NOTHING GIRL || Remus Lupin

-Thirty Eight: Spinning Gold-

And Here's What you Missed At: Hogwarts

He leapt through the air and then BANG!  Remus was blasted sideways. He could feel his vision fading to nothing, succumbing to the vicious pain tearing through his shoulder.

Finally he looked up, and his last, hazy view of the world was a pair of blue eyes hovering over him, lit up by hellfire.

.....................................

Remus cracked his eyes open.

It felt like he had been passing out too much recently. Frankly, he was sick of it. A canopy of trees swayed above him as early morning sunlight trickled through them. His left side was conspicuously warm. He tilted his head to see a small wood fire, crackling merrily away on the forest floor. Knelt over this fire, adding the small bits of greenery necessary to build it's flame, was Helia Blacksmith.

She still had her uniform on, black hair tumbled forward into her darkest-blue eyes. Remus had almost forgotten the exact colour of those eyes. The freckles on her cheeks were more pronounced, somehow, away from the halls of their school.

She noticed his movement before he had chance to decide how to react.

"Good morning, Gryffindor." Her voice was still empty.

Gryffindor. Not Moon Boy or Remus or Wolfy or even just Lupin. Remus began to struggle into a sitting position, but a sharp pain in his shoulder forced him back down with a hiss. Helia stood and made her way over to him.

"Can you stand?" Her voice was slightly clipped, as if his infirm state was nothing but a minor annoyance in her busy schedule.

Remus took it as a challenge, gripping the bark of the tree that he had been leaning against and using it to lever himself upwards. He gripped the trunk tightly as he stood, and was rewarded by Helia's eyebrows rising slightly. His triumph was short lived, however, as one unsteady, swaying step away from the tree sent him tumbling back to the earth with a groan.

He heard Helia's impatient sigh. "That's what I thought."

 A pale, outstretched hand hovered in his vision. Seeing no other option, Remus took it, and pretended that he couldn't feel the thrum of electricity that shocked through his skin. Remus was heaved upwards, the breath stolen from him as Helia slid her arm under his and round his shoulder to support him. She was surprisingly strong.

"You can speak, you know." Helia said after a short pause.

"Can I?" Remus had intended it as a joke, but it came out raspy and flat and all too serious. He felt Helia stiffen against him and instantly regretted it.

"Clearly." She said shortly. They inched forward, and Helia let out a frustrated sound. "This is taking too long." She announced, before flicking her wand to extinguish the fire and then turning without warning, dragging Remus into side-along apparition.

Crack!

He couldn't breath. The world was closing in around him. He was-

Crack!

Helia caught him again as Remus gasped and clutched at his throat. They had landed in front of a house. It was packed in against the others on it's street, front garden overflowing with weeds. The pasty white paint was chipped and peeling and the wood of the windowsills looked like it was rotting away. Two steps lead up to an old, battered door. This was not where he had expected Helia Blacksmith to live.

Helia positioned him so his uninjured shoulder was leaning against the wall while she hopped up to the second step to unlock the door. It was such a childish thing, to miss the first step, that Remus felt the ghost of a smile brush his mouth.