Chapter Twenty-seven

A/N For everyone who has read this far, a heartfelt thank you. Big thanks also to Sirius Lupin, who is a brilliant beta reader.

This chapter is dedicated to Rebecca, who poked me gently and asked me to finish the chapters that have been languishing on my hard drive.

I don't own the characters, or the town of Potomac, but I do like to visit, hope you do, too.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Samuel stared at the silver moonlight with John wrapped up in his arms. A chapter of his life was closed, a new one beginning here in the land of purple mountains, but he still felt a bit unsettled. The feeling reminded him of wondering if he forgot to turn off a burner when he was three miles from home, and not being able to focus on anything else until he drove back home to check. Not once had it ever been on when he returned, but that wasn’t really the point.

He felt like he was forgetting something, that there was some loose end he’d missed.

“Are there any other countries I’m wanted in?” he asked his sleepy mate.

“Not unless you started smuggling potions into Canada when I wasn’t looking,” John answered easily.

“No, just the sheep that count themselves at night,” Samuel quipped back.

“I think you’re safe in that case. G’night.”

“Night,” Samuel answered automatically even though he continued staring out the window at the drifting shadows.

“Need to scare the coyotes off again,” he said to himself before he slipped into an exhausted sleep.

He took John’s coffee cup out of his hand in the morning and replaced it with a vial of deep blue potion.

“That will work better than the coffee this time around. It should be okay with orange juice,” he said with a soft, concerned smile to John’s grey, haggard expression. “Longbottom should have our roots in time for the next moon, so I expect everything will be a bit easier.”

Samuel didn’t like to see the bit of rash at the back of John’s neck. He knew it must itch and sting every time the shirt collar brushed against it even lightly.

John gave Samuel a loving smile before he quickly downed the potion with a cringe. “Garlic… It tastes like garlic.” He chuckled as he lifted a bite of eggs to his mouth. After carefully chewing he laughed heartily. “Now everything tastes like garlic.”

Their eyes locked for a moment as something deep and smoldering replaced the laughter in John’s eyes and Samuel responded with a slow smile.

“Plenty of time for that after the moon, Keats.”

“Actually, Samuel,” John said with a soft, slightly sad smile, “I have a suggestion for tonight. Let’s set up a sound relay from our room to your office. You stay there, but you can hear me, and if it’s too much you can turn off the sound. I’m sure that seeing me furry will bring back at least a few bad memories.”

Samuel was about to argue that it wasn’t necessary when Amanda and Reggie joined the table. They weren’t company, but there were things he preferred to keep between the two of them, and when John caught a hint, he was usually respectful of Samuel’s need for privacy.

He spent the morning brewing for the moon and the morning that would follow, extra healing and fortifying potions, even as he heard John’s footsteps traveling the hall overhead, no doubt setting up an infant monitor. Samuel sighed, wishing he could just face his fears straight on and look his lover–partner, rather–in the eye no matter what night of the month it might be.

He’d planned to take a walk and clear his head when Reggie bolted out the back door ahead of him.

“Bloody fur ball,” Samuel insulted the dog halfheartedly. “I’ll fetch him,” he told Amanda, who was jogging down the hall in her socks.

After a half-hour of Samuel searching, Reggie came down from the hills on his own and lifted his leg to the corner of the barn in an uncharacteristic show of territorial assertion. Instead of correcting him, Samuel sighed and patted the dog. “Dang coyotes,” he said in agreement.

He sat with John for a short while after lunch, talking of nonsense like fences and feed and whether he should keep the horses now that Troy had moved away. It seemed strange to him that John would offer to take on their care–at least for the coming winter–but he realized he didn’t want to sell them if John liked riding. He didn’t mind the thought of riding with John, when he stopped to think about it, so it was easy to agree to keep them over the winter and consider it again in the spring.

When he couldn’t delay any longer, he brushed his lips across John’s forehead and set his feet on the road to his clinic to look in on his patients. Things went reasonably well, including a face to face conversation with the intrepid Dr. West. In the end Samuel thanked the man and helped him find a guide to teach him to fly fish. Samuel did admire the man’s persistence, after all, and he could help Doug West enjoy his holiday even if he didn’t have a post to offer him.

He stared at his computer for a long time, searching through references and images. He wanted to put it in perspective before he asked Amanda what that tree meant to her. With a flash of triumph, he printed out the Norse mythology surrounding Yggdrasil, the world tree. He felt a small shiver travel up his spine as he looked once more at the design he had seen in Amanda's mind and later flowing off her knitting needles. Sorting this out was the key to everything–he could feel it.

He needed to understand what it symbolized and help Amanda safely contain those memories, but he had mind magic at his disposal. He would use that if she needed a stronger temporary seal on those memories. The late evening sun was dying and he decided, committed himself to meeting John in their bedroom that night, full moon aside, he would offer his partner the comfort of his presence.

With that thought, he paged his nurse to send Amanda in.

"I keep them behind the curtain," she told him softly, "so that I don't have to look at them: Yaxley, the squirrel; Macnair, the dragon... the wolf, Fenrir," she said in little more than a whisper.

Samuel felt his lunch sour in his stomach. "Who?"

"Greyback."