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It was a crush, to begin with. Years older than me, scrawny and poor and my Dad met him once when he was visiting me and Remus stopped with a message on his way off on a mission and Dad hated him even if he didn't understand exactly how much there was in Remus to hate and fear. It was enough, for Dad, that Remus existed, only a few years younger than he was, dressed like a heroin addict, quiet and endlessly polite, object of my desire because let's face it, it's not as though Dad couldn't just tell. You may not think it, me being an Metamorphmagus and all, but I'm really kind of easy to read.
I mean. Completely wrong for me in nearly every way I can think of, I know. A werewolf, for Merlin's sake. I know. And so of course I fell for him, because that's what you do when you're me.
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This is how it happened with us: slow as fucking treacle, that's how. God, it was excruciating, the long talks where I did most of the talking because with Remus there are all these silences to fill. Walks, after Sirius died and for a while it looked like Remus was dying too, and I would go over to the little flophouse where he lived and practically force-feed him and nag at him until he either suddenly looked as though he was about an inch away from smacking an unforgivable on me (I'd just leave, those times) or he'd smile just the tiniest smile and that meant he was coming along, and we'd walk, and I remember thinking that when we walked I was like a moon, whipping around his orbit at twice the speed, just to keep up, cringing at the sound of my voice but not quite able to stop and just let the silence open up all around, ready for us to fall into.
And after a while, after a whole load of walks where we wandered around and did nothing in particular and I chattered and he would sometimes fill in a pause and the sound of his voice just made me happy. And there was this one time, I must have been specially, well, kinetic, that day, because he laughed and reached out and grabbed my hand and sort of pulled my arm to his side, and I felt tethered into place by his fingertips pressed against my palm, and that was probably the day when I realized that the crush had turned into something bigger than a crush. Something that scared me, something that made my throat tighten and my hair change by itself, made it wave and crackle like a promethean flame.
And after that only a long lot of misery. What do you do when you're having your hand held and you think, right, he is holding my hand, and all I have to do now is turn to face him, and my whole life will change, but you stamp on the impulse because for once you'd rather relish the last little moment of anticipation than rush, and you squeeze his hand and stare at the nymphs in the fountain you're circling and feel the blood rushing to your face but then it all gets to be too much and you do turn after all, and he is ready for you, already looking at you with a frozen expression that douses your flaming hair right out? Well, whatever you do, here's what I apparently do, apparently I do nothing. Apparently I look at him just the once, and apparently I know right away that it's pointless and slip my hand out of his and turn back to the fountain and don't really feel any more as though I need his hand in mine to keep from floating away. Apparently, that is what I do, when that happens.
I never even kissed him, you know? It just kills me that I never even tried, that day. But I was already terrified, and then the look on his face. I don't know if you'd have tried, either. He looked--more than forbidding. He looked lifeless. I couldn't bear the thought that I'd done that to him in the space of ten seconds, and so I didn't do anything more.
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Later, things did happen. There was his hand at the small of my back, just for a second before it disappeared. There was a kiss, once, as the moon grew nearly full, and he looked so stricken when he raised his head that I never wanted him to kiss me again. Other things, enough to give Molly ideas, enough to give me ideas, too, just enough so that it was never quite possible for me to give up completely.
But you'd not quite have been able to give up either, I'd bet.
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And then it just all got to be too much, I suppose. That night in the infirmary. Sirius dead, Dumbledore dead, Bill mauled beyond repair, and Remus sitting in his chair, numbly letting everything wash over him, letting everything go because he doesn't know how to make his life work if he doesn't let everything go. And okay, it was the worst time ever to say what I said right at that moment and I knew it even then, but I heard the words come out of my mouth and I almost didn't care that my mouth was saying them. I just wanted him to--well, I just wanted him, is all. I just wanted him, and all his reasons for not wanting me to want him seemed so ridiculous, and it seemed so unfair that Fleur was going to get what I had wanted for so long and I should have saved it for later but I didn't. I didn't. And I'm glad I didn't because it meant that when everything was over, when we left Hogwarts and apparated home in the dark with the weight of all that had happened and changed that night dragging behind us, we apparated to my flat, and we apparated together.
And so I'm learning, now, to slow to his pace. I'm learning that not all silences need to be filled. And he's learning that sometimes you don't have to let go, that sometimes there's someone on the other end holding on. And if you stop and think about it--as bizarre a couple as we may seem, those aren't such strange lessons to be teaching each other.
You'd be just as eager to learn them, I suspect, if you were me.