(And with this chapter I declare the 'complete' option has been clicked.)

REMUS' POV.
*a decade + a while later*

I try to go out for a drink once a month. When I can afford it. Back to the pub where all of us sat as friends, back to the table in the corner that held so many memories. I try and raise a drink to all those I've lost. It serves me better than visiting each grave.

I pushed open the door all of their hands have touched many times and scuffled my way into the pub. An ache in my hip so stiff from the last transformation slowing me down. With each step a sharpness that mimicked the pain of each memory these walls held was physically felt.

A group of young wizards were sat in our table and I halted in my spot, now feeling extremely disoriented. The landlord knew to keep that table free for me on this day every month. The little money I received on this day, I tried to prioritise it to come to this exact table, our table, and it was taken. Beers scattered and spilt over the wood, laughter that seemed to taunt me bouncing from person to person.

That was once us.

The comparison snapped me out of my anger due to my routine being meddled with and I found myself a small two seater close by.

It didn't matter, I'm still here. Remembering. I don't have to sit at our table to do that.

I found myself unravelling the threads of my gloves whilst attempting to ground myself. Reminding myself of why I was here, as planned and that new people taking our table was an irrational thing to get upset about. They didn't know.

Despite this I found myself beginning to burn holes in the back of their heads with my eyes. Who were this group of twenty something year olds? I had never seen them before. Never heard their voices or laughter.

They almost felt threatening to me, as if they were replacing the memories my group had made on that table. Their group were stealing from me.

"No!" Someone shouted from the table.

"Your round!" Another laughed back and suddenly the defeated member stood and playfully shoved the person beside her.

I felt frozen, like my brain turned off or maybe thrown back in time and stuck there. I couldn't figure out how I was feeling. My heart felt as if it was beating faster and calmer all at the same time. Regardless, my fiddling hands felt heavy and still like weighted balls of cement and my eyes glued upon her like she the predator and me the prey. Did I feel scared?

"All the same again?" She asked the group.

I didn't recognise her voice.

She almost stormed past me to the bar, not giving me a second glance. She moved confidently. Big movements that weren't entirely graceful. I could hear her almost crashing into a table behind me.

When she marched past a fresh smell of sweet smoke wafted.

I didn't recognise the scent.

Before I knew it she was walking past again, slower now. A tray of beers in her hands and her friends immersed in whatever card game they were playing.

She hesitated beside me, the tray slightly wobbling.

"Oop- almost." She mumbled to herself before shuffling to our- their table once again.

I didn't recognise her.

I didn't recognise the rest of the group either, I knew that upon seeing them from an instant.

Something in my body was screaming at me that I did recognise her.

And that's when I saw it, as she bit her lip gently with concentration whilst laying down the tray on the table in front of me. Her eyes looking at her friends as she smiled.

The feeling of heaviness spread from my hands to the rest of my body now.

How?

How did she have her eyes? Her smile?

I could practically hear my heart beat as if it rested between my ears. My throat felt as if it could have been holding it, too.

The noise of the pub seemed to evaporate and all I could focus on was her.

This stranger.

This such familiar stranger.

I wanted to look away. I swear I was trying. My eyes were the only part of my body that seemed to be able to move, and yet they didn't move away from her.

She had pushed back her chair, swinging and balancing on its back legs as she sipped her beer.

It's as if she had almost shuffled out from the perfect circle of her group to be more noticeable to my gaze. More direct.

The stranger laughed.

I felt like I could only hear her, I didn't recognise the laugh. It wasn't familiar.

I considered if my lack of sleep was finally beginning to take a toll, was this the moment I was truly going insane? Starting to see my dead loved ones in the faces of strangers?

But I could see her...and in the moment I didn't seem to care.

She had Arty's smile.
Her eyes.

And as much as I was trying to figure it out...I didn't want to find out the answer. I didn't want to stop seeing it. To overthink the familiarity and lose her again.

I never thought I'd be able to see her again and here I was, illusion or not...she was here. In some way I couldn't make sense of.

"Remus!" A hand slapping me on the shoulder snapped me out of my trance. I turned around to see the landlord with a beer in hand.
"Sorry I couldn't save the table for you mate, stubborn lot this new generation of drinkers."

"I-oh...it doesn't matter." I struggled to get out real words.

"You alright mate? You look like you've seen a ghost. We haven't any here." He laughed as he handed me a drink.

"Perhaps you do." I said softly and glanced back at the stranger.

She was now looking directly at me and we caught eyes before I hurried my gaze away and down to my lap, embarrassed and a new sense of shame over the reality of my gawking.

I couldn't tell whether it was paranoia but I felt those familiar eyes staring at me while I was trying so hard to not get lost in them.

She isn't Arty.

My trembling fingers started picking at my already falling apart clothes. In attempt to distract my brain from racing thoughts.

I felt like a school boy again. Ashamed of his creased and cheap clothes in front of the gaze of a pretty girl. A sense of insecure immaturity I haven't felt in years. I hadn't felt young in years. Youth stolen from me by grief.

I felt as if I had aged twenty years in ten. My hair almost half grey already and my body not coping with the full moon at all anymore. It had had enough. I was simply tired. I was in my early thirties with permanent lines around my sunken eyes. I looked defeated. Dreadful.

I hadn't particularly cared until now, feeling those eyes on me. I found myself reaching up to brush my hair out of my face, in attempt to comb it a bit better.

I tried to be confident, cracking my neck to lift my head higher as if I hadn't seen the love of my life flash before my eyes unexpectedly.

I glanced at the table of friends once more, the stranger wasn't watching me anymore. She had returned to the card game.

I could see her smirk at the other players.

It isn't normal to have such a strong reaction to someone so unfamiliar.

But she did feel familiar, in a new way.

Merlin, I'm so confused.

Who is she?

I must have been staring too intensely again because her eyes flickered over back to me through the gap between the heads of two of her friends.

My eyes darted down.

Stop being so weird, you old run down man. She's young. She's probably frightened.

I cleared my throat and adjusted my posture, sitting more up right and brushing down my lap before taking a large sip of my beer.

I attempted to look at the others around me, many familiar faces around that I regularly see. People that know to leave me alone on my visits here.

Suddenly a crash sounded from their table and I instinctively looked over with the fright of a loud noise.

"Winner!" One of them rejoiced and stood to celebrate.
"Round of shots on me!" They said and jogged over to the bar.

Leaving a perfect gap so that she was opposite me in perfect alignment and view.

I was about to rip my gaze away, fearful that it would linger too long yet again when she looked at me and smiled.

I couldn't help but smile back but I could feel my eyebrows furrowed together in a sadness, a longing.

Merlin it felt so good to be smiled and looked at by those features again.

She held my gaze. She seemed curious of me, not frightened as I perhaps would have thought.

All of a sudden she pushed her hands against the table and into a standing position, her eyes still locked with mine.

I watched her walk over to me. My heart beginning to thump harder, as if it were even possible.

Her eyes were so familiar.

So were her lips, her smile.

Heartbreakingly familiar.

But she didn't walk the same as Arty. She was bold with her movements, she was loud in her voice. She didn't share the same porcelain skin colour, or her pin straight hair. Instead had a short messy haircut of flicks that waved in all different directions.

Before I knew it she was stood at the other end of the two seater table I remained frozen and glued at.

"Are you going to keep staring at me or are you going to buy me a drink?" She said with a smirk and a playful glint in her eyes that already felt like home.

"You want me to buy you a drink?" I almost spluttered.

"Why not?" She shrugged as if it were no big deal.

It was to me.

"I'm a bit old, aren't I?" I tried to joke, my eyes shyly starting to look around the room. Annoyingly only now just gaining the ability to not look at her properly.

"How old are you?" She asked confidently.

"Thirty three." I glanced to look at her quickly for her reaction.

Shockingly she pulled herself a chair and sat down in front of me.

"So, are you going to buy me a drink or should I go back to my table?" She said.

"Oh um, yeah." I rushed out, pulling out my wallet and cringing at how I had to try and discreetly count the counts I had left.

I felt my gut gurgle with anxiety as I realised I didn't have enough. I exhaled a small disappointed sigh and suddenly her hand reached out onto mine, sending a shock through me. She took my wallet and gently closed it, setting it down on the table and pushing it towards me.

"Tell you what," she began.

I felt a shame and embarrassment that meant I couldn't quite look up from the table. A shame that I couldn't even buy a beautiful woman a drink when she asks for one.

"If I find you interesting...You can buy the next one some time." She proposed.

I managed to look up at her, with a questioning look.

"This one's on me." She said with a nod.

"No, you don't have to bother. I'm sorry." I said almost formally. I felt like an absolute charity case, she was pitying me surely?

"No." She said firmly and then rolled her eyes cheekily.
"How do I say this..." she lingered, her eyes searching for the words as if they were written in the ceiling.

She laughed. Still unfamiliar despite the feeling she gave me.

"I want to buy you a drink." She said and then locked eyes with me. I shyly looked away

"I...that's very nice of you but-" I said staring at my hands.

"And I didn't mind you staring. Stare."

There was that feeling again. Like I'm a teenage boy trying to keep composure again. I looked at her to see if she was joking, maybe teasing me like some girls used to do when I was growing up.

"What's your name?" She leant in, leaning on the table. Confident and interested.

No one had approached me like this since my late teens. I felt uncomfortable in the excitement of being perceived again.

"Remus." I said as casually as I could.

"And what do you drink Remus?" She asked.

"Whisky." I forced out.

She nodded and pushed herself up from her seated position like she had done moments before on the table we seemed to have in common.

"Aren't you going to ask what my name is?" She said spinning back round to me before she headed off to buy drinks.

Fuck.

"Oh shit sorry-" I mumbled.
"What's your name?" I asked sounding stupid.

She smiled brightly at me. Amused by my obvious lack of practice with socialising.

"I'm Tonks."