic nor defensive, simply weary with the knowledge that he, too, has carried all these years. "As I said, I have told you all I can. What I cannot tell you, you can guess. I might recommend -- I have a book you may be interested in." He lets go Harry's hand and goes to a bookshelf, where he selects a volume without even looking for it, and hands it to me. It's a small book, but fairly thick, on whose plain cover Little Known Potions is stamped in block letters. Everything about it speaks of utility rather than style. "You'll find this instructive," Severus says, "if you consider what you already know."

I stare at the book and find myself turning to go, walking slowly toward Severus' office door.

"Lupin."

I look back over my shoulder. Severus has crossed his arms over his chest as if he were huddling against a cold wind. "Listen. Listen to me: I never knew Robert Weasley was in danger."

I look at him for another moment, and then I do leave the office. I do not thank him for lending me the book; I know perfectly well he hasn't done it for me.

I was very pleased to be able to refer back to that line of Snape's from the Wolfsbane conversation. :-)

Among cultures that concern themselves with the moon, apparently, the dark side is the seat of a great deal of mystery. I wonder why the mysteries so rarely become clear as the moon wanes and the dark side turns to face the earth.

Little Known Potions has two tables of contents: one separating the potions into those applied externally and those to be drunk, and one simply listing the potions alphabetically. The names and descriptions are cross-listed with indices in the back, so the reader -- assuming the book ever had a wide readership -- could look up a potion by active ingredient or intended effect. As I flip through, I see that the write-up of each potion includes not just a recipe list and instructions for preparation, but also a short essay on why the potion is relatively unknown, and whether it should remain so.

The tone of the essays sounds familiar to me, as if I've read them before, which of course I haven't; I was never any good at potions, and certainly haven't read rare books on rare ones. But the writing style -- I can almost hear the words spoken, by --

By Severus. Of course. It's his own work; how stupid of me. I flip through the book again, seeing it all in a new light shed by professional respect. Then I turn a page and find that there's an entry for Wolfsbane.

I'm not at all sure I want to read it, but I do anyway. I skip past the ingredients list and two-page description of how to brew the stuff, and look at Severus' editorial comments. Wolfsbane would be better known, he writes, if more werewolves took it and were seen to benefit from it. But of course aside from the reluctance of most werewolves to have their condition generally known, few werewolves have even heard of Wolfsbane. People who have never known a werewolf but have heard of Wolfsbane tend to believe the potion is the stuff of myth; everybody knows there's nothing but a silver bullet that can make a werewolf safe. Severus writes that, since the Wolfsbane potion harms nobody, it should be available over the counter in any self-respecting apothecary shop.

Plus there should be education, etc. etc. But ultimately, since Wolfsbane makes werewolves safe, if it's available over the counter, and more werewolves take it, then fewer werewolves will bite people, and you know eventually lycanthropy might vanish.

I wonder for a moment if I've ever known Severus at all.

The real reason he lent me the book, though -- the manuscript, in fact -- is to find what he must have been brewing for Lucius Malfoy at the time Robert Weasley was taken. I won't find the potion by searching either of the tables of contents; I'll have to trust the indices to help me.

With a sigh, I begin reading the alphabetical index of active ingredients. Acacia. Adder's fern. Alligator scale. Aniseed. Blackberry, blackroot, bloodberry, bloodroot, bloodthorn. A lot of "blood" ingredients, actually. Besides blood itself, of course, which has a whole list of subcategories -- animals' blood, human blood, arterial, from a pricked finger, willingly given, characteristics of donor (see also inalienable possessions).

There's nothing that's explicitly led me to conclude that it was Robert Weasley's blood that Severus needed for Lucius' potion, but the evidence supports the idea. I turn to "inalienable possessions" and find three listings. The first, "inalienable possessions -- one's own (1)", refers to a potion for binding up an inheritance, especially to designate as inheritor someone not related by blood. "Inalienable possessions -- one's own (2)" refers to a potion for sealing a marriage. And "inalienable possessions -- wizard with son(s)" refers to a potion for ensuring the conception of a son with magical ability.

Assuming that the marriage potion would have been of no interest to Lucius, and guessing he did not kidnap Robert Weasley in order to make him beneficiary, and knowing that the secret has something to do with Draco, I turn to the page for the third potion. But I am confused. Robert Weasley was six years old, so he can't possibly have had a son at that time; if the potion was supposed to help Lucius and Narcissa conceive Draco, how would putting Robert Weasley's blood in it be of any use?

When I realize what the answer to my question must be, I drop the book on the floor as if it were a weapon I hadn't meant to use. I stare at it for a moment, feeling sick; then I run from my rooms and through the castle and out into the grounds, heading for the Whomping Willow.

It's a long tunnel under the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack, and then it's a long way from the Shrieking Shack down the Hogsmeade high street, but all together it's still quicker than going round by the road. Nevertheless, I'm out of breath when I reach the Three Broomsticks, and Rosmerta raises an eyebrow at me when I ask which room Bill Weasley is in. But I don't care -- she can raise all the eyebrows she wants, as long as she answers my question, which she does.

"Remus," Bill says, surprised, when he answers my knock.

"I found -- Severus gave me --" I begin, still catching my breath.

"Come in, good lord, you look as if you've run for miles. Sit down." He guides me into a chair and pushes my hair off my forehead before sitting down and facing me, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking concerned. "Are you all right?"

"Severus gave me a book," I say, when I am able to do so evenly. "One he'd apparently written himself, about rare potions." Bill sits up and inhales sharply. "It was a--"

Of course the fact that I literally cannot speak the words confirms, for me, that they are true. I've discovered the information that Lucius and Narcissa protected by swearing their elder daughter to the Fidelius charm. But I need Bill to know more than that I know; I need him to know what I know.

He won't be able to answer my questions, but I can ask them all the same. "Did Severus brew Paterfiliorum for Lucius Malfoy?" I ask. Bill's jaw sets. "Did Lucius decide he needed a thing that belonged to your father to make the potion work?" His whole body is tense. "Did he use your brother?"

Bill closes his eyes and shakes with twenty years' worth of rage and grief. He hangs his head, and then can't lift it again -- and he makes a sound something like a mirthless laugh and something like a sob. He covers his face with one hand and clutches at the knee of his trousers with the other, and I sit and watch him struggle to breathe evenly. Finally he sighs and scrubs at his face with his hand. "That's been festering for a long time," he murmurs.

He hangs his head and then can't lift it again because the charm thinks he's nodding, which would answer the question, which isn't allowed.

What can one say? "Yes."

He sits with his hand over his mouth, as if he'd be tugging at his beard if he wore one, and looks pensively at something near the baseboard. I can think of nothing useful to say or helpful to do; so I sit and watch him stare for a long, long time.

"Your brother Ron knows about your research -- won't he ask?"

We are at a small table in a darkish corner of the Three Broomsticks; there's no guarantee nobody is eavesdropping on us, because there never is, but we've made the usual efforts of couples in hotels to keep to ourselves and not attract attention.

Bill plays with a spoon and shrugs one shoulder. "He'll ask, I expect. I won't be lying when I tell him I haven't been able to break the charm."

I like having little bits of things where it's possible to see that one character has influenced another. Bill picked up his slightly snarky rhetorical "May I continue?" from Snape; Harry may have picked up his spoon-twirling fidget from Bill; and so on.

"Don't you think they deserve to know?"

He sets the spoon down firmly on the table. "You know, Remus, they do, but they also deserve not to know, all right?" He glares at the spoon for a minute, but when he looks back up at me, his eyes are sad again. "Look, Fred and George don't remember Robbie, and Ron and Ginny never knew him. Charlie and my parents ..." He scratches the back of his neck. "I want my parents to know for sure that he's really gone, but if they knew I know exactly what happened to him they'd want to know what it was, and as soon as you asked me the questions they'd wish they hadn't heard."

I want to reach for his hand, but I don't. "But you -- keeping secrets. You hate it."

He shrugs the same shoulder again. "I don't like it. But I don't want to do a thing for myself that's going to hurt so many people I love." He picks up the spoon. "Your lycanthropy, when you were keeping it a secret, it was to protect yourself, right?"

I think about this. I often said I was protecting those around me, my friends and family and later the students in my charge, by not revealing my condition. But in fact Bill is right: I was protecting myself more than anyone else. I never wanted to hurt anyone; but what could have been harmful was me, not knowledge of my condition. In fact, I was forced to admit, people who knew I was a werewolf were likely safer than those who did not. I sigh and nod.

Bill nods back. "This, now -- I'm trying to protect the ones the secret is kept from." He rubs his eyes with his other hand. "And you know the secret, after all. So I don't --" he looks up at me now -- "I don't have to deal with it entirely on my own."

He reaches for my hand, now, and I lace my fingers in his. And when we go back upstairs to his bed, we throw the curtains open; and we make love slowly, lit ever so faintly by the light of the crescent moon.

The crescent moon didn't break his heart this time! Or not as badly. Sigh. :-)

I'm very pleased with this whole arc, and I don't think I'm entirely done with it yet.

Comments always welcome!