InsaneJournal

RP Log: Lily & Remus
Who: Lily Potter & Remus Lupin
When: Early Tuesday afternoon, Nov. 10
Where: Brookstanton Memorial Library
What: Lily gets off work early to go check up on Remus after the break-in.
Rating: G

There were words on the page, but Remus was having the devil's own time doing more than discerning each individual one. Every time he'd gotten three words into the sentence, the meaning was lost, and it was back to staring. It was back to turning over in his head that article in the Daily Prophet. Back to feeling like the air was being sucked out the room every time he tried to catch his breath. And then he noticed that his breath didn't need to be caught because he was holding it in, actually, and so he let it out -- and that kept happening. Earlier in the day Mrs Jones had been as understanding as he could have asked for, at least. The same Werewolf Registry that was keeping her daughter's file was in shambles, and with no count of what was taken, destroyed, and left behind. Remus didn't have the answers to the questions asked by a concerned mother, and when she asked if his file, too, was on those records, he merely nodded. And the conversation closed of its own will, really. There wasn't anything more to say, and less more to do than to wait and see. Remus settled his hand and underneath his jaw and narrowed his eyes at the open page, though it only made the print fall out of focus. Severus was away assisting in another portion of the library for the moment, but even when the other man was seated beside him, Remus hadn't paid him one knut of attention. It wasn't intentional, but the world went hazy the moment he tried to step outside of this thoughts. And then things were sharply painful once he retreated back into them. He could even recite the first half of the article by heart for how many times he'd poured over the words. Lily was at the Ministry when it'd all gone down and while, granted, she was on a very different floor and section of the large structure, she had been stunned to hear the ripple of gossip that flooded the halls and memos until an official announcement was sent out. She'd put her head down and tried to get as close to the department offices as possible, but it was predictably blocked off by the time she'd heard what exactly had happened. After that it hadn't been too difficult to get off work early, and after sending James a quick owl to let him know she was perfectly fine, she ducked out and apparated immediately to the library. Still in her work robes, red hair tied up in a practical but certainly a perfect bun, Lily entered Brookstanton Memorial Library with caution... although trying to look perfectly casual. She wasn't trying to avoid the management noticing she was here to see Remus, most who knew them knew they were friends and besides maybe being a distraction, there was no reason for them to question her stopping by his workplace. No, it was her other ex-friend... friend? ... that she was glancing around for self-consciously as she took a few more steps inside. She would have been uncomfortable but at least confident in her ability to just walk right in and very solidly pretend Severus didn't exist... before Halloween. Now, with their couple conversations since, she wasn't sure if that was warranted. He'd sent her some potions, after all. And listened to her vent when James was still in the hospital and she couldn't go to him... so now, she was very uncertain of what to do in person if she ran into Severus again. So she was hoping it wouldn't happen until she figured it out. But that was difficult considering he worked a desk over from Remus. Snaking around a bookcase near the front and pulling out a few random pieces of literature to pretend to be interested in, she held them up and subtly glanced around them toward the desks she knew the boys worked at. Seeing only Remus there, Lily breathed a sigh of relief and stuffed the books into the crook of her arm, figuring they'd be useful cover if someone accused her of distracting Remus from his responsibilities. She approached as quickly and quietly as one could in a library keeping an eye out in case Sev had just been nearby and she'd missed him, but she smiled a bit sympathetically at her newer friend when she got close. "Fancy seeing you here," she started light-heartedly. Remus jumped, his mind careening straight back from the distant plane it had been on, and he whipped his head around perhaps too quickly (if that pull of his neck muscles was any indication). A hand reached up to massage at the aggravated area as Remus found the owner of the voice in the form of Lily Potter. "Lily," he started, searching for a smile to greet her with, and finding one without too much digging needed. "Same back at you." He let the book in his hands go -- just as well given how little good focusing on it was doing -- and turned the rest of himself about on his chair to face her. A distraction from his own thoughts was always welcome. "You're... off from work early. Or on break?" He arched a brow. "...Did Sirius do something?" Like burn the flat down, his brain supplied. Lily's lips pursed in amusement and she shook her head, brows raising at the thought. "What? No, Merlin," she said with a slight laugh. She glanced around for a chair and found the closest was from the desk next to Remus's. Was it Sev's? Who knew. Lily grabbed it anyway and rolled it around the desk so she was sitting next to Remus and set her books down on his desk, opening one so it'd appear she was asking him something about it. Or something. Bending her head toward him, Lily lowered her voice as she got settled. "Unless he's the one who broke in to take your file, no, Sirius hasn't done a thing," she said quietly but wryly. It was only a second later that she thought she really had quite the habit of being to-the-point with Remus. Most people, really, but Remus was always the one to still seem a bit surprised whenever she did so. She paused only a moment before continuing. "How are you doing?" "Good," Remus practically sighed out. "Not that I automatically associate surprise visits with Sirius blowing things up, but..." He pulled a slight frown, shrugging. Sirius was a force of nature. Anything Remus could say of Sirius couldn't be contained by the English language as it presently stood -- or whatever the English language did as its preference of verb, really. ...And then that sudden shift in topics hit Remus straight upside the skull. Both brows drew upward in alarm, and Lily was right about as much as his apparent shock when she got straight to the point -- but in his defence, those points where always the sorts that were unpleasant, even if he had the time to brace. "I..." Oh, what was the use in skirting around it? "I've been having quite the rubbish day, but I like to think my chipper attitude and positive outlook is..." There was another shrug, coupled with a pitiful smile. "Working from the outside in. Any moment now, I fully expect to be convinced that today wasn't a nightmare." Lily gave him a slight smile in return and rest a hand on his arm for a moment. "That's the spirit," she told him before sighing and tucking a few loose strands of her red hair behind her ear. Studying him for a second, she moved to lean on the desk. "I tried to get a closer look but by the time I'd heard what had happened and been able to make it over to that side of the building, things had been long-since blocked off to anyone not authorized. Hopefully some of our friends in DMLE will have more details for us," she mused, pulling her gaze away and dragging her thumb along the edge of the book pages under her hand. "If anything, maybe this will delay those bloody ID cards?" she offered with a half-hearted shrug. "Maybe," Remus consented. He'd thought about all the avenues that things could take, and that was his favourite at the moment -- at least of the set that were feasible. And there weren't a terrible lot of feasible and semi-happy-ending situations, at that. Naturally, this left a wide gaping space to fill with the worst-case scenarios, which Remus's mind had gone to work on as was the habit of a habitual worrier. "As far as I can tell, my file is either still there, a pile of ashes, or in queue for someone's nefarious plans." He drew in a breath, looking to Lily. "And knowing my luck..." The words fell off. So much for feigning a positive attitude. Face scrunching in thought slightly, Lily considered those possibilities one at a time. "Well... the first wouldn't leave you any worse off than you were, which-" She gestured to the library around them. "- isn't so bad at all. Then, the second, well... free pass out of Werewolf legislation?" She smiled a bit at that and tried to look positive for a moment. "That's two out of those three possibilities being decent?" She knew it was kind of silly to pretend like there wasn't an extremely, even more likely possibility in his file being taken with the rest. "We won't let you be used for any nefarious plans unless they come from the brains of Potter & Black, I promise," she said finally, almost smirking at the fact that "Potter" now applied to both her and James, and thus gave her old, sort of dismissive way of referring to James and Sirius an entirely new meaning. That was the hope, at least. Things staying the same as they were wasn't anything awful, and a chance to skulk past the legislation would be a godsend, but the final one... It really didn't help to dwell on it. Merlin, if he could only stop. It never was that easy. "If you say so, Mrs Potter," Remus countered lightly, fairly smirking in return, for may God strike him down if he ever lost his sense of humour. "Anyhow, I was thinking about it... about what to do because there's no telling what happened unless the --" He made a gesture with his hands, but found that signalling out 'werewolf' wasn't happening. "Er. Furry problem brigade wants to send out a notice about the status of those files." Lily had to let out a light chuckle at that but rolled her eyes as he continued. "Right, and knowing their reliability, who knows if they'll even think to do so. God forbid they look bad," she said a bit sarcastically. She didn't loathe the Ministry by a long shot, but with each passing law that made their lives that much more difficult, she was finding herself less and less confident in certain departments' accountability and trustworthiness. She took the hand that was thumbing the pages and brought it up to rub her temple slightly, then leaned her head against it, her elbow keeping it propped up. "And with some being destroyed and some being taken... it's going to be really difficult to tell anyone what may have happened to their file specifically." Why did their lives have to be so frustrating, honestly? She should have been worrying Remus would starve due to an inability to visit the grocer's, not checking up on him to make sure he was mentally sound after finding out his personal Ministry file could have been stolen. Remus gave a nod. "Which makes me think that my best bet is to... well, do absolutely nothing," he replied. Sit around and wait. That was the grand scheme, the culmination of hours of thought, the best his self-admittedly somewhat clever-ish mind could dream up: sit and wait. Fret was in there, as well, but it happened whether planned or not. "I can't imagine going down to the offices and inquiring if my file is still on record would help if it wasn't. Counter-productive, that." He fumbled the buttons on his right cuff, laughing mildly as he started in on the next bit: "And if I wind up jailed after the week ends, then I'll know I guessed wrong, I suppose." Lily gave him a bit of a look and shook her head. "You are not going to wind up in jail, Remus, there's no reason for that," she told him firmly enough, even though she knew he was mostly kidding. "And it might not be the worst to ask about your file... if it is there and you don't get word on it by the start of next week, it might be nice to know. If it's gone... then we can hope for incineration until the investigation turns something up?" She thought it over in her mind. "Do any of our DMLE friends," by which she more meant connections, "know about your Furry Little Problem?" she asked curiously. "I can't remember now... if so, you could ask them to let you know the status of the files or how the investigation's going. For all we know this could be some ridiculously organized and annoying anti-furry group that will at worst advertise their knowledge and try to continue to be bigots as per usual." No, Lily wasn't biased at all she thought with the slight upturn of her lips. But Remus shook his head right back, true to stubborn Lupin nature. "Depending on the perspective, there's plenty of reason to lock us up," he remarked, grimly at that. He raised a hand to rub idly at the spot where he pulled a muscle earlier, finding the area sore more than painful now. A surreptitious look was taken at the immediate surroundings, and Remus found them consolingly vacant. "Yeah, Auror Bones -- although I'd imagine he's a tad busy lately. Podmore, but likewise. I suppose I can ask them to shuffle around and see if anything turns up, but if they can't... I don't know that I like the idea of alerting anyone of the possibility that I had a file. It sort of means that -- even if there isn't one now -- there was one, and I..." He leaned into his hands, pushing his hair out of his face, and exhaling. "Then there could be two copies up for circulation, and..." Remus closed his eyes. "And I'm going to be sick." Frowning with that, Lily sat up a bit and rested a hand on the back of his shoulder. "Remus..." she started sympathetically. "You'll be fine. You've got plenty going for you, and you're not part of the problem... people who've done something to be arrested for." Lily would not allow Remus to go to jail. Period. And she knew Sirius and James and Peter felt the same. "And while bringing it up to Mr. Bones or Mr. Podmore might alert them to the fact you have a file... well, remember, they know you well enough to know you're... good to have around." Her brows raised pointedly, hinting at the Order. "You're an asset, and obviously a good person, they'll stand up for you. Along with the rest of us very, very stubborn people." She gave him a nod. "And don't forget Dumbledore." "Oh, no --" Remus backed out of his near-agonised slouch, realising that it was doing little more than making him seem theatrical. He kept his voice low; it wouldn't carry more than a few steps outside of where he and Lily were conversing. "They know about me. They sat me down some time ago. I about tossed up on Podmore's shoes, too, the moment I realised what they were telling me." His brow knitted lightly at the memory of it all. The two D. M. L. E. workers hadn't been the most kind in their approach, and add on top of that how stomach-upending someone -- some two, really -- finding that out was? It was a right old jolly time. "But I didn't," Remus added as an afterthought. "You know what? I'm thinking of the what-if's too much. I'll write them, and I'll... I'll ask. And if they don't know --" Remus stopped, mouth twisting into a grimace at the immediate surfacing of that 'if' so soon after he'd pointed out how little the word was helping. "I'll write them," he finished. As sympathetic as Lily was, it was hard for her to not give Remus a look that was somewhere in between skeptical and amused as he spoke about telling Edgar and Sturgis about his secret. She understood the severity of it. The fact that she was still allowed nowhere near the Shrieking Shack during his transformations, and the care which all the boys had taken to go out of their way becoming animagi to stay safe and keep the wolf inside Remus calmer impressed upon her just how serious a situation Remus's was. It was hard to imagine Remus ever being one of those werewolves they read about in the paper, but when Lily really thought about it, she knew during those three nights of the month he wasn't the Remus they knew and loved. She accepted it though, and refused to let Remus be treated poorly outside of that, so she was still able to find a bit of the humour in his skittish behavior on the subject. At least when it came to people Lily was fairly sure wouldn't judge him poorly because of it. "You always think about what-if's too much. I'm used to it," she replied, giving his shoulder an affectionate pat before lowering her hand to the desk again. "I really don't think it will hurt, Remus, especially if they already know and you'd been previously registered and had things going pretty well for you in the first place." She paused and shrugged. "Besides, I'll hex them if they give you trouble over it. Don't think I'm scared of an Auror," she joked, very obviously not skilled enough to take out any of their Auror friends, let alone ever having the actual desire to. She'd kept her voice low though, just in case someone was listening. A small smile was Remus's best effort in return. Fewer people in the world had the same ability Lily did to remain collected and level-headed about something that would otherwise be cause for someone to back away and sever ties. Remus never pretended like his condition wasn't worth fearing, but it was always a solace to know there were brave enough souls to keep him company. To be his friend. Offer to hex Aurors for his sake, even. "Spoken like a true Gryffindor, Lily," he countered around a vaguely smirk-like turn of his lips. "But, really... I think I can stand to ask first. Before I think myself into a stupor, at least." He let out a soft laugh. "And after I get up the guts to --" A noise at the other end of the room caught his attention, putting a cease on his reply as he listened in. Severus could be returning at any moment, and it didn't take any large amount of guesswork to figure out that Lily probably wasn't visiting to speak with, or to run into, her old friend. Remus knew enough of the story as it happened between those two to draw that conclusion, and to feel somewhat confident in getting it right. Lily paused as well, glancing up and waiting, but upon not seeing anyone approach, she looked back toward Remus. "You've got the guts to ask them, if that's what you were going to say," she said stubbornly. She really hoped Severus wasn't going to come back soon. With a sigh, though, she closed her book. "Look, though, I should probably get going... I was able to get work off early, thank you magical rain, but..." She glanced at the desk next to Remus's. "I wouldn't want to be here to make things awkward." Her face brightened after a moment, however. "Why don't you and Sirius come over for dinner tonight?" she offered, figuring James would have no problem with it. "I've got the time to go pick up some groceries for it, and even if I burned it all, it'll still probably be more nutritious than possibly expired lunch meat I found in your fridge this weekend." Her lip curled a bit with the thought. Boys. "And here I was about to say: run -- run, while you still can." Looking back at Lily from where the noise had pulled his attention to, he caught sight of her closing up the book. Technically, he wasn't on break to be having the conversation, come to think of it. She'd have to be going, then, and he'd have to try to get some work done. "But dodging the awkward bullet? Also a good reason." There was a slight expression of amusement in the way his held his brows marginally higher than their natural level. Besides, with the topic having made a sharp turn into an invitation to dinner, Remus was able to find a good deal more to grin about. "Lily, how are we supposed to live as proper bachelors when you keep tidying up?" But he gave her a nod, all the same. "I'll pass it along to Sirius when I get home. Something tells me he wouldn't mind the idea of food that hasn't been sitting on a shelf for God knows how long. I'm sold, myself." Grinning back, Lily scooted her chair from it's place and shoved the books in his direction. "Sorry to give you things to reshelve," she said as an aside, not looking that sorry at all. "I'm glad, though, I'll get to the store and let James know and all that... come by whenever you can." With that, she reached over to give him a quick hug from the side and stood to go. "Let me know if you hear anything, or need anything, etcetera." She pulled the chair back and brought it around to the other desk once more. "Will do." Remus pushed the books back on his desk; he could stand to wait until Severus was back on station at the neighbouring desk to put them away, and then he'd take his sweet time with it. The hug was semi-returned -- in as much as Remus could from the odd angle it came at him from -- and with a small salute, so was the only thing left to say: "I'll see you later, then." Nodding and giving him a small wave and a warm smile, Lily stepped away from the pair of desks, sparing only one more glance at the surroundings for a certain Slytherin alumnis. "Later, Remus," she said, and then she was headed out the door, already pulling her wand from the inside of her robes to apparate to the store. Attempting to cook would take her mind off things for now, and she hoped eating said cooking would relax Remus as well. It was funny how these four boys she'd only been acquaintances with until her last few years of school had become something of her new family. Sure, she still had her closest girlfriends, but there was something that drove Lily to take care of the blokes, even Sirius, in their heavily sarcastic way. She figured that was part of the deal, like marrying into a band of brothers of sorts, and she'd reflected many times before that she didn't actually mind in the least.