Basic plot summary: Alanna and Remus are in a relationship. Remus is a werewolf. Prusilla Umbridge drafts a bit of legislation to send all werewolves to Azkaban. Alanna grows bitter with this turn in their relationship and though she never breaks things off with Remus she can't help but wish that everything is over. Remus receives the Dementor's kiss because his Patronus is a bit too late and Alanna watches. All clear?
He holds her hand the entire way to St Mungo’s, white, long nails clenching painfully against her fragile, delicate fingers.
“Everything is going to be alright, Alanna,” he says to her, except he isn’t quite sure of it himself, but still he says it because it is a beautiful lie to believe in..
Her lips align in a twisted smile as the irony strikes her. In a different world, in a different time, she would have been telling him that (should have really, but she doesn’t like to think about it; still she foolishly denies that she has never wanted to say the right thing but she knows, even when they think she doesn’t).
“Nothing will be the same, Remus.”
She wonders if he ever feels the same way, and if he does, then she isn’t the only master of deception.
He throws his head back and laughs.
She looks at him and thinks how inappropriate that is for the moment. He is a werewolf now and he can do nothing more to convince the Healers that he is insane as well.
She throws back her head and laughs too.
(But not in quite the same way.)
He returns from the ward and he looks drawn and pale. She wonders if this is still Remus (He had told her he was then, but she didn’t think it was true and she still doesn’t think it now).
“Prusilla Umbridge has drafted another bit of anti-werewolf legislature. She plans to cart off all the werewolves and dump them in Azkaban,” she tells him, in so careful a tone that she may have as well be discussing the weather and the only possible hint of weakness is that small, ever so slight tremor in her voice. “That’ll make it a bit harder for you won’t it?’
“It might.”
It is then that the calm composure that she had worked so hard to preserve, shatters into a million different pieces and she collapses, and he watches her with a sad smile on his face because he thought that she was foolish enough to fight the inevitable. “Remus, you can’t win this time. You can’t be brave and heroic and everything else you so desperately want to be--- you have a thousand centuries of tradition against you and the Wizarding World isn’t ready to just blow it all away. I am not ready to just blow it all away.”
“Just because it was over before we began is no reason not to fight,” he tells her.
She doesn’t believe him, but she nods her head all the same and pretends it is true.
Except now he can’t fight.
He is meant to be broken; she can’t help thinking that maybe things turn out right after all, and she smiles her bright, fake, phoney smile and he smiles back, but he smiles like he means it.
“Do you believe in magic?”
He laughs and shakes his head at her, and for a moment she is disappointed.
This time, they move into a tiny flat on Bond Street. She doesn’t like it--- It is too small, too musty, too far away.
“For the children,” he assures her.
“For the children,” she repeats tonelessly.
The war has ended (not with a bang perhaps, more of a whimper), and when she sees the world dying, she hopes that he will die with it.
“Everything is going to be alright, Alanna,” He tells her.
Liar.
She finds the flat empty and a scrap of torn parchment on the floor.
“I am sorry,” he says.
Too late Remus, she thinks bitterly. Too late.
He is on his way to Azkaban, and he can’t help but wish that he has a hand to hold.
He has never much liked repetition, though people have told him that it is fashionable and he must stay in style (Just walk, Remus, walk).
He thinks the sea monotonous. He thinks if he sees one wave he has seen them all. He thinks many other things too, but he would rather forget them.
Because she loves the sea…
“You are going to break,” she chuckles.
His ragged tones are soft and hushed, and he slowly crushes the greying grass under his feet.
“I might.”
He knows the end.
“You’ll be fine,” she says, though it sounds suspiciously like his ‘everything will be alright.’
Repetition.
He thinks of other things instead.
Alanna’s gone.
He thought he knew the end, and this may certainly seem like it but then maybe it is finality, or maybe it is something else.
Azkaban is cold and drab and he doesn’t think he likes it much, but it is solitude and desperation. Right now that is all that is left of his sanity.
Because she told him that she isn’t coming back.
The Kiss.
Everything about his life has been false, endless veils and doubtful ways, but how can he expect anything else? When there’s only endless night, where is the room for light?
He sees one more figure, one more veil, one more cloak, but he doesn’t think that this will be much the same.
He’ll die. It won’t be much different this time.
Smoke.
Smoke and mirrors, he thinks, as he draws his wand. Perhaps producing a Patronus is difficult, and perhaps the world is already torn, but he thinks that if he does this, then he can do anything.
Because he is done with saving the world.
His wand snaps and his heart breaks, but he still sees a distinct line between what is real, and what he once thought was, but then the past and the future are rising and they crash down, shattering into a million different broken shards that rain down from a frozen sky.
His wand shoots out a silver wolf, the darkness hides in shadows and the light bursts out again but it is an eternity too late.
She stands there, and she watches him
fall.
~End