After days of not feeling anything at all, the following day finds Reverie feeling the repercussions of the past weeks.
Alone with the sound of her footsteps against the stone hallways, right before entering the Great Hall, she suddenly hears Lupin whispering her name against her lips, she feels his burning hands roaming against her body, and then she stops and puts out a hand to hold herself up against the stone walls, because her heart pangs repeatedly in her chest at the memory of his words, the way he pushed her away as if she was just another rule he broke, something he didn't mean to do.
She hadn't given herself time to process, and when it hits her like a pile of bricks just before dinner, she isn't expecting it. Everything floods her mind. The whispered words, the late nights, the fires, his fingertips against her skin, the smoke, the lake, his smile, the book, the color green, his lips, the shack, the moon.
Her chest is heaving with the effort of remembering, her blood rushes through her veins, and a sharp pain behind her eyes makes her hang her head, clenching her eyes shut. Her hand against the wall tenses with the effort, and she isn't sure she can hold herself up much longer —
A soft hand lands on her shoulder, and for one treacherous, treacherous moment, in the midst of everything, she almost wants to believe it's Lupin. But when she turns, eyes wide and red, and sees Oliver's face looking down at her, a single tear drops before she lets herself be taken into his arms.
"Rev, hey, hey," he says gently, as she trembles against his chest. "What's wrong? What's happened?"
She shakes her head and mumbles something that Oliver can't make out, even in the empty, quiet hallway. He takes her face gently between his hands, and he pulls her away from him to look at her.
His thumbs stroke her cheek, and her breathing is shaky as she realizes how cold his hands feel against her face. She hates how cold his hands feel against her face. But looking into Oliver's worried, caring eyes, her chest racks with guilt, and she doesn't pull away.
"If this is about last night, it's fine, we can forget about it if you want to." Oliver scans her face. He's used to not being able to discern what's bothering her, but now it feels different.
Reverie covers his hands on her face with her own, shaking her head adamantly. "No, no, I'm tired of forgetting."
Oliver frowns as he feels her pulse calm under his fingertips, her hands warming his.
"Rev, you know you can still talk to me, right? About anything. I don't want anything to change that."
Reverie smiles sadly, closing her eyes. Without thinking, she rests her forehead against his. His hands are still resting against her face, and the moment suddenly feels much more intimate than she intended.
She is about to pull away, when she hears footsteps coming down the hallway slow as they get closer.
A voice clears its throat. Oliver feels Reverie's pulse jump under his fingertips, and she straightens, pulling Oliver's hands off of her face as she turns around.
Her breathing quickens, her back straightens, and Oliver looks up to see Professor Lupin staring back at Reverie darkly, his eyes filled with another emotion Oliver can't discern. He notices Lupin's fingers tapping against his side, tensing, as he stands before Reverie. He watches Reverie's face harden, but neither of them look away from one another.
Lupin's voice breaks the muffled silence his presence has set over them. "I'm sure I won't need to tell you that mingling in the hallways this late is strictly prohibited."
Reverie is locked in place and doesn't know what to say, if there is anything she can possibly muster. His eyes burning into hers for the first time in so long have stopped whatever she might've said to him in its tracks.
"We weren't mingling, Professor," Oliver says for her, and Reverie shuts her eyes briefly. "Rev wasn't feeling well and I stopped to help her."
Lupin drags his eyes away from Reverie, resting on Oliver with indignation that Oliver doesn't understand.
"Helping her and using Hogwarts' empty hallways to snog her are two very different things, Wood."
Lupin's eyes flicker to Reverie against his will, a subconscious need to see her reaction, to see if he's right. Her chest heaves in anger, and so does his, but her cheeks are burning red, and he's suddenly overcome by an urge to take her back to his classroom, lock the door, push her against the wall, and make her moan into his lips until that blush becomes his, her cheeks red because of him.
He turns his head away quickly, and that's when Oliver sees it. The way Lupin looks at Reverie with a need to see her eyes on him. The way Lupin's breathing quickens when she looks at him. The way the sight of Oliver and her together is tormenting him.
He feels Oliver's eyes analyzing him and points to the Great Hall.
"Go. Now."
Watching Lupin, Oliver takes Reverie's hand, and Lupin's hand twitches again. But when Oliver begins pulling her after him, she pulls her hand from his grasp.
"I'm not hungry anymore, Oliver," she says, without tearing her fiery gaze away from Lupin. "If you'll excuse me, Professor, I'm going to go back to my dormitory."
Lupin and Oliver watch her go, but when Oliver turns towards Lupin with the intention of speaking, Lupin turns around and walks back to his office, the echo of his footsteps in one direction mixing with Reverie's in the other drowning out anything Oliver had to say.
~~~~~~
Lupin slams the door to his office with enough force to shake the skulls on his shelf, and he walks directly towards his bottle of firewhisky, pouring himself a healthy glass-full and tipping it all back down his throat, wincing as it goes down. The pain erases the thoughts of her lips on this glass, her lips on his.
But it doesn't erase his anguish at the idea of someone else holding her face between their hands, kissing her, feeling her. Lupin leans against the table, his arms holding his weight, his head down, his fingers tapping mindlessly against the wood.
Crooking his head, he eyes the map on his desk, a new addition to the mess around it, and he turns away as he pours himself a new glass and walks over to the window.
He watches the lake below, rippling, reflecting the starry night sky, and he starts to feel restless, realizing that everywhere he looks, he sees her.
The flask of wolfsbane stares at him tauntingly from the windowsill, and he remembers the night she had figured him out, the night she had come to him, the reason why he pushed her away.
He forces himself to look away, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands.
He and McGonagall had been at the Ministry for a week, and they'd discovered an intercepted letter from Reverie's grandmother, traced with poison. He knows it'll break her, knowing that the Ministry had gotten hold of her grandmother's information. Lupin knows it's nothing less than a threat, a warning sign, to get her to stop searching, stop writing, stop digging, and it's killing him, not being able to tell her, not being able to get close to her.
But what he hates the most is that there's no telling that he'll stop the next one, and the wrenching pain in his chest at the thought of Reverie hurt—or dead—scares him more than anything ever has.
He grabs the map off of his desk and opens it, muttering "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," and scans it to see her name. He finds her, pacing the Gryffindor common room, but when he sees Wood's name written just next to hers, his eyes darken.
He can almost picture them together, Reverie letting Wood take her hand, letting him kiss her, letting him hold her.
How could he possibly justify being jealous of a student? He knows it was reckless of him to abandon her like he did and then expect her to stay, waiting for him to get his act together. He hates himself for looking at Wood's name with such anger.
But when their names get closer and he swears they blend into one, he drops the map onto his desk, grabs his long forgotten box of cigarettes, and goes outside.
Refusing to look at the lake, the sky, or the trees, blind to everything but the terrible feeling of the nicotine filling his lungs, he realizes that he was somewhat right, that night so many months ago. Reverie truly would be the only credible orchestrator to his slow and torturous death, but only from a distance, for he'd never felt more alive than he'd felt alone with her.