A Dance Through Thyme (Harry Potter)

Glasscherben

Decided to put this one up a little early. Hope you enjoy xx

Shards of Glass

Remus winced as the heavy oak door of the Room of Requirement shut behind him – not because of the injuries he now possessed, but because it made more noise than what he had intended. Now Hermione would wake up scared and then almost certainly be angry with him.

James had said that she hadn’t exactly been in the best mood when he had seen her and had to pass his message on. Yet, Remus could hardly blame her. She had every right to be angry when he had been so vague with her. It was for her own safety that he did not tell her what kind of a monster he really was during the full moon.

“Who’s there?” a shaky voice came out of the dark. Remus could just about make out one of the pokers from the fireplace seemingly holding itself aloft in the dark. It moved forwards slightly, and this allowed enough light from the dying embers of the fire to illuminate that it was in fact Hermione holding the iron poker in the air, ready to strike.

“Relax, Hermione,” said Remus, in the calmest voice which he could muster. “It’s only me; please don’t hit me with that.”

Hermione lowered the poker, but her gaze did not shift.

“Oh, I thought that you weren’t going to be able to come over until tomorrow morning. What are you doing? It’s well past midnight.”

Remus shrugged his shoulder as best as he could given the shooting pain which travelled across the bruise that was swiftly forming across his back.

“It was my turn to patrol the corridors tonight...” his voice slowly died away as he thought about the best way to let Hermione know that he would need her help to heal where he couldn’t quite reach on his back. He could have asked one of the other Marauders, but he did not want them knowing that it had happened again. Sirius and James in particular would have gone completely mental and wanted to beat the lights out of Rowle, and Remus did not have the physical strength to restrain them both at once. Madam Pomfrey could have also helped, but she would have asked too many questions.

“What’s wrong?” he heard Hermione ask, her voice losing all sleepiness as she sensed his hesitation.

“Ah, that’s a very good question....” Remus trailed off again.

“Remus,” Hermione reproached. “Tell me what is going on. Where were you the other day when we were supposed to have our date?”

In the absence of a wand, Hermione used a box of muggle matches to light a single taper and use this to light all the lamps across her lounge room. Turning to face Remus, it was only in this light that she was able to see how dishevelled his clothes were. In fact, she could see a hint of purple across the side of Remus’ neck, moving down towards his back.

“I knew it...” she muttered, stepping closer towards him. “I am going to kill James.”

“No, don’t hate James. He doesn’t know about this.”

“Then why did you send him to cancel our date the other day. You don’t mean to say that you’ve been hiding these injuries for days?”

Hermione mentally planned a painful death for James whilst she waited for Remus to explain himself.

“I haven’t been hiding any injuries from James, or from anyone else for that matter. At least I haven’t seen him yet to decide whether or not I want to tell him. Rowle only did this about fifteen minutes ago. I missed our date on Friday because of something entirely different and unrelated.”