Stars Fall

Nymphadora kicks him out of the house two weeks after Teddy's second birthday. Even as he walks away with nothing but his wand in his pocket, he thinks it is long overdue, and regrets that she had to be the one to demand the divorce and do something about the ugly rut they've run themselves into.

He just couldn't bear to hurt her so badly, so he hurt her in little ways every day until she'd had enough.

Remus Lupin doesn't really regret the end of his marriage, but he doesn't regret Nymphadora, either. They'd loved when it had mattered; it wasn't the greatest love, not the strongest or truest like the sorts in epic poems and storybooks, and neither of them had been starry-eyed over the other, but maybe that didn't happen to people who'd seen war. They'd clung to what was convenient, and it had been enough when times were hard.

There are angry words said (mostly by Nymphadora, but Remus has his moments, too), but they won't hate each other when the blood cools and the ink dries. They have a son to think of. In truth, neither of them thought they'd live to this point, where normal life resumes and the background roar of the war is not there to drown out their smaller disputes. Both of them prefer this ending; better to be two angry people abandoning a failed marriage than two cool corpses laying hand-in-hand on some battlefield. Not much for the storybooks, really, but most stories are tragedies anyway. Leave those endings to the tales they'll read to Teddy.

He works at a Muggle bookstore. If he pressed all his advantages, he could have employment in the wizarding world, but he feels comfortable around these people who don't know him, likes to have conversations with people who aren't in awe of what he has done, with people who don't know they should fear him for what he is. Little girls smile at him and men look him in the eye and women don't pull their coats tighter around their bodies when they see him. He likes feeling like a man, not a hero or a monster, because he is both in his own world.

He doesn't know her when she steps into the dusty little second-hand bookshop; she looks like any other lovely young muggle who wanders in out of the cold to browse. She's wearing a red wool coat over a black polo neck jumper and he can't see her scars because Lavender Brown saved her pretty face. It is the only part of her that is not rent with old wounds, the only part not ripped to ribbons by claws and fangs as she lay helpless on the stone floor with no one there to save her in the few seconds that really counted. She is nineteen years old and she covers her scars with cashmere.

Remus is puzzled when she smiles at him like she knows him, and he asks if there is something he can help her find.

"I've found you," she says, and laughs. He recognizes her at this, and he remembers her at thirteen, because it is that Lavender that he knows best.

Remus Lupin remembers Lavender Brown because her papers were poetry. They were not good papers by any conventional means; she didn't use facts or research, tending to write about what she thought and felt instead, and was markedly disorganized with her thoughts, but there was a fluid lyric quality in her words and sentence structure that made him give her passing marks even when the actual content of the paper might not have merited such a rating.

She'd come to him in his office after he assigned the final essay, determined to get a good mark, and he had walked her through it. She'd been triumphant when she showed him her second draft and he'd regretted ever showing her how to write the kind of flavorless, structured, perfect-mark essays that Hermione was so adept at creating.

It was after he resigned, after the word of what he was had spread round to the students, as he was packing up his meager belongings that she appeared again at his office door, parchment scroll in hand.

She had looked at him staidly, her eyes deep-blue in her small face. "I wanted to hand this in before you go. I worked very hard on it."

Astonished, he had taken it from her. He looked over it briefly as she stood there. It was perfect and bland and ordinary. "This is terrible," he said softly, and she looked heartbroken. "Forget everything I taught you," he instructed her, waving the rolled-up parchment in his hands.

Lavender had looked up at him, puzzled. "But...you're a good teacher. That's stupid, and it's stupid you have to go. The only bad thing about you as a teacher is that you had to be gone those days every month and leave us with Professor Snape."

He couldn't help but smile at the little girl with her sweet oval face who was looking so indignant on his behalf. "I mean about what I taught you about writing. You're a lovely writer, Lavender, don't let any of the other teachers here kill that."

She had blushed a little, and then laughed. "Well, Professor Trelawney likes them, too...thank you." Lavender turned to go. "We all think you should stay, Professor Lupin." He sighed and she quickly added, "Just saying. You're a lovely teacher. Don't let any of the other students here kill that." She'd seemed a little appalled with her own daring, to speak so to a teacher, and he'd had to laugh. She'd laughed, too, before she turned and left, hesitating slightly by the door. "Bye, Professor Lupin. Good luck."

Good luck. He finds himself wondering abstractly if this still would've happened to her if he'd returned the wish before the door had shut behind her, that day years ago.

She's sadder than he remembers, but he can't be surprised at that. She's not a little girl anymore; she has lost a great deal, lived much in the six years since and it's wearing her on the edges.

He's a little in awe of this almost-woman who sits across from him in the dusty armchair, scarred little hands (there is a pretty diamond ring on her left hand and he wonders who gave it to her) peeking out of her coat sleeves. She's thinner and has lost the round, innocent prettiness of her youth. It's melted away to something structured and elegant, a bone-deep beauty that she'll probably carry with her even when her face is lined and her hair faded to silver.

When he asks her how she found him, she smiles and says "Harry." That's all he really says, just to ask her how and then..."Why?"

And she says, ever-so-simply, "Don't you want to be a wizard again? A human being?"

He is about to protest that he is, that he is both already, when the light glints off the gold registration tag Sealed around Lavender's wrist and he thinks of the same bracelet that Sirius and James finally managed to Hex off when they were all eighteen, that tag he still keeps among the detritus in the bottom of his trunk, Spellotaped to an essay on werewolves. And his protest dies, because he is not and she is not either and they both know it all too well. They are still animals, tagged and registered and licensed to live.

A little bit of fury creeps into her voice, just a little tinge of color in her soft tone. "It all just seems so unfair. How many of us got bit that day? We were fighting for them, and now they're telling me I can't work here and I can't live there and if I want to keep my wand I need to submit to monthly monitoring! I'm a witch and I'm so miserably sick of being an anathema in the world I suffered and fought to save...it's sad how quickly people forget their gratitude."

There is something very sure and steady in her eyes and Remus Lupin has little beyond his son (every other week) and James's (who loves him, of course, but needs him?). Lavender needs him; he is respected as none of their kind are (or so she says...he shudders to think of some of the 'respect' he has known in the past months, now that everyone knows him and knows what he is.)

They work out of Lavender's grand house outside London; her parents', a muggle place for her witch mother (dead in an 'accident' at her Ministry job in November) and the Muggle millionaire she'd married (ruled suicide by the Muggle authorities, Imperius murder by the MLE). It is already full of people (not animals); some live there, denied any suitable housing in the wizarding community and too unfamiliar with Muggles to move in their world.

It is strange working with these children...these little girls he knew and taught (for they are nearly all pretty young women, with few exceptions. Greyback's preferences make themselves clear in this assembly), because they are not children anymore and they should be. They still call him Professor, most of them. He wishes he'd taught them better; he sometimes feels they are as they are because he failed them that year he taught.

They are not as scarred as Lavender, though some of them wear their scars on their faces. All their attacks were efficient; cruel and quick and meant to ruin rather than kill. A swipe of a clawed hand to incapacitate, a bite to the shoulder, move on. They, the ones who had lived through Greyback's attack, had all been able to bandage their wounds, grit their teeth, wail at the unfairness of fate, and stand again against the second onslaught.

Lavender didn't even see the second wave; she lay unconscious and very near death on dais. Remus remembers when Firenze carried Lavender into the Great Hall in the lull; he'd had to drive off Greyback to get at her, barely alive amidst the rubble of the Entrance Hall, the werewolf's soft, bleeding masterpiece of ruin.

Charlie Weasley comes around often and sets the girls (not animals) atwitter at his easy charm and dragon-handling ruggedness. There are stars in Lavender's eyes every time she sees him (Remus quickly learns that it's Charlie's ring on Lavender's finger), when he picks her up and kisses her in the entrance foyer she blushes and giggles and it is a little like that innocent laughter Remus remembers, when Parvati would shoot encouraging glances across the row and Lavender would giggle nervously before poking Ron in the back to ask him his opinion on her new hair ribbon.

She is lovestruck over this man and Remus loves to listen to her talk about him, because she is so very happy and he is so very glad that this has not been stolen from her. This is starry-eyed love and it seems very precious. She tells him everything (nearly everything, and what she leaves out would embarrass them both anyway) about it over Ministry petitions and insistent letters and he is fairly sure he has never really been in love, because he does not recognize her words and feelings as anything he has ever thought or experienced. Lavender loves to talk (she's older and sadder but she is still Lavender and she can still talk and gossip and laugh), and she loves very much to talk to him because he listens to her.

They're in Madame Malkin's and Lavender is pushing him to finish the last of his marshmallow-hot-fudge sundae from Florean's (Because you're too skinny, she informs him as she licks the last of her coconut-almond-fudge-ripple from the spoon, and I won't have you in that meeting with the Werewolf-Registry woman looking like an underfed derelict) when she temporarily abandons her quest to assemble him a suitable wardrobe to wander in the women's section.

Lavender doesn't like shopping here, or anywhere in Diagon Alley, preferring Muggle establishments. None of the Diagon Alley shops employ werewolves, and as a rule she refuses to spend money anywhere her kind is not welcome, but she overruled herself when Remus tried to accompany her to a Ministry hearing on the legality of werewolves in the Ministry workplace wearing his best (and very carefully patched) robes.

Remus watches the saleswoman goes wide eyed as Lavender orders suit after suit of robes, mostly for him but a few for herself. He hesitantly expresses concern for her expenditure as the dazed woman makes her way to the till to ring them up, but Lavender quickly and firmly quashes his protests. "I've got nothing else to do with all my money but try to make a reasonable life for people like us. You're my poster boy and I'll dress you how I please. Now you finish that sundae. You're skinny."

Remus has a flash of Lavender as the newest Mrs. Weasley (as she'll soon be) scolding over a pack of red-headed children. He thinks it's a very nice picture, until he remembers her polo-necks and mandarin collars and long sleeves in the heat of July, of those scars and that way she glances up at the moon every night like he does. And he remembers how sadly she told him that Charlie was having a hard time understanding that she couldn't give him a family like that, not the normal way. She looks troubled by this when she tells him, but she puts such feelings away soon enough.

He dances with her at her wedding and he wears the set of robes she thinks suits him best (a dark charcoal, because it's not as harsh as black). Her cream wedding dress (with long, fitted satin sleeves and a high collar to hide her scars) is trimmed in lavender, ribbons of the same color woven with tiny pink roses through her long brown hair. Lavender looks like a Victorian princess, beautiful and starry-eyed when Charlie snatches her away for another dance and Remus wonders how this happens to people, because it seems so easy and simple when he looks at it from this distance. She hugs him goodbye before she and Charlie leave for Greece, smiles brilliantly at him and kisses him on the cheek.

He doesn't notice that there are no stars in Charlie's eyes until years later, when he sees them. Charlie is supposed to be in Romania for two weeks, and Lavender mopes around Remus' office, straightening things and reorganizing the cabinets and pushing food on him as she coaches him on the answers he's supposed to give in an upcoming interview (she writes all the answers, he just says them for her).

Remus takes Teddy to Nymphadora's for a Sunday afternoon visit because the little boy misses his mum. Charlie is in Nymphadora's kitchen, kissing Remus' ex-wife while he still wears the wedding band Lavender gave him. He is starry-eyed and Remus wants to kill him because Lavender wears her stars for him and he is stomping them out. Teddy almost understands, so he edges out of the kitchen as his father condenses into rage. He doesn't trust himself to speak much, so he only tells Lavender's husband, "You tell her or I will." He says that but he doesn't know if he could ever tell her because it will demolish what happiness she has (and so rightly deserves, because she is kind and generous and has somehow become his dearest friend).

It takes three days for Charlie to tell Lavender and every minute of her pretty happiness infuriates Remus because he knows it is about to be crushed. Charlie 'returns home' on a Thursday afternoon and Lavender is so thrilled to see him (like always, like always) and Remus can only sit in the parlor he uses as an office, blindly staring at another petition as he waits. It doesn't take long, and Lavender is quietly closing his office door behind her. Her stars are running down her sharp cheeks in streams; another love broken. Remus mourns this more than he ever mourned his own failed love; he never wore the stars in his eyes for Nymphadora. Lavender wore constellations for Charlie Weasley and now she is standing, pressed against his door, choking because he has ripped them all down from the sky.

"I'm sorry," she sobs, gracefully sliding down onto floor, curling her back and covering her face with her hands. "I couldn't make it anywhere else," she manages. "And I don't want anyone to see me cry like this."

He sits down next to her on the floor and she collapses against his shoulder, crying herself hollow with heartbreak until she has exhausted every reserve of energy and the afternoon has faded into evening. She struggles to her knees and he jumps up to help her. She can walk herself to her room, she insists, but he goes with her anyway to make sure she gets there and then transfigures the sofa in his office to a camp bed so he can be there when she wakes up.

As he curls up and tries to sleep, he wonders when he stopped being anyone.

Seamus Finnegan shows up at Lavender's door the next morning with bruised knuckles and an ugly, stolid look on his face that suggests his friend's husband is currently in a far worse state. Lavender's eyes widen and she opens her mouth to scold him, but the words get lost somewhere and she can only say thank you. Parvati arrives later in the day, canceling dinner plans with her fiancé to bring takeaway Chinese and ice cream. Lavender picks at the food and Remus retreats to his office while the two sit on the sofa in silence until Parvati has to go. When he goes to check on her, she pulls him down next to her and he watches the television with her late into the night until he realizes she's fallen asleep against the arm of the sofa. He thinks she's cried herself to sleep, but her face is dry.

She only cried in his office, that one single day when Charlie leaves her. She's not all right by any means; she's lost her enthusiasm with food (and for werewolves, with elevated metabolisms and too many days sick off the necessary evil of Wolfsbane, enthusiasm for food is the only way of maintaining weight) and he's now the one having to press ice cream and takeaway on her, because in just a few weeks she's grown alarmingly thin. If he thought her sad when she found him that day in the bookshop, she is hollow now. He finds her, sometimes, just standing in the kitchen or in her office or in the hallway, her eyes dull and hopeless as if she has no idea what to do with herself anymore.

He goes out shopping with her, taking her out of the house while Seamus and Daphne Greengrass unceremoniously toss all of Charlie's belongings out the window and down into the garden (Seamus later informs Remus and Lavender that he decided to ask the former Slytherin girl to marry him after she nailed, in his words, "that bloody fucker" straight in the head with one of his broken Snitches as he collected his belongings.)

It's the day before the full moon and Lavender spends money like it's going out of style. He only just stops her from trading in her (rarely used and year-old) Mercedes for a brand new Jaguar. She comes home with enough shopping bags as it is; he doesn't quite understand the what muggle money is worth in relation to wizarding currency but the stores she shops in look ridiculously high-end and all the numbers seem quite staggering. To be fair, she needs the clothing; she's dropped quite a bit of weight and everything she owns hangs off her, but Remus would rather take her to Florean's and fatten her back into her size eights. No woman of her height should weigh any less than nine stone, in his opinion, and he doubts she's making eight.

Lavender has never spent the full moon with any of the other werewolves who share her house. They all share a large, warded suite of rooms on the third floor, but Lavender locks herself in another suite in the cellar. When Remus offers to stay with her, he doesn't expect her to agree, but she does.

The unpleasant Wolfsbane does its work and he can still see the sad humanity in her amber wolf's eyes as she curls up on a plush rug and rests her head on her paws. She's very pretty, even as a wolf, more brown in her coat than his own grey. And she's still Lavender; he tries to leap up onto her cream-duvet-covered bed and she barks at him in reprimand, very human disgust somehow managing to write itself across her long canine face.

In the morning, when the moon sets and they pick their aching human bodies off the floor and pull on pajamas, he has some notion of propriety and makes to curl up on the chaise in the corner. Lavender collapses onto the bed and rolls her eyes, using what strength she has to reach up and grasp him by the shirtsleeve, pulling down on the bed and rolling over to the other side of the giant bed. "When you turn tonight, keep your paws off the bed. I'm allergic to us," she mumbles before falling asleep.

She's setting down a tray when he wakes up, tea and toast and Wolfsbane, which they both shoot, Lavender a little more hesitantly. Lavender's still not got over the dreadful taste; she gags at the bitterness while Remus merely twists his mouth in distaste. She pushes toast on him and puts too much sugar in his tea (well, too much sugar in a conventional sense--he likes it syrupy sweet). Calories, she insists, and he returns the favor with a huge bar of chocolate he had hidden in his robes. This is more interesting to her than it would have been before and she eats her half slowly. Moonrise isn't for a few hours, so Lavender digs through the bedding and finds the remote control. They watch television, listlessly sprawled amongst feather bedding.

"Thank you for talking me out of the car yesterday. That was ridiculous," she says during an advertisement, starting Remus out of his exhausted haze (and he rather likes the television, he usually reads during these useless, weary hours but this is much less taxing). She sounds like she wants to say something more and quiet overlays the chatter of the television.

"My dad used to do this. On my mum. Cheat," she says after a while. "He did it a lot, and he always came back just ever-so-sorry about it. He'd beg her to forgive him and promise to change and that it wouldn't ever happen again and he, oh, he loved her so much. And then she'd go out and spend his money to punish him. Like he cared about that. He'd just do it again, and every time was the last time she'd forgive him." She settles back into the cocoa-brown-cased pillow, still watching the television but not really seeing.

"And when Charlie told me he'd been cheating--God, with your ex-wife!--I just stood there, waiting. Waiting for him to beg forgiveness, to promise he'd ended it and that he'd never do it again and that he loved me. Just this one time, I was telling myself the whole time he was talking; just this one time I'd forgive him, because he wouldn't do it again. He wasn't going to be my dad and I wasn't going to be my mother." She's still not looking at him; her eyes are fixed intently on the screen. "And he isn't my dad--he never wanted me to forgive him, he doesn't want me at all anymore." There's a very long, anguished pause and when she continues on, her words are measured and tight, carefully cut away from the misery he's sure is swirling in her stomach. "He loves her and I think he always has. I think I've just been this huge waste of time for him, just a way of biding his time till she got over you." There's accusation, just a tinge of it, in the last syllable, and he knows an illogical little part of her is angry with him. How dare they end their marriage, how dare he allow Nymphadora to move on?

She finally curls onto her side, facing him. Her long brown hair pools into a tangle underneath her head. "These wartime romances are not working out for anyone, are they?" she comments, an ugly, sad smile twisting painfully across her pallid face.

Remus feels honor-bound to disagree. "Harry and Ginny are quite happy," he points out.

"Hero gets the girl. Doesn't count--Harry deserves that happy ending." He very much wants to ask her why she didn't merit such a reward (because Lavender is valiant in her own way and she's still fighting), but he can only think to bring up another example.

"Ron and Hermione, then." Remus knows he's erred when a stricken look ghosts over Lavender's face.

She manages to speak, but it's a little strained. "Doesn't count either. They've been in love with each other since they were eleven years old. That falls into the category of 'Childhood Destiny', not 'Wartime Romance.'" There's a sad, lonely bitterness in her voice again, and he desperately wishes he hadn't brought Ron into the conversation. Very quietly, she wonders aloud, "Why don't we all get something like that?"

He hasn't an answer for her.

She flips over onto her other side and laughs a little bitterly to herself. "So, which Weasley next?" she muses. "I've gone through two, and both have them have tossed me over for the loves of their lives. I must good luck for them in that regard. Not much good for me, though. 'Beware a red-haired man', indeed."

Remus wants to comfort her, but he's not really sure how because he's always been awkward with women. He thinks it would be too familiar of him to touch her, though that is his first intent; they're already in bed together and she'll probably think he's trying to start something. She doesn't say anything more, and they're quiet until she checks the clock and pulls him out of the bed right before moonrise. She's quite insistent that neither of them pollute the bed with allergens.

She turns around to face the wall as she peels off her red-silk pyjama top (she could afford to rip through a new pair of pyjamas every night of the full moon, but she likes these) and before he can turn away he catches a look of the marks ripping down her bony back, purple and red and ugly in the twilight. She wraps herself in a big blanket and sits on the floor in front of the empty fireplace, staring into it as though it were offering some great answer. He doesn't bother her, shedding his own clothing and wrapping up in another blanket before settling onto the chaise.

A little later, as a wolf, she merely curls up on the plush rug with that achingly human sadness in her wolf's eyes. Remus noses her gently and she doesn't snap at him, so he curls up next to her and rests his head on hers. Touch and comfort is so much easier to give and receive in this form, somehow.

It's a terrible, cruel time that Charlie chooses to abandon her. Just as Remus is helping Lavender fill out the familiar forms (sometimes her hand shakes too violently to hold a quill, but her parchments aren't tearstained) the wedding invitations pour in. Ron and Hermione are to be wed in early December, with Parvati and Terry only a few weeks later on New Years'. It seems almost torturous that Lavender must bear witness to so many happy beginnings while she is picking up in the ruins of her own marriage.

The worst is Harry and Ginny's wedding in September, barely two months after the dissolution of Lavender's marriage. Ginny, a particular friend of Lavender's (he was somehow surprised by this friendship, but Lavender quietly tells him that it was hard not to love those people she suffered with, hid with during her last year with the Carrows) visits one day and kindly tells Lavender that she needn't be a bridesmaid, needn't attend at all, really, if it will be too painful, but Lavender waves her off.

He can tell she's rethinking her dismissal of Ginny's offer as they process down the aisle after the ceremony, behind Ron and Hermione walking arm-in-arm as best man and bridesmaid. Lavender's face is a study in joy for her friend, but her grip on his arm tightens as they pass the row where Charlie sits with Nymphadora and Teddy, who is fidgeting with suppressed boredom after his brief stint as ring bearer. Barely two months have passed, but Nymphadora is noticeably pregnant and there is a pretty diamond ring on her left hand; everyone draws their conclusions and looks at Lavender pityingly throughout the reception until she disappears from her seat beside his when he goes to get her a drink.

He hears Charlie and Nymphadora arguing as he passes them in his search for her. Remus pauses only long enough to hear Nymphadora, nearly in tears, snap at Charlie. "I told you I shouldn't have come, Charlie. We've hurt that poor woman enough; she didn't need to see me here like this." There is sick guilt in her voice, and Remus remembers why he cared so much for her and some of his anger (with her, at least--he would still gladly join Seamus Finnegan in beating the stuffing out of Charlie) fades.

He finds Lavender in a coat room, staring blankly and picking at the dense lace of her long sleeves. When he asks he what she's doing (stupid, silly question) she answers quite simply, "I'm not crying." And this, for her at the moment, is most certainly doing something. The effort of it is showing in the tightness of her face her trembling hands. He stays with her until she can relax her face from the tight mask, and then he takes her back.

He dances with her until Seamus steals her away for a dance when his fiancée disappears (Lavender finds Daphne a little while later, off in the loo being ill, cursing, in her words, "that bloody Irish fucker" and wondering if she should move her wedding date up by a few months so she can walk down the aisle instead of waddle.) He bribes Teddy with a later bedtime next week and another cherry soda right this minute to ask Lavender to dance and she smiles something that's almost genuine as she accepts, her eyes flashing over at him.

He takes her home after the wedding couple leaves (she's had a little too much to drink and nearly Splinches herself) and she seems so sad to see him go, because the house is huge and quiet and dark behind her. He is almost afraid she is going to ask him in and that he will have to refuse (because he will refuse, he will, he tells himself, she's lonely and drunk and doesn't need that from him) but she doesn't, just smiles at him as he Disapparates back to his little cottage, which is sad and empty without his son.

She gets better, and sooner than he really expected. She throws herself into a Quidditch campaign for Alicia Spinnet, who has been banned from the Kestrels (and every other Quidditch team) by a decree from the Department of Games and Sports.

Of all the campaigns to which Lavender has dedicated herself, this is perhaps the most successful. She is after every official, captain, and team owner with a passion, letters and appearances and articles in every publication she can manage. It takes years, and Lavender is nearing thirty when the ban on werewolves in the Quidditch leagues is rescinded.

Lavender cries so violently at Alicia's first match that she has to sit down. An emerald-haired Teddy, ten years old and nearly sick from excitement at his first professional Quidditch match, jumps up onto the seat next to her and throws his arms around her neck, letting go only when the crowd cheers madly as Alicia makes the first goal.

Lavender bursts into tears all over again after a brief pause of watching the boy cheer, his hair flashing yellow to green and back again, this time wrapping her arms around Teddy's father, victory and pride shining through her tears as she looks at him (she's in especially high heels today and she's just barely taller than him). "We've done something today," she says quietly and Remus almost can't hear her over the roar of the crowd.

"And we'll do something tomorrow," he promises her. She smiles so widely and it doesn't matter that Charlie Weasley tore down her stars; Lavender Brown will make her own constellations.