Thicker than Water (Marauders Era)

24 June, 1978 - Tipsy

Now that set Remus on edge. Safe from what? What was she running from tonight? The way she said those words it didn't sound like she was running from herself and while that was some small relief, it made that question so much more important.

"Vin," Remus asked gently, as though dealing with an animal that was likely to scare at any moment. He honestly thought she might. If this was a bad enough night for her to be sitting on the steps of the Gryffindor dormitories, then it was probably a bad enough night for her to run if pressed too much. But even so, he had to ask. "Why did you change your mind about going to bed?"

She shook her head and glanced at him for a moment, something like fear flickering over her face for a moment. "I decided not to tell you that," she repeated, but this time her voice was tighter, her tone impatient.

"Why did you-" He broke off, his eyes again going to the bottle in her hands. "How many of those have you had?" he asked cautiously, not sure he would like the answer.

Lavinia looked at him, then followed his gaze to her drink. She shrugged. "Four?" she guessed. "Or five. This might be the sixth. I stopped counting," she explained, not sounding at all perturbed by the fact.

Remus closed his eyes and sighed. How had she managed to find yet another unhealthy coping mechanism? He knew better than to express his frustration, knew it wasn't going to help her but that didn't stop him from feeling it. "Vin," he groaned. "I know those aren't strong but that's a lot."

She looked down at her drink and then back up at him. "I'm not drunk," she defended. "I've seen drunk," she added and an inexplicable little shudder passed through her. "I am not that."

"You're tipsy," Remus informed her, a bit impatiently. "And for all the wrong reasons."

"How do you know what my reasons are?" she asked defensively, though her cagey manner seemed to him to betray that she suspected his hunch was correct.

"You're trying to make yourself feel better aren't you?" he guessed, doing his best to keep his voice even. "Trying to drown out the thoughts or memories or whatever made you come here."

She shot him a scowl that told him all too clearly that he was right and he held out his hand for the bottle. She chewed her lip slightly, but handed it over. Relief swept him at that. James and Sirius might think there was no problem with drinking, especially at parties, but it seemed to Remus that in Lavinia's already unstable state, the last thing she needed was to drink too much.

"For your own sake, Vin, please don't have any more?" he requested, rubbing his forehead with his free hand as he tried to figure out what to do with the bottle.

She pulled her knees a bit closer to herself but nodded and sighed. "I'm sorry," she murmured again.

"It's okay," he returned, setting the bottle down in the step below them. He'd throw it out later, but at the moment, he didn't particularly want to leave her. Not like this, anyway. "Do you want to join the party?" he asked, hoping she might need or want a distraction tonight. "I'm sure Sirius would love to dance with you," he suggested, not particularly caring about being subtle.

To his mild surprise, she shook her head, looking suddenly miserable. "I think I ruined that too," she admitted ruefully.

"How so?" he pressed, not at all sure what she meant. Sure, they'd all noticed her staring a bit more lately, but it wasn't like they'd been awkward with each other. If anything, Remus had thought she might finally be realizing how much she cared because it had become clear enough to the rest of them by now.

"He kissed me," she said blandly and the lack of emotion in her voice was again rather concerning. "And I laughed," she added, sounding disgusted with herself. Then she shook her head. "I panicked," she explained. "And I knew it was the easy way out and... and I think he might hate me now even though Evans really did make sense earlier."

Remus sighed, belatedly realizing that a tipsy Lavinia was a depressingly honest Lavinia. Not that he was particularly upset about it. Getting her to open up had been an ongoing and very very slow process. Still, though he wanted her to be more open and honest, this was not how he wanted that to happen. He wanted her to admit these things when she was ready, not when her inhibitions were lowered by too much butterbeer.

"He doesn't hate you, Vin," Remus informed her patiently. "I don't think he will ever hate you." He could remember having said something very similar to Sirius and the thought almost made him smile.

"He should," she asserted, utterly calm and the almost amusement Remus had felt died an abrupt and unceremonious death. "You all should." And before he had the chance to argue the point she smiled at him. "You should go back to the party," she added, her tone suddenly bright and cheery and again not remotely convincing. "I'll be fine. See? No knife or anything." And she held up her hands to illustrate the point.

Remus felt his heart squeeze terribly, hating how calm she was about such a thing, hating that she smiled while informing him that she couldn't hurt herself. Like that was in any way a normal thing to reassure a friend of. And it did reassure him, if only slightly. But that she even though to offer him such information seemed to him to imply that if she had a knife, she would have been ready to use it. And that terrified him.

He'd known for a long time that Lavinia had bad nights. He's suspected she might be harming, or thinking about harming, before she'd told them about it. And he'd heard from Sirius, just as James and Peter had too, what Lavinia's bad nights were like. But he'd never actually experienced one, unless you counted the night in the hospital wing. Which he didn't, because they hadn't actually talked much and she hadn't done more than sit on the bed and hide her face from him. The reality was that he had never seen just how deep her loneliness went or how far she was willing to go to drown her guilt and fear and pain. He had never seen her stripped so bare, never seen her be this honest. And her honesty was more painful than he thought any lie ever could be. But he also knew it was necessary if she was ever going to get better.

"I'm not going to leave you like this, Vin," he informed her quietly.

She frowned at him. "Why not?" she countered, sounding rather annoyed. "You can still have fun tonight."

"And what about you?" he argued. "I don't want to have fun when I could be helping you feel better."

"I'll wait for tomorrow," she replied blithely, waving her hand in dismissal. "I'm very good at that," she added, almost as an aside. "Lots of practice."

Remus shook his head, his chest aching and feeling a bit like it was caving in. "I'm still not leaving," he insisted, trying to decide whether or not he should act on the urge to reach out to her, to offer her some sense of touch that might be a physical comfort to go with what he hoped would be an emotional one.

She looked at him for a long minute, apparently thinking. "Then I will," she decided suddenly and without warning, she stood up. "I'm bored, anyway." And before he could say anything, she descended the stairs and pressed into the crowd, disappearing along with Remus's hope of keeping this night under control.