Author's Note

Hello everyone! I hope you're enjoying the story so far, and thank you so much for 1 million reads!

This truly means the world to me, and I couldn't have gone this far without you. I love you guys so much!

***

Diana's heart was in chaos. From the crowded King's Cross stations and all the way to their house, she couldn't stop thinking about Remus, his words echoing through her mind on repeat.

     Everything had happened so fast that she still couldn't quite take a grasp of it. Had he actually broken up with her? Is that what he had meant by saying 'I won't bother her anymore'?

She hated how weak she felt when it came to him, but what she hated more was that she had no control over it.

Remus was the first and only person she had felt comfortable enough to open up to. The first one she had shown her emotions to, no matter how vulnerable these emotions made her feel. He was her one and only weakness, and yet somehow he was the one who could hurt her the most.

Diana desperately wished that she had someone to talk to. She wished she had been closer with her mother, like how she knew Layla was with hers. But for the sake of her own future, Diana knew she couldn't say a word to her mother about Remus Lupin.

Remus hadn't been entirely wrong by saying that his family weren't rich enough. That the Lupins weren't noble enough. And even though Diana didn't care about any of these at all, her parents definitely would, and she knew it.

She would be grounded if her parents found out that she wasn't with a Pureblood wizard. And even worse, they would even go as far as disowning her and kicking her out of the house if they knew that the boy was a werewolf.

But Remus didn't understand any of this. He didn't understand her life at all. The only take he had on the matter was that Diana was embarrassed to be seen with him, which wasn't the case at all.

The full moon is tomorrow night. He wasn't being himself, Diana thought to herself, desperately trying to justify his actions, but that didn't make the memory of his cold look and his harsh words any less painful.

"... so I want you to be at your best behavior. This gathering is very important to our family," her mother's voice snapped Diana out of her thoughts as she was sitting around the dinner table with her parents.

     Diana looked up at her mother nervously. She had been so lost in her thoughts that she'd forgotten to even listen to what her parents were talking about.

     She already felt grumpier, knowing that they were supposed to visit her brother and his wife tomorrow, and assumed that this was what her mother was referring to.

      "Er... okay," Diana said carelessly, placing her elbow on the table and resting her chin upon her palm as she stared rigidly down at her plate.

     "Oh, for Merlin's sake, Diana, please don't slouch. It's unladylike." Her mother shook her head at Diana in disappointment.

     "That's why I do it," Diana mumbled, still not daring enough to say it out loud and face the wrath of her mother. This sentence had become her reflex answer to almost anything her mother said, like an instinct.

      "Please leave the Ministry earlier than usual on Monday," Mrs. Greengrass told her husband. "We don't want to be late."

"Very well," Mr. Greengrass said tonelessly without even glancing up at his wife.

He then wiped the edge of his mouth with the napkin before getting to his feet and leaving the dining room. He liked to spend long hours alone in his personal parlor every night after dinner, sitting on his armchair by the fireplace with a cigar and a glass of Fire Whiskey in hand.

Diana's mother — strict as she was — still showed Diana more affection than her father did, hugging her daughter and embracing her from time to time. But Diana used to her mother better back when she had been a kid, because the older she got, the firmer her mother got when it came to her manners, and Diana hated being told what to do and what not to do.

Her father, however, was completely different. He never told her how to behave or he never spared the time to scold her. In fact, he barely talked to her at all.

Diana couldn't remember the last time he had shown any interest in spending quality time with his family. She wasn't sure if she had ever seen him laugh or even crack a little smile. Although Diana didn't mind. She had spent seventeen years getting used to this that it never bothered her anymore.

***

The next day which was a warm Sunday morning, Diana and her parents went to visit her brother, Darwin, and his wife. Diana couldn't understand why her mother had asked her to be on her best behavior, because no one else was invited that day other than her own family, and they all already knew what a lost cause Diana was. She didn't need to act good around them.

     That night as Diana laid in her bed, facing the window with a hand resting underneath her head, she gazed up at the full moon. There was a familiar ache in her heart that she got every month, because she knew what Remus was going through. But tonight, she felt much worse than ever before as she thought of her boyfriend.

     If she could call him her boyfriend anymore, she kept reminding herself.

     She didn't know when she fell asleep, but a series of nightmares haunted her dreams that night. Although Diana shot awake a few minutes before dawn.

     At first she'd thought that she had been awoken because of her horrifying nightmare, but seconds later she realized that it was the sound of tapping that had woken her up. Confused, Diana blinked her eyes a few times and at last opened them with difficulty, trying to figure out what that annoying sound was.

She nearly let out a scream when she saw someone outside her balcony window, tapping at the glass. Although she quickly held her squeal back when she realized that it was Remus.

      "Merlin's beard..." Diana whispered to herself in surprise, pushing herself out of bed and quickly walking toward her little balcony, where Remus stood. She opened the window for him, letting in the early morning summer breeze.

"Remus? What on earth are you doing here?" Diana asked in horror, looking up at the twilight sky.

     The sun had not yet fully awoken from its bed in the horizon, the full moon and a few stubborn stars still lingering in the bruised sky. Remus must've transformed back to his human form only minutes ago, his face full of fresh wounds and scratch marks.

      "I... I came here to see you," he said softly, the look of guilt and remorse visible behind his chocolate brown eyes. "Would it be okay if I came in? I really need to talk to you."

     Diana had the urge to slam the balcony door in Remus's face and even close her curtains over it, but she saw the way he was holding onto the balcony railings, obviously having a hard time keeping himself standing over his weak limbs.

     Letting out a sigh, Diana wordlessly stepped aside and gestured at him to walk inside her bedroom. She noticed how he was limping forward, though she could tell that he was trying hard not to show on his face how much pain he was in.

     "How did you even get up here?" Diana asked quietly, closing the balcony window.

     "I Apparated in your garden," said Remus, watching Diana as she took her wand off her nightstand and walked toward her door, locking it and casting a few silencing spells.

     "No. I meant how did you get up here, in the balcony?"

      "I — I climbed up the pipings outside on the wall," Remus explained sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck the way he always did when he was nervous.

     "It's four a.m, Remus. You can't just show up to my room out-of-the-blue and climb up the walls like a thief!"

     "I know, I know! And I'm sorry! But I had to talk to you!" Remus held up his hands defensively. "I came as soon as I transformed back to human. Because that was the exact moment I realized how much I'd screwed up."

     Diana folded her arms, raising a brow at him. "Go on."

     Remus took a deep breath. "I'm sorry for acting that way, Diana. I know I should've been more understanding of your situation with your family, but I want you to understand as well that before the full moon... I... I have almost no control over what I do and what I say."

      "And I want you to understand that my family is different than yours!" Diana said sharply, all the sorrow she had been feeling throughout the last two days suddenly turning into rage. "We're not the type of happy family who gather around the Christmas tree on Christmas morning, opening up presents together in our pajamas. We don't sit around, laughing and talking together at dinner times. They're not understanding, like your parents are, okay? They will always put this family's nobility and its honor before me, or my happiness! Do you think they care about what I want? Do you think they care about how I feel about you?"

"Look... I know I've never been in your shoes, and I know I could never completely understand what you're going through, but Sirius's family was just the same, and he stood up to them —"

"Well, I'm not Sirius!" Diana snapped, cutting him off sharply.

She wasn't mad at what Remus had said. She was mad at herself, because she knew she could never defy her parents. Because, even though she would never admit it out loud, she felt envious of Sirius for doing what she had always wanted to do. For doing what she knew she could never do.

"I'm not like Sirius, Remus," she whispered, tearing her eyes away from him and glancing outside her window. "I — I could never..." She let out a shaky breath, closing her eyes. "He ran away from his home, and got himself disowned and banished forever. And as much as I applaud him for it, not everyone has the courage to leave their home behind, no matter how bad their families are, no matter miserable they are."

With that, she went and sat down on the edge of her bed. Remus was silent for some time, seeing the anger slowly leaving Diana's face, replaced by something much worse. As he watched her, sitting there with her face buried in her palms, he realized for the first how much pressure she was under, like she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Hesitantly, Remus took small steps toward Diana and sat down beside her on the bed, wordlessly wrapping an arm around her. It only took her a few moments before she quickly hugged him back, snaking both arms around him tightly and burying her face into his chest, as though a comforting hug was all she had needed.

"Would you... would you like me to stay here with you for a bit longer?" he whispered, and as a respond, Diana nodded lightly without even looking up at him.

Remus took her small figure into his warm embrace and hugged her tighter with his arms wrapped around her, placing a small kiss on top of her head.

If she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, then Remus wanted to carry it all for her. And at that moment, if he could take all her suffering away for his own, he would have.