"So. We're in a Forest. Filled with murderous monsters. And ice. And your first instinct was 'I think I'll throw my wand down this thirty foot drop'?" Helia gasped as they methodically searched the ground underneath the tree for Remus' wand.
Remus grinned. "I didn't want to break it climbing down."
"Well, I-" Helia dropped her own wand, and it fell dark. Her fingers were numb and she fumbled trying to pick it up again. "Dammit. Lumos." Nothing happened. She felt a familiar ball of frustration grow in her ribcage. "Lumos! "
A pitiful flare of light emanated from the magical instrument and died almost immediately. Magic seemed to have retreated into the furthest part of her, going numb with her fingers. She scrunched up her face in concentration. "LUMOS!" Finally, the output of magic returned to normal. She glanced up to see that Remus had stopped searching and was watching her with a frown on his face. She turned away from him, unwilling to let the wizard see her failure moulded onto her expression. Helia hated losing at anything.
She feigned interest in a patch of ground for an unconvincing amount of time. Until a pair of shoes came into view. Helia glanced up to meet Remus' brown eyes with her own. He was holding his wand. "Come on." He gestured in the direction of Hogwarts.
.............
"Twenty Questions?"
Remus shrugged, ducking under an overhanging branch. They were almost an hour into their trudge and so far he had (unsuccessfully) tried to get Helia to play I Spy, Truth or Dare (which didn't really work in the Forbidden Forest, since they were pretty much on the Dare of all Dares as it was) and even briefly mentioned spin the bottle (maybe a bit of wishful thinking). Walking with him was like going to a nine year old's sleepover. "Yeah."
Helia almost laughed again. "You had the whole world of travel games to go for and you pick twenty questions?"
"I'm curious." Remus decided to be honest with his motives. One of them had to be.
"About what?"
"About you."
Helia sighed dramatically. "Fine. Twenty questions. You start."
Starting easy was probably the best way to go. "Favourite animal?"
"Octopus." Helia said confidently.
Remus laughed. It was a short, surprised laugh. The kind only the people who know you so well they can make you happy without even trying pull out of you. "Octopus?"
Helia shrugged, mirroring Remus' earlier actions almost exactly. "I like octopi. I like the fact that, when you have more than one, it's not octopus's, it's octopi. It's like they're too awesome for normal plural noun endings."
"It's a unique answer, I'll give you that." Remus said.
"You?" Helia said. Remus took a second to answer. "Oh, please don't tell me it's wolf. That would be too perfect."
"...No." Remus said reluctantly after a pause.
"Oh my God. It is, isn't it? Oh God, Remus." Helia was laughing- actually laughing- and Remus had to hide his delight at the sound it made, like tinkling bells and children and Christmas. He winced instead.
"I think you just blasphemed, like, I dunno. A lot." Remus said, grinning. "And my favourite animal is not the wolf."
Helia was still gasping, letting her wand dip a little in her hand, and casting illumination in the twigs that littered the earth beneath them. "Aw, man. You're no fun."
"Next question." Remus announced.
"But you didn't-"
"What's your brother like?"
Remus heard Helia's breath hitch, and guessed he had found a way to distract her from that particular route. There was a second of silence, where only the sound of their footfalls and something ominous slithering in the bushes (that Remus was trying not to think about) filled the air.
"Helia?" he prompted gently.
"He's like..." Helia seemed struggling for words, but when she spoke, it was with a surprisingly thoughtful tone. "He's like me. I guess. I mean, we're really similar in a lot of ways. But he's just... more."
Remus looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She was focused on the ground in front of her, features still. "More?"
"Yeah." Remus felt like he was seeing Helia in a way he hadn't before, now she was talking to him honestly about herself. No amount of moonlit werewolf lessons could make up for that. "More funny. More interesting. More smart. More kind. More brave. More popular." She rubbed her arm hesitantly. "It makes sense, really. He practically raised me. My parents worked a lot. And I was..." she coughed delicately "unplanned for. They weren't just going to uproot this life that they'd finally got sorted for a kid."
"How old was he?" Remus asked.
"When I was born? Seven." Helia said. "But he's the golden child. Again: smart, funny, interesting, kind, brave, popular. My parents always said he's gonna come out of his A Levels with A*s all round, the little Sweat." She was smiling affectionately at the ground. It shocked Remus. He didn't think affectionate was a setting for Helia. "Sometimes I think about him looking after me when I was a kid and I wonder how he did it. He was so young. And it's not like I was the normal child. I was a witch for God's sake, even my parents couldn't handle me, but Dean..." It might have been the dark, but it looked like a blush spread itself over Helia's face as she glanced at Remus as if realising he was there for the first time. "I'm sorry. I don't usually talk this much. To anyone really."
"You're telling me." Remus muttered, trying to diffuse the tension. He frowned. Something about what she had said snagged on his mind the same way his uniform caught the branches around him. He was so distracted by the thought that he didn't even notice the figure slipping in and out of the shadows among the trees around them. "Wait. If your brother is seven years older than you, that would make him twenty three, right?"
"Dear God, the man is a genius." Helia muttered. She seemed only half paying attention as well, focused on that suspicious shape dancing at the edge of her vision. Saying anything at this point might alert their silent stalker, so she tried to make her silence speak for her.
Remus was too busy chasing his idea to catch onto her warning tone. "I thought muggles took their A Levels when they were eighteen, how is he only just taking them now?"
Suddenly and without warning, Helia shoved Remus into a tree, covering his mouth with her hand to catch any sounds of surprise. His wide eyes of shock made enough noise to let Helia know his feelings about this particular situation though. "Shhh." Helia whispered hurriedly. "Don't. Move."
She leaned around the side of the trunk. The figure was human-shaped but cloaked, and now stood in the centre of the path. As she watched, it fell to it's knees and a wail escaped it, sounding hauntingly lost in the magic and foreignness of the forest. Helia closed her eyes. She knew that noise. That was a noise of loss and abandonment. That was the noise of a person who had let everything fall, knowingly, and was claiming the aftermath. Repentance wasn't as fun as they said it was.
Helia looked back to Remus. He had heard it too, she could see it in the stuck concentration of his face, busy working out a way to save this person.
Damn Gryffindors.
The shape on the ground wailed again, and Helia winced. She couldn't blame Remus really. They sounded so pained. It was taking all of her energy not to call out.
"Remus." She said, as quietly as she could. Remus snapped his focus to her face, but he couldn't talk with her obscuring his mouth. "Remus, I am going to ask you to do the hardest thing in the world now. I am going to move my hand so that you can talk. I am going to step back so that you can move. And I am going to ask you to walk away."
Another moan cut the air, it was like a finger running up and down Helia's spine. Her eyelids fell shut again. In through the mouth. Out through the nose. In through the mouth. Out through the nose. Walk away.
Sensing Remus' unease, she added. "It's not human. It just wants a snack. And we're walking Happy Meals." Remus stared her down, unconvinced. Helia felt something begin to crumble inside her and looked away. This didn't need to be any harder than it already was. "Remus. Please. " She begged. "Trust me. Just this once. Trust me."
The decision was made for Remus when they heard it stand. He still hadn't seen the cloaked figure, but it's cries reminded him of his mum on those nights where the medicine didn't do enough, couldn't do enough, and she would try to smother her screams of pain and frustration in her pillow. His dad would sit in the corridor outside with his head in his hands and they would both try and hold themselves together for the son who was already ostracised from society. But Remus knew them better than he knew himself, and he knew when they were breaking.
The sound of the cloaked creature standing was the same as listening to a chain rope drag over flagstones. It grated and dragged on his exhausted mind like nails on a chalk board, making him wince. All thoughts of his mother flew from his mind. He gave Helia a short nod, letting her know that it was okay, he believed her. Her hand retracted from his mouth, but her posture had gone stiff, and there was a warning in her eyes. Do not move they said.
This time, he obeyed her.
And even as footsteps drew nearer, and the metal-on-stone sound intensified, Remus stayed stock still, trying to ignore the crawling fear that crept up and down his back. He expected to see the same fear reflected in Helia's dark blue eyes, but the only thing he could find was steely resolve and a glimpse of something else: Pity, though he didn't know why that would be there.
Some distance away, the creature stopped and spoke. It's voice was like nothing Remus had ever heard or wanted to hear again. It bore the traces of humanity, just enough to be able to distinguish the characteristic of cruelty. Other than that, it was a serpentine hiss, a feline snarl, every rat pit and dancing bear and act of violence for the sake of violence that had ever been committed.
"Two little doves." It snarl/hiss/growled. "Caught in a tree. Come out from your hiding place, little doves. The bark and branches cannot save you now."
Remus could help the spike of paralysing fear that shot through him, couldn't even move enough to lift his eyes to Helia's for some silent support, though from her ragged breaths echoing in his ear he doubted she was faring any better.
"Perhaps the little doves will look to the leaves for safety when they are stood six foot from a monster. Perhaps." The voice scratched on. Helia closed her eyes, like she was sending a private prayer to any god she could think of. "But the leaves are gone now, little doves. Gone with the winter. And what will you beg for protection then?"
One of Helia's hands had caught Remus' bare arm when she had dragged him to the tree. Her fingernails were digging into his skin, and he would find marks there the next morning, but for now the adrenaline coursing through his veins prevented him from feeling anything other than the warmth of her skin against his.
"Little doves. Tiny doves. Come out now. Hide and seek only works when I count."
Remus tried to focus on Helia's small frame pressed against his own. Her dark pool eyes millimetres from his chin. The cold biting air that her warmth pushed away like a child pushes away unwanted food. Remus tried to focus on anything- anything- other than the thing stood six feet behind him.
He didn't know how they were going to get out of this.
But, for a brief second, he didn't care.