The bride shows up half an hour late, with electric orange hair and singe marks on her auror robes. We don’t have to do this, Remus says quietly, touching his fingertips to the new bruise on her cheek. You know we don’t have to do this.
There is blood on her trousers from where Leach bled out (hands scrabbling at his throat, his eyes wide and white as he struggled for breath—he’d been a few years ahead of her at Hogwarts and she’d been too busy trying to defend their position to notice when he’d gone still—)
I do, she tells Remus, who has his own fresh scars, deep shadows under his eyes. I want to. I want to.
it’s only few days from the full moon, so you may kiss the bride tastes of wolfsbane potion and his stubble, rough at her lower lip.
She transfigures her wedding band into a bracelet as Remus slips a few galleons to the only magistrate willing to witness to an illegal intermarriage. But Remus’s hand is warm when they step out into the night, and for a little while, she can pretend they are not going to die.
.
