Author's Note: Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

Hogwarts: Assignment 7, Task #2, The Babysitter and the Clown Statue: Write about someone/something hiding in plain sight.

Warnings: Canonical prejudice.

Wigtown Wanderers, Chaser 2

Prompt: A character searches for a sense of belonging.

Additional prompts: 2. (Colour) Indigo, 3. (dialogue) "Have I told you how much I love you recently?" 8. (song) "Here's to Us" by Halestorm

Word count: 2414

Who We Belong To

On the outside, always looking in

Will I ever be more than I've always been?

'Cause I'm tap, tap, tapping on the glass.

I'm waving through a window.

—Waving Through The Window

"Have I told you lately how much I love you?" Dora asked, pulling the sheets around herself as she sat up in bed. She reached out for the cup of coffee he was bringing her way.

"I do know you love coffee," Remus said, climbing back in beside her. They clinked their cups together in a toast—the last few days had kicked their respective asses, by the power of overtime at the Ministry and also that damned moon.

"Do you also love sharing blankets?" he asked.

"Selectively so," Dora said, throwing back part of the duvet to let him crawl back in.

"Mmkay," he said, kissing the top of her magenta head before settling down in bed. "I can live with those odds."

"Are you going to put that in your vows when I marry the crap out of you?" Dora asked, peeking up at him innocently from the rim of her coffee cup.

"Really? On a beautiful Sunday morning?" Remus said.

"We can talk about this every morning..." Dora shrugged. She tightened her fingers around her cup. "I'm mostly on night shifts for the next month anyways…"

"I told you; there are too many logistics in the way of even the world's best wedding planner," Remus said.

"Molly's corrupted you," Dora grinned. "I said it once and I'll say it again: getting married isn't complicated. All it takes is two people who belong to each other. Check?"

"Check," Remus confirmed, kissing the spot just above her ear that drove her mad. "Listen, I agree that Molly has excessive enthusiasm for flowers and decorations, but she's not wrong that there are logistics."

"Alright, let's break those down," Dora said. "Cake is easy; that's got to be chocolate because of who you are as a person, possibly double chocolate…"

"Here's something more complicated than cake: the right place," Remus said. "Setting. Location…"

"Anywhere," Dora said.

"Not everywhere is safe," Remus said.

"Okay," Dora said. "It doesn't have to be anything fancy. My parents got married at The Hog's Head during a trip to Hogsmeade in their seventh year, under her family's nose…"

James didn't grab Remus, he knew Remus hated that, so he just sprinted in front of him and stopped him on his trekk to Dumbledore's office.

"Remus," James said. "Remus, think this through…"

"I'm not an idiot, on top of the rest," Remus said. He had made up his mind; he was telling the headmaster that he couldn't stay here as a student. He had told him so nearly a month ago, the morning after the incident, and if it hadn't been for Peter Remus might have left there and then. But now the tension between he and Sirius was becoming unbearable.

"That's not what I meant and you know it," James said. "Look, Sirius is an idiot…"

"It's more than that, James," Remus said. "He's an idiot when he tries to snort scrambled eggs or releases mice in McGonagall's class to see if she'll start chasing them down. This was… this was me. This was me being an idiot."

"What?" James frowned for a second. "No, this was definitely Sirius' doing. Snape never would have gone if Padfoot hadn't…"

"And Snape wouldn't have had anywhere to go if it weren't for me, if I weren't like this," Remus said. He ran his palms over his eyes. "James, this is why. This is why it gets harder when people know. I can't even stand trips to Hogsmeade anymore—not even the used bookstore, because you can see the Shrieking Shack from it and I just remember… I just remember how much better it is to hide but now I can't because of Sirius but it's not Sirius' fault, it's me James..."

"One mistake does not a friendship break, Moony," James said evenly. He put a hand on Remus' shoulder and looked at him solemnly. "Nor does one bad night a month."

Remus snickered. "You're an idiot too."

"Yeah," James agreed. "Now come back to the Common Room, Sirius will apologize and Peter will break out his hot chocolate stash to seal the peace…"

"That was just an example," Dora said, casually swinging her legs over his and rearranging her pillows (and his) to lean back and make herself comfortable. She wrapped her hands around her cup and gave it some thought. "Bill and Fleur's new place is quite nice, ever fancy a beach wedding?"

Mum closed her book and looked over to him.

"Is your book good, love?" she asked, digging her toes in the sand. Mum loved it here; whenever they visited her parents in the seaside village where she'd grown up, she spent as much time as she could on the beach. She'd spread her blanket on the sand to read, walk Remus up and down the shoreline, tell him old stories and legends…

"It's okay," Remus said.

Mum considered this a second, chewing on her lower lip before taking off her sunglasses.

"You know, those boys playing football in the sand—I'm sure they'd let you join," she said. "Look, their teams are uneven…"

"The team that's missing players is skin," he pointed out to her. "They've all got their shirts off."

"That's okay love, we're at the beach—it's normal. You can just…" She seemed to realise the problem as she spoke because no, Remus could not just. The scratches were getting bigger and bigger, taking more and more room on his back and more and more time to heal.

"Here," Mum said, opening her book for him. "This chapter is particularly interesting… let's trade."

"The beach is overrated, I suppose," Dora said. "Hey; you know Hannah McNimue?"

"Lead singer of the Weird Sisters, yes." Remus grinned. He had also tutored her niece while he was at Hogwarts and gotten her through her NEWTs, which gave him access to an infinity of concert tickets—which he was planning to put to good use.

"Yeah, she married her bloke right in Diagon Alley—at the Ministry outpost where you can get your Apparating license renewed," Dora said. "I got my license there when I was sixteen, you know? Press never even saw it coming…"

Arms full of books to trade in at Flourish and Blotts, Remus made his way across Diagon Alley. Luckily, it was early enough in the summer that the back-to-school shopping crowd was of no concern—it was eager vacationers he had to worry about. And perhaps his own distraction; he got caught in his thoughts and nearly ran into the woman in front of him when she slowed down to let a cart full of owl cages cross the road.

Someone behind him slammed into him, and the top five books of his pile slid to the ground.

"I'm so sorry," Remus said, turning around. With a quick wandless spell, he let the books hover in the air and turned around to offer his hand to the witch.

"Oh, not at all, such a zoo here…" she said dismissively, taking his hand. When she was back on her feet she looked at him, really looked at him, and the smile drained from her face.

"You're him," she said suddenly. "You're that werewolf that taught at Hogwarts!"

She pulled her hand back so quickly, as if she could pull it back through time to make it as if they'd never touched. Not even a helping hand.

But her words were loud and they couldn't be taken back—and suddenly Remus wasn't hiding anymore.

"I could go on and on, but I don't really. We could just go to the Ministry, get the piece of paper signed and go on our married ways after…" Dora suggested.

Remus shook his head and took a sip of his coffee.

"I know that for you it's a happy place, it's where you do all your work and were trained for it, but for me it's got… well, memories," he said. "It's the place where I had to go sign my name on the werewolf registry. It's the place I got dragged to and interrogated when Fenrir Greyback became active again, in case I knew anything. It's where I have to report to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures whenever they call me, at random, and answer as many unnecessary and invasive questions as they ask."

"Okay," Dora said, nodding along. "Okay, I see what you mean. That's not the kind of place where you can get married."

"Thank you," Remus said. He took her hand, playing with her fingers and running his fingertips over her chipped nail polish.

"I'm in love with you," he added. "And I… I think that's all I can do for you, Dora. Love you. I don't fit in very many places, in a normal life and... That's what I've been trying to explain to you; you deserve better…"

"You said it yourself that I deserve what I want, and what I want is you," she said. She brought his free hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles.

"You're…" Remus wasn't sure what to say next; there were just too many options.

"Here's to us," Dora said, raising her cup of coffee. "And to many more years of bickering in bed until the coffee gets lukewarm."

"Do you need a top up?"

"Don't you dare get out of this bed, Remus Lupin."

"I think we did a damned fine job at losing them," Dora said, surveying the tavern for a sign of that Death Eater patrol that'd been tailing them with the methodological gaze of an Auror. Remus loved that look; it reminded her just how smart and sharp and powerful she was.

"Finally," Remus said, lowering the hood of his cloak. The tavern they'd stumbled into was in the middle of nowhere in the grassy slopes of the Highlands.

"Mad-Eye's not expecting a report until tomorrow morning," Dora said. "We could just go home right now."

A band was playing by the bar, which was manned by a bartender with thick arms entertaining a few seemingly well-versed customers. Tables were bustling, the windows were foggy, the hearth glowed… After the cold night they'd stumbled out of and the amount of Death Eaters they'd had to shake, the whole place looked even warmer and homier to Remus.

"Or maybe we could stick around," Remus said. "For just one more drink."

Dora looked a little surprised but she nodded it off. "Oh. Oh, yeah…"

She looked around the tavern.

"There's kind of a crowd," Dora said quietly, giving him a look that opened the door for them to leave and bundle up at home on their own.

"It's fine," Remus said. "What are the chances of us knowing anybody here? Besides, I… I want to be with you."

"Yeah, sure," Dora said. "I'll get us a table—grab whatever's on tap for me?"

"Sure," Remus said.

"Unless it's awful," Dora called after him after he turned away. She couldn't see it, but he couldn't help but smile.

The table she got them was in a prime spot for both keeping an eye on the door and people watching for fun. She took his hand across the table and asked him about work—since he was managing to snag shifts organizing and cataloguing Flourish and Blotts' backroom, but they'd been whisked away on this Order mission just after he'd gotten home. He'd made a few ridiculous finds that made her laugh.

While the Auror Department was under even more pressure and threats of confidentiality than usual, she did dig up a few anecdotes about Kingsley charming free cookies out of the witch manning the cafeteria and updated him on her office prank war. He even found something to say about her latest initiative (charming all of Dawlish's quills so that they formed a bird that flew around the office whenever he needed them) that made her throw her head back and laugh.

He could listen to that laugh forever. When it came pouring out of her like a tidal wave, it wrapped all around him and made it more than clear that he belonged to her entirely.

He looked around the pub without seeing a single familiar face or anybody particularly concerned with his scars or looks… in fact, nobody here was concerned with him at all. He was just another patron, despite not being a regular. Nobody was questioning his right to sit in a tavern with a drink or to sit with this beautiful woman and her beautiful laugh. In a strange twist, by not belonging here at all, Remus… well, belonged.

He turned back to Dora who was lowering her mug from her lips and smiling again.

To her, more than anything else. He belonged to her. That was real.

"Dora…" he said.

"Yes?" she asked.

"What colour would you turn your hair for a special occasion?" Remus asked.

"It depends on the occasion," Dora said. She did pause to consider the question for a minute before scrunching up her nose. As if an egg had cracked on the top of her head and was oozing out colour, a dark and rich indigo colour spread down from the roots of her hair and down to the tips. She swept her hair over her shoulder.

"Beautiful," he said.

"Why do you ask?" Dora frowned.

"Remember that thing I said I would never agree to?" Remus asked.

Dora snickered. "Which one?"

Remus smiled and gave her a second. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. She looked around the tavern before turning back to him.

"Here?" Dora asked. "Now?"

"We're two more faces in a crowd that doesn't mean anything," Remus said, reaching across the table to take her hands. "But we mean everything to each other. Everybody belongs to this place. Let's belong to each other."

She still looked a little bit breathless.

"Really?" she double checked.

"Yes," Remus said. "Yes, let's… if you'll still have me."

Dora grinned. The indigo of her hair really made her amber eyes pop.

"Let's go check with the bartender, see if anybody in this place is ordained." She got up and reached for his hand again. Her smile was particularly bright.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing. I just told you that I'd marry the crap out of you someday, Remus Lupin," she said.

Shipping Wars

Ship (Team): Nymphadora Tonks/Remus Lupin

List (Prompt): Fall Medium 1 ("Vegas" wedding/Elopement)

Fall Bingo

Space Address (Prompt): 3C (Gathering)

Stacked with: MC4A; Shipping War; Hogwarts

Individual Challenge(s): More than England; Black Ribbon; Black Ribbon Redux; Gryffindor MC; Hufflepuff MC; Brush; Seeds; Golden Times; Old Shoes; Trope it Up B ("I don't believe in things"); Trope it Up C (Bed sharing); Themes & Things A (Reflection); Themes & Things B (Protection); Themes & Things C (Blanket); True Colours; Rian-Russo Inversion; Short Jog; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux

Representation(s): NA

Word Count: 2414