Predisposition|Remus Lupin

Piertotum Locomotor

Chapter LVI

*trigger warning: reference to suicide*

Petit Biscuit: You

"I thought the two of you didn't get married?" Neville enquires as he reaches the end of the passage, my legs stiffen from crouching so long, my wrist aching from flicking away the spiderwebs.

"Not officially. But it sort of felt right to say?" He nods like he understands it better than I ever will.

"If it helps, I thought the two of you were acting like a married couple since third year." He smiles brightly as the door swings open and my stomach twists from his words, had our love been that obvious? Were all our arguments pointless if the world thought we were already madly in love? "You lot! I've got a surprise!" The chattering quietens down and Neville helps me down, there are gasps and as Harry turns, it's like seeing him for the first time. Recognising a stranger in a crowd, because you're so certain you know them. You're sure that you held them once, but they look at you with distance.

"Quinn-" Harry brushes past the students and wraps his arms around me. My knees begin to buckle when my face buries into his shoulder, I remember the pictures of Harry as a baby, the emerald eyes, skirting around on a broom only a few inches off the floor, and it pains me that he's taller than me. That I didn't get to be the one to coddle him and protect him from the world, that when he was abandoned on a door step, here I was. Brotherless, unwittingly waiting for the day I'd be able to call him my brother.

"You're safe," I whisper until the words sound odd until I begin to question how exactly we formulated language in the first place. What was the mode of currency before we imperialized? We held one another. Harry's hand falls into mine and he squeezes it, his glasses askew and for a moment James Potter is standing in front of me, telling me everything is okay.

But it's not. It'd never be James, instead, it was a boy trying to be his father, trying to fill the gaps in the last Marauders, to make them feel somewhat whole again. And maybe I was selfish, but with Harry, for only a second, I had my father.

"But Luna, it's been lost for centuries now. There isn't a person alive who's seen it." Cho exclaims as Harry and I turn back, his hand still firmly in mine, my throat constricting with the pressure to protect him.

"What the bloody hell is a diadem?" Hermione rolls her eyes as Ron turns incredulous. I give her a wink as Ron's confusion is settled, the entrance rumbling open as the crowd stiffens. Ginny Weasley appears her eyes on the verge of tears, her face on the verge of berating Harry for going missing.

"There's only one Harry."

"Shut up Seamus." And there's a ripple of laughter, the first years looking to the group, curious if it's okay to laugh. I kneel down and tend to one of their cuts, the first year winces as I brush my thumb across the gash, muttering a spell as the flesh knits back together and my mind wanders to Teddy and Oliver. It'd be their bedtime by now, Sirius reading them to sleep with Andromeda rocking them.

"Snape knows that Harry was spotted in Hogsmeade." The first year shivers at Snape's name, almost flinching as I clean away the dried blood.

"The Order's coming!" A dishevelled Hufflepuff springs through the crowd, clearly unaware of the new problem we have to face, "the Weasley's, the twins made contact. The Order's coming, well, half the bloody Order's made of Weasley's at this point. But they got Sirius coming too! We've got a mass murderer on our side!"