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*.·:·.*
Smoke coiled against the black sky like the castle itself was burning from the inside out. Spells split the night in violent streaks of green and red, throwing jagged light across shattered stone and crumbling archways. The air stank of blood and ash and magic stretched to its breaking point.
Remus Lupin barely registered any of it.
He had learned a long time ago how to move quickly and efficiently through battle—focused, never giving it the satisfaction of slowing him down. But the focus fractured the second he saw her.
She was standing near the edge of the courtyard, wand arm shaking, blood spilling down the side of her ribs like a crimson river carving through a pale cliff. She was upright, defiant, until another spell struck her. Her knees buckled, and the world contracted around that single motion.
No, no, no—
He was already moving before the thought finished forming. He ducked under a streak of green light that split the air where his head had been, shoving through the heat and noise. Someone shouted his name. It didn't matter. The war didn't matter.
His axis was tipping.
He reached her just as she fell the rest of the way, catching her weight without hesitation. She was lighter than she should've been, breaths coming in labored bursts that sounded like the war had already weaved its way into her lungs.
"Stay with me," he rasped, dragging her behind a collapsed wall. Rubble bit into his knees as he knelt. His hands shook as he pressed them over the largest of the wounds—Merlin, there was so much blood—but the trembling in his hands didn't help.
"Remus," she choked out, her voice rough and cracked, the single syllable a plea.
"I've got you," he said. He forced the words out as steady as he could, even though panic clawed at the back of his throat like an animal. "Look at me."
She did. Her eyes—still so devastatingly alive—found his, even as the light around them dimmed beneath the inevitable.
Another explosion shook the ground, sending a rain of grit over them. He barely blinked. His world had narrowed to the space of her pulse fluttering weakly beneath his fingers.
"Remus," she breathed again, and it sounded less like the plea it had been before. It was something worse: acceptance.
"No. No, love. Don't—" His voice broke. He pressed harder against the wound. "Help's coming. Do you hear me? You're not—"
A spell sizzled over their heads, close enough that the heat brushed his hair. He didn't flinch.
Her hand came up, clumsy and blood-slicked, and curled into his sleeve. Her fingers barely had the strength to hold, but they didn't need to. Remus would have let the world fall apart before he let her go.
