- Chapter Ninety-Six -
"Do you even like me?"

"Is there something wrong with your arm?" He asked with his eyes narrowed in concern but she just shook her head and no matter how deceiving she thought she was being, the slight trembling of her arm gave her away and Remus knew for a fact he hadn't grabbed her that hard.

"Remus, no-" She started to warn when his hand reached for her sleeve but before she could stop him or maybe swat his hand away, her sleeve was already rolled up and the cruel skull with the menacing snake was pitch black against her pale skin and moving with show for the boy to see

He said nothing and the silence rang loudly around the kitchens. Her heart hammered against her ribcage as he stared at it and she stared at him, stared at each individual hair on his head that dropped down with his tilted head. Then he only slowly looked up at her with a face no longer having a trace of affection or desire, their eyes met and Elladora wanted to cry at the look of betrayal glinting inside of them. It was an emotion she had never seen before and as his mouth tilted into a frown, she knew nothing good could come next.

She should've just run. She should've ripped her arm out of his grip again and ran without looking back until she knew she was safe and didn't hate to give any answers. Maybe it would've saved both of them of the pain they were about to endure, maybe Remus would think it was all just a dream, maybe if she ran then everything could've been resolved yesterday.

It would make her such an awful person but she could've tricked him into thinking what happened that night wasn't real, asked him what he was talking about, asked him if he's feeling okay, act the hardest she'd ever acted in her life so he would think he dreamt every single bit of it. Horrible, absolutely terrible, but maybe needed for both of their sakes.

Perhaps she was being selfish to think that. But in the back of her mind she knew it would be even more selfish if she stayed and tried to explain her actions away to protect herself. If she ran and pretended like it never happened, she'd be protecting Remus from the knowledge he wasn't supposed to have and everyone they cared about would be safe from that looming fact too.

However she didn't run. Instead she stayed frozen in place, staring brokenly into Remus' just as broken brown eyes. Like the irises had been cracked, Elladora felt as though all of his emotion was on displays and he couldn't hide it however much he wanted and she suspected she was the same but with an emotion of guilt instead of betrayal.

Neither knew what to say, that was obvious. Between them it was the quietest it had ever been apart from when they'd be reading and Elladora would accidentally fall asleep on his chest and he'd put the book down and just revel in the quiet with quite possibly his favourite person in his arms.

But this was far different and even though some of the elves were bustling away across the kitchen, all Elladora heard was silence.

"What-" He said, so quiet she barely even heard. It was a mutter of a flurry of negative emotions, one that it pained Elladora to her and the small pinch of his eyebrows as if he really didn't believe this was true was somehow even more heart-breaking than the small crack in his voice.

"Remus..." She said softly, gaping after her single word whilst her brain tried to configure something to say but even her valued intelligence couldn't seem to find anything to comprehend what was happening.

He dropped her arm, letting it fall back to her body limply as he took a step back and put his hands behind his head with a breath of incredulity. Across the kitchen he backtracked, staring at the blackened skin with an air of consternation. His hands left the back of his head and he ran them through his hair a couple of times before he started lightly pacing and moved his hand to cover in mouth as he took hesitant steps back and forth.

Elladora still stood near the door, frozen and motionless whilst she let Remus have his small freak out whilst her brain worked tirelessly to make something up. Every piece of her body itching for it to hurry up but the only thing it seemed to make her do was pull her sleeve back down so it covered the mark, hiding it from view once more.

Remus froze in his pacing, facing her again as she brought her hand away from the sleeve she had just pulled down. His arm came up to point at her clothed sleeve and he didn't say anything for a while before he finally let it all out with one breath.

"What the fuck?" He asked, letting his arm fall down to his side as he continued to stare wide-eyed at her arm he had seen the mark on. It was covered now but he knew it was there and Elladora looked down to the floor in terrible shame. "Dora, what the fuck?"

"I-" She cut herself off, still staring down at the floor with the sustained turning of the cogs in her brain. Despite the lack of emotion in the past week, her anxiety for the moment was causing a lump to form in her throat. "I...can explain."

"Oh, explain?" He asked loudly and she glanced up, frowning at his tone and the action of his throwing his hands up like he was exasperated with her but knowing she deserved everything he threw at her at that moment. "Explain? Seriously? Explain? Okay, sure, explain to me why exactly you're a fucking Death Eater!"

"It was a mistake-"

"A mistake?" He asked and she looked up properly this time, feeling the need to shrink back into herself at the blazing look in his eyes but his anger was perfectly valid and she stayed unmoving and silent whilst he looked at her. His was messy and his face red with emotion. "What, did You-Know-Who just trip over and his wand touched your skin?"

"No, but it's not what you think." She pleaded, taking a step forward and stopping when he stepped back, starting to hold up a hand as to protect himself from her. He paused when he realised what he had done, but made no move to take it down as they stared at each other.

"Not what I think? You have the Dark Mark on your arm! You're one of them." His voice cracked as he stared at the same arm that the permanent mark was purring satisfactorily on from under the sleeve. As though hit with a sudden realisation, he stood up slightly straighter. "It wasn't remedial defence, was it?"

"Remus-"

"Oh my god, they were meetings." He put his hands on his head again, gripping his hair tightly with a laugh of disbelief whilst he started to pace again. "You were going to Death Eater meetings and coming back like everything was normal! I-I hugged you and- and I took you on a date after you'd been in a meeting! You looked Lily in the eyes and smiled after being at a meeting."

"I have never once thought about hurting Lily!" She defended herself on a whim, slightly angry that he could even think that she would do that to her. He couldn't exactly be blamed but Elladora was nearly in physical pain at the thought of Lily coming to harm by her own hands. "I would never do that to her!"

"Would you do it to others?" He asked her, looking her in the eyes again and letting his chest heave with his heavy breaths. "Would you do it to Ernie? He's a muggle-born. Would you do it to Sirius and James? They're blood-traitors, aren't they?"

"How could you even think that?" She whispered, shaking her head at him and he laughed in disbelief again with a large shrug.

"You've been lying for however long, what else are you lying about?" He asked her spitefully and she frowned, she'd been lying about a lot. "Were you really not hot when you wore all those sweaters?"

"...No."

He scoffed. "Did you really have homework every Sunday?"

"No."

"Was Macnair really drunk?"

Elladora slowly looked up, both of their eyes were filled with tears and she knew she'd be shattering his affection for her with her next answer but she couldn't lie anymore, she didn't want to. He already knew the answer, she thought, by the way he was so apprehensively staring at her but she had to say it anyway. "...No."

A soft sob escaped him and he shut his mouth to prevent any further sounds coming out. A tear escaped her eyes and rolled down her cheek slowly, she wanted to race across the room and envelop him in the biggest hug ever. In times like this she would want to stuff her face into him and sob whilst he rubbed her back, kissed her head and told her soothing things but she couldn't do that now.

Not when he was the one she was feeling this way because of.

"Do you even like me?" He whispered hoarsely and she felt her stomach drop, turning into a feeling of bubbling sickness.

"Of course I do, how can you say that?" She cried out, forgetting all about their argument and stepping forward in seek of comfort and safety but he stepped back again, shaking his head and raising his hand again.

"No, no, I know that you-know-who recruits werewolves, Dumbledore told me!" He practically shouted at her and she sobbed out at his words, shaking her head frantically. Both were crying messes now, cheeks all red and vision blurry from the hot tears building up. "Is that why we started this? You've faked it all. You don't like me, you've had to put up with me for you-know-who."

"No, that is not it at all!" She begged, stepping forward but Remus swerved and turned so his back was facing the door just like Elladora's once had. She turned too so they had swapped places, she could've thrown up from the way he was staring at her. Betrayal...hatred.

Attempted hatred at most.

"Please, Remus, that is not it, you have to believe me." She said again but he didn't look like he was listening, his eyes were almost clouded over from the way he was thinking. He probably wasn't even listening but she had to tell him. "You were the one thing I wanted to keep away from all of this, I never wanted you to get hurt. I just wanted something for myself for once instead of doing things for every one and always treading on eggshells. I felt the best I ever have around you and I wouldn't have traded that for anything. I'd rather die than put you in danger!"

"When you came back from Easter, I always suspected there was something wrong with you." He spoke, seemingly completely disregarding what she had said. "Then that night you and Yaxley had some sort of conversation and then you kissed me, I-"

"No, Remus, I know it looks bad but-"

"I was such an idiot to believe that you actually liked me." He cried, breath hitching in his throat as he looked around the room and she continued to cry. "I really thought that I finally had something, but apparently not, it all circles back to the werewolf thing."

"It has nothing to do with the werewolf thing!" Her skin was on fire, burning angrily at his sheer inability to listen to her. His actions were most likely reasonable but the fact that he didn't listen irked her.

"Of course it's the werewolf thing! It's always the werewolf thing!" He yelled and she cried, shaking her head and spitting out angry nonsense that she begged he'd listen to. "It was too good be to true and I should've noticed because you were just too clingy-"

Elladora scoffed, at the end of her patience with his lack of attention where she was trying to explain her actions to him. Her brain had finally thought of something but it wasn't anything that could calm the fire, instead something that ignited it.

"You're one to talk, Mr can-i-have-a-fucking-hug?"

Remus stopped talking, going silent at her exclamation as they stared at one another; chests heaving and eyes blazing with anger. His face crumpled at her words, the sentence striking him hard in the chest and her own angry expression fell, the effect of her words on him obvious. It fell silent again and even the elves had stopped at the sound of their arguing.

"Remus-" She started but he was already out of the door, slamming it behind him and she swore under her breath, running out after him and calling his name but he had gone from her sights.

Up the stairs she went, determined to find him and apologise so sincerely but even when she got to the ground floor and looked around for him, the figure of her lover had disappeared and she was left stranded alone. Still crying and feeling like she could collapse at any minute, she hobbled her way back down the stairs in a retrace of her steps all the way back to the Slytherin common room.

The wall slid open painfully slow and she stormed into the room with frustration, another relationship ruined. She paced, just as Remus had done in the kitchens and whilst the rest of her house mates were sound asleep upstairs, she cried out in anger and sadness before swinging her hand around and hitting the radio that sat on the table down to the carpeted floor.

"So don't misunderstand me, you put the light in my life. Oh, you put the spark to the flame-"

Elladora cried out again and picked the radio up, tossing it across the common room in anger at the sound of that song. That fucking song that seemed to be everywhere, now it was taunting her along with the clock on the wall that ticked slowly as if warning her of her time. Today was the day but she couldn't think about that right now, all she could think about was the sound of the radio hitting the wall and switching to static for a moment as it fell.

Words tried to filter through as she paced, tugging at her sleeves and trying to calm her breaths that got caught over and over again in her throat. Her hands left her sleeves and she covered her face with them, sobbing into them as she walked to around the sofa and plopped down onto the cushion, still crying whilst the radio regained it's ability to play music without static.

"No bed of roses, no pleasure cruise. I consider it a challenge before the human race and I ain't gonna lose..."

Elladora recognised the voice of Freddie Mercury as she stared numbly at her lap with her hands on her forehead guarding the view from the fire that was burning through the night. Tears dripped from her face down to the skin on her legs being shown by the shorts, the summer night didn't grant her any more warmth than the black lake outside of the Slytherin Common Room did on a normal day.

"We are the champions, my friends and we'll keep on fighting till the end. We are the champions, we are the champions. No time for losers, 'Cause we are the champions of the World."

Elladora closed her eyes and the tune faded to a soft hum as her thoughts overtook reality. Everything was going to change.

•*•*•*•*•
4 chapters left guys
sorry for destroying moonra