⠀ ❝ And in the back of her mind, Katie knew that her words were a lie. Because if her nightmares could creep up into her mind and become her reality, she would be damned if this Remus Lupin - his lips, his hands, his ragged breath, his willing rec...
[ Katie began to laugh in both disbelief and utter bewilderment. "Oh my god. You're a lunatic. An absolute fucking lunatic." ]
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"Kate, Lily, come take a look at this," Remus called.
Katie and Lily shared a look before easing their way off of James' bed, their books left opened on the mattress. James, Sirius, and Peter had all gotten detention, but Remus always had an uncanny ability of avoiding getting caught along with them.
"Look at Tolbert's name." Remus pointed a finger at a stationary figure on the Marauder's Map. Katie inched forward, squinting to see the tiny letters next to the word "Defense Against the Dark Arts office". She blinked once to make sure she'd seen it correctly.
The name didn't say Malvolio Tolbert. It read Edward Tolbert.
"So we were right," Katie said, her mind numbing. Speculating about it was different from knowing — Tolbert had been in a relationship with her mother. Her jaw ticked with frustration at the questions that had no answers that kept piling up in her brain.
"What if the map's made a mistake? That's possible isn't it?" Lily cast a worried glance in Katie's direction before looking to Remus for an answer.
Remus shook his head. "No, the map doesn't lie."
"Are you sure there could've been—"
"No. We made sure that everything about this map was true and up to date."
Lily sent another glance in Katie's direction. "That means—"
"He's the guy in the picture," Katie finished for her. She rubbed her temples. There was something about knowing for sure that Tolbert had at one point been in relations with her mother off-put her.
The question of "What happened between them that was so bad that she never mentioned him?" flicked disturbingly in her mind.
Katie pushed off of Remus' chair, striding to the drawer next to James' bed. Within it she found the picture of her mother and Tolbert, looking so uncannily like her and James.
She slouched down on the bed, her shoulders dejected as she skimmed the picture once more, taking in the expressions on both their faces. They were in love, there was no denying it.
She flipped the picture to the back once more, staring at the lettering 'Edward and Eleanor after she caught the game-winning snitch.' and willing for the words to change into something else, anything else.
