Destroying the moon would have consequences, potentially very large ones that only started with the tides. Yet even thinking of that, the wizard charged ahead, agreed. Or at the very least, was open to the hypothetical. And that was interesting.

“What if you weighed in all the other people it might help?” The other werewolves. “Would that make your answer more definite?” She was poking and prying, and Robyn knew it wasn’t the most polite thing to do, but he didn’t seem to mind and thus she saw little reason to back off. If anything, she’d say he seemed intrigued by the questions, and no one would ever accuse Robyn of dropping an intriguing line of inquiry. No, there was far too much potential for discovery to ever do that.

“What would you absolutely do, to ‘rid yourself of it’?” Robyn echoed his words back at him; his choice, his phrasing, his framing, not hers.

What if you weighed the other people. Oh. Remus blinked, turning to look at the girl with astonishment. It was surprising how that simple sentence had managed to very easily turn his thought process inside out, all at once. He'd do anything to help other werewolves. Specially now, specially having met so many packs and lived with them, seen all the anguish in them. Sure, there were a handful of werewolves proud of their condition who didn't wish to change, but the other vast majority understood the weight of the curse. 

"Yes. It would," he agreed. It was actually embarrassing that he could be read so easily by her, but he wouldn't mention it out loud. 

Lily leaned into his hands as, together, they got her upright. Or as upright as could be managed in an infirmary bed, with a pile of pillows at her back. Comfortable wasn’t the proper word for it, but at least it was different from being on her back and she wasn’t in immediate pain.

Finding his hand again, she wove their fingers together and squeezed. “Good company,” she told him with as warm a smile as she could muster; she had to reassure him that she was okay, that he could stop worrying. To do anything less would be evidence of something really wrong with her. “And look, you’re already managing that. You’re so good at this nursing thing.” A dip into teasing before it crumbles under the weight of his earnest concern.

“I… I could do with someone telling me what actually happened. With, everything. I know the kids and their families are okay, and all Order members will be fine, but I wasn’t up for hearing more details than that, before.” And now she was awake enough that the not knowing was starting to gnaw at her, chewing away in her stomach and not helping the generalized nausea she was dealing with.

Remus smiled as her hand fit into his and squeezed. He squeezed right back, letting out a sigh that was part relief, part his own tiredness. He knew it wasn't fair to rely on her to reassure him of anything at this point when it should be the other way around, but it was difficult not to spiral otherwise. "Why, thank you, maybe I've picked up on some healer pointers over the years," he joked right back, a poor excuse of a tease, though it managed to put a fleeting smile over his lips just the same.

When Lily asked about what really happened, he paused, thumb tapping against her hand absentmindedly to guide his thoughts. "I mean, a lot happened. How much time you got?" He snorted out a chuckle, quickly shaking his head to let her know she didn't have to answer that jest. "I don't even know where to start. I took our kids out with Lucinda and Reggie. Reggie almost got slashed by the father, bloke had a knife to his neck. I reckon things were that hectic everywhere, though."

Emme nodded her head. It was nice, to deal with an injury that was simple and easy to deal with. After Lily and Edgar, Emme was happy to handle something that wasn’t a cause for concern. She would fix Remus up and he would be fine. For that, she was glad. She hoped that they had seen the worst of it already, and that the next wave of people would have minor wounds, if any, like Remus. She wasn’t sure that she could handle another injury like Lily. 

“I’m sorry,” Emme apologized as she worked, knowing that it was an uncomfortable feeling. “I know that this is uncomfortable, but I’m almost done,” she promised him. She grabbed the dittany and began to apply it. “You’re a great patient, by the way. No complaints and you are so still,” she teased him lightly. She got the sense that Remus didn’t have a lot to smile about, and well, she understood that. She may not be a werewolf, but she thought that maybe she could understand a tiny fraction of what he felt. People treated her weird a lot since coming back. They didn’t know how to act around her. So she was trying to be more normal for his sake, to show that she wasn’t afraid of him like some people might be. 

It wasn’t a surprise to her that Remus was worried about Lily. She supposed that Lily had been friends with all of James’s friends, she probably still was. It made her wonder what it was like for them, with James gone. How did that feel that she had known James while he was gone from them? It wasn’t really…something that she had thought about much, how James’s friends had felt while James was gone outside of the obvious that they missed him and was worried for him. She hadn’t really known any of them before her capture. Seeing the doubt in his eyes, she paused what she was doing and reached out to take his hand, she squeezed it gently. “Lily is going to be fine. I promise you. If Evan thought that she wasn’t going to be okay he would have brought her to St. Mungo’s for better treatment. She’s going to be just fine.” 

Finishing up applying the dittany, she glanced at the wound for a moment, trying to decide if she wanted to bandage it. It had been a shallow wound, but she wasn’t sure what Remus’s plans would be after this, so she decided to be on the safe side and grabbed a bandage and worked to bandage the newly formed skin. “There. I bandaged it just to be on the safe side, but you are good as new.” 

x

"No worries. I'm used to it," Remus offered. A great patient, she called him then. He laughed, a quiet sound, careful not to disturb the general aura of the infirmary. If nothing else, then perhaps he should take pride in that, at least. This was the life he knew, being a patient since he was born -- not really, but he didn't have any memories of his life being anything else. "Thank you. Practice makes perfect, you know?" He joked back. She was practically a sister to James, so surely she could handle some jokes at the expense of self here and there.

There was little to do other than worry now. The adrenaline was starting to settle in his system, carefully crafting a knot in his stomach, threatening to make his breaths shallow. He'd just have to busy himself with other things while he waited for everyone else he loved to be in this room, safe and sound, too. It always felt like begging for too much from the universe -- give me another friend safe, and another, and another, and all of them. Emmeline took his hand, pulling him out of previous thoughts, and he blinked up at her in surprise. She was right, of course. He couldn't place all of his trust on Evan like that, but he could at least hope the man indeed knew what he was doing in the medical field enough to know when he wouldn't be able to handle a healing. Remus would take her word for it.

Smiling, he squeezed her hand in return, genuinely grateful and feeling some of the weight lifted off his shoulders. "Thank you. Really." He let her bandage him up, before nodding, and smiling again. "At the risk of sounding like a broken record, thank you. For everything, really. There's not a chance I'll be able to rest now, so I'll just hang around here and help you folks out with whatever you may need."

Sirius was working, which meant James was back home. There was little else to do after a mission where he’d screwed up and was now back at square one of proving himself. In the past, he would’ve been at headquarters going over plans with the higher ups, talking about where they went wrong or what they’d all done right. Now… he had nothing. Was nothing. That was what Severus had said, even if James logically knew there wasn’t really that much truth to it. The other wix had been just as angry as James had been and they’d both said shit they didn’t mean. Unlike if it had been a friend, however, James doubted there would be any after-argument apologies. They’d just simply… move on. Continue to coexist.

He was laying on the couch in the living room releasing his old snitch into the air before reaching up to catch it. It reminded him of sitting outside with the lads at Hogwarts. He used to do this all the time when he was bored - it kept his reflexes sharp. Garnet was, rather uncharacteristically, present. He was sitting on the ground next to James watching the snitch intently, yellow eyes chasing the movements, stalling on James’ hand every time it was caught.

James jumped at the knock, sitting up quickly and pulling a wand towards the sound. The snitch went zooming away over his head and the cat moved with it, leaving his owner to feel stupid alone the second Remus’ voice came. “All yours, mate,” he mumbled to Garnet, the cat already running after the snitch towards the kitchen, and got up to answer it.

He opened it with a tired smile and jerked his head. “Since when do you knock?” he asked rather wearily, jerking his head towards the living room and stepping aside to let Remus through. “I should probably ask you a question, since you’re acting all weird. Make sure you’re you and everything.” James shot him a wiry grin, but followed the ‘rules’ anyway. “What did we blow up 5th year potions class?”

x

It was a relief in some ways, seeing James open the door, looking mostly fine. As if Remus was half expecting him to show up broken and battered, despite knowing the mission had gone well. Whenever he let the anxiety creep up on him, whenever Remus let himself get too caught up in his own intrusive thoughts, that was when not seeing James in the flesh, was a time he kept thinking about his friend getting snatched up again. An irrational fear, he told himself in an attempt to rationalize it -- but it would've felt irrational before too, and look what happened then. So, it was easier to push the thoughts off and handle himself than to give into the paranoia and become a parasite attached to James' hip. But some days, the little voice in his head was still louder than he even realized.

There was an edge to James' smile, a minuscule twitch that seemed to expose all the baggage he'd had to carry. Something about him looked weary, dragged down, and Remus would be one to know about that. In another time, maybe he would crack a joke about James being in a pre-moon state himself.

Since when do you knock. The pathetic truth was that Remus had come here on a whim, impulsively, which meant he had not given any thought to everyone else's schedule -- which meant maybe Sirius could be there. "Maybe you had a girl over, mate, I don't know. Wouldn't want to barge in and see your bare arse going at it," he responded, leaning on the crudeness of his words to take away from a bad answer.

Remus said he was fine, and Xenophilius believed him. He did. But, this was also a part of Xeno’s own post-mission check-in that he couldn’t shake off. There was almost a need to check in on those he cared for, friend, in-between, or otherwise. The fact Remus allowed himself to be pulled in closer, though, was just testament to that, to allow Xenophilius to fuss over him. 

Still, Xeno tutted when Remus sighed at him. Xeno would hear nothing of it, reaching to move some hairs sticking up from the top of the werewolf’s head. Then, he leans forward and presses a kiss to the other’s nose and his mouth before continuing. 

“And that stuff can wait. The kitchen will be fine if you take a nap for a little while or, at the very least, lay down and let me play with your hair.”

Remus didn't like to have people worrying about him. For someone whose entire life consisted of that, one would think he'd gotten used to it by now, and he had -- but still didn't like it. It was always an odd thing, to be at the receiving end of too much concern, too much kindness.

He gladly accepted the hand fixing his hair, as well as the kiss that made his nose wrinkle, before Xeno's lips were on his. He hummed, pulling back before it could be deepened; half out of self-consciousness for being in such an open space displaying affection, half because his brain was currently anywhere other than getting into some kind of fun mood with Xeno, sadly.

Continuing forward until she was at his side, Robyn gave him a faint smile. Most would have asked the question first, before agreeing. Or did he mean to say as much with the simple word as he had; an agreement to all the things she could have meant, offered with little hesitation.

Breaking their shared gaze, she tilted her head back to look up at the sky and its freckled stars, the dark void of the moon more noticeable for it. “The moon,” she clarified simply. Was it the easiest part to hate, or the hardest? This concrete emblem of what was done to him, what happened against his control, but ultimately a bystander in the horror of it all. Or at least, so she thought. Lycanthropy and its exact mechanisms weren’t her area of study; how much of its tie to the lunar cycle was causation and how much was correlation?

“How much do you hate it?” She found his eyes in the dim light once again, her stare unwavering in its curiosity. “Would you destroy it, if given the chance?”

The moon. He did hate it, so he simply hummed in agreement, standing by his response. Perhaps hate was not the first feeling that filled up his chest at the sight of it, fear was something closer to it. Some sort of despair, twisted deep into his guts, every time he looked up and saw it growing fuller and fuller. He was used to it, the whole thing. He didn't know a life without it. But it didn't mean he didn't feel the uneasiness pulling at his heart every time the night fell upon them.

Robyn's follow-up question was intriguing, enough so that his brows furrowed in confusion, gaze turning down to see her again. Not many people poked around within this subject with him. Usually it was a lot of pretending they didn't see it, and him pretending he didn't care. This direct approach was certainly different, but not entirely a problem.

It'd just been a pressing matter, a thought that came to him all at once and refused to leave: how is James doing. Not in the way one would ask conversationally upon bumping into someone, no, Remus wanted to know how his friend was actually doing. Ever since he'd heard of James being kicked out of the infirmary, it had clicked something for him. James had been through so much, piles and piles of absolute rubbish, for the past several months, and he never stopped once to take it in.

It couldn't be easy, hitting the ground running like that, coming back from being held captive for months and returning to a still ongoing war. Remus knew this, and they had talked about this, they'd had their tearful reunion when he first came back, and their promises of never letting the other go again, as was expected. But then, what? James had been going around picking up baggage after baggage, taking care of everyone else's fight, as he always did. But Remus wasn't sure his shoulders could take all of it, this time.

His knock was an anxious thing, just short of a more insistent bang, as he crowded closely to the door. "Hey, mate. 'S Moony here. Haven't seen you since the estate, can I come in?"

Lily needed a lot of things, but as the numb relief of the pain potion started to settle over her, the most pressing thing was an anchor to keep her here. She found it in squeezing Remus’s hand. “S’okay,” she murmured. “Ted did the same thing.” Granted, Ted had managed it without teasingly insulting her, but Ted couldn’t have managed it like Remus did. Coming from Remus, it got a wry expression caught between a smile and a pout.

“Lily Ruth Evans,” she reeled off, finding some comfort in the fact that the answers came easily enough for the questions to be annoying. That was a good sign, right? “It is 1984. And I’m banning you from time spent around Rosier, if you think insulting patients is a good idea of bedside manner.” Not that the brusqueness wasn’t sometimes warranted, given the number of extremely stubborn and dense-headed patients the man dealt with on the regular.

With no intention of adding herself to that list of difficult infirmary inmates, Lily made sure to ask, “Am I allowed to sit up? Or am I too much of an invalid for that?” Better to check than risk the wrath of what had to be a very tired and stretched thing Healer Rosier.

Remus' smile grew more relaxed as he felt the squeeze to his hand. Things didn't feel as bad when she was here, awake and talking back at him, answering all the questions without any issue. He felt like a selfish, tantrum-throwing kid for wanting her to be up and aware instead of dead asleep recovering, but he couldn't be blamed when she at least looked alive like this.

"No more insulting," he promised, scooting his chair closer so he could help her sit up, if she needed it. She still looked like a fragile thing -- her energy could make her one of the biggest people in the room, ironically to her height, but laying down like that she seemed small. "Come on. Evan is not in here to yell at us if you can't, anyway. Should be fine."

It was good for her, having something to get her mind off of worrying about everyone else. She didn’t do very well, when she was left to her own thoughts. Four months in captivity and torture had left her like this. But for the first time in months she felt like she was in control of something, which was ironic, given the circumstances. But it was a good feeling, using the skills that she had been learning from Evan to help people. People that she cared about. It made her realize that she could still offer something useful to the Order, despite what had happened to her. 

The only thing that could make things better would be seeing the people that she held closest to her coming back. James, Gideon, Marlene, and Dirk. She wouldn’t rest until they were all back and okay. She had to accept that it could be hours before they came back, and she couldn’t rush it. So she would continue to throw herself into this to keep her busy.

The fact that he was a werewolf never crossed her mind. She knew, of course, but he was just Remus to her and he needed help. And that was why she was there. Emmeline had heard the stories of the supposed dangers of werewolves, but Remus was no threat to any of them. Not in his human form. And with wolfsbane, she truthfully didn’t think he was much danger to them in his wolf form either. She knew that he couldn’t magically turn her into a werewolf just from healing him. So the thought of turning away from him had never crossed her mind. “That’s okay, let me take care of you,” she smiled. She wasn’t sure how great she would be at healing herself, she knew that some healers preferred to do it themselves, but Emme wasn’t sure that she was that kind of person. Plus, it could be difficult and Emme didn’t think that she was at a place where she would be able to do that. 

Returning to him, she began to clean the wound. It was important to do so since he wasn’t entirely sure what had caused it. “Well, it may be in a terrible spot, but it’s a rather shallow cut, so it’s going to heal just fine,” Emme told him with a smile. She grabbed the dittany and she carefully started to apply it to his arm after she let the wound cleaning potion do it’s job. At his thanks, she looked up at him. “Of course. I’m happy to help.” Emmeline shrugged her shoulders. ‘We’re here to help whoever needs help. Don’t worry about it.” Glancing towards Lily, she bit down on her lip, before she nodded. “She’s going to be okay. She’s in good hands, Evan is great. And she’s doing better now then when she first got here. And she’s strong. She’s going to make it through this.” 

x

"Shallow. That's good," he agreed. On one hand, it meant he could've probably gotten away with slapping a bandaid on and surviving, without having to bother her for this; but on the other hand, he wanted to help around the infirmary, and people would probably trust him even less if he was walking around with a red stain that got progressively larger on the back of his shirt.

He held perfectly still as she cleaned it up, save for his eyes squinting at the sting. It was hardly the worse he'd ever endured. If anything, tasting wolfsbane's foul flavor was worse than feeling the bite of whatever cleanser she was using to make the wound safer to close up. The dittany came in after, that one a much more familiar feeling. He remembered squirming in place when he was a kid, getting used to the sickening stretch of skin from when Dittany was applied; it didn't exactly hurt, but it was certainly no pleasant feeling. These days, it was almost comforting. He didn't even have to hold his breath.

His eyes followed Emme's again, towards Lily, when she spoke. Lily was strong. One of the strongest people she knew -- and not in that stubborn, resilient kind of strong he could see in Sirius or James. She was the type of strong that came with kindness, an abundant amount. The kind of strong that was forged out of being dealt the bad hand from life, and still not letting it take away from who you are. She's doing better now, Emme had said. It didn't feel like a great feat considering she was still passed out on the bad, but he clung onto the information, hoping it meant progress, at least. "Yeah. Yeah, she has to," he murmured, nodding. Just as he'd done with James, pushing any bad thoughts away, he'd do for Lily. She had to make it through this, there was no other way. 

Xenophilius’s furrow deepened. It had already been two hours? Where in the world had all of that time scampered off to?

Well. It was no matter. Remus was here now. Xeno could focus on that.

Remus interlaced their fingers, squeezing his hand, and Xenophilius squeezed back, tugging the other wizard closer, the other hand swiping hair away as he fretted over the dark circles under Remus’s eyes.

"Yes, well, you are about to have another,” he said, voice decisive though Xeno did, of course, pause, waiting for Remus to tell him no. If he did, Xenophilius would listen, though begrudgingly. It always worried him when the people around him didn’t care for themselves and, knowing Remus, he certainly ranked fairly high on that list.

A few ways to make him tired flitted through Xeno’s mind, but perhaps another time. If the nap had only been a short one, the presence of another person may very well me enough to do it.

Remus let himself be pulled closer, too tired to protest Xeno's fussing. He was tired, but it was the kind of exhaustion that settled deep within his bones, the kind of tired that a good night of sleep couldn't fix. Maybe a nap wouldn't hurt, but he still sighed at the other's suggestion.

"There's still stuff to do around here." Not stuff that was his job, necessarily, but stuff he still wanted to do. He spent half of his time living here, stealing snacks and sleeping on the extra beds, the least he could do was to watch out for the Estate in return. Remus never took a roof over his head for granted. "I mean, I'm convinced the kitchen needs to be scrubbed by hand, one more Scourgify and the layer of mold under the sink will start talking." 

Gwen had maybe managed an hour of sleep upstairs before returning to the infirmary. She’d laid awake, keyed up from everything that had happened and unsure how to quite process it. She’d volunteered for this for a few reasons. It was the right thing to do. It distracted her from going home and stewing over the last twenty-four hours. It proved she wasn’t useless.

Though right now, Gwen couldn’t say that was true. She sighed as she watched Theo and Lily sleep on. Good. They needed it after what had happened. The longer they slept now, perhaps the easier it would be to bounce back. Gwen couldn’t help the twinge of worry, though, especially as she looked at Lily. Always so worried about other people, and now they needed to worry about her.

Gwen looked away and caught Remus’ eye. He smiled at her, and Gwen tried to offer one back. She wasn’t sure they’d ever been alone in a room together. She tried not to be wary; Lily had made it clear not to be. He was a friend to her, and Gwen tried to be mindful of that. Lily was usually a good judge of character.

She shrugged. “Today was a lot,” she agreed. “I think any amount of quiet would feel odd after, but yes, this is… It seems uncanny. It’s too still.” Theo and Lily were too still.

Remus noticed that Gwen didn't seem all too comfortable smiling back, but that hardly registered in his mind. It was late, he was tired. And it'd been such an odd day filled with so much tension and so many uncertainties, it made sense that anyone would be struggling to bare their teeth at five in the morning. It was just circumstance, that made him lucky enough to not feel self-conscious, for once.

Prewett Estate June 30th, after dark @melancolialunar

Things were quiet in the house for once; the stillness in the wake of mission that had beaten them all down, the exhaustion muffling them all, a held breath for whatever new shoes were about to drop as they licked their wounds. It was more than a little depression and honestly sort of stifling. Robyn finished unloading a restock of bandages she bought (she may have been overzealous in her use of them on Fletcher, but it had seemed to make him feel better, so she wasn’t the least bit remorseful about it), and then headed for the door, glad to get her visit over with quickly.

It was quiet outside as well, but there was room to breath. The evening cool had started to set in, the sun a few hours gone behind the horizon. It was dark enough out here on the estate for the stars to be able to twinkle. The barest sliver of the waxing moon hung in the sky as well, adding its pale light to the evening. It was bright enough that Robyn didn’t need to pull out her wand to light her way (or the pocket flashlight she kept in her bag)—and it was also bright enough for her to make out a silhouette standing on the green, head slightly tilted back to look up at the sky.

Raw curiosity had her shifting her steps to head towards the figure; it was refined down to something sharper when she realized who it was. When she was close enough to be heard in a soft tone meant to not shatter the reverie of the night, she said, “Do you hate it?”

A waxing crescent. Remus always thought the moon looked its best just like that. Barely visible, it stood in front of the navy blue skies as a sliver, a barely visible curved string, as if someone had added a dash of light as an afterthought. New moons were too ominous -- something about the full absence of the very thing that haunted his nightmares being worse off than having it there. He liked her like this, stupid, tiny, harmless. He could stare up all night, and it wouldn't move, wouldn't grow, despite what some of his more whacky nightmares liked to play out.

It was a nice breath of fresh air, every month, knowing he was far away from the next turn. It was like seeing the incoming impact, but knowing you still had enough time to brace yourself for it. 

nightlight

WHEN. june 25, 1984, early afternoon 

WHERE. prewett estate 

WHO. @melancolialunar

Xenophilius had slept like a rock troll the moment their aching body touched their bed. The debrief had gone long and the half-healing Xeno had gotten meant that most of their aches and pains were gone but not all. Getting out of bed after Pandora had left that morning was difficult; they’d needed to accio their cane to the bedside, and they hated when they had to do that. 

Thankfully, after a pain potion and some food, the cane was stored back away before heading off to headquarters again. Probably, Xenophilius should go to the Quibbler office, but they were due for a break, even if they couldn’t stay cooped up in their house the whole day. They made their own schedule, and they could take a day or two off to help and to rest if necessary. 

They’d intended to do just that when a familiar, tired looking figure cut in front of them in one of the many labyrinthine halls of Prewett Estate. Xeno skids to a halt, brow furrowing as their head cocks to the side, and they shake their head, grabbing for a hand or an elbow. 

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping? You just came off an infirmary shift.” 

Getting off the adrenaline of missions was difficult. It came in spikes, for Remus. The whole day after was spent reviving and crashing, over and over again, like someone taking a dozen espresso shots throughout the day and burning out the caffeine too fast. He'd slept before his infirmary shift, out like a light. Then he'd taken a nap after it, too -- everything else in between he'd been walking around, half-man half-corpse, looking for something to busy his hands with.

The hand on his was a surprise, one that had his brows furrowing as he turned to find his captor. 

Lily may have stayed out of it for longer if it wasn’t for the combination of lingering stress and anxiety from the attack and the quickly fading impact of the pain potions she kept taking. Instead, she awoke for the third time that day with a racing heart and pain in her everything.

At least the faces greeting her each time were getting more and more familiar and beloved. It meant she didn’t have to try and muster a smile for Remus; such closeness as theirs came with the ability to complain without softening with pleasantries, surely? If it didn’t well, too bad.

“Awful,” she gripped with a moan. Still, she rolled her head carefully to the side, glad he was on her right so she could look without jostling the healing break in her collarbone too much. Her hand too could move without stabbing pain to take his, though she didn’t squeeze—that would hurt. “Do you have more potions for me?” Lily was tired in being in pain, already, and even though some small part of her mind that didn’t have new sympathy for the poor bean rattling around the proverbial tin can pointed out she was taking too many of them too fast, Lily would scream if she didn’t get more pain relief. Seeing that screaming would only cause more pain, she would much rather circumvent the run around and have the potion.

“Please?”

Remus wasn't used to being here. Always the patient, never the bedside companion. His whole life he'd spent stuck watching people watch him suffer and dealing with the guilt and annoyance and hurt that came from all of that -- but actually watching his loved ones in pain? That was so much worse. Lily looked miserable the second she was conscious again, and although watching her sleep had been like looking at a dead body, he almost wished she could have that unconscious peace again.

He quickly agreed to get her the pain potion, accio'ing the vial over to the bed and helping her down it carefully. Evan hadn't seemed worried about allowing her however many potions she needed while she was still in pain, so Remus wouldn't question the speed in which these vials were leaving the cabinet, either. "A little better?" He returned his hand to hers, still overly cautious in his touch, worried he could make her pain any worse. "Let me know what you need."

It was good news to see Remus looking mostly okay. She knew that James was going to have a hard enough time with Lily and her injuries, she just hoped that that was all that he would have to worry about. They just needed Sirius to come back, she supposed that Peter was already with James so he would know how he was doing. That relationship was complicated, Emme knew, but she hoped that they could figure it out at some point .She still didn’t understand how everything had gone so wrong while they were gone. 

Emmeline could see blood on Remus’s shirt, but she couldn’t quite tell if it was his blood or someone else’s. She had made that mistake with Edgar, assuming that the blood was someone else’s, and look at what had nearly happened. She wasn’t going to make that mistake again. The good thing was that Remus seemed more with it then Edgar had when she had first found him. He was talking and moving around and wasn’t falling asleep from the blood loss. So those were all good signs. 

The look on his face was confusing. She wasn’t sure why he looked like he was caught doing something that he shouldn’t be doing, but she pushed that aside for now. “It’s okay?” Emme replied, confusion in her words. She wasn’t sure what Remus was apologizing for. It was strange, but there was no way for her to know what he was thinking. “I doubt that you’re stupid, Remus,” Emmeline told him, raising an eyebrow. “James always talks about how brilliant you are. So I find it hard to believe.” 

She knelt down in front of him. “Show me what’s going on,” she requested. He was in the infirmary for a reason, even if he didn’t want to show her. She sighed and nodded her head. “You’re welcome. I hope he’s back soon too.” It would be easier to relax when he was back in the estate. But then he would find out about Lily, which was a whole other thing that she knew she would have to manage. Emme was glad when he finally showed her his arm. The cut didn’t look bad, especially after Edgar’s, but it did need to be dealt with. “That’s a hard place to heal yourself,” she agreed. “And that happens all the time. Your adrenaline doesn’t let you notice the pain until you sit down. Then it hits you like a truck.” Emmeline stood up. ‘Be right back,” she told him. She went to grab a few potions and came back to him a moment later. She knew that she could just accio it but sometimes she liked to get up and grab things. “This is probably going to sting, but it’ll stop you from getting an infection,” she explained as she started to clean the wound.

x

James always talks about how brilliant you are. That was too sweet, and it had no business tugging at his heart like it had then, in a busy infirmary where said friend had not been back yet. It was so easy to get caught up on the go, go, go of missions, to turn off his more emotional brain and be rational for the sake of not letting anything stray him from their goals. But now, the adrenaline had finally started to settle down in his system. The buzzing in his ears was subsiding, the sting from the cut on his arm was coming through. The fear of losing people was able to creep back in.

He pushed it off, because sitting here and worrying would do him no good. Or Emmeline. She probably had even more time of sitting around and waiting anxiously than any of them, the least he could do was sound confident and help them out -- healing was such an underrated job. 

"Annoyingly hard place, yes," he agreed. "I'm usually pretty good at healing myself. This one just got away from me." She must've known by now, much like everyone else, that he was a werewolf. The fact that she wasn't twisting her nose at the sight of his blood or refusing to touch him at all didn't go unnoticed by him, and he actually let out a sigh of relief as she set out to grab things to help him. It was always a gamble, if people would be willing to help, or if they believed the wild misconceptions about his curse. Easier to do things himself. And usually, he could patch himself up, but he wasn't great at it. He was sloppy, careless, his post-moon exhaustion didn't have space for intricate healing. It was just a matter of survival. His self-healing usually meant a lot of scars that had to be taken care of later. Back in school days, he'd heavily relied on the Marauders for first aid, before they'd drag him back to Madam Pomfrey. So even if he could've managed to do something here, it wouldn't be any better than what she could do.

Emmeline returned quickly, and he nodded at her warning. The sting wasn't anything he couldn't deal with. His skin wasn't feeling particularly sensitive today, by some unexpected luck, so his pain tolerance remained higher than most. "Thank you," he said softly. This help meant more than he could properly express without getting awkward, so he hoped she knew how genuinely grateful he was for her kindness. "I didn't want to bother you for such a tiny thing, I'm sure you're all busy here." Case in point, his eyes made their way over to the cot where he knew Lily was. A beat of silence, before he asked. "I know she's not doing good, but... She's going to be okay... Right?"

James just stared at Remus as he choked over the word they both knew he was thinking without saying anything for a long moment. Remus wanted Lily to check in with Severus about James’ healing process. That sounded like one of the stupidest things James had ever heard, given the fact that he’d pretty much forced himself to pass out in the hospital the second he’d heard about their friendship. “I’m not gonna bite your head off if you say her name again, mate,” James said to Remus quietly, feeling bad for the way he’d treated his friend in the hospital. “But I also don’t want her involved, alright? This thing is between me and Snape.”

He was glad they could go on with joking, though. While he wasn’t going to be cross with Remus for bringing up someone who was still a friend to him, even if it hurt, he’d still rather not talk about Lily. The wound in his heart still felt so fresh, like it could open up and he’d just start crying again at any moment. Six years… they’d been together six years… Fuck - yes, jokes. Those were easier. James could joke about Remus puny (okay admittedly not puny, he’d seen it a bunch of times) cock all day if it meant he could avoid talking about Lily.

Remus laughed, seeming to think the same thing about safe territory for now, and pushed James on the shoulder, causing James to spill over near his wrist. “Fuck, Moony!” he said, both wincing and laughing at the same time, but there was still a smile on his face as Remus told him it served him right. “Oh yeah, you sound real sorry.”

James was grateful when Remus didn’t comment on the letter - who it was to nor the contents - but was not so grateful at that shift on his friend’s face at the mention of Sirius. James knew Remus too well. He knew that this would get no where and it was fucking frustrating. Time was a bitch. It had moved on without James and now he was stuck playing catch up, which was hard to do when no one was talking. 

He’d left with a girlfriend and a solid group of mates - loyalty to one another that was forever unbroken - and come back to cracks that fell way below the surface and he had no idea how he got there. Lily… she would’ve told him, if they were talking. She should have been here right now. James could feel his anger again at her at the fact that she’d left.

He forced a breath, tried to push it down. He’d never been this angry, before. There was an unfamiliar, constantly simmering rage at the surface of everything he did now. It was a growing concern he wasn’t willing to share just yet, but he didn’t know what to do about it. He was furious at Lily for leaving him - cross with Sirius and Remus for not talking - angry with Peter for taking his place. They were supposed to be okay without him. He wasn’t supposed to have to come back from torture and be forced to carry their weight, too. He’d had enough - enough pressure, enough burden. It was sinking him back into a person he’d thought he’d left behind years ago. He’d been better! He’d been doing good.

Hadn’t he?

And, just as expected, Remus laid his head on James’ knee and simply said it was complicated. No fucking shit, Moony, James thought bitterly, but his actions contradicted that as he put his good hand to Remus’ hair (even that hurt a bit, the seeds ripping from him day after day) and rubbed gently. Remus couldn’t talk about it. Fine. James would just have to shoulder this, too.

“You have to someday, though,” he told him, though his tone was kind. “Both of you. I can’t - “ He cut himself off as his voice cracked. “I can’t come back from that to this without knowing why.”

Remus' intentions in hiding Lily's name hadn't been to make James feel guilty -- hadn't even been to make his friend not bite his head off. If anything, he could handle some James-wrath, the universe knew James had to handle a lot more Remus-wrath in their days, particularly in a handful of teenage years pre-moons. "It's not that. I just didn't want to... make you remember her at all." He said, apologetically. He thought it'd be better to avoid Lily's name entirely, so that James didn't have to feel that weight dropping in his stomach, that cold on the back of his neck, the same way Remus had been feeling every time he heard about Sirius. Not the same sort of break there, but ironically parallel, he would say. "But noted. Won't talk to her. Just keep an eye out for Snape."

It was evidence of how many years of friendship they carried on their backs, the fact that they could navigate so easily back and forth between laughter and angst and everything in between. He had the decency to let his laughter trail off as James whined, though it still trickled a bit into his voice as he spoke again. "You're okay?" He wouldn't baby, he wouldn't smother -- but he still wanted to look out for his friend.

James offered nothing but kindness, with the tone of his voice and the touch to his hair, but Remus knew that must've taken more strength than people tended to give him credit for. It couldn't be easy, to be kept in the darkness of all of this chaos. But it hadn't been easy, either, to stand there and be called a spy, a traitor, a monster. It hadn't been easy to dig into years of friendship and craft the sharpest dagger he could find to hurt Sirius back. It wasn't easy to know the last words he'd spoken to one of his closest friends had been with so much anger. None of this was easy, for anyone.

He sighed, untangling lanky limbs off the floor so he could climb onto the couch again. "You're not coming back to this," he protested emptily, the same weight on the word as his friend had used. He sat, legs tucked under himself, a hand reaching out for the hairs on the nape of James' neck again. "We're still here. I still love you. It's just..." his lips pursed. "Different now."

txlkalots:

Lucinda wasn’t able to catch if Reggie made it before the portkey activated; it was out of her hands now, and the only thing she could do was try and keep upright as the entire world lurched.

The feeling of moving though space this way never really stopped being disorienting. For a brief moment, Lucinda had no idea what was up and down, before suddenly the ground was coming at them. Bracing, she managed to land on her feet and she gripped Spencer’s little arm, managing to keep him upright in the process as well.

She allowed herself a brief second to gather herself before taking an overview. Spencer was next to her, his eyes wide. Yeah, this was probably a pretty rough introduction to the world of magical transportation - especially with no warning. His mom seemed to have managed to keep on her feet, with the dad having keeled over. Served him right. Lucinda managed to bite back a comment on how they would have warned them if they hadn’t lost so much time. Turning, she saw Remus, and, mercifully, both Reggie and tiny, fuzzy human in his arms.

“Everyone’s alright, yeah?” She asked, taking stock. “Don’t worry, the feeling of being scrambled goes away quick enough. Just, ah, maybe walk slowly for a little while.”

She looked around the room they had landed in, but before she could say anything, Rosie the baby decided that she decidedly did not enjoy being flung through a portkey and went back to wailing. Her mom stumbled forward, and Lucinda stepped in to catch her. She glanced at Reggie, waving her free arm towards them. “Reggie, baby please?”

@reggiecatastrophic

-------

Reggie heard Remus yell and squeezed his eyes shut as he felt an arm snake around his waist. He tried to get as close as he could to Remus before the portkey kicked in and slammed them away. He managed to stay upright as they landed, though whether that was more thanks to Remus or his own awareness that the baby could not fall, Reggie wasn’t sure. 

For a brief blissful moment, there was silence in the air. Reggie relished what they’d done. 

Then Rosie made a low wobbly noise, and Reggie looked down at her in horror as a wailing scream burst forth. Holy shit, babies made a lot of noise. 

He stared at her in shock for a moment before Lucinda’s voice snapped him out of it. “Right,” he said, speaking loudly over the baby before wiggling out of Remus’ grip to going hand the baby over. “Here you are. Safe and sound.”

The woman looked unable to decide if she wanted to thank him or not, and Reggie figured he should step away before he figured it out. He turned toward Spencer. Still a kid but the least intimidating option of the muggles right now, baby included. “Wild ride, right?” he asked. “You get used to it, but don’t worry, you don’t have to do that all the time. Good job, by the way. I fell on my a- ahhh, butt the first time I used a portkey.” Probably shouldn’t swear in front of kids. Also should probably watch the dad to make sure he didn’t take the comment as a cheap shot, even if it kind of was.

He glanced back at Remus too. “Thanks,” he said and looked back at Spencer, still talking to Remus. “What next?”

@melancolialunar​​

Please don't kill the baby. 

That was all he could think of, morbidly, sending the universe (and this portkey) one last plea before they were yanked through space. He was used to this type of travel by now, knew what to expect, but experience never made it any more pleasant.

They stumbled onto the safe house and Remus never thought he'd be filled with so much relief upon hearing the eardrum-shattering screams of a little baby. His arm around Reggie lingered, much to the awkwardness of the moment, if only because the werewolf was still figuring out which way was up or down, and if he could actually still let go.

The father was brutally pale and looked ready to empty whatever was in his stomach. Served him right.

"I'm sure baby's just a little confused, but portkeys are totally safe, she'll be fine," he comforted the mother, lying through his teeth. He had no fucking clue what a portkey did to a baby, but for everyone's sake, he hoped little Rosie was just feeling a little scrambled and would be fine in no time. Lucinda was doing a better job at communicating with the family, he should've just left it up to her.

At the question, he took a deep breath, looking around the house. "Back to headquarters. They should hear of what happened to our team, and they might need help there." He looked between Lucinda and Reggie quickly. "Would either of you like to stay back? Just in case?"

The safe house had all types of precautions to keep the family safe even if they were left behind alone, although Remus would feel better leaving them with one of them. But he couldn't not make it back to headquarters, and he wouldn't force Reggie or Lucinda to stay either, if they felt the same pull.

"Where are we?!" The mother suddenly shrieked, still trying to soothe Rosie.