***
“I can’t find anything wrong with you, Mr Black,” Madame Pomfrey said after she had finished prodding Harry in a variety of places.
Harry noticed that it was starting to get dark outside already as he made his way back to Gryffindor Tower, and he kicked at the wall in annoyance, earning himself a few stern words from the portraits and a sharp pain in his toe. He didn’t mind the pain, though; it helped him to wallow even further in his guilt.
“Well?” Remus asked as soon as Harry had entered the dormitory.
“Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“So she didn’t do a psychological assessment,” James said with a smirk.
Remus pulled on his shoes, saying, “I’d better be off.”
“We’ll see you in a couple of hours, Moony,” Peter called out, bringing Remus to a halt in front of the door.
“You’re not to come, not without Padfoot.”
“What?” James said, jumping up from his bed in a flash. “We don’t need Padfoot.”
“It’s too risky. I don’t want you there.”
James glared at Harry. “Nice one, Sirius. You’ve not only let Remus down, but you’ve spoiled it for us, as well.”
“It’s not my fault,” Harry snapped back, feeling a sudden urge to take out all of his frustrations on his dad. “You don’t give a damn about Remus. All you care about is having a bit of fun. He’s going to be in that horrible shack, alone, and it’s all my fault. I can’t bloody well change into that bloody dog, but I want to, God, I really, really want to.”
When he finished his tirade, he found that his breathing had become erratic and that he had instinctively raised his fists. He also realised that James was looking nervous and had taken several steps away from him.
“Sirius,” Remus said softly, reaching out with a tentative hand and placing it on Harry’s shoulder. “Calm down.”
“Will you be okay?” It seemed like a dumb question, but Harry didn’t know what else to say.
“I’ve done it without you before.”
Harry didn’t sleep at all that night, even though he was still tired from worrying the night before. In the distance, he could hear howls coming from the direction of the shack, and he couldn’t stop thinking about Moony being cooped up by himself. When the sky gradually began to lighten, he went to sit by the windows, watching the grounds until he saw Madame Pomfrey escorting Remus back to the castle.
He wanted to see Remus, to make sure he was okay. As soon as Remus had disappeared from view, Harry started to get dressed.
“Where are you going?” James said in a drowsy slur.
“To see Remus.”
“Don’t be stupid. You know Pomfrey won’t let any of us near him before lunchtime, especially not when he’s had a bad night.”
There was an underlying note of accusation in James voice as he said this last part, and Harry knew that it was directed at him. Remus’s bad night was his fault. Harry didn’t need James taking a dig at every opportunity: he was well aware of that fact.
Resigning himself to a few more hours of waiting before he could check on Remus, he made his way to the bathroom and undressed once more. Hopefully, a scalding shower would help to clear his mind in the meantime. As he passed the mirror, Harry stopped in his tracks. His scar was now much clearer.
**
Neither Tonks nor Arthur made it into work that afternoon. Tonks stayed upstairs with Molly, and Remus hoped that Mrs Weasley wasn’t making things worse with her attentions. With the atmosphere that was left downstairs, Arthur hadn’t been willing to leave the house.
Arthur wasn’t the only one to realise that Sirius was itching to have another go at someone; the sensation of Sirius threatening to bubble over at any moment prickled at the back of Remus’s neck, too. And so, Remus had spent the day in a state of restless anxiety waiting for the next outburst. He was now sitting at the kitchen table, leaning on his elbows and burying his face in his hands. If only Molly would finish trying to console Tonks and come downstairs; then he could talk to Tonks in private and perhaps make some sort of peace with her.
It was when Hermione and Ron came home that Sirius started off again. It seemed he was just waiting for a fresh audience.
“You gonna get on your moral high horse next?” he asked Hermione as soon as she and Ron had arrived in the fireplace.
“About what?” Ron asked at the same time that Hermione turned to Arthur and said, “What’s happened, Mr Weasley?”
“Well, er—” Arthur stuttered, but Sirius finished the sentence for him, addressing himself to Ron.
“—your ol’ lady caught me and Remus at it on the kitchen table and it’s mortally wounded her sensibilities.”
“Sirius, please,” Remus pleaded from behind his fingers. He didn’t hold out much hope of getting any respite: if there was one thing that Sirius excelled at back at school, it was making a bad situation worse.
He heard Ron give out a nervous chuckle as if not believing what had been said. Then the sound of chuckling faded away when it became evident that everyone else had taken Sirius’s words in earnest.
“Where’s T?” Hermione asked in concern.
“Upstairs sulking because she’s jealous,” Sirius said before anyone else had a chance to answer. Remus raised his head and glared at Sirius for his lack of tact. “Well, she is. If she so desperately wants to have you, then she should accept that she can’t have you all to herself.”
And then Remus saw Sirius take a deep breath in preparation for his next bout of verbal effusion. Remus winced in anticipation for what was to come.
“What is it with women, anyway?” Sirius turned to face Hermione. “Where do you get off trying to put men into little boxes, forcing us to fit an ideal that we couldn’t possibly live up to? Just look at you and ‘Ronald’. I bet he was just as laid-back about getting things done before you got your claws into him. If that’s not the sort of bloke you want, why insist on making his life miserable in the first place?”
Remus glanced at Ron, who was standing about a foot behind an increasingly-irate Hermione and staring at the back of her head clearly worried that she was going to turn around and demand that he deny what Sirius was saying.
“Sirius, this has nothing to do with Hermione and Ron,” Remus intervened, hoping that he’d save Ron the embarrassment of being bullied into submission by Hermione.
“Yes it does,” Sirius said. “She’s just like T, with a stupid notion of what Ron could be like with a little helping hand on her part. I bet T thought that she could ‘cure’ you of your obsession with me. I don’t know when we stopped fucking, or why, but you told her about us—you and your idiotic sense of obligation would have seen to that—and I bet she just dismissed it outright. Not to your face, of course. But you liking me more than her wouldn’t have fit with her fantasy vision. So she pushed that bit of reality to one side, ignored it, completely disregarded that part of you. And now she’s sulking because she can’t run away from it anymore.”
“And what are you sulking about?” Hermione asked. “There’s got to be something for you to make such a fuss.”
“Not being allowed to do what I do best with Remus,” Sirius said with a lurid grin.
“But once we’ve got the book, there won’t be anything to stop you in your own timeline.”
“Yeah, I can’t wait to go back to my used goods.”
The bitter note to Sirius’s words sent warning bells off in Remus’s head. “What do you mean by that?” he asked.
“What do you think? Harry is back there, in my body, fucking my Remus. How the fuck could you not tell the difference? I must’ve made such an impression on you: you didn’t even notice that you were shagging a complete stranger.”
Remus glanced around the room quickly to see jaws gaping in every direction, including Molly’s. She was at the foot of the stairs, her hands on her hips, and was positively glowering at Remus.
“Sirius, could we discuss this outside?” Remus said, motioning towards the back door.
“Oh no you don’t,” Molly said. “I told you I’m not having you two left on your own.”
Sirius grunted and pushed his chair back from the table, scraping the legs across the floor so they gave off a harsh grating noise like fingernails down a blackboard. “Fine by me,” he said before stalking off upstairs.
After a few seconds of silence, Remus could hear Sirius shouting along the corridor at Tonks, “You can go back downstairs now: the competition has left the room.”
“I’m holding you responsible for the appalling way he’s behaving,” Molly said to Remus. “As if Tonks doesn’t have enough to cope with, without him rubbing it in her face. And I certainly hope for your sake that what he said about Harry wasn’t true.”
Remus caught himself grinding his teeth so hard, he was surprised that they hadn’t already shattered. He didn’t dare stop, though, not when there were a hundred different ways of insulting Molly waiting on the tip of his tongue. Resisting the urge to say something that he’d later regret, Remus rose from the table, deciding to take the opportunity to talk to Tonks.
Molly still didn’t move away from the stairs as he climbed them. She stayed stock still with only her eyes moving as they followed his ascent suspiciously.
“I’m going to my own room, Molly, not Sirius’s,” Remus said, pleased that he’d managed to keep his words neutral, but thoroughly resenting the fact that he had to justify his actions.
“Don’t you think you’ve upset her enough for one day?” Molly said as she moved up a few steps so she could continue to monitor his progress along the corridor.
He chose not to reply and steadfastly ignored her as he turned the handle to the room he was sharing with Tonks.
Tonks was curled up on the bed, arms wrapped around her knees, face blotchy and eyes red. When she looked up at him without any malice, only hurt, it was like receiving a kick to the gut. What had he done to her?
“This is such a mess. I’m sorry,” he said, perching on the edge of the bed.
She pulled her lips into a tight smile, which left her face almost as soon as it had appeared, and then she continued to gaze at him, as if waiting for him to make everything better. But that wasn’t going to happen.
And then she started to cry, a few big, fat tears rolling down her puffy cheeks. He had come up to talk to her, and now he found that he couldn’t find the words. He just felt awkward and strangely resentful that she was giving him an extra complication to deal with.
“I should go. I’m only making you worse,” he muttered, and he stood up to leave.
She reached out to him, resting a hand on his arm, and said, “I’m sorry, too. I pushed you into something you didn’t want.”
At her unexpected apology, he felt something break inside and was left fighting against his own tears that threatened to escape.
“I shouldn’t have been so easy to push,” he said. “I wasn’t ready. I’m not sure I ever will be. And now I’ve got to send him away, and I don’t want to, but he can’t stay. I hate having him back in my life like this.” He knew that he was starting to waffle and that he was close to just letting everything overwhelm him. “I have to go. The sooner we work out how to get Harry back, the better.”
Taking her hand from his arm, Remus left the room, making his way to the garden where he sat in silence until Arthur called him in for dinner. But he wasn’t hungry, and he stared at his plate as he pushed the food around in circles. Tonks evidently wasn’t hungry either—she still hadn’t come downstairs.
Worried that Tonks was going to make herself ill, Molly dished up an extra plate of food and took it up for her to eat. She came back to the kitchen a few minutes later, still carrying Tonks’s dinner.
“She’s not there,” Molly said with a frown. “She’s gone.”