WHO: Remus Lupin & Petunia Dursley WHEN: September 26th, after this WHERE: Outside the Cottage WHAT: Remus walks Petunia home. WARNINGS: No
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Remus had his head lowered and was looking at the sidewalk as he kept pace with Petunia underneath the quiet night sky. It was quite later, later than he usually was out on a work night, but there were exceptions to be made. He'd already called in for a substitute for the following morning. He just didn't want to have to handle the typical routine so soon after Teddy's departure. He wanted time.
And, typically, he wouldn't have left Hermione alone in the house even though she wasn't his daughter and was old enough to be alone. He just felt like he needed to be there. He needed to demonstrate a sense of normalcy in this very abnormal circumstance they were living in. He felt it was important for a child to have as clear of a stable foundation as possible. Thankfully, though, the Marauders had also come to help cheer him up; and were staying at the house while he walked Petunia home.
He lifted his head and spotted the Cottage off in the distance. A sad smile crossed over his expression as he came to a slower pace, turning his gaze. "Petunia," he said, loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to disturb the other rows of house. "Can we talk for a moment?"
Petunia had been happy to have Remus offer to walk her home. Even if she hadn’t managed to get the courage up to say anything to him, she’d taken every moment that she could to be around him. It was easy enough considering she had gotten to know Hermione and seemed to be quite adept at coming up with excuses to come over to the house. Plus, with the full, she knew that he would likely not have the energy to do anything the next day, so she could easily make up some excuse to bring breakfast or something.
She smoothed her dress down when he said her name, turning to look at him.
Talk. He wanted to talk. That could either be a good thing or a bad thing. Had she been obvious? Had Lily said something? Maybe he was going to tell her that he couldn’t do anything now. He had just lost his son and that was understandable. Petunia couldn’t fault him for that.
Still...she kept her expression as controlled as she could. “Of course.” She was British after all. She understood a stiff upper lip as well as the rest of them. “What did you want to talk about?”
He sucked in a breath against the cooler night air. Texas would never be like the cool and damp temperatures of their home country, but having resided in the state now for some time, he could say with certainty that it'd cooled down considerably as they'd moved into the Fall.
Teddy was gone. A day before, his son had been at his apartment having grilled cheese and tomato soup in company with himself and Hermione. Teddy hadn't tried to leave or asked to. It was a firm reminded that chance could come at any moment and they were all rather powerless to stop it. And, well, the way Remus was seeing it was that they had two options. They could live in dread or they could make each moment count. And he'd lived in dread for more years than he'd like to count. He had just a few years left back home and he knew that those years were some of his most active, after a decade of more or less self imposed exile.
He didn't want to do that here.
"Things can change here so quickly," he opted to say with a heavy sigh. Looking to her, he gave a small pressing smile. "We make plans and then some higher power intervenes and tosses them to the side."
Petunia’s expression softened a little at his words. “Things change quickly everywhere.” It wasn’t said meanly. It was just that she’d known quite a bit about plans that had been thrown to the side. She hadn’t expected Lily’s death, hadn’t expected Harry coming to stay with her, hadn’t expected the zombies. She could go on and on about the things that had changed quickly for her. Here was just...a very different setting in the end with different players. Or, really, some of the same, but not at the same time.
“I can barely remember what I set out to do anymore.” But she wasn’t sure what exactly that had to do with them. Naturally Teddy had just recently left. Perhaps it was something about that. Perhaps he’d just wanted someone to talk to. She could understand losing a child. She’d lost two in a way. Even if one was her nephew in all technicalities.
There was a moment of hesitation before she reached out to rest her hand on his arm lightly. At least she could convey her being there for him.
"That's quite true," he agreed. He'd experienced quite a few world changes back home. A young boy being nearly tore apart by a mad man, a slightly older boy being brought into the friendly fold of a small group, and a Halloween night where everything came crashing down. Change was possible with the blink of an eye.
He nodded his head in agreement. He remembered what he'd been working to achieve back home, though only because it'd been something he'd so drastically wanted. He had wanted to be a teacher. His courses here in Literature were a nice second place but he'd rather have been at Hogwarts.
His eyes cast to her hand and he smiled more. "There was something I had wanted to do today," he confessed as he kept his eyes upon her hand. "Teddy and I discussed it just yesterday."
It took most of her self restraint not to ask what it was that he meant. She knew Remus was Remus and so she had to let him come out and say the things that he wanted to say, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want him to say it. He wasn’t looking at her. Maybe it was just something that he and Teddy had meant to do. Taking in a deep breath, Petunia let it out and hoped that by the end of exhaling, she would be done wanting to lightly shake him until he spoke. She was fairly convinced that that would not solve anything.
“Oh?” She followed his gaze to her hand, wondering for a moment if she wasn’t meant to touch his arm. Only he didn’t seem displeased, just fixated. Like he was going to say something that was difficult to say while looking at someone. Or maybe he just wanted to look at her hand for some reason.
“Did you two have plans for today?”
"We did not," he replied swiftly before shifting. He brought his own hand up to slide underneath the palm of hers, lifting it from his arm, while holding it delicately against his fingertips. He slid his hand down a moment later so that he was able to fold his fingertips around her hand, holding it in his own. "We'd discussed the notion of defining our lives here, separate, from home," he explained, before lifting his eyes to look her in the eye.
"We talked about you."
As much as she refused to be prone to flights of fancy, Petunia wasn’t altogether unsure that her heart had fluttered unusually in her chest...or perhaps it was just the feeling of butterflies in her stomach. Remus holding her hand wasn’t the way she’d expected this conversation to go, but she wasn’t upset that it was going that way.
She looked at him for a moment, entirely uncertain of what to say. She felt the words there, but she couldn’t get them out. It wasn’t exactly unusual for her, but this was a different thing. “About me?”
Way to sound like a bloody parrot, Petunia.
“Nothing bad, I hope.”
"Nothing bad," he reassured her, giving the smallest smile.
"I told him I would like to see you more frequently," he explained, nerves still eating away at him. This was not something he was prone to do. He'd never actually expressed his feelings for anyone in this way. He hadn't allowed for them to reach the surface, for starters. He'd always been so afraid of what being with another person could mean. It felt selfish, as though he were predisposing them to his life, which he felt no one deserved.
He was more open to the idea now that he had hindsight. He could open himself up and things could turn out alright. They had with Tonks in his actual future, hadn't they? Things had been bumpy. He'd made mistakes. But they were happy. Even if it was brief.
But here?
He wanted to see what could happen if he went out on a limb and expressed himself. And there were few people he cared about more than Petunia these days. "Perhaps just ourselves alone?"
For a moment, Petunia was still trying to figure out what he was talking about because he was so painfully unusual with his manner of asking things. She understood this part of him because of being at home, but then he’d never been quite so awkward toward her there. Mostly he’d been awkward around other people in her general presence and she’d slowly come to understand it. Vernon had been particularly straightforward about these things, but Remus was not so much.
“Are you saying that you would like to go on dates?” Because see more of her...but alone, well, she had to hope it was dates and not just suggestion, but the latter didn’t sound like a very Remus Lupin thing to do, so she couldn’t imagine that it was that.
"Yes," he replied but then paused, frowning momentarily, "Eventually," he quickly added. He didn't want to have this begin on a somber evening such as his son's disappearance. "I'd like it to be known that...I would like to go on dates. I thought it important to let you know since..."
Since people had no way of knowing if they'd be around the next day or not.
"But tonight isn't the night to ask. But maybe... we can revisit the subject in a few days? If you want to, I mean. Consider...dates."
Petunia smiled. It felt like the world had shifted just a little in that moment. Eventually seemed like a while, but it meant that it might happen. She wanted to go on dates. It hadn’t been something she’d been able to tell him, but it was the truth. Then again, she lived in a world where the girl did not tell the man that they liked them. She figured that he may have eventually figured it out. Or Lily would have told him.
“A few days,” she agreed. She considered her next action for a few moments before carefully reaching for Remus’ hand and squeezing lightly. “I would very much like to consider dates. Plural.” Because if he did not take her for more than one...well, she supposed she would be fine with that, but she had always enjoyed the dating part of things. Even the smallest things could be considered a date. Though, not just sitting around one’s house. That was not a date.