Fire Whiskey in the Moonlight (Remus Lupin)

Chapter Nineteen: We're Not at Hogwarts

~Smut Warning~

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I stood outside the door of Remus's cabin, his letter resting in the back pocket of my jeans. The choice of whether or not to address it was made for me last night when he showed up at my house. His cabin was small and seemed to be rather run down on the outside, however, I hadn't expected much else since I knew he had been having a fair bit of financial trouble before he got his job at Hogwarts.

I hesitated at the door, I had no idea where this conversation would leave us, would we be friends again, more than that? My biggest fear is that we would talk about everything and decide that things should remain how they had been, no contact. With everything out on the table this time, that would mean losing Remus for good. I wasn't sure if I was ready to deal with not having him in my life as anything other than a professor. At least before I could hold out hope that he and his girlfriend would break up and we could try being friends again, but knowing that his relationship was a lie made everything so much more complicated.

I breathed in heavily before moving forward and knocking on his cabin door. Remus answered the door almost instantly, wearing one of his infamous oversized sweaters and holding a cup of tea. He smiled weakly at me, visibly nervous, "Come on in."

Like the outside, the inside of the cabin was nothing special. It was quite small, with only a few chairs and a quaint kitchenette, before a small hallway that led to a door which I presumed was Remus's bedroom. I could tell that he had made an effort to make the place look nicer for me, and the scent of pine from a large candle filled the air. I walked in and sat down, feeling oddly comfortable for being somewhere I had never been before.

Remus sat down across from me, "Would you like a cup of tea?"

"No, thanks."

"How did things go last night with your parents?"

"They're still mad as hell that I didn't tell them, but I sprinkled some white lies in the story that seemed to calm them down."

"Such as?"

"That Dumbledore had found us as soon as I disarmed Black, and due to that, I walked away totally unscathed. Black only managed to escape when he left Hogwarts grounds with some less than capable ministry  workers."

"I'm glad they calmed down about the incident."

"Ya, I'm just happy they agreed to let me out of the house today." I said as I rocked on my hands, not knowing what more to say.

We sat in silence for a bit before Remus finally spoke up, "I've been trying to tell you something for the last few weeks, ever since you decided we couldn't be friends anymore and ran out of my office." He sighed and rubbed his hands together before looking up to make eye contact with me. "Vivian, I don't have a girlfriend and I never did, at least not while I've known you."

"Ya, I know," I said rather nonchalantly as I pulled out the letter from my back pocket. "I found this."

It took him a moment to realize what I was holding, "I was wondering if that'd ever pop up. Thought maybe my owl had delivered it to the wrong person by mistake."

"It got tossed with a bunch of random junk on the first day of classes, I didn't even know I had it until I unpacked during break."

"As I said, I'd been trying to tell you the truth for several weeks. When I told you I was in a relationship I thought lying to you was the right thing to do. I thought things were going very well between us as friends and when you decided that we couldn't be friends because of this other relationship I was in, I figured I had no choice but to tell you the truth, but obviously, I didn't have a chance to until now."