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Chapter Text

Narcissa Black Malfoy had not dared leave her bedroom for five days, not since Lucius’s quick, noisy trial for that debacle at the Department of Mysteries had found him guilty and imprisoned him at Azkaban.

“Stay in the manor,” he had told her as he had embraced her for the last time in the courtroom, Draco standing trembling between them. “You shall always be a Malfoy by marriage, my darling, and that will be enough to command the protection of every wall and nail and fibre of the house. Stay there, and wait for me.”

These were simple instructions. But Lucius ought to have known that, with the Dark Lord, nothing is simple.

“Flee the manor,” Bellatrix had said the night before, when she’d convinced Narcissa to allow her to come wandless into her room. She had stood on Narcissa’s bed, pacing along the mattress between the white lace of the bed curtains. “Make the house an offering to our Lord. Leave it to him.”

“He has already taken possession of it,” Narcissa had answered, dispassionate. “It ought to make no difference to him that a prison-widow keeps to herself quietly in an upper room here.”

Bella sank to her knees, scrabbling to the head of the bed where Narcissa sat propped in a heap of pillows. She leaned close to whisper. “What if it did make a difference? What if he took it from you by force? He has that power. Whatever enchantments the better Malfoy wizards who went before Lucius cast on the old place, they are nothing to the power of our Lord.”

“That may well be,” Narcissa allowed, patting Bellatrix’s hand where it clawed the bedspread. “But if I were to flee, the manor would still belong to Draco. He would be its master. That would make him the Dark Lord’s rival for control of the manor. No, it is too dangerous. He is still too young, too vulnerable to bear such things.”

Bellatrix pulled at her own hair. “Drace is not unprotected. You made an unbreakable vow. Yes, it was with that worm, Severus Snape, but…” She had no confidence in her own words and let them trail into emptiness.

Narcissa squared her shoulders. “I will not leave. I am no threat to our Lord. I will depend on his grace.”

But the Dark Lord had no grace, and on this night, Narcissa would know that for certain.

The thud of a heavy silver hand beat against her bedroom door. “Madam Malfoy,” came Peter Pettigrew’s voice from the corridor outside, “My Lord demands your presence.”

Narcissa rose from where she had been slumped on a chaise. “I am indeed honored,” she called through the door, cinching the cord of her dressing gown more tightly around her waist. “But do send him my regrets. I’m still doing poorly and cannot attend to him tonight. Tomorrow morning–”

“Will be too late,” Pettigrew blustered over her excuses. There was something different in his voice tonight. He always sounded afraid and whinging, but there was a strange new depth to his tone tonight. Something like grief in it–like sorrow. “He demands you meet him in the kitchen immediately, or else he shall summon your son through the Mark, and not to the safety of the manor.”

Narcissa swore under her breath. She hadn’t been sure the Death Eaters knew about the safety members of the family enjoyed in the house. Now she knew they did. Had Bella told them? Had Lucius himself–

“Now, Madam Malfoy!” Pettigrew clamoured. “Shall we fetch your son, or…”

“I’m here,” Narcissa said, opening the door, keeping to her ruse of illness by remaining in her nightdress and dressing gown. “Out of my way, Wormtail.”

Sounds of screams and shouting and an awful laughter grew louder as they approached the kitchen. At the foot of the stairs, Narcissa and Pettigrew stopped as if they’d been hit with leglock jinxes. There was a sound like a loud, snarling howl.

“What have they brought into my house?” Narcissa said.

“What? How about who?” Pettigrew said, his fingers working, picking at the air, as if it was all he could do to keep from transforming into a rat and scuttling away.

The sight of the Dark Lord holding court in the kitchen beneath racks of family cookware was beyond absurd. The elves were nowhere to be seen. The door to the cellar stood open, a black space barred by an inner iron gate padlocked shut and guarded by Crabbe and Goyle Senior. As Narcissa approached, two clawed hands gripped the iron bars and shook the door, wrenching at them. Crabbe slashed at them with his wand until they withdrew. Nothing but the hands and the arms had been visible within the dark of the doorway, but Narcissa didn’t need to see any more of the creature to know it.

A werewolf. The Dark Lord had trapped a werewolf in her cellar.

“Ah, Ms. Black,” the Dark Lord greeted her. She had never heard her unmarried name sound so ominous. “Come, the paperwork is ready.”

At this, the werewolf flung itself against the locked gate, its brown pelt bristling through the bars. Bella screamed, clapping her hands.

“Yaxley will act as solicitor,” the Dark Lord continued. “Lucius Malfoy, as you will see, has already signed. Write your name here, below his, and that will be that.”

Narcissa blinked rather furiously. “What shall be what, my Lord?”

“The divorce,” he said. “Sign your name and your marital bond to the House of Malfoy will be ended.”

So this was their ploy to get control of the house. Bella was still grinning. She had never liked Lucius. Well, Narcissa would give them what they wanted. She could always remarry Lucius once all of this was over, and being free of the house would allow her to go to Draco, to spare him from that ludicrous suicide mission with the Hogwarts Vanishing Cabinet. They would run away and wait for Lucius somewhere secret and safe. Nothing in this house mattered as much as that.

The parchment nearly tore with the force of her signature. With a flourish of Yaxley’s wand, the parchment was stamped, folded, and winged away by a ghastly owl that looked more like a buzzard.

Feeling fortunate to have been let off so easily, so reversibly, Narcissa dropped a small curtsy and turned to go back to her room to pack, her eyes stinging with tears.

“But where are you going, Ms. Black?” the Dark Lord called after her as Yaxley blocked her path. “The divorce is only the first act of tonight’s romantic drama. Act Two is your remarriage, your bona fide revocation of any claim to the House of Malfoy.”

She glared up at Yaxley, her lip curling with revulsion.

Behind her, the Dark Lord laughed. “No, Mr. Yaxley is a married man, Miss Black. Most of my closest lieutenants are. No, for you, we took care to find a particularly stunning bachelor. And I must say we’ve outdone ourselves with this groom.”

The werewolf. The Dark Lord meant to marry her to the werewolf in the cellar.

Narcissa bowed her head to plead. “My Lord, I assure you, I shall make no claim on this house. Never. Please–”

“It is not a matter of control over this house,” he shouted over her. “I am all-powerful and do not depend on promises from Malfoys in order to use that power. I do, however, need to openly punish you for all the ways you and your ex-husband and, someday, your son will fail me. Yaxley!” he called. “The marriage contract.”

The single sheet of parchment lay on the table where the bill of divorcement had been just moments before. It was tattered and mangled, flecked with fresh red blood, nearly illegible in places.

“As you see, Madam, the werewolf has already–erm, signed,” Yaxley said. “Add your own name here and Goyle and Crabbe shall witness it.”

“The werewolf?” she said. “How can a creature sign its name? Does it even have a name?”

“It is perfectly legal for an illiterate groom to leave a mark rather than a full signature on a marriage contract,” Yaxley said, pointing to a smear of blood that looked as if it had been wiped along an open cut rather than voluntarily drawn. “And as for the name, I inked it in myself.”

As Yaxley pried her fingers open to close them around a quill, Narcissa read the untransformed human name of the creature: Remus Lupin. Yes, she knew him. He’d been at school with her, a year or two younger, notable for always making an ass of himself with James Potter. And he’d taught Draco at Hogwarts in third year. He was at the Ministry the day Lucius was arrested–the day Bella had killed their cousin Sirius.

“Will you sign it, Madam, or shall I summon your son to persuade you?”

At last, she spun to face the Dark Lord. “Don’t hurt Draco. He’s a child, my Lord. He wants nothing but to please you. He won’t oppose you.”

“Of course he won’t,” was the Dark Lord’s answer. “You needn’t delay this marriage on his account. I have need of Draco within Hogwarts, as you well know. Until then, his safety is assured. Now sign.”

Then it was a bizarre act of humiliation, this marriage of a witch to a werewolf. Narcissa would submit and be done with it. Again, she signed.

“Very good,” the Dark Lord intoned as Yaxley whisked the second document off the register at the Ministry. “Now for Act Three: your honeymoon.”

With that, the cellar’s iron gate shrieked open.

Pettigrew’s terror overcame him and he twisted into a ball of scraggly grey hair scurrying beneath the stove.

Bella wailed. “My Lord, you promised no honeymoon! Please! She’s the only sister I have left.”

He raised a hand to silence her. “Quickly, you brutes,” he ordered Goyle and Crabbe. They took Narcissa by each of her arms and shoved her into the cellar even as the creature could be heard bounding, snarling across the stone floor, making for the stairs.

Bellatrix’s voice rose into the shrillest scream yet as the gate slammed shut with Narcissa on the other side of it, lost in the dark.

“Out!” the Dark Lord called over the ruckus. “All of you, get out! Leave the hairy devil to its bride.”

___________________

In the blackness of the stairway of what had once been her own cellar, Narcissa stood pressed to the wall, silent and shaking, feeling for her wand. Had they left it with her? Yes, it was here, still in the pocket of her dressing gown. Perhaps they didn’t intend for her to die this way. This truly was an act of revenge driven by the desire to humiliate and debase. But there was no time to puzzle over it. She had her wand but that was not the same as surviving this evil.

At the foot of the stairs, low growls rumbled over the rush of quick sniffing of the air. The werewolf didn’t need to see her to find her. She had nothing to lose in raising her wand and lighting it.

In the blue glow, the growling seemed to escalate, prickling the hair on her arms and neck. The creature was massive across its shoulders, tall and twitching. If Yaxley hadn’t named the creature, she might have killed it at once. But though the human cursed within the creature was not someone she liked, it was someone–someone who had not chosen this. For his connection to Harry Potter, Lupin was hated by the Dark Lord, and perhaps she had been sent into this cellar as an executioner.

But she would never serve the Dark Lord ever again. She raised a hand not to kill but to still the beast. She shushed. “Please. I can let you out,” she told the creature, as if it understood. “If you let me, I can use this wand to open the door and then you can–do what you like.”

The growling flared into a bark, louder than human shouting. Narcissa jerked, the light pulsing, but she did not drop the wand. She shushed again. “Easy now. I’m going to step aside and open the door. Please–please just pass me by. Have your freedom but leave me my life.”

Alohomora was such a simple spell but it required a quick flick that might spur the creature to attack. She had to risk it. Wand raised toward the locked door, she cast the spell.

Claws scraped on the stone steps, the creature rushing forward, upward. In an instant it would either be racing past her or sinking its teeth into her throat. Narcissa crossed her arms over her chest, her hands and wand raised to protect her neck. The creature came.

And then it stopped.

They stood together in the stairway, beast and wife. Its snout was level with her nose as it cocked its head one way and then the other, unsatisfied with only smelling her, wanting to see her as well, examining her face as best it could by the light of the wand she clutched.

Its breath was hot, rank with licking at the blood of its own wounds. This close, she could see the creature had been viciously beaten, its face cut, one eye nearly swollen shut. Narcissa had been told that werewolves’ eyes were green, like the flare of a curse. But by the light of her wand, this one’s eyes looked icy blue, like Draco’s, like her own.

It turned the scream in her throat into speech. “Please go. We won’t hurt each other. Never.”

In a burst of movement, the beast thrust both of its clawed hands against the cellar wall, one on either side of Narcissa’s head. Its posture was more human than animal and somehow far more terrifying. Narcissa had no more words, not a sound as she waited for the creature’s teeth.

And then it was gone. Two great bounds and the werewolf had sprung from the cellar and into the kitchen. She watched its back framed in the doorway above. It turned its head to the passage to the rest of the house, where its torturers had gone. Instead of the revenge it might have had catching them unaware, it bolted in the other direction. Glass shattered as it vaulted through the window.

Narcissa swore and ran after it. The windows were heavily warded. A wizard would not have survived a crash through one of them. Perhaps the Dark Lord had the execution he wanted after all. She followed the werewolf’s path, up over the sink.

There it lay on the ground, stunned and even more beaten than before, its chest heaving, still alive. She watched it, waiting. And as she did, the manor grounds, which had been luminous with moonlight that night, grew darker rather than lighter.

“The moon,” Narcissa said. The moon had set, and the creature stirring and suffering on the grass was transforming. As its pelt receded she saw the narrowing shoulders were bare. The rings of the curtains over the sink snapped as she hauled them down, climbing out the window herself now that it and its spells were broken.

She draped the curtain over Remus Lupin.

He sighed his thanks as he gathered it close. “Wand?”

“Yes. Here,” she said, the wand still in her hand.

“Good. We’ll be off.”

“We?”

He had closed his hand over hers, commandeering the wand and initiating an Apparition, his magic conducted through her flesh and into the wood. Eyes wide, she watched her life at the manor as Madam Malfoy twisted away, vanishing into the darkest hour of this dangerous night.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

Barely transformed back into his human state, Remus Lupin had taken Narcissa Black by her wand hand and apparated the pair of them away from the wicked chaos of Malfoy Manor. It was his final act of the night before all strength left him. In the in-between state of apparition, Narcissa felt his grip slacken around her hand. If she hadn’t snatched at his wrist to hold him, he would have whirled away, wandless and lost.

It felt like the longest, most desperate apparition of her life. She clung to the dead weight of the stranger draped in the curtains from the manor kitchen, his head lolling on her shoulder. At last, it ended with a cold squelch of fetid water as they jolted back into the visible world in the reedy shallows of a dark pond.

With a grunt, Lupin fell away from her, landing with the back of his head in the muddy water.

“Mr. Lupin,” Narcissa said, shaking his arm. “Mr. Lupin, where have you brought us? There’s no one here to help and you’ve been badly injured.”

He only grimaced as if voices hurt his head.

With no clue as to where they might be, she didn’t dare light her wand. The moon had gone, but now a distant sunrise was beginning to lighten the night to a pale blue. Not far away, a yellow square of light burned within what looked like a dense thicket of trees. Smoke seemed to be rising from a short, stout branch, and as Narcissa studied it, she saw it was not a tree but a chimney. The thicket was actually a well-disguised house.

“Mr. Lupin, wake up,” she said, whispering close to his face. “Whose house is this?”

He stirred as if trying to speak but his tongue only clicked against the roof of his mouth in an unvoiced letter T.

“I’ll get you the help you need,” she said. “But I must know whose help it will be. My family and I have made enemies of all kinds lately, and – “

He made the T sound again, insistently, as if she ought to understand. “Won’ hurt you,” he managed to say at last. “Promise.”

Pondwater seeping through her clothing, Narcissa was shivering and soaked. There was nothing for it. Since she could not go home, she must press forward. And though she might be hated by her countrypeople outside the Dark Lord’s movement, she herself had done nothing wrong – nothing strictly illegal, that is. Let them turn her in and question her all they liked. This is what she told herself as she rose out of the water to stand. Lupin’s weight sagging against her, she partly levitated, partly dragged him toward the light in the window.

The door to the house was tucked beneath a peaked awning covered in a dark fuzz that must have been green moss by daylight. Lupin muttered as Narcissa took a moment to compose the both of them before knocking. He was still decently covered by the curtain, but she used a tailoring spell to lengthen it just to be sure. The spell ruined the weave of the brocade fabric Lucius’s mother had so painstakingly chosen for the manor kitchen, but none of that mattered now.

“Mr. Lupin,” she whispered to him. “Do try to wake up.”

Narcissa had not yet succeeded in balancing Lupin on his feet well enough to take her hand from his chest when the door was flung open.

“Who goes there!”

A rather fierce looking woman, wand drawn, had burst into the space beneath the mossy awning. Perhaps it was only the lamplight behind her, but at the sight of Lupin, Narcissa was almost sure she’d seen the woman’s brown hair flash deep red. “Stars in heaven, Remus!” the woman said. Without the aid of any levitation spells, she transferred Lupin’s weight from Narcissa’s shoulder to her own and muscled him over the threshold and onto a long kitchen table. “Dad!” she called into the house.

“What’s all the racket, Dora?” a mellow, pleasant voice called back. “Has Lupin turned up?” A tall, fair, rather rotund man had joined the fierce woman in the kitchen. Neither of them paid any mind to Narcissa, still standing in the open doorway. Their sole concern was Remus Lupin lying bleeding and not-quite conscious on the table. With a sigh, the man rolled up the sleeves of his pajamas and set to work.

“Last I saw him, he was dashing off to find Severus. Must not have found him in time,” the woman said. “Clearly he spent the night transformed. No Wolfsbane potion again this month. I don’t understand.”

“Take it up with Dumbledore.” The man gave a low whistle. “Looks like Remus had a run in with someone.”

“Yeah, a whole gang of someones,” said the woman. “Nasty wounds here. Made with a very particular cutting spell. I think I know the wand that’s done it.”

The man gave a knowing hum. “What about that eye?”

The woman shone the light from her wand into Lupin’s pupil. Her manner was professional, like that of a good soldier, but there was a frayed edge of rage to her voice. “That is a wound struck through dark magic indeed. I’ll have to wake Mum.”

“No need, I’m here already,” said a third voice. “Is it Lupin? Oh dear. Dora, you’ve left the door —”

The voice stopped. It belonged to a woman several years older than Narcissa herself, several inches taller, and as they stared astounded at each other through the open door, Narcissa knew exactly where Lupin had taken them. She was in the home of her long-estranged sister, Andromeda Tonks.

“Cissa.”

Andromeda stepped forward to pull her inside and shut the door. She seemed less surprised than she might have, as if she had been expecting her sister to come looking for refuge, waiting for it for years and years. “Have you come alone?”

Narcissa blinked hard, still reeling from everything else that had happened that night. “No, I’ve come with – with him.”

Dora was shouting from the table. “Mum, healing spells now. Before he loses his sight.”

Andromeda darted away, and for the next half hour, no one spoke of anything but healing Lupin. Narcissa kept her place, standing on the mat by the door as if it was a raft afloat on a dangerous sea.

“He should revive in half an hour or so, once the anti-concussion spell does its work inside his skull.” Andromeda straightened her posture, her hand pressed to the small of her back. “The poor dear.”

“Strong and determined as he is, he’ll wake up right as rain,” Dora said. She lifted Lupin’s hand to wash the grime of blood and pondwater from it with a warm, damp cloth, pressing the fluffy fibres between his fingers, tender and slow.

Ted Tonks tried to catch Andromeda’s eye to share a bittersweet smile at Dora’s doting. Now that Remus was sleeping and Dora had stopped shouting, they made a rather lovely pair, the first of the morning sun coming through the window, lighting the auburn lights in Dora’s natural hair colour. It was a pity, Ted thought, that Remus was so nobly stubborn in his belief about werewolves making bad husbands that he wouldn’t give Dora a go.

Andromeda, however, had no eye for her daughter’s heartache this morning. She interrupted the moment. “Remus has brought us a guest. Ted, Dora, allow me to introduce Narcissa Malfoy.”

Both of them startled, finally noticing the blonde woman standing silent on the doormat, still somehow elegant in a muddy dressing gown and with dried rusty werewolf blood smeared on her neck and Remus’s fingerprints bruised onto her wrist.

“It is her, isn’t it?” Dora said, setting Lupin’s half-cleaned hand back on his chest.

There seemed to be no way to begin but with the ridiculousness of good manners. “Good day to you all,” Narcissa said. “Do pardon me for intruding.”

Dora advanced. “What have you done to Remus?”

“Nothing,” Narcissa said, her head bowed. “I found him like this, trapped in my cellar. So I set him free, and once he’d – changed back, he brought us here.”

“The Death Eaters had him. I knew it,” Dora said, returning to his side.

Narcissa’s defensive habits flared to life. “I didn’t see who hurt him. It’s not impossible that they found him already beaten.”

Ted Tonks scoffed a laugh.

“Those were the marks of dear old Auntie Bellatrix’s cutting spells all over his face. I’ve seen them enough times to know,” Dora huffed. “We’ll hear it from Remus himself once he revives.”

“However he was hurt, nothing has explained why the pair of you arrived together, Cissie” Andromeda said. “What’s happened to you? Why aren’t you at home, safe and sound?”

Narcissa was a careful woman, exacting. Before answering, she made a pause, surveying her surroundings. She would not be rushed into revealing too much simply because everyone’s eyes were fixed on her. Andromeda’s eyes were wide and inviting – hopeful; Ted’s were curious, amused; and Dora’s were wary but no longer furious. Her concern for Lupin had softened them, and her hand had found his again, covering it as he slept.

With that, Narcissa saw it. Dora, this formidable niece of hers, was in love with Narcissa’s werewolf husband. Of course the Dark Lord wouldn’t have stopped to ask the werewolf if it had any attachments of its own before trying to marry it off to someone else. But maybe discovering a prior attachment was the best way out of this mess.

“Are you his wife?” Narcissa asked.

Dora withdrew her hand from his, and with that frayed edge to her voice again, she answered, “No.”

“Remus is a dear family friend,” Ted hurried to say.

Then they didn’t need to be told about the sham wedding, Narcissa thought. She would tell them nothing they did not need to know. Nothing that might further hurt them – or Mr. Lupin and herself. What she did tell them was that the Dark Lord had taken control of the manor and sent her to fight Lupin’s werewolf as further punishment for Lucius’s mistakes. All of the Tonks looked almost proud of her when she explained how she’d frustrated their designs by freeing Lupin rather than attacking him.

“And now here we are,” she said. “You see, I haven’t burdened you with my presence intentionally, Medie. I know that after all this time, and all the harm the Malfoys have done wizards like your Mr. Tonks, I have no claim on you for rescue now. It was Mr. Lupin who brought me. And I do understand if you would rather I left.”

But Ted Tonks could read in Andromeda’s face how badly she wanted her little sister to stay, and how she didn’t dare ask him, a Muggle-born wizard, to harbour a Malfoy. He began with another sigh, “Around here, we don’t always agree with Remus’s judgment when he’s overthinking his decisions. But when he acts on instinct, I find his judgment is sound. And it seems to me that he brought you here on instinct. So I say you stay. It’s up to Dromeda, of course. What do you say, my dear?”

Andromeda’s chin quivered, her eyes shimmering, voice hoarse as she answered. “I’ve been longing to protect this person for twenty years, as I did when she was a tiny girl. If she’ll let me, I will resume doing so now.”

Narcissa’s shoulders slumped, heaving with a quiet sob. “Thank the stars for you, Medie. And Mr. Tonks – I’m so terribly sorry.”

“Do you admit it then?” Dora said. “Do you admit that blood purity is a lie?”

Narcissa raised her head, wiping her tears. “It’s an excuse to hoard money, property, and power in the hands of those who have always held it. Even Lucius knows that. Forgive me, Mr–”

“Enough of the “Mr.” business,” Ted said, his voice sunny and easy as ever. “You may call me Ted. Or, if it isn’t fancy enough for you, Edward.” With that, he held out his hand to shake his sister-in-law’s for the first time, drawing her further into the house, free at last from the doormat.

Andromeda received Narcissa into her arms, sensing the clamminess of her clothing at once. “Put the kettle on for your aunt, Dora. Remus isn’t going anywhere. Ted fetch a change of clothes for Cissa, and one for Remus too. I do believe he’s wearing nothing but a very posh window treatment.”

Ted scoffed another laugh as he climbed the stairs. “That’s a fair sight better dressed than how he usually returns to us after a transformation.”

—--------------------

Remus Lupin was still sleeping, snoring like a sheepdog on the Tonks family kitchen table long after Andromeda’s anti-concussion spell had finished working. She had tucked a pillow under his healed head, covered him with a quilt, and forbade anyone to pester him for the rest of the morning.

It was her turn to dote on a loved one now, and she helped Narcissa to wash her shining hair and fasten all of the complex buckles and laces on the clothes Ted had brought her from Dora’s room.

Dora elbowed her father in the ribs as they stood doing the breakfast washing up over the sink. “You brought her my best jacket to wear,” she chided him in a whisper.

“What? That one? It’s all battered and wearing through.”

“Exactly.”

Andromeda had stepped out into the garden to receive the post, leaving Narcissa alone in the front room. She rose to approach the table again, checking on Remus. The dark bruise around his eye had already faded to the colour of a tea stain. Would his vision be returning to normal as well? Though his eyes were shut, she waved a hand in front of his face as if to test them.

As she watched, he began to stir, clenching his eyelids and raising a hand to his face. Narcissa was standing at his side as he opened his eyes. She did not know what he remembered of the night before, or how she should begin to tell him if he’d forgotten. If he didn’t remember, maybe she could continue pretending she’d merely been evicted, not divorced and remarried.

What she wasn’t expecting from him when he found her standing there, was for him to be laughing at her. “What’s with this new look?” he said. “You don’t usually go in for platinum blond.”

Narcissa blinked hard. “I don’t?”

“I mean,” he went on, pushing himself to sitting on the table, now dressed in Ted’s trousers and jumper, “it’s a stunning colour. But it does make you look a bit older. And didn’t you tell me that getting your hair as light as that was almost as unpleasant as cursing yourself? The eyes though – ”

“What about my eyes?” Narcissa said, her voice rising.

“Well, don’t you think they’re a bit…”

“A bit what?” she demanded. “You may say what you like about my hair, but my eyes are the image of my son’s and I will not hear a bad word about them.”

“Your son?”

“Ah Remus, you’re up. And looking only a little worse for wear,” said Ted, turning from the sink, a tea towel thrown over his shoulder. Dora turned with him, and at the sight of her, Remus looked sick all over again. His head pivoted, tracking from Dora to Narcissa and back again.

“Dora?” he said, feeling Narcissa’s arm through the sleeve of Dora’s favourite jacket.

“Over here. That’s my Aunt Narcissa you’ve got there,” Dora said. “Thought she was me metamorphized, did you? Well, that’s probably unfortunate.”

“It is indeed,” Narcissa said, wrenching her arm out of his grip.

Ted was laughing. “Sorry, that’s my doing. Dora’s clothes are a better fit for Cissa than Dromeda’s.”

Remus bowed his head into his hands. “Cissa?”

Dora was at his opposite side from where Narcissa stood. “What do you remember about last night? Anything?”

His hands dropped away as he let out a mighty sigh. “I don’t usually remember much but –” He turned to Narcissa. “I feel like I was at a grand house full of horrible people.”

“That’s my house,” she nodded. “Or, it was.”

“You-Know-Who threw Aunt out into the night,” Dora said.

“Yes, yes that’s right,” he said. “There was a cellar, and a…solicitor?”

Ted laughed. “You had your face carved up by Bellatrix Lestrange and what you’re remembering is a solicitor.”

“Well, yes. He was – he took my blood and –”

Narcissa was gripping his arm now. “Be still, Mr. Lupin. Collect your thoughts carefully so you don’t speak nonsense.”

She clamped his arm tighter when the kitchen door slammed. There stood Andromeda, back from the post, speechless, the morning edition of the Daily Prophet folded between her hands.

“Mum?” Dora said.

“Page four,” Andromeda said.

“The gossip page?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever it is, let’s hear it, Dromeda,” Ted said, clearing the quilt from the table so Andromeda could spread out the newspaper for everyone to see.

But she kept it folded close to her face as she began to read: “Ancient, enchanted grade two listed building Malfoy Manor has passed from the control of disgraced, incarcerated Death Eater, Lucius Malfoy, to his young son Draco.”

Dora huffed. “Didn’t take the press long to sort that out. You-Know-Who must have tipped them off himself.”

Andromeda hushed her so she could read further. “Inquiries into the cause of the sudden transfer uncovered the recent divorce of Malfoy from his wife of seventeen years, Narcissa Black.” Andromeda let the paper crumple between her hands. “Cissie, how could you not have told me?”

Narcissa had let go of Remus's arm and was now wringing her own hands. “It didn’t seem real. It was more like a mock proceeding the Dark Lord put on for his followers to mortify Lucius and myself. The whole thing was so absurd. I couldn’t give up hope that none of it mattered in the real world.”

“Well it does,” Andromeda said, “especially the last part. Shall I tell them the rest, or would you rather do it yourself?”

Narcissa pressed hard at her temples. “Just read it. But know we were forced, all of us.”

Andromeda nodded but did not go on. “Remus? Do you have anything to say?”

He gave a deep frown. “Me?”

“Mum, quit stalling,” Dora said. “Give it here.” She took the paper from Andromeda and spread it on the table, clearing her throat to read. “Details of this shocking marital breakdown are unknown, but our further inquiries revealed an even more recent registration of a marriage between Ms. Black and yet another wizard of dubious character, former Hogwarts professor now of no fixed address…”

Dora’s voice trailed away.

Ted leaned in to finish reading. “...of no fixed address, Remus J. Lupin. Blimey, that’s…”

Though Remus was well-known among his friends for his gift of having the right thing to say always at the ready, this morning, for the second time, he was found with nothing to say but, “Me?”

Dora stood back from the table. “It’s not binding. It can’t be. Aunt is right. It isn’t real.”

Just then the Floo was sparking, and an instant later, Dumbledore stood in the kitchen, fanning away the cloud of soot with his own morning edition of the newspaper.

“Oh good,” he began. “Here you all are. Most convenient. Not to worry, my friends. I have come with a plan.”

Chapter Text

All chances of sorting out the Daily Prophet’s announcement that Madam Narcissa Malfoy was now suddenly–and almost certainly illegally–Mrs. Remus Lupin seemed to disappear with the arrival of Albus Dumbledore.

Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin met the announcement that he had a plan with relief. Dumbledore was wise and trustworthy, and they had pledged themselves to his service through the Order of the Phoenix. They leaned toward him in the crowded kitchen, eager to hear his solutions.

To Narcissa, however, he was the force that had exposed the Dark Lord’s raid that Lucius had led on the Department of Mysteries. Without Dumbledore’s interference, she might not have lost her original husband and her home in the first place. She met his appearance with a seething rage.

What Ted and Andromeda Tonks met Dumbledore with was moderation. Yes, Dumbledore commanded respect for his talents, experience, and good intentions. But he did not command everything.

Andromeda, like her sister, knew how to arm herself with her good manners. “Good morning, Professor. Dora, put the kettle on. Ted, show the professor into the lounge. Remus can tell him about the difficulty he’s having with his Wolfsbane potions. Narcissa and I will rejoin you in a moment. Do excuse us.”

Without giving anyone time to object, Andromeda had towed Narcissa by the hand up the stairs to the privacy of her bedroom.

“I’m sorry I tried to keep this ridiculous mess from you,” Narcissa said as they fell to sitting on the bed. “I couldn’t bring myself to speak of it out loud. How could I admit that after seventeen years, Lucius and I are…” Her voice quavered into silence.

“My poor darling,” Andromeda said, crushing her sister close. “Your Malfoy wouldn’t spare me a glance, but the pair of you certainly looked like a — a well-matched marriage. What a terrible loss it must be for you.”

Narcissa confirmed it with a sob. “And Draco,” she managed to say. “Our son – this is how he will learn what’s happened too. He will hear of it in the Hogwarts dining hall from that gloating know-it-all girl who reads bits out of the newspaper aloud to the Gryffindor table.”

Andromeda clucked her tongue. “Then I’ll send Dumbledore right back to his school to see no one abuses your son over this. Whatever other plans he has can wait until he’s taken care of his first responsibility to those children.”

Narcissa sat back, taking her face out of Andromeda’s shoulder and burying it in her handkerchief instead. “But he’s right in saying I need a plan, Medie,” she said. “I hate it, but I don’t know where to begin.”

“You begin by annulling this sham of a marriage and divorce, of course,” she said. “By British common law, only adult humans can enter into binding contracts – oh, and goblins.”

“And centaurs.”

“And vampires.”

“Merpeople, perhaps –”

“But definitely not werewolves in anything but their human forms,” Andromeda finished. “And once it’s annulled we can work with HM Prison Service to restore your marriage to Malfoy, if that’s what you want. Surely he was coerced into agreeing to the divorce without real and meaningful consent just as you were. We’ll start with all of that. Simple enough.”

“Only it isn’t simple at all,” Narcissa said, her eyes nearly dry now. “And though my heart aches to go to Draco, I can’t. He is bound in the Dark Lord’s service. It’s through threatening him that they force Lucius and I to comply with what we know will hurt us. If I raise a commotion, if I defy them any more than I already have by not killing Mr. Lupin last night, I fear they’ll…bother Draco.”

Andromeda gave a sigh. “How did they force you to bring Draco into You-Know-Who’s service? He can’t be much older than seventeen.”

“Sixteen,” Narcissa said, her tears renewing themselves. “It was Lucius’s doing, and the closest we ever came to a rift between us before…before…” She still couldn’t say it.

Andromeda stroked her silky platinum hair. “Well, even if you do want to keep Malfoy after what he’s done, we don’t need to bother with the remarriage yet. It hardly matters while Malfoy is in jail. But we can manage the divorce from Remus quietly enough.” She squeezed Narcissa in a side-hug. “No one will dissuade us of that.”

Narcissa cleared her throat, her head wobbling in something like a nod.

“Right,” Andromeda said with a decisive nod of her own. “Now we may as well hear the Professor’s plan. He did come all this way. But listening doesn’t mean we’re bound by it. Come along.”

The Sisters Black had been raised in a large house full of dark, secret conversations. It gave them the habit of opening doors slowly, listening at them before stepping through them, as Andromeda did now. With the door to her bedroom cracked, she and Narcissa could hear voices from the lounge below.

“So that explains it,” Remus was saying. “Snape can’t be relied upon to brew my potion when he’s confined to Hogwarts fulfilling an Unbreakable Vow involving one of his students.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore said.

“And the student isn’t Harry?” Remus pressed.

“No.”

“Unbelievable. What kind of selfish lunatic would push one of the most powerful potions masters of our age into an Unbreakable Vow over an ordinary student?” Dora raved.

“And what do they have on him that would make him agree to it?” Ted added.

Narcissa stepped out of the bedroom but kept to the shadows at the top of the stairs.

“Now, now, let’s not rush to judgment,” Dumbledore said, lifting his eyes toward her.

Dora took no notice. “I suppose Remus will need to learn to brew it up himself.”

“Odd he doesn’t do it himself already, really,” Ted mused, harmlessly enough. “Is it all the essence of aconite it takes to make Wolfsbane? Is it that so toxic to werewo – er, to you?”

Remus hummed. “Yes, exactly. One stray aconite fume and that’d be the end of me, transformed or not.”

“Well, I’ll figure out how to make it for him then,” Dora said. “I got an O on my Potions N.E.W.T.”

Ted huffed. “Yes, but you’ve chosen to develop other talents since then. You hardly ever brew anything now. This tea you’ve made for the Professor is barely tolerable, my dear.”

There was a sound of boots on the floor, Dora getting to her feet to pace. “I’ll do it anyway. I’ll muddle through it. If the potion takes one lunar cycle to brew, we need to begin it today or Remus is going to be forced into another transformation next month.”

Dumbledore’s eyes still twinkled even as he shook his head. “Wolfsbane is not a suitable potion for a refresher course. Too much muddling and Remus might not survive. But fortunately, there is someone within earshot already adept in brewing a safe and sufficient Wolfsbane potion for us.”

Eyes wide, Andromeda turned to her sister. Narcissa drew in a breath and stepped into the light, descending the stairs.

“Here she is,” Dumbledore beamed. “What none of you may know is that Narcissa was Severus Snape’s lab partner when he was taking Advanced Potions two years earlier than the rest of his Hogwarts class. I remember the partnership well. A perfect match in skill and talent.”

Narcissa nodded. “You are very kind, sir.”

“And you’ve kept up your skills?” Dora asked.

Narcissa fought not to bristle at Dora’s surprise at hearing her spoiled old Aunt was still an accomplished potioneer. “Yes. The Dark Lord has several werewolves in his employ. To keep them untransformed as they’re coming and going from the manor, I maintain – maintained a ready stock of Wolfsbane potion.”

“Excellent,” said Dumbledore. “I can give you access to the lab in Severus’s home in Cokeworth and, if you’re willing, you may begin to brew tonight.”

Dora stopped her pacing and sat heavily on the sofa beside Remus again. “Oh, thank the stars.”

Ted slapped Remus lightly on the knee. “I knew little sister would do you good.”

“And you shall do her good in return,” Dumbledore said, his eyes fixed on Remus.

“I hope to,” Remus said. “Though I have little to offer, I’m afraid.”

“You have enough,” Dumbledore went on. “Narcissa, my dear, I am afraid that while you work at brewing, you will be in need of protection and refuge – “

“Which she will find here,” Andromeda interrupted. “She won’t be spending any more time than necessary at Snape’s house. She’s one of us now and her place is here.”

There was a beat of uneasy silence, a bluejay crying in the fir trees along the lane outside, before Dumbledore resumed. “This household is already at risk. Ted’s family history makes him a target, as does Dora’s position as an Auror, to say nothing of any personal vendettas Madam Lestrange may hold against the three of you. After her fatal attack on her cousin Sirius, we know her violence is not constrained by family ties. And now that the Malfoys have been singled out for such bizarre acts of revenge as we saw last night, I fear it would not be wise to add Narcissa to the household. I propose instead that she stay,” he drew a deep breath, “with her husband.”

The next heavy silence was broken by a laughing scoff from Ted Tonks. “You mean to protect her in Azkaban with Malfoy? I really don’t think so, Professor.”

“Not at all,” he went on. “I mean safety in Severus’s well-warded but unassuming Muggle house with its fully stocked potions lab and with the husband we have before us this morning: with Remus.”

All at once, everyone was speaking at the same time.

“That’s a bit much, now isn’t it?” Ted said.

“Remus can’t be her husband if he wasn’t able to legally consent to the marital contract,” Dora was insisting, rightly enough, slapping the back of one hand into the palm of the other.

“Cissie is traumatized and exhausted and will not be entering into any daft, risky agreements in such a state…” Andromeda said, her arm linked through her sister’s.

“Everyone quiet, please,” Remus was saying. “Please, we need to talk about this reasonably…”

“Enough!” Narcissa called over the din. “The decision is Mr. Lupin’s and my own. We will discuss it freely and privately. Medie, show us to someplace quiet.”

It was Ted who led them to a shed near the back of the garden. “My ice fishing shack,” he explained. “Every year, I take it up north in the dead of winter to fish on the frozen lochs. One of the best things about Muggle culture, ice fishing. Shack’s not too fancy though. Hope that’s alright, Cissa.”

“Yes, thank you, Ted. You're a dear,” she said.

With the plank that served as its door shut, the shack was lit through windows about the size of Ted’s face in each of its sides. A single three-legged stool stood against the wall. Remus pulled it into the centre of the room and motioned for Narcissa to sit.

“Take a seat yourself,” she said.

He shook his head. “No, my mother raised me better than that.”

She frowned, dredging her memory for what little she remembered of him from when he was her cousin’s best friend at Hogwarts. “Who is your mother? Do I know the family?”

Remus squared his shoulders. “No, you wouldn’t. My mother is a lovely woman named Hope. A Muggle.”

Narcissa saw the bait but did not rise to it. “Sit down all the same,” she said. “You’re much too tall for me to be able to see your face comfortably when I’m talking to you in such a small and dark space.”

He obliged her, sitting on the stool, his feet braced apart on the floor.

“Listen to me,” she said, stepping closer, to where they were both in the light. “You know Draco, my son.”

“Yes, of course.”

There was a pause, each of them carefully regarding one another’s faces. The blue she’d seen in his eyes as the werewolf by the light of her wand in the cellar stairwell was now gone. In daylight, as a human, his eyes were a warm, woody brown.

“To attract the attention of the Dark Lord to myself by resisting him would only prompt him to lash out and hurt Draco worse than he has done already. I cannot have that. Dumbledore is right. He and Severus, as Draco’s house leader, will care for him while I must go into hiding for the next year,” she said.

“Why only a year?” he asked.

She stiffened again, as she always did whenever she thought of the impossible task the Dark Lord had given Draco at Hogwarts. “For at least a year then,” she allowed.

Remus stretched out his legs, crossing his ankles. “I see. And since I will be dependent on you for my potion, in return, you can depend on me to be your partner in staying safely hidden. This isn’t your conversion to our ideologies, not a personal venture at all, just a transaction between two people who each have something the other needs.”

She swallowed. “No, it’s more than that.” In the dimness, outside the reach of the beams of light through the windows, she found his hand. She held it in her left hand and she placed his fingertips over the bruises he’d left on her right hand during their Apparation the night before. His skin was cooler than it had been then, his pulse slower, less frenzied and wild. “It’s something Ted said when you were sleeping through your healing spells.”

As she spoke, Remus raised their hands into the light, seeing her bruises, frowning at them.

“Ted said when you act according to your instincts, your judgment is at its best.”

Remus smirked, raising his wand over her bruises. “Ah, but instincts are for spiders building webs, or birds who don’t need to be taught how to sing. Humans don’t have them. We only have reflexes. Maybe intuition, if we're lucky."

“But werewolves might have instincts,” she said. “And in my cellar last night, when I stood aside on the stairs to set you free, you rushed at me –”

“The werewolf rushed at you –”

“Yes, you did.” She spoke to the top of his head as he bent over her hand, muttering spells almost inaudibly over her bruises. “And there was a moment like this, when we were close, face-to-face. You stopped. I thought you might bite me, maybe kill me, and instead you left me unharmed. A higher instinct in you overpowered your mere hunger for blood and you to let me live.”

With a final flourish of his wand, her hand was healed. “You’re telling me Moony spared you?”

“Moony?”

“The werewolf.”

“You?”

“Yes, fine. You’re saying you looked into the werewolf’s eyes, saw his teeth –”

“Smelled the blood on his breath. Yes, everything.”

“And he spared you?” Remus waited. His wand in one hand, Narcissa’s healed hand in the other.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Obvious, perhaps, but also impossible. You did something to fend him off. Wordless, wandless magic, perhaps.”

“I didn’t.”

“You must have. You don’t know Moony. He would attack any of the people I love most in the world without a moment’s hesitation. The last one he went after was Sirius himself, for stars sake.” He dropped her hand to scrub his face with his palms.

She turned her back to him, looking out the window to where her rediscovered family was waiting in the hidden cottage across the garden. “Loving someone is not the same thing as not hurting them.”

“That’s exactly what loving someone is,” he said.

She sniffed a laugh. “No. Look at my Lucius. Look at what a terrible protector he’s been to me and to Draco. Nothing endangers us more than his choices. And I suppose I haven’t done well at protecting him either. But I have reason to hope you may be of some use to us, Mr. Lupin…”

He blew out his breath. “It’s going to be a long, awkward year if you don’t start calling me Remus soon.”

“Remus.” She turned to face him again. “And I’ll be just Narcissa.”

“Yes, I believe the last thing either of us wants to hear you called is Madam Lupin.”

“Quite right,” she said, and they shared a melancholy laugh.

—-------------------

Dora sat in open misery as Dumbledore spun the ludicrous arrangement between Remus and Narcissa into something even more absurd.

“Cokeworth,” he explained, “is not a large centre for wizarding life. When Severus is there, he takes pains to be inconspicuous to his neighbours.”

“The house is visible to Muggles?” Dora asked.

“It is the house he acquired through his Muggle father. Severus has modified it with the potions lab and with spells of protection, but in every other way, it is a thoroughly Muggle house.”

Andromeda scoffed. “Cissie won’t know the first thing about living in a house like that.”

“But I will,” Remus said. “It will be more like the house my mother raised me in than anywhere I’ve lived in wizarding Britain.”

“Good reason to keep him in the kitchen and yourself out of it, eh Cissa?” Ted laughed.

“It is, isn’t it?” she said. “How does my brother-in-law understand me so well so early in our friendship?”

“You’ll need to dress down quite a bit, Aunt,” Dora was saying, smoothing Narcissa’s hair into a slick pony tail. “Nothing posh. Have you heard of jeans? They’re blue and Muggles keep wearing them even after they rip open at the knees.”

Remus ran a hand through his own hair. “Right. So like Severus, we’ll keep to ourselves, stay inside and wait out the year.”

“And I’ll check in on you whenever I can,” Dora said. “Maybe come to stay the weekends. And around the holidays and such. Say, do you think Severus ever wears jeans around Cokeworth?”

Dumbledore raised one finger. “I’m afraid,” he began, “that in the interest of maintaining your cover, contact with other wizards and witches should be kept to a minimum. And I will need to ask more of you than to merely stay out of sight. A house of mysterious, seldom-seen neighbours attracts notice and suspicion. What would be less conspicuous would be if you were to meld into the community.”

Ted scoffed. “Like a proper family. These two?”

Dumbledore took a pencil box from his robes and threw it to the ground where it became a large trunk. “Not exactly these two. We have false identities prepared for both of you.”

“We?” Remus said.

“Yes, Severus and myself could not simply toss you through the floo and into Spinner’s End. The house alarms would have murdered you right there on the hearth,” Dumbledore said. “You may keep your own first names but you will use the surname Warry. Remus Warry is a professor of folklore currently on sabbatical from Joe Clark University, in Canada. Narcissa Warry is a chemical engineer and a divorcee with one son away at school. Recently married, they are hoping to start a new life together in Cokeworth.”

Andromeda shook her head. “Cokeworth. Really.”

“It’s expected, in the Muggle world, for chemical engineers to live near industrial sites like those of Cokeworth. Greet your neighbours warmly, accept their friendship. In other words,” Dumbledore said, lifting the lid of the trunk full of what he had been told were normal Muggle clothes, “fit in.”

By mid-afternoon, Narcissa had already left for Cokeworth through Andromeda’s Floo. Nothing in Dumbledore’s trunk looked anything but out of place on her, and it was Dora who perfected her Muggle disguise. She wore high heeled black pumps, a brown wool suit and over top of it, a vest of bright orange nylon striped with silver that did something strange to the light.

“It’s a high visibility vest,” Dora said as she smoothed it over her Aunt’s shoulders. “Engineers wear them with everything, like a uniform.”

Next to pass through the floo was Remus. Dora hadn’t tampered with his clothing much. She’d shrunk Ted’s jumper and dark green corduroy trousers to better fit him and perched a pair of dark-rimmed spectacles with clear glass lenses on his nose. “There,” she said, winding a striped muffler around his neck, her hand shaking ever so slightly.

“One last thing.” She rose onto her toes and kissed his cheek.

He jumped at the touch, his face flushed pink.

“I’m off to Hogwarts for a term of guard duty,” she said. “Don’t forget me, Professor Warry.”

He managed a smile. “How could I possibly?”

He hadn’t kissed her, but Dora was blushing all the same.

______

As Remus passed through the Spinner’s End floo, the first thing he was able to see was the high visibility vest Dora had dressed Narcissa in. He saw it through the haze of soot and floo powder as he arrived in the musty, book-lined lounge of what must have been Severus Snape’s house.

Though Remus had never been invited there before, Narcissa seemed to know the place. She was already at the bookcase tipping volumes out and then back over and over again.

“Oh good. Your delay was just long enough to have me wondering if you’d changed your mind,” she said, not turning to look at him. “You can start at the opposite end of the shelf. Dumbledore said one of these books was the switch to open the passageway.”

Remus hummed. “A mechanical rather than magical switch. This really is a Muggle house.”

“Yes, it’s vexing me already.”

Remus clucked his tongue. “What are you like? Just think of it as quaint. A hidden book switch is an old trope from Muggle mystery novels.”

“They have novels?”

“Reams of them, yes. They’re delightful writers,” Remus said, still not started on his shelf of books. “Here, take that vest off.”

“This? But Dora said engineers wear them. You all assured me she knows about such things.”

“Yes, but she’s only half right this time,” he said. “These vests are worn outdoors where there is a lot of traffic or heavy machinery. They’re meant to keep you from being run down by a lorry. They aren’t worn indoors.”

Narcissa looked down at herself. “Oh. So I look like a lunatic, if you’ll pardon the expression. And you said nothing of it before so as not to embarrass Dora.”

He shrugged, reaching for the bottom edge of the vest to pull it up over Narcissa’s head. She raised her arms to let him lift it free of her, but her hair became caught and she stood awkwardly close as he worked to untangle it from the vest’s velcro closures without pulling. “Sorry,” he said. “Your hair’s so fine, like a web.”

“Not a compliment, Mr. Lu – my dear Remus,” she said, finishing the last of the job herself.

“What you can wear,” he said, dropping the vest on the sofa, “is this. It’s called a lab coat and it serves the same function as school robes do.”

She huffed. “You mean, as long sleeves to trail through our work?”

“No, as protection,” he said as if she hadn’t been joking. “Though it’s protection for me more than for you, in this case. If you had aconite on your clothes when I call you up for tea, it might be my last meal. If you wear this over your clothes in the lab, you can take it off and leave it there so the rest of the house isn’t contaminated.”

She gave a nod. “Right.”

“See? Muggles are smart.”

She was still nodding. “High viz vest no, boring white smock of a lab coat yes.”

“Right. Any other questions?”

“Yes. Are you in love with our Dora?”

Her face was turned up to his, and they were close enough for her to see his cheeks flush pink and his throat ripple in a hard swallow.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I decided months ago not to think about it.”

She folded her arms at her middle. “So the answer is ‘yes’ she is, but you ignore it.”

“That’s not what I said.” Remus turned his back to her, frantic to find the book switch all of a sudden. “I know she would like me to know and to do something about it but – I’m no good as a real husband. I can serve for shams like this but – she doesn’t know Moony. I can’t marry myself to anyone who doesn’t know him. And since he wants to murder every human he sees, no one can ever know him. So that’s the end of that. Dora is too young for me, anyway. She’s lovely and she’ll find someone else easily enough.”

Narcissa made no answer. The sole of her shoe continued to tap steadily against the dull wooden floor, inviting him to turn to face her again. When he did, her arms were still folded and her head was cocked at an angle that told him she didn’t believe a word what he’d said about Dora.

“Alright, look,” he said. “I know this arrangement of ours isn’t a ‘proper’ marriage, but I don’t want it to be wholly – improper either.”

Narcissa uncocked her head. “Oh, so you mean to play this honorably? You mean for us to be loyal to one another even as we pretend at this? Loyal to each other in spite of my niece who’s pining for you?”

Remus rolled his shoulders and went back to his work at the bookshelf. “Yes. Whatever Dora is trying to offer me it’s – it’s suspended at least until this year is through. I won’t consider a relationship with her or anyone else. It would be foolhardy, selfish to do so.”

“Selfish,” Narcissa repeated. “I won’t say I’m not selfish, but you can be sure there’ll be no outside relationships for me, what with the love of my life locked up in Azkaban. Though having a husband, even a fake one, with no outside relationships of his own will be a bit of an adjustment for me.”

Remus froze over his shelf. “He wasn’t faithful to you?”

“No. Not before we were married and not after. Never.” Narcissa said it in a light tone, offhandedly, as she slid her arms into the lab coat. “Men of a certain echelon generally keep mistresses. My father did, and Lucius’s father, so of course Lucius is no different. Those girls must be missing him terribly while he’s away. Poor dears.”

Remus gave a shudder Narcissa didn’t see, her face turned to the books again. “I do hope Draco will not be the same when he’s married. The world may have changed quite a lot by then.”

“So you don’t think it’s alright,” he said.

“I never said I did. I said it was normal, which is not at all the same as alright.”

He gave a sigh. “You don’t have to go back to him, you know. When this is over, you can divorce me and stay single. I’ve never been in a couple myself. It’s not a bad life. Though it was less lonely before your lot slaughtered or corrupted all my best mates, but –”

“Ah ha!” Narcissa called. “This one is sticking. I think I’ve found the switch.”

Remus darted around the sofa to stand beside her. Beneath her finger was a thick red book. “Looks like a romance,” she said. “Hard to tell from the title, but look at those swirly, romantic letters.”

The title on the book’s spine read Always. The rest of the cover named no author and the pages inside seemed to be glued together into a single pulpy mass. “Snape will never cease to surprise me,” Remus said. “Shall I pull it?”

“You can try, but the mechanism is quite stiff, we may need to –”

With the effort of both of Remus’s hands, the book switch creaked to life. A panel of the wall slipped past the rest, sending up a shower of plaster dust and revealing a dark, narrow space even Narcissa would have to turn sideways to enter.

“You forced it,” she said, and for a moment, Narcissa looked almost impressed with Remus before she flounced toward the passageway. “You’d best not follow me,” she said, lighting her wand. “If there are no more mystery tropes, I’ll be back in three hours. I take my tea with heather honey.”

Chapter Text

Keen on not dying of aconite poisoning in the potions lab in the cellar of Severus Snape’s house at Spinner’s End, Remus let Narcissa brew his Wolfsbane without him. While she worked, he tried to settle into this very inhospitable little house. It lacked the soft coziness of the Muggle house he was raised in. Here, all the angles were sharp and irregular, as if it was trying to catch on his clothes or trip up his steps.

Climbing the narrow staircase to the topmost level, he found only two rooms. There was a loo with an immense, rusty looking bathtub that couldn’t possibly have been moved up the stairs by brute strength alone. The bed was likewise oversized, and crafted in an ornate wizarding style with high corner posts hung with bed curtains. It would have to do for Narcissa. The bathtub, however, called for wand work to de-rust it and Remus gave it his best. Dumbledore might not know of them, but there were ways Muggle-born and Mixed-born wizards knew to do a little household magic without being detected by the neighbours.

Judging by the size of the main floor, there ought to have been at least one more bedroom upstairs, but no other doors were visible. If Severus had hidden his own room away, Remus was just as happy not to have to see it. The missing room did mean, however, that Remus would need to improvise his own sleeping quarters.

Off the kitchen, was a nearly empty larder. If he cleared away the disused cooking utensils on the sideboard there, he might be able to transform the chipped butcher block slab into a bed. It was a musty room with one tiny, high window curtained in cobwebs. If he hadn’t spent so many of his schooldays crashing in a place called the Shrieking Shack, he might have despaired at it. What would Narcissa think of what he’d managed to do to make a comfortable bedroom out of it? Oh, that hardly mattered. Whatever the coming year held for them, there would be no more need for them to be in one another’s bedrooms.

In the kitchen itself, he found a few canisters of dry goods: sugar, tea bags, rolled oats, rice, and long, straight noodles like linguini that swelled into yellow pasta snakes’ heads on one end. There was also a tin of biscuits of uncertain age and a sticky bottle of extremely crystallized honey. They would need to go to the shops for real food. Either that or he’d be fixing porridge for his fancy new wife’s first supper in their dreadful little home.

He leaned forward, his elbows on the kitchen sideboard, his head in his hands, laughing quietly, morosely to himself at the ridiculousness of it all. What else could he do?

It was about time Narcissa reappeared upstairs, wasn't it? He’d cleaned and organized the house, made a pot of tea, deemed the biscuits safe to eat. How could she still be working? For all Remus knew, she hadn’t slept at all the night before. He'd only slept for a few hours on the Tonks’ kitchen table himself. Now he'd remembered how nice sleep was, he was yawning, fluffing up the cushions he’d taken from the lounge for his sideboard bed and lying down on them, just for a moment. Even though the bed wasn’t quite long enough for him to straighten his legs, he was soon asleep.

When he awakened, it was with a start. The light through the larder’s window was far more oblique than it had been when he lay down in the middle of the afternoon. As he sat up, the hair on the back of his neck prickled, raised as if in alarm, though the house was quiet. It was a reaction he knew well, almost like an animal sense, and it only stirred when dark magic was about. The lads – James, Sirius, and even Peter – they had the same kind of sense, thanks to their animagus status. In them, it was wild in a neutral way, like the turning of a compass. For Remus, it was a sign that darkness was near enough to resonate with his own wolfish curse.

It was time to find Narcissa.

In the lounge, the passage through the plaster wall into the cellar had been closed, the thick red book slid back into its place on the shelf. Narcissa’s brown wool jacket lay elegantly draped over the back of a shabby armchair. He held the cuff between his thumb and forefinger. The outside was a rough weave. The inside was lined with something smooth.

“It isn’t silk,” Narcissa had frowned as Tonks had handed it to her from Dumbledore’s trunk of Muggle clothes. “It’s not made of anything grown out of this earth. It’s…”

“Chemical,” Remus had supplied. “Probably nylon.”

“Nylon? Is it safe?” Narcissa had asked.

He’d laughed at her. “Yes, perfectly safe. Common as anything. Take it from me, sworn as I am to protect you.”

He dropped the cuff, his prickling skin on his neck grown clammy and cold. She must be upstairs. The wood creaked like a decrepit, untuned xylophone as he climbed the stairs. The door to the bedroom was open and a flash of long platinum hair reassured him that Narcissa was indeed safely asleep. She was as she should be after a long, heartbreaking, exhausting day.

To be sure of it, he stepped over the threshold, into her bedroom again. She lay on her side, her face turned to the pillow, her body on top of the covers, one stockinged foot jutting over the edge of the bed. The cold sweat on Remus’s neck flared hot. Her posture was more like that of someone who had collapsed in a faint than of someone who’d put herself to bed right after taking such care not to rumple her cheap, borrowed jacket.

Another step closer and he could see her ribs moving in the slow rhythm of her breath. She was deeply asleep. Nothing was amiss here – so why was the prickling not abating but moving down his neck, into his arms, along his spine to course through the backs of his legs?

“Narcissa?”

She didn’t move.

Louder. “Narcissa?”

Nothing.

He reached out to prod her arm, to shake her awake. The wave hit him before he could touch her, the force of a hex that would have dropped anyone not already profoundly cursed. A snarl tore from his throat as he threw himself back before whatever it was could take him too. He sat on the floor, panting with the exertion of escaping the hex, fighting to think like a man instead of a creature. The wolf in him wanted to bolt, to flee from the bedroom like a bull avoiding an electric fence on a Muggle farm. But he was not all wolf. He was a person who needed to get this woman out of the hexed space. He rose to his feet and faced the bed.

In the split second of delay his dual werewolf-self gave him before succumbing to the hex, Remus thrust an arm back beneath the shadow of the bed curtain rails, clamped his grip around Narcissa’s waist, and dragged her out. Dazed but unhexed, he sat on the floor with her limp, still-sleeping body folded in his lap. There was no chocolate stashed in the pockets of the borrowed trousers to ease his brush with the darkness. But he had to press on anyway.

He sat Narcissa up in the crook of his arm, tapping the flat of his opposite hand against her cheek. “Narcissa. Madam. Please, you must wake up.”

He coughed past the sound of a growl in his voice, fumbling for his wand, trying to reverse whatever bad spell this was. “Rennervate.”

Nothing.

“Come on, Cissa.”

This was no light spell. She was alive and seemed physically uninjured but he needed help to revive her. On orders from Dumbledore, he couldn’t summon any other wizards here. With Death Eaters infiltrating all their institutions, he couldn’t very well deliver Narcissa over to whoever might now be in charge at St. Mungo’s. But there was still Hogwarts. It was impossible for him to Apparate there but he still knew the password for the Hogwarts Floos.

Gathering her up, Remus got to his feet, turning sideways to carry Narcissa down the stairs to the fireplace in the lounge. Where did Snape keep the bloody Floo powder –

“What – are – you doing?”

Remus jumped, gripping Narcissa tight to his chest. He yelped a swear. “Severus. Quick, help. The bed –”

Snape paced slowly across the rug, moving toward where they stood by the hearth them without looking Remus in the face, regarding Narcissa instead, his eyebrows bent as if trying to inch down the bridge of his nose. “Yes, that bed is charmed to disable intruders and sound an alarm in my office so I may – intercept them.”

Remus’s voice was still loud and frantic. “Why on earth did you leave it armed? You knew we were here. You agreed to it.”

“I knew you were arriving this afternoon and I left my post this morning at great inconvenience to myself and the school to disable all of the house’s deadliest hexes –”

“Only the deadliest?”

“Yes. My time away from school is short. The rest of the hexes I intended to leave until my dinner break, which is now. How was I to know the pair of you would be in such a rush to go to — to retire for the evening?” His wand produced, Snape stepped as close to Remus as he could stand and muttered a spell over the woman sleeping eerily peacefully in his arms.

“Nothing’s happening.”

“Wait. It’s slow-acting. Too abrupt of a waking spell often leads to a punch in the face.”

Remus knew this, and remembered that Sirius would have said that was half the fun. Most of the time, Narcissa bore hardly any family resemblance to Sirius, but Remus saw a flash of one as her face reanimated. Her expression was changing from angelic peace to the faces Sirius would pull when waking up the morning after partying.

All resemblance to him vanished as she opened her eyes. She looked into Remus’s face, returning his puzzled stare, lifting her hand to brush her fingertips along the end of the short, neat mustache over his lip. “Oh,” she said, as if startled to find him real to the touch. Her hand dropped away. “Sorry. What’s happened?”

“Nothing of concern,” came Snape’s reply.

Narcissa gasped. “Draco!”

“No it’s –” Remus could say no more. Narcissa was pushing at him, swinging her legs as if desperate to dismount a horse. He set her down, terribly bewildered to hear her address Snape as Draco.

“What’s happened to Draco?” she said, taking Snape by his lapels. “What have they done to him? Severus, please –”

“Nothing, as of yet. Draco is as well as he can be,” Snape said, letting her back him into the bookcase.

“But why have you left him? He’s not safe.”

“He is,” Snape said, covering her hands with his. “I left him in the dining hall for his evening meal with the entire Hogwarts faculty watching over him. He is quite safe for now, but I have little time and a few more household alarms to disable.”

Narcissa fell back, unhanding Snape’s robes. “Be quick then. But wait!” she said, grabbing at him again. “How did he take the news in the Prophet this morning about the – changes at home? Was he taunted for it? Were the other students cruel?”

The angle of Snape’s shoulders softened. “I tried my best to find him and deliver the news before he reached the dining hall at breakfast. Though I met him at the doors, someone had already told him. The Granger girl. She swore to me she only sought him out to tell him to spare him the added shock of finding out in public, but…”

Remus saw it: the moment Snape decided that allaying Narcissa’s grief was more important than indulging in calling Hermione Granger an insufferable know-it-all once again. He saw Snape swallow the habit down to finish with words of hope instead. “But you may be assured I did my best to explain the nature of your unfortunate and temporary situation.”

“Oh my poor Draco, was he…?” Narcissa could not bring herself to ask if Draco was alright. Of course he wasn’t.

Snape shook his head. “He is grieving, yet resilient. Take heart, Cissa.”

Head bowed, she stepped away from him. “Thank you, Severus.”

Snape cleared his throat as he glanced toward the kitchen. “Indeed. Now. As the house isn’t swarming with snakes, I assume you haven’t tried to cook the serpent-ghetti. I’ll take it away with me, shall I?” He waited for no answer as he strode into the kitchen.

As Snape’s cloak whirled out of sight, Remus crossed the floor to Narcissa in a single step. “It’s you.”

“What is?”

“You,” he whispered to her. “You’re the – how did Dora put it – the selfish lunatic who made an Unbreakable Vow with Severus over the safety of a single student, over your Draco.”

Narcissa lifted her chin. “That’s OUR Draco now, husband. And what of it?”

Remus huffed. “None of this would have happened if Severus hadn't been bound by a vow and was free to make my Wolfsbane potion on time.”

“None of it would have happened to you, that is.”

“Yes, and look at the chaos you’ve caused.”

“You heard Severus. ‘Inconvenience’ was the word he used.” She took up her jacket and put it back on, flipping her hair over its collar. “And I daresay I’m entitled to take something from the Death Eaters after they cost my son the protection of his father, inept as it was. I’ve been thinking of it this way all afternoon as I brewed your potion. For my family’s protection, I take Severus from the Death Eaters, and from Dumbledore I take you.”

Remus turned on the spot, rubbing at his eyes. “Why did Snape agree to the vow?”

Narcissa drifted into a sitting position on the sofa, “He’s a dear old family friend. Severus was brought to my father’s house during his sixth and seventh year summers to learn Occlumency with us. How else do you think he’d know it so well? The House of Black is famous for its skill in Occlumency. Father always said Bella was the strongest Occlumens among us, but mother said he just didn’t appreciate the gentler character of my skills. Bella is more brutish, showy. But Severus – his skills had the best of both of ours. It’s part of what makes him worthy to protect my son.”

“He accepted the vow because your family taught him Occlumency?”

Narcissa wobbled her head. “Well, that and the fact that Bella followed along with me and was all but blackmailing him to agree.”

“Right.” Remus let himself fall into the armchair beside her. “So you trust a man who was manipulated into a vow and who, just now, hexed you into some kind of unwakeable sleep.”

Narcissa clucked her tongue. “The sleep was a mere mishap. Acceptable risk. No harm done. He came with a counter-curse in the end. Don’t these things also happen all the time among your friends?”

“No. Well, yes. But why did it take so long for him to put it right?” Remus asked as Snape twirled back into the room, having found his way upstairs somehow. “There must have been was quite a lag between Narcissa going to bed and your appearance.”

Snape managed to both scowl and roll his eyes at once. “As I said, it was just before dinnertime and as I knew there was hardly any unjinxed food here I waited while the school kitchen prepared a basket for you. I am, after a fashion, your host. In fact, I would have laid it out for you in the larder but someone’s built a blanket fort out of it. You’ll find the basket on the table instead. Now, since I’m sure Cissa is anxious for me to return to my responsibilities at the school, I’ll be off. Do – take – care.”

Neither of them spoke again until the crack of Snape’s Apparation signaled his going. Remus was first to lift his head and sniff at the air. There was indeed food in the kitchen, and he was famished.

He stood. “Come along. Let’s eat.”

She sighed. “I can wait until you’re finished if you’re too angry with me to eat.”

“I am angry with you. But we’ll get along better later if we eat together now.” He extended his hand. “Let’s go. It smells like Hogwarts beef stew and fresh brown bread. You remember how nice it is.”

“I do.” She slid her small white hand into his and rose as he tugged at it. “And what’s all this about a blanket fort?”

Chapter Text

Remus Lupin and his new wife bought far more groceries from their local shop than they could comfortably carry on the short walk back to Spinner’s End.

“I still don't understand,” Narcissa said, glancing behind them again. “We left with all this food but we gave them no gold at all? And no one's chasing after us?”

Remus sniffed a laugh. “Yes. As I said, when I gave them the little plastic card and typed the number Dumbledore gave us into the machine, it was the same as paying them. So you can slow down. Please, before you hurt yourself.”

She hefted her paper sack, searching fruitlessly for a better hold on it. “It's the tins. Why do the Muggles put their food in tins when it’s so heavy that way?”

“Why indeed.”

“It must taste better out of tins.”

He laughed again. “You'll have to judge for yourself.”

Paper rustled as she continued to fumble with the sack. “Are you certain we can't just discreetly levitate these home without risking an inter-ministerial crisis?”

Remus stopped to face Narcissa, leaning into her to take her load from her. “There. Now stop rushing about like a fugitive and slow to a stroll. And smile at the nice neighbours we're under orders to fit in with. Honestly, how can Dora be known as a master of disguise, when her aunt is quite the opposite?”

Narcissa answered by drawing more attention to herself, With her arms now free, she stretched them over her head and let them drop to her sides. Was there any point in hiding themselves so early on a Saturday, with so few people out in the wet street? She didn’t care to argue about it.

“You know,” she said instead, “I suspect you're much stronger than you look.”

He nodded over the three sacks he now carried in his long, lean arms. “Yes. Though I have no idea how strong you think I look.”

She hummed. “Is the strength rooted in the fact that you’re…well, that you're…”

“Yes.”

Narcissa folded her arms across her middle. “Ah. So the inner wolf isn’t all bad.”

“It most certainly is all bad.”

She scoffed, flicking away an elm seed that had fallen into her hair. “That hasn’t been my experience.”

“Your experience is too scant to offer much insight. Your opinions on Moony are like your views on tinned food. Interesting but off the mark.”

“Not at all.” She unfolded her arms and wedged one hand into the crook of his elbow, nodding and murmuring “Good morning” to an older man wheeling a bin from the pavement and into his garden. Remus tensed at her touch though he knew it was only part of her happy-families act, a bid to blend in.

He had to learn to receive touch from other people as if it was natural for him, though it was not at all. When Sirius was alive, they had natural touch between them. Dora touched him sometimes but she invested too much in it, taking it far too seriously for him to act naturally about it. But Narcissa’s touch was careless and easy. It had been true ever since the morning they agreed to this arrangement, alone in Ted Tonks’s ice fishing shack.

Maybe touch was easy for Narcissa simply because she was a mother and so very accustomed to being touched. Yes, that must be it. He relaxed his arm, and let his posture incline toward her as the old man receded behind his garden wall.

“Oh, but you can’t lightly dismiss my experience with – with the whole of your character. I could argue that my experience with that part of you is unmatched. How many people have experienced a wolf rushing into their faces on a narrow cellar stairwell and then come away unharmed?”

Along with being natural about touch, Narcissa had an easy, natural way of speaking about Moony too. Again, it was like Sirius’s manner, but at the same time, not at all like it. Sirius and the lads joked about Moony, treating him like a clown to defend themselves from what he truly was. Narcissa, on the other hand, did not try to disguise him with silly inside jokes or even the name “Moony.” She never used that name but spoke of him as part of Remus himself. It was a part she, like everyone, feared, but not so much she had to pretend he was something he wasn’t.

Remus wasn’t ready for that kind of honesty, and his arm stiffened in her grasp again. “Will you stop that, please,” he said through the gritted teeth of a forced smile as they passed close to a young woman struggling to fold a pram flat.

“Oh. Sorry.” She began to withdraw her hand from his arm.

“No, I didn’t mean that,” he said, pinching his elbow closed to keep her hand where it was. “Go on and hold onto me at least until we get you some proper walking shoes. You shouldn’t have to teeter off to the shop on a drizzly Saturday morning in October in high-heeled shoes.”

“I walk very well in heels, thank you. But it is positively absurd, really, that Narcissa Malfoy is now left with only one pair of shoes scavenged from some tickle trunk of Dumbledore’s.” She looked off into the grey sky. “What a wardrobe I once had, Remus. Famous. Coveted. Miles of shoes. Proper robes, floor length, flowing and sumptuous. And my jewelery…I had so much of it we hired a curse breaker to come and de-jinx it all once a month. It was more than I could have kept up with myself.”

Remus glanced at her, sighing a laugh at her unapologetic breathlessness over her lost lavishness. In the grey morning and her brown suit, her gleaming blond seemed otherworldly, which indeed it was.

And it was rather pleasant to find himself laughing so often, however unboisterously. Sirius had this deadpan understated side to his humour as well. Those outlandish pranks of his sprung from the synergy between Sirius and James. When it was just Remus and Sirius together, the mood was more like this.

He said none of this to Narcissa, only, “You look perfectly fine this morning.”

Her face still upturned, her eyes narrowed. “Fine? That’s just it. I’m not sure anyone has ever described a going-out look of mine as merely fine before.”

“All I mean is, you needn’t worry about the image you portray to the good people of Cokeworth when we’re doing our big shop of the week.”

“Then I wonder what I shall worry about instead,” she said. “When my parents bore only daughters, they understood that any beauty we might have could be leveraged to their social and economic advantage. Bella defied them in that, of course, seizing power by making herself monstrous instead. All power, no beauty. Medie gave all for love, or what have you. All beauty, no power. But as for myself, I did as my parents wished. I stained my lips red, perfumed my throat, practiced elegance as if it was my vocation. And my parents were right. I gained ladyship over one of the most ancient and enchanted estates in Britain that way.”

He was clearing his throat, steering the pair of them into the gate at their tiny, thorny front garden. “Your parents never warned you that with such a fine house, you should expect your guests to lash out and steal it from you eventually?”

She was frowning deeply. “Now Remus, let’s not spoil our morning speaking of that.”

They had reached the doorstep when both of them jerked to a halt at the sight of a large cardboard box with one of its corners crushed and torn as if it had been dropped there by a pair of talons. Without a word, Narcissa let go of Remus’s arm, her hand inside her bag, fingers closing around her wand. Remus kept silent himself as he set the groceries on the ground and took a slow step forward, craning his neck to read the address scrawled in the distinctive ink of a quill.

“Careful,” Narcissa said.

He risked one step more. “It’s addressed to Dr. and Mrs. Warry. That’s a good start. And the sender is…Blunder? Burden? Oh, it’s from Bluebell!”

“Who?”

“Bluebell. It’s a name your niece uses sometimes.”

More of those silly Order of the Phoenix code names.

The box was big enough that Narcissa wouldn’t have been surprised to find Tonks herself packed inside of it. But then Remus lifted it into the house with far too little effort even for him.

“Well, it isn’t shoes,” he said, piling excess packing material on the floor at his feet. “It's hats.” With that, he set something on Narcissa’s head.

She snatched it off, squinting at it. “What in the stars?”

“Don’t you recognize it? That’s a Muggle rendition of a witch’s hat. They wear them on Halloween. See the pointed end? The brim?”

Narcissa held it out at arm’s length, pinched between two fingers. It was slick and black and smelled of the fumes that hung over Muggle motorways. “Not even Minerva McGonagle would wear this. What’s it made of? Is this nylon again?”

“No, nothing so nice. It’s cut from sheets of black plastic glued together.”

Narcissa stood speechless, turning the hat in the light of their hazy kitchen window.

“Oh, don’t be so sour about it,” he said, laughing at her again, setting the hat on her head and miming fluffing her hair beneath the hat without actually touching it. “Take it as a compliment that Muggles would mass produce such a thing. They admire us, envy us. They do it in tribute to our world, even though collectively, most of them have forgotten all about our world.”

Narcissa blinked up at him from beneath the brim. “And Dora sent us this abomination?”

“Yes,” he said, plucking the hat from her head. “I had promised to show her how my parents and I used to celebrate Halloween as a mixed-Magic family. Seems like we will have to wait for another year for that. But Dora’s such a good sport she’s sent the costumes she’s been collecting so you and I can use them in the meantime.”

Narcissa had so many questions. But the one that slipped out first was, “Where is your Muggle Halloween hat then?”

Remus continued to grin at her as he put a large, black top hat on his head.

“Yours is Victorian formalwear?” Narcissa puzzled.

“No, it’s a Muggle magician’s hat,” Remus said.

Narcissa looked as if she might be sick.

“Honestly, Narcissa. You’re just like Sirius,” Remus said it out loud now as he straightened his hat. “And like James Potter too, for that matter. James never spoke to his brother-in-law again after the oaf introduced him as a Muggle magician.”

For only the second time ever, Narcissa found herself sympathizing with James Potter.

“But magicians do wear these,” he said, taking it off, dusting the brim. “And though my Dad was a proper wizard, it was a hat just like this that he would wear for me every Halloween. That was the one night I could bring him out in front of all my little Muggle friends from my non-magical primary school and show everyone that he was magic. They thought it was an act, of course. But Mum and I knew better. It was our one night a year to stop pretending Dad wasn’t marvelous and powerful. Mum would dress in her Muggle witch hat and robes and hand out sweets to the neighbour children. And Dad would sit in our front garden levitating this and that, summoning coins as if they were coming out of children’s ears, vanishing things and bringing them back. On Halloween, thanks to hats like these, my whole family could exist in public in the same world.”

He held the top hat in both of his hands, turning it slowly, his eyes half-closed, his smile gentler than Narcissa had ever seen it.

She breathed an immense sigh, shaking her head before she took the hat from him. “The same world,” she repeated. “I think I can see what Dora is getting at in sending us these now. This is how we make our entrance into the world of our Muggle neighbours. It’s not by nodding awkwardly at them on our way home from the shops. It’s by setting ourselves up in the front garden on Halloween just as your parents did.” She reached high enough to put the top hat back on his head. “You’re quite right about me. I'm going to be hopeless at blending in. But this way, in these costumes, we can avoid the impossibility of hiding me.”

“By making our true selves known, we perfect our disguise.” Remus nodded, the black brim rising and falling like a signal arm. “Irony.”

She returned his nod. “For you and me? Always.”

***

Between her daily work brewing Remus’s Wolfsbane potion and the assignment she'd given herself of transforming the Muggle Halloween costumes Dora had sent into something she'd be proud to wear, Narcissa’s next few weeks were busy.

She had found that, while the contents of Malfoy Manor that had belonged to the Malfoy family itself passed out of her power to influence when her divorce was finalized, items she had brought into the marriage and left in the house were still available to her.

She tested out this theory first with a bedspread of heavy velvet in a purple so deep it was almost black that her mother had given her as a seventeenth birthday present in Bellatrix’s name. Without much hope, Narcissa had summoned it just as darkness fell and was delighted to see it draped over the clothesline in the back garden by morning. It was a lovely bed covering, but she now had more use for it as fabric for the coat she was making for Remus’s magician Halloween costume and the skirts she was making for her own.

Since the first summoning went so well, she spirited away a few other items of no consequence that no one would miss from the Manor, including several books on lycanthropy summoned one volume at a time from the library.

What she wanted most of all was the album of pictures of Draco’s too-short childhood. But since Draco was the house’s heir, it was unlikely the house would allow an outsider like she now was to summon them away. She hoped the same magic that kept the album from her would keep it safe from anyone who meant to harm it.

While Narcissa worked at her own projects, Remus spent his days learning his role as a scholar of Muggle folklore. The first step in this process was to choose a very narrow area of specialty, like real Muggle scholars do. The obvious choice was, of course, the role of wolves and werewolves in Muggle lore on witchcraft. When he studied up on the field, it was in order to remind himself what Muggles don’t know so he wouldn’t accidentally reveal anything new.

When Narcissa was out of the cellar and working on her tailoring in the lounge, he would sit in Snape’s hard, angular armchair, one long leg thrown over the chair’s arm, and read aloud to her from the books he’d had shipped from all over the country to the Cokeworth Public Library.

“And so,” he summarized, “Muggles tend to connect wolves to witches through a shared interest in gobbling up human children.”

“Witches eating children?” she repeated, clucking her tongue. “They really thought we – It’s slander. Pure slander.”

“It was,” he agreed. “But don’t be angry with the Muggles. Pity them. The slander wasn’t actually against witches or even wolves. It was a sideways means of persecuting innocent Muggle women. It was a way to blame women for the dismally high rates of infant death in the old days. And blaming it on supernatural wolves instead was a way for the women to fight back.”

She hummed. “Ridiculous. As if having a baby wasn’t already hard enough – for Muggle women and for proper witches. I could only manage it the once myself. Medie appears to be the same. I’m dying to talk to her about why Dora is her only one. That’s something to ask a sister about. Except if that sister is Bellatrix Lestrange.”

“I’m my mother’s only child too,” Remus said. “They’d planned on having more. But then raising me became…complicated.”

Narcissa flourished her wand to snip the end of the shining silver sewing spell she’d been spinning. “I suppose it would be quite a lot for your mother, having not just a wizard child to mind but a cursed one at that.”

Remus might have been offended by the suggestion that his mother wasn’t fit for him if he hadn’t also been so surprised to hear Narcissa offering casual compassion to a Muggle. Most of the time, they dealt with their differences in politics by ignoring them.Certainly she was disenchanted with You-know-who after all he’d done to her family. But as to whether she believed in blood purity and all that rot – the more peaceful and comfortable their quiet life in this awful little house became, the less he wanted to know. He should probably be ashamed of himself for pretending it might not matter…

Whatever the best course of action may have been, at this moment he chose to evade the issue but flipping the sensitive topic back at her. “What do you think it was that held you to one child?”

“Only one thing: Lucius,” she said, no hesitation at all. “With Draco’s safe arrival, the heir was secured. And a male heir, at that. Everyone acts like it doesn’t matter, but stars know it does, somehow. One child was enough competition for the resources of the Manor and of my time and energy for Lucius. He refused to have any more.”

“Mischief managed, I suppose.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Here, put that book down,” she said, closing the pages over his finger and taking the book from him. “I need to try this against your very odd measurements before I start on the lining.”

Obedient, he stood on the rug in the centre of the lounge. Narcissa held the coat like a valet as he slid his arms into it. He shrugged further into it as she stepped from behind him to see him from the front. She hummed as her fingers moved over his shoulders, pinching and smoothing seams. With her palms flat, she rounded his shoulders and followed the drape of the fabric over his chest. He drew a deep breath. Since that first walk home from the shop, it had got easier and easier to rise to her touch – not quite with naturalness, but with something quick and perhaps eager.

She brushed the nap of the velvet up and smoothed it back down along the lengths of both of his arms. “Yes, that’s coming along nicely.” Her voice was low and with an edge of satisfaction at the sight of him in her well-tailored coat that made him feel like he needed badly to swallow.

“Feels like it fits alright so far,” he said, tugging at the cuffs of the sleeves.

She pursed her lips. “The shoulders. I may have under-estimated their breadth.” She boosted herself onto her toes, trying to see the seams running from his collar to where his arms began but finding herself too much shorter than him to see.

With a sigh of exasperation she felt her own pockets. “Where is my wand? Why are all Muggle women’s slacks bereft of adequate pockets? Blast. There’s no one else here to see if I were to levitate myself to see the shoulders properly, but my wand –”

“Allow me,” he said, and with a delicate flick of his own wand, she was rising toward him.

“Thank you,” she said. “Ah, yes. Barely half a centimetre on each side ought to do it.”

She straightened her neck, no longer bending over his shoulder but hovering face to face with him. It had been months since she’d been so close to man of her own age, one she was caring for, whose company was pleasant, his conversation interesting. Lucius was shorter than Remus so he had always been closer to her face. And his cold blue eyes had a habitual intensity to them – an intensity that, though real, she knew seldom had anything to do with her.

Remus was different. When he spoke to her, the expression in his eyes always seemed to be in response to her and the moment – to her wit, her questions and stories. What she hadn’t seen in his soft brown eyes yet was intensity. Perhaps it had been there, as he towered over her, but she had missed it. But no, she remembered, she had seen intensity in him before: as the wolf. Her cheeks stung with a rush of blood. That intensity – she could see the trace of it now as he looked at her as a man.

Maybe he’d seen the flush of colour in her face and that was why his levitation spell dipped. As he recovered it, she found herself closer, close enough that with the slightest lean she could have brushed her nose against his.

“Sorry. You alright?”

“Yes…”

There was a snap in the kitchen, the arrival of someone apparating smartly into the house.

The levitation spell broke but Remus kept control of her, catching her waist in one arm and setting her feet on the rug just as Snape came to stand fuming in the lounge.

“Madam,” he addressed her. He set a flat, square box hard on top of the scraps of fabric she’d cut away to make Remus’s costume coat. “ What – is this?”

She frowned, reaching for the box.

“Do not touch it,” he said.

“Snape, what are you playing at?” Remus said.

“This – object – found its way to Hogwarts today.”

“Then you can be sure it has nothing at all to do with us,” Remus said. “You know we’ve been here in this house every day since the last full moon, almost a month ago.”

Snape’s scowl twisted into something more like a smirk. Lupin was already trusting her, defending her. Oh, this would hurt him. In just a moment, Snape himself would be able to hurt him. He savoured the anticipation, leaving his stare fixed on Narcissa. “Shall I show it to him?”

She stood as tall as she could, as if she truly was innocent. “You can do what you like, Severus. It’s your house.”

Prying the lid with his wand rather than his bare hands, Snape opened the box. There it was, more foul than ever, a glittering necklace of opals.

Chapter Text

Snape, Remus, and Narcissa stood in a tight triangle, as if they were about to cast a spell together over the open jewel box Snape held between them. He gripped it by the edges, gingerly, careful not to touch the jewels inside with his fingers.

Remus cupped the back of his own neck with one hand, rubbing at his prickling skin.

Narcissa sneered. “It’s a ghastly piece. Look at the cut of its stones. Proper opals are cabochons but these have sharp, jagged edges inside the settings, like broken teeth. And the colour is dull and greyed, like the skin of a waterlogged Inferius. Where did this come from?”

Snape snapped the box shut. “It isn’t yours?”

“No, of course it isn’t,” Narcissa snapped in return. “You feel the curse wafting off that hideous thing. Apart from its being poorly crafted, I would never let my jewelry get so curse-laden. Wasn’t I just telling you about my maintenance schedule, Remus?”

He shrugged, taking off the magician’s coat and draping it over a chair so he could rub at the crawling skin of his arms.

“Put it away, Severus. Clearly it’s upsetting Remus to be so near it.”

“What happened?” Remus managed to say, still scrubbing at his arm with one hand. “You said this thing was found at Hogwarts. Was anybody hurt by it? Was Harry –”

“Draco!” Narcissa gasped.

“They are both unharmed,” Snape said. “The same cannot be said, however, of their classmate, Miss Bell.”

Remus squinted, remembering. “Katie? The chaser?”

Snape dropped the jewel box into a sack, throttled it closed with a drawstring, and tucked it inside his cloak. “Yes, she is at St. Mungo’s recovering from having touched the thing when its wrappings tore open on the walk from Hogsmeade to the school. An account from the friend accompanying her leads us to believe she carried it under the influence of an Imperius curse – a grievous offense on its own.”

“So the girl wasn’t the target,” Narcissa said. “Then who –?”

“Not – Draco,” he said. “Or Potter either. The target appears to have been the headmaster himself.”

Remus scoffed. “And where was Draco and his ilk while all of this was happening?”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Narcissa said, rounding on him.

Snape let her glare at Remus for a moment before he said, “Draco did not visit Hogsmeade with the rest of the school. He was serving detention with Professor McGonagle, completing some overdue schoolwork.”

Narcissa uttered a little, wordless cry of triumph as she spun away from Remus.

“Potter, on the other hand,” Snape continued, relishing Narcissa’s angry vindication, working to inflame it further, “he witnessed Katie Bell’s accident and went for help.”

Remus winced, swearing. “Of course he did. And I suppose it’s sheer luck he didn’t try something rashly heroic like picking up the necklace.”

“Oh, but he did,” Snape said. “Wrapping it in just a scarf, he picked it up and delivered it to me. I would assume using the scarf as a barrier must have been a suggestion from someone more cunning. Granger, no doubt.”

Remus collapsed to sit on the sofa, his head in his hands. “Too close, Harry. Much too close.”

Narcissa huffed. “Not everything is about Potter. He was a bystander today.”

“He is never just a bystander.”

“He was in this plot against the headmaster,” she said. “And it’s an idiot’s plot. One whiff of that necklace and all of us could tell it was too cursed to be touched. Even Potter and his – friends could see that. Dumbledore was never in any real danger. Only an idiot would believe he would be fooled into such a crude trap – an idiot or a child.”

“A child? You do suspect a student then,” Snape intoned. “Just not your own.”

Remus took it up. “Minerva is quite sure that Draco was in her office the entire day? She never left him alone, even for a moment?”

“And what if she did?” Narcissa said. “What are you suggesting? If you must make an accusation, Remus, do so directly. Go on.”

“Oh dear, what an unpleasant family row,” Snape tutted, folding his arms. “These things are best kept private, so I shall be going. My intention was only to see whether Narcissa had any insight as to the source of the necklace.”

“Because you suspected I gave it to my son as a weapon against the most powerful wizard of our age?” Narcissa said, her arms folded as well. “Suspected that I armed him so poorly and sent him marching off to his own destruction, which, handily enough, would also be your own destruction?”

When Snape wouldn’t meet her eye, she swiveled to look at Remus, his bowed head where he still sat on the sofa. “And you,” she called to him. “You were thinking the same thing? That this abomination was my jewelry? Part of my plan? My sacrifice of my son?”

“I don’t know what to think,” was Remus’s miserable reply. “I’ve been trying not to think about so many things for so long. I was uneasy at first to get so close to you, but you’ve been so obliging, reasonable – charming even – that I’ve been wilfully ignoring the colossal problem of what’s at stake here and whether I can trust you with it. And I don’t mean just trusting you to brew my potion. I mean trusting you with everything I’ve fought for, lost my friends for, suffered for ever since I was Draco’s age myself.”

Snape’s smirk had become a cringe. “I’ll be going.”

Narcissa startled, as if she’d forgotten he was there. “Severus, wait.”

He turned to stride into the kitchen, cloak swirling. “I will call on you later, once your marital spat is finished. You are correct, Narcissa, if you suspect we have more to discuss about our ongoing arrangement. Good evening to you.”

Narcissa clawed at the empty where he had been standing just before he apparated away. “What more? Severus? Don’t…”

In shock, she stood alone in the kitchen, stunned by her own fury over not knowing what might be happening at Draco’s school, when another sound jarred her back to her surroundings. The bolt locking the front door had been turned. Remus was leaving.

Dashing after him, she threw herself between Remus and the partly opened door, forcing it closed with her back as she faced him. “No.”

Still gripping the doorknob, he hung his head. “Narcissa, please clear the way.”

“You can’t go.”

He raised his head, eyes clenched almost shut. “I need some air – some space and time to clear my head – to think through all I’ve been evading since we came here.”

“Yes, think all you want,” she said, her back pressed to the door, arms splayed to hold it shut. “But the moon has been in the waxing gibbous phase for days now. And so you need to stay and do your thinking here where you’re safe.”

He was still twisting the doorknob, moving to leave. “It won’t be full for at least 30 hours. There’s plenty of time for me to take a walk before then.”

She widened her stance, barricading the door as she summoned one of the books she’d managed to take from her old library. It came flying toward them from beneath a cushion of the sofa, where she’d hidden it from him. Catching the book, she thrust it at his chest. “Read this. It’s Eldenbach’s unabridged treatise on lycanthropy.”

He stood straighter, his pressure on the door slackening. “Eldenbach? He was a dark wizard. He purposely led people to be attacked by werewolves for the sake of his twisted field observations. All of his works on transformatory creature curses have been banned in Britain for two generations.”

“Which is what makes the volumes preserved by the House of Black so precious,” she insisted, tapping the book against his chest again. “And it’s also why I hadn’t told you I’d been reading it. Please, Remus. Look at the page I’ve marked here. It’s the chapter on werewolves’ vulnerabilities during the waxing gibbous phase.”

With a huff, he reached for the door again. “Vulnerable? Shows what Eldenbach knows. My lycanthropic tendencies are stronger during the gibbous phase. The wolf ought to be more powerful right now, not less.”

“The excess wolfishness is precisely what makes you vulnerable,” she said, her voice rising, desperate. “Your body is quicker and stronger but so are your feelings. You’re more rash. Less careful. That must have been what got you caught at the last full moon. You weren’t your careful self, too loud and ferocious in searching for Severus, attracting attention to yourself before the transformation had even begun. You were as much of a danger to yourself then as you are tonight.”

He tried to dissuade her with a shake of his head, but the movement was more like a violent twitch.

“And if you’re provoked again, the wolf’s violence will be too primed, too ready.”

He fought for words, for an argument. There was nothing.

She wouldn’t stop. “Please, Remus. They know I haven’t killed you. They’ll be waiting, wanting to have you to toy with and torment all over again.”

It was coming back, the panicked rage at being hunted and caught, being trapped – trapped anywhere, even here in Spinner’s End. He wanted out – needed out – and he flung away what was barring his escape.

That was Narcissa. She didn’t make a sound as she fell away from the door and toward the floor, her hands flailing to catch herself on something before hitting the hard tile floor. The wolf’s quicker reflexes made her fall appear to Remus as if it was in slow motion. For a long moment, he saw her face dropping away, eyes wide and frightened, the back of her skull coming closer and closer to its impact with the floor.

He thought he knew the wolf, thought he’d find it throwing his head back to howl in victory before darting off into the night. Instead, the wolf’s reflexes sent him lunging forward, sliding onto the floor where Narcissa would land, raising his arms to catch her against himself. And as he moved, the cry that left his throat was not a wolf’s but a man’s.

The only sound she made was a gasp, sharp and scared. As her body came into his arms, it was rigid, braced for pain and injury. He gathered it close, sitting up and cradling her, her head tucked under his chin.

“I’m sorry. So sorry. Stars, Narcissa. I’m sorry…”

“I’m not hurt,” she said, her voice quavering, her arms clamping around him as he held her. “You didn’t let me get hurt. You wouldn’t do that to me.”

He uttered a loud, voiced sigh, bending over her, rocking them back and forth. “Thank the stars. Say you forgive me.”

Her arms tightened around him. “Only if you’ll say you won’t go.”

And with that, Narcissa did something he’d never seen her do before. She cried. She had no choice. Involuntarily was the only way she ever cried. Men in her life – Lucius, her father, and father-in-law – they often accused women of crying strategically, for manipulation. Narcissa didn’t know how it was for other women, but it wasn’t true for her. Finding herself in tears was like being overcome with nausea. It couldn’t be resisted and it overwhelmed her completely and just as unpleasantly. In crying she felt powerless – foolish. It was a feeling that only made her cry more.

Remus felt her body jerk against him in the first of her sobs. He answered with a groan. “Cissa – come now. Of course I’ll stay. Truly, I only wanted a walk –”

She forced out a teary, tortured protest. “Eld’nbach – said it’s – not safe.”

“And after what I’ve just done, I suppose I must admit he may be right,” Remus allowed, guiding a stray lock of hair away from her wet cheek, easing it behind her ear. “I’m remembering how the lads and I would get more boisterous as the month wore on – more play fighting, riskier flying, some of it getting out of hand and leaving us roughed up. We always chalked it up to high spirits – to the excitement of another night running the forest as beasts. But there may have been more to it.”

She didn’t trust herself to speak yet, and buried her face in his shoulder instead.

“Whatever the gibbous moon portends,” he said, “I never had any intention of abandoning you for good tonight.”

His arms still closed around her, Remus got to his feet, shuffling across the room to the sofa, its frame squeaking as he sat with Narcissa still weeping, folded in his lap. “It’s alright,” he said, smoothing her hair. “I let Snape play us off each other when I know better than that. It won’t happen again.”

He was too kind, so very different from Lucius who cast blame everywhere but on himself, lashing out at children and elves and Muggles. She inched further away from Lucius, burrowing her face into the chest of this new kind of husband, grieved but greedy for Remus’s comfort, knowing she hadn’t done enough to deserve it. If she ever stopped crying, perhaps she could tell him how good he was.

On the mantlepiece above them, Snape’s four clocks ticked away, the long tall one badly out of sync with the rest. In the near quiet, Remus’s hand fell into a rhythm of stroking her hair, gathering it together so it would flow in a single length down her back. With each stroke, she waited for whether his thumb would deviate slightly to one side, brushing the line of her throat. Her posture was softening, her tension melting into him as the waxing gibbous moon climbed the sky outside their windows. Her heart stopped its racing, the hitch in her breath subsiding.

They were quiet long enough for him to wonder if she’d fallen asleep. He leaned forward, tipping her face away from his shoulder, looking to gauge her expression.

She blinked at him, her lashes still wet.

He grinned down at her. “Look at my fine lady, with her red nose.”

She wrinkled her nose at him, wiping at his damp shirt with her sleeve. “Sorry.” She moved as if to rise, but he held her still.

Despite his moment of teasing, he hadn’t finished with their serious conversation. His grin became grave again. “With an outburst like tonight's, surely you see that I’m not fit to be anyone’s husband. Not for real.”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Well then it’s a good thing a real husband wasn’t what I bargained for when I agreed to this arrangement. And anyway, we still haven’t read what Eldenbach might have to say about husbands and wives.”

He was scoffing again. “Eldenbach –”

“ – is a lost classic on the darkest secrets of lycanthropy. Don’t let all those people’s suffering be for nothing. Not when you need this information so urgently, so personally. Whatever the source of his data, you’d do well to read Eldenbach while we’re still together and you have access to my copy.”

He dropped his head against the back of the sofa, looking up to the ceiling as he said, “Fine.”

“And Remus,” she said, lifting her palm to his cheek to coax his eyes to meet hers. “You were asleep on Medie’s table when I said it, and you might not have heard me, but I do know that blood purity is a lie. It’s an ugly falsehood people tell each other as an excuse to refuse to share power and prosperity. No one really believes it has anything to do with blood. Not even the Dark Lord himself. We could all see it when he killed the Diggory boy so cruelly and needlessly.”

As she’d spoken, he had lifted his head, settling his jaw into her touch. Eye to eye, his face was close, even closer than when she’d been fitting his costume coat.

She kept talking, her voice slow, disordered by his nearness, and the way he was coming ever nearer. “I know my saying that alone isn’t enough to earn your trust,” she said as his forehead came to rest on hers. “But I wanted you to hear me say it all the same.”

The room was quiet, the ticking of the clocks lost to the roar of her emotions, her heartrate regaining speed. She felt Remus’s forehead move only very slightly as he swallowed. Her thumb caressed his rough warm cheek and her body sensed something it knew well. This was desire, her own and that of this strange and lovely man. Being in his arms was sublime but it wasn’t enough. She drew a deep breath and the scent of him filled her head. Her lip quivered but not with tears this time. Years of experience had made her response to desire quick and demanding, her body wanting all of him, the sumptuous tension mounting.

But what her heart wanted was just to kiss him, deeply and thoroughly. It could begin with closing her eyes, lifting her chin, parting her lips…

If it weren’t for that blasted Eldenbach…

“Rhubarb,” she said, sitting back, clearing her throat.

Remus’s answer was short and breathless. “What?”

She was disentangling herself from him, pushing at the back of the sofa next to his head to get to her feet. “I nearly forgot. If I don’t add the crystallized rhubarb pollen before the moon reaches its lunar zenith, the Wolfsbane potion will be ruined.”

“Oh. Right.”

Now at the bookcase, she reached for the trigger of Snape’s “Always” book, careful to keep her flushed face turned away from Remus. “It will take some time to fully dissolve the particles. I’ll need to finish with your costume tomorrow morning. There will be time enough. Right then. Goodnight.”

Without a glance behind her, before he could reply, she slipped behind the plaster panel where Remus wouldn’t dare follow. In truth, she’d added the rhubarb pollen hours before, while he was cooking supper. What she hadn’t done was tell Remus what else Eldenbach had said about the late gibbous phase. Along with the curbing of violent inhibitions, sexual inhibitions were also lessened in the days and hours before a transformation. And she would not use this timing to take advantage of him. The connection between them was too important to be ravished by a pre-transformation accident. She couldn’t share so much as a kiss with him under these conditions.

That wouldn’t be right. That wouldn’t be what they wanted. Not what he wanted, anyway.

She crammed her arms into the sleeves of her white coat, pacing along the lab bench, muttering insults at herself.

They’d been alone together in this house for too long. Maybe this kind of attachment was precisely what Dumbledore was trying to spare them when he told them to be sure to meet the neighbours. Of course, having other people in their lives would flatten their feelings for each other. Yes, a little company would put everything back into perspective.

They’d put off socializing too long, planning their perfect Halloween party debut. Tomorrow, Halloween would arrive not a moment too soon. First thing in the morning, Remus would drink the Wolfsbane potion. And if it worked and he didn’t tear her to pieces at sundown, he could spend the evening giving her the ick doing Muggle magic tricks.

Yes, that was what had to happen next.

She sat to inspect the potion. The heat had been off since noon, everything cooled and waiting. Purple with its aconite blossoms, the potion swirled against the glass wall of the vial, corked in its cooling rack. This bloody potion was why Dumbledore had sent her here. She was like a private Muggle chemist for a sick man, caring but clinical.

On the floorboards above her head, she heard his steps. They moved over the rug in the lounge and toward the kitchen, veering into the larder where he slept. Cold metal clicked as he shut the door.

Chapter Text

Without a light, Remus shut the door to the larder-turned-bedroom off the kitchen of Snape’s house in Spinner’s End. The initial mad flush of being so close to Narcissa for so long, their emotions high, their connection tested and strengthened – all of that had passed. Now began the miserable work of agonizing over how it had gone wrong.

He thought he'd understood her as they sat on the sofa together, her sweet, delicate fingers on his jaw, her thumb tracing a light, inviting line toward his mouth, her face upturned, blue eyes dark in the dim late evening lamplight, a tremor in her usually steady voice.

And then she’d gone scrambling away from him, forgetting she’d already told him hours before that the Wolfsbane potion was finished and only needed to cool. Whatever she’d said about adding a last minute ingredient was an excuse to flee when he’d been certain they were on the verge of…

No, he’d been mistaken, fooling himself. He’d been too lonely for too long, forgetting how to read the sometimes complicated signs of friendship – especially friendships with people to whom he was as profoundly attracted as he now was to Narcissa.

There was nothing to do but stop thinking about it, stop remembering the pressure and warmth of her as he’d held her on the sofa for what must have been close to an hour.

Just go to bed, Remus. Wake up tomorrow, drink the ghastly potion with a reasonable amount of gratitude, and act as if nothing happened.

That’s what he told himself, tugging his jumper over his head. But he caught her scent on the fibres. To him, she smelled like a dish of creamy vanilla birthday cake served at a garden party in June by a field of clover where the tables were covered in crisp white linens and freshly cut peonies. Before tossing the jumper away from himself, he pressed it to his face, breathing in what she’d left him of herself.

He was lost, falling facedown onto his bed to try to sleep it all away, forget it. It was more difficult than he thought, with everything in the room speaking to him of her, even in the dark. He stretched out his legs in bed and remembered how, on the first night of their stay in this house, Snape had called this room a “blanket fort.” And instead of joining Snape in sneering at him, Narcissa had come through the room, rearranging things, expanding the space where she could, searching the house for better linens, hanging mirrors to refract the light from the single window. Without her, the room would have been a dungeon.

But just because she was good at caring for him didn’t mean she liked him any better than anyone else who tried to make his life nicer. His mother would be happy to dote on him more if he wasn’t so afraid of leading the Death Eaters to her half-Muggle home. Occupying a role very much like an older brother and sister were Ted and Andromeda, Sirius’s favourite cousin. The good old Weasleys had continued to host him for Christmas and Easter ever since the summer holiday they’d all spent at Grimmauld Place.

Nothing, of course, made up for the fact that the lads and Lily were all gone – all of them but Peter, who was worse than gone. And Harry, stars love him, was still a child and had far too much to bear already.

And then there was Dora – bless Dora’s heart, she tried everything humanly and magically possible to keep him safe and comfortable and happy. Why couldn’t he bring himself to fall for Dora? It’d please everyone so well. She was a bit too young to bind herself to a man on the far side of his 30s but she had protested enough times that she wasn’t bothered by his age that it might be almost believable. And still…

Everything froze as he heard the light tread of Narcissa’s feet coming up the cellar stairs. Plaster dust grated as she closed the passageway to her lab and came to stand on the rug of the lounge. His hearing was uncommonly good – another wolfish trait she’d probably tell him to celebrate and enjoy. He wondered if Eldenbach’s treatise had anything to say about changes to the senses during the waxing gibbous phase. He usually felt like his colour vision was less vivid but his senses of smell and hearing were more keen.

His hearing was so sharp tonight it painted a picture in his mind of how Narcissa must appear in the lounge at this moment, on the other side of a wall he could almost touch. He heard her sigh, take a step, rustle the pages of a book, before she climbed the stairs to her bedroom and the recently unjinxed bed he’d hauled her out of unharmed. The book would be the Eldenbach treatise. She was taking it to bed, nodding off to sleep studying arcane secrets of how to better manage him, so she wouldn’t have to keep running off to hide in the cellar.

He took a deep breath. Yes, remember what the book said about intensity of feelings and reactions during the waxing gibbous phase. If it was earlier in the lunar cycle, things would have gone differently tonight. There would have been no scuffle at the door in the first place, no outburst of tears from Narcissa, and none of his excess compassion flaring into unresolvable passion.

This was the first time they’d completed the lunar cycle in one another’s presence and they hadn’t known what to expect of themselves. It would be different next time. They’d be prepared, knowing not to take his overreactions so seriously. Next time, they’d remember to deescalate sooner instead of coming right to the moment before he would have devoured her.

Perhaps he should be thankful to her for realizing all of this before it was too late. In leaving him alone in the lounge, she’d shown mercy to the less wolfish part of himself that would have had to deal with the consequences. What a lovely way for her to behave, preserving his dignity and distance from her in the moment when he’d had no interest at all in dignity or distance.

Yes, calm down, take her cue to calm down, he told himself. If you care for her at all, do that. True, his typical loneliness combined with the phase of the moon was making him more lovesick than he’d ever been, but it would pass. He had to survive like this just until he took his potion in the morning. That was all.

He flipped over in bed, face to the opposite wall, considering another aggravating factor, one he didn’t relish remembering. For a man his age, he was inexperienced in love. Sirius had been exceptionally popular with women and had sometimes called on Remus to slow the pace of new relationships by starting with double dates. When he needed a friend to tag along on a double, Remus would be called into service. One of these double matches had been Remus’s first kiss, a nice girl with glasses. Claire was her name, spelled the French way.

There had been a few other women after her, one of them serious enough to break his heart. That was Liza, who’d thrown him over after they thought Peter had been killed. A boyfriend who was a werewolf was one thing. A werewolf boyfriend with three dead friends and one headed to Azkaban was something else altogether. Two Christmas cards ago, his mother had told him Liza had written to say she and her Canadian husband had two daughters now. Canadian – he wondered if Liza had ever been to Joe Clarke University, the place he was supposed to be enjoying a sabbatical away from.

At this, he finally yawned. Yes, think of Liza dumping him on the pavement outside the courthouse the day the Wizengamot adjourned to deliberate on Sirius’s sentence. That was sobering. Think of her bored indoors with her little children half the year during Canadian winters. Winter with cold snow drifting, chilling, vanishing everything. This was the image in his mind as he failed to sleep, knowing that if the pristine snow in his imagination shifted, it would change into a head of soft, fine platinum white hair, warm and nestled to his chest.

***

She was up early.

It was Halloween morning and unless he was still partly delirious, he was now hearing the sound of Naricssa setting the breakfast table, the light brushing of her fingertips against the Snape family crystal dinnerware.

He needed that potion.

“Oh, you're up,” she said, too cheery and chummy in the kitchen. “I was trying to be quiet so I didn’t wake you but – here you are. I've been making pumpkin crumpets for us. This was Draco's favourite breakfast when he was little and the only way I could get anything but sweets into him on Halloween.”

She was speaking too quickly, no breaks between her phrases. Remus himself felt stupid and slow, blinking sleepily beside the place she’d set for him. A single ornate port glass stood next to his plate, filled with a wine so deeply red it was purple.

She clucked her tongue. “Don’t stand there all innocent Remus…”

“Er, what?”

“I know about your caches of chocolate all over this house,” she said. “All the sweets are more reasons this is your favourite holiday, I don’t wonder.”

“Right,” he said, slouching into his chair. “Bit early for this, isn’t it?” He tapped his fingernail on the crystal base of his port glass.

“What, for your Wolfsbane potion? I wouldn’t say so. Just in the knick of time is more like it.”

“That’s the potion?”

“Of course. What were you expecting?”

He lifted the glass, holding it to the light, shining like a new amethyst. “I’ve never seen it as anything but a stone bottle full of thick grey ooze that can hardly be swallowed.”

Narcissa scoffed. “That Snape. Let me guess. The ooze made your mouth dry and your lips pucker.”

“Yes, actually,” he said, sniffing at the potion cautiously, as if it might sear his nostrils.

She took her seat at the table, spooning clotted cream onto the crumpets. “If you’d read Eldenbach, you’d know that there are two versions of Wolfsbane potion. One is for werewolves like yourself who want to suppress their transformation and take it willingly. The other is for werewolves who want very badly to transform but are being prevented against their will from doing so. That version has a teaspoon of alum added to force them to shut their lips and swallow it down. You can probably guess which version Snape was brewing for you.”

Eyebrows raised, he set the glass down again. “It will still work?”

“If the Dark Lord’s werewolves can be any indication, then yes it will. The active ingredients are the same. Drink it,” she said, tousling his already messy fringe as if he was a naughty child. “If you insist, I can get you a bit of alum to chase it down.”

Still braced for a nasty dose, he closed his eyes and threw it back in one long shot, setting the glass down too hard on the tabletop. “It tastes like flowers.”

“That’s aconite. It’s a flower, after all,” she said. “Its poison is, of course, neutralized in the brewing. But you’d still better eat before it upsets your stomach. Then I need you to start on making some caramels for the children. I’ve still got the costumes to finish sewing.”

“Oh, I ought to have mentioned,” Remus said, well into his first crumpet. “Muggle children are taught not to accept sweets that aren’t sealed in wrappers from government inspected candy factories. Either they’ll reject them outright or take them home and put them straight in the bin. Handmade caramels, or what have you, are literally wasted on them.”

Narcissa stared across the table at him, her mouth slightly open in bewilderment.

Blast, when was that potion going to kick in?

“But freshly made sweets are so much nicer,” she said.

“Yes,” he answered, becoming Dr. Warry and settling into Muggle urban folklore, “and two decades ago someone started a rumour about madmen poisoning handmade Halloween sweets on purpose to harm children. It was all hysteria, probably invented by the stakeholders of candy factories. But it put an end to handmaking Halloween treats.”

“Again with this morbid fascination with their children being hurt.” Narcissa could only shake her head. “Well, then I suppose I’ll need to send you to the shop for factory sweets instead.”

He was just as relieved as he was disappointed to be away from her on this errand. Along with the candy, he bought a bag of cheap polyester fibres meant to look like spiderwebs to make their garden decorations look more authentically Muggle. This had been a trick of his dad’s as well. As Remus dropped it into his shopping basket, nostalgia overtook him, and he chose a simple greeting card from a rack by the cash register to send to his mother to let her know he was remembering her on Halloween. For safety’s sake, he wrote no message inside the card, and didn’t write a return address on the envelope, but he trusted she would know who had sent it all the same.

“Shall I post that for you, sir?” asked the young girl at the register. “We do double duty as the post office and the corner shop.”

He turned it over to her with his thanks.

The afternoon was spent in the garden placing and transfiguring the empty crates Remus had found stacked by the back door to look like the plastic tombstones and gargoyles Muggles used as decorations. The Snape family linens were hung from the beams of the verandah like ghosts floating over the spot where he and Narcissa would dole out sweets and magic.

When the sun began to set, it was time to go inside and find Narcissa so she could stun him – or worse – if the transformation started. Like a thief, he cracked open the front door.

“Cissa?”

Her voice came from above. “Up here.”

He waited, but there was no sound of her footsteps approaching.

“Well, are you coming up?” she called again.

Taking a deep breath he moved up the stairs himself. Through the open door of the bedroom he saw her standing at the long, oval mirror she’d engorgioed out of the small one from the dressing table. Her hair was brushed to its most gleaming lustre, smoothed into a column down her back. Her robes were made from the same heavy purple as his own costume but embellished with silver luminescent embroidery spun from spells rather than threads. In the mirror, her face was visible. She held one finger to her lower lip, gliding over it to apply a shimmering burgundy colour.

The skin on Remus’s face pricked as it flushed. Outside, the full moon would be rising. He studied his hands to confirm that he was not showing any signs of transforming, his nails short and blunt, skin not covered in a pelt of hair. And yet he was still like this…

“What’s wrong?” she said, speaking to his reflection in her mirror. “Is my costume not good? I think the sewing turned out well but I had to formulate a lip colour myself since the Dark Lord didn’t give me leave to fetch my makeup bag on our way out of the manor. The light in here is not the best for this either. Does it look smudged?”

“Not yet,” was his mind’s silent reply. But he hung his head and said instead, “No, it’s all – fine. It’s just that Muggle Halloween witches are usually a bit – ugly. A wart on the nose, or something…”

She scoffed, turning to face him. “No. This is as far as I go.” With that, she set her refurbished version of the Muggle witch’s hat Dora had sent on her head. It was of the same shape but its plastic was covered in a proper black wool shrunk and from an old coat she’d ‘borrowed’ from Snape’s hall wardrobe. “This will have to serve as my ugliness. Now how do I look? And you know I won't accept ‘fine.’ Put some real thought into it.”

What he wanted to say was that she looked more beautiful than he’d ever seen her. What he said was, “It’s still not ugly enough but…I suppose the costume suits you better this way.”

She came toward him, her hand slipping under his fringe to feel the heat of his forehead, showing her first sign of concern for whether he was going to transform and murder her. “The potion is working? You're not feeling wolfish?”

He swallowed, his throat dry. “No more so than usual. Thank you.” He took her wrist to lower her hand from his head. “I’d better get dressed before the children start throwing eggs at the windows.”

“What – ? Oh, just go. I’ll get the sweets sorted.”

There was no rain that night and soon after sunset the streets were filling with people. When Narcissa sent up a jet of sparks to announce the start of the magic show, Remus was worried the police might notice, but no one came except droves of children hoping to see more. In the garden, Remus was making linen ghosts dart overhead, their folds resolving into clownish faces as they went. He summoned what looked like a live bat from a top hat, and pulled sweets out of the bolder children’s ears. He levitated the candy bowl from Narcissa’s lap and turned in upside down without spilling any. It was easy foolishness for an eager audience.

And there was an awed wonder at the magician’s “witch queen.”

“Where’d you get your costume, Miss?” one of them dared to ask her. “Did you make it?”

“This? Oh, yes. I conjured it out of an old blanket my mad hag of a sister gave me, and I charmed it with silver spells,” she answered.

“What about your hair?” a girl close to Draco’s age with brassy bottle blond hair asked. “It doesn’t even look like a wig.”

“Because it isn’t,” Remus beamed, releasing the bat illusion over a crowd of cheering, ducking children. “But I do remind you that my dear wife's other identity is that of a brilliant chemical engineer.”

“Yes, it is. But I hardly see what that's got to do with anything,” Narcissa said as the girl’s parents laughed.

“So you're a professor, are you?” the girl's mother asked Remus. She elbowed her husband. “I say we ask them, Roddy.”

“Please yourself, Maudie,” the man said. “Right, Slim. It’s quiz night at our local this weekend. Maudie has a vendetta against that team of teachers from the posh school after last time and she'd love to have the smarts of an engineer and a professor on our side.”

“Wha’d’you say, Nancy?” Maudie pressed, slapping at Narcissa's knee. “Win or lose, we'll buy you a round.”

Narcissa gave a nod and leaned into Remus, whispering through grinning teeth. “What are they talking about?”

Remus interpreted, speaking low and near her ear. “They think your name is Nancy and they’re calling me Slim, but they are very friendly and slightly competitive and want us to join them for drinks and a game of trivia at the nearby pub.”

“Oh!” said Narcissa, turning away from him. “Of course, Nancy and Slim would be honored.”

“Right,” the man said again. “Roddy and Maudie. That’s us. Easy enough to remember. Come by the Crane and Quarry at half eight on Saturday. We’ll keep an eye out for you. Cheers.”

______

“Well,” said Narcissa, sitting on the top stair of the verandah after the neighbourhood had gone quiet again. She unwrapped the last tiny bar of chocolate from the bottom of the bowl. “That, my dear Remus, was a success.” She snapped the chocolate in half and offered the part she didn’t eat to him.

He took it, sitting on the stair beside her, smiling to himself as the candy melted in his mouth. Narcissa held her robes close in the chilly wind. She had the same melancholy smile as his, and in this case, he knew exactly what that meant.

“I’m sure he had a pleasant night,” Remus said.

Without any clarification, she knew he was speaking of Draco. “I suppose he must have. But Snape’s last visit was so worryingly cryptic.”

Remus hummed. “Hogwarts Halloweens are legendarily fun even under difficult circumstances. The year I was teaching, the students got to have a massive sleepover in the Great Hall while we searched the castle for Sirius.”

Narcissa scoffed. “Good times indeed.”

“They were,” he protested, laughing and exaggerating a sideways fall when she shoved at his arm. Their laughter abated but the melancholy remained. “You know, I sent my mother an unmarked, coded holiday greeting today. Did me a world of good. Why don’t you consider sending Draco a patronus? They’re untraceable.”

She gave a heavy sigh, bending over her lap, speaking to him with her arms folded on her knees, her head laid on them. “Why don’t I? Because I don’t think I have the heart for it tonight. That and I’m out of practice. The Dark Lord banned Patronuses ages ago. It’s said they disrupt his work.” She sat up. “Lucius never liked me to use them anyway. He said their appearance made a show of him – all flamboyant and emotional.”

“Well, they are.”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s something I like about them.”

They sat quietly until Narcissa cleared her throat. “You aren’t pestering me about what form my Patronus takes. And for that, I’ll tell you what it is, if you’d like to know.”

He scooted sideways toward her, preparing to hear her secret. “I would very much like to know.”

She turned to face him before lowering her eyelids. “I saw it for the first time in seventh year Defense Against the Dark Arts class, in the very room where you taught. A peacock.”

He grinned. “Of course. It’s almost magnificent enough to suit you.”

“It’s completely perfect for me,” she said. “And then after I was married, it changed, just a little. I hardly minded. And though I haven’t seen it in years, the last time I did, it wasn’t a peacock but a pea hen.”

He sat back, humming gravely.

“You understand, don’t you,” she said, moving closer, conspiratorial. Reading a Patronus is like interpreting a prophecy, or a dream, usually spoken of only in hushed tones. “You can read it, can’t you?”

He gave a nod. “I think I can. What you desired most was for Lucius to become your soulmate and take the form of a peacock for his own Patronus. You wanted it so badly your heart changed its own Patronus to the peacock’s mate, the plain little pea hen.”

She only nodded, her eyes shimmering as if she might cry if she tried to speak.

This was the last thing he wanted. “I’ll follow your lead and I won’t wait for you to ask me what my Patronus is before I tell you either,” he said, redirecting. “Mine is exactly what everyone assumes it must be: a wolf. But it’s not a half-man, cursed, monster of a wolf. It’s a beautiful, innocent animal – natural and whole, like everyone else’s Patronus.”

Her sad smile had returned, and her eyes were still too shiny for speech.

So he went on. “You know, I’ve helped several people perfect their Patronus casting. And while I was working with one notable young wizard in particular –”

“Oh please, you mean Harry Potter,” she said, her tears no longer threatening at the mention of Draco’s rival.

Remus smirked. “Yes, actually. It was Harry. The method I taught him to use was to think of his best memory. That was three years ago, and thanks to an extraordinary flash of good luck, he was ultimately successful and saved Sirius’s life for a little longer. But if I had to teach anyone new, I would teach them a different method. You see, I’ve learned that a memory, something that lies in the past, is not the only or even the greatest reservoir of good feelings. A Patronus can also be drawn from what lies in the future.”

“Hope,” she finished for him. “We can cast it based on what we hope for most. My Patronus and yours – they’re both manifestations of our greatest hopes.”

“Yes, exactly,” he said. He forced out the next bit, the part that followed logically even if it didn't ring true. “And if you like, you can hope that, when you see Lucius again, he will have learned to appreciate a great many things that were lost on him during your first marriage. And perhaps he’ll have ascended to become your perfect peacock soulmate after all.”

She bowed her head again. “I don’t suppose a stay at Azkaban has ever really improved anyone’s Patronus…or their second chance at marriage.”

He nudged her shoulder with his own. “Take the peacock back for yourself then. Like you said, it’s perfect for you.”

“I do love them.” She lifted her head and shook her hair from her face. “I kept a flock of them in the manor gardens. Draco tried so hard to train them to carry the post. Hopelessly stubborn painted chickens…”

At her side, Remus was laughing, louder and happier than either of them had laughed since the trick-or-treating had ended. She watched him sway away from her with his laughter, and then come back to centre. And while he was not quite perfectly still, she pecked a tiny burgundy kiss onto his cheek.

His laughter ended with a stifled gasp.

“Thank you, Remus, for a lovely evening.”

She bolted onto her feet, into the house, and behind her bedroom door.

For the second night, Remus sat alone and stunned where she’d left him. Feeling his cheek, he brought his fingers away smudged with her lip colour. He blew out his breath. He had taken the potion, calmed down, been a better friend, and nothing of what he’d felt the night before had passed.

Chapter Text

“So you mean to say that we’re about to be a terrible disappointment to our new friends?” Narcissa said as she and Remus walked to quiz night at the Crane and Quarry pub on a brisk November evening.

He patted her gloved hand where it held tightly to the crook of his arm. “Unless you’ve had a secret fascination with Muggles Studies all this time, then yes. Yes we are.”

“But we can’t let that happen,” she said, level and determined. “Maudie and Roddy are counting on us to beat those snobs of theirs.”

At the one-time Madam Malfoy’s new distaste for snobs, Remus had to laugh.

“It’s not funny,” she said. “How are we ever to make friends if we begin by showing them up in front of their rivals? But I may have thought of something…”

“No. No non-consensual Legilimency,” he said, his finger raised.

She batted it down. “Thanks to the ruddy Statute of Secrecy, non-consensual Legilimency is the only kind Muggles can encounter. And I wouldn’t be looking in their heads for deep, dark secrets, just a few answers from the quizmaster.”

“Absolutely not,” he insisted.

She grumbled to herself, knowing all further arguments were evil.

“We’ll think of something else,” he said. “Something more ethically hygienic. Like – like not cheating at all.”

“Using magic here is not cheating.” This was an argument she believed in. “It’s using our natural gifts. The Muggles’ gifts are their lifetimes of lived experience in this culture. We don’t have that, so it’s only fair we use…the gifts we do have.”

They had come to the door of the pub, warm yellow light glowing through leaded windows, the buzz of voices and clinking of glasses already audible. Remus stopped to take her hand in both of his. He bent toward her, low enough for something to thrill through her. Ever since she’d kissed his cheek on Halloween night, after he’d taken his potion and the moon had started to wane again, the possibility of him kissing her in return had been hovering over them with every inclination of his head toward hers. So far, nothing had happened. And though she knew it was highly unlikely that this pause here in the doorway of a public house would be the moment, her skin felt electrified all the same.

“Just enjoy yourself this evening,” he said. “Lose the quiz to the snobs honestly and charmingly. I’m sure you’ll figure out how.” Straightening up, he led her inside.

Maudie was hailing them from a high table close to the bar. “Here they are: Slim and the lovely Nancy.” She pulled Narcissa onto the stool beside her.

Roddy waved toward the bar. “Quick, Slim. Get your orders in before we start.”

Remus cast his eyes over the bottles lining the mirrored back wall. None of the Muggle liquor looked familiar and he realized all at once that he had no idea what their orders should be.

“Oh, we’ll just have what you’re having,” Narcissa said, slick with the social rescue.

Roddy gave a nod. “Pint a bitter and a cran-tini. Off we go.”

The first of the evening’s crises settled, Narcissa smoothed her wind-tossed hair and took her lip colour from her handbag.

Maudie sipped a drink out of a glass like an inverted triangle.“I’ve never seen that brand of lippy before. Looks posh. Where’d you find that in Cokeworth?”

“Oh this? It’s just something I concocted myself in the kitchen,” Narcissa said, applying it to her lower lip with her fingertip. “I do need to invest in a proper lip brush.”

Maudie gave a hum that was more like a chirp. “Brilliant. So that’s the chemical engineering you do?”

“No, cosmetics is just a hobby. Nothing special,” she said, gliding her finger over the bow of her upper lip.

“Well, your husband seems to appreciate it.” Maudie waved her glass to where Remus stood at the bar. He was partly turned back toward them, his hand full of coins poised over the upturned palm of the barkeeper, ignoring the man waiting to be paid as he stood watching Narcissa colour her lips.

Goaded by Maudie’s amusement, Narcissa snapped the makeup vial shut and waved back at him.

Across the room, Remus jolted back to the present moment, stammering an apology and paying up.

Maudie laughed hard enough to lean into Narcissa.

Narcissa shrugged, coy and modest all at once, her cheeks more pink than usual. “You know how newlyweds are. Sorry about him.”

Maudie sat up. “No, go on and enjoy your high romance, love. I admire you, but there’s no envy in it. No, I wouldn’t want to be starting over at our age. Not for all the hungry looks across the pub in the world.”

“Hungry? Shall I get us some nibbles then?” Roddy said, arriving back at Maudie’s side.

“Always looking for an excuse, aren’t you,” Maudie said, puckering her lips at him.

“What’re you playing at?” he said, lifting a paper napkin to blot her mouth. “Got something on your face? Did I get it?”

“No, Roderick, you did not.”

He shook his head and set about doling out the quiz sheets. “Right. They’ve got four categories tonight. Sports, TV, History, and Music.”

“Oh no. Nancy’s strong point must be science. No science tonight?” Maudie said, turning the sheets over.

“It’ll be running through everything else. All knowledge comes down to science in the end, right?” Roddy said. “Slim, you can help me with sports.”

Remus caught the microexpression of panic passing over Narcissa’s face. “I certainly can,” he said. “Though since I’ve been abroad so long, it will have to be with questions on ice hockey or Canadian football.”

For an instant, Roddy was stunned. “Well, I’m – I’m sure that could be useful.”

“I don’t suppose a brainy pair like yourselves watch much TV,” Maudie said, pressing on.

“I’m afraid we haven’t watched any at all since we’ve arrived in Cokeworth,” Narcissa said. “The house we’ve let hasn’t got one.” This was true. If Snape had such a thing as a telly in the house, it must be hidden away in the vanished upstairs room along with the rest of his secret guilty pleasures.

“It’s alright, alright,” Roddy said, assuring himself more than anyone. “We’ll make it up in history. That’s your field, right Slim?”

“Folklore and mythology, actually,” Narcissa corrected. “But it’s really all the same.”

This dubious claim went unaddressed as the quizmaster called the event to order.

“Pencils at the ready,” the quiz began. “Question one: which Beatle appears barefoot on Abbey Road?”

“I thought they said no science questions,” Narcissa muttered to Remus, trying hard to remember which kinds of beetles have the feet of bears.

“No talking!” Though the words were whispered, they were jarringly loud. The speaker was a woman at the table beside them with blown out hair and a fairy cardigan. She was glaring at Narcissa, primed to shush her again. This was their rival, the queen bee of the snobs.

As Narcissa regarded her, she let her head drift into a posture she hadn’t assumed in weeks. It was the one Draco described as looking as if something foul smelling had been passed under her nose.

“Question two,” crowed the quizmaster, defusing the tension. “What is the maiden name of Coronation Street’s Gail?”

Maudie wrote furiously, Roddy glancing at her paper as Remus tapped the end of his pencil against his chin. Coronation – that meant this must be a question about history. Why couldn’t he think of a single historical figure named Gail?

“Question three: Who was both a rookie player and top try scorer for England in 1984?”

Remus could do no more than doodle a quaffle in the margin of his answer paper.

“Too easy!” the man beside the shushing lady heckled. “We’re all going to be tied with full marks.”

The quizmaster cracked his knuckles. “Too easy, is it? Well since I aim to please, here’s a hard one from our ancient history. What was the name of King Arthur’s horse? And mind that spelling counts.”

At last, Remus was writing words on this answer sheet – too many words, answering in essay form. Beneath the table, Narcissa bumped his knee with hers, but this time, he wouldn’t be distracted, scrawling away.

Roddy gave a greedy laugh as he walked the answer sheets to the quizmaster at the end of the first round. When the tallies were in they were ahead of both of the other teams. As promised, Roddy had got the rugby question right and Maudie had known Gail Potter Tilsley Platt Hillman’s original name. Everyone in the room but Narcissa and Remus had got the Beatles question. And in reading Remus’s answer to the horse question, the quizmaster had learned that King Arthur rode both a mare and a stallion and agreed that either name was acceptable as a correct answer.

“A question about Arch-wizard Arthur – that was lucky,” Remus whispered to Narcissa as they lowered their glasses after toasting their results with Maudie and Roddy.

She gave a quick gasp. “Luck! Of course!”

‘What?”

She had him by the wrist, calling back excuses to Maudie and Roddy over her shoulder as she dragged Remus toward the toilets. “Hold still,” she said, pushing him to the wall in the tiny, shadowy space between the gents’ and the ladies’ rooms.

He pulled her close, whispering. “You are not getting your wand out here.”

“I am,” she whispered back, chin lifted in defiance. “It will only be for a second while I cast a luck spell on us.”

He took her face in his hands. “Look here. Luck spells don’t work. Felix Felicis is the only thing that can magically conjure luck – unless you’re a leprechaun or extremely susceptible to placebo –”

She was the one doing the shushing now, standing on her toes with her hand covering his mouth. “I have a very reliable, very secret, very short acting luck spell of my own. And if you can shut it for one moment I can cast it on us.”

“What’s all this?” came a booming voice behind them. It was the rival fairy cardigan woman again. “The pair of you are back here colluding, cheating aren’t you?”

That was exactly what they were doing, but Narcissa wouldn’t be caught at it by this shrew. Her hand flipped from Remus’s mouth to the back of his neck and she pulled him down, ready and more than willing to snog him and embarrass this woman for interrupting their extended honeymoon. But instead of finding his face against hers she was met with something rigid and unyielding: his ear. Remus had turned his head, avoiding face-to-face contact, making sure he didn’t kiss her. To the woman standing behind them, it would have looked like a proper snog – Remus holding Narcissa’s head as she stood on her toes obscuring a clear view of how they’d come together – or failed to.

The woman let out a frustrated “tsk.”

“Leave them be, Carol,” Maudie called from the tables. “They’re still a little mad for each other. And anyway, there’s no such thing as colluding in a game with teams.”

Remus and Narcissa were left alone in the dark, tiny corridor again. Remus fingered his ear, looking down at Narcissa’s wand still drawn between them. “Alright, since we’ve come this far, you might as well cast your luck spell. Quick, while they still think we’re back here snogging.”

She gave a nod and cast the spell so half-heartedly she wondered if it would work at all. The flash of magic was small and kept well between them. From the bar, it would have looked like the flashbulb of a camera.

Round two of the quiz went well. When the sports question asked for the hockey sweater number of Wayne Gretzky, Roddy turned wide eyes to Remus who wrote the first two-digit number that came into his head under the influence of the luck spell: 99.

The patrons let out a collective yell when the quizmaster announced that he’d got it right.

The luck spell, however, was wasted on Narcissa. She barely managed to write anything on her answer sheet, distracted as she was by her second and then her third cran-tini of the night. At first, Remus wasn’t concerned. Her mood had been low since the beginning of the second round of the quiz and the drink seemed to help her shake it off. The triangular glass with its red fruity colour seemed harmless, and frankly, neither of them was familiar enough with Muggle cocktails to realize how much alcohol she’d had until she was falling off her stool into him, her body curving into his as she waved her glass in his face, talking nonsense.

“You must try it, my darling. It’s a cran-tini. Made of cranberries and so many lovely tinis.”

Remus pried the nearly empty glass from her hand and set it on the table. “I think we’ll have to miss the third round of the quiz. Do accept my apologies. Nancy’s more of a red wine with dinner drinker and she’s a bit out of her element with…” He sniffed at the glass.

“Vodka,” Roddy supplied.

“Great stars,” Remus sighed. “What’ve you done to yourself, Nancy?”

“Right. Well don’t worry about the quiz,” Roddy said. “You’re leaving us with a strong enough lead.”

“Cheers.”

“Oh, let me help.” Maudie slid off her stool to join Remus in stuffing Narcissa’s arms into her coat. “She’s a good girl, but a little sad about something. I reckon it might be that teenaged son of hers. The one she tells me you don’t get on with.”

“Maudie, darling,” Narcissa said, springing to life all at once. “This man is my new husband. Isn’t that extraordinary? But the waxing gibbous phase is past and he doesn’t want to kiss me anymore.”

Maudie scoffed a laugh. “You could have fooled me.”

“And I did!” said Narcissa, tapping Maudie on the tip of her nose.

Remus was rushing her to the door as quickly as her loose, sleepy limbs could be made to move. Outside, he held her waist in the crook of his arm as he leaned against the rough stucco wall, arranging her limbs for the walk home, his coat still unbuttoned despite the now bitter wind. The cold might have sobered her, making her quiet, hiding her face in his shoulder like she hadn’t done since the night he’d nearly hurt her scuffling for the doorknob.

Dread shot through him. Had he hurt her tonight? His mind tore through the evening's events. He’d scolded her a little though he suspected they'd both rather enjoyed it. But then there was that fake snog where she’d mashed her face into his ear. She’d meant it to be fake all along – hadn’t she?

He tipped forward, hoping to find her face to read her feelings from it. For someone so renowned as an Occlumens, it was ironic how clear her feelings were from her facial expressions. Or maybe they just seemed that way to him after living with her all these weeks. Either way, she wouldn’t look at him now, clinging to him to hide herself.

He stroked the back of her head. “You alright?”

Her reply was unintelligible, muffled in his front.

“Cissa?”

“It’s Nancy,” she said.

He clucked his tongue. “It isn’t. It’s my fine lady, extremely tipsy and with a red nose again.”

“Don’t be charming,” she said. “Just take us home. No walking.”

“Right,” he said, mimicking Roddy’s manner. He looked left and then right, up and down the Cokeworth high street, before he turned on the spot and brought them to the garden gate of Spinner’s End.

Rather than wrestling her to get her on her feet, he swept her up and carried her down the path, through the door, and into the house. Inside the front door, he paused. “We’re home.”

She made no move, no sound but steady breaths.

With another gentle laugh, he set off up the stairs, carrying her to the bedroom. As he laid her on her bed and slipped off her shoes, she stirred again, her voice sounding.

“Be still. Don’t roll over. You’re safer on your stomach,” he said. “Drink some water and I'll leave you to sleep it off.”

“You’re acting like a medic,” she moaned into her pillow as he conjured water for her.

“I’m acting like a friend.”

“But you're not my friend,” she said into the pillow, dropping her fist against it in a listless protest. “You're my husband. And though you'll watch me put on lipstick like you'd like to eat me alive, you won't actually kiss me for anything.”

Setting the water on the bedside table, he sat on the edge of the bed. He closed his eyes, collecting himself. “People with werewolf spouses should avoid hyperboles about being eaten alive, you daft thing,” he said, patting her back between her shoulder blades.

She settled beneath his touch, muttering and restless.

“And believe me when I say that I have wanted precious few things more than I want to kiss you.” He spoke the words to the back of her drunk head, perhaps forgetting he wasn’t perfectly sober himself. “It’s so important to me, I wouldn’t have a first kiss with you squandered as a tactic in a silly game or to cheer you up while you're drunk. It's like when you wouldn't kiss me during the waxing gibbous. Adding crystallized rhubarb pollen to a finished potion…”

She laughed. “You knew that was bollocks. Will we ever get it right?”

He sighed, withdrawing his hand from her back. “If it ever happens, I want you to kiss me clear-headed and consenting and – I want you to do it for no reason but that you like me at least a fraction as much as I like you. Now drink your water.”

Groaning, she pushed herself onto her back. “I'll drink it if you’ll tell me about your first kiss ever.”

He let out another long breath. “It was more about harmless teenaged theatrics than real feelings. I was at the lake at school with Sirius and James. James was snogging Lily under this golden willow tree they liked and Sirius was at the shoreline working up to kiss some new girl of his, leaving her friend stuck with me. I was completely clueless and invited her to lie in the grass to look at stars. I suppose it was part peer pressure, part an attempt to get me to shut up about astronomy when she rolled over and kissed me. Claire was her name.”

“Spelled the French way?”

“Yes, actually.”

“I might remember her from school. Hufflepuff?”

“Ravenclaw.”

“Whoever she is, she'll have a lovely memory of that.”

“Will she?”

“Yes.” Narcissa labored to sitting, taking the water glass from him at last. “My first kiss has no stars or romance. It was with Lucius, at our betrothal ceremony in the Manor ballroom with our families looking on and applauding, congratulating each other more than us. It was mortifying.”

She drank deeply, as if washing her first kiss out of her mouth, lowering the glass and wiping away the excess water on her lip with her sleeve. “If you ever kiss me, Remus Lupin, it will be only my second time having a first kiss with someone. And I’ll want a nice one, like your Claire’s. I’ll want it personal and spontaneous – sweet.”

He palmed the top of her head. “You are so very drunk.”

“I’m not,” she said, ducking clear of his hand. “And I give you my permission to kiss me anytime you like as long as it’s done sweetly. Effective from now until you see fit to do it.”

He took the glass from her and filled it again. “That’s not how it works. And I will certainly not hold you to anything said during this very foolhardy conversation you likely won’t even remember.”

She didn’t argue, fading back into the mattress, her eyes closing. He still didn’t trust her to sleep on her back and rolled her over onto her front again, her face in profile against the pillows. A fine web of stray hair lay like a lace veil over her cheek. With the lightest touch, he cleared it away. “My fine lady,” he said.

In the dark house, he felt his way downstairs. It felt good to be good to her. It would be sublime to indulge in romancing her. He wasn't sure anymore if he could help himself, when it came to that. But real feelings didn't make him a real husband. Not when he lived under a real curse.

Chapter Text

It was late in the morning when, with great alarm, Remus woke up to the sound of a beak tapping at the tiny window of his larder-turned-bedroom. Disaster – it could only be a disaster that would prompt anyone to breach their cover by sending another owl to Spinners End.

In a dressing gown and slippers he raced outside, snatching at the plain brown envelope and all but throwing the owl back into the air. At the sight of the letter's handwriting, his dread deepened. This wasn’t an operational letter from anyone in the Order. He’d known this handwriting longer than he’d known anyone there. This was a letter from his father.

Inside, Narcissa was still upstairs, lying in on a Saturday morning. Alone, he stood at the kitchen sink and read the letter from parents who shouldn’t have known where he was. Maybe someone had captured them and this was a ransom note they’d been forced to write.

Dear Pupper,

It’s a good thing your mother doesn’t know what a howler is, or this letter very well could have been one. Despite my best efforts to let the matter blow over, news of your most unlikely marriage to Madam M. has reached your mother. An anonymous someone was kind enough to clip the marriage announcement out of the Prophet and send it to us through the Muggle post. Your mum was heartbroken to have missed the event, and though I assured her there must be some mistake or deliberate misinformation, she insists on paying you a visit and meeting your wife (if indeed there is one).

By the time you receive this, we will be on our way from Cardiff to Cokeworth. I’m not sure you know, Pupper, but when you sent your mother the Halloween greeting, the Muggle post office stamped their city name on the envelope (as they all do). Bride or no bride, please meet us at the station at 3pm. Mum says to tell you that if you don’t turn up, we’ll wind up spending the night on the station benches or some such rough place.

Yours, Dad

Remus’s arms went slack, his expression stunned. This was how Narcissa found him when she shuffled past him in the kitchen, muttering her good morning.

He patted her shoulder as she passed.

“A letter?” she said. “New orders from your Dumbledore? More costumes from our Dora?”

“No.” He let himself fall into a chair at the table. “It’s my parents. They’re on a train this very moment, headed here to stay the night with us.”

She flicked her wand at the kettle, setting it boiling. “Your mother is coming here? Your mother the…”

“The Muggle, yes,” Remus said, bristling.

“But it’s so dangerous,” she said, filling each of their teacups. “How could your father let her —”

“She’s a Muggle, not a child,” Remus said, his voice verging on snappish. “She does what she likes. And since she was intent on coming, he couldn’t very well let her go alone.”

Narcissa set his tea on the tabletop. “Well, I suppose I can keep to my lab until they’ve gone if you want to keep me a secret.”

“No, that won’t do,” he said as she skimmed the letter herself. “Mum knows about you already. And it’s you she wants to see – the daughter-in-law she hasn’t dared to hope for all these years. So please don’t…”

He didn’t finish, his eyes fixed on her until she looked up from the letter to stare back at him.

“Don’t what?” she said. “You think I would be anything less than a gracious hostess? Me, the woman who wouldn’t harm you within the walls of my own house, even when you were a werewolf?”

He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Werewolves are magical creatures. But my mother – she’s not magical – not in the way Dad and I are. And your – your views on Muggles – well, they’ve been awful. And I know you’ve said – but…”

She bowed her head, collecting herself. “Let’s be frank, Remus. Dumbledore sent us here for a great many reasons, most of them based on convenience and safety. But he also intended for me to learn to love the world outside pureblood wizardry. To become an ally and a convert – a living example of getting out. And if the kindness I’ve shown Maudie and Roddy and the neighbourhood children means anything –”

“It does,” he said, grasping her hand where it lay on the table by her cooling tea.

She covered his hand with her own. “Then trust me with your mother. And even if I was still completely poisoned by pureblood propaganda, please trust that I care for you enough to be kind to whomever it is you love.”

He raised their hands and held them to his forehead, nodding. “Alright.”

“But,” she said as he released her. “There are still matters to be decided. Chiefly, how much shall we tell them about the true nature of our arrangement here?”

Remus blew out his breath. “My primary concern is their safety. It’s more pressing even than my honesty or Mum’s feelings. So I suppose we should act based on what will keep them safest. Is it safer to let them believe we’ve got a proper marriage? Or should we explain everything and send them away burdened with a secret to keep? I mean,” he said, rising from his chair to pace, “if they’re spotted with their Undesirable son and their Defector daughter-in-law and picked up and questioned, it may be best if they don’t realize there is anything to hide.”

Narcissa gave a nod. “It won’t be too difficult to pass ourselves off as genuinely married. It’s not as if we’re at one another’s throats.”

“Yes, and we did manage to fool everyone at the pub last week,” he said.

At the memory, Narcissa cringed.

He noticed and it rankled him, wondering as he had for days about what she most regretted about what she’d said and done the night of the pub quiz night. Maybe it was something he’d said or done. He’d been over it in his mind countless times, though they’d never spoken of it.

And they wouldn’t speak of it now either. Narcissa was on her feet, beating the dusty kitchen curtains with a spatula, trying to throw them open to let the sunlight reveal all the dull and dingy surfaces in the room. “Well, let’s get to work. There’s much to be done before this place is in mother-in-law shape.”

He reached over her head to pull the curtain past where she could tug it from her height. “Oh, it’s just Mum. She isn’t fussy like that.”

“But I am,” Narcissa said, still cheery but also rather stern. “As you’ve never had a mother-in-law before, Remus, you will follow my lead in this. We’ll prepare for my new mother-in-law’s arrival as if she’s royalty. I’ve always wanted in-laws who saw me as more than a business contract with a womb. I am going to get it right.”

The rest of the day was hard labour, the pair of them shifting furnishings and cleaning everything, stowing Snape’s more ghastly knick-knacks, like the taxidermied flying fox in the lounge and the painting over the dining table of a witch flying triumphantly off a ducking stool as a gaggle of terrified Muggle villagers watched. Narcissa was genuinely sorry to brush away the patina of spider webs Snape had allowed to collect over the chandelier in the vestibule. They weren't left by dangerous arachnids and they diffused the light rather charmingly. But Muggles were funny about creatures in the house so it couldn’t be helped. She’d apologize to Snape later.

When he thought they were nearly finished, Remus found her standing in the doorway of her bedroom tapping her finger against her lips. He caught his breath and came to stand beside her.

“Don’t give up your room. We’ll find an inn for them,” he said. “I’ll book them in under a false name and stand watch all night.”

She clucked her tongue. “They’ll sleep here, of course. And it’s not as if that will force us into sharing a bed, like a trope in a romance novel.”

“A what?”

“A romance novel trope – the shared bed. Don’t tell me you’ve never read a romance.”

“No, actually.”

She scoffed. “Then you’ve neglected your education. Otherwise, you would know that sharing a bed with someone who’s not yet your lover is a classic scenario of romance writing. Like the turn in a sonnet.” She was pulling the blankets from the bed, piling them in his arms.

“Someone who’s not – not yet –”

“Stop your stammering and take these out to the clothesline to air.” She waved him out of the room with both arms, calling down the stairs to him as he went. “You’ll sleep in the larder, as usual, and I’ll sleep on the sofa in the lounge. It’s as simple as that.”

Late in the afternoon, Remus went to the station to meet his parents and bring them to Spinners End. Narcissa remained in the house, monitoring the pot roast and getting dressed. As she'd been cleaning, she’d found an old Muggle magazine lost deep between the cushions of the sofa. It was from 1968, imported from America, and called TV Guide. The woman on the front was a darker blond than Narcissa with her long bangs pulled back in a loose, soft roll over her forehead. She was pretty in a wholesome way, wearing a minidress in a bright print over tights so opaquely blue she didn't seem under-dressed. Her shoes were pink and printed on the cover next to her was the word “Bewitched.” From the article inside, Narcissa learned the woman was a Muggle actress playing a witch on TV. Muggles liked her even without a pointed hat or a warty nose. Narcissa could work with that.

When the Lupins arrived at the house and she opened the door, Narcissa was dressed and styled exactly like the woman on the TV Guide. “Welcome, Mrs. Lupin!” she said, offering her hand.

Remus was taken aback by her mod 60s look. Lyall Lupin, who had the misfortune to have met Lucius, regarded her with lifted, guarded brows. But Hope Lupin, who had been wife to a wizard and mother to a werewolf for most of her life, had long learned to accept the unexpected with optimism. “Mrs. Lupin yourself,” she said, reaching past Narcissa’s hand and taking her in a hug. “Aren’t you a picture? We’re going to be such friends.”

Though Narcissa didn’t like to cook that didn’t mean she was not a good cook. “My mother had me trained since infancy to keep a perfect house,” she explained as she received Lyall’s compliments on the meal. “We’re only borrowing this house from an old family friend of mine so it’s far from perfect. But we are making do quite nicely.”

Hope nodded over her tea. “Once you’re established in your own home, I’m sure you’ll have many long, perfectly happy years. Look at how well Pupper is looking, Lyall. None of that peaky pallor he takes on sometimes, And not a scratch on him.”

Remus patted Narcissa’s shoulder. “Cissa’s best cooking is in the laboratory. She makes the po – the medicine that suppresses my transformations.”

Lyall was openly impressed but a shadow fell over Hope. “Suppresses it? So she’s never seen…”

“Seen Moony? Yes she has, actually,” he said, gathering the empty teacups to pile into the sink where the rest of the dishes were washing up.

“Now Pupper, your mother has asked you not to use that name,” Lyall said.

Hope waved it off. “I’m glad to hear Cissa knows that part of you. It would be hard for me to have much faith in this marriage otherwise.”

Narcissa lowered her eyes. “Yes, I know it all. And there is nothing left for me to fear.”

Hope reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “Of course, my dear. Now, Pupper tells me there’s one more member of your family away at school. A nearly grown son.”

Narcissa lifted her head. “Yes, my Draco.”

“I was his teacher during my short career at Hogwarts. He’s very bright,” Remus added, truthfully enough.

“So they aren’t strangers,” Narcissa finished. “But Draco is very close to his father, and family breakdowns are never easy, especially for children.”

“The young man will be joining you here for Christmas?” Lyall asked.

Remus gave a sigh, waiting for Narcissa to decide how to answer a question they had yet to properly discuss.

“No, he’ll be staying at school. But we are determined to spend the holiday with him there.” She took Remus’s hand. “Aren’t we, darling.”

For the rest of the evening Lyall played wizard’s chess with Remus while Hope questioned Narcissa about foraging for herbs.

“They say there are some lovely wild mushrooms in the woods around our city: scarlet elf cups, I think they are. I’ve seen them but I’m too terrified to actually eat any,” Hope said. “Lyall says he’s forgotten most of his old herbology classes. You must have kept yours up.”

“Oh yes. We kept extensive gardens and greenhouses at the manor. Though nothing beats wild produce. And surviving a wild mushroom mishap is easy. All it takes is a beezor added to the cooking pot and –”

“Cissa, you’re not giving my mother advice she can’t use that’s going to get her killed are you?” Remus called from the chess board where he was moving his king hopelessly in and out of check.

Cissa frowned. “Am I?”

“Yes,” Lyall and Remus answered in unison.

“Don’t fret about it, love,” Hope told her, patting her knee. “I’m never so careless as to take magical advice at face value. What I am interested in is what magic you’re using to make somewhere nice for the pair of you to sleep while we’ve put you out of your bed.”

Remus’s face flushed. “We’re sleeping apart tonight, Mum.”

“There’s got to be a first time for everything,” Cissa said, tugging at the hem of her minidress. “We’ve got a tiny guest room off the kitchen for Remus and this sofa is just long enough for me. No magic needed.”

But Hope was having none of it. “Are the lot of you wizards, or aren’t you? Lyall, see if you can remember that trick your cousin showed us where a normal sofa gets made into a sofabed. It’s inspired by a real kind of furniture regular people often keep in their homes.” She rose from the sofa, shooing Narcissa off of it so she could remove both of the seat cushions.

Narcissa flashed a glare at Remus as if to say, “Now aren’t you glad we cleaned under there?”

“Oh. Well, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try,” Lyall said.

“Brilliant. Pupper, shift the coffee table out of the way.”

Lyall stood in the cleared space, waving his wand over Snape’s sofa. “Barrin Baccheus.”

Snape’s sofa swelled into an upholstery-covered cluster of grapes.

Hope hummed. “Have you got the right one, Lyall?”

He hummed in return. “Let’s try another: Breakin Bacheus.”

Snape’s sofa creaked and strained, dust Narcissa hadn’t been able to reach puffing from its corners. Just when Narcissa thought it would crumble into matchsticks, the thing was shaped like a thin bed only wide enough for two adults who liked each other very much.

“Perfect,” Hope said, and she ordered Remus to bring the bedding from the larder.

After the senior Lupins had turned in, Narcissa was first in the sofabed, her Samantha Stevens eye-liner and lipstick washed away, a book propped on her chest, pantomiming reading. Remus came down the stairs from the bathroom and stood over her, measuring the mattress rather dubiously with his eyes.

“Don’t you dare sigh,” she said without looking up from her book. “There’s nothing to be mournful about. You’ll only lie here for an hour or so, until we’re sure your parents have settled for the night. Then you can go off to the larder. But be sure to be back before dawn, so they don’t wake up and think we’ve had a row in the night.”

It took quite a bit of effort to hold back his sigh but he managed to do it. She was tense to the point of being hostile. What was she defending? She was quite safe. He’d promised her the night she drunkenly gave him permission to kiss her that he wouldn’t hold anything she said in that conversation against her. There was no need to be sure of it by being so short with him now.

He sat on the metal edge of the sofabed, lying back just to find Narcissa rolling into the crease that had formed down the centre of the mattress, folding him into it as well.

“Oof,” she said, fighting to free herself of the pull of the flimsy mattress. Tossing her book aside. “Did they enchant it to squash us together?”

“No, it’s –” Remus stopped his struggling to get out of the crease himself. “It’s just what these things are like. I slept on one at my Granny Howell’s house for an entire summer. Dad recreated it too perfectly, right down to its propensity to fold along the middle like this.”

Narcissa had managed to prop herself on one elbow. She looked him squarely in the face. “You’re a werewolf with a Granny Howell?”

“Yes.”

“That is ludicrous.”

“And true all the same.”

Narcissa’s elbow lost traction and she slid back into him.

“It’s not going to work,” Remus said, trying to turn over and get his legs back over the side.

“Just be still,” she said, her hand on his arm to keep him from leaving. “We can bear anything for an hour. Just wait.”

Beside her, she felt his chest rise. “No sighing!” she said, her finger raised.

“But it's the romance novel scenario, isn’t it?” he said without a sigh. “And you so desperately don’t want it to be.”

She sat up again. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Look,” she said. “Why don’t we pretend we’re something else for the next hour – something other than a newlywed couple. Let’s pretend instead that we’re school friends out on a wilderness trek. We’re friends at some sleepaway event, passing a pleasant hour in a cramped tent in our sleeping bags before falling asleep for real. How’s that?”

Remus sniffed a laugh. “Alright, Fine.”

“So what would you and your friends do after lights out while you were off camping? We can begin with that.”

He shook his head against his pillow. “We didn’t have lights out. Our camping trips were lit by the full moon on the nights I was transformed. You'll recall that Moony’s not one for sleep.”

Narcissa tsked. “Your parents don’t like you to use that name.”

“The lads gave me that name. I’m the only one who remembers it. There’s great affection in it.”

“Naive affection,” she said, poking his chest. “Your lads were children trying to protect you and themselves by separating you into Remus and bloody ‘Moony.’ I don’t blame them for it. They were frightened and didn’t know any better, but –”

“Enough, Cissa,” he said. “It appears they weren’t nearly frightened enough. Now tell me what you and your friends would do after lights out.”

A beat of silence passed between them before she hummed, settling into her pillow. “We would try to terrify each other with horror stories –”

“Like being forced by evil wizards to marry werewolves.”

“Enough yourself, Remus,” she said, but with a playful shove at his shoulder. “And then once we were scared, we’d soothe one another by braiding each other’s hair.”

They lay facing each other, all the lamps and candles snuffed out. The moon was a perfect half and it lit the room through the freshly cleaned glass of the front window. His hand moved toward her hair, rolling a stray lock of it between his fingers before lacing it behind her ear. She watched him, her eyes never leaving his face.

“That’s the best you can do? You don’t know how to begin braiding my hair?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “But I can pet your head like a cat’s instead, if you like.”

His fingers curled over her ear again, his fingernails short and blunt, scratching lightly through her hair.

She closed her eyes and angled her head to invite more of his touch. It was a positively feline maneuvre and it drew a soft laugh from him as he let his fingers sink deeper into her fine, silky hair.

“If we stayed married,” he said, “and my Patronus changed as a tribute to you, I’m afraid mine wouldn’t be a peacock either. It would be a cat. A little, white, spoiled cat with a collar of glossy pearls. The kind of beast always bumping its head into my hand, demanding attention.”

She laughed back at him, her hand lighting on his arm as he combed at her hair. “Fair enough. But as for me, if my Patronus became all about you, it wouldn’t be the wolf people would expect.”

“Not even a she-wolf?” he said.

“No. Not a wolf, but a werewolf,” she said. “Not the image of what a wife might hope you’d be someday, but you just as you are now. That’s what I’d have in my purest, happiest of hearts.”

His long-held sigh finally escaped him. His hand in her hair advanced along the curve of her head to palm the back of her skull. He held her like that, motionless but for his breath, saying nothing.

“What is it?” she whispered to him. “If I’ve said something wrong –”

“No, you haven’t,” he said, his face now near enough for his brow to roll against hers as he shook his head. “But you’ve said something I can respond to in only one way. You may want to close your eyes.”

She shut them and waited, lying in the folding mattress face to face with him, her arm bent between them, her hand on his heart, fingertips marking the torrent of his pulse through his chest.

At first, his response was to brush his mustached lip against her cheek, letting her sense its texture on her face. He remembered, she thought, remembered that she'd never been this close to any man but Lucius, with his immaculately clean-shaven face. And so Remus was coming for her slowly, without any shocks.

She smiled and moved her face against his lip. “It’s like an eyebrow.” Her head tipped upward, finding his actual eyebrow to press a gentle kiss on it.

His hand was on her face, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw from her ear to the center of her chin. She drew back from his brow, and when she did, he was there. His mouth swept up, catching hers. She opened to him, vibrating and eager. His heartbeat seemed to be everywhere now so she let her hand track up his chest, her fingers threading in the waves of his hair at the nape of his neck, bringing him deeper into the kiss.

Her voice sounded, high and still fraught with the tension of their weeks together. Ever since he’d taken her hand and apparated them away from the manor, it had just been a matter of time before they wound up like this. They belonged to each other, somehow. She knew him, she adored him, and he must believe it too.

But her body was too moved by him. She knew it was too soon to fulfil every desire she had for him but her body craved him anyway, urging her to curve her leg around his hip, seduce from him the sensations she had missed for months. She couldn’t stop wanting him but she could keep her passion for him focused in their kiss.

She heard his desire for her in his ragged, famished breath as their mouths broke from each other for a moment. As he gathered her ever closer in his arms, his weight was shifting from his side to his front, pressing her down as she arched toward him. His mouth had left hers again, finding her throat. She opened her posture to him, baring her neck for him to devour, trusting him with it.

She knew this dance well. But maybe this man was more than she could resist – the wildness of him calling to appetites in herself with greater force than their combined powers of reason.

It was a question that would not be answered tonight, not when Lyall Lupin’s voice sounded in the room. “Pardon me, Pupper. Mum thinks she left her reading glasses in the kitchen and she claims Accio spells scratch the lenses. So don't mind me as I sneak through.”

At the sound of his father's voice, Remus had thrown himself off her, nearly escaping the folding mattress. “G'night,” he croaked as Lyall found his way back upstairs.

Beside him, Narcissa was laughing.

“Look at you,” he said. “My fine lady caught out getting snogged on a sofabed.”

She stifled a squeal as he let the mattress roll his torso back onto hers. She held his face between her hands, lifting his kiss-tousled hair out of his eyes. “Still less embarrassing than a betrothal ceremony.”

He laughed back at her, and she lunged forward to kiss his smile. He bent over her again, and kissed her, returning to his interrupted worship of her neck and collarbones. His hands no longer kept to the safety of her head but roved her waist and back. And when his thumb, perhaps by accident, grazed the bare skin at the hem of her shirt, she broke from his mouth with a gasp.

“Sorry,” she said. “The long marriage – it conditioned my body to respond quickly. And right now, we need to be slow. And anyway, I think we’ve convinced your parents we’re really married,” she said.

Remus pressed his closed mouth to her forehead, speechless for a moment over the rush of his own breaths. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’ll go to the larder until morning.”

“I don’t want you to, but…”

“No, I agree,” he said. “It’s one thing for Dad to find me kissing the daylights out of you for the first time. It’d be quite another if he walked in on anything more…”

“Precisely,” she said, stamping a prim kiss on the end of his nose. “Go on, but don’t think too hard about any of this while you’re away from me. Just sleep. Don’t work yourself into some mad state of noble regret.”

He held her tight, his lips on hers again. “Never.”

***
Hope was sitting up in Narcissa’s bed when Lyall returned.

“Well?” she said, not asking anything about her reading glasses.

“Well, I did indeed crash in on them in a marital embrace,” he said with a shudder. “They were decent enough but certainly – preoccupied.”

“Excellent,” Hope said, her posture relaxing. “I told you this was the real thing. Nothing to worry about. You see?”

Lyall shuddered again, feeling like he had indeed seen far more than enough. Remus did seem to be enamoured with this princess from a monstrous family. She seemed sincere in return. But it made no sense that her old attachments would simply shrug and let their princess have a happily ever after in a story that went against their own wicked ends. No, the more Remus loved her, the more danger there was to the both of them, not to mention that son of hers.

Hope’s breaths grew deep and sleepy while beside her, Lyall frowned and blinked in the dark.

Chapter Text

Without any apparation, Remus and Narcissa walked home from the Crane and Quarry pub. Neither of them was drunk but neither of them was walking at their usual brisk pace either, strolling slowly back to Spinners End through quiet, empty streets. Thanks to advice from Hope Lupin on Muggle social drinking, at the pub tonight Narcissa had ordered one small sherry and left it at that. Instead of tucking one gloved hand into the crook of Remus’s elbow, Narcissa had taken off her glove and laced her fingers through his inside the pocket of his coat. Hand in hand, she was happy, and she was almost certain he was as well.

After tea, the senior Lupins had left on the train back to Cardiff. On the walk back from the station, Maudie and Roddy had hailed Remus and Narcissa into the pub. Only now did they find themselves alone for the first time since the hour they’d shared in the sofabed the night before.

There was much to discuss, not all of it romantic or delightful. Their relationship could not change without considering Draco. Sorting him out – him and his horrific mission to mend the vanishing cabinet forgotten in Hogwarts – was as inevitable as it was impossible. But since Narcissa couldn’t begin with what she couldn’t explain, what she said instead was, “Well, I think they liked me alright.”

“My parents?” Remus said over the slow crunch of their footfalls. “Of course they did. Except for the potentially lethal mushroom cooking tip, you were perfect.”

She batted his arm with the hand not already held in his. “At first, I was most worried about your mother. But then I remembered your dad was more likely to have run into certain nefarious family members of mine.”

Yes, Lyall had met Lucius during an investigation of reports of weaponized Boggarts. And everyone knew Narcissa’s murdering, maiming older sister, at least by reputation. But there was nothing to be done about any of that. So instead, Remus said, “My most pressing question is about you. How did you like my parents in return?”

“You know very well they’re lovely,” she said. “You know even though you’ve distanced yourself from them since growing up. Hope told me as much. Made me promise to bring you ‘round more often. The sudden loss of Sirius was as sobering for them as it was for many of us.”

Remus rolled his head from shoulder to shoulder. “I do write to them regularly. But they're old enough now that they deserve some rest from caring for me. I'm exhausting,” he said. “And lately I've been occupied with things other than parental time.” He pulsed his hand against hers, still inside his pocket. “And even before I – found you at the end of this summer, I was caught up spending the season visiting werewolf packs.”

She chirped in surprise. “Really? Was that a directive of your Order’s, or your own idea?”

“Mine,” he said. “But with the Order’s endorsement.”

“Oo. You in a pack, wolfish as you please, days without end. What was that like?” she asked, crowding into him as they walked.

He answered with a nudge back in her direction. “Whatever you’re thinking, that’s not it.”

“No?” she laughed. “What was it like then?”

“Loud and scrappy enough,” he allowed. “But there was plenty of valuable conversation too. Do you know when most werewolves join a pack? After their very first transformation.”

“Their families turn them out?” she said.

“That can be the case, if anyone in their families survives that first full moon. Most of the time, we run away ourselves when we see what our presence costs our loved ones. But I had no sense of that as a young child, and by the time I did, my parents had already shaped their entire lives around keeping me.”

She bent her free arm across herself so she could hold onto him with both of her hands, keeping him in her own way.

He patted her hand where it gripped his arm. “But it’s not really the older generation that’s concerning you the very most at this moment, is it Cissa.”

Here it was: the impossible conversation. This time, it was her who couldn’t help sighing. “No. It’s Draco – always Draco. Severus is doing all he can to watch over him at school. And though he says Draco is acutely unhappy, that was the case even before the Dark Lord un-Malfoyed me.”

“So Severus doesn’t think the divorce is the sole root of it?”

Narcissa adjusted her grip on his hand. “No, but he is trying everything to work out the rest. Though it’s getting harder for Severus to watch him unnoticed now that Draco has become so solitary.”

Remus frowned. “That doesn’t sound like him at all. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen Draco without being flanked by gangs of friends.”

Narcissa nodded. “Now he’s shying away from all Hogwarts social life. Won’t play quidditch anymore. Stays in the Great Hall at mealtimes barely long enough to eat. No appetite for sweets at all. Dropped the poor Parkinson girl flat. Can’t even be bothered to spar with Potter anymore. Even the Crabbe and Goyle boys are losing interest in him. And then he’s falling behind in schoolwork. Most troubling of all, Severus has heard him making cryptic declarations about not returning to school at all next year.”

Remus gave a hum so low it was nearly a growl as he stopped walking. “Is he safe?”

Her eyes shone with tears. “No.”

He bent low, speaking softly in the deserted street. “He’s in their thrall, isn’t he.” It was not really a question.

Narcissa scanned the empty lane through her brimming tears. “Yes. Since Easter break, before the arrests, when Lucius was still trying to bargain his way out of leading the raid of the Ministry. He offered Draco’s loyalty in place of his own leadership. And the Dark Lord helped himself to both. By the time I knew such a thing could be possible, Lucius had already taken our boy to them and…” Her voice quavered into breathy silence.

Remus let go of her hand and pulled her into his front, enfolding her in his arms, and letting her hide herself in him. “Let me help, Cissa. Our first night at Spinners End, you made no apologies about securing both my help and Severus’s in protecting your family. Please trust me. Tell me everything about what they’ve done to Draco so we can protect him. Draco is – after all – he is – my – step-son.”

It was the first time he’d spoken that word to her, his voice falling to its lowest, softest place as he did so, as if testing if it was alright to speak the word by barely saying it.

She accepted it, open-hearted and nestling closer as he kissed the crown of her head. “Thank the stars for you, Remus.” Her voice was muffled in his coat. She tipped slightly away to speak clearly. “It isn’t a matter of trust, but of spells. They sent Draco to school with a miserable plan. And though they made sure to tell me what it was, I can’t tell anyone, not Severus – and not even you. They bound me with a Fidelius charm to keep the secret. If I divulge it and Draco is found out, at the whim of the Dark Lord, Draco will – he’ll suffer terribly, perhaps to death.”

Remus hushed her, still holding her tight. “Fidelius. I understand the frailties of that spell only too well. If you’re hoping Severus works the secret out on his own as he keeps his Vow, it won’t work, because…”

“I know,” she said, nodding against him. “Mere surveillance is useless with a Fidelius secret. As long as I keep the secret of Draco’s task, it can’t be found out. That’s why they forced it on me. But perhaps if Draco himself could be persuaded to trust someone enough to reveal the plan on his own, everything could change. It has to. I don’t –” her voice was breaking apart again. “He never said so, but I don’t believe the Dark Lord expects Draco to survive the plan. As far as the Dark Lord is concerned, Draco’s doom is sealed whether he succeeds or not.”

Remus held her closer as her body shook with a sob. Her hair moved with his sigh. They stood as one on the pavement, gently rocking. “It’s a lot to take in,” he said. “But give me time to think, Cissa. Together, we’ll come up with something. There’s always something.”

The nod she gave seemed weary, but there was strength and energy in her arms as she held him.

He lifted her chin with the edge of his forefinger. “Does Dumbledore know his school harbours Draco as one of You Know Who’s operatives?”

She blinked through the last of her tears. “I assume Severus has told him about the vow and why I had him make it, ever the double dealer.”

Remus hummed. “Well, perhaps we ought to take courage that Dumbledore hasn’t barred Draco from the school. He isn’t afraid. After seeing him out-duel You Know Who so decisively at the Ministry just months ago, I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that Dumbledore is confident he could do it all again to protect the school, if need be.”

“Still, it’s odd that he feigns complete, blissful ignorance, keeping silent, just plodding on as if the risk is nothing, isn’t it?” she asked.

Remus scoffed a quiet laugh. “Odd for Dumbledore? No, not really.”

Far down the lane, voices in the street were singing “Happy Hour Again” as the Crane and Quarry closed up for the night.

“Let’s go home,” he said, sweeping her hair out of her face with his knuckles. Eyes drifting closed, she followed his touch, her neck a gentle curve, the motion of her reaction slow and cat-like again. The sight sent a tantalized shiver running through him all at once.

“Yes,” she said, turning out of his arms to resume their walk. “We can finish this at home. And thank the stars there is more for us to discuss than just our troubles. All day I’ve been anxious to speak to you alone about last night.”

He went to answer but could only stammer at first, grateful the light of the half-moon was not bright enough to reveal the flush to his cheeks. “Uh – Anxious. Right – er – me and all,” he managed to say.

She took his hand again. “The pair of us getting closer is a good thing. A comforting, strengthening, happy thing.”

His head bobbed as he swallowed. “And also a terrible risk for you.”

“A fully informed risk. Don’t make an infant out of me by refusing to let me accept the risk,” she said.

He bent his arm around her neck, tilting it sideways so he could kiss her temple. “You’re completely mad.”

“Yes,” she said. “And impatient with all this walking. Let’s go.”

Without further warning, she turned on the spot. It was safest not to try to apparate through Snape’s intricate system of household wards, so Narcissa brought them to land on the verandah outside the front door instead. Caught off guard, Remus stumbled out of the apparation, still clinging to Narcissa’s hand, tipping her off balance with him. They didn’t fall but Narcissa’s back was slammed against the locked door. Remus’s momentum brought him crashing into her between the door jambs. With the impact, her breath came out in a high gasp and her hands became fists in the lapels of his coat, holding herself up. His elbows bent, his forearms slammed flat on the door on either side of her head.

“Look what you’ve done,” she scolded in a whisper, as his face descended toward hers.

He had no witty rejoinder – nothing he wanted to say or to do but to kiss her again. Perhaps it was their return to something like the same position they’d been in as werewolf and wife in the stairs of the manor’s cellar, face to face with her back against the wall as he hovered over her, or maybe it was the direct, unfiltered half-moonlight, but the passion in his kiss was different than it had been the night before. She turned her mouth up to his and he captured it, quick and hot.

Almost immediately he restrained himself, drawing back only to find that her hands were in his hair, fingers clawed, driving him back into the kiss. He snatched at her with enough force to lift her onto the tips of her toes, held between the door and crush of his chest on hers. All night and day she’d been craving the same kind of exploration of his throat that he’d given her on the sofabed and she broke from his mouth, relishing his snarl of frustration and she kissed down his chin. He understood quickly and threw his head back, cradling her head in his hands as she mouthed his throat. But his scarf was in her way. And when her hands rose to untie the loose knot, it was too much like a quick, straightforward seduction, the kind he could lose himself to. He pushed himself away, breathless, eyes still shut.

“What is it?” she said.

He shook his head, swallowing hard. “You want slow.”

Against the door, she was sliding down, back onto the soles of her feet. “Yes,” she said, in that maddening kittenish way of hers. She crossed her wrists to link her arms behind his head, dragging him back to her. “But I also want what your Claire-spelled-the-French-way had under the stars at Hogwarts. I want you to kiss me for hours, until our lips are swollen and we’re both ecstatically frustrated beyond belief.”

He laughed, bowing his face into her shoulder. “You want that? You want a high-school-Sirius-Black-level snogfest?”

She clucked her tongue. “Well, I would rather you not bring my cousin’s name into it, but yes. I want that now, because I never had it the first time I fell in love.”

Their laughter stilled. Narcissa stood wide-eyed, shocked at her own careless words. There was a trace of fear in her face, distress that it was too soon to say anything about love, and he’d have to correct her, reject her.

He recognized the fear at once, and it devastated him. He pulled her out of the doorframe, lifting her up, the soles of her feet completely clear of the ground now as he spoke into her ear. “I’ll give you anything you want from me, always. Cissa I –”

The door opened. From behind Narcissa came a scoff, a “tsk” so loud and crisp it could only have been uttered by a professional, a teacher.

“Remus Lupin. Stop rattling this door like a dog begging to be let back in. And before that woman you're pawing asks me, tell her there's no news of Draco.”

Remus set Narcissa down. “Severus. We weren’t expecting you.”

“So I see.”

Narcissa wiped her lip colour from above Remus’s scarf. “What are you doing here then?”

He flung a copy of the Daily Prophet at Remus’s feet. “Reading a newspaper in what ought to be the comfort of my own home, awaiting the arrival of certain people who appear to have mislaid a particularly well-preserved flying fox specimen of mine along with an eighteenth century painting of The Trial by Water of Ceres Watt.”

As if her hair wasn’t more disheveled than Snape had ever seen it, Narcissa breezed past him and into the house. “We did some temporary redecorating while Remus’s mother was visiting. Your flying fox is safe in the kitchen sideboard. And your eighteenth century witch trial painting is actually a twentieth century copy. You’ll find it behind the wardrobe upstairs.”

His brow crumpled into a scowl. “You brought Muggles to this house?”

She shrugged. “It isn’t as if it’s the first time. Don’t look offended, Severus. We’re all mixed-magic families here. There’s no shame in it. Best of both worlds, in many ways.”

He inflated his chest. “I intend to neither take nor give offense.”

“Then don't speak of Remus in terms of mongrel dogs,” she snapped, folding her arms over her middle.

“Cissa, it’s alright,” Remus said.

“It isn’t,” she said. “You’re nothing but polite to him and yet he insists on continuing to treat you with derision.”

Snape tsk-ed again. “Imposing the Black family pride on your new husband…”

Remus ignored him. “Really, it’s alright. He doesn’t hurt me.”

“Well, perhaps he hurts me,” she said. “If he’d ever seen how far you are from a common mutt, how marvelous you truly are –”

“Oh, I've seen it,” Snape said in a hiss. “I’ve stood between him and three students he would just as soon have –”

Remus whistled over their voices. “Enough. The two of you really were raised as siblings over your summer holidays.”

Snapes twirled in a circle on the fireplace hearth, reorienting the conversation. “I’ve been sent to give you the password for the Hogwarts parents’ floo and to see that you attend a meeting with the headmaster.”

If she was a first year summoned to the headmaster's office for the first time, Narcissa couldn't have looked more alarmed. She pivoted toward Remus. “Tonight?”

Snape kept back his scoff. “No need to fret over being separated. The headmaster has asked to speak to Remus as well.”

Narcissa stepped to the mirror by the front door to smooth her hair back into place. She had Remus stoop to let her fix his as well. When she ran her fingertip over his eyebrow, it sent both of them into thoughts of the night before, each of them bowing their heads and laughing.

As he usually did with inside jokes – especially romantic ones – Snape shuddered openly. He summoned his flying fox and restored it to its place on the mantlepiece between his four clocks. Whether he realized he was recreating the scene between Remus and Narcissa by his fussing over his taxidermy, they couldn’t tell. He smoothed the dull brown pelt and rubbed at an imagined snag in its leathery wing. Only then did he open the lid of a dingy tin of floo powder. It had been sitting there, disillusioned out of sight all this time.

He gestured for Narcissa to go first. “The password,” he said, “is ‘Dentist.’”

Chapter Text

For the first time, Narcissa stepped out of the Parents’ Floo at Hogwarts not as Madam Malfoy but as Mrs. Lupin. Though she had changed since her last visit to the school, the small alcove around the corner from the Floos for staff and students looked as it always had. Despite Lucius’s campaigning during his time on the school’s board of governors, the telephone that allowed the children of Muggles and Mixed-Magic-Parents to stay in touch with their families was still there, just as it had been since 1920. Unlike the telephone by the loos in the Crane and Quarry, this phone had no push-buttons but a heavy iron dial, and an earpiece that hung on a separate hook from the mouthpiece.

She had crossed the floor and fit the tip of her forefinger into the telephone’s dial by the time Remus arrived.

“Ah, this old thing,” he said, coming to stand at her side. “The reception on it is terrible. Imagine Mum and I, back in the day, shouting at each over all the static on this line. But it’s nice that it’s here. Did me so much good to hear her voice even if I couldn’t make out all the words.”

The gears of the dial ground against each other as she turned it. “What kind of monster would deprive a child of the care of their parents by taking this away?” she said.

Snape rounded the corner from the staff Floo. After Narcissa had left Spinners End, he and Remus had stood on the hearth and argued over which of Hogwarts’ Floos Remus should use. In the end, Remus had won out and arrived on the parents’ side.

Snape huffed at the tenderness with which each of them regarded the telephone. His Muggle father had never attempted to ring him on it, something for which he had always told himself he was glad. “If you’re quite finished meddling with the antiques, the headmaster is waiting.”

They knew where to find Dumbledore’s office, but Snape led the way all the same, his cloak billowing before them. It was well past curfew, when there should be no risk of meeting any students – no one out of bed but the Aurors sent to patrol the school that year. Remus wondered if Dora was on duty tonight. He held in his sigh and followed Snape without taking Narcissa’s hand until they reached the door to the spiral staircase. As Snape turned his back to them to speak the password, Remus found her hand and raised it to his face, speaking with his lips against the back of it.

“We'd better meet him hand in hand, so he doesn’t have to wonder how we’re getting on,” he said as the spiral staircase descended from the room above.

In the office, Dumbledore was dressed in a lavish dressing gown and nightcap very much like his daytime robes. The sight of the Lupins holding hands set his eyes twinkling, and he clasped their joined hands in both of his. “An excellent development. And I do hope it will make my next request of you not only easier, but perhaps rather pleasant.”

Snape stood at the top of the stairs vibrating with nerves, waiting either to be invited to sit or to be given leave to stalk around the room.

A moment later, all of them were arranged around a small table with a self-serving tea set. Remus and Snape were good soldiers and waited more or less patiently for Dumbledore to cease his smalltalk and share some information with them. Narcissa, however, had never been allowed so far into the headmaster’s inner circle and didn’t know its etiquette. She was too tense, too concerned for Draco to wait any longer.

“Pardon me, Professor,” she said, interrupting his reflections on the merits of cardamom versus nutmeg in the pumpkin biscuits they were sharing. “If you please, how can Remus and I help?”

He beamed at her over his half-moon specs. “Ah, yes. As I was saying, the fading use of cardamom and the growing use of nutmeg signals the passage of the year from autumn to winter. The Christmas season is a busy social season – something in which you have a particular expertise, Narcissa.”

Her posture grew rigid. “I once did. But if you’re worried that I have planned any wizarding holiday events for that might threaten our cover, then –”

“Oh no, not at all,” Dumbledore said. “It is not your experience as a hostess that piques my interest this year, but your experience as an honored guest at gala events.”

Remus sensed her squirm ever so slightly on the settee next to him. She was reading Dumbledore’s compliments as sarcasm. Accustomed as she was to being taunted and mocked by Voldemort, she must be certain some awful, perhaps not undeserved rite of humiliation was at hand.

Remus abandoned his patience. “You want us to infiltrate a holiday event? Undercover? Is that it, Professor?”

Dumbledore was visibly taken aback. “Inflitrate? Undercover? Why, no. Severus, pass me the latest edition of the Quibbler, if you please.”

As he rustled the pages of the ridiculous magazine, Narcissa exchanged a pained look with Remus.

“Here,” Dumbledore said. “In both of the editions of the Quibbler published since your arrival at Spinners End, these sidebars have been printed in the “Unsolved” column speculating on your whereabouts and welfare. People love a forbidden romance. What began as an attempt to disgrace Narcissa has backfired in grand style for Tom Riddle. While he may have meant your marriage as a show of his power to punish even wizards with great wealth and influence, the story people prefer is one of Narcissa's successful, happy defection from his ranks.”

“People are talking about us?” Remus said. “When we’re not anywhere in the public eye?”

“Of course they are, darling,” Narcissa said, patting his hand. “People I didn’t know used to publish comments on the colour of my gown and what it meant for upcoming changes in the economy. My marriage to a werewolf and what it might mean for a looming war must be much more interesting.”

“Precisely,” Dumbledore said. “And before another smear campaign is launched telling lies about mistreatment at the hands of your new husband, I propose you dispel them in advance with a public appearance at the most photographed event of the year.”

“At the quidditch world cup?” Remus said.

“No, the Ministry’s Yule Ball.” Narcissa needed no further confirmation. “You’re asking Remus and I to appear there as a happily married couple?”

Dumbledore nodded. “Yes. An exhibition of the pair of you safe and well and happy, giving hope to those overwhelmed by the Death Eater movement, showing that escape is not only possible but joyful.”

Snape let loose a sneer. “Yes, that is exactly the kind of drivel the public laps up.”

Narcissa rose to her feet. “Pardon me again, Professor, but I must speak to Draco. I’ve done as you wanted and only communicated with him through Severus ever since I left the Manor. But I can’t take this step back into wizarding society without first re-connecting with my own son.”

Severus heaved a massive sigh. “Shall I fetch him from the dungeon, Professor?”

Dumbledore adjusted his spectacles. “Yes, bring him to his mother. Thank you, Severus.”

Narcissa did not sit down again but took Snape’s place standing restless at the top of the stairs. Remus flicked a worried glance in Dumbledore’s direction. Narcissa needed distraction – something light but busy. “I say, Professor, what are we to wear to the Ministry Ball? Cissa’s right. The press will be reading all sorts of meaning into her gown alone.”

“Ah yes,” he said, his arm raised in a wordless summoning. “Madam Maxime, headmistress of Beauxbatons and an ally of our cause, has most generously donated this.”

Narcissa turned to see what had flown into his hand. It was a massive, pale ice blue gown rolled up in a bundle held together with a ribbon.

Dumbledore tossed it to Remus. “It’s a garment of very fine French fabric from her own wardrobe. Silk, I believe. I rather like the buttons. It will need to be cut down and altered to suit you, Narcissa, but I believe this is also within your expertise?”

She crossed the floor to take the bundle of silk from Remus, humming and weighing the fabric in her hand. “Yes,” she said. “This will do nicely. Please thank Madam for me.”

Remus pinched a section of the dress between two fingers, letting it glide over itself before unhanding it quickly, as if it shocked him.

The staircase was moving again. Narcissa tensed, striding forward to meet…

…Severus returning on his own.

Narcissa’s complexion blanched even whiter than usual. “You haven't found him? He’s out of bed?”

“It happens occasionally and always without disaster,” Snape assured her. “By the time I check all his usual haunts, he’s back in his bed. If you’ll excuse me again, I’ll begin the rounds at the astronomy tower.”

“I’ll look for him myself as well,” Remus said, as Snape’s footsteps sounded on the stairs. “I won’t approach him without you, Cissa. But I daresay I know the castle better than most people. I can watch over him until Severus catches up with us. Make sure he’s safe.”

She squeezed his hand as he moved past her, toward the stairs. “Thank you. Go on then.”

Dumbledore's smile twinkled again as Remus dashed off. “That was wise of your Remus. It might be best if your post-divorce reunion with Draco unfolded without his visibly lovestruck stepfather looking on.”

She blushed rather deeply. “I'm sure you're right, Professor.”

He gave a chuckle. “I'm very happy for you, Mrs. Lupin. In time, Draco will be too.”

***
With a glance over his shoulder to be sure Snape wasn’t following, Remus made for Gryffindor Tower. The first three passwords he gave the painting of the very sleepy Fat Lady were outdated but the fourth one worked. He ducked through the portrait and into the Common Room. The fire was cold, everyone gone to bed. He wondered how Harry had been sleeping lately, and though he regretted having to wake him up, he made for the boys’ dormitory all the same.

“Remus?” Harry whispered, as he settled his specs over his bleary eyes in his moonlit room. “You're here. Tonks said you were in hiding.”

“Not for much longer,” he said. “We’re here tonight at Dumbledore’s request to make some preparations for a mission. And I’m afraid I need to trouble you for a quick look at the map.”

Without any objection, Harry took the map from beneath his pillow. “We?”

“Yes, Narcissa and myself.” Remus said, unfolding the parchment at the foot of Harry’s bed by the light of his wand.

Harry rose to his knees on the mattress. “Madam Malfoy is doing missions for Dumbledore now?”

Remus drew in a deep breath. “It’s Mrs. Lupin. And yes.”

“How can they trust her?” Harry said hovering over Remus as he scanned the map. “Her husband tried to kill us. I heard him give the order. And her sister did kill Sirius. You were there…”

Remus dropped a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Yes. Their evil acts devastated Narcissa’s life as well as yours and mine. I’m certain you’ll find her much changed when you meet her again.”

Harry sank back onto his feet, falling away from Remus’s hand. “I won’t be meeting her again.”

“Harry…”

“No, the Malfoys can never be trusted. I'm sure you heard what happened to Katie Bell. It’s the same with Snape. He hasn’t changed.”

Remus rubbed at his eyes, the wand-light faltering. “It comes down to whether you trust Dumbledore’s judgment. He trusts Snape and now he trusts Narcissa as well. I’ve come to trust her myself – with my life. We can only place our trust in a handful of people. Don’t become blinded by hatred, Harry. ”

“Well, hatred's not the only feeling people can be blinded by,” Harry said, something like a sneer in his voice.

Remus understood what Harry couldn’t say but only shook his head. “Narcissa is not a Malfoy anymore.”

“Yeah? What about her son?” Harry said, crowding Remus over the map. “You haven't found him on the map, have you. He's gone again.”

Remus peered closer to the parchment. “Draco vanishes from the map?”

“Yes. For hours at a time. He's up to something – something for Voldemort and Snape is in on it. I know it.”

Remus stood up straight, and for the first time that evening, he met Harry’s eyes. They had the harried look of someone who had made the same desperate claim over and over only to have it dismissed. As loudly as he dared in the room of sleeping boys, Remus spoke in his teacher voice. “Are you seeing visions again? You’re still studying Occlumency, aren’t you? Because you musn’t stop practicing it. The need for it didn’t end with the last school year. It’s not like a book that’s simply been closed – a plot device that doesn’t serve anymore.”

On the defensive now, Harry bowed his head. “No, no visions. But it doesn’t take anything supernatural for me to know that Draco has picked up right where his father left off.”

Remus gave a sigh. “And if that is the case, then he will benefit immensely from reorienting himself toward his other parent, his mother, who is also Dumbledore’s choice for this mission – and my wife. Trust us, Harry. Thank you for the use of the map. Now go back to sleep.”

Remus turned to leave.

Harry cast his eyes around the darkening room as if scanning it for something to use to keep Remus there. “Does Tonks know about Madam Malfoy?” he blurted.

With his hand on the doorknob, Remus stopped. “Her own aunt? Of course. Dora’s been invaluable in helping her adapt. I assume she’s been kept fully briefed on the upcoming mission too.”

“No, I mean,” Harry said, uncomfortable with trying to shame Remus but pressing on anyway. “Does Tonks know that it’s not pretend anymore – that Madam Malfoy is your wife for real.”

Remus’s shoulders fell.

Harry rushed on. “Because I’ve seen Tonks cast a Patronus lately, when she was reporting to Kingsley outside the school. I reckon she doesn't know I saw, but I did. It takes the form of a wolf now.” Harry crossed the room, his hand on Remus’s sleeve. “See, you don’t have to be with Madam Malfoy for real just because it’s so awful to be alone. If you wanted to, I'm sure Tonks would –”

“Stop, Harry,” Remus said, but not unkindly. “It isn’t so simple. You and I are united in terrible loneliness for all the same people. Our shared loss, our profound grief – it means more to me than I can ever say. In that way, we understand one another perfectly. So trust me that if anyone in this school poses a threat to James and Lily’s son, to Sirius’s godson, to my good friend, I will stop at nothing to protect you, especially if the person who means you harm is also someone I do not want to see hurting himself either.”

Harry unhanded Remus’s arm. “Draco’s up to something. I think you might believe me more than anyone about that. But I also think you might be underestimating how dangerous and determined he might be this time. His mother might not even realize it herself.”

Remus patted Harry’s shoulder again. “We will take the utmost care. I promise. Now goodnight.”

***

Draco was still in the castle. Snape had said he was sure of it. So there could be only one explanation for Draco’s disappearance from the map. He was in an unplot-able area: the Room of Requirement or the Room of Hidden Things. Which of the rooms it was didn't really matter when all Remus needed to find was a door. He stood in the corridor on the seventh floor, feeling the dusty mortared cracks in the solid wall, trying to coax the fickle unplot-able door into revealing itself.

He stood with his ear pressed to the stone, listening for signs of someone in the room on the other side of the wall when he couldn’t see or feel any.

“Whatcha doing, Remus?”

He gasped, recoiling from the wall and the voice speaking into his ear. “Dora!”

She shushed him, laughing quietly and punching at his arm. “Still deadset on finding cousin Draco? I met Snape looking for him too.”

Remus slouched against the wall, his hand on his heart.

“Oh, you’re alright,” she said. “Thanks for the dramatics though. It’s been dead boring around here for weeks.”

“That means you're doing an exemplary job of keeping the peace,” he said.

She frowned. “I suppose, but –”

He was the one shushing her now, one hand raised. “Did you hear that?”

She waited for the sound. “Nothing. You know my hearing isn’t as good as yours, even when your ears aren’t long and pointy. It doesn’t mean –”

Again he shushed her, his raised hand waving Dora away from the wall where a gritty scraping of shifting of stone on stone was getting louder.

She heard it. “It’s coming.” The door was about to appear. Dora knew it and as a well-trained Auror, she knew it was better to watch than to be watched. She ploughed her shoulder into Remus, pushing him backward and behind the tapestry on the wall opposite the door. For just a moment, they tussled behind the thick, musty fabric, each of them standing at its edge, peering out from behind it, Remus watching for the door from above Dora’s head.

Though the door was made of hardened oak and iron gratings, it opened almost soundlessly. The student who stepped out of it was not Draco. It was a girl of the size that it was equally likely she was a tall first year as a short seventh year. Though it was very late, she was still in her uniform. This wasn’t the only sign of her having had a long day. Her hair looked like it had been an age since she’d been able to properly brush it.

Something like recognition flared in Remus’s memory at just the back view of this girl. But, no. It couldn’t be…

They watched as she leaned into the room again, her head hidden behind the door as she spoke softly to someone still inside. As she withdrew, the door opened wider and a boy joined her in the corridor. This was unmistakably Draco, standing in the light of a candle burning in a sconce near his head, the door closing behind him to fade back into the wall. He hadn’t turned to see it disappear but kept his eyes fixed on the girl as she continued to speak to him too softly for even Remus to decode the words.

Remus hadn’t seen Draco in person since the Triwizard events he and Sirius had watched in secret. He was taller than Harry now, but not quite as tall as the average Weasley. Even in the warmth of the candlelight, he was ghostly fair. It was the same kind of ethereal, almost eerie beauty as his mother’s. It heightened Remus’s sympathy for him, his sense of the urgency of getting Draco to reveal the secret of his mission to someone so they could help him. That was the aspect of Draco’s looks that piqued Remus’s feelings most. The boy looked exhausted, his face beautiful but haunted. In this, he looked like his stepfather. He looked cursed.

Even so Draco’s features seemed to soften as he nodded down at the girl. When she paused, he glanced up and down the corridor, as if he knew they couldn’t risk standing together out in the open much longer, even so late at night. The girl knew it too and she was taking her leave of him. And as she did, she sprung forward and kissed Draco’s cheek before she sprinted away.

Draco’s first reaction was one of shock. As it passed, he took one quick step after her, his hand outstretched before thinking better of chasing after her through a dark, sleeping castle. He let his arm fall back to his side and stood watching her vanish into the shadows at the top of the staircase. He blinked deeply, still exhausted but now dreamily so. That fleeting, parting kiss must have been the first one between them. It had changed his whole demeanor, cheering and comforting him somehow even though the girl had been…

“Hermione Granger?” Dora whispered. “What in the stars?”

Chapter Text

The night Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks spied Hermione Granger kissing Draco Malfoy’s cheek for the first time, it was decided that Draco would not be made to face the added surprise of being reunited with his mother until the morning came. It was Narcissa herself who made the final decision. She granted Draco a few hours of peace and rest, and gave herself time to figure out what this new development might mean for how to approach her very confused son.

With Snape himself teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts that year, but not relocating his office from the dungeon, the rooms Remus himself had once occupied next to the DADA classroom were currently empty. Dumbledore offered them as a place to sleep for the few hours left in the night. With Narcissa at his elbow, Remus unlocked the door at the front of the classroom, re-opening a chamber he had once called home but now barely recognized. When she took her post here, Dolores Umbridge had purged every trace of the previous professors. After she was removed, the headmaster had purged every trace of her, leaving the office a stone shell.

Narcissa scanned the empty bookcases, the bare walls, the cobwebs wafting in the draught of the newly opened door.

Remus cleared his throat. “The sleeping quarters are through there. The bed isn’t large but it’s comfortable. You should be able to take a proper rest there – clear your head before you have breakfast with Draco. I’ll cast Dad’s sofabed spell on the settee in here and let you get some undisturbed sleep.”

She only glanced at the door to the bedroom. “I’ve never been any good at sleeping in unfamiliar places.”

He gave a gentle laugh. “I suppose I got the wrong impression, seeing you sleeping so deeply at Spinners End for the first time under the influence of the hex on that bed.”

She patted the back of the settee. “It was rather peaceful, as far as hexed sleep goes.” She brushed the velvet pile of the dark brown fabric so it stood up beneath her palm. “This late at night, trying to sleep might just make me more groggy come morning. Perhaps there’s something else we could do to occupy the next few hours instead of sleeping.”

Remus stepped to her side, his hand covering hers on the back of the settee, his voice taut as he said, “Whatever you like.”

His hand followed hers as she smoothed the pile of the settee down again. “Then let’s take a walk outside, on the grounds.”

Though he agreed to the walk, Remus insisted that this far north, they needed to wear more layers to keep warm. And he knew exactly where to find them. Through quiet corridors, they made their way to the kitchens by a route Narcissa had never taken before – not that she had ever spent much time in the kitchens. Even with nothing cooking, the space held the smell of centuries of boiled potatoes. Leading her past the cold hearths and massive iron pots, Remus brought them to the scullery where the school’s linens were washed and pressed. He led on until they stood before a narrow door kept shut with a rusty padlock. It looked like the kind of doors Muggles used to hide ironing boards in old houses.

“It’s like the entrance to the Hogwarts Express platform at Kingscross,” he told her. “The door looks solid, but it isn’t. You’ve only got to walk into it and you’re through.”

“Through to what?” she asked.

“A kind of hidden treasure,” he said. “Come see.”

The space they’d found had no windows and was pitch dark until Remus conjured a flame, wandless, wordless, with just his fingertips, and lit a lantern he’d already hit with his head and set swaying from the ceiling.

Narcissa raised her arm to shield her eyes, so pale they were slow to adapt to sudden brightness. “Is it the Room of Hidden Things? I thought it appeared only on the upper floors. And I must say it’s much more drab than what I imagined.”

Remus caught the lantern and stopped its swinging. “This isn’t that room. But it is something like a squib’s version of it. The non-magical door Filch uses for it is just there. This is the room where he stores everything he’s confiscated over the years. That and everything turned in to the lost and found that goes unclaimed. He saves it in this hoard.”

Still squinting, Narcissa backed into a rope of scarves in all four of the house colours crudely plaited together and strung from an overhead beam. It did look much more like a collection than like a storage room.

“Careful,” he said. “Rumour has it there's a vat of love potions all poured together and stashed in here somewhere.”

Narcissa tucked her hands into her pockets. “A toxic soup of decades of teenaged love potions. Filch really does have the most dangerous position here, doesn't he.”

Remus huffed. “If he'd ever caught you up to something, you wouldn’t be so sympathetic.”

“Come, Remus. He never caught you.”

“Yes, he did. And it was most unpleasant.” A shudder ran through him. “At any rate, we should find something here to keep us warm on our walk.”

Narcissa wasn’t as interested in rummaging through a bin of old student jumpers as she was in picking over a shelf of books Filch had arranged according to the colours of their spines. They wouldn’t be just any books, and they certainly weren’t lost library books. These were books that, for whatever reason, had been banned from the school.

“I wonder…” she said, remembering a book the older Slytherin girls had been passing around during her fifth year that she hadn’t managed to read herself before it was confiscated. It was a romance novel that had some kind of scandalous content that no one would repeat, everyone just falling apart with laughter whenever the subject was raised. She seemed to remember its cover was purple with gold lettering. Filch’s section of purple bound books was the smallest, and one spine stood out as particularly well-worn but not abused, as if responsible older girls had seen some value in it. Narcissa slid the book from its place. Its title was written in the same romantic typeface as Snape’s Always secret passageway book. It read Fated to Love and had a picture of a hatless witch in torn robes running through a dark forest dotted with yellow eyes on its front cover.

This was it, the forbidden romance novel she had wondered about all these years. Filch certainly had no need of it, so she reduced it to a cube the size of gaming dice and dropped it into her pocket.

“Here we are,” Remus was saying, grinning over his own finds. “This jumper looks like it should fit you, but it’s in Gryffindor colours. So to make it fair, I’ve found one for myself in Slytherin.”

“How very diplomatic of you.” She shrugged off her coat to slip the jumper over her head. “And it isn’t a bit musty,” she said as she flipped her hair out of the collar. “Aren’t you a darling, thinking to cast a Scourgify over it before bringing it anywhere near me.”

Remus didn’t seem to hear the compliment. He stood in front of her blinking, his throat working as he swallowed.

“Oh,” Narcissa said. “Look at you dressed in my house colours.” She traced a slow line along the band of green from his shoulder to the point of the collar’s V at the centre of his chest. “Positively dashing.”

He took her opposite wrist, lifting her hand to better see where a line of red circled the cuff of her sleeve. She stepped closer, bending her arms between them as his hands ran over her back, gliding over her hair all the way to its ends, the texture changing under his palms into the familiar rib-knit of his house uniform. He found the small of her back and pressed her close, her palm covering the serpent crest on his chest.

She spoke against his throat. “No one ever kissed me at school.”

He breathed a laugh, bending to speak with his lips against hers, tantalizing. “That’s an utterly unnecessary waste. All you would have had to do was ask me.”

She laughed into his parted lips. “Ask you? The best mate of my disowned younger cousin?”

“That’s the cursed best mate of your disowned younger cousin, thank you very much,” he said even as she tugged gently at his lower lip with her mouth. “It would’ve been fitting since kissing at school is supposed to feel…” She’d taken his lip into her mouth now, clearing his mind of any words he might have wanted to say.

“Supposed to feel like what?” she said, releasing his lip to kiss the underside of his jaw.

“Uh – transgressive,” he said. “Bad.” Now his hand was at the nape of her neck, tilting her head upward, towards his mouth again —

When from somewhere unseen, a cat let out a tremendous yowl.

Narcissa barely stifled a scream, jumping against him as his arms clutched her.

“Mrs. Norris?” she gasped. “She’s still alive?”

Remus huffed. “Of course she is. Not even a basilisk could stop her for long.”

“But I don’t see her,” Narcissa said, stepping out of his arms to look for Filch’s cat.

“We don’t need to,” he said, holding up her coat to slip on over the jumper. “Filch’s rooms are right through that wall. She’s detected us and now she’s alerting him. Come on. Quick.”

“Wait, look,” she said, darting around the scarf rope and back to the corner with the bookcase. A row of sticks stood against the wall and she pulled one free from the rubbish piled over it. “I thought so. Brooms.”

Remus broke into a grin. “Brilliant.”

Through another round of cat yowls, they passed back through the door, out of the scullery and onto the grounds.

Neither of them remembered seeing the other fly before. For the sake of their sense of decorum, Narcissa’s parents had urged her not to fly in public beyond the school’s minimum requirements. She was a decent flyer anyway, and much more to thank for Draco’s flying skills than Lucius ever was.

Remus didn’t let people see him fly after being too often caught up in ugly conversations about the “unfair advantages” werewolves might have in wizards’ sports. He’d resigned himself to not drawing attention to his agility and quick reaction time around those he didn’t trust. It meant that in school, he had only played quidditch as a practice partner for the lads, never as a proper athlete – something James and Sirius thought as an awful crime for both him and Gryffindor.

Even with no one to judge them, there was no acrobatic flying from Remus or Narcissa that night, only a leisurely stroll of a ride from the castle all the way down the hill to the lake. The ground was not yet snow covered but it was frozen hard underfoot when they alighted, the grass glittering with frost in the light of the low half-moon.

“It’s a bit frosty for sitting under the stars,” Remus said. “But I’ve always wanted to take a girl into the shelter of that willow anyway.”

“The one where Harry Potter’s parents used to canoodle?” she said, her nose wrinkled.

“Well – yes,” he said. “Come see. It’s a weeping golden willow with branches forming a natural bower.”

“The kind of place where a wild creature might make a den?” she said, letting him lead her by the hand.

“I suppose. Though my wild creature isn’t interested in dens. Not when he’s only got one night a month to roam.”

They had stepped through the long, drooping branches. Though leafless and dormant, the willow boughs were still dense and pliant enough to form a waving curtain between the frosty lakeshore and the Lupins. “A very intimate space, and so dark,” Narcissa said. “Now do that spell again. The handsome one you did in Filch’s hoard, where you pass your thumb over your fingers just so and conjure a perfect little heart of flame.”

He ducked his head at her compliment. “You liked that?”

“Immensely,” she said, her voice low.

He ran a hand through his hair. “Unfortunately, it needs a wick to catch it, otherwise it burns out as soon as it flares.”

She took the book from her pocket, restored it to size, and tore the flyleaf from inside its cover.

“What is that?”

“Nothing for you to worry about,” she said, shrinking the book again. “But you can use this blank page as a wick. See if you can get it to burn slow.”

“Slow,” he said with a wink, the crumpled paper already crackling between them. “Our specialty.”

The willow bower glowed with the warmth of the flaming forbidden flyleaf as they sat against the trunk of the tree, Narcissa tucked under Remus’s arm, pooling their heat. He turned his face to let the breath from his nose warm her scalp.

“You know,” she began. “When you came up the stairs into Dumbledore’s office after prowling the castle alone together, I didn’t like seeing you with her.”

Remus sat back, finding her eyes. “With her? With Dora?”

“With the beautiful, powerful witch without the shameful past who everyone knows is in love with you? Yes, with her,” she said, ploughing on over his voice as he tried to explain. “I know she’s no threat to me. If you wanted to be with her, you would have gone to her months ago. I can only imagine she’s tried everything she can think of to make you love her and nothing’s worked. She might have worn you down eventually, after a few more years of everyone rooting so shamelessly for the pair of you, but it always would have felt like settling for you, and she doesn’t deserve that. I know all of that. You don’t need to say it.”

He caressed her cheek with his knuckles. “So why do you still have this look?”

She nestled into his chest, hiding the look she couldn’t take from her face. “Lucius’s mistresses. After all those years of his flagrant infidelity, the attitude among everyone close to us that it was a normal entitlement of his – after all that, it’s hard to believe I could have someone all to myself.”

He held her tighter, head bowed to speak into her ear. “You do,” he said. “There's no one but the two of us. And I keep thinking of a phrase Harry repeated twice when I was talking to him tonight. He kept warning me about having you as my wife ‘for real.’”

She drew her face out of his front, showing it to him in the orange light. “For real? Meaning what, exactly?”

He pulled her off the ground to sit across his lap, her legs curled up at his side and held in place with his arm, his fingers laced together at her hip. “He doesn’t know much about marriage, the poor boy, but I think in his crude way Harry meant “for real” as in, you’re no longer my wife on any one else’s orders – not You Know Who’s and not Dumbledore’s either. You’re mine for real because I choose you. For real because, ever since that first proper conversation in Ted’s ice fishing shack, I’ve liked you. Mine for real because my werewolf has preserved and protected you instead of – treating you like every other human he’s ever encountered. For real because, even with so little time together, I'm quite certain I love you.”

She combed her fingers into the hair waving over his ear, tipping his face down to kiss her. His mouth was warm as it pressed hers, pushing and then yielding until their connection was deep and lush with sensation, emotion. Breathless, she inhaled the air between them, breathing him in, her chest expanding as if her heart itself was straining to be closer to his.

This might indeed be love, and she knew it because it was also joy. She remembered joy from a kiss Lucius had given her, achieving it just once, when he came to find her after meeting newborn Draco for the first time. But Remus didn’t need her to produce a son and heir in order to kiss joy into her. He didn't need anything beyond themselves.

But he did want something. She felt it in the growing urgency in his hands on her as she whispered his sweet words back to him. She could taste it in the wolfish hunger behind the gentle force of his mouth, and in the heat and tension of his body beneath hers. She closed her fist along the placket of his shirt above the V of his jumper, her fingers slipping into the gap between his buttons only to find not his skin but the fabric of his vest underneath. Hang all these sensible layers.

A sweet ache had risen in her own body. She was on the verge of turning in his arms, pinning him to the ground with her knees on either side of his hips and ravishing all she could of him under the circumstances. All her adult life, physical intimacy had been normal for her. Not indulging the full range of it now was strange, but she knew the same wasn't true for Remus. Slow was still their watchword. She wouldn’t take everything she could from him, not in this place that might have been fine for the snogging teenaged Potters but was not a fit place for the marital consummation she desired more and more with every kiss. But just as she began to move, Remus broke away.

“If – if we’re going to keep loving each other properly,” he said, grazing her bottom lip with his thumb, “then we need to sort out what you’re going to tell Draco this morning before it gets any later.”

She wouldn’t ravish him here after all, responsible darling that he was. Instead she sat back, flushed and still something like dazed with her own frustrated desire. It ebbed away as they looked out at the lake now visible over her shoulder. They'd been slow to notice through the willow boughs, but the sky was growing lighter. “They'll be rousting him out of bed already,” she said. She slid from Remus's lap to sit on the cold ground again. “We need to get back.”

“Get back to tell him what?” He smoothed her hair with his palm as she straightened her clothes.

“I'll tell him everything about us being married for real, as Potter puts it, but nothing about what we know about the situation with Miss Granger.”

Remus nodded. “Let him go on thinking that Muggleborn girls kissing him after curfew was all his own idea and nothing like taking a side in his parent's bizarre divorce.”

“Yes, exactly. If he's angry about me not wanting to remarry Lucius, he'll want me to know it. I don't want him to push Granger away just because he thinks I'm associating her attachment to him with the one you have to me. If I pretend I don't know about her, he'll feel less like he has to reject her as a show of remaining neutral in the divorce. I need those children to stay close to each other, Remus.” She held his face. “He won't confide in Severus anymore, but if Draco tells this girl his secret, she'll tell the rest of you, won't she? She'll bring rescuers for him? He's told me over and over what a tattle-tale she is.”

He took her hand from his face and held it to his sternum. “Hermione? Either she'll find someone to save him, or she'll sort out how to get it done herself.”

Chapter Text

The walk from the Slytherin dungeon dormitory to Snape’s office was too short to give Draco much time to worry about why he’d been ordered to report there before going upstairs for breakfast. At a stroll, he made his way along the corridor, still feeling the spot on his cheek where she had kissed him. She – Granger – Hermione Granger. Whatever she’d meant by it, the kiss had affected him like a good spell. He’d only slept for about three hours the night before, but he was feeling better rested than he had in months. Ever since his father had taken him to meet the Dark Lord during Easter break and they’d forced him to take off his own shirt and…anyway, he hadn’t been sleeping well since then.

No, none of that this morning. No, he’d keep thinking of Granger in the candlelit corridor boosting herself onto her toes, her curls bouncing as she advanced, eyelids low and dreamy, lips formed into a pink rosebud and pressed to his cheek.

But what if someone had seen him with Granger and he was being called in now to explain himself? How could he begin to explain it to Snape when he didn’t understand it himself? He had meant to drop his hand and collect himself before knocking on the office door, but Snape had already flung it open.

Draco thrust his fingers into his pocket. “Good morning, Sir.”

Snape gave a nod. “You have a visitor.” With that, he stepped out of the office.

“Sir!” Draco called after him, his voice too loud in the narrow underground space. “You’re not leaving me here, are you?”

“I am,” Snape said, pushing at Draco’s shoulder to move him through the door. “You’ll have no need of my protection. Go in and sit.”

The door slammed shut and Draco was alone in Snape’s office. It looked like it always did but it felt – different. He’d been told to sit and so he did, taking the chair sat in front of Snape’s desk. That’s when he smelled it – a scent like birthday cake served on a picnic blanket in June in a meadow of clover.

He sprung to his feet, willing himself not to hope too hard.

And there she was, his mother coming through the doorway between the office and Snape’s living quarters, her arms outstretched. “Draco, darling…”

He took one of her hands, then the other, looking her over from her feet to her head, eyes wide and worried. “You’re alright?” he said.

“I’m very well, yes,” she said, stepping closer, dropping his hand to smooth his fringe from his forehead, wiping a fleck of sleep from the corner of his eye.

He was blinking, shaking his head as she enfolded him in her arms.

“Snape kept saying you were safe,” Draco began, speaking over her head, gasping for breath the way he used to when he had something he wanted to tell her so badly he could hardly speak. “I wanted to believe him but the communiques from – the people at the manor. They said the Dark Lord had given you to the werewolves. And – and – “

“And I remember how werewolves were your greatest fear as a little boy,” Narcissa finished, standing back to pat his cheek. “When you were very little, you told me you didn’t want to come to Hogwarts at all if there might be werewolves in the forest. I haven’t forgotten.”

“So who is lying to me?” Draco said, stepping out of her reach. “All Snape would say was that you were safe in hiding and I should worry about my own problems. The bloody papers say you divorced Dad and eloped with some cursed, penniless, half-blood loser. And Kreacher says the Dark Lord punished our failure at the Ministry by taking the manor away from us and handing you over like a slave to werewolves who were free to torture you, or kill you, or turn you into one of them. What in the stars am I supposed to believe?”

She pursed her lips. “Nothing you’ve been told is completely true or completely false. There’s no simple answer. So hear me while I explain.”

There was a settee in Snape’s office just like the one in the DADA rooms and she led him to it, pulling at his arm to have him sit close to her. It was a long story, beginning with her expulsion from the manor, her flight with Remus to Andromeda’s cottage, and the deal struck between them where she would brew him Wolfsbane and they would keep each other safe in hiding. She did not tell Draco where they’d been hiding. If he didn’t know, he couldn’t be forced to tell.

When she paused, he sat reeling, still trying to make sense of it. “So the werewolf bit is true, but there’s only one werewolf?”

“Yes.”

“And it’s Lupin?”

“Yes.”

“And he can’t transform while you’re giving him that potion? Really?”

“Yes. He’s extremely pleasant company. In fact –”

Draco sprung to his feet, interrupting. “But the thing about being divorced from Dad and married to Lupin – all that is…” He couldn’t finish.

“That is true as well,” she said. “And you should know that – “

“It’s all fake though,” Draco said, pivoting away from her to pace in front of Snape’s desk. “Dad is still your real husband and when the Dark Lord sets him free, we’ll sort all of this out and –”

“Draco, listen. You are well aware that your father and I – we had our struggles –”

“Yeah, but so does everyone else. Crabbe says his dad makes his mum’s skin crawl. It’s not like that in our family.”

“No, but we have our own kind of awfulness.”

“Not really, though. It’s just Aunt Bella and the rest coming around making trouble between you. You’re just scared, Mum. Well, so am I. And you don’t see me stabbing Dad in the back, running off and betraying him like a –”

“Draco!” she called over his voice, stopping him before he said something he’d regret. “Listen to me. Do you remember Miss Nasturtium? She worked at the club where you took flying lessons to help you make the quidditch team in the summer between years one and two.”

Draco scowled. “Nasturtium. Yes.”

“Do you remember how – how attentive your father was to her?”

He made no answer except to tighten his jaw.

“That woman was your father’s mistress for three years. Maybe more.”

He flinched as if she’d slapped him. “Rot,” he said.

“You know it isn’t. Remember how she flirted and fawned over him. You must have seen it with your own eyes. And he received it shamelessly. So please don’t lecture me about betrayal.”

He stood speechless, remembering the flying club’s chestnut-haired secretary standing too close to his fine, stately father at the edge of the pitch. Miss Nasturtium would beam up at Lucius, twittering with giddy laughter, Lucius stooping to ease stray bits of hay from the hippogriff stables out of her hair as if it was a marvelous joke. Ever since then, Hippogriffs had disgusted Draco. He’d let himself forget why, but he couldn’t help remembering now.

“She wasn’t the only one either,” Narcissa went on. “I can tell you now because the other party is dead, but your father’s most serious mistress, the only one he could have possibly been in love with, was another man’s wife, Mrs. Nott.”

“Mrs. Nott?” Draco said, holding his stomach with both arms. “Theo’s mum?”

Narcissa folded and re-folded her shaking hands. “The dark-haired boy in the same year as you? Yes. It’s a near miss that he isn’t your half-brother. You were both just babies when Nott himself came storming into the manor demanding a paternity potion. I witnessed the results myself. You are indeed your father’s only son. But Nott had every reason to doubt it.”

“Theo’s mum,” Draco echoed. “Pansy said she died of suicide, poisoned herself with nightshades before Theo was old enough to come to school.”

Narcissa reached for his hand. “She did. It was a terrible tragedy. Your father was inconsolable – as well he should have been.”

Draco collapsed to sitting on the settee.

“And I loved Lucius anyway,” Narcissa said, her arms around Draco as he sat limp and stunned beside her. “I hated myself, but I loved him every day of our marriage. Right up until the night I learned he’d already taken you to be marked.”

Draco crumpled into a heap in her arms. “Already? But he said you knew beforehand.”

Narcissa held his head where it had fallen on her shoulder. “What did he tell you?”

He was gasping for breath again. “He said you knew they were marking me. You wanted it. And you told me to be brave and to do it for our family.”

“No, no, no” she said, holding him tight, kissing his temple as he wept. “Draco, no. I would have died rather than let them bring you into that kind of bondage. If only I’d known…”

There was no sound but their sobbing as they held each other on the settee. When he’d quieted a little she gathered him up and took his head in her hands again. “Listen to me, Draco. I’ve got away from them. Remus is well-connected and more powerful than you know. We can free you too.”

He shook his head out of her hands. “No, we can’t. It’s different for me. The bloody mark…”

“We’ll find a way. You’ve got to tell someone about the –”

“No,” he said. “If anyone finds out what they’ve sent me to do, the Dark Lord will kill me. And you and Dad too.”

“They aren’t so very powerful.”

“They are,” he wailed, hanging his head.

“They are not,” she said, falling to her knees on the rug, her face level with his as he doubled over. “They sent Remus and I into the cellar to kill each other. They assumed we would have no other choice. But we did. We chose to spare each other. Even in his werewolf state, Remus chose not to hurt me. We chose peace and – and love. There was nothing they could do to stop us. And now we’re not only free, we’re happy.”

Draco swallowed the last of his sobs, raising his head to face her. “You’re happy with him. So it’s all…”

“It’s all real,” she said. “Yes. I’m going to stay with Remus. I want to. You remember what he’s like. Gentle and wise, devoted and kind.” She clasped both of her hands around his. “But I can’t get you the help you need. Not with the Fidelius charm keeping me silent. You need to tell someone the secret of your task yourself, Draco. Find someone you trust, and tell them.”

As if she was too naive to even speak to, he shook his head.

“And I must tell you,” she said, rising from the rug to sit on the settee again. “Remus and I are about to make our first public appearance together. In all likelihood, people will be talking about it. Don’t deny it or try to defend me. When they see that I have escaped the Dark Lord, there may be a swell of hope among our people. They may take courage. Things may change.”

“The Dark Lord won’t allow it,” Draco said. “If you embarrass him by parading around with the monster he sent to kill you, he’ll have a worse punishment to send after you.”

She knew this was true. And she knew what the worse punishment would be. It would be something that would hurt Draco. She felt nothing but dread when she thought of it, but she couldn’t let him see. She had come to fill him with confidence enough in the power of people in love to save each other that he’d tell the Granger girl his secret. Whether it was true or not didn’t matter as much as convincing him to tell anyone who could get word back to Dumbledore and bring in the power of his protection.

Narcissa clenched her fists and forced herself to make a declaration she hoped more than believed was true. “If he attacks us again, Remus and I will thwart him just as we have before,” she said. “Neither of us could best him alone but together we have a chance. So do you, Draco. Trust in the good people here who want to help you.”

He sneered. “You mean Snape?”

“I mean anyone you believe in,” she said, meeting his eyes with a hard, knowing look.

His gaze dropped to his feet, his hand rising to his cheek again. It was all too much. What he wanted most was to leave, to rush upstairs to breakfast and act as if he was staring into the distance when really he was watching Granger reading the morning paper, munching at toast and jam with her sweet little mouth. But his mother was still talking.

“Whatever happens, until any backlash to our public appearance has abated,” she said, “stay safe here at school. Don't go back to the manor for anything. No matter what Kreacher or your aunt and uncle or letters from your father or anyone tells you. Promise me.”

He let out a sigh he didn’t realize was an echo of his step-father's. “Alright, Mum. I promise.”

***

When Remus came to find Narcissa in Snape’s office, she was asleep on the settee. He crouched beside her, studying her face. She was peaceful now, but he thought he could discern the track of a tear on her cheek. Though he'd expected her meeting with Draco to be difficult, it was still hard to see proof of it for himself. Indulging in a sigh while she wasn’t awake to hear it, he traced the track with his thumb.

She frowned in her sleep, swatting at him, murmuring, “Get off, Lucius.”

Remus gave a quiet scoff. “Cissa, it's me. We need to go.”

She gasped. “Remus.”

“Sorry to wake you,” he said. “We can't stay here, love. Have you and Draco…”

“We’ve talked all we can,” she said, sitting up on the settee, still too tired to even tidy her hair. “He needs time now. I’ll tell you everything after we’ve rested. Let’s be on our way. I was just waiting for the all clear from Severus when I nodded off.”

“He’s in class now. Told me to get us out of here before the students are turned loose in the corridors again.”

She hummed. “Yes, I’d rather you didn’t meet Draco as his step-father for the first time during the jumble at Hogwarts class change.”

He extended a hand to raise her to standing. “Come along. I’ve got our parcel. Madame Olympe’s fabric for your gala dress and a little something for myself to wear.”

She felt the outside of the rucksack slung over Remus’s shoulder. “Extendable bag?”

“Yes, Dumbledore’s always good for one,” he said, leading her to the door.

“Which benevolent foreign donor provided you with gala robes?” she said, still palpating the rucksack.

“None. Mine are borrowed from Horace Slughorn, if you can believe it. Everyone knows the man loves the finer things so I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised to learn he was quite the dandy back in his prime.”

Narcissa clucked her tongue. “That may very well be, but the Slughorn is a full head shorter than you.”

He opened the door and watched her pass by. “Yes, all sorts of alterations will be needed. I am determined to learn how to do it myself and stop relying on you so heavily for such things.”

“There’s nothing wrong us with relying heavily on one another,” she said as they came to the foot of the stairs.

“Well, since you feel that way…” He bent to hook his arm behind her knees, lifting her off her feet.

She gasped and clutched him around the neck as he set off up the stairs. Though her first impulse was to protest, she gave it up before she could begin, resting her head on his shoulder, laughing into his collar.

He stamped a quick kiss on her head.

“Alright,” she laughed at the top of the stairs.

Each of them on their own feet again, they made their way through the Hogwarts parents’ floo and back at the front door at Spinners End. Remus pushed through the door, scuffing out of his shoes, pulling off his coat and letting himself fall facedown on the sofa.

Narcissa was laughing. “So letting me rely on you so heavily on the stairs used up the last of your strength, did it? Fair enough. But that sofa isn’t long enough for you, darling. Go to your proper bed.”

“Inna minute,” he muttered.

She tousled his hair as she left him there to go to her own bedroom. But halfway up the stairs, she stopped. If his own bed in the larder wasn’t enticing enough to get Remus to move off the sofa, maybe she ought to offer him somewhere more comfortable to sleep – like her own bed – with her. Surely they were both too tired for anything to get out of hand. It might be the very best introduction to sharing a bed. And if they were to wake up together feeling – energized – well – she could certainly think of worse things that could happen.

She crept back to the lounge. “Remus?”

He made no answer.

She stepped around the sofa to better see his reaction. “Remus? Really – “

He let out a snore like Abraxas Malfoy’s old French bulldog, stars rest its soul.

Sighing a laugh, she raised her arm to wordlessly summon a blanket from the larder. Even when she draped it over him and crouched beside him to kiss his head, he only snored harder.

“Ah, love,” she whispered. “Someday soon…”

Chapter Text

In the last week of November, as the full moon approached, Narcissa spent a good deal of the morning hours brewing Wolfsbane potion alone in the cellar where the aconite fumes might be deadly for Remus.

With the Ministry of Magic’s Annual Yule Gala and Ball happening just a few days after the full moon, her afternoons were spent working on getting their festive clothing sorted. Alterations to make Horace Slughorn’s borrowed robes suitable for Remus would be easy enough, but crafting a gown for Narcissa out of Madame Olympe’s donated French silk was a task of a much greater magnitude.

Narcissa began by sketching designs. Remus deemed them all magnificent, which meant he was no help at all. It was just as well that the school that Carol and her husband from the pub quiz worked at had invited him to spend the week speaking to the students as an expert in folklore.

“By all means, accept their invitation,” Narcissa had told him. “You’re still heartbroken about having to leave your post at Hogwarts and you deserve to be happy in a classroom again, even if only as a visitor.”

It was true that Remus was a naturally gifted teacher who genuinely liked older children. After his first session at the school, he was pleasantly surprised to find a small packet of paper Muggle money left for him at the office.

“It’s an honorarium,” Carol explained as they left the administration office together. “Small, I know. Doesn’t come anywhere near what you’re worth, but we do like our visitors to leave with a token of our appreciation. Same time tomorrow?”

Only it wasn’t a small amount. This was, after all, what Maudie and Roddy referred to as “the posh school” and it kept a healthy fund for honoraria. So here Remus was, in Muggle Britain, with eighty quid in his pocket and the promise of more every day that week. He could afford to buy something beyond Dumbledore's allowance of food and clothing. And he knew exactly what it would be.

As Remus walked back to Spinners End, the packet weighing comfortably in his pocket, Roddy drove by on shift-change from the smelter beeping his car horn. “Oi, Slim! Can I give you a lift the rest of the way?”

“Cheers,” Remus said, slipping out of the cold early winter drizzle and into the passenger seat. The odds that Roddy would know where to find what Remus was looking to buy weren’t good, but since he had no idea where else to start, he asked. “Say, I’m looking for some advice. Husband to husband. You and Maudie have been married for a long time, haven’t you?”

Behind the steering wheel, Roddy swelled with pride. “Seventeen years come spring.”

Remus gave a nod. “That’s a lot of anniversaries. You must know where to find nice gifts. And I’m looking to buy a long overdue wedding present for – for Nancy.”

“Wedding present? Like a blender? Toaster?”

“Erm, no. Something more – uh, personal.”

Roddy gave a low whiatle. “What, like something slinky?”

“No, no,” Remus said. “More like jewellery, like a ring.”

“Well done” Roddy said, taking a hand from the steering wheel to smack at Remus’s shoulder. “Lovely gift.”

“I thought so too,” Remus said. “Our wedding was – well, it was very rushed and far too informal. We had no rings and it’s high time I got one organized.”

“Too true,” Roddy said. “Nancy’s profession is in a man’s world. And nothing tells a room full of men that a lady is spoken for like a ring on her finger.”

“Well – yes,” Remus allowed. “But the difficulty is, where am I to find a good ring for sale in Cokeworth? Unless I’m much mistaken, there don’t seem to be many jewelers in town.”

Roddy hummed at the windscreen. “Yeah, you’re right, Slim. But here’s what we’ll do: I’ve got a mate that runs a business selling off estates. I’ll let him know you’re looking for a nice, ladies ring and see what he can dig up.”

“Would you? That would be brilliant,” Remus said.

“Your Nancy will want something posh. That's a given. But is she alright if it’s not brand new?”

“Yes, in fact, she’d prefer something antique,” Remus said. “She’s been a collector of old jewellery since well before our marriage. As long as it's well made, not too flashy, but with an interesting history.”

“Haunted?” Roddy laughed.

“Not haunted, but perhaps a little tragic. We could probably manage a slight curse but nothing potentially incapacitating or – “ Remus made an abrupt end. He was getting too comfortable with the Cokeworth Muggles.

But Roddy was just laughing it off. “No curses then. Got it.”

Remus leapt at a change of subject. “I simply can’t go on any longer without giving her a ring of my own. I’m hoping to have one for her to wear to an event we’ll be attending this weekend where I expect to run into quite a few acquaintances whom we haven’t seen since before the wedding.”

Roddy gave a sharp nod. “Right then. One week, one ring that’s romantic and worthy of a seasoned collector. Challenge accepted.”

***

With the house emptier than usual during the days, and the time to the gala getting shorter, Narcissa arrived on Maudie’s doorstep late in the afternoon with her sketchbook, her bundle of ice blue fabric, a tape measure, and a bristling pin cushion, desperate for help.

“You see, a British school Remus used to teach at has asked us to attend a gala as their representatives. We accepted even though I’ve brought none of my gowns with me to Cokeworth,” she explained, truthfully enough. “Maudie, help.”

A moment later Narcissa was sat at the kitchen table humming over a stack of bridal magazines Julissa, their daughter Draco’s age, had collected in anticipation of the formal dance coming up after A levels at the end of the school year.

“They are lovely,” Narcissa said, patting Julissa’s hand even as her mother flipped noisily, dismissively through the pages.

“It’s true, love,” Maudie said, still flipping. “But look at the stiff, beaded, lacy bodices on them. We’d need a magic wand to get Nancy’s light silk sculpted up into one of them. I’ve never seen such an airy silk as this.”

“It’s a French textile,” Narcissa said. “Lovely but challenging.”

“I like the backless ones,” Julissa said, retrieving the magazine her mother had tossed aside.

Maudie frowned. “Yeah, they’re alright. How’s your back, Nancy?”

“Haven’t taken a good look at it lately, actually,” Narcissa said.

“Do you mind?” Maudie's finger was already hooked in the back of Narcissa’s collar.

“Not at all. Go on and scout it out for me. How is my thirty-six-year-old back faring?”

Maudie pulled Narcissa’s collar back until it nearly choked her and peered with one eye down the back of her shirt. “Good shape. No tan lines,” she said. “Hard to tell from inside the fabric, but your skin tone seems quite pale.”

“Maybe you’ll want to book some time in a tanning bed if you decide to go backless,” Julissa said.

Not knowing what a tanning bed was, Narcissa simply thanked her for the suggestion. “Now tell me,” she pressed on as she opened her sketchbook, “what the pair of you think of these.”

“My word. They’re not at all like the magazine, are they,” Maudie said. “Let’s go by a process of elimination. Which one of these is the most like your wedding dress? We can eliminate that one since everyone’s just seen you in it.”

Narcissa let her head fall onto her arms folded on the table. “That’s it, isn’t it? Our wedding was – well it was as quick and minimal as it could be. We left for Cokeworth the very next day so there wasn’t time to plan. My sister and a few old family friends were there but that was all.”

Maudie patted Narcissa’s head where she lay slumped against the tabletop. “Lots of second weddings are modest affairs, deary.”

“Ours certainly was,” Narcissa said. “Neither of us was dressed in wedding attire. So there’s no wedding dress style to eliminate.”

Julissa had unrolled a metre of the silk and fanned it over a chairback. “It’s too bad it’s blue instead of white or you could have made this one into a wedding dress,” she said.

Maudie gave a gasp. “Well why not? What’s the good of all that training in chemical engineering if you can’t bleach a bolt of fabric, eh Nancy?”

Narcissa lifted her head. “What?”

“The blue is already so light,” Maudie said, taking the end of the fabric from Julissa. “Shift it just a few shades lighter and it’ll be white. Then you can make a grand entrance at that fancy soiree in the wedding dress your husband never got to see you in. All your friends there will see it too. What do you reckon? Can it be done?”

Narcissa had sat up and was examining the fabric in the afternoon light of Maudie’s kitchen. She was so enthralled she nearly took her wand from her pocket to test whether any of the re-colouring spells she knew would work. She barely stopped herself, pushing away from the table. “White at the Ministry gala. It’s no one else’s wedding. And the theme is wintry and snowy so white wouldn’t be too out of the way. That’s an intriguing suggestion, ladies. I will look into it.”

“But if you’re making a wedding dress,” Julissa said, “Dr. Warry can’t see it until the night of the party. It’s bad luck.”

As Narcissa paused to remember that Dr. Warry was Remus’s secret identity, Maudie was taking over planning the surprise. “You can work on it at home, while he’s off at that bleeding Carol’s school. Then bring it here for all the fittings. Dear Slim, he’ll faint dead away of happiness when he sees you in it.”

***

Remus was leaving the school the next day with another honorarium payment tucked into his coat when Roddy picked him up for a lift. “My mate's come through,” he said after reminding Remus about his seat belt. “He's clearing out an old widow's house this week. She's not dead, just moving to Kent with her son. If we come ‘round tomorrow evening, he'll give us first crack at it before they let the public have a go.”

“Excellent news,” Remus said.

“Right, so we'll tell the girls we're off watching the match at the pub so we don't spoil your surprise.”

“Match. Right,” Remus said. Quidditch would be in full swing in November, but what were the Muggles playing? “But we'll have to duck in at the Crane and Quarry on the way back so it won't be an outright lie.”

Roddy snorted a laugh. “Suit yourself, Slim.”

“It’s important, isn’t it? I've never lied to Nancy before,” Remus said.

“Never? Come on…”

“Never. And it will take more than keeping a surprise to get me to do it now.”

Roddy dropped him home and as Remus came inside and hung his coat on its hook, he caught a glimpse of Narcissa vanishing away what must have been her gala gown project – though there seemed to be an awful lot of white fabric to it today.

“How did the sewing go?” he called from the front hall.

“It’s coming along,” she called back, in the kitchen now, her voice oddly fluttery and higher pitched than usual.

Remus sniffed hard as he made his way toward her. “Is there a funny smell in here?”

“Funny? Like what?”

He sniffed again, stopping in the kitchen doorway as Narcissa vanished a caldron from the hob. “Like a potion I’m unfamiliar with.” He covered his mouth and nose with his hand. “It isn’t…”

“The Wolfsbane? Oh no, you’re quite safe, darling,” she said, stepping forward to tug his hand away from his mouth, replacing the hand with a light, sweet kiss before smoothing his windblown hair. “The smell isn’t so very strong, but you’re picking it up because you’re well into your gibbous phase today. You remember how you get: sensitized and reactive.”

She kissed him again, warming his lips still slightly cold from being outside. His hand was at her waist, keeping her close, his kiss hungry as it became long and deep. They weren’t used to spending days apart. Remus had realized already that he missed her, but not how much. They’d done some extraordinary snogging in the evenings since they returned from Hogwarts, and here they were again within a minute of reuniting. When would she tire of kissing him, he wondered, the pressure of his hands growing as they moved from her waist to trace the curve of her back. Kissing was sublime, but when would she want…more?

She broke the kiss before he was ready, leaning away to laugh as he bent forward to follow her, his arms enfolding her even as she raised her forefinger, pressing it to his chin to create enough distance to speak into. “Sensitized and reactive,” she repeated. “Too easy for me to take advantage of.”

He straightened his posture, letting her go with what he hoped was a tame, civilized kiss on her forehead. “It’s not a curse that makes me want to kiss you,” he said.

She shrugged one shoulder. “It doesn’t make you not want to kiss me either though.”

He smirked as he opened the window over the sink to let in some fresh air.

“Is it that bad? It’s just the smell of a recolouring potion I’ve been brewing today,” she said. “You’ve seen Julissa’s hair. She’s no Nymphadora Tonks, that's for certain. She took it upon herself to colour her hair with a bottle of something she bought at the chemist's shop. Did it in the bathroom when no one else was home and it’s – well, it could use some correction. I’m going to help her with it tomorrow after Maudie and I finish with the latest round of fittings for the gown.”

This was also not an outright lie. Narcissa would indeed help Julissa with her hair, but she would do it with a little discreet wand work while going through the motions of washing it in Maudie’s kitchen sink. The smell in the kitchen was from a potion needed for a much bigger job: the whitening of the gown itself. She had barely finished it before Remus arrived.

Remus was glad to hear she’d be occupied the next evening and wouldn’t be affected by his trip with Roddy to the estate sale. “I’ll start dinner in a bit,” he said. “I wanted to take a moment to look at the Eldenbach book again. Today's students had some questions that got me wondering about a few things.”

“Of course,” Narcissa said, eying the sideboard where they’d once stored Snape’s taxidermy as if she was concerned about something else that might be stashed in it at the moment. “The book’s up in my room, on the bedside table, if I’m remembering correctly.”

She had remembered correctly and Remus found the Eldenbach book on the table next to the pillow where she laid her head every night. As most of the books Narcissa had managed to summon from the Manor library were, it was an antique, hardbound book. It wasn’t a massive tome but it was large enough that someone very sleepy and not willing to get out of bed to find a proper bookmark could mark where they stopped reading with an entire small, modern paperback novel slipped between the pages. This is exactly what Remus found inside of Eldenbach: a rather faded purple book titled Fated to Love. Its binding was intact but so well worn that its pages parted as if by magic to a section near the middle. A rather provocative word caught Remus’s eye, and almost before he was aware, he was reading.

Downstairs, Narcissa was easing the rumpled gown she had vanished to the sideboard out of the cramped space and folding it neatly with the reverence a real wedding dress would have deserved. She kept one eye on the stairs, expecting to see Remus returning with the Eldenbach book at any second. Minutes passed, enough time for her to complete her folding. Where was he? Had Snape re-hexed the bed?

She set off up the stairs, “Remus? Did you find it?”

Especially in the gibbous phase, with his hearing approaching its most acute levels, he must have heard her coming. Yet, he wouldn’t answer back, wouldn’t look up from the book he held high enough to hide his face.

“There you are,” she said, stepping into the bedroom. “What unlawfully, unethically gained secret on lycanthropy is Eldenbach astonishing you with tonight?”

She was close enough to see the book’s cover now, and she knew it wasn’t Eldenbach.

Without a word, she lunged at him where he sat on the edge of her bed, her hand stretched out to snatch the book from him. With his reflexes never quicker than they were during this phase of the moon, he moved with quick, fluid grace through an elaborate motion. He raised his own arm to move the book out of her reach, catching her by the wrist of her advancing hand, standing up enough to turn in the air, and using Narcissa’s own momentum to send her falling on her back onto the bed as he brought himself to hover over her. When the motion stopped, one of his hands held her wrist to the mattress above her head. With the other hand, he held the Slytherin girls’ long-confiscated, best-loved book of spicy werewolf fetish fiction.

From where she lay, Narcissa stared up at him, speechless and mortified. She searched his face. It was flushed from his cheekbones all the way to where a vein in his throat pulsed against his collar. Not a good sign.

Maybe it wasn't as bad as she thought. If he began reading at the beginning, all he would have seen was the beautiful spinster main character's ill-treatment by her jealous sisters. Narcissa asked through gritted teeth. “What part did you read?”

He shook his head as if clearing something out of it. “It just fell open. There was a lot of howling and torn satin sheets and descriptions of moonlight on bare body parts.”

“And how much of that did you read?” She knew the page he’d described. It couldn’t be much worse and without thinking, she squirmed beneath him, moving to recover a little of her dignity by working her way toward sitting upright. Though they were touching only at her hand where he held it to the bed, her movement seemed to affect him anyway, his eyes “darkening” just like in the bloody book as he loomed over her, keeping her there.

She felt her own reaction to him like a hot spring in her chest, a surge of heat and rush of blood. The shock of it stopped her struggling. Yes, she thought. She hadn’t wanted their first night together to be in the gibbous phase because – there had been reasons. Something about Remus never having to doubt his motivations, his feelings for her. But those were decisions made by a sensible woman sitting alone sewing in the afternoon between sips of tea, not those of a woman pinned to her bed in the twilight, waiting beneath her deliciously wolfish husband for him to fall on her and ravish her.

His mouth opened, her breath hitching at it…and then he spoke. “I read enough.”

Instead of coming closer, he flung himself away, crashing onto the bed beside her, the springs rebounding, setting her bouncing. As he withdrew, he released her wrist, letting his empty hand fall on his chest as he lie there breathless, swallowing hard, blinking up at the ceiling. “Stars, Cissa…”

Freed from his grasp, she flipped onto her side, finally getting hold of the book. He didn’t resist as she plucked it from his fingers. The shades of a hundred Slytherin schoolgirls must have been wailing in grief when she threw their cherished dirty werewolf book spine first against the wall, shedding its pages like a deck of cards dropped on the floor.

“It’s not really my book,” she said. “I saw it passed around by the older girls at school. Before it circulated to us girls in fifth year, it was confiscated by Filch. Then I found it in his hoard the other night, and out of a very old and enduring curiosity, I took it. I just knew its title and that it was – a bit racy. I had no idea it was specifically about…”

Her voice trailed away, lost to the sound of his quick breaths.

“Would you have left it in the hoard if you knew it was werewolf fiction?” he asked.

She sat up. “Why, Remus? Do you think I should have left it?”

He labored to sit upright beside her. “Listen. I'm not so naive and sheltered that I don't realize there are plenty of witches – and Muggles too – who fetishize werewolves. I know it. I've – dealt with it, and not always as well as I should have. But after all the friendship and mature caring you've done for me – “

“Mature caring?” Narcissa said, loud enough to interrupt him. “Why not just start calling me ‘mother’ and be done with it?”

“What?”

“So let’s start with my mothering and observe that even though I knew it would hurt him, I told my son I was going to stay with you, Remus Lupin,” she said. “And if that's the case, maybe it would be a good thing if I was trying my hardest to stoke a werewolf fetish in myself.”

The flush in his face was gone, overcome by a pallor. His mouth moved wordlessly for a moment before he was able to say, “Trying your hardest?”

She saw that he'd misunderstood, that she'd hurt him. She held his arm to make sure he’d stay. “You listen to me. What I mean to say is that I'm not trying at all. I'm not just an accidental friend of yours making the best of our situation by trying on a romance. In every way there is to want a person in my life, I want you. I’ve known more werewolves than most people and I know for certain that I don’t fancy any of them but you.”

He heaved the biggest sigh she’d ever seen from him. The pallor was beginning to ebb away.

She kept calling him back. “It’s true that I can hardly think straight when you move about me with the uncanny speed and strength that you keep hidden from other people. And yes, I want to howl myself when I kiss you and you make that sound in your throat between a man’s groan and a wolf’s growl.”

He was turning toward her, bowing his head to rest his forehead on her temple.

She went on, her hand cradling his jaw. “And never in my life have I felt so terrified and yet so safe as the moment in the manor cellar when – transformed though you were – I watched you spring past me. I knew you’d accepted that I wouldn’t hurt you, and in your way, you agreed never to hurt me.”

His arms around her, he pulled her closer, sitting her on his lap. “I can’t explain how that happened,” he said. “Werewolf lore – we act like there are rules but everything that’s ever been said about it, even by Eldenbach, it’s all just fieldnotes. It’s just humans scrambling to report what they observe about us though they only know what they see. And they don't see everything.”

She nestled into him, her face in the crook of his neck, still mad for him but reconnecting to the good judgment of the person she’d been that afternoon, the one who could see the wisdom in waiting to seduce him for a few days more. “We should write our own treatise on werewolfism. Set the record straight.”

He glanced over her head to where Fated to Love lay in ruins on the floor. “Did the rest of the romance book get the werewolf lore right?”

Narcissa hummed against his throat, relishing the feeling of her voice vibrating through him. “It was mostly about werewolves’s bedroom lore and I can’t really speak to that yet, can I, darling.”

“Right,” Remus said, as Narcissa’s hair blew in another great sigh.

“And even when I can,” she said, turning her face up to see him. “It will be no one’s affair but ours.”

Her words were punctuated with the growl not of a werewolf but of her stomach.

“Listen to you now, half-starved,” he said, getting to his feet. “Come along. Time for tea.”

Chapter Text

Narcissa stood in Maudie’s upstairs bedroom as Julissa fastened the zip of the white, silk gown the three of them had made together.

Maudie was on her knees on the floor plucking the last of the pins from the hem. “There. It’s a pity we couldn’t have made the train longer, but since there will be dancing at your soiree, it can’t be helped.” She took Narcissa’s hand and hefted herself to her feet.

Narcissa turned in the full-length mirror hung on the closet door. The gown had turned out nicely. Its foundation was a simple, snug bodice embellished with an elegant drape of the luxurious fabric along the low scoop of the neckline in both the front and the back. Though Julissa had wanted the back to plunge all the way to Narcissa’s waist, the grown up ladies had tailored it to fall just below the shoulder blades.

If they’d been making it in summertime, the gown would have had no sleeves, only thin straps over the shoulders. But since the gala was a winter event, below Narcissa’s bare shoulders more of the fabric draped around each of her upper arms in loose, short sleeves, almost like a stole. The cut of the skirt was similar to a Muggle version of a mermaid dress but with the snug portion ending high enough on the legs to allow for dancing. The train was barely there but it gave the skirt a structured, elegant shape.

“It’s the prettiest dress I’ve ever seen in real life,” Julissa said.

“Aren’t you a dear,” Narcissa answered, patting the girl’s cheek. Daughter-like people truly were lovely.

Though she was pleased enough with the gown, Narcissa couldn’t seem to stop splaying her hand on the exposed white skin beneath her collar bones, but she did manage to stop short of complaining that such an open neckline clearly demanded a necklace. It wouldn’t do to leave Maudie with the idea that their hard work to make her into Remus’s beautiful bride had yielded anything less than perfect results, especially since no one they knew in Cokeworth could do anything to provide suitable jewelry now.

Maybe when she and Remus went back to Spinners End to Floo to the Ministry she could transfigure a ladle or a fork from the kitchen into something to wear as jewellery.

“And you look simply stunning with your hair up,” Maudie said, coiling one of the tendrils falling along Narcissa’s neck around her finger.

“I needed to hear that,” Narcissa said, patting the back of her skull. “Up-dos always remind me of an old teacher of mine. A Scot named McGonagall – all tartans, and immense hats worn indoors with her hair piled up underneath them.”

Julissa gave a snort. “I’m definitely not getting old school teacher from you.”

“Good. We’ll leave the old school teacher role to Remus,” Narcissa said. “Do you think he’s ready for me?”

“Roddy!” Maudie hollered through a crack in the door. “Shall I bring her down?”

“Yes!” came Remus’s voice, quicker than Roddy could answer.

The women laughed. “He sounds ready to me,” Maudie said. “Right. Jules, you go down first, make sure they’re watching, and then beckon Nancy down after yourself.”

“Ooo, like a bridesmaid,” Julissa said, setting off to where Roddy and Remus waited.

Dressed in proper formal wear for the first time since he and the lads stood up with James at the Potters’ wedding, Remus was wearing well-tailored wizard's dress robes. The Muggles had accepted them without question as some odd academic regalia from the school he was representing.

As she took her first step down the stairs, Narcissa couldn’t yet see Remus. In the moment before the reveal, she paused to take a deep breath – to find herself again in this strangely wonderful new life. This narrow set of stairs in Roddy and Maudie’s clean but simple working class house – it was far from the grand staircase in Malfoy Manor. As the tenant of Spinners End, Narcissa was no lady of the manor. Her jewels gone, her neck was bare. Since she’d sewn so much of the gown herself, she was keenly aware of every tiny flaw in it. She was thirty-six-years old, no longer a radiant maiden of a bride. But unlike the girl she’d been when she was married at nineteen, she was in love with her groom.

Descending slowly, she came into Remus’s view, one of her hands holding the bannister, the other lifting her skirt to be sure not to trip. The white of the gown was indeed a surprise for him. She saw it as she met his speechless gaze.

“By the stars,” Remus said at last. “A wedding gown.”

“You like it?” she said, eyes wide as he took both of her hands at the bottom of the stairs.

“Like it?” he said, looking her over. “It’s like a vision.”

Julissa cooed while Roddy chuckled in an oddly self-satisfied way. “Now wait until you see the surprise Slim's got for you, Nancy. Alfie!” Roddy hollered to his twelve year old son sitting on the sofa in the lounge ignoring the spectacle. “Bring the box.”

What Narcissa was about to find out was that at the estate sale Roddy had taken Remus to in search of a ring, there had been a massive old safe no one could open. Roddy had found his friend desperate enough to be closing in on the safe with a fire axe when Remus asked to have a go at the lock.

“Multi-talented, this one,” Roddy had said, pointing his thumb at Remus. “Just give him room to work his magic.”

Though Remus had flinched, he quickly saw that Roddy hadn’t spoken of magic literally. The estate sale manager had thrown his axe down, waved Remus on, and was flustered enough to promise that if he got it open, Remus could keep any one of the items inside.

Remus had spun the lock’s dial back and forth until the others grew tired of watching before he cast a simple wordless, wandless Alohomora spell. The lock sprung open, and inside was a stack of Muggle banking papers everyone was quite excited about, a very old single shot pistol, and the jewel box Alfie was now handing him.

Before it was even opened, Narcissa recognized the type of box and pressed her hand to her bare throat. “A necklace?”

Remus grinned, opening the creaking velvet box. “Yes. It’s only aquamarine stones. Not the most precious of gems. I expected your gown to be the same ice blue as them but – “

“No, they're perfect with the white,” she said, her fingertips trailing over the stones where they lay in the box. “The size is just right too. And the silver settings are in remarkably good condition for a piece this age.”

“I should hope so. He spent hours polishing it,” Roddy said.

Maudie fastened the chain around Narcissa's neck as Julissa held a mirror. The five aquamarines caught the light, flashing with just the light of Maudie’s electric chandelier overhead. Narcissa rounded on the pair of them. “You knew I was getting this all along, didn't you?”

They only laughed.

“And this is the last gift of the night,” Remus said as they quieted, his hand slipping into the breast pocket of his robes. “I bought this one with my honorarium from the school.” He held a small green satin sachet, and with a delicate touch, he tipped its contents into his palm.

Narcissa’s gasp was nearly inaudible. “It’s – my wedding ring.” The piece was another antique from the estate sale, something from early in the twentieth century, swirling platinum filigree so glittering and ornate no stone was needed for it to shine. She couldn't say a word as Remus slipped it on her finger.

“You may now,” Maudie crowed, “kiss the bride.”

Remus took both Narcissa’s hands again, leaning forward to give her a quick, clean kiss that wouldn’t embarrass young Alfie too much.

Roddy insisted on giving them a lift back to Spinners End where, as they had told him, the school would “take care of” their transportation the rest of the way to the gala.

With the happy, helpful, hopeful energy of their friends gone, Remus and Narcissa stood together at the hearth in the dim front room of Spinners End, nothing left to do but Floo to the gala.

She fussed with the cravat she’d tied in a fancy, complex knot at his throat, clearly stalling their departure. “Go on and sigh,” she said.

He replied with a sound that was only partly a sigh, the rest of it a weary laugh. “Is this party really going to be so awful?”

She smoothed the placket of his shirt. “My reunion with the socialites of wizarding Britain after defecting from their ranks in what they imagine to be disgrace? Yes. It will be awful. They will be stabbing at me with questions that seem on the surface sweet as honey.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, lowering his forehead to hers. “Though I am also glad that there is little chance of actual, non-metaphorical stabbing. Not with Dumbledore attending alongside us.”

She hummed, never quite as confident as he was in Dumbledore. “Even if there was a risk of harm to me tonight,” she said, “I’d do this anyway if it meant there was the least chance it would persuade Draco to defect from them himself. He’s got to tell someone…” She let her head fall to Remus’s shoulder.

He closed his arms around her, the gown hidden beneath her long, dark cloak. “This is the best mission the Order has ever given me. All I need to do is show anyone who sees us that I’m mad for you. Nothing could be easier or more pleasant for me.”

She raised her head, nodding and lifting her hands to unclasp her cloak. “They’ll have the entrance to the Floo routed to the central fireplace so everyone can make a grand entrance,” she said. “We won’t spend any time outside and our entrance will be more striking if we aren’t fumbling out of our wraps as we arrive. I’m not bringing my cloak.”

“But your white gown,” he said. “The soot of the Floo –”

“There is no soot coming in or out of the Ministry,” she said. “They couldn’t have their top ranking officials representing Britain while dusty from Floo commuting.”

“Right, of course,” Remus said, taking her cloak and folding it over the back of Snape’s armchair. While he’d turned around, Narcissa had stepped away to have one last look in the mirror in the hall. This meant her back was turned to him – and much more of her back than he had ever seen before. In the small, crowded front room of Maudie and Roddy’s house, before she’d covered herself with her cloak, Remus hadn’t got a proper look at Narcissa’s gown from behind.

In the top corner of the mirror, she saw him reflected as he looked her over, hiding nothing of his admiration, his eyes coming to rest not on the part of her rear view that used to hold Lucius’s attention best, but on the expanse of her back he’d never seen bared before.

She chirped a laugh. “See anything you like, darling?”

He sputtered for just a moment. “Aren’t you cold? With so little on your back? Your cloak – ”

“Will only be a nuisance,” she finished, coming back to him at the hearth. “Trust me. This is far from my first gala and I know about these things. If I’m cold, I’ll come stand under your arm, like this.” She took his wrist and raised his hand toward her shoulder.

But when she let go of his wrist he didn’t drape his arm around her but pressed all five of his fingertips to the warm, velvety smooth skin on either side of her spine. For a moment, he froze, as if he didn’t dare move for fear she’d dissolve back into his imagination.

In return, she kept quiet, no laughter, no teasing, only a mounting tension, like a string on a harp waiting to sound.

Slowly, he flattened his hand, bringing his hot palm into full contact with her. She tipped her head toward him, letting out her breath. He heard it leave her, felt her ribs move beneath his touch, and though he couldn’t see that her eyes had closed, he sensed it. He sprung forward, his arm was around her waist pulling her into himself, backward, the hand on her back moving over her skin, searching out more of it. He curved around her, stooping to close his lips on the arc between her neck and shoulder.

“Remus,” she breathed as she staggered into him. “The sooner we go, the sooner we can come back here.”

He sighed against her throat. “Right. The mission.”

“The mission,” she said, breathless and finding her feet.

“In a minute,” he said, retreating from her to lean rather awkwardly on the mantle beneath the extremely sobering figure of Snape’s flying fox. “Honestly, woman. You should have warned me about there being so little back to that gown.”

She laughed a scoff. “And you’re one to accuse me of having a fetish.”

“It’s not a – argh, we need to stop talking about it…” He took two great cleansing breaths, the second one more like a growl. With its force, he pushed himself off the mantle and paced in a circle. “There. We’re focused on the mission again. Let’s be off.”

***

The grand foyer of the Ministry of Magic, where statues had stood for generations celebrating harmony between the magical and non-magical peoples of Britain, had been transformed into a festive, sparkling ballroom. Just as Narcissa had said, the room was oriented toward the central Floo – the large, ceremonial one used for visiting dignitaries but available tonight to all of the gala’s invited guests.

When the Lupins arrived, the ballroom was mostly full. Remus appeared on the high marble hearth of the central Floo first, confounding the master of ceremonies who had never seen him at any Ministry galas before. While he searched his list for a name to go with Remus’s face, Narcissa arrived to stand beside him, she shoes clicking on the marble, her arm slipping with her usual elegance through his without any hesitation.

The master of ceremonies recognized her at once, and with great voice and vigor he announced them.

“Mr. Remus Lupin and Mrs. Narcissa Black Lupin.”

The chatter in the room fell to whispers. Even the musicians seemed to trip out of rhythm for an instant as all eyes turned to see Madam Malfoy and the werewolf.

Lifting her chin, Narcissa returned their stares – all of them. “Come along, darling,” she said, extending her foot beneath her white skirts to step away from the hearth and into the teeth of this evening.

Chapter Text

Remus Lupin’s posture grew straighter, taller at the touch of his wife’s arm slipping through his as they stood on the hearth of the central fireplace in the grand atrium of the Ministry of Magic. That night, all of the most important institutions of Britain’s wizarding society were represented in the atrium, their leaders, donors, broads of governors all dressed in their finest for the annual gala. In genuine amazement, they gawked at Remus and Narcissa as they stepped down from the hearth to take their place among them.

No one in this society had been particularly surprised to hear that Lucius Malfoy’s marriage had ended soon after his incarceration in Azkaban. His humiliation of his wife by being a shameless philanderer was one thing, but demeaning himself with a prison sentence was something else altogether. No one would have wondered at his wife for leaving the manor before he returned disgraced and damaged from Azkaban.

It was the addition of Remus Lupin to the Malfoys’ story that made the gossip about Narcissa Black into a scandal. She hadn’t left Lucius to return to the House of Black, but was driven from the manor with second disgraced husband. In the days after the announcement of their wedding, the fact that Lupin was listed on the Ministry’s registry of werewolves became a well-known, much discussed fact in the wizarding press.

Just as the Dark Lord intended, most of high society read the situation as a sign of his power to unseat and punish those who failed him. Clearly, Madam Malfoy had been given to a werewolf to be tortured and abused, perhaps to death. Of course she had disappeared from society. Either the creature had already killed her, or she was living with him beaten, scarred, violated, homeless, impoverished as a wild animal. Even if she survived her absurd marriage to a creature that fed on murder, her name and her bloodline would be polluted with a lycanthropic curse.

And now here she was, appearing at the event of the year as a vision in white silk, glittering with a respectable amount of gems, not a scratch on her fine skin, looking out at the crowd with her head high, an icy serenity in her pale blue eyes.

In immaculately tailored, if slightly vintage, dress robes, the companion at her side did not look like a beast. He was tall and slim, brown hair coiffed in a wave away from his high forehead where a trace of a scar disrupted the line of his otherwise neatly arched eyebrow. He wasn’t bristling with a shaggy pelt, just a modest, well-groomed mustache. And while the tabloids had led the masses to believe they would find him glaring with flaming devil eyes, he only watched his wife as she watched everyone else, drinking in the sight of her with a softness, an adoration that was, frankly, rather breathtaking to see.

But not everyone in the crowd would let themselves see it.

Narcissa and Remus crossed the atrium to join the Hogwarts contingent that had invited them. Near the statues of witches, wizards, and elves, Dumbledore stood with the Hogwarts staff honoured with invitations that year. Slughorn had stayed at school to host his own Christmas party that night. And Snape – Snape would be remaining at the school to watch over Draco.

But stalwart Minerva McGonagall was there, looking just as Narcissa had imagined her in tartan and an immense, pointed hat. As a nod to the festive occasion, the brooch at her shoulder was a massive ruby. Stunning as this was, Narcissa still barely held back the impulse to loose her own up-do. Next to McGonagall was Flitwick, splendidly dressed as usual. Sprout had come too, unapologetically underdressed, as usual, in brown and yellow calico with vines in her hair.

Behind Flitwick, making a rare appearance without a medic’s uniform, stood Poppy Pomfrey. She did not restrain herself from clutching at her heart for joy to find Remus looking so well. After all she’d seen him through as a young werewolf who would often injure himself terribly during his transformations, her heart always went out to him. Never for a moment had she believed there was any truth in the tales about him abusing Narcissa Black. And here before her, in this lovely couple, was her proof.

At the sight of such a friendly group, Remus’s step quickened, and he didn’t spare a single glance for the Ladies Aid Society of St. Mungo’s assembled near the foot of the hearth. In other years, this group was the one Narcissa would have stood with. They were an auxiliary to the hospital’s board of governors that focused on lavish, gorgeous fundraising events not unlike the gala itself. Their current president was Potentilla Parkinson, mother of the girl Draco had broken with just a week into the school year. Close to Madam Parkinson stood Chrysanthemum Crabbe and Geranium Goyle, their heads swiveling to follow Narcissa as she passed them without a word on her way to join the rag-tag band from the school.

“Ah, my dear Lupins,” Dumbledore said as he received them. “What a fine addition you make to our party, here representing the parents and past faculty of the school.” He spoke as if giving a speech, making sure the reporter leaning into their circle understood the reason this particular couple had been invited. Narcissa dropped a curtsy as Remus nodded, falling much more easily than his wife into smalltalk with the other teachers.

All sound stopped when the Minister Scrimgeour took to the hearth to offer a few words of welcome. Despite the festivity, his tone was weary and grave. His former associates from the Auror department emerged from the crowd, circulating as he spoke. Kingsley and some others were dressed as guests in formal wear, and at the far back of the room, flanking the exit to the rest of the Floos stood Alastor Moody and his protege Nymphadora Tonks on guard duty.

Remus swallowed hard against the knot of his fancy cravat.

The bulk of the attendees were Ministry officials of all sorts.

“Look there,” Narcissa whispered to Remus as Scrimgeour ground out his speech. “There’s our wedding officiant. That vile Yaxley. Look at him bold as brass here at the ministry when he spends his off hours doing the Dark Lord’s bidding.”

Remus patted her hand where it lay on his arm, eyeing Yaxley, the man who’d been tasked with collecting enough of Remus’s blood to stand as a signature on the marriage contract. Of all the things Remus couldn’t remember about that night, this man was one of them.

“I suppose it wouldn’t do to begin our mission by chatting up Yaxley,” Narcissa went on. “Though he might reveal something about the current state of the Death Eaters if taunted into gloating about gaining control of the manor.”

Remus stiffened. “That’s beyond the scope of this mission. I’m sure there are any number of people here he’d be happy to gloat to. It doesn’t need to be you.”

“I know, darling, I know,” she said, nodding in a different direction as the applause for the minister’s speech died away. “No, I’m off to greet my old comrades, the Ladies Aid Society of St. Mungo’s.”

Remus gave a light hiss between his teeth. “Those ladies there? They look like the personification of all the signatures on that letter demanding my resignation from Hogwarts.”

Narcissa blushed. “You remember all the names on that letter? Really?”

Slowly, he lowered his face toward her. “Yes. Every single…” he tapped the end of her nose, “...one.”

She met his gaze with a slow blink. “You must know by now that I’m terribly sorry about all that, don’t you? But I will keep telling you so all the same.” With that she raised her face and kissed him gently on the cheek.

He was blushing himself now as she sank back onto her heels. “Shall I come with you to see the Ladies?” he said, ready to give her anything.

“No, it’s best if you don’t,” she said, wiping her lipstick from his cheek with her thumb. “But make it look as if you have other pressing visits to make. Like – oh there are some of your Auror friends, or maybe a Weasley.”

Without much hope, he’d already been scanning the ministry staff in the room for Arthur Weasley. Perhaps when they were no longer paying tuition and books at Hogwarts he and Molly would be more inclined to come to events like this one. For now, the closest things to them at the gala were their estranged son Percy – a situation Remus did not understand and would not impose upon – and a tall man with long ginger hair standing with the contingent of men and goblins from the board of directors of Gringotts bank.

This was Bill Weasley, of course. Molly had said that Bill held a junior position at the bank, the kind that usually didn’t warrant an invitation to an event like this. It seemed like an odd choice until Remus noticed another junior Gringott’s employee, Fleur Delacour, at Bill’s side. She must have been invited to beautify the Gringott’s group. Wizards didn’t appreciate goblin beauty, and while goblins didn’t understand witch beauty in return, they heard Fleur was a beauty among witches and had brought her along. Bill must have come as her date. Good for them. They stood close, swaying slowly as if the music had already started, taking no notice of the rest of the crowd. Remus would leave them to it.

That left him to the Aurors after all. “I see Dora’s on duty,” he said as Narcissa released his arm. “So I suppose I’ll…” He caught a glimpse of Narcissa’s face, her lips parted as if she wanted to argue something but wouldn’t. “So I’ll be sure not to bother her and catch up with Kingsley instead.” Her lips closed into a smile, and she was off.

Narcissa approached the Ladies Aid Society cooly calculating the least risky way to join them. Since her appearance at the gala was unforeseen, none of the women would be under any particular orders on how to receive her. Shunning was a standard social response they had used in Slytherin House together as girls, but shunning required the kind of inner discipline that Chrysanthemum Crabbe and Geranium Goyle were not capable of without a direct threat of punishment, and which Potentilla Parkinson would find too boring to muster.

No, though she knew them best, these weren’t the Ladies she wouldn’t approach first. There were other women in the society with kinder dispositions. There was Marigold Bulstrode, for instance, a tank of a woman, once a marvelous beater in quidditch, who had a fine, friendly sense of humour. It was her eye that Narcissa caught first.

“Cissa, thank the stars!” Marigold called over the heads of the other Ladies. “We were all so worried. You haven’t been seen in months.”

Narcissa answered with a practiced, melodic laugh. “Not being seen is what a honeymoon is all about.”

While Chrysanthemum and Geranium stood gaping, not sure what to say, Potentilla Parkinson had collected herself and twirled around to face Narcissa. “Let me look at you, Cissa darling.” She clucked her tongue. “My dear, it’s clear that you’ve been through so much. Chrys, summon a glass of wine for her. Quickly, you can see how haggard she looks.”

“Oh, don’t trouble yourself, Chrys,” Narcissa said, calling Mrs. Crabbe back. “Didn’t they tell you, Tilla, that in the interest of an uneventful evening, the wards around the atrium have neutralized our wands for tonight? The Aurors serving guard duty are the only exceptions. Dumbledore’s just told us so.”

At once, Geranium Goyle produced her wand and tested the claim with a Lumos spell that refused to light.

Potentilla lowered Geranium’s wand, shaking her head. “Enough, Geri. Yes, that’s right. I’d forgotten they’d slipped that stipulation into the invitation at the last minute.”

“It’s tyranny,” Chrysanthemum began. “The Ministry can’t just – “

Potentilla hushed her.

Marigold had stopped a waiter passing by with a tray of brimming wineglasses and was handing them out to the rest of the ladies. “Well, wands or no wands, I say Cissa’s return to society merits a toast.”

“To be sure,” Potentilla agreed, her voice honeyed as she raised her glass. “And may you soon recover your strength enough to make room in your new life for the true lord of Malfoy Manor.”

Narcissa’s smile iced over. “You’re speaking of Draco? Or is it someone else?”

Potentilla lowered her glass. “Draco, of course. He’s come into his responsibilities so young. It must be terribly onerous. And my Pansy has told me he’s been quite alone at school this term. No sign of your usual hovering.”

“Your Pansy is mistaken,” Narcissa said through the ice. “As you can see from our invitation tonight, Remus and I are quite involved with the school and continue to do all we can to care for my son.”

Marigold gave a sharp nod. “All that you can do. Yes, I’m sure that will be enough for Draco. Stars bless him.” It wasn’t meant as sarcasm, but it rankled Narcissa all the same.

Potentilla smelled blood in the water, lifting her glass again. “Then here’s to the lord of Malfoy Manor.”

All of the glasses but Narcissa’s were lifted, and before anyone could drink, Geranium Goyle jostled Chrysanthemum Crabbe hard with her elbow. Chrysanthemum staggered away, and as her arms flailed in a wide, exaggerated circle, her glass of red wine flew from her hand, its contents upending on the train of Narcissa’s gown.

It was a maneuvre for which the pair of them were famous. Narcissa had seen them do it before to other women they wanted to degrade in public.

“Oh, I’m so very sorry,” Chrysanthemum said. “Geri, look what you made me do.”

“What a pity indeed,” Potentilla said. “And here we are, none of us with a working wand to lift the stain.”

Marigold bit her lip, shaking out the train to get a better look. The trail of wine on the white silk looked like a murder scene – or at least a very bad period accident. “Maybe that lady Auror back by the doors can help…”

No one had yet noticed that despite all the commotion, Narcisssa didn’t seem vexed at all. “It’s alright, Ladies,” she said. “Give the skirt one more light shake, would you Mari?”

Marigold complied, a breath of air moving through the train as it settled. And as the Ladies watched, the stain crept out of the silk fibres, forming into a straight, liquid line. Leaving the gown, it snaked across the floor to the overturned glass and coiled itself inside. Now full, the glass flew back into Chrysanthemum's hand, only one drop splashing out to land on Geranium’s cheek.

“You will recall,” Narcissa said, “that this is not my first time attending a gala dressed all in white. I have enough experience to know to enchant my gown to repel stains before arriving. So there’s no harm done, Chrys, Geri. Lovely to see you all. Enjoy your evening.”

She strode toward the safety of the Hogwarts party, almost reaching it when Remus caught her by the elbow, striding alongside her.

“How were the Ladies?”

“Awful.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, nothing much in the end. How are your Aurors?”

“Forbodingly tense.”

She stopped, facing him. What she wanted was to throw her arms around him and hide her face in his chest, shutting out this entire scene. But that wasn’t the mission. It wasn’t enough to look in love with him, batting her eyes and wiping her lipstick from his face. She had to look strong and happy – like they were winning this horrific national power struggle so other people would believe it and join in.

Just then the musicians struck up. After the Minister’s dour speech, the room was ready for frivolity and the parquette dancefloor set in the centre of the atrium was soon so full of couples it didn’t really matter whether the song was suited for the waltz Narcissa and Remus had been practicing in the Spinners End kitchen all week long. There was hardly room for anything more than Bill and Fleur’s kind of gentle swaying.

Narcissa was not sentimental enough for that, however, and she maintained a more traditional dance hold, hand to hand with her left hand on Remus’s shoulder and his right hand at her waist.

“No one’s quite themself without our wands working,” Narcissa said, allowing herself to lean into him, her face upturned. “It’s like we’re all underaged again. Fewer responsibilities and inhibitions.”

“I knew something was even more than ordinarily off. Is that what it is?” he said, his hand advancing past her waist to find the silk at the small of her back, pressing her chest into his. “Still, I can see the Ministry’s wisdom in neutralizing the wands given the –”

“Of course you can see the wisdom in a rule,” she said, her real laugh sounding for the first time that night. “You are, after all, my ironically law-and-order werewolf.”

He hushed her through a muted laugh of his own. “Don’t use the w word out in public, darling.”

“Why not? What’s the use in being quiet about it? Everyone knows. Everyone else is saying it,” she said.

“So what everyone knows is fair game, is it?” he said, his hand trailing upward, passing over the silk draped at the gown’s upper edge, his fingertips skating over the skin of her back. He watched her respond to his touch, her eyelids low, a pinkness flooding her icy serenity.

His head dropped until the end of his nose brushed hers, drawing a sigh from her. “You should see how the young Muggles at clubs dance now,” he whispered into her face, his fingers tracing her spine from the end of the gown to the hairline at the nape of her neck. “The women turn around while the men cuddled them from behind, moving to the music together.”

“That’s filthy,” she whispered, her hand gliding along his shoulder to curve around his neck.

“Yeah,” he breathed against her forehead.

“How long do these bloody missions have to last?” she said, clearing her throat. “How soon until we can – go home?”

He gave a low laugh and turned in a circle, her train flying, swatting away any dancers who’d come too close. It was too fast, orchestrated with too little restraint of his inhuman powers of speed. She lost her breath, clinging to him, unable to see anything else.

Then the music was changing, the tempo bouncing and raucous.

She stood back. “Enough. Go take your leave of Dumbledore. I’m off to powder my nose to be sure we still look perfect as we stand up in front of the Floos to leave.”

Remus did mostly as he was told, finally catching the eye of Bill Weasley and stopping to visit with him as Narcissa made for the loos. There was only one person in the toilet, and they were leaving as Narcissa was going inside. Though they didn’t speak, something between dull recognition and a flashing alarm flickered through her mind as the woman bumped her against her.

Narcissa was still at the mirror, blotting her lipstick when the woman returned. This time, she was not alone. Corban Yaxley had come with her.

“Ah, Mrs. Lupin. Thank you, Alecto. You may go.”

Yes, Alecto Carrow, a new addition to the Dark Lord’s hosts just before Narcissa was expelled from the manor.

“I’ll be leaving too,” Narcissa said. She was following Alecto out the door when it was slammed shut in her face and barred with something from the other side.

Head held high, Narcissa turned to face Yaxley. Both of their wands were neutralized but his body out-sized hers. She squared her shoulders anyway. “No more of your games, Mr. Yaxley. Tell your lady-brute to open the door before you disgrace yourself any further.”

“But I thought you wanted to see me disgraced,” he said, advancing on her where she waited in the dim corner by the door to be let out. “Your last night in the manor, you wanted to see me disgrace myself with you.”

“Don’t you come near me.”

“Why not? When you heard you’d be married in the kitchen that night your eyes went right to mine,” he said, close enough to touch her now.

“You’re remembering wrongly,” she said, her hand raised to cover her throat. “My eyes went to you in horror. In revulsion –”

“But you still would have rather had me than the werewolf. Well, you can have me now, Madam. Not as a legal husband. The Dark Lord was right about that. But it doesn’t mean I can't make myself available for whatever else you’d like.” There was no space between them now. Reeking of wine and scallions he had wedged her into the corner.

“What I would like is to leave and never see you again,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Then call him.” Yaxley worked his finger between the chain of her necklace and her collarbone. “Call out to your werewolf to rescue you. Their hearing is legendary. He’ll hear. He’ll come, attack me in front of everyone, ruin this happy fairy tale you’ve spun about your marriage. Alecto will witness the whole thing. She can tell everyone I did nothing to provoke him but happen to pass by you on my way back from taking a piss. It takes so little to provoke a monster.”

Narcissa shook from head to foot, trapped in the corner by the horrible, hot bulk of this wicked man. His hand was at her throat, his thumb in its hollow.

“Call him,” he hissed into her ear.

Her breath was quick with panic, her eyes glazed with tears, but she kept her teeth clenched and her voice silenced.

She fought to raise her knee to get it between them, but this only set Yaxley chuckling.

“Oh, I like that,” he said. “I’ll certainly ask the Dark Lord to let me have you for good once the werewolf’s dead. Lots of our ilk prefer the young ones but for me, nothing beats the bag of tricks that only comes with maturity. Now call the werewolf. Just a peep out of you should do it.” His breath was on her face, his grip tightening on her throat. “Just one slutty little squeal and –”

There was a flash of what could only be a soundless blasting spell obliterating the door at Yaxley’s back. He whirled around, shouting curses at Alecto who already lay slumped and stunned on the floor. Dust hung in the air, and as it cleared, Nymphadora Tonks came into view.

“Get away from aunt, you disgusting pervert,” she ordered in a low, quiet voice.

“Pervert?” he railed at her. “All I did was wander into the wrong toilets only to find this wanton –”

“Oh, shut up,” Dora said, her wand still fixed on him.

“Get your supervisor. That man with the eye,” Yaxley ordered. “He’ll understand it’s nothing but her deranged word against mine.”

“What? You think Moody will help you out of this? Have you lost your mind?” She laughed.

Narcissa was staggering out of the corner, reaching for Dora. “My darling girl, just let him go on his way. Please. I’m not hurt and he’s only here to bait Remus. They’ve failed and the Dark Lord will make them pay. Leave them to go crawling back to him.”

Dora’s scowl deepened. She was opening her mouth to lay into Yaxley again when Remus came skidding on his fine leather-soled shoes into the doorway. “Dora, where’s Cissa? She still hasn’t come back and I heard you and a man shouting and…”

Remus took in the scene: the blasted door, stunned Alecto Carrow, Dora’s drawn wand, the streaks of tears in Narcissa’s freshly applied powder, and Corban Yaxley adjusting his trousers in the ladies room. In an instant, he saw it all, his fingernails biting into the wood of the doorframe, his lips pulling back to bare his teeth, nostrils flared, brows low over his glowering eyes.

It was not a transformation but it was enough to terrify Yaxley out of any noble plans he had to let himself be savaged in order to shame Remus Lupin for the Dark Lord’s cause. With the door blocked and his wand useless Yaxley was the most desperate he’d ever been in his life. Something silver flashed in his hand, like a coin, but not a coin.

It was a small knife like Muggle children take camping, and he’d plunged it to the hilt into the flesh of Remus’s left flank, below his ribs. As Remus cried out, Yaxley fell at his feet, stunned cold by Dora. Narcissa lunged at Remus to stabilize the knife but he’d already pulled it out and hurled it across the bathroom.

Blood rushed over Narcissa’s hands pressed hard over the wound. “Wand, Dora,” she said. “It’s the spleen. Always bleeds like mad.”

Dora didn’t argue. Like her Aunt Bellatrix, she was more of a fighter than a healer. She watched as Narcissa tore Remus's shirt from the waistband of his trousers, surveying his exposed flesh for the extent of the injury, murmuring spells to staunch the bleeding and set the slashed flesh knitting itself together.

In the throes of shock, Remus was pale and slick with sweat even after the bleeding stopped. “You alright?” he asked each of the women as he stood panting against the door jamb supported by them tucked under each of his arms.

In such a ludicrous situation, they could only laugh at him.

“Are we alright?” Dora raved. “Stars love you, Remus. Yes, we're fine. But we need to get you out of here. Discretely. Right, auntie?”

“Yes, just be quiet and listen to Dora,” Narcissa told him. The stain repelling magic was working to take Remus’s blood from her gown, finding its way back to him and spattering an even bigger mess of his clothes.

Dora scourgified him and then herself before leading them through the cafeteria kitchen to the everyday, non-ceremonial exit Floos.

“You should be alright from here,” Dora said, stepping out from beneath Remus’s arm. “I’ve got to clean up that mess in the toilets. As far as anyone will ever know, Yaxley is drunk and nothing happened.”

Narcissa caught Dora’s hand as she spun around to leave. Dora turned to see the pair of them once again in the pose they'd been in the first time she saw them together. Remus was wounded and woozy, disheveled, his clothing compromised, shivering as the effects of shock abated, leaning on Narcissa as she stood under his arm. From beginning to now, their marriage looked like a disaster, and yet…

“Thank you, Dora. For all you’ve done,” Narcissa said.

Dora folded her lips into a hard line, her neck jerking in a nod she couldn’t quite control. “Yeah,” she said. “Any time. Anything for him.”

Chapter Text

After a disastrous evening at the Ministry of Magic’s Yule Gala, Remus Lupin came stumbling out of the Floo at Spinners End and sprawled onto the rug. Still reeling from Corban Yaxley’s attack in the ladies’ toilet, he rolled himself onto his back to lie looking up at the cracked plaster of the ceiling. His breaths were quick, shallow, and the only sound in the room. Until Narcissa arrived…

She came through the Floo with a great flash, following after him as quickly as magically possible, rushing over the hearth just to trip on his legs and fall to her knees on the rug beside him in a heap of white silk.

She scrambled toward his head. “Remus! Have you fainted?”

“No, just – still in shock, maybe?” he said.

“Let me see that wound again.” She tugged at his tie, unraveling its ornate knot to expose the buttons at his collar. “Does it still hurt?”

“A bit,” he said, slipping a hand beneath his untucked shirt to feel his flank. “What kind of gremlin pokes another grown man with a Swiss Army knife?”

“Swiss?” she said, working at his collar. “What have the Swiss got to do with anything?”

Remus couldn’t answer. By now, Narcissa had begun a swift, methodical, almost maternal unfastening of the buttons of his shirt. He lay as if helpless, his arms at his sides. “Cissa – I can – you don’t have to – “

“I do,” she said. “I cast all those healing spells in a shadowy ladies’ room doorway, stooped over, half-panicked, and with a borrowed wand I'd never laid hands on before. It needs a second going over with my own wand.”

But Remus was no longer thinking of his healing wound. Speechless, he only gasped as Narcissa slid both of her hands into his undone shirt, pushing toward his shoulders, spreading the panels open to bare his torso.

At the sight of him lying lean and creamy white, his chest heaving beneath her as she bent over him, her hands still inside his clothes, palms on his shoulders, she caught herself, and froze. For weeks she’d been daydreaming about the moment when she would come this close to him for the first time. No, daydreaming wasn’t the right word. She’d been fantasizing about it, imagining it as a slow, languid seduction, something to be savoured, always remembered, intense with tenderness.

And now she’d ruined it. In her great concern for his wound, she’d rushed ahead and stripped Remus to the waist in the same perfunctory way she would have used to ready Draco for a bath when he was a little boy. The new, intimate threshold had been passed over unceremoniously, and she couldn’t relive and repair the moment now.

Remus seemed to read it all in her sudden silence, the regret in her face, the abrupt ending of her frantic motion. A moment of quiet passed between them before he relieved her of having to be in control of the situation. His arms sprang to life and he pulled her down, drawing her cheek to his chest and holding her close, her head nested under his chin.

“Are you really alright?” she said.

“Never better.” He inhaled the scent of her hair.

She settled her arms around him, nestling her smooth cheek against his chest, still kneeling at his side, her torso diagonal across his and clad in cool French silk. “For just an instant, I thought he’d killed you,” she said, turning her face into him, breathing him in as he’d just done to her.

He answered with a groan, shifting her weight off of her knees, taking more of it on himself. “Killed me with a blade that small? Maybe if he struck me right through the heart, or – “

“Don’t even speak of it,” she said, clinging all the more tightly.

He kissed the crown of her head. “Well, you’d better take a look at your healing handiwork and satisfy yourself it’s good so we can stop fretting over it.”

She sat up. “Thank you, darling. I’ll ask you to slide your arms out of your sleeves yourself and turn onto your side.”

Sighing, he pressed his palms against the rug to heft himself to sit beside her, not yet making any move to take his arms from his sleeves.

“Not the sighing again, Remus. What is it?” she said.

“It's that – well, you’re about to get a good look at the bare skin of my back for the first time. And it’s – a sight.” The lesser three fingers of his hand trailed over the delicate dome of her shoulder. “Maybe that’s why I find your back so exquisite. Your skin is perfect, unmarred and finer than this silk itself. But my own back – ”

“Will be just as lovely to me as mine is to you,” she said.

He gave a weary laugh. “You saw how Poppy Pomfrey looked at me when we arrived at the gala tonight. After all the mornings I crept into her infirmary to be healed after — after gruesome transformation accidents of every kind, I’m a tragic figure to her. She can hardly believe I’m still alive let alone safe and happy.”

He turned his hand to caress the softness of Narcissa’s shoulder with the backs of his fingers. “Because in my early years at Hogwarts, before Wolfsbane, before the lads learned to transform into animals and keep me safe and occupied as a werewolf, the best Dumbledore could do was to lock me in the Shrieking Shack. I couldn’t get out but once I turned, I wouldn’t stay there without a fight. And the only thing in the shack to fight was myself. I’d rock and pace and scratch, my arms crossed and holding myself, those claws tearing idly, almost innocently at the flesh of my own back.”

She took his hand from her shoulder and kissed between each of his knuckles in turn as she spoke. “There’s no ‘almost’ about your innocence as a child locked up alone in a spooky house. Now, I love you more than Poppy Pomfrey does. Let me see it.”

An air of reluctance remained as he shrugged out of the robes and shirt and lay down with his wound facing upward. Narcissa lit her wand, examining her healing work in silence. It was still red, slightly ragged, but not sore enough for Remus to flinch away when she pressed the site of the puncture.

“Good,” she said at last. Then, with only the pressure of gentle nudge, she moved him from lying on his side to his front. There by the light of her wand, she saw the story of those terrifying years as a newly turned werewolf etched in his skin. Through his jumpers and jackets, she’s touched his back hundreds of times in the three months they’d been together and she’d never thought the irregularities in it were anything but seams or stray yarn or folds worn into his clothes. But some of those lines and ridges were part of him, a map of suffering scratched over his skin.

“Stars, Remus,” she breathed. “You poor boy.” With no barriers, with full sight of what she was feeling, her fingers were drawn to a particularly rough spot, a raised tangle of scars still stained slightly purple on his left side.

“That injury,” he said, narrating her exploration of the map, “was the worst one I’ve ever given myself. I gouged at the kidney there, damaging it and missing a month of second year while I recovered at St. Mungo’s.”

Narcissa tutted, bending low over the scars.

“Not long after that, James just happened to find a book on animagus transformation left on the spot at the Gryffindor dining tables where we usually took our meals. When he tried to return it to the library, they said it didn’t belong to the school, and even if it did, knowledge of that kind of magic would be restricted, not left lying about in the great hall. Then when I made James turn it in to Dumbledore, he only patted James's head and said, ‘Maybe that book is a gift to you, from a friend of a friend of yours who is badly in need of help.’”

Narcissa laid her face on his back, next to the scar where his healed kidney must be, his body rising toward her with a sharp intake of his breath. “You believe Dumbledore left this book so your friends could learn the magic that could save you,” she said. “That’s why you trust him completely without having to know why he does whatever it is he’s doing.”

He let out his breath. “I suppose it is.”

Her hand came to rest at his waist, holding him close as she turned her head to speak with her lips against the scar. “Your life, your body – all of you is so precious. These people in your past – they fought to keep you here among us long enough for me to find you, and to love you like this.”

With her lips warm and open, she pressed a kiss to the scar. He knew to keep still, showing he accepted it, believed her. She didn’t stop with a single kiss but pressed on, moving from the rough skin too battered to sense much more than the warmth of her lips to the sensitive, unscarred flesh around it. Though he didn’t move his arms, he quivered at the touch of her mouth, at the feel of her entire torso moving over him as she mouthed and kissed her way to his shoulder blades, the silk of her bodice gliding over him, the contours of her body imprinting on his. She found his spine and reserved her direction, a long drag of her mouth descending to the small of his back.

It was too much. He rolled himself over, facing her, catching her under her arms to bring her up from the tantalizing path toward his waistband to where he could speak to her sanely and face to face. Her lips were dark and full, her breath short and ragged. He meant to speak to her but at the sight of her lips he had to kiss them himself, that high note of frustration sounding in her throat, her knees planted on either side of his waist now, holding him down. His fingers twitched, reaching and ready to gather up her skirts, clearing away all that fabric that was keeping her apart from him.

And at the roar of that impulse, he remembered himself. “Cissa,” he breathed into her mouth. “This is the part where Severus usually comes through the Floo to scold us for something. Or where one of the Order’s helpful owls comes tapping at the window with some urgent plan.”

She sat up on his stomach, glancing around the room. The flush that Remus had seen before in her cheeks and throat and wondered how far down it went was proving that it did indeed extend lower, plunging along what her gown bared of her chest. Somewhere in all the mutual ravishing, Remus had found the pin that had bound up her hair and tugged it free, her hair now falling loose over her shoulders and back.

He sat up himself, bringing their faces close together again, his forehead on hers as he slid his hand into her hair falling over her back, desperate for a handful of her smooth skin and silky hair all at the same time.

“You think we need more privacy?” she said, interrupting as he leaned in to kiss her again.

“Yeah.” He nodded against her forehead. “No one should see you like this but me.”

She cleared her throat and nodded at the wall behind them where the stairs rose up to her bedroom. “Then come with me.”

He took her head in both of his hands, his fingers combing into her hair. “Cissa, I want to. But if you bring me there – if you want to go slow –”

“I did want slow,” she said, her hand over his heart, fingers curved into him, the light from the fire catching on the platinum filigree of her wedding ring. “And we have gone slow. Now I want my wedding night.”

With a burst of his hidden strength and speed, he was on his feet. Instead of setting Narcissa on her own feet to walk with him, he kept her at his waist, his arms holding her up, her legs bending around him, her skirt bunched as he carried her to the staircase. She thought about the contraceptive potion she’d taken at lunch, just in case, and let herself cling to him. When they reached the first stair he pressed her back to the wall and let her find her footing again.

Narcissa recognized the pose at once. This, at last, was the return to that kiss-that-wasn’t against the wall in the stairway of the manor’s cellar the night they wouldn’t give in to the Dark Lord and murder each other. On this night, in this position, she was confirming her desire to give herself fully to Remus Lupin, giving herself to the man and to the werewolf. In pausing here on the stairs, the werewolf reached for her, showing he remembered and wanted her just as badly. She nipped at his lip, light and quick, with her teeth to acknowledge him there.

As if he’d been waiting for it, Remus broke away, catching her hand and trotting up the stairs in front of her, hurrying her along. He tugged her through the door and kicked it closed, not taking his eyes off her as she held onto his hand and walked backward toward the bed. With his freehand he conjured a flame in his fingertips and flung it at the candle wick, washing the room with a dim, golden glow.

“Stars, that’s gorgeous,” she breathed, her shoulders heaving. “Come here.”

He was there, one hand palmed her head, sunk into her hair, tipping to open her neck to him. Her eyes closed, her hands open and rounding his shoulders. He was feeling at the back of her gown for the zipper that would open to leave nothing more between them. Breaking the kiss when he found it, pausing as he held the pull pinched between his thumb and forefinger, he looked into her eyes.

She opened them, looking hard at him. For the first time, she was about to be with a man who wasn’t Lucius Malfoy. Though Lucius had never been loyal to her, he had taken pride in learning to satisfy her and in being spectacularly satisfied by her in return. She had never been enough for him, somehow, but that didn't mean he had never truly desired her. Lucius had looked at her just as her Remus was looking at her at this moment, his hand poised to undress her and have her. She knew already, but still she wanted one last assurance that she wasn’t just desired by her new husband, but that she would be adored by him for the rest of her life.

She swallowed, wanting to be eloquent but finding herself able to speak only a single word: his name. “Remus?” Her voice was high and sweet, trembling.

“Narcissa,” he answered, low and soft – sure. “My forever bride.”

At that, she answered him with a nod and one last kiss on the mouth, her breath hitching as her wedding gown fell away.

***

Snape came swooping into his office in the Hogwarts Dungeons, his robes reeking with the cinnamon and citrus of Slughorn’s Christmas party. Taking up a quill as if it was a scalpel, he sat down to write a letter.

Draco had been caught in the corridor after curfew. Without a doubt, he was scuttling about working on that mission no one could discover while he was still protected by the Fidelius charm the Dark Lord had forced on Narcissa. When caught, he'd claimed he was gate crashing the party.

Potter seemed to have known it was just an excuse too and he'd followed Snape and Draco out, eavesdropping. But so had Granger, creeping about in a pink party dress. Snape had left Draco in the corridor for Granger to find while he went his own way, leading Potter on a merry chase through the castle.

Such childish games infuriated Snape. To hear Tonks tell it, Draco was warming up to Granger, but without knowing how she could help him, the girl didn't seem to be any closer to getting Draco to confess the mission. She needed to be recruited more directly and with more complete information. And crucially, it had to be done without triggering a noble but devastatingly wrongheaded overreaction from Potter. The last time Potter overreacted, Sirius Black wound up dead. Stars only knew who might be next.

Yes, it was high time someone sat Granger down and explained what she needed to do for Draco and how. And they needed to do it soon. At a time like this, it was impossible for Snape to leave Draco to get help, and so, a letter in the morning post would have to do.

Snape began with a flourish: “My Dear Narcissa…”

Chapter Text

Remus held onto Narcissa all through their first night.

Narcissa had already known from the mornings when she’d found Remus still asleep in the larder or on the sofa that his sleeping habit was to lie on his stomach with one arm extended, trailing off the bed. It seemed to be a way to make more room for the rest of himself in beds that were barely long and large enough for him. She had suffered pangs of compassion for that arm, sacrificing itself, dropping into the cold, open air for the sake of the comfort of the rest of the body.

This morning, that arm wasn’t hanging alone off the bed but curled around her waist beneath the bedcovers. Was she what he had really been feeling for, reaching out to her in the night, in his sleep without knowing all this time? This was the arm’s reward for all its years of sacrifice, to wind up in a bed large enough for two where, even as he slept, the arm linked Remus to the person who loved him.

Beneath his arm, Narcissa lay on her back, her head turned to look at his face as he slept. The scent of the pomade they had combed into his hair to lift it away from his forehead for a polished gala look was now on her own fingers. In the night, she had tugged and twisted his hair into the tousled, waxy, but still rather dashing mess it was now.

His lips remained full and dark from their latest encounter, not more than an hour before. His eyelids were still, no longer dreaming but resting. The poor dear must be so tired, after all she’d put him through. She sniffed a laugh at the thought. He’d come to her the first time passionate, eager, and offering a breathless hope that he wouldn’t disappoint her. She’d smirked down at him and assured him disappointment was something she’d learned to out-maneuvre years ago. Sure enough, without anything to out-maneuvre, he had managed…not to disappoint her. And this even without it being the waxing gibbous phase of the moon.

She glanced at the spot on the wall where, weeks before, the Slytherin girls’ forbidden book of werewolf smut had split apart when she’d thrown it. This drew another unvoiced laugh from her. So far, she had seen no signs that whoever wrote that book was truly a werewolf or a werewolf’s lover. Both were so very rare she could hardly fault the author for that.

She lifted Remus's heavy, sleepy hand from where it had settled into the curve of her waist and held it to her heart. Yes, she loved the wolf in him. But in this sunlit room on their first morning truly together as husband and wife, everything golden and new, she believed she could have adored him all the same if his creature identity was something less magnetic, with no fetish fiction – like a grindylow, a blast-ended skrewt – anything.

She was laughing again.

“What is so funny?” Remus muttered, his eyes still closed as he came even closer, leaving his hand where she’d set it on her heart, the tip of his middle finger in the hollow of her throat.

“Nothing. It's just that I'm so very happy this morning,” she said, kissing the end of his nose.

“Me too.” He settled his head on her pillow, eyes still closed, bending to kiss her shoulder in almost exactly the same place where he'd already left a love bite.

It was his voice that had done it this time, two syllables to say how happy he was with her, spoken low and sweet and close enough to spark her desire again. Her heart beat hard beneath his hand, warmth and colour rising in her skin. Could he tell even with his eyes closed?

Maybe it would be better if he couldn't. They were not so young that they could believe that staying in bed forever would have no consequences. She thought of the Wolfsbane potion brewing in the cellar in need of its daily morning distillation of aconite. The solvent would only accept very little of it every day and to miss a day would mean the potion might not come to full effect.

Then there was the cranberry honeymoon potion she needed to brew to keep herself healthy and strong. It was not a difficult formula – more of a mixture than a brew. But it would not fix itself.

But even with these pressing matters on her mind, what she said aloud was. “I wonder if the post has arrived.”

Remus moved to keep the outside world from encroaching too soon, hooking his ankle around hers and turning onto his side to hold her closer. “It’s still early, isn’t it?”

His eyes were open now, the light through the window warming the brown to amber. How was she ever going to leave him to go to work in the cellar? “No, it isn’t early at all,” she said. “Look at how high the sun has got.”

He propped himself on his elbow, squinting toward the window. “A sunny day in Cokeworth. Will wonders never cease…”

“Never,” she said, tracing a line at the centre of his chest.

Remus needed no further invitation, gathering her beneath himself and giving her one more reason to need to take the honeymoon potion.

Eventually, she did manage to dress and come downstairs. She had come up from the cellar lab and was looking for Remus when she noticed that the post had arrived. There it was, pushed through the slot in the door charmed to admit nothing but the post: one letter and the weekend edition of the Daily Prophet.

Since success of the mission depended on if and how the press covered their debut as a happy married couple at the Ministry gala, she opened the paper first. There was nothing about the gala on the front page except a prompt to read more about it on page four. She leaned over the coffee table, turning the broad sheets of cheap parchment.

There on page four, below a banner of dour-faced Scrimgeour making his grave welcome speech, were over a dozen pictures of witches, wizards, and goblins dancing and drinking and laughing at the gala. A picture of herself and Remus stood out from the rest, the negative space of her white dress drawing the eye to it. The paper had chosen a picture of the pair of them arriving on the central hearth together, Remus turning to her with a smile of sweet, delighted relief as she came through the Floo. Her head was held high in that haughty, loveliness that was her typical mien when out in society.

“Same old Narcissa,” she muttered to herself, imagining what people who knew her would have to say about it. “Good.” They would see she had not lost any of her dignity by leaving the Dark Lord and staying with Remus.

“How did it turn out?” Remus said, joining her on the sofa.

“You look marvelous,” she said. “And like you aren’t at all suffering for being with me.”

Remus followed her pointing finger to their picture. For a moment, he seemed pleased – and then it passed. “What’s the caption on about?” he said, reading the title printed below the picture, “Stepping Up and Stepping Out…”

Narcissa pulled the paper closer, squinting at the blurry picture paired with the one of their triumphant arrival on the hearth. It was a shadowy image, the movement in it lumbering and laboured, not graceful and composed, like her own in the neighbouring picture. It was the back of the head of a dark-haired woman pressed to the side of a tall man, his arm slung over her shoulder, clinging to her.

“It’s Dora,” she said. “And that’s you. And they’ve cut me out of the picture on the other side of you, holding you up from beneath your other arm after Yaxley attacked you.”

Remus swore, returning hurriedly to the words, reading aloud. “This season’s gala marked the return to society of recent divorcee, Narcissa Black Malfoy, now Lupin. Madam Lupin appeared all in white, striking a note of bridal purity. Regrettably, the same cannot be said of her spouse, Remus J. Lupin, pictured above absconding early from the gala with a young woman identified as junior Auror Nymphadora Tonks on his arm. Auror Tonks is also of the House of Black, though estranged from Madam Lupin. Whatever the relations of these three persons, here’s to many happy years of matrimony to this most fascinating of families.”

Narcissa threw herself backward, sitting hard against the back of the sofa. “How can they do this?”

Remus ran his hands through his freshly washed, still damp hair. “It’s what they always do. The Prophet’s been positively torturing Harry with their half-truths for years now, just as they did with Sirius.”

Narcissa sat slowly shaking her head. “They’ve sabotaged our mission.”

“Not completely,” Remus said, folding up the paper. “Now we have proof that the Death Eater movement has the Daily Prophet in its thrall. That’s worth knowing.”

Narcissa had sprung to her feet, pacing. “Draco will have seen this. He’ll have seen it and he’ll trust you less than ever.”

Remus gave a sigh. “Hermione will have seen it first and done her best to tell him gently. In fact, she’s a good person to talk to about wilful misrepresentation in the press. During the Tri-wizarding Tournament she was cast in a romantic plot with Harry that caused no small amount of trouble for the both of them.”

Narcissa gave a ragged sigh of her own, and he knew he had used up all of his talking-about-Potter credits for the morning.

She clutched her own hands. “What are we to do, Remus? The mission is worse than a failure. Poor Dora – having the knife of losing you twisted this way. And Draco – this will steel him in his belief that no one cares about anybody and that no one can help him.”

He rose from the sofa to unclench her hands and hold them in his own. “Then we’ll prove that’s not true. We’ll go right through that Floo and into Hogwarts to find him and tell him it’s all lies.”

She flung her arms around his neck. “You’ll come with me? You’ll show him I’m not a fool and he has every hope in the world?”

“Of course,” he said, pulling her closer.

But neither of them managed to leave the lounge before the flaring of the Floo stopped them and held their attention there…

***
The morning the Daily Prophet announced the divorce and remarriage of Draco Malfoy’s mother, Severus Snape had failed to intercept Hermione Granger to keep her from giving Draco the news. The morning the Daily Prophet insinuated that Draco’s mother’s new husband was cheating on her with her estranged niece, however, Severus had been quick enough to stop Hermione as she sprinted into breakfast.

“In my office,” Snape had snapped at her.

“But Sir, can’t it wait until after breakfast?”

“If it could, it would. Clearly it cannot. Now come.”

Hermione followed him to the dungeon stairs, craning her neck as she walked backward, trying hard to see if Draco had already arrived for breakfast.

Alone in the office, Snape tossed his own copy of the Daily Prophet onto his desk, opening it to page four with a flick of his wand. “I trust you have seen it.”

Hermione gave a hard swallow. “Madam Mal – Lupin at the gala?” she said. “Yes, I have. And I don’t believe any of it. Tonks would never. And Remus Lupin is the kindest, most loyal, trustworthy–”

“Yes, all the best qualities of a well-trained canine,” he said, flicking the paper closed again. “You needn’t trouble yourself with breaking the news of this slander to Draco.”

Her face flushed, her eyes wide with alarm. “Why – why would I –”

“Come, Granger,” he said. “You really think any of you are capable of keeping secrets about who it is you’re mooning over in this castle? Of course not. We have known about your – infatuation with Draco for weeks now.”

“Have you…” she began, hating herself for how, after all these years, Snape still left her sputtering and speechless. “Have you brought me here to order me not to speak to Draco anymore? Because if that’s the case, I really do think that—”

“You have not been asked for your thoughts,” Snape said.

She managed to lift her chin. “Why can’t I tell Draco the Daily Prophet is back to its old lying ways again?” Each time she spoke his name, she felt bolder and bolder.

“Tonks will tell him herself. Most conveniently, she is here on guard duty today. And you,” he said, twirling to face her, his cloak spinning to such a fullness that it nearly brushed her knees where she sat on the settee. “You will come with me. The Order requires your service and you have already proven yourself trustworthy with secret locations.”

Hermione perked up, her look of dread lightening with the prospect of actually doing something. Harry would be so pleased…

“On one condition,” Snape said, his finger raised. “You must not–speak a word about it–to Potter.”

In the quiet room, he heard Hermione lose her breath. He folded his arms. “Very well. If you cannot accept this condition, then I shall have Tonks undertake this mission in your stead as well.”

“No!” Hermione chirped. “No, Sir. Please – is this mission – is it about Draco?”

Snape pursed his lips, furious at being questioned but suffering it anyway. “Yes.”

Hermione lowered her chin in a nod. “Alright,” she said. “Then Harry doesn’t need to know.”

“True,” Snape said. “Now you will accompany me – discreetly – to the Floos.”

***

Remus and Narcissa Lupin stood transfixed as Hermione Granger passed through the heavy wards on Snape’s fireplace and stepped into the front room of Spinners End. Snape himself was just an instant behind her, rolling his eyes at all the surprised expressions in the room.

“Did you not read my letter announcing our coming?” he said.

Narcissa lifted the paper from the table, exposing the forgotten letter. “That was from you?”

“Yes, and now that I’ve introduced Miss Granger, I will be returning to the castle. As you can well imagine, there is much to do there.”

“Severus, wait,” Narcissa said, reaching for his sleeve. “Draco – how is he –”

“I do not know,” he said. “Hence the reason I cannot stay. Explain what you can to Miss Granger about how she may help and then promptly send her back. Good day, Cissa.”

“Thank you, Severus,” Remus said as Snape disillusioned his tin of Floo powder.

Snape answered with only a glare.

Narcissa scoffed. “Surely you know Remus didn’t do anything the paper reported, don’t you Severus? For the love of stars…”

Snape was gone. As the flash and smoke of the Floo dissipated, Narcissa and Hermione stood on either side of the coffee table, regarding one another.

Remus closed his hands in a gentle clap. “I’ll make us some tea, shall I?”

“Thank you, darling,” Narcissa said without turning from Hermione to look at him. When he had gone, she sat on the sofa. “So they’ve decided I must trust you, have they?”

Hermione began to shrug her shoulders, catching herself and stopping midway, straightening her posture and giving her answer. “Whoever they are – they’ve decided I must trust you too.”

Narcissa broke into a slow curving smile. She patted the cushion next to hers on the sofa. “Come sit, Miss Granger. I should like to tell you there’s nothing to be frightened of, but I believe you know only too well that is not the case.”

Hermione glanced toward the kitchen door, wishing that safe, familiar Remus would return, but advancing to sit where she was bidden all the same.

“You like my son.” It was not a question.

“Well, he’s having a difficult year at school. I reckon his father’s –”

“Ah, so you pity Draco.”

“I did,” Hermione said, nodding as if her head was very heavy.

“And pity is not the same as real affection,” Narcissa said, crossing her wrists over her knee.

“No, but pity may be a precursor to affection,” Hermione said. “Especially between two people who have a history of…not getting on.”

“History. So then you and Draco do get on well now? You do have some affection for him?” Narcissa sat waiting, blinking.

Hermione managed to nod her heavy head again. “I most certainly do,” she said, finally succeeding in striking a slight note of defiance. “And I will continue to – to be his friend during this difficult time.”

“Very good, Miss Granger.” Narcissa refolded her hands.

Remus had returned with a tray of hot tea and toast.

“There you are, darling,” Naricssa said. “Help me begin to explain Draco’s situation to Miss Granger. It is too dangerous for me to speak of it.”

Hermione waited, watching somewhat stunned as Remus handed out teacups, drizzling honey into Narcissa’s cup, and spreading a napkin on Hermione’s own knee.

Narcissa noticed her stare.

“What is it?” she said. “Is my Remus any different than Draco? Both of them have a side of themself so tender they only reveal it to people for whom they have a particular – what were we calling it, Miss Granger? – a particular affection.”

“She’s admitted it, has she? Well done, Hermione,” Remus said, settling into Snape’s chair with his own teacup, draping his knee over the arm in a very comfortable, contented way.

Hermione gave a frustrated gasp. “How is it that everyone knows about Draco and me? Especially when there’s hardly anything to know?”

“There’s enough,” Remus said. “And we always know.”

“Like reading a clock,” Narcissa said into her tea.

Hermione glanced rather helplessly at the four discordant clocks ticking away on Snape’s mantlepiece.

“Now, listen carefully,” Remus began at last, dropping his knee from the chair’s arm to lean toward Hermione. “Harry has told me he suspects Draco is at school on a dangerous mission from You Know Who.”

“Yes, it’s infuriating,” Hermione said.

“And true,” Remus said.

“What?” Hermione’s stare now ricocheted between the Lupins. “Harry’s been right about Draco sneaking and plotting all this time? It really isn’t just sadness?”

Remus shrugged one shoulder. “Well, it is definitely sadness. And Harry certainly isn’t right about everything he suspects Draco and Snape of doing. But Draco does have exactly that kind of a mission. Cissa knows the details of it but she is kept from divulging them by a Fidelius Charm the Death Eaters forced on her. The only way we can find out what Draco is doing without risking You Know Who’s wrath at the breaking of the charm is to get Draco to willingly tell the details to someone else. Then the charm remains intact, You Know Who is not alerted, and we can help Draco make his way to safety.”

Narcissa took it over, moving closer to Hermione on the sofa. “You see, my dear girl, Severus has been fighting hard all term to win Draco’s trust and get him to disclose the mission, but it isn’t working. I myself have also told him to tell someone, but he thinks I’m naive and won’t do it simply because I’ve asked. And now we come to the next desperate strategy we can find: enlisting you in getting Draco to trust someone, to talk to someone.”

Hermione frowned deeply, setting her cup back into her saucer with a click. “You think Draco will reveal his plan to me? One of Harry Potter’s best friends? And the Muggleborn one at that?”

Narcissa waved her hand, gesturing to Snape’s rundown Cokeworth house, the plain Muggle clothes she was wearing, and her werewolf husband sipping tea and grinning into his cup as if he was remembering a beautiful secret. “Stranger things have happened to the House of Malfoy this year than a boy falling in love and spilling all of his secrets.”

Hermione’s face flushed red again. Draco in love with her, the way she could see Remus was in love with Madam Malfoy?

“Don’t mind Cissa’s dramatics,” Remus said, looking up from his cup to bat lightly at Hermione’s arm. “Just be a good friend, stay close to Draco, and run and tell Dora everything you hear from him. That’s really all anyone’s asking of you.”

“That and that I not mention any of this to Harry,” Hermione said.

Remus winced. “Well, yes. Please, don’t tell him. That condition couldn’t be more important. It’s in the interest of everyone’s – safety.”

Hermione bowed her head, still too aware of Harry’s role in the debacle at the Department of Mysteries that cost the life of Remus’s oldest, dearest friend. All at once, she understood perfectly.

“Alright,” she said, sitting her tea untouched back in the tray. “I’ll do all I can to get Draco to tell me the mission.”

Narcissa reached for her hand, pressing it between both of hers. “Yes,” she said. “Everyone told me you were the best of girls. Now back to school.”

***

A weary knock sounded on the door to Snape’s office. He rose to his feet to answer it rather than waving it open with his wand. The moment’s walk would help steady his nerves before he was confronted with the emotional mess of whoever was knocking.

Though he knew it could have been any number of people, he was quite surprised to find it was Tonks. She stood in the doorway, nowhere near at attention, leaning on the jamb, her head hanging low.

“You’ve met with Draco about the newspaper?” he said, beckoning her inside as he shut the door.

“Yeah,” she said. “Went through the whole rigmarole about how the picture was cropped and the story was rigged and I did not actually lure Remus away to a forbidden rendez-vous.”

“And Draco accepted that?” Snape said.

She gave a shrug. “It was hard to tell. You must know how he is. His feelings kept changing. Fast. It was like trying to ride an untamed Hippogriff made of emotions instead of feathers.”

Snape sniffed, almost as if he was holding back a laugh. “Quite.”

Dora looked up at him, her dark eyes shining, not joking in the least. “Severus what you do – how can I possibly – after all those years of only Remus in my heart…”

He laid a hand on her arm, guiding her to sit on the settee. “I have no wisdom to offer on such matters – less than no wisdom, in fact.”

“I'm sorry. Of course. But I’m trying so hard to let go,” she said, her voice quaking, breaking apart. “It’s like I need a whole new heart, one where he’s never been. Why can’t – I can’t…”

Mad-eye Moody’s protege, junior Auror Tonks was crying, gasping and choking as she fought to do it silently. Severus Snape sat beside her on the settee, and with a tremendous sigh, he offered her his shoulder, his arm bent over her back easing her head to rest on himself. At this show of compassion, her voice filled the office, sobbing. Snape took a handkerchief from his robes and pressed it into her hand, not uttering a single word about how in time she would be alright. His personal experience left him with no reason to believe it.

“Yes, go on. Loose your anger, your grief here,” he said instead. “Lance your suffering like a festering sore. Let its pus and poison drain away lest it ruin you.”

She raised her head, sniffing, her shoulders still heaving. “That is so disgusting. And so exactly how I’ve felt since the first moment I saw them holding each other up at my mother’s front door.”

Snape raised his pinky finger to move aside a lock of her hair that had stuck to her teary cheek. “Then keep wailing, here with me. I will keep everyone safe from your tears until you are through.”

“And what if I’m never through? What if I'm life this for always?” Tonks said, her sobs welling up again. “What if I need to wail tomorrow, and every day after for years and years?”

Snape pushed her head into his shoulder again. “Then you shall come back here, every day for as long as it takes for your pain at his loss to be no threat to anyone else.”

Chapter Text

Snape came swooping down from the headmaster’s office with a stiff black letter folded between his hands. It was official correspondence from the warden of Azkaban sent directly to Dumbledore, and now delegated to him to relay to its true recipient: Draco Malfoy. Christmas was coming, the time of year when medium security prisoners such as Draco’s father were permitted their annual visit with their loved ones. The letter told Draco exactly when and how to make the visit.

Setting his jaw for a grim meeting with Draco, Snape marched at a swift clip toward the dungeons. Of course, Draco could not be sent alone to the prison. He would need an escort. It seemed like a task unpleasant enough for Snape to be assigned to it himself, but the headmaster wanted Narcissa to be asked to accompany her son, and Snape knew she would not refuse. But if she insisted on bringing Lupin along, it would be out of the question. She’d simply have to…

Snape’s thoughts about Lupins and Malfoys were disrupted as he came to the top of the staircase to his office to find Tonks standing at the bottom knocking at his door. A lump rose in his throat, a jolt of energy pricking at his fingertips. He swallowed hard as he descended toward her, letting the sound of his footsteps announce him.

Ever vigilant, she spun around. “Severus. There you are.”

“What – do you need?” He barely kept his voice to a monotone.

Tonks hung her head, a show of vulnerability she only indulged in with people she trusted. “It’s not something I need. Not really.”

Snape noticed that the cylinder she twisted between her hands was too thick to be a wand. It appeared to be a rolled up colourful, glossy magazine.

“It’s family business, something Mum wants done,” Tonks went on. “It’s – I’d rather show you in private, if that’s alright.”

He gave a nod and moved to step past her to unlock the door, only she didn’t get out of his way, letting him crowd into her in the small space on the landing. The outline of her arm, bent at the elbow as she held her rolled magazine, pressed into his back.

They were through the door, alone again in the office where she’d wept over Lupin the morning after the Ministry’s Winter Gala. The mood was the same – sad and embarrassed at being sad. Her throat worked before she managed to say. “Witch Weekly’s come out with their coverage of the gala. And it’s – it couldn’t be more different from the story in the Daily Prophet.”

She didn’t explain, just offered the magazine so he could see for himself. Turning to his desk, he unrolled the pages she had marked to find a full-page, full colour picture, a profile of Narcissa drawing back from kissing Remus’s cheek, wiping her lip colour from his face with her thumb as he watched her like it was all he could do not to maul her on the spot.

Snape grimaced at it, snatching his hands back from the image, letting the pages roll together again.

“Yes, aren’t they sweet? Isn’t it awful?” Tonks said, coming to stand at his side now the picture was gone from view. “But Mum pressed it on me and insisted I make sure it gets back to Aunt. Odds are she and Remus won’t run into a copy of Witch Weekly on their own while in hiding.”

“In Cokeworth, the odds are absolutely zero that they will find it,” he said. “Yes, of course I’ll help. There’s no need for you to deliver this rot yourself. And as it happens, I will be traveling to Spinners End later today.”

She hung her head again, this time in relief. “I’m so glad it’s convenient for you. Thank you, Severus.”

“Not at all,” he said. Even if it was not convenient, he would have gone anyway, resolved as he was that nothing inflame her pain. The potential for it to become destructive was simply too great.

Tonks let herself fall slightly forward, her forehead connecting with his chest, her hands closing around the lapels of his robes.

“Do you need to…?” He didn’t finish asking if she needed to cry over Remus again, not when he felt a mounting sob convulse through her.

“C-can I,” she said through the tears, “can I have your arm?”

He lifted his arm to hold her across the back as he slumped to sit on his desk, bringing her head level with his shoulder. She stepped between his feet, her fists still holding his lapels, her arms bent between them. Though her crying was audible, it wasn’t the same kind of wailing she had succumbed to the last time they’d been here like this. Proud of her progress, he patted her back without a word.

“I know I should be happy,” she said at last. “Romantic pictures of a Death Eater defector mean that not all of our press is in the thrall of You Know Who. I should be cheering to see Remus celebrated in a major wizarding publication making goo-goo eyes at…”

She couldn’t go on.

Snape let out his breath and closed both of his arms around her. “When you joined the Order, you promised your service and loyalty, not a cavalcade of lying emotions you do not feel.”

She took a breath that was more of a hiccough close enough to his neck for it to move his hair. “Cavalcade,” she said.

He tsked. “Don’t act impressed at obscure vocabulary. You’re far too bright for that.”

She sniffed against him. “I am, aren’t I.”

“Indeed.”

Her sobs had subsided. She ought to be letting him go, apologizing and thanking him again. There was still tension in his arms, like she had interrupted him and he hadn’t quite forgotten the other demands on his time. Surely his other matters were important and she should stop keeping him from them. But Dora, who was so seldom selfish, held him just a moment longer, taking comfort from his care even when she wasn’t crying.

She was too wary of taking advantage of him to let it go on for long. As she pushed back from his chest, his arms fell away from her.

“Well,” she said. “With a wife to dote on, at least Remus won’t be moping around the Burrow for another Christmas.”

Snape only hummed.

“Where are you spending the hols then?” she said, punching lightly at his arm.

“Do not invite me along to the Weasleys,” he warned.

“Who said I was going to? I might have been asking you to Christmas dinner with Mum and Dad in Upper Ferrum.”

His face twitched, his arms folding themselves like a shield of protection over his middle. “I regret that I must spend the holidays on duty at Malfoy Manor, making certain no one succeeds in summoning Draco there to be trifled with during the – festivities.”

Tonks was the one grimacing now. “Sev, that’s terrible.”

“And absolutely necessary.”

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose it is. You’re better for him than a dozen Lucius Malfoys, you know. It’s a pity Draco doesn’t yet know it for himself.”

***

Remus lay on the sofa in the lounge of Spinners End, his arms wound around Narcissa as she lay on top of him while the day greyed into night. Snape had already visited so they had no fear of him returning soon enough to catch them chastely but affectionately entwined like this in his front room. He had left them with Andromeda’s gift of the latest edition of Witch Weekly, which Narcissa had enjoyed very much, and with the letter of summons to Azkaban, which she had not been happy to receive at all.

The trip to Azkaban would disrupt the plans Narcissa had made for a quiet Christmas at Hogwarts with plenty of time and space for Draco to start getting used to his step-father – and maybe to confess the Dark Lord’s plan to him if the Granger girl still wasn’t making any progress.

Narcissa lay in Remus’s arms disappointed at the unpleasant change of plans but not devastated. He rubbed her back anyway, smoothed her hair, petting her like a pretty white cat he was only too happy to soothe and spoil.

“Maybe I am as naive as Draco thinks I am after all,” she said against his neck. “Thinking Lucius would quietly accept his punishment and let me try to save our son without any more interference from him. How did he get downgraded to medium security anyway? Calling in favours from his cronies on the parole board?”

Remus hummed.

“What? Aren’t you going to say it?” she said, rising up on her elbows to look into his face. “Aren’t you going to say, ‘There now, Cissa. There’s nothing odd or ominous about a man wanting to see his son on Christmas even if it means seeing his ex-wife as well.’ You’re not going to speak that kind of good sense to me?”

“No, I’m not,” Remus said, gathering her closer to lay her head back on his shoulder. “I don’t believe for a second that Malfoy is over you and that seeing you again is only as an accident of seeing Draco. Malfoy wants very badly to see you, and I can hardly blame him. I can’t imagine you’re so easy to get over.”

She huffed even as she snuggled into him. “If Lucius does want to see me, it will be to berate and browbeat me. It will be awful.”

He kissed the top of her head. “I’m afraid it will be. But it may also be just what Draco needs to see to prompt him to give up on the wild hope so many children of divorced parents have of a reconciliation – of everything somehow going back to the way it was. The last time the three of you were together it was in solidarity before the courts. Being reunited but with you happily divorced will be very confusing for him.”

She gave a sigh. “Yes. But what do you know about divorce, darling? It’s mostly a Muggle institution. That’s part of why the Dark Lord chose it as a humiliation tactic. And your Muggle mother seems perfectly fond of your dad.”

“She is,” he agreed. “The closest I got to a divorced family was Lily Potter’s. Her Muggle parents were divorced by our second year. She was grieving it badly enough to be treated with sleeping draughts during the same time I was in the final weeks of recovering from my kidney damage in the Hospital Wing. We grew close over our overlapping pain. And if you ask me, I think the breakdown in her parents’ marriage played a role in James succeeding in getting her to marry him right out of school.”

“She wanted a crack at making a marriage of her own, and doing it properly,” Narcissa finished.

“That’s how she chose to deal with her loss, yes,” he said. “That and the fact that James was quite charming and loving when he wanted to be. And then there was all the pressure from James’s parents about soulmates and what you have. They read something about it in the star chart they made the night James was born.”

Narcissa pushed up to look at his face again. “Do you think it’s real? Soulmates?”

Remus looked up to the plastered ceiling overhead. “Well, I think that when people memorialize Lily’s sacrifice for Harry, the co-sacrifice of James’s life in making their spell strong enough to disembody You Know Who is wildly underestimated, so –”

“I’m not asking if you believe the Potters were soulmates,” she said, her hand on his jaw, coaxing him to look at her. “I mean – do you think – that moment in the cellar that neither of us understands, when I promised we’d never hurt each other, and you spared my life even in the teeth of your transformation – well, what other explanations for it can there be?”

Still propped up on her elbows she kept her eyes fixed on his as he lay beneath her, tendrils of her hair falling onto his face, his eyes dark in the late dusky light through the front window. He palmed the back of her head, drawing her down to kiss her, gentle but sure.

“I don’t know,” he said as he broke away. “The concept of soulmates – for me love is diminished if it’s nothing but a pre-determined identity that all we’d have to do is discover to make real. I feel like I fell in love with you choice by choice – like it happened because you showed me how smart and brave and funny and caring and beautiful you are.”

Between each of his adjectives, he had kissed her face and neck, tickling her without meaning to but without minding it either, her laughter sounding around his head.

When he was finished she collapsed on his chest again. “Yes, darling, but you didn’t know any of that when you chose to leave me alive in the cellar.”

He hummed again. “Maybe not, but with my senses at their keenest I must have been able to tell that you smell like birthday cake.”

“You are ridiculous,” she said as he snuffled at her throat. “And the smell of you makes me think of freshly aired clean linen.”

“Mmm, like going to bed,” he said, shifting beneath her, sitting both of them up.

“I suppose so, yes,” she said, looping her arms around his neck as he stood up with her in his arms. “Like someplace warm and safe enough to rest.”

“Rest, yes,” he said, carrying her toward the bed in the larder for a change. “Rest is a very important use for a bed. But not right now…”

***

Draco sat on the rug at the foot of the broken Vanishing Cabinet in the Room of Hidden Things. Carriages bound for the Hogsmeade station had been rolling out of the castle all day, ferrying all but a few international students and lonely faculty members away for Christmas holidays.

When he’d awakened that morning, Draco had been dreading spending Christmas in the castle playing happy families with his mother and the werewolf. Now he knew to dread something much more fraught: a sombre Christmas visit to his father in Azkaban. They’d been told not to expect to see him but something in his classification had changed and – now this.

A hopeful but infantile part of himself was excited to see his father again, while another more mature and battle-weary part of himself knew to expect to have his heart broken at the sight of his father locked up in such a ghastly place. The bleeding Dementors flying overhead would make sure of it. His mother would be coming as his escort, and no part of him could tell whether that would end up being a comfort or a curse.

One thing was for certain: he had no inspiration, no energy to work on mending the Vanishing Cabinet today. That wasn’t why he’d come to this room. He was here only so she could find him, if she wanted to. He thought she might want to see him one last time before she left for Christmas holidays, but it was now nearly noon and there had still been no sign of her. She didn’t know about the Azkaban visit, and he wouldn’t tell her. But he did have the strangest notion that it would bring him some kind of reserve of strength or hope if he was able to take his leave of her in private. Maybe she’d kiss his cheek again…

No, he was being a sap. She was off to London to be with her parents. She had tried not to let him see how glum she was about not spending any of her Christmastime at the Weasleys as she usually did. But what could she do when she was on the outs with Weasley thanks to Lavender Brown being better at closing the deal with him than she was? Bloody Weasley…

Draco got to his feet. He was making a fool out of himself, sitting here waiting, sulking, mooning over a girl on the rebound from a non-existent relationship with a worldclass git. Enough.

He’d taken two quick steps toward the door when it cracked open. He shot a glance over his shoulder to be sure the Vanishing Cabinet was still covered in its heavy wine-coloured velvet cover and squared his shoulders to tell off whoever was intruding.

And then Granger was there, wrapped in a heavy traveling cloak over her Muggle clothes, a fuzzy, deep purple scarf coiled around her neck, her impossibly soft hands closing the door with hardly a sound. He watched her approach, her face turned up to his, her rosebud mouth held closed, as if she expected him to begin.

He set his jaw, menacing them both with the silence.

“Happy Christmas, Draco,” she said anyway, and he worried his attempt at scowling came out looking more like lovesickness. “Here, I’ve made you this.” With the flourish of a Muggle stage musician, she unfurled something long and wooly and began to wind it around his neck.

It was not possible to try to remain aloof as she draped him in a purple scarf exactly like the one she was wearing herself. He lifted one end of it and threaded his fingers through its tassels.

“It’s alpaca wool,” she said. “All the way from Peru. And I daresay even though it isn’t from a magical creature it’s fancy enough to suit you.” She took the end of the scarf that was still in her hand and held it to his face, smoothing the fibres against his cheek. “See? Nice and soft.”

At the touch of the wool on his face, he stood frozen, the softness lost on him until her thumb came free of it and it was her skin gliding over his cheek. With more force than he intended, his arm hooked her around her waist, pulling her in to hold her close.

He wanted to taunt her about having more time on her hands now that she wasn’t doing so much of Weasley’s homework. He wanted to threaten her not to get nostalgic about Christmases at the Bungalow, or whatever it was they called that ramshackle house of theirs. He wanted to beg her not to forget about him when she was back in the other London she half-lived in.

But all he said as he turned his face toward hers was, “Thanks.”

She held him in return, standing on the tips of her toes, close enough to have felt the warmth of his breath on her skin when he’d thanked her. She wanted to plead with him to tell her what his mission was. She wanted to entreat him to stay safe in the castle and to keep away from Malfoy Manor at all costs. The thought that he might enjoy being reassured that she wouldn’t end up canoodling with Ronald Weasley over the holidays was the last thing on her mind as she told him, “You’re welcome.”

He held her as he straightened his posture, her feet coming clear off of the floor.

She raised a hand to his face without the barrier of the scarf between them as he set her down again. “Whatever happens this Christmas,” she said. “You need to remember that I’m thinking of you often, and warmly. So wear this scarf and know that I’m wearing mine too.”

Her hand had trailed along his jaw, her thumb not stopping until it reached the edge of his lip, where his white skin became pink. His breath came quick and shallow as he asked, “And what can I give you, so you’ll remember me while you’re gone? I haven’t got much this year. No one’s ever taught me to knit.”

He was closer now, his nose brushing one side of hers.

“I’m sure whatever you have,” she said, a tremor in her voice, “will be memorable enough for me.”

It was as good of an invitation as any to kiss her, so he did. Though he knew it wasn’t her first time, he took it slow all the same. Her mouth was lovely, eager but shy, so sweet. He kept his arms around her torso, supporting her as she stretched to find his face. She held his head in both of her hands, one of them knuckles deep in his hair. For once, he wasn’t kissing a girl for sport. He was kissing her to make her love him. He didn’t want just any love. None of the other girls who fancied him would do. He wanted this girl, like her love was the only love that mattered.

When she left him there for the last carriage out of the castle, Draco couldn’t face the Vanishing Cabinet anymore and left the room. He was making his way down to the all but empty Great Hall for lunch, arriving at the bottom of the marble staircase when he saw them standing outside McGonagall’s office. There was his mother arm in arm with her husband, Remus Lupin. They weren’t just a picture from the magazine the girls in the dorm had been passing around all week. They were here in person together.

Remus was first to notice Draco’s arrival.

With that dog hearing, of course he was, Draco thought.

Through his ever-disheveled fringe, Remus looked out across the hall at his stepson. He tried a smile – subtle, understated, nothing too simpering.

Unsmiling, Draco returned the curtest nod he could muster, before he strode on into the Great Hall without them.

Chapter Text

Hi Everyone. I love this story enough to put it on hiatus for a month while I wrap up my schoolwork for the term. I will be back with Narcissa and Draco's trip to Azkaban just in time for Christmas. See you then, DDD.

Chapter Text

Azkaban was not accessible by apparation. Thanks to the Dementors patrolling the skies and seas around it, the prison couldn’t be approached by boat or by broom either. No one moved in or out of it except through a single high security Floo well-concealed in the Ministry. That was where Narcissa and Draco were led by heavily charmed Aurors early on a quiet Christmas morning.

Narcissa's arm was linked through Draco’s, hoping she was giving more strength to him than she was taking from him. His emotions weren't as obvious on his face as they once were, but she knew how to see the fear in his grim resolve.

Their Aurors escorts led them along a catacomb snaking toward a Floo that looked more like a black, rotting maw than a warm hearth. No one would look directly at either Narcissa or Draco, as if they were sparing them the shame of having someone to visit on the other side of this awful Floo.

Regardless, Narcissa followed the Aurors with her head held high, wondering how much of this mounting dread she was already feeling was real and how much was emanating from the Dementors just beyond the Floo. Thanks no doubt to Sirius, Remus had more experience with Dementors than most free people. The night before, late on Christmas Eve, he’d sat with her on the cozy chaise by the fire of his old Defense Against the Dark Arts office in Hogwarts and got her to promise to conjure a patronus if she found herself overwhelmed by Demetor gloom at Azkaban.

She hated to see him so pained with worry for her, and she’d tried to tease some of his fear away. “How gloriously confident you are in my loyalty, darling,” she’d said, shifting into his lap. “For the first time, I’m about to encounter my ex who may or may not know our marriage is over, and all you can think to warn me about are the wraiths drifting over the ramparts.”

He’d taken her face in both his hands. “Listen. You might need a patronus. Any patronus. Whether corporeal or not. It doesn’t matter, but promise you’ll conjure one if you need to. Promise me,” he’d said.

“Remus, I’ve lived with Tom Riddle under my roof – his snake familiar and all. I think I can handle the emotional strain of some dusty flying draperies bent on making me sad.”

“You’re not promising,” he persisted even as her lips touched his.

“I do promise,” she said into his mouth. “Now give me some more happy memories I can use to defend myself.”

“Be serious,” he’d said as she slid his cardigan off of his shoulder.

“Alright,” she’d relented, her hand dropping out of his sweater. “Fine, and I'll go one better and try that experiment of yours. If I need to cast one, I’ll think of a wonderful future rather than a good memory. I'll think of you and Draco and me in Medie and Ted’s kitchen having Christmas dinner together a year from now. How do you like that?”

“Oh – yeah, alright. The future – brilliant,” he’d said, finding her hand himself and slipping it back inside his shirt for her. “But we can still try for those last minute good memories..”

Even without conjuring a patronus, the memory of Remus was lifting her, helping her seize her own bravery as they arrived at the Ministry’s darkest, most secret Floo. “I shall go first,” she told the Auror, squeezing Draco's arm as she released it.

“I'm right behind you,” he said as the Auror sprinkled barely a dusting of Floo powder into her palm. With a nod and an uneasy smile, she was flaming toward Azkaban.

Without her, Draco paused on the hearth just long enough for the Auror who was reaching to give him his portion of powder to stop and speak to him from behind a massive brown beard.

“Y'alright? You know they can't force you to go, laddie.”

Draco’s jaw clenched. “But they can.” He flung the powder into the fire and whispered the name of his father's prison.

He arrived at Azkaban in a long, narrow anteroom that smelled like beached, rotting jellyfish. Narcissa seized his arm again as he arrived. She pulled him close, away from the hearth and even the walls of the prison.

“Touch nothing,” she said.

There were other families there, waiting. Some, like Draco and Narcissa themselves, were waiting to get started. Others were finished, waiting for their return passages through the Floo, far more than ready to leave. Narcissa’s glance took them in. None of them had brought anyone as young as Draco to this place. Every awful place he went, he was always the youngest one there.

A new Auror came forward, a short scroll curling over his hand. “Right. Welcome to Azkaban. You may be experiencing a sense of impending doom. This is normal here. Just a symptom of Dementor proximity that needn’t alarm you.“

“Excuse me, please,” Narcissa said as the Auror checked his scroll for their visitor authorization. “Will you cast a patronus if a visitor is overcome by this – what was it – this sense of impending doom?”

He made a noisy rustling of his scroll but did not look at her. “That won’t be necessary,” he muttered, and Narcissa wondered how long a wizard could work here before they lost the power to cast a patronus at all – at least temporarily.

But all she said in reply was, “Of course.”

“Right this way, Madam Malfoy,” the Auror said, turning on his heel too quickly to be corrected.

The anteroom's long wall was lined with rough iron doors. The Auror led them to the one numbered 4, closed his eyes to cast a wordless, wandless spell, and the charmed door ground open against the rough stone floor.

“Your man will be sat in a chair he can't rise from,” the Auror said without facing them. “If you like, you can touch him. Try to keep him calm. If I hear raised voices through the door, the visit ends. You have twenty minutes. Merry Christmas.”

He stepped aside to let them pass into the small visitation cell. Narcissa let Draco lead, waiting for him to step over the threshold by his own choice. She was still holding his arm as Lucius came into view.

Never had either of them seen him look as small as he did held down in the prison chair. Lucius’s hair was still long but its platinum lustre had faded to grey. His cheeks were gaunt, his pale skin now sallow.

And yet he was beaming at Draco, his eyes shimmering. “My boy…”

Draco fell into his father’s embrace, their reunion desperate and bittersweet, Lucius’s arms trembling as he held his son.

Still standing near the door, Narcissa had to look away, her own eyes teary. Did Lucius know yet that of all the things he’d lost to his Dark Lord–the Manor and its wealth, his freedom–this boy was the most precious? Her poor child and his weak and pathetic father…

Lucius’s arms were crossed over Draco’s back, and as he’d extended them, his sleeve had risen high enough for Narcissa to see that his left arm was bound in dark red ribbon. It looked as if it had been bandaged, sealed up to make the Dark Mark inaccessible to him. It made sense, she supposed. What would happen if the Dark Lord called him out of a prison like this with its deadly barriers to escape? It would be the same as calling for Lucius’s execution.

Lucius released Draco, patting his cheek. “You've grown more serious. Growing up so quickly isn’t easy, Draco. I know that. But these are unprecedented times. Growing up is for the best. The sooner you do it, the safer you’ll be.”

“Yes, father.”

‘Yes, father,” Lucius repeated, savoring the words he hadn’t heard in too long, touseling Draco’s hair. “Good man, Draco. You're working hard?”

“Yes.”

“Staying at school to dedicate yourself to the project entrusted to you? Not bothering anyone at the Manor? Not getting underfoot looking for Christmas cheer?”

Left speechless by the baffling ignorance of the question, Draco only blinked. “Cheer? At the Manor?”

“We’re spending the holiday together at Hogwarts,” Narcissa rushed to say.

Lucius gave a low hum. “Cissa,” he said. “There you are. Won’t you come closer?”

The room was too small for hiding and he could see her perfectly well from anywhere within it. Still, she obliged him, stepping further into the light of the torches burning behind him in the windowless cell. “Hello, Lucius.”

He huffed. “What? No ‘darling’? No mad rush to throw yourself into my arms?” His tone was that of sarcasm. He knew his marriage was ended, and now he would test the limits of whatever power he had left over this woman.

“Come now, my darling, you’ve always been so ridiculously scrupulous about the legalities of marriage,” Lucius began. “It’s infuriating, really, your dogged pursuit of monogamy, if you’ll pardon the expression. And now you won’t come to me, despite my suffering, because you believe yourself legally married to – to that cursed wretch of a penniless beast – “

“Enough, Lucius,” she said. “If you want to accuse me of being blindly loyal when it comes to marriage, go on and do it. Accusations of fidelity to my husband are not insults to me. But don’t debase yourself like this in front of Draco.”

Lucius’s sneer was spectacular, the curl of his lip sharpened by his new thinness. “Which of Draco’s parents has debased themself most, Narcissa? Is it his father, a prisoner of conscience, or his mother, the bigamist?”

Narcissa’s posture stiffened, any compassion in her eyes icing over.

“Of course Draco shares my disgust,” Lucius went on. “How ashamed you’ve made us, making yourself into a dirty spectacle in the tabloids. There you are, so ludicrously sincere about that sham of a marriage even as everyone mocks and jeers. Oh yes, the Aurors here like their cruelty. They’ve been sure to show me the tabloids where you’re making wanton eyes at that – “

“Lucius, you must stop this,” she said, her voice firm but her hands twisting as she fought to stop their shaking. “If the Aurors hear you shouting at me, they’ll take Draco away before your allotted visiting time is over.”

“It is for Draco’s sake that I shall say what must be said.” Lucius lifted his chin, trying to look haughty while magically strapped to a chair. “Your so-called marriage is illegal. You know that as well as I do. You and I and the creature itself, we all must have signed the parchments to break and make these arrangements under unthinkable duress. The contracts were not voluntary, and therefore, both our divorce and your – your marriage to the beast are null and void.”

Narcissa drew a deep breath. “All of these contracts are now voluntary on my side and on Remus’s. We will not contest any of these contracts. On the contrary, we shall defend them.” she said. “I do not need your consent to divorce you, Lucius. Especially not with your infamous history of – with your friends like Miss Nasturtium from the flying club, or the late Madam Nott.”

“Silence, woman,” he said, flicking a glance at Draco.

“Ah, here’s your true shame. Yes, I’ve already told Draco about a few of your witch friends,” Narcissa said. “You seem to believe he’s old enough for all kinds of horrors, so why not those ones?”

Lucius shook his hair out of his face. “I might have shown mercy for you, but no more. The divorce is going back to the courts to be contested. You will be notified of it in writing shortly.”

“No, I won’t be,” Narcissa said. “Your Dark Lord ordered the divorce himself and you have never opposed a single order of his, no matter how vile or contrary to your own best happiness it might be.”

Lucius scoffed. “You underestimate our Lord’s gift for strategy and his appetite for vengeance. How can he remain passive when you’ve been foolish enough to provoke him? When you taunt him with the picture of your happy werewolf family? No, Narcissa. Our Lord gave you to the werewolf, and whenever he chooses, he shall take you away from it.”

Narcissa’s throat was dry and tight, but she said. “If all he’s sending is you, his weakest most impotent servant, to attack my marriage, then I’m not afraid in the least. Now don’t waste anymore of this time squabbling with me, Lucius. Visit nicely with Draco. I’ll call for the Auror to let me out.”

“Mum, no,” Draco said, catching her arm. “Just wait, both of you.”

Lucius’s shoulders heaved but he kept quiet.

“Dad,” Draco said. “Please apologize to my mother.”

He only scoffed.

“I’m in earnest, Dad,” Draco said. “I know I can’t sort out the problems between the pair of you. But I also know it doesn’t have to be like this. This place brings out the worst in people. I know that too. Even so, I can’t let you speak to my mother the way you’ve spoken this morning. If you don’t apologize, I’ll let her leave. But I can’t let her leave without me. I’ll be going too.”

Narcissa covered Draco’s hand with her own. “It’s all right, darling,” she said to him.

“It isn’t,” Draco answered, and in his protest she heard herself scolding Snape for speaking roughly to Remus.

“Apologize? How can I?” Lucius burst. “Hers is a breach far beyond marital fidelity. Your mother has done what I would never do. She has sullied her pure blood. I have never done such a thing. I never would. And neither would you, Draco.”

At this, Draco moved to round on his father in the small cell. Narcissa felt the platectonic shift in his feelings and grasped his hand in both of hers now. “Easy, Draco. Please…”

“I would never sully my pure blood, you say?” Draco spoke the words back to his father like a dare.

Lucius’s defiance crumpled into consternation. “Of course you wouldn’t. Especially not with werewolves. You’ve always despised them. I’m sure you wouldn’t – “

“But what about mixing with Muggleborns?” Draco pressed. “What would become of me if I was to do that? Would it be so bad? Some of the bravest, brightest people I know are Muggleborn.”

Lucius had regained his composure enough to sneer again. “Muggleborn? Since when have you started calling Mudbloo – “

“Enough of your filthy mouth!” Draco bellowed. “You apologize to her! You apologize this instant!”

“What has come over you?” Lucius shouted back at him.

Narcissa was shouting too. “I accept his apology. I accept it. Now be still, Draco.”

“You have received no apology to accept!” Lucius shouted over her.

At last the Auror from the anteroom threw the door open. There was no further discussion. “Right, back you go Malfoy.” With a flick of his wand, the wall behind the chair vanished. Still strapped to the chair, Lucius was shot backward into the darkness, wailing as he went.

The sound didn’t die away as he disappeared into the prison. Other voices had taken it up, echoing his wailing back to the prison in rasping, hungry whispers.

The Auror frowned. “We’re in for it now. Hold tight. They can’t get inside but that sense of impending doom – it’s about to become a full-blown sense of doom.”

Narcissa saw it in Draco before she felt it herself. He stooped against the grimy wall, his voice in his throat, too panicked to breathe. She clutched at him, calling to the Auror. “It’s truly just Dementors doing this?”

“Yes,” he said, a cry in his own voice now. “Horrible but – can’t – can’t physically harm us.”

Now the doom was indeed closing like a strangling hand around her own heart, so strong it felt like true danger. “Patronus,” she called to the Auror. “You can’t cast one, can you.”

A sob heaved out of him as he sat hard on the floor.

Narcissa turned to Draco. He was breathing but too quickly, too shallow, a terrible blueness discolouring his lips, the tension in his body rising toward the point where he’d faint away.

She found her wand. The incantation for conjuring a patronus was simple enough for a child to master. What was harder was finding any kind of inner reserve of happiness or hope in a moment like this. She thought of the future she wanted for her family – that quiet Christmas dinner at Medie’s.

Barely a spark left her wand.

In the face of all the dread Azkaban’s full complement of Dementors could muster, the future was too ephemeral. Memories. She thought of Draco as a baby but Lucius’s image intruded on it.

She voiced a cry of despair, and then a name. “Remus…” Yes, there he was, performing magic tricks on Halloween for the Cokeworth children. There he was winking at her over the chess board as he played with his father after tea. There he was at the foot of Maudie and Roddie’s stairs, watching her descend, waiting to give her a wedding ring. There he was the morning after their first night, asleep in the sunlight, in love with her.

The tiny cell flared with silver-white light. It coursed from her and then through her. With her arms around Draco’s torso, she felt him expand with a deep breath. From where he sat on the floor, the Auror lifted his head to look at her face as he watched the patronus do its work.

Shouting a laugh, he hopped to his feet. “Well, I never. A werewolf. What're you like, Madam Malfoy?”

Narcissa rose to her fullest height. "It's Lupin."

***

Hogwarts on Christmas morning was a melancholy place. This year, even Snape was gone from the castle. And this year, someone missed him there.

Nymphadora Tonks had just finished patrolling the all but empty castle, seeing no one except a small group of international students taking breakfast in the Great Hall, each of them still not sure what all the yuletide fuss was about. The last stop on her rounds before heading to the breakfast Molly had invited her to at the Burrow was the Astronomy Tower. Poor Molly was having a rough ride this holiday, what with Percy carrying on like a prat on behalf of the Ministry. Dora simply had to go to cheer her up.

From the tower, Dora would have one last look at the entire grounds before setting off. Rounding the corner at the top of the stairs, her stride broke. There was Remus, pacing like a caged wolf along the line of gusty paneless windows.

Annoyed with herself for still feeling a flush rise in her cheeks at the unexpected sight of him, she hollered out “Happy Christmas!”

It was with some satisfaction that she saw him jump.

“Dora!” he said, his hand on his heart.

“You didn’t tag along with the family on the holiday trip to Azkaban then?” she said, joining him at the windows.

He scoffed, leaning hard on the sill. “I should have insisted on coming. I knew it.”

She punched at his arm. “That was me taking the mick. No, of course you shouldn’t have gone. Azkaban is ghastly but orderly. I'm sure they’re safe. For visitors, the only possible damage is psychological.”

With no one to scold him about it, Remus sighed.

Dora leaned on the sill beside him. “Dear Auntie Narcissa is quite famously and happily married to one of the country's most notorious werewolves. Her inmate ex-husband must seem extremely underwhelming by comparison.”

Remus began to hang his head in his usual, modest way only to stop halfway through the motion. “Dear Auntie Narcissa,” he said. “Great stars, Dora, that would make me your…”

“Uncle Remus,” they said in unison.

“Sorry,” Remus said.

She forced a swallow through her dry throat. “When do you expect them back?”

Remus turned to sit in the window. “Draco will be back here within the hour and won't want to see me. Cissa is going to Spinners End to work on the potion with the fumes that are fatal to me. She won't be back until after noon.”.

Dora scanned the deserted grounds. “Well, if you’d like to come along to Weasleys with me until then, I’m sure you’d be welcome. There’s no point in us making things…awkward…”

At this, he raised his head, scanning the grounds alongside her.

“What was that?” she said.

“What?”

She tsk-ed. “Why am I asking you? You’re in your waxing gibbous phase now, when your eyesight starts to go rubbish on us.” She lifted the fieldglasses hung around her neck and set them on the bridge of her nose. “There was something there. Flashing like polished metal over the snow. Where’s it gone? How did – ”

With a gasp, Dora fell silent. A stream of light spun itself against the shadowy stone walls of the tower, encircling both of them. Inexplicably, her spirits rose at its appearance. This was Narcissa’s patronus sent from Azkaban. In it, Dora heard her aunt’s voice speaking a single, unintelligible word. When its swirling stopped, the patronus took on the form of a creature: tall and thin, two-legged and clawed, its muzzle flashing with marvelously sharp teeth.

At her side, Remus laughed, swiping a hand through the spell as it bounded past him, as if patting it heartily on the back to speed it onward.

It only lasted an instant before it had faded and gone.

“Ha!” Remus said. “That’s it? I’d never actually seen myself as a werewolf. Good for Cissa, keeping the Dementors in their place with it, eh Dora?”

Her smile was almost too strong to speak through. “Good for her indeed,” she said, standing at the top of a windy tower with the man with whom she was no longer in love.