Boys Will Be Bugs

Chapter 131: Rehearsals

Remus had no intention of returning to Hogwarts for the remainder of his seventh year, content as he was to begin his new life in Selene's flat and tend to the pub that he had seemingly always been destined to work at. He wanted to focus on rebuilding everything he had worked towards, because there were so many loose ends he felt he couldn't yet move on from. He had to figure out what his future in the Order was going to look like, because he knew full well that Dumbledore wasn't happy about how the mission had ended.

Remus didn't care; the last thing on his mind during the aftermath of the attack was whether or not Dumbledore would be disappointed, but even so... the Order of the Phoenix was the main group fighting against Voldemort, so Remus had no choice but to at least pretend he was participating, when in reality his loyalty remained with the True Order and helping to clean up after the attack.

In the following few days and weeks, everything was mostly up in the air. Some of the residents were found, and some were eventually declared dead, and some had probably even defected to the new pack because Remus doubted if Arianell's pack would have been satisfied to leave empty handed. Morgana had not gone with them, though. Remus knew this, because she eventually showed up in one of the villages that Selene was sending the now homeless werewolves to, desperately searching for a new place to live. Once she realised that Remus was alive and well, she requested to see him.

He was nervous, of course, and he knew he should have been angry at her for not trying to stop Arianell in the first place, but after Luke's death, it was simply nice to see a familiar face and conclude that she had managed to escape. She didn't have a lot of info on the rest of the residents, although a few of the adults had followed her to safety and were now in the same situation: vying for a new home and hoping to be reunited with their loved ones.

"Have you visited your daughter?" Remus asked, after the awkward greeting between them where the guilt on Morgana's face was depressingly obvious. She apologised profusely for acting like a coward, insisting that she had only been thinking of her daughter and not herself. Remus let her apologise, because he didn't have much he even wanted to say to her.

"Of course not," she said. "It's still far too dangerous."

"I'm sure Selene can help you, if you ask. I'd rather know that your daughter does actually get to see you, if she's the reason you ran in the first place." Morgana looked down at her feet and sighed.

"She doesn't even remember me," she said quietly. "I'm just some strange woman to her."

"You'll always be strange if you never meet her," replied Remus. "Is that why you've never tried, because you're scared?"

"It is a risk," she insisted. "But... well, what if she hates me?" Remus chuckled suddenly, even though he knew the conversation wasn't funny in the slightest.

"You're the one who advised me to make the first move with my dad, and now you're being a hypocrite."

"Well, I was speaking from your father's perspective... it's not easy living as a parent with a child who hates you. I was trying to save myself from that." Remus simply shrugged.

"It's up to you," he said. "If you change your mind, Selene will help you out." He was ready for the conversation to end, but he turned back to her for a moment. "I don't blame you for what happened, by the way," he said. "I'm glad your kid didn't lose their mum, because Merlin knows too much of that has happened so far. Just don't... don't waste it."

Remus had no intention of returning to Hogwarts... and yet, a lot of his friends were still attempting to sit their NEWTs, and as the days creeped by, he couldn't help but feel a slight nagging guilt that he had given up on reaching his last day of school just because he was scared to face a few cowardly Slytherins. Lyall suggested that he sit his NEWTs regardless, because maybe he would manage to scrape through them with the knowledge he had already built up, while Selene suggested that he return just for some temporary protection that Hogwarts was guaranteed to offer from the outside world.