There are four things you should know about the 21st of June:
1) It was a full moon.
2) It was the day where an organized meeting between Helia Blacksmith the mudblood and Fenrir Greyback the werewolf was taking place.
3) Helia Blacksmith the mudblood and a nameless muggle held onto that day as a sign of something. Something that, as a matter of plot device, will remain hidden until an opportune moment.
4) None of these things would have mattered had it not been for Dean Blacksmith.
Have you got all that? Helia's been waiting so long for tomorrow, dreading and coveting it. Remus has been treating it the same way that I- that is, your omnipresent narrator- treat a particularly difficult piece of Chemistry homework: i.e. ignoring it and hoping it went away.
I hope you're ready.
........................
"Blacksmith's not here."
Those were not the words that Remus expected to wake up to the night before a full moon. Sirius and James were stood at the side of his bed, Sirius with a clenched jaw and James appearing exhausted as they looked down at him. Remus shifted and made a questioning noise as he blinked sunlight from his eyes. He glanced around the dormitory.
"I should hope not." he mumbled sleepily, indicating the room with his eyebrows.
"She disappeared last night." Sirius said, ignoring his friend. "No one knows where she went."
Remus pulled himself into a sitting position, rubbing his eyes. "So you think...?"
"Twenty first of June is tomorrow." James supplied by way of confirmation.
"Crap." Remus rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. "Who's going after her?"
James and Sirius shared a look. "No one."
"What?" Remus was out of bed in a shock, pulling on jeans. "You can't just... Dumbledore has to want to send someone."
James looked at the ground. "He told us to stay out of it."
"Fuck." Remus ran a hand through his hair, gripping the roots in a clenched fist. "Fuck." Sensing James's uncomfortable shuffle, he glanced at his friend with a frown. "What aren't you telling me?"
"Nothing." James lied with an easy grin.
"Prongs." Remus said. "I have known you for six years. I know when you're lying."
James sighed. "I heard Blacksmith yelling at Dumbledore in his office a few weeks ago." he admitted.
Remus waited. "And?"
"She was shouting about... killing someone. She was going to kill someone and Dumbledore wouldn't let her. She was going on and on about the Order just being a kids club or something, that we're all going to end up like her." he shrugged helplessly. "I'm not sure what she meant by most of it."
"And when she said someone, you presumed...?" Remus was starting to see pieces fit together. Not all of them. Like, one or two.
"That it was you." Sirius finished.
Remus paused his pacing. Sirius and James shared another look and stepped forward, knowing just where this was going. "But what if it's not?" Remus said quietly.
He grabbed his jacket off an armchair and ran out of the room.
"Moony..."
Remus didn't stick around long enough to find out what Sirius was saying.
......................................
"Mr. Lupin? Come in."
Remus pushed open the door to Dumbledore's office with a little too much force, and it slammed against the wall. He paused, adrenaline still rushing through his veins.
"Helia." he said, and then stopped, unsure what to say. He hadn't actually planned anything, and being suddenly put on the spot had lead him to say the first thing on his mind. Remus took a deep breath while the Headmaster waited patiently. "Is Helia trying to kill me?"
Professor Dumbledore gave him a wistful kind of look. "Ah, young love."
Remus went red, a blush fighting across his cheeks. He wasn't sure how to respond. His mouth opened and closed.
"It can be quite difficult to tell what Miss Blacksmith is thinking." Dumbledore said, "I'm sure you've noticed that she can be very unpredictable."
"Is... is that a yes?" Remus felt his stomach sink.
"I don't know." the teacher said honestly. " If I've learned one thing in my years of teaching, it's that you can never be completely certain when it comes to your student, although I believe that Miss Blacksmith has some very... intense emotions."
"So she didn't come here a few weeks ago and tell you that she wanted to kill me?" Remus said carefully.
"Ah," as Professor Dumbledore spoke, understanding dawned on his wrinkled face, "I see you've been talking to young Mr. Potter. How so many misunderstandings can occur in the life of a teenager, I shall never know."
"It's not true then?" Remus didn't think his heart had ever beat so fast.
The Professor simply shrugged. "Who can say? I'm sure she would rather you believed that to the truth."
"You aren't giving me an answer." Remus stated.
Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "You always have been a very observant boy."
Remus wondered if the Headmaster had always been so incredibly infuriating. He walked out of the office numbly, deciding what he was going to do before it the door had even swung shut behind him.
He pounded up the stairs to the seventh floor. The Room of Requirement seemed to seep from the stone. His footsteps slowed as he neared the door, reluctant to acknowledge the fact that the sinking in his stomach was already telling him: Helia was already gone. It was his last, desperate hope that she might be in there, berating the room for it's dry, and often embarrassing, sense of humour.
He hadn't told Sirius or James about the Room of Requirement. He didn't know why.
Remus could feel the stillness that came from a distinct lack of human presence from the second his shoes sunk into the dark carpet, but he checked the rooms anyway. Gryffindor, as usual, was locked. Hufflepuff arranged itself into a 3D, virtual map of a small village in Yorkshire somewhere. Ravenclaw, as it turned out, was a small office space, featuring a desk and a swivel chair (because of course she had a swivel chair) as well as a continuation of the bookshelves from the main room. Like Slytherin, this space was overflowing with scribbled notes, crumpled up on desks and abandoned on floors. There was a notebook on every surface, most of them flipped open to a random page that was also full of rushed scrawl. A copy of the Tales of Beedle the Bard was open on a small coffee table. Helia wasn't in there.
He checked the Slytherin room last, out of fear of seeing his name again and having to confront the possibility of Helia Blacksmith attempting to murder him. The breath was stolen from his lungs when the door swung open. There was a burn mark in the centre of the table, in fact, the whole thing was covered in ash, parchments gone. The whiteboards were wiped clean. There were no names; the board markers were snapped in half on the floor. Remus imagined that this was what it would look like if a natural disaster struck a science lab. A blue eyed, black haired natural disaster.
He took a step forward, into the room, and noticed that the walls weren't all blank. In the bottom corner of a whiteboard next to the door was the same cramped hand that had become so familiar to Remus.
If you're here, then there are two possibilities:
Either your name is Remus Lupin, or you asked for the same thing as me when you got to the room. Whichever it is, I'm sorry.
Please don't remember me.
...............
-One Day Before-
"Helia? Helia, stop! What are you doing?"
"Isn't it obvious?"
Jade Wood barged through the door to discover Helia Blacksmith- her best friend of six years- carefully and methodically burning a pile of clothing in the middle of the dormitory. She was watching the flames leap higher with a cocked head, twisting her wand to keep them under control.
"Stop!" Jade yelled over the dancing sparks, eyes alight with panic. "Helia, stop! Someone could get hurt!"
Helia shrugged.
"Helia, please." Jade's voice seemed to jolt the other girl a bit, and Helia tilted her head to survey her friend with a puzzled expression. "Please, Hel-"
Anger and pain flashed in equal measurements across Helia's face. "Don't call me that!" She whirled on Jade.
"Good." Jade kept half an eye on the fire as she edged around it. The ends curled dangerously close to her robes. "Good. Be mad at me. Rage at the world for being so unfair. But- and Helia I need you to look at me- you need to know who your enemies are. Look at me. Do you want to kill me?"
Helia's wand hand jolted suddenly.
"I wouldn't have killed you." She growled, and Jade sensed she had struck a nerve. "I wouldn't have..."
"I'm glad." Jade said, and it was true. "Can you feel that? How much that hurt you?" Helia said nothing. "Hold onto how much that hurt. Can you do that for me?"
"I am not a child."
"No. I know you're not." Jade swallowed. "So I'm going to ask you a question now, and you're going to answer honestly for once: What do you want?"
Helia met Jade's eyes, blue crashing against green. "I want to see my brother."
Jade closed her eyes briefly. "Then go home, Helia."
"I already am." Helia said, not having the good grace to look guilty. "I'm leaving tonight. But you... You already knew that, didn't you?"
Jade nodded and opened her eyes. "When will you be back?"
Helia looked at the ground. "I wont."
"No." Jade said. "No. You can go, okay? I'm letting you go. But you have to promise me that you will come back. Promise me that you will make it through this."
Helia's gaze never wavered from the floor. The fire was slowly dwindling, leaving nothing but a pile of used-to-be-robes in Helia's size. "I promise." She muttered.
And some part of Jade must have known that she was lying. Some part of her knew her friend well enough to look at her and pick the untruths from the whole, but Jade stood aside and let Helia pass anyway. Helia paused on her way out.
"I meant what I said, you know." The girl whispered soft enough that it could have been the wind. "If your parents turn out to be giant homophobic dicks, you can stay at my place."
She let the subtext hang in the air. Whether I'm there or not.
................
Crack!
The ground slammed up to meet Remus as he fought the urge to vomit.
He staggered a little, and straightened, turning slowly on the spot to observe his surroundings. His apparition had been on point. A small village- the exact one he'd seen in the Hufflepuff room- had opened up around him. Modern-ish, brick houses cut neat lines on either side of Remus. A tacky looking newsagents down the road proclaimed with a peeling sign 'The One-Stop Shop For Shoppers That Just Wont Stop!'. The windows were boarded up and someone had drawn a scarily inaccurate portrayal of male genitalia in spray paint on the wood. The end of the street seemed to split into two identical roads that would lead him deeper into the village.
The full moon was tomorrow. He had a whole day before he had to apparate back to Hogwarts. A whole day to find Helia and stop her from killing... someone. Someone that was maybe him. There was the distinct possibility that Remus was walking into a trap.
"Oi!"
The voice from the other side of the street sounded so masculine that Remus felt himself drawing himself up before glancing over to see the boy (maybe early twenties) in a neon vest with sweatpants and sunglasses and a snapback on despite the distinct lack of sun. His hat was on backwards because of course it was. Following behind him were maybe four guys, all dressed in slight variations of the same outfit.
Remus became immediately aware of how out of place his Hogwarts robes would look in a muggle village.
"Hey," Mr Cool Dude Hat Guy shoved into Remus, surveying his outfit choice with a curl of his lip. "You gay?"
"Um..." Remus frowned, "No?"
"No." Hat Guy mimicked him. His minions cackled mercilessly. One of them (with a particularly over the top plastic gold neck chain) stopped abruptly, staring at his chest. Remus glanced down to see if he had spilt anything, but the boy seemed to be focused on the Hogwarts emblem.
"Yo, Will." Neckchain hit his friend/leader/Almighty Commander of Dickishness on the arm. "Look." he pointed at the logo. "Same as Smithy's sister."
It took Remus a second to figure out that 'Smithy' was a nickname for 'Blacksmith', and that these boys probably knew Helia's brother, though they looked about as different from the kind, slightly nerdy boy that the boggart had turned into as Remus could imagine.
Will's mocking expression immediately snapped into something predatory, and slightly feral. "You know the Small Fry?"
Remus took a step back. The idea of anyone being stupid enough to refer to Helia as 'Small Fry' was equally terrifying and amusing. "I don't-"
"I've heard what your weirdo school did to them, you know." Will poked him hard in the chest. "Anyone who messes with Smithy's sister messes with us."
Remus barely had time to formulate a reply before he was on the floor. Will aimed a kick at his head and pain split his vision in half, cracking across his skull. He blinked, but the world seemed blurry, spinning slightly. The spit hit him directly in the eye.
"Understand?" Will's voice was harsh on his ears, as his gang faded from Remus's immediate line of sight.
Remus could feel the tug of a blackout, and begged himself not to faint. A concussion wasn't his worst problem. He had heard the ominous snap in his back pocket as he had been shoved to the ground.
His wand was broken.
...............
A/N
Dammit Remus. You more of a clutz than I am. Okay, that's a lie. SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION ALERT: It was just Pride Month, and to celebrate I posted one of my coming out stories. (Turns out telling your mum you aren't straight in the middle of a supermarket isn't a great idea.). Check it out if you want. Anyway, see you next time.
Mischief Managed,
BecauseBecky