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May 2, 1978
“She just gave it to you?” Sirius asked, his eyes twinkling. Remus swatted his curious hand away from the golden pendant around his neck.
“Borrowed,” he corrected and took a step back, wincing at the usual jolt of pain that shot through his hip. “I’ll have to hand it over again to the Ministry at the end of the term.”
“Well, that’s only a few days!” Sirius straightened up and crossed his arms like he was preparing to give a lecture. “You mean to tell me you had this all year and didn’t tell us! James!”
Honeyed eyes behind round-rimmed glasses peeked over the Witch Weekly magazine. “Don’t bring me into this. As far as I’m concerned, Moony did you a favour.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?!”
Peter snorted, and Sirius targeted his glare at him next. “C’mon, Pads. There’s a reason McGonagall trusted Remus with a Time Turner. She knew he could keep it a secret from you long enough before you got yourself into more detention.”
Remus sighed. “Almost…” he muttered, slapping at Sirius’s hand again.
“Moony,” his impatient friend groaned. “Just one little spin? For me?”
“No.”
“But—”
“Out of the question.”
“Perhaps—”
“Perhaps not. Sirius! Stop it!”
But he was too quick, and the rest of the boys were too slow. The world around them lagged—Remus leaning out of his reach, James and Peter lunging for Sirius just as his fingers latched around the pendant—before it picked up in a blur of motion, light, and sound. Sirius had managed to flick the rings, causing them to turn and forcing Remus to be dragged through time.
Their room smeared into streaks of brown and scarlet red, the Gryffindor banners bleeding into the brick walls like paint running down a canvas. His lungs strained to draw in the thinning air. His stomach lurched as if the floor had collapsed beneath his feet. Wind roared past his ears, pulling and pulling…
…Then, with a crack of thunder inside his skull, everything stopped. The world was stiller than before.
Remus panted, his ragged breaths vibrating with the thrum of his racing heartbeat. Time Turning had never felt like that. It had never been painful. But he’d also been prepared before, had always known where he was going.
Fucking Sirius, he cursed to himself. Where are you, you godsdamned mutt?
But Sirius wasn’t there. Nor James. Nor Peter. Remus was still in their dormitory. Or so he thought, anyway. It was only a shell of what it was. The shape was the same, the same curve of the tower walls, but the space felt heavier. Wrong.
“Padfoot?” he croaked. “Prongs? Wormtail?”
No answer—and somehow he’d known that would be the case. It terrified him to be proven right.
He limped toward the window, bracing himself for what else he wouldn’t find, and peered down into the courtyard. Once again, it was familiar. But now it was a graveyard. The bridge was jagged and broken, connecting two sides of green grass and scorched earth.
Remus released an aching breath that had been held hostage in his chest, relief softening his worry when he spotted another soul. Then another. Then a few more, all working together to organise the ruins into neat piles with their wands. Were his friends down there helping?
He scrambled out of the tower to find that the castle was a skeleton of what it once had been. The shifting staircases were frozen in place, this way and that. The portraits were rid of their enchantments. He moved through the wreckage with as much compassion as he could show, careful not to disrespect whatever had happened. Though he didn’t draw his wand, he stayed alert. The deeper Remus made it into Hogwarts, the more convinced he became that this had everything to do with Sirius being reckless with the Time Turner.
Ducking under a fallen pillar, he stepped into what had once been the Great Hall, following the voices drifting from its shattered entrance. The long house tables were gone, replaced by rows of low cots. Magic no longer cast a reflection of the sky; it didn’t need to, not with the roof blown apart and open to the dark clouds overhead.
Witches and wizards of all ages, their robes stained with blood and mud, moved between the patients that filled the beds. Their faces were etched with exhaustion. Some seemed to be mourning; most seemed ecstatic. Remus jumped as a burst of hysterical laughter rang out. Two people stood in a corner, embracing so tightly they bounced on their toes.
They were…celebrating?
In the centre of the wreckage of Hogwarts, the world had ended—and people were joyous.
Remus scanned the crowd, desperate to spot someone he knew. He still didn’t see his friends, but a staff uniform he recognised caught his eye. Madam Pomfrey cradled the back of a child’s head with one hand as she poured a green potion into his waiting mouth with the other. She was always helping someone, always doing the right thing. He started toward her with new urgency, certain she’d have answers.
He ignored the blinding pain in his hip, his walking cane missing, and rested a hand on her shoulder when he approached her.
“Madam Pomfrey? What happened?”
When she turned to face him, the empty glass vial slipped through her fingers and dropped to the ground with a sharp clink.
“Remus?” she whispered, her voice rough like a frayed thread. “Is it really you? But…”
His brow furrowed in concern. He’d seen her stressed before—usually on nights she locked him in the Shrieking Shack, and the mornings she came to heal his fresh wounds—but never quite like this. She looked like she’d aged a lifetime since he last saw her, only yesterday.
“Of course it’s me, ma’am,” he assured her, offering a lopsided smile. “Who else would it be?”
A choked, teary gasp escaped her before she lunged forward to wrap her arms around his neck with a strength that knocked the wind out of him. Remus staggered, but he instinctively wrapped his arms around her in return. He was happy to see her, too; so incredibly grateful to find a friendly face in this strange duplicate universe he’d found himself in.
“Oh, Remus,” Madam Pomfrey sobbed into his chest, the raw sound of it too loud for the hushed room.
It drew attention and turned heads; a girl with wild curls and a dirt-streaked face paused while winding a bandage around a lanky ginger boy’s wrist. Remus looked to the others over Pomfrey’s shaky shoulder, his heart sinking as he checked again.
How was it possible? They wore the decades-old school robes he owned from the same house he had been sorted into. There were blue, yellow, and green, too. But the faces were all wrong. It was like he’d walked straight into a dream where the setting remained, but the characters had been changed entirely.
“Where is everyone?” he asked cautiously. “Have you seen my friends?”
She pulled away from him as if he’d burned her. Her wet eyes filled to the brim, a fresh wave of tears spilling over. She covered her mouth with a palm, as if her body was physically stopping the words she wanted to say.
“Poppy, what is it—?”
Much to his astonishment, Professor McGonagall approached. Her emerald robes were burnt at the hem, and she had more wrinkles and grey hair than he’d remembered, her brisk dignity still holding strong. But the moment her gaze landed on Remus, her composure cracked the same way Madam Pomfrey’s had.
“Remus? Oh my!”
He was tugged from the Healer’s arms into another fierce embrace, his request for an explanation ignored. Still, he hugged her back because there were two people he knew now, thank Merlin. This time, he didn’t wait for the emotions to settle before trying again.
“Professor, please,” Remus pleaded, gently easing her away so he could look into her eyes. “I don’t understand. Why is everyone acting like they haven’t seen me in years? And Hogwarts—what happened here?”
A mask of…something crumbled her expression.
“Is everything alright?” someone politely asked.
The girl with wild curls suddenly appeared. Beside her was the red-haired boy and another who looked very much like James to Remus. He had the same unruly black hair and even wore glasses, though his were cracked and misshapen. For a brief moment, Remus’s heart leapt at the thought that he had found one of his friends. But the joy vanished instantly upon seeing a long, branch-like scar that haunted his face like lightning struck in a storm.
He stared back at Remus, his head tilting slowly to the side, his green eyes searching, as if he recognised him too. As if sorting through his mind for where he’d seen him before, trying to place him.
“I…I don’t know how to answer that, dear,” Professor McGonagall replied, wiping away a tear from her cheek before clasping her hands around Remus’s. “How on Earth are you here?”
His patience finally gave out. “Why are you two acting like this?! Where else would I be?! What is happening—”
The girl gasped, halting his panic long enough for him to see her step around Madam Pomfrey and pull the golden pendant from the neckline of his jumper. He tried to back out of her reach, but once again, he wasn’t quick enough.
“Professor, look!”
McGonagall’s spectacles slid down the bridge of her nose as she leaned in to squint, along with James’s doppelgänger and his ginger friend.
“No bloody way,” they both said at the same time.
Madam Pomfrey hovered at the edge of the circle, her hands wringing her ripped apron. “What’s wrong? What is that?”
“A Time Turner, Poppy,” the professor answered, her eyes darting to his. “How do you have this, Remus?”
“It can’t be,” the dark-haired boy muttered. His friend gawked, like a piece of the puzzle had been revealed.
“You gave it to me for my classes. Don’t you remember?”
The colour drained from McGonagall’s face. “I did?”
“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?!” Remus’s voice rose, cracking under the pressure of his panic. “Why are you so shocked to see me?! Where in the hell is everyone?!”
He caught himself when he heard his amplified outburst echo off the walls, his chest heaving.
“Respectfully, ma’am,” Remus added in shame, lowering his head.
A soft giggle broke the tension, and the girl stepped forward to take his hand. Her palm was warm, grounding the manic energy humming through his body. Whisky-brown eyes told him he was safe. He wasn’t sure why he believed it, but he still stayed rigid, as if bracing for another twist of defying fate that hadn’t caught up to him yet.
“We can handle this,” she told their superiors. “We’ll explain everything to him.”
McGonagall looked torn, her attention bouncing between her and Remus. “Are you sure, Hermione? This is an outright mess. I’m not sure—”
“It’s okay,” Hermione promised, her grip on his hand tightening as she pulled him along with her. He tripped over his feet, but he followed aimlessly. “We’ve got this.”
“We do?” the boy with bright red hair asked incredulously.
“Yes, Ron,” she sighed, leading the way out to the courtyard. “We do.”
The edge of Black Lake rolled over the shore, lapping against the pebbles and sand before retreating home. In his trembling hands was the Marauder's Map, now aged and crinkled from years of use. It felt good to see their legacy passed down to another generation as they initially intended. But the circumstances were heartbreaking; a creation meant for simple fun used as a fundamental tool in a war.
It was silent except for the waves at their feet and the leaves of the trees rustling above them. Hermione, Harry, and Ron had explained everything as best they could, but the burden of the future could not be lifted, no matter how much they tried to tell him. They laid it all out: the rise of the Dark Lord, the prophecy, the betrayal, the story behind Harry’s scar. So much death. So much pain. An undercover army working with Aurors and Dumbledore falling, then regrouping just to fall again. They told him how Sirius was framed and left to rot before he escaped and redeemed himself, only to die in the end at the hands of his own flesh and blood.
“Where is Bellatrix now?” Remus asked no one in particular, his knee bouncing restlessly.
Ron, who had been tossing stones into the lake, stopped and turned to face him with hollow eyes. “Dead. My mother killed her when she went after my sister.”
Remus twiddled with his cuticles, unsure how to handle that. It was good she was gone, but he couldn’t deny feeling disappointed that he’d never get his vengeance.
Hermione turned the Time Turner over in the crevice of her palms, studying every rotation before lifting the pendant up to the sunlight.
“I don’t think you’ll be able to go back, Remus,” she said softly and pointed out a hairline fracture in the hourglass. “The enchantment’s seal is broken. I’m not sure if the magical core can be restored.”
“Do you think they saved some from the Department of Mysteries?” Harry suggested. He sat a few feet away on a fallen log, detached from the moment but close enough to hear the stories they’d lived through be told. “Surely they weren’t all destroyed in the battle.”
Remus shook his head, absorbing another piece of information thrown at him. How many battles had they fought? And when? How? They couldn’t have been any older than he was. He looked out at the horizon of the bruised water, the sun taking its time to set, making up for the days that had been stolen from him.
“I’m not sure I would have been able to go back anyway, knowing what I do now.” He absentmindedly traced the edge of the map, trying to hold on to the last part of his life that’d been torn away. “I think I would’ve gone mad trying to prevent it all. How could I look at Peter? How could I have not gone after Riddle myself?”
“Blimey, I’m confused,” Ron groaned, rubbing at his temples as if to realign his thoughts. “How is that you—uh, I mean…Professor Lupin…didn’t remember us if he had already been here? If he were you, shouldn’t he have had the memory of meeting us today?”
“There’s still so much we don’t know about the Laws of Time,” Hermione countered. “There are different dimensions to consider. Different timelines that may or may not go into effect. Maybe our Remus’s death triggered something for this Remus to change course from what’s already happened in our lifetime.”
“Sirius died too,” Harry reminded her quietly with an expression that was far too ancient for someone his age to have. “Why didn’t he come back? Or my dad? My mum?”
Hermione looked at Harry, inhaling deeply before letting his question hang in the air between them for too long.
“I don’t know, Harry. Why didn’t Fred? Or Dumbledore? I’m just grasping at straws here. I… I don’t know.”
Harry nodded solemnly, as if he had expected that answer. He stood up with a stiffness Remus felt in his bones.
“I just need a moment,” he muttered, barely audible, avoiding everyone’s gaze as he began to walk away.
Remus watched him leave. He wanted to chase after him, comfort him with an instinct he would have done for James. But he didn’t, because how do you even attempt to make someone else feel better when your heart was breaking too?
“Ron, go with him, please,” Hermione requested gently. “He shouldn’t be alone right now. I’ll stay with Remus.”
Ron didn’t argue, appearing as if he had already been planning to, and jogged after him.
Remus didn’t argue either, not knowing how to be alone with everything happening. Still, it didn’t feel right to be babysat. A war had been won, but he had his own to face. So he sat with Hermione, who kept passing the Time Turner between her hands as if it might fix itself through sheer will, and hoped he’d find the strength to keep going.
December 2, 1998
The emptiness of Grimmauld Place was more brutal than the gutted ruins of Hogwarts. There was nothing to remind him of what he’d left behind except Sirius’s bedroom. He’d heard him talk about his bedroom as if it were a sanctuary, his safe place to hide when his mother was on a rampage. Now it was Remus’s, a portal to the past he could curl into.
He’d chosen Sirius’s old family home over the Weasleys’ Burrow. Molly had tried to insist, pleading through tears and prominent maternal instincts. He knew she saw a lost boy, a stray dog that needed a home. And he just wasn’t ready to fall into that category yet. He was also certain Harry didn’t want to see him either, with the way his jaw clenched every time Remus entered the same room as him.
Harry no longer looked at him. Not since he left him at the lake. Remus couldn’t blame him. If Harry was a walking, breathing mirror image of his father, Remus’s best friend, he could only imagine what it was like for Harry. To keep being reminded that it was he who had come back, and not his parents or his godfather, if anybody at all.
“He hates me,” Remus grumbled, taking out his agitation on Hermione’s calf.
His thumbs kneaded the knot that tormented her muscle below her knee. She hissed through her teeth, but her tired body relaxed into the velvet sofa regardless.
“How are you this sore, Mione? I thought you were on the run for nearly a year?”
She’d been in the Auror Programme since September. Kingsley, another blast from the past who had cried at the very sight of him, didn’t waste time before requesting a Voluntary Veteran Draft to replenish the count of Aurors they’d lost in the Second Wizarding War. As expected, the Golden Trio’s applications were accepted immediately after submitting them.
“Technically, we sat for the majority of it.” She huffed a humourless laugh, then broke into a whimper when he finished with that knot and focused on another. “Gods, that feels good. Please, don’t stop, Moony.”
His cock twitched at the little sounds she made. He cursed himself and his teenage hormones. It had been months since he arrived in 1998. Therefore, it had been decades since he had last been with a girl. Right? Was that how it worked? It definitely felt that way.
“Harry doesn’t hate you. He was actually very close to Professor Lupin,” she assured him, throwing her arm over her eyes to block out the lamplight. “He won’t admit it, but he fought for a lot more than just the Wizarding World when it came to defeating the Dark Lord.”
Remus’s eyes wandered up her body, watching her chest rise and fall with each breath. “What do you mean?”
“Harry had been so close to finally having a family,” she started, propping herself up on her elbows to look at him as she spoke. “He just wanted to be able to enjoy it. But the war took everyone from him. He saved everybody, except those he wanted to live most.”
His fingers paused their ministrations around her legs, witnessing her face transform into a mask of sorrow.
“He wants to talk to you, Moony. Probably now more than ever. But he doesn’t know how.” Hermione sat up then, taking his hands in hers, like she thought he’d need the contact to truly convince him.
“He was distraught the day Sirius died. He could hardly bear it. But the day you died… He only had minutes to mourn before he was expected to go after Voldemort. And then after he did, you miraculously showed up. I think he’s still trying to wrap his mind around it.”
Remus let his head fall back onto the sofa, dropping her hands to massage her calves again. “Me, too. Trust me, Mione.”
He had been holed up in Grimmauld Place for the last six months, and he was beginning to feel the side effects. Fortunately, there was plenty of cleaning to do. Molly and her children had handled most of the heavy work, from what he’d been told. But there was still a lot of dust to clear from the furniture, light fixtures to repair, and boxes of artefacts to sort through.
At least the Black residence was situated in Muggle London. There, he didn’t need to conceal his identity. Keeping his scars glamoured was simple enough. He actually enjoyed disguising that part of himself. He’d spend hours in the library or catch a bus to spend the day at the museum. Whatever he was doing, he made sure to be back in time for Hermione to drop in each evening.
Kingsley would pop in from time to time to give him updates on the Werewolf Rights Act. Even if there were a Time Turner to use, Remus would not have been able to go back. He knew too much. It could jeopardise everything they had accomplished. He would need a different alias to go by, but he was too old to return to Hogwarts. He needed to work, but waiting for the laws to take effect was maddening. Some things time couldn’t change.
Hermione made things easier, though. It was hard to be upset about not returning to his past when someone like her was in his present.
Minerva and Poppy visited him every other day, bringing him books to read and sharing bittersweet conversations. On the nights of his transformations, about an hour before the full moon rose, they would come together to set his wards and stay overnight to help him heal the next morning. But it was afterwards, when Hermione sat beside him while he slept off the healing potions, that he never wanted to leave. Or her either, for that matter.
She came every day from the Weasleys, always bringing him a plate of food. He would make her a cup of tea, and they would sit together while he ate whatever delicious meal Molly had made that evening, simply enjoying whatever their routine had become. Hermione was the smartest person he’d ever met, and it didn’t hurt that she could verbally spar with him about nearly anything.
Every night she came to see him. And after she entered the Auror Programme, most days she’d be too tired to Floo back to the Burrow and choose to stay over and leave for work from there. Another routine he looked forward to was Hermione falling asleep with him in the sitting room, sometimes with her head on his shoulder, and he’d carry her to the guest bed he’d made up for her.
Somewhere along the way, in the fallout of the war and the torment, they’d become Mione and Moony.
“How do you not lose your mind in this place?” she asked, her eyes scouring the room as if it might come tumbling down around them.
He rolled his head to the side, smiling lazily and watching her from beneath hooded lids. “It’s not so bad, Mione.”
Her head whipped around toward him, but dropped to where his hands rested on her legs. His thumb stilled as he realised he had been tracing the line of her ankle where it rested on his thigh. When she didn’t move to stop him, his touch grew bolder.
“W-when w-we w-were on the run,” Hermione choked out, her voice fluttering. “I would freeze my arse off for as long as I could before going back into that horrible tent. Some days, I thought the walls would close in on me, even with the Enlargement Charms.”
Remus tracked the way she swallowed hard when his fingers joined his thumb to idly draw circles over her smooth flesh. He felt the rapid beat of her pulse beneath the thin skin around her Achilles tendon, a weak spot that betrayed the truth of her shattering self-control. But she wasn’t a god. She was the beautiful maiden for whom a legend surrendered his legacy.
“Mione, have you not figured out what keeps me going yet?” The moment simmered down to embers—her presence, his touch, their heat, and the question that lingered in the air between them. “Are you really so humble as not to take ownership of the very sanity you’ve gifted me all these months?”
Fuck, she shouldn’t look at him like that. Didn’t she know she was breathtaking? From this close, he could see all the ways the war hadn't broken her, leaving her completely open and unguarded. Her gaze dipped down to his mouth. It was only for a moment, but it was enough to make his stomach tighten and his smile falter.
Hermione had made happiness bypass his grief as naturally as falling asleep, as easily as breathing. Eventually, he wanted more with her, and more often; greedy with their time and hating that it ever had to end. Remus ignored it as another mood surfacing during a moon cycle. That is, until it became overwhelming all the time.
Then, on a devastating afternoon, while they were reading by the fire and she used his lap as a pillow, as if he were as much of a comfort to her as she was to him, he finally came to the bewildering conclusion that he had fallen in love.
If Remus leaned in just a fraction, he could taste the answer to his own question on her lips. Would she want him back? Could she love another version of a man she once knew? Instead, he laid bare every unspoken thought, every selfish, impossible need on his face for her to see.
Hermione sat up farther, supporting herself on one hand so they were nearly eye to eye. He could feel the warmth of her breath lingering on his jaw. Her curls cascaded around her shoulders like thick, velvet curtains drawing him into a confessional. He would have shared his sins, pledged his redemption. Whatever it took for her to close the gap and kiss him.
He tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, letting his fingers glide to the ends, savouring the silk between his fingertips. Her brown eyes, flecks of gold swirling around her irises like ice in a glass of whisky, flicked across his face, twinkling in the dim light. Their noses were almost touching now, the tiny scar under her eye lifting as she smiled up at him.
“You make me feel like surviving was worth it,” Hermione admitted, words tumbling out in a short breath.
The honesty in her voice, the sincerity of her sudden truth, undid him far more than any seduction could have. His hand moved of its own accord, leaving her ankle to slide up her body. Her skin prickled beneath his heated palm as it became entangled in her hair, cupping the back of her neck. She exhaled, shaky and weak, curling her fingers into the wool of his jumper.
Grimmauld Place creaked and sighed around them, the clock on the wall ticking on. Time had betrayed him once, and he was fed up with waiting for an apology.
“Mione, if you don’t want this,” Remus started, each word carefully set up for her rejection, “tell me to stop.”
But even as he said it, he gently tilted her chin up.
Her lips teased his as she whispered, “Why would I ever ask you to stop?”
All the years between Remus as a boy and the man he hadn’t realised he would become now seemed to collapse into this tiny, ridiculous moment. How could one kiss feel so significant? Hell, he’d kissed girls before. Even loved once. Or so he thought. Perhaps not. Because he knew without a doubt no one could or ever would compare to the witch straddling him now.
Their restraint broke apart. She brushed her lips against his, her tongue tasting his bottom lip with delicate care. He responded immediately, leaning in until their chests were flush, his free hand resting on the small of her back. Desire surged through every scarred inch of him. Even with her eyes closed, he’d never felt so seen. Hermione’s hands cradled his face as she drew him into another kiss, slow and unhurried, far from the feeling of being stranded that had consumed him for so long.
Remus yielded to her, succumbing to what had been waiting for him all along.
That lifetime… This lifetime… He was exactly where he was meant to be.