No One You Can Save
Author's Notes: Thanks to the wonderful Dimgwrthien for her services as a beta.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter does not belong to me and neither does All You Need is Love. That belong to the Beatles. I am making no profit from this work.
Remus stared into his young lover's eyes as she lay with her head in his lap, looking up at him. "Do you think this is the end?"
"No. We have time. Someone will save us."
"Really."
"There's no one you can save that can't be saved," she replied cryptically, closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep. He stared out the barred window. The moon was still waning. She may be right. He kissed her on the forehead and followed her to sleep.
---
"I think we'll die of scurvy long before the full moon," she announced, as they were eating the day's ration of bread and water. "We need vitamins. Though, I have to admit I've always thought I would go out like a pirate. I wanted to be a pirate when I was six. More than anything."
There was little to do. Once they had ascertained how they had achieved their current situation and that there was no getting out of the room and what their eventual fate would be, there only left intimacy and talking about everything. Her stories of growing up as a shape-shifter and a half-blood Black, through to tales of auror training. His stories of his childhood, then his bittersweet school years followed by a lonely adulthood.
"What happened to that dream?" he asked. Somehow, he could picture her at the head of a ship, cutlass in hand.
"I met some of the outlaws in my family. It took away all my romantic fantasies of breaking the law," she replied, moving across the room and curling up to him. She had been dwelling on her childhood so much lately.
She was relatively happy that evening, so he raised the topic again. "I want it to be me."
She pulled away, tears welling in her dark eyes. "Stop thinking that way." She grabbed the steel knife off the floor and placed it in her boot, then refused to talk to him the entire rest of the evening, before she drifted off to sleep.
Remus started through the bars. There was no light that evening in their small cell and no moon hanging in the sky.
---
She told him the story of her parents. How her mother came to love a man she had been raised to hate. How, on summer days, her dad would sing an old Muggle song whilst dancing in the kitchen with her and her mother. She told Remus how it was right, that all you ever needed was love. Like them, they would survive.
As each day passed, she sounded less and less convinced of herself. "Just wait," she would say, they will find us, Kingsley, or Mad-Eye, or Harry.
She then started to tell him that she could fend him off.
"A hungry adult male werewolf in a confined space, with that small dagger?"
"I've been trained."
He didn't believe her, but she wouldn't let him anywhere near the steel knife in her boot.
"I couldn't go on living if I killed you."
"Neither could I."
"So let me do it myself."
"I can't live without you."
The moon rose that night, a nearly three-quarters. She never watched it. He couldn't stop himself.
---
It was the final day. The sun was setting. They no longer moved more than they needed to; the bread hadn't been enough to sustain them for a long period of time. They were starving - her hair brown was lifelessly stuck to her forehead, and her cheekbones prominent. Remus saw nothing but her beauty.
"What do you want more than anything, other than a way out?" she asked, knowing the answer. She had asked it many times through their stay.
"I want to take you dancing, in the snow, under the full moon."
She turned to him and grinned, "Let's do it."
She got up grabbed his hand and started singing.
He twirled her in the light of the setting sun as she sang her mantra. "All you need is love, love. Love is all you need."
After sunset, she was exhausted and sat down.
"I love you," she said wearily as she curled up with him in the corner. She was so weak. "Don't worry about me, I've been trained." By now she was half asleep.
"Yes." He kissed her forehead. "I love you."
Once she lost consciousness, he reached for her boot, determined never again to see the moon.