The Wolf and the Witch

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created, owned or inspired by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Author\'s Notes: This story takes place between the end of OotP and beginning of HBP, therefore there are OotP spoilers. It was beta-ed by one of the wonderful people over at Perfect Imagination. My thanks to Megan! It is complete, but I am in the first stages of outlining a sequel to it. Please take a moment to leave a review. It\'s my first fanfic and I\'d love feedback!

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Ever since she was a little girl, Saima Niemi had wanted to follow in her mother\'s footsteps and become an Auror. While at Hogwarts, she found she had a deft skill with memory charms, which would lead her to another department. After leaving Hogwarts, she applied to the Ministry of Magic for a position in the Obliviator Department. There were five tests out in the field and a difficult final exam, which she passed with flying colors. She was hired on and worked her way to the top of her department during the eight years she was there. Saima had a painless touch when altering or removing memory, even though her subjects remained unaware of the care she took to leave their other memories intact.

In June of her seventh year at the Ministry, she started hearing rumors that Lord Voldemort had returned after the Triwizard Tournament. Since Cornelius Fudge didn\'t seem very concerned, she approached her mother one night and asked what was going on. Olivia was a quiet but firm supporter of Albus Dumbledore and Saima had sensed her mother was part of something rippling under the surface of the Ministry. Olivia smiled grimly at her daughter and told her she couldn\'t say anything, but she needed to be on guard for danger at all times. She soberly told Saima the rumors of Voldemort\'s return were not to be ignored.

This information was kept in the front of her mind for a year. The next June, Saima read in the Daily Prophet that Sirius Black, who everyone thought was a murderer, was innocent of the killings that had placed him in Azkaban. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had indeed returned and was gathering his Death Eaters to him. People - Ministry workers even - were being killed, and her mother was one of them. Someone had correctly suspected her of slipping information to Dumbledore and had fatally cursed her. Despite all her skill as an Auror, she was killed while taking her dog outside one night. Saima found her the next morning when she dropped by for breakfast as she had a habit of doing. It looked like Olivia had put up a good fight, as the spattered blood couldn\'t have all been hers.

After the horrible shock and sorrow came anger. There was no adequate explanation from the Ministry about her mother\'s death. \'Died in the line of duty\' was the official report released. Later that week when Fudge was sacked, Saima resigned her position. She wanted nothing to do with the organization that, for a whole year, ignored the fact that Voldemort had returned. She could live comfortably without a job for a while with the modest amount of Galleons she inherited from her mother.

At the end of the week that she quit her job, an attempt was made on her own life. Saima had kept her mother\'s warnings in mind and had been using some of the basic concealment tricks Olivia had taught her, but it didn\'t help. She had gone to Diagon Alley to buy a few necessities when the curse blasted her from behind. The only thing that saved her life was the owl that flew by at that exact moment. The owl caught the brunt of the blast and died, while she only caught the fringes of the powerful spell. Nobody saw who did it, and Saima had been knocked into a wall and didn\'t remember a thing. She was taken to St. Mungo\'s and placed on the fourth floor to recover.

Sometime before she had died, Olivia had asked Dumbledore to watch after her daughter if anything should happen to her, since they had no one but each other. Olivia knew there was a chance that her daughter could be targeted and wanted her to have some protection to fall back on if she weren\'t there. She had told Saima as much, so it came as no surprise to Saima when after four days at St. Mungo\'s, Albus Dumbledore appeared at her bedside. When he asked her if she would come with him, she did so without hesitation, trusting him then as she did years ago as a nervous first year student. They briefly stopped at her flat and her mother\'s house to allow her to gather some of her possessions, and then left immediately for the place she was to stay.

Saima was brought to a remote, abandoned looking cottage located on the Welsh border. The owner of the cottage was Remus Lupin, someone unfamiliar to her, but she didn’t care at that point. Saima didn\'t know if she could be tracked to this place either, but frankly she doubted it. To her eyes it was a most unwelcoming looking place. When he saw the reservation in her eyes, Dumbledore told her that heavy camouflaging and protective wards had been placed around the cottage and she was safer here than anywhere else, bar Hogwarts.

Thankfully, the inside of the house was much better looking than the outside. The furniture was worn but clean and the soft white walls looked like they had been painted fairly recently. The front door opened into a small foyer with a neat kitchen off to the right side. On the left side stood the entrance to a living room. A half dozen pieces of mismatched, overstuffed furniture were arranged mostly in a ring around a large fireplace. All of the walls were lined with bookshelves almost groaning with the weight of various books and interesting objects on them. Small tables with what looked like a few very well used books were scattered around the room. A rather beat up looking Muggle record player lay on a corner table with records stacked haphazardly underneath it. The initials S.B. were scratched into the side of it. A narrow hallway ran along the length of both rooms, ending with a spiral staircase leading to a second level.

Saima was brought upstairs by Remus Lupin and shown to a room painted in different hues of blue with a large squashy bed that took up half of the room. Saima suspected that she had been given the larger bedroom and hoped that she hadn\'t taken over his room. Her trunks had already been taken up and partially unpacked by a red-haired woman, so there wasn’t much for her to finish. There was another room on that side of the landing that was closer to the staircase, but she didn\'t get the chance to look in at it.

On the other side of the upstairs landing was a surprisingly well-appointed bath done in shades of yellow. Piles of towels were stacked on a low cabinet against one wall and various jars and bottles lined a shelf near the large tub. A long mirror engraved with runes hung over a spacious white marble basin. Large mullioned windows looked out over an emerald green field where she could see cows grazing.

Much of what she saw and heard those first two days was confusing, although she tried to fit what pieces of information she heard and saw in the puzzle in her mind. Other than Dumbledore, she only really remembered three other people, although she knew there were more people that she recognized from the Ministry that visited with hushed voices. Remus Lupin was there of course, as it was his house. Molly Weasley was the kind red-haired lady that stayed in the house with her the first couple nights. Severus Snape dropped by only once. He had been hired on at Hogwarts the year she started school, so she had him for a teacher. Snape acted like he didn\'t even recognize or notice her there, which was just as well, for she had never been too fond of him as Potions master.

Saima quietly observed her host for the next two days. If she was to be staying with him, she wanted to know what kind of person he was. He might have caught her watching him, she wasn\'t sure. His calm gaze had brushed hers more than once. Remus Lupin was... different. His clothes were in much the same condition as the furniture in the house: faded, but neatly mended and clean. He was polite and kind, quiet and thoughtful. But there was a quality about him that was somehow wistful and longing, and a strong aura of sadness hung around him. Saima found herself drawn to him the first day there, even though she didn\'t say much to him at first.

In truth, she realized that he was someone she would have been attracted to anyway, under normal circumstances. He appeared to be a youngish man, maybe in his middle thirties, but he looked much older due to a lightly lined and careworn face. Even though he had a look of exhaustion on his face at all times, he was undoubtedly handsome. His hair was a light brown shot with silver and his eyes were a pure blue with a hidden golden sheen that caught the light unexpectedly at times. When Remus smiled, it was wonderful and slow and spread across his face to light up his eyes. Already Saima felt a bit safer for the first time in a week. His patient, steady presence was comforting.

Remus in turn studied his guest when she wasn’t looking. Dumbledore had asked him to look after her because she had just lost her mother and had been attacked herself. Saima was quiet, and seemed contented to take in her surroundings and watch the people around her. She was pretty, lovely even, but had a look of sadness etched around her eyes. Long strawberry-blond hair hung down her back in slight waves and her skin was very pale, almost translucent. Her eyes were a clear bluish-gray and somewhat heavy-lidded, giving her a slight expression of tiredness. The robes she wore were slightly loose, as if she had recently lost a little weight.

It seemed to him that she relaxed slightly after the first day and a half. Remus didn’t know if she had made up her mind to give him a chance, or if she just thought she had no choice in the matter and was resigned to his presence. Molly’s company had helped relax her, even though she wanted to leave for the Burrow and get back to her family.

Saima knew the red-haired woman, Molly Weasley, had been torn between anxiety for her family and the motherly urge to stay and care for Saima. On the second evening she was there, she took Molly aside and understandingly told her to go back to her family. The woman gave her a grateful hug and told her that Lupin was an extremely talented and competent wizard, and to have him get in touch with her if she needed anything from the Weasleys. Molly gave Saima another reassuring squeeze and told her that she would be absolutely safe there with Lupin.