Notes: For Syne who is too far away to cast a cheering charm. I did shamelessly steal this from westernredcedar, who generously beta’ed this version because she is that fantabulous :D
Remus didn’t need to consult a Lunar Almanac update him about the past weekend – not that he had an almanac any longer by the look and taste of things this morning. The unexpected partial lunar eclipse had meant that he couldn’t take the Wolfsbane. Despite the havoc he’d unleashed on his basement, however, the memory still brought a smile to his face.
Severus had swirled through the Floo, a fury in a whirlwind of dark robes, knocking the vial from Remus’s hand. After a quick Evanesco and a scathing comment about wasting meticulously gathered potionsingredients, Severus had demanded to know why Remus had not yet contacted him. Severus had stood very close, his voice growing simultaneously quieter and deeper, the rich timbre explaining that while the moon’s path was obscured, Remus would start to change back and the Aconite was likely to kill him. Remus had been shocked but not so much as to ignore that the scent of Severus’s adrenaline, boot polish and curry breath would likely do him in as well.
Remus didn’t remember climbing a short flight of stairs to his bedroom. When the pile of blankets he’d crawled under stopped his muscles from screaming, he remembered something else. Night Phlox! Severus smelled of Night Phlox – which didn’t mean much in itself, except that his dose on Saturday had also smelled like honey covered almonds and tasted of dark chocolate buried in the garden.
*
The scent’s vanishing woke Remus with a start. By his bed there was another vial of Wolfsbane, a glass of water and a note. Lunar effects are back on course. Drink this directly. S
A revised edition of the Lunar Almanac greeted Remus in the kitchen, filling him with atypical joy. The book opened to September with the same book mark Remus had tucked into the treatise on magical nocturnal flora he had given Severus last month.