"being fearless isn't the point. that's impossible. it's learning how to control your fear and how to be free from it."

*

The minute her class of Gryffindor and Slytherin third years shuffled in for class one September morning, Eva knew something was wrong. For starters, each student flooded in fifteen minutes prior to the start of class. Even offer was their behavior. Generally, she had to break up at least one Gryffindor-Slytherin spat before the period began, but no one argued. Their silence was a fog, slowly curling through the rows of desks and smothering all it covered.

Nevertheless, Eva clapped her hands together once they had all taken their seats. "Good morning!"

A few of them mumbled responses, but no one directly engaged her. Still, most of the students stared at her, their eyes wide. Harry in particular looked quite unnerved.

She bit her lip and glanced down at her hands. Of course, this caused her to notice her tattoos, and she quickly pulled her sleeve down before anyone could notice her scar. Instead of dwelling on the uneasiness of the moment, she cleared her throat and continued on.

"Today, we'll be continuing our work on cheering charms," she said as she picked up her wand from on top of a stack of books. "And from the looks on your faces, I think some of you could use one."

Silence.

"Okay, honestly, what's going on? I know I'm no Dumbledore, but I'm not that dull."

"Please, Professor!" Hermione said, sticking her hand up in the air, although her voice shook a little. She'd gotten taller over the summer, Eva noticed. They were all growing up. "We just came from a lesson on boggarts."

"Oh," Eva said sympathetically, recalling all of her friends' boggarts from years and years ago. It was scary to think that some of them had come true. Instead of pushing forward with the lesson, she sat on the corner of her desk. "They're nasty creatures. I know it's awful to see your own worst fear. Is everyone all right?"

Mumbles of "yes" and "mhm" swept through the classroom.

"I'm glad. If anyone needs to talk after class, my door is always open. You're never a bother, and I rarely have something to do." Eva stood up and retrieved her wand for the second time. "So for today's lesson, you're going to need your wands and a partner. Go on, move seats if you'd like."

No one moved.

Eva looked at them all blankly. She was becoming more and more concerned. "What's actually wrong?"

Neville tentatively raised his hand, and she nodded to him with a gentle smile. "We saw Professor Lupin's boggart."

"You did?" Eva tried to think of what they could have possibly seen. There were so many. The pair had horrors in their past that schoolchildren shouldn't have to witness. Even though she knew asking might be prying, she had a feeling that if she didn't ask, they would tell. "What... what was it?"

"It was... it was you," Ron finished, his face scrunching up in a mix of confusion and repulsion. All of the Gryffindors and Slytherins wore similar perturbed expressions.

Eva hid her emotions well, but her fingers twitched at her side. "I- me?"

"You were dead," Harry said softly, staring down at his quill. "All bloody and scratched up."

"It was awful," lamented Seamus.

Now that their secret was officially out, other students began to chime in. Eva could barely keep up with their comments.

"And all the color drained from his face-"

"I thought he was gonna pass out-"

"He didn't look good to begin with, honestly, all pale and tired-"

"He just stared at it for a second-"

"Then he got rid of it-"

"With Ridikulus-"

"And he ended class early."

"Okay." Eva finally found her voice. "That's enough. Settle down and we'll have a talk."

Once the students had ceased chiming over each other, she sat on the corner of her desk for the second time. A stray curl fell out of her clip, and she redid her hair to keep her hands busy as she talked.

"First of all, I am one hundred percent fine. Not bloody, not scratched, and certainly not dead."

"Why would that be his fear, though?" Draco asked. "I mean, how likely is something like that to occur?"

Eva trusted Remus enough to believe that an incident like that wasn't likely at all, but it broke her heart to know that his hurting her scared him more than anything else.

"What you have to understand is the mentality of many in my generation. We grew up in the war. We fought through it, and we saw horrific things." She closed her eyes, trying not to picture the corpses of her friends.

Marlene's blank eyes staring up at the night sky. James' body sprawled out in the hallway of the Potter cottage. Lily's red hair covering her pale face. Kriss' blood-soaked cardigan. Peter's mangled finger on the street.

When she called to mind the memories that haunted her nightmares, she almost thought that he deserved it.

"Wait, you fought in the war?" Ron asked, impressed.

"Yes," Eva said shortly, coming back into the moment in a rush. "And that's as far as we'll discuss it."

There was a sharpness to her voice that the students rarely heard from their professor. Harry watched her, his gaze worried. She never talked about her past, even with him. The more he thought about it, the more he realized how little he truly knew of her.

"Please take your wands out and pick a partner. You know the charm. Get started, I'll... I'll be right back."

As soon as the students started breaking into pairs, Eva hurried out of her classroom and down the hall. A few of the portraits greeted her jovially, but she barely spared them more than a passing wave. At the end of the hall, she stopped at a door and pushed it open.

"Remus?"

He was sitting at his desk, hunched over a book as usual, his glasses pushed up his scarred nose. With the full moon approaching, he looked sicker than usual as he stood up.

"Eva? What're you doing here? Don't you have a class? What-?"

The rest of his sentence was lost as Eva pulled him into a tight hug.

"I just wanted you to know," Eva said softly, eyes closed as her chin rested on his shoulder, still wrapped in an embrace they both needed, "that I wouldn't be standing here without you."

*

Thunder crashed so loudly that it could be heard even over the din of the Great Hall during dinner time. Enchanted pumpkins floated above the students as they enjoyed on of Hogwarts' best feasts. The house elves always outdid themselves for it.

Professor McGonagall smiled serenely at the student body, happy that they were happy, and above all, that they were safe. So far, nothing had gone wrong. No criminals had broken through the school's repulsive guards. She had to admit, when she thought of her ex-student's appearance on his wanted poster, she was slightly grateful for the presence of the dementors.

Predictably, two seats at the head table remained empty.

Her heart clenched as she thought of them, still mourning after twelve years. They weren't the only ones who still mourned James and Lily. Every time McGonagall thought of James Potter asking Lily Evans out on a date with various levels of creativity, sadness washed over her in waves.

Sometimes she wondered how she had survived and they hadn't. There was nothing as deadening as outliving her students, and she'd outlived several.

At least Eva had Remus. The young woman was strong in ways that many would never understand, but she'd lost too much. McGonagall thought of Eva like the daughter she never had, wanting to protect her at all costs and knowing she couldn't. Remus had been her shoulder to cry on as her world caved in.

The night was October 31, 1993.

*

The sound of the crackling fire and an occasional flipping page kept Eva's mind at ease. She kept her eyes on her sketches, but even as she continued to draw Francis sitting on her windowsill, her hand kept wobbling. For once, it wasn't because of Halloween. She just felt shaky.

In the last few years, she had gotten to a mental place where the mere thought of James and Lily didn't send her into a deep depression. In fact, she was enjoying the quiet night with her friend immensely. It just wasn't easy to go out and celebrate.

Eva popped another marshmallow in her mouth and tucked her knees under a blanket, resting her head on his shoulder. "Want another s'more?"

"No, but you can pass me another piece of chocolate. Please and thank you." Remus carefully bookmarked his place in a tattered copy of Les Miserables before accepting the piece of candy. "This is nice."

"Yeah, it is," she said, nodding. "I suppose our absence from dinner is doing less than nothing to deny us being a couple, though."

"We are a couple." Remus winked. "A couple of friends."

"Best friends."

"Indeed."

The rain hammered against her window violently. An occasional flash of lightning illuminated Remus' office. Neither paid any mind to the storm, focusing on the warmth of companionship.

Eva's mind drifted as she sketched, remembering all of the friends she saw only in dreams and photographs. It was an old ache, but it never really dulled. She focused on one in particular, a memory of the weeks after her mother's death. "Remus?"

"Yeah?"

"I miss... I miss Peter."

There was a beat of silence. Remus removed his glasses and ran a tired hand down his face, recalling another one of his fallen brothers.

"I do, too," he said.

Peter was always safe to him. Not in a protective way, but in a reliable one. The pair met on the Hogwarts Express because they were both too nervous to introduce themselves to anyone else. He was always there for him, always ready to offer a piece of decent advice or a piece of candy. Peter was the best listener he'd ever met, and Remus felt that he owed a great deal to his friend.

Back in their fifth year, it was Peter who figured out how to transform into an Animagi first, and so he was the first one to accompany Remus on a full moon. James got the hang of it a few weeks later, and about a day after that, Sirius officially joined the crew.

And so the Marauders were formed.

"I miss his hugs. And his cooking. And his laugh." Eva sighed and pulled more of the blanket over herself. "I miss everything."

Remus blinked back a few tears. The lives of Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, & Prongs seemed like lives of different people entirely. All the pranks, inside jokes, vacations, memories. How had he somehow been a part of such a brotherhood, only for it to be torn in half in a single night? Two dead, two living. Not to mention the other members of his family, a girl who loved him despite his scars and three sisters who never stopped fussing over him. If it wasn't for Eva, he often wondered where he would be.

"Remus?"

"Yeah?"

"I might go down to the feast."

He turned to look at her, surprised. "Really?"

"Mhm. I could really go for a pumpkin bar right now, and most of the students have probably headed to their common rooms by now."

"I'll join you."

Eva and Remus set off together for the Great Hall. She had been right. Most of the students seemed to be returning to their common rooms in droves. Much to her amusement, the sight of the two professors caused quite a bit of whispering and giggling.

A crowd began to form on a set of steps going up towards the Gryffindor dormitory. At first, Eva tried to continue through like nothing was wrong (mischief was to be expected in a common room that housed the Weasley twins), but her curiosity and concern got the best of her. She started to weave her way through the throng of students, knowing that Remus would follow closely behind.

The farther she climbed, the thicker the crowd became. Finally, she reached a landing and addressed the distraught Gryffindors. "What's going on?"

Ginny Weasley turned to look at her professor and piped up, "it's the Fat Lady! She's gone!"

"What? Gone?"

Once she moved to get a closer look, Eva confirmed Ginny's story. The portrait was desolate, and it looked as though someone had taken a knife to it. Multiple slashes ripped through the painting. The subjects of the surrounding portraits were in different levels of panic, from crying to screaming to talking over each other. Her stomach twisted uneasily. 

"Find Professor Dumbledore," she whispered, her eyes never leaving the portrait. A hand gripped her shoulder tightly. She didn't have to look to know that it was Remus. 

The headmaster appeared a few minutes later, Filch at his side. By then, the crowd had only grown. Dumbledore ran his fingers down the portrait and murmured, "Mr. Filch, round up the ghosts. Tell them to search every painting in the castle to find the Fat Lady."

"There's no need for ghosts, Professor." Filch pointed up a few flights of stairs. "The Fat Lady's there."

As soon as he said this, the mob began to shuffle up the stairs. Percy Weasley's shrill attempts to keep Gryffindor House in order could barely be heard over the general commotion. 

Eva thought her heart was going to beat out of her ribcage, or maybe explode. Only the knowledge that Remus was beside her kept her sane.

There was the Fat Lady, cowering in the landscape of a different painting. She shuddered at the number of people surrounding her. 

"Dear lady, who did this to you?" Dumbledore asked, shocked.  

The Fat Lady shook her head dramatically. "Wild eyes and soul as dark as his name. It's him, Headmaster. The one they all talk about. He's here, somewhere in the castle: Sirius Black!" She shrieked again and covered her face with her hands. 

All of the color drained from Eva's face.

Dumbledore's expression didn't change, but his eyes flicked to Eva before he spoke again. "Secure the castle, Mr. Filch. Students, to the Great Hall." 

For a minute, Remus saw the world in red. He returned to the present at Dumbledore's voice. 

"Professor?"

"Sorry, yes?" Remus cleared his throat, but he was too angry to be embarassed. 

"Please find Professor Taylor. Once you have, join the rest of us in the Great Hall. I assume the dementors will want to search the castle, and it's not wise for anyone to be out and about."

Remus blinked and looked around. He hadn't even noticed his friend slip off, but if he felt this sick, he couldn't fathom what she was going through. "I'll find her, sir."

He took off down the hall, wishing that he still had the Marauder's Map. None of them realized how easy they had it back then. Thankfully, he didn't have to search very long, finding her in an abandoned corridor.

Eva was on her knees, arms wrapped around herself as gut-wrenching sobs wracked her entire body. She rocked herself back and forth, tears streaming down her bloodless face. 

"Oh, Eva."

Her head whipped up at the sound of his voice. He knelt down next to her and pulled her into a tight embrace. She couldn't seem to stop trembling.

"Remus, he can't be here," she mumbled. "I can't... Sirius can't... the dementors... Harry..."

"I know," he whispered as he smoothed down her curls. "I know."

She shook her head and continued to cry weakly into his chest. It was awful how familiar it felt. "Not today. Today of all days... I wish... sometimes I wish he was... no, I don't wish that... but I-"

"You need to take a deep breath, Eve."

"He's after Harry!"

"Harry is safe," Remus said firmly. He cupped her face in his rough hands and forced her to look into his eyes. "He's safe. You're safe. We're all safe. Black can't hurt us anymore."

It was a lie through and through. Sirius Black was the constant cause of Eva's heartache.

Drama-filled chapter! Let me know what you thought!