Disclaimer: If I owned them, I wouldn't be writing this because this scene would never have happened. Also, the title is from a W. B. Yeats poem of the same name.
A/N: This doesn't explain or justify or shed light on that painful scene in which Remus tries to leave, but it helped me, writing it. Hopefully it helps you, too. Also, I hope the formatting isn't too painful: I'd like to use asterisks, as the sections are so short, but I can't.
There's something wrong. It's dark and the baby is weighing on her organs and she's holding the world together and there's something wrong. She reaches across to her husband and her hand closes on nothing but bedsheets.
Oh, she thinks. That's it.
He leaves the house early, under cover of darkness; leaves and walks, and walks and walks. He hates what he's doing, but he hates what he's done even more. The stars twinkle above him, and the setting moon stares down at him (west, he realizes, he's heading west). He walks and walks until the sun is warm on his back and he has no idea where he is, and then he Disapparates.
She finds a note, on the kitchen table, written in his firm and slanted hand, hesitation only visible in the lines of her name.
Dora –
I can't stay, you know I can't. I'm sorry – I wish it didn't have to be this way – but it does. I'm doing what I have to. If I don't come back, give the baby my love – tell him who I was.
Go to your parents; you'll be safe there.
I love you.
Remus
She burns it.
He doesn't know where Harry is, he realizes (for it became clear while he was walking, even more than it had been yesterday, that it is to Harry he must go). He's in Ottery St. Catchpole, and that's wrong; he doesn't even have to make it up to the Burrow to know that's wrong. He knows Harry. But nothing feels right.
Except for Grimmauld Place.
She doesn't go to her parents. She walks the house, lost, straightening things that don't need to be straightened and washing clean dishes. Housework, as usual, leaves her feeling worse than before, caught up in the futility of life. She tries to eat, but ends up nauseous. She conjures a Patronus for company and doesn't remember until it's looking at her, lupine eyes unblinking, what a bad idea that is.
She wonders why she's never enough for him.
She turns on the shower. It's when she's inside, feeling hot water pouring down her back, that she breaks down and cries, sinking slowly to the floor as the world breaks apart around her.
He doesn't want to go to Grimmauld Place. Grimmauld Place is darkness and death and depression and madness. Grimmauld Place is where Sirius lost his tenuous grip on sanity, where time stands still, where he fell in love. Grimmauld Place is doom.
So he walks the streets of London in Muggle clothes, pretending that he is not who he is.
When she looks in the mirror, she sees Dear Auntie Bella.
The sun is close to setting and he hasn't eaten all day and he doesn't know where he is until he looks round and finds himself a few blocks away from Grimmauld Place (his feet lead him there with no hesitation, and he berates his heart for lacking their courage). He keeps walking.
And stops short when he sees the two men leaning casually against the fence, staring at a house they cannot (must not) see. He cannot wait any more – it's time to face the truth.
She goes to bed early, shortly after the sun sets, and tosses and turns until falling asleep from pure disastrous exhaustion. Her dreams are full of emptiness.
He slams the door behind him, seething, regretting, and is nearly down the steps before he realizes, and in that moment he has a flash of pure clumsiness that would rival Tonks. When he's stopped himself from pitching headfirst onto the pavement in front of two Death Eaters, he Disapparates, and the frustration and anger and self-loathing writhing in his mind throw him off, and he finds himself nearly an hour from home. He walks.
It's nearly midnight when she hears the door open and shut, hears the locks being secured, feels the protections around the house being strengthened. By the time he turns around, she's halfway down the stairs, wand aimed straight at his heart.
"Remus?"
"Tonks." He's having trouble meeting her eyes. "You're not with your parents."
"No, I'm not." He looks up at that one, and there's a flash in his eyes that she can't recognize, and she realizes how she looks. "Oh, bollocks," she says, and she's still feeling tragic but less so since he's here, and so she shifts her hair lighter, dark brown, her mother's color, and her eyes grow warmer to match it. And now he knows it's her, and he comes to the bottom of the stairs, and looks straight up at her.
"I'm home, Dora," he says, "for good."