By Measures Daily
title: BY MEASURES, DAILY (aka MEAT PUPPET)
author: Nightspore
challenge: frustrated lust
pairing: Harry / Remus / Harry's doppelganger
disclaimer: What circle of hell is reserved for Those Who Use Other's Creations As Their Own (and make them do naughty things)? Whichever one it is, there I shall go.
rating: porn
BY MEASURES, DAILY
A greenish light flared; a ragged, vicious voice screamed, Mudblood! Foul metis! Besmirching the House of Black with thy presence! Miscegenation! Mudblood! Mudblood!
Harry stumbled backwards and fell, unconscious.
It was the second week of their summer break, and he and Ron had been sifting through the attic in Grimmauld Place. Except for Lupin, who had stayed behind because the full moon was only a few days away, the rest of the Order were off on their own missions. The boys had been browbeaten by the formidable Mrs. Weasley into continuing the work scourgifying the house of dark magic. She had already declared there was nothing so evil in the attic that the boys could not handle it on their own. After all, the D.A. had proved their mettle this past battle with the Death Eaters.
They’d found the gargoyle watch in a rather horrible umbrella stand which looked like it once was the paw of a smallish dragon. It was covered in keeled, overlapping scales and rested on four stumpy digits armed with hooked claws. Ron had jokingly brandished it at Harry, and a small hidden compartment on the sole was jarred open. Inside were some letters on yellowed, folded parchment covered in illegible reddish-brown scrawls, and the watch.
Harry lifted it admiringly, blowing off dust. The oversized face was bracketed by an ornate cast silver carving of an extraordinarily ugly monster.
Ron whistled. “Posh. Is the strap zaltys-skin, d’you think?”
“Could be,” Harry said, unwilling to admit he had no idea what a zaltys was. Some sort of reptile, apparently. The thick leather strap was creased with dull, dark gray scales that shimmered iridescently when he held it up to the light.
“Nasty little bugger,” Ron commented. “Looks like something a Slytherin would wear.”
“I like it.” He did - there was something appealingly masculine about its weight and grotesqueness.
Ron screwed up his face. “Probably some Black’s retirement gift. You can have it, mate.”
Harry strapped it on and held out his arm, then examined the carving more closely. At the top of the watch face was the monstrous visage, horned and prognathous and lop-eared, too ugly to be human but too cunning to be animal. One eye was screwed shut, the other represented by a chip of emerald. The fanged mouth was twisted into a knowing leer. The creature’s long arms wrapped around the watch face, its taloned hand-paws clutching something at the base. Harry squinted, and saw the lumpish whatever-that-was it held was a distinct piece. He caught his nail under it and gave it a twist. It was the stem, just as he suspected. He wound it up tightly and was rewarded by a sudden loud ticking.
Then the flash - and nothing else.
Until now.
He came to slowly, blinking and groaning, and found himself stretched out on the floor. Lupin knelt beside him, cradling his head. He pushed something against his lips, urging Harry to drink.
Somehow he managed to sip it, and immediately felt better. Better, but still weak as a half-drowned kitten.
"What happened?" Lupin asked, looking up at Ron.
He stuttered out a guilty explanation, and Lupin shook his head. "I'd tell you two you should have known better, but I get the impression you already know that. Harry? Are you feeling any better?"
Harry realized with a guilty start that for the past several minutes he’d been content to lie in the comfort of Remus's arms, his head resting on man's chest. He could hear Lupin's thudding heart. Nodding, he pushed himself upright, trying to ignore the buzzing in his head.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“That was extremely foolish,” Lupin said severely. There was a moment of ice cold silence between them. Almost immediately, a surge of anger overtook Harry. Lupin wasn’t his babysitter. He had no right to speak like that.
“I’m fine,” he snapped. He turned away and tugged at the strap. It wouldn’t budge. The buckle seemed to have fused into a solid piece of metal. He scrabbled his fingers on it frantically. The watch band drew tighter around his wrist, cutting off the blood supply to his hand. His fingers began going numb. “I can’t get it off!”
The gargoyle's mouth twisted, and a faint, croaking voice gleefully whispered, Mudblood, foolish mudblood, greedy child . . . He suddenly realized that the lopsided lump it grasped, the watch's stem, was carved in the shape of a tiny human heart.
Lupin shuffled through the parchments that had been in the dragon’s leg umbrella stand. His grim expression frightened Harry far more than the recalcitrant buckle.
"Too much mold and water damage to make most of this out, but apparently there’s some sort of curse on the foul thing, set to go off when the watch is wound and geared specifically to harm Mudbloods. If I’m correct about its nature, the curse will strike when the watch winds down."
Harry did the first logical thing, of course - he tried to wind the watch up again. But the heart-shaped stem refused to budge. The gargoyle grinned, showing off jagged fangs, and chuckled sardonically.
"But Harry's not a Mudblood," Ron protested. "His parents were both wizards!"
"No one ever said discrimination had to be reasonable," Lupin said. "Lily's parents were both Muggles, and by the standards of the kind of wizard who would cast a curse like this, that counts for enough."
"Should I fetch Mum, do you think? She's had to defuse a lorry load of curses since we set up here."
"No, I think this might be beyond your mother," Lupin said. "And we can't take Harry to St. Mungo's, either."
"Why not?"
"The Ministry of Magic is riddled with Death Eaters, Ron. Think about it. At the present, we can't trust any Wizarding institution."
"So what'll we do? Just sit around on our arses and see what happens when the watch stops?" Ron was getting belligerent.
Lupin did not rise to him. Calmly, he replied, "Of course not. I know a spell that might help us. But it's complicated, and rather . . . upsetting." He glanced sidelong at Harry, who had been unusually quiet through this.
Mudblood, river of liquid stools in your veins. The tiny lips drew back in a hateful snarl. Just try to get me off. Try! You’ll choke on your own filth, dirty little beast, Suffer, suffer, suffer . . .
“Do it.” Harry pushed himself up and looked Lupin square in the eyes. Normally, they were a light brown, but as the full moon neared, they'd lightened to pale gold. It gave his normally thin, weary face a strange intensity. “Whatever it is, do it.”
"It's called the Allosegō spell," Lupin explained as he bade Harry to sit on the floor in a comfortable position and hold very still. "It creates an alter, a sort of living replica of a person. But it’s merely a meat puppet, with no memories and only the most basic of intelligence. More importantly for our purposes, although the spell duplicates a person's clothes and any items he may be carrying, the alter does not possess magic. An alter‘s wand, for example, would appear perfect down to the last detail, but it would be merely a stick of wood. What I'm going to do is try to mix it up a bit, confuse the casting protocols . . . and hopefully the watch's curse will transfer to the alter."
He drew his wand and waved it. Harry closed his eyes, bracing himself.
There was an interval of shocking pain, then devastating cold, followed by a slow, numb flush of heat. Harry's muscles went slack under its ministering warmth, his bones melting and stretching like a toffee bar being slowly pulled apart. He was suddenly dizzy with déjà vu.
He opened his eyes. Staring back were a pair of brilliant, eerily vacant green eyes.
Harry was sitting nose-to-nose with his not quite perfect duplicate. The alter‘s forehead was smooth and unscarred. As Lupin said, Voldemort's mark was magical and therefore did not affect the alter.
Then Lupin gripped his shoulders in strong, calloused hands and turned him smartly away.
“Don’t look at it,” he said, urging Harry upright and propelling him towards the door. “It’s a bit disconcerting.”
Ron had backed away from them and was leaning on the frame. His face had gone the color of Swiss cheese. “Cor,” he said. “I hope I never see anything like that again.”
“What did it look like?” Harry’s tongue and lips felt thick and unwilling to move, as if he’d just got back from the dentist. He wiped away a string of spit that slipped over his chin, and saw the vile watch had vanished from his wrist. He went weak-kneed with relief, as though a tenacious blood-sucking tick had been yanked from his skin.
“Best you cut along, Ron,” Lupin said, not unkindly, as he herded them into the hallway. Harry ducked his head under Lupin‘s arm. The alter remained sitting, staring into space with less animation than a basking lizard. "And take care that you don't tell your mother about what happened. Harry's safe, and you know how she is. There’s no point worrying her unnecessarily."
Lupin shut the door behind them. Ron waited till they had gone down the corridor and turned the corner before saying in a low tone, "What do you want to bet he doesn’t want me to tell because that's a forbidden spell?"
"It is."
"How do you know?"
"I read it in one of Hermione's werewolf books. At one point the Death Eaters were trying to create an army of werewolves. They snuck legislation through the Ministry and had a bunch of werewolves rounded up and put under lock and key. Supposedly it was to keep people safe from them and to work on a cure, but really they were looking for a potion formula that'd make them transform anytime of the month."
He was glad that Ron was so shocked he neglected to wonder why Harry was doing extracurricular research on lycanthropy.
"That's rotten," Ron said. "So, what'd the Death Eaters use Allosegō for?"
"Food."
"What!?"
"You catch werewolfery when you're bitten by a werewolf and survive, right? Well, the only reason we're not overrun by a crop of new werewolves every full moon is because hardly anyone survives."
He and Ron had reached the kitchen by this point, and stood in front of the great stone fireplace. Ron somehow went even paler than before. "So they . . . duplicated people . . . and fed the meat puppets to the werewolves?" He looked resignedly down at the pinch of Floo Powder between his fingers. "I may sick all over Mum's fireplace, what with all the spinning on top of that choice little bit of pleasantness."
Harry had to laugh at Ron’s hangdog expression. “She’ll love that. Just tell her you got into some of the twin’s experimental candy. That’ll be a good excuse to keep away till this curse thing sorts itself out.”
Ron cast an eye back the way they’d come. “Good thinking. I don’t know as how I’d enjoy sharing a house with that thing. If you’d seen the way it . . . never mind. Better get going.” He rubbed his stomach, then tossed the powder into the fire. The flames leapt up, brightly viridescent. He stepped in and disappeared.
Harry was abruptly hungry, ravenous, as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. He rummaged in the pantry and tried to put what had happened out of his mind.
So Harry and Lupin were left alone at Grimmauld Place.
A week passed. Harry knew he’d be bored without Ron, and there was that, but something else gnawed at him, too. Lupin normally kept to himself, but he’d never turned Harry away when the boy felt the need for company. Now, however, his time was almost entirely taken up with caring for the meat puppet.
Harry had not seen the duplicate since those first moments of its creation, but he pestered Lupin about it whenever they happened to bump into each other. He felt a sick fascination with the thing. But Lupin remained closemouthed, telling him again and again it was best not to know too much. He’d developed a furtive, harassed demeanor, and Harry began to suspect Lupin was deliberately avoiding him. That hurt more than he would have suspected.
Although he’d grown used to the loyal friendship of Ron, Hermione and Hagrid, the more distant affection of adults like the Weasleys and some of his teachers, and the unavoidable notoriety of being the Boy Who Lived, Harry had grown up an outcast. He'd grown more accustomed to being on his own than he’d formerly realized. He couldn’t understand why the sudden lack of Lupin’s quiet presence now bothered him so much.
Finally, he managed to corner the older wizard over a dinner of leftover soup and sandwiches. Lupin was visibly reluctant to discuss the alter, but he admitted that Harry had a right to know what was happening.
Normally, he elaborated, one cast the Allosegō on oneself and invested the alter with a simply worded command at its creation, programming it like a robot (Harry had to explain this metaphor to Lupin). But since this spell was cast by a third party, himself, the meat puppet’s mind was a perfect blank. It was helpless as a baby, he said, unable to feed, wash, or dress itself and requiring constant supervision to keep it from accidental harm. It had to be kept alive and safe until the curse activated. The watch was ticking very slowly now, he added, and would probably stop sometime tonight.
Harry looked up questioningly from his soup, but Lupin was concentrating on his own dinner and seemed disinclined to elaborate. Still, Harry could detect a certain relief in his manner. He was even dressed fairly nattily, for him, in a bulky Aran sweater that looked as if it were knitted from oatmeal, leather loafers and a comfortable old pair of pants. Harry'd bought him the sweater, feeling bad that his own clothes were so shabby, and had been baffled when Lupin seemed uncomfortable with the gift. He realized with a sudden stab that he’d never even seen him wear it before.
Harry wondered aloud what the point was of feeding the meat puppet if it was due to be destroyed in a few hours. Lupin merely looked pained.
Belatedly, Harry remembered something else he’d read in Hermione’s werewolf books. Lycanthropy was unlike other sorts of transfiguration in that it fed upon the victim’s own life force to power the change. It was a degenerative disease, each shape-shift more punishing than the last. Lupin was almost unique in having lived with it for so long . . . but eventually it would take its inevitable toll.
Silently, Lupin took another bowl of soup and hurried away. It was the meat puppet’s feeding time.
Harry sat alone in the vast, dark kitchen, idly stirring his cooling soup. More than ever he felt as though an invisible sword were dangling over his head, hanging by a thread. After all, they couldn’t besure the curse as well as the gargoyle watch transferred to the alter until it actually wound down.
Suddenly, he made his decision.
Dropping his bowls in the sink, Harry took off after Lupin. Again he felt the rise of outraged anger. Lupin had said himself that Harry had a right to know. After all, he was the one threatened with this unnamed curse. He wasn’t a child who needed to be protected!
Harry had no idea which direction Lupin had gone, so he cast a quick Lumopedivis charm. Lupin’s footprints lit up, outlined by a faint glow. He followed, taking care to stay to the outer edge of the runner carpets, because the much-tread center boards of the corridors tended to squeak. The trail took a winding route through the ancient house, and he soon found himself in a section he’d never explored. He climbed endless narrow, twisting stairs and ended up in a hallway decorated with black oak paneling below and peeling, soot-stained wallpaper above, the faded, nearly obscured design seeming to consist of snakes intertwined with sharp-thorned roses. The gas-lamps feebly lighting this stretch of hallway were set in holders shaped like human hands.
The trail vanished into a heavy oaken door carved with leaping stags. It was slightly ajar, and a yellowish light glowed behind it.
He paused, anticipating a disgusting sight. On one of the rare occasions he’d answered Harry’s questions about the alter, Lupin had described how it ignored the utensils and simply pushed its face into the bowl and lapped up the food like an animal. The first few days it could not even do that: Lupin would have to load the spoon with something soft, like pumpkin pudding, and put it far back in its mouth to trigger the swallowing reflex. But gradually it was becoming more aware. More . . . lifelike.
Lupin’s face had twisted oddly when he said that, and he’d abruptly changed the subject, inquiring if Harry was progressing on the extra-credit summer work he was doing to raise his grades in hopes of qualifying for Auror training.
Still, Harry's anger had calcified into furious resolve. He took a half-step in, then froze. The threadbare tapestries and rough-hewn furniture looked medieval, but Harry recognized many of the same books and wizardly paraphernalia he’d seen in Lupin’s office. The patchwork quilt on the bed was a homey touch certainly not original to the room. There was even a glowing, pixyish creature sleeping contentedly in a cage on the nightstand.
He hadn't realized that Lupin was keeping the meat puppet in his own quarters. In retrospect, it made a certain amount of sense. This suite of rooms had its own bath, so it could be kept isolated from the entire rest of the house. Lupin half-joked that the Blacks quarantined the madder of their relatives up here; that is, the ones who didn’t practice dark magic.
He could hear splashing coming from a door in the bedroom’s far wall. Lupin must be in there now with the meat puppet.
More determined than ever not to give into the squeamish sensations curdling in the pit of his stomach, Harry crossed the floor and peered into the washroom.
It was a singularly uninviting looking place, despite being extravagantly spacious. The tiles were mottled shades of green with a reticulated black mosaic, giving the effect of dragon scales. Rich floral scented steam fogged the air, but barely disguised a stronger stench of mildew and neglect. The tub was big enough to drown a horse in, and stood out from the wall on four stout clawed legs. And in the tub was Harry’s double, up to its chin in a bubble bath.
The disorienting almost-but-not-quite déjà vu swept over Harry with the force of a tidal wave and he staggered, nearly falling into the bathroom. Harry managed to regain his balance and draw back far enough that he wouldn’t be seen even if Lupin happened to turn around.
Not that it seemed likely he would. Lupin was totally absorbed in what he was doing, which, at the moment, was gently wiping foam from the meat puppet’s face. The alter played with the bubbles, swirling its hand around, scooping up a handful and then blowing on it.
Lupin blinked soap out of his eyes. “That’s quite enough, young man.” He reached into the water and pulled the plug. The alter watched with uncomprehending sorrow as the suds swirled away down the drain.
Harry squirmed with embarrassment. The Dursleys had never kept pictures or home movies of him, naturally, but they’d documented Dudley’s development as if he were some rare and fascinating zoological specimen. Dudley always protested loudly but with barely concealed pride when his mother would drag out photo albums and videos of him as a child to inflict on unsuspecting guests. Harry had never had the experience of being a spectacle.
Of course the alter wasn’t actually him, but it was almost as bad to see Lupin helping it out of the tub, dripping wet and naked except for the cursed watch strapped to its thin wrist. It was indeed a nearly flawless replica down to the long thighs muscled from gripping the broom during Quidditch practice, the swirls of dark hair on its scrotum, the delicate paleness of its penis nestled above them. The meat puppet contorted its Harry-face into a clownish expression of sadness as Lupin wrapped it in a towel, still watching the disappearing suds.
Lupin rubbed the towel over its shoulders and it twisted underneath his touch like a happy cat, murmuring wordlessly. There was something touching, almost motherly, about the scene that seemed at bizarre odds with the truth of it. Lupin was not at all feminine, with his angular, drawn face, and there was something about the way he was touching the meat puppet . . . his hands straying to places they didn’t need to be, lingering a bit too long as he swabbed off the alter’s privates . . .
Watching, Harry felt himself getting hard. His hand slipped into his robes.
He'd long since stopped questioning his feelings toward Lupin. At first he'd been guilty and confused, but it had given him such excitement - not the comfort he felt with Cho, but a wild, naughty feeling, the spiced of perversity and secretiveness making it far more exciting than he could resist. He was old enough to acknowledge there were too many obstacles to ever do anything about it. And of course, there had never been even the slightest indication Lupin felt the same way about him.
But now the quiet professor was pushing the alter down to the furry bathmat. The mindless replica submitted happily, oblivious to anything besides the delightful feeling. It was like seeing one of his own hormone-addled daydreams played out in front of him. Added to that was a fierce jealousy that it was the alter’s mouth that Lupin tongue thrust greedily into, the alter’s nipples reddening under an onslaught of quick, nipping kisses.
Harry stroked himself harder, his Quidditch-roughened palm on the delicate skin of his member causing delicious friction. He could feel the veins popping out of clammy skin stretched taught by his iron hardness, until even the gentlest touch of his own fingertips was almost too much to bear. He knew he should leave now, before he saw any more, before he lost control, but the spasming muscles in his thighs and shoulders held him to the spot surely as shackles.
Lupin tore his oatmeal sweater off over his head, unbuckled his belt and let his pants - worn shiny at the knee, the cuffs threadbare, the zipped missing teeth - fall to the floor. His bare body was whipcord thin but not frail, the muscles corded and knotted with a lean, stripped-down predatory strength. The scars inflicted by his wolf-teeth delineated a map of pain, mountains of thick keloid scars, continents of bruise bordering a sea of weeping, ugly wound that had never fully healed.
The look in his eyes, which had gone pale amber in the light of the three-quarters full moon, was a fixed gaze of absolute concentration, the total focus of a beast about to pounce. The meat puppet huddled rabbit-still under that searchlight gaze.
Tenderly but relentlessly, Lupin devoured its innocent body. Even Harry had to egotistically admit there was a certain beauty to it. Freshly cleaned, the chalky-white skin almost glowed in the rippling, subaqueous lamp light. Every oiled and gleaming inch of it was explored, exploited, by Lupin’s strong, slender fingers, every muscle traced and kneaded, every curve of its young body voluptuously stroked. Lupin drew his hands over the downy thighs and forced open the meat puppet’s buttocks. The alter sighed and squirmed in an encouraging manner, raising its taut bum for more pressure, exactly like a cat being scratched at the root of its tail.
"Harry, Harry . . . " Lupin’s voice devolved into a ravenous growl. "Hrrrrrrr . . . "
Aroused, he was all beast, biting down on the meat puppet's exposed nape, licking away droplets of sweat and water, leaving little tooth-dents in the moist silk of its skin. The meat puppet was groaning quietly, but with delight, not pain. It crouched on all fours beneath his pawing, rough embrace, looking vague but content, like a pedigreed Persian being brushed by its adoring owner. At that moment, Harry hated it with all his heart - that galling expression of mindless self-satisfaction on its stupid face hurt him like a dagger twisting in his guts. It didn't even know what it had.
A helplessly captive audience, Harry was more besotted than before. To say he was crushing was to understate the feelings washing over him, these rich, mysterious, enormous feelings. He entertained wild thoughts: perhaps he could somehow disguise his scar, cobble together a fake cursed watch, lock the meat puppet away in a closet and take its place . . .
But the curse was due to strike this evening. Lupin would be watching the thing carefully. Even if he could somehow trick Lupin into leaving the room long enough to make the switch, Harry knew he could never make his eyes take on that empty, unknowing gaze.
And besides, after tonight it would be gone.
Would Remus turn to him now that the threshold of perversity had been crossed?
Harry caught his breath, pausing mid-stroke. The back of his neck prickled as his hackles rose. Maybe up until now, Lupin hadn't been able to admit what he was feeling to himself either. Might he now, having taken the first step with the meat puppet, come to Harry in full acknowledgment?
No. Harry realized with a dull thump of certainty that this surely must be why Lupin had lost control. He'd known this would be his only chance to sip at the pleasure they might have known together without fear of rejection or repercussions.
Lupin took the meat puppet in a tumult of passion, but it was not the sweet intimacy of humans, adoring, gentle, accepting, full of fun and play. It was not a caring embrace - it was fierce and immediate and full of snarl.
He gripped the velvety back of its neck in his teeth and drove himself into the meat puppet, searching, struggling, straining. The alter grimaced, momentarily resembling the silent gargoyle watch.
Harry’s heart beat so hard he thought it would explode, but it didn't. Instead, his loins exploded as if a grenade had gone off in the small of his back. Cum gushed from his jerking member, soaking the inside of his robes. He moaned desolately, not caring if he was heard.
There was no danger of that. Wild, and relentless and passionate, Lupin threw back his head and let out a mournful howl as he came. For all that, it was over in the space of a few minutes. Spent, his dignity splattered across the tiles, Lupin collapsed on his side, breathing in hard, hoarse gasps as if he had just run a marathon. The meat puppet reached out and gave his face a clumsy pat. Lupin smiled wearily.
"I love you, too, Harry." He let out a guilty cut-off yelp of laughter. “But you’re not Harry, are you?” He sounded wistful and mystified. “That's good, though, isn‘t it? Good enough, I suppose. This is the best I’ll ever have. All I deserve.”
The meat puppet rested its head in the crook of Lupin’s arm, and he petted it in a distracted manner.
Soundlessly, Harry backed away and left them there. He was mad with lust and love, ignored by the one whose touch he craved. He padded dazedly back down the corridor, ignorant of the telltale wet patch cooling and stiffening on the front of his robes.
After all this time, he knew Lupin was as desperately, hopelessly in love as he himself..
And he also understood now that his curse was this: to look but never be allowed to touch, to always desire the unattainable, to be trapped in his own personal psychosexual Gethsemane, to slowly be driven mad by measures daily . . .
*end*
author: Nightspore
challenge: frustrated lust
pairing: Harry / Remus / Harry's doppelganger
disclaimer: What circle of hell is reserved for Those Who Use Other's Creations As Their Own (and make them do naughty things)? Whichever one it is, there I shall go.
rating: porn
BY MEASURES, DAILY
A greenish light flared; a ragged, vicious voice screamed, Mudblood! Foul metis! Besmirching the House of Black with thy presence! Miscegenation! Mudblood! Mudblood!
Harry stumbled backwards and fell, unconscious.
It was the second week of their summer break, and he and Ron had been sifting through the attic in Grimmauld Place. Except for Lupin, who had stayed behind because the full moon was only a few days away, the rest of the Order were off on their own missions. The boys had been browbeaten by the formidable Mrs. Weasley into continuing the work scourgifying the house of dark magic. She had already declared there was nothing so evil in the attic that the boys could not handle it on their own. After all, the D.A. had proved their mettle this past battle with the Death Eaters.
They’d found the gargoyle watch in a rather horrible umbrella stand which looked like it once was the paw of a smallish dragon. It was covered in keeled, overlapping scales and rested on four stumpy digits armed with hooked claws. Ron had jokingly brandished it at Harry, and a small hidden compartment on the sole was jarred open. Inside were some letters on yellowed, folded parchment covered in illegible reddish-brown scrawls, and the watch.
Harry lifted it admiringly, blowing off dust. The oversized face was bracketed by an ornate cast silver carving of an extraordinarily ugly monster.
Ron whistled. “Posh. Is the strap zaltys-skin, d’you think?”
“Could be,” Harry said, unwilling to admit he had no idea what a zaltys was. Some sort of reptile, apparently. The thick leather strap was creased with dull, dark gray scales that shimmered iridescently when he held it up to the light.
“Nasty little bugger,” Ron commented. “Looks like something a Slytherin would wear.”
“I like it.” He did - there was something appealingly masculine about its weight and grotesqueness.
Ron screwed up his face. “Probably some Black’s retirement gift. You can have it, mate.”
Harry strapped it on and held out his arm, then examined the carving more closely. At the top of the watch face was the monstrous visage, horned and prognathous and lop-eared, too ugly to be human but too cunning to be animal. One eye was screwed shut, the other represented by a chip of emerald. The fanged mouth was twisted into a knowing leer. The creature’s long arms wrapped around the watch face, its taloned hand-paws clutching something at the base. Harry squinted, and saw the lumpish whatever-that-was it held was a distinct piece. He caught his nail under it and gave it a twist. It was the stem, just as he suspected. He wound it up tightly and was rewarded by a sudden loud ticking.
Then the flash - and nothing else.
Until now.
He came to slowly, blinking and groaning, and found himself stretched out on the floor. Lupin knelt beside him, cradling his head. He pushed something against his lips, urging Harry to drink.
Somehow he managed to sip it, and immediately felt better. Better, but still weak as a half-drowned kitten.
"What happened?" Lupin asked, looking up at Ron.
He stuttered out a guilty explanation, and Lupin shook his head. "I'd tell you two you should have known better, but I get the impression you already know that. Harry? Are you feeling any better?"
Harry realized with a guilty start that for the past several minutes he’d been content to lie in the comfort of Remus's arms, his head resting on man's chest. He could hear Lupin's thudding heart. Nodding, he pushed himself upright, trying to ignore the buzzing in his head.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“That was extremely foolish,” Lupin said severely. There was a moment of ice cold silence between them. Almost immediately, a surge of anger overtook Harry. Lupin wasn’t his babysitter. He had no right to speak like that.
“I’m fine,” he snapped. He turned away and tugged at the strap. It wouldn’t budge. The buckle seemed to have fused into a solid piece of metal. He scrabbled his fingers on it frantically. The watch band drew tighter around his wrist, cutting off the blood supply to his hand. His fingers began going numb. “I can’t get it off!”
The gargoyle's mouth twisted, and a faint, croaking voice gleefully whispered, Mudblood, foolish mudblood, greedy child . . . He suddenly realized that the lopsided lump it grasped, the watch's stem, was carved in the shape of a tiny human heart.
Lupin shuffled through the parchments that had been in the dragon’s leg umbrella stand. His grim expression frightened Harry far more than the recalcitrant buckle.
"Too much mold and water damage to make most of this out, but apparently there’s some sort of curse on the foul thing, set to go off when the watch is wound and geared specifically to harm Mudbloods. If I’m correct about its nature, the curse will strike when the watch winds down."
Harry did the first logical thing, of course - he tried to wind the watch up again. But the heart-shaped stem refused to budge. The gargoyle grinned, showing off jagged fangs, and chuckled sardonically.
"But Harry's not a Mudblood," Ron protested. "His parents were both wizards!"
"No one ever said discrimination had to be reasonable," Lupin said. "Lily's parents were both Muggles, and by the standards of the kind of wizard who would cast a curse like this, that counts for enough."
"Should I fetch Mum, do you think? She's had to defuse a lorry load of curses since we set up here."
"No, I think this might be beyond your mother," Lupin said. "And we can't take Harry to St. Mungo's, either."
"Why not?"
"The Ministry of Magic is riddled with Death Eaters, Ron. Think about it. At the present, we can't trust any Wizarding institution."
"So what'll we do? Just sit around on our arses and see what happens when the watch stops?" Ron was getting belligerent.
Lupin did not rise to him. Calmly, he replied, "Of course not. I know a spell that might help us. But it's complicated, and rather . . . upsetting." He glanced sidelong at Harry, who had been unusually quiet through this.
Mudblood, river of liquid stools in your veins. The tiny lips drew back in a hateful snarl. Just try to get me off. Try! You’ll choke on your own filth, dirty little beast, Suffer, suffer, suffer . . .
“Do it.” Harry pushed himself up and looked Lupin square in the eyes. Normally, they were a light brown, but as the full moon neared, they'd lightened to pale gold. It gave his normally thin, weary face a strange intensity. “Whatever it is, do it.”
"It's called the Allosegō spell," Lupin explained as he bade Harry to sit on the floor in a comfortable position and hold very still. "It creates an alter, a sort of living replica of a person. But it’s merely a meat puppet, with no memories and only the most basic of intelligence. More importantly for our purposes, although the spell duplicates a person's clothes and any items he may be carrying, the alter does not possess magic. An alter‘s wand, for example, would appear perfect down to the last detail, but it would be merely a stick of wood. What I'm going to do is try to mix it up a bit, confuse the casting protocols . . . and hopefully the watch's curse will transfer to the alter."
He drew his wand and waved it. Harry closed his eyes, bracing himself.
There was an interval of shocking pain, then devastating cold, followed by a slow, numb flush of heat. Harry's muscles went slack under its ministering warmth, his bones melting and stretching like a toffee bar being slowly pulled apart. He was suddenly dizzy with déjà vu.
He opened his eyes. Staring back were a pair of brilliant, eerily vacant green eyes.
Harry was sitting nose-to-nose with his not quite perfect duplicate. The alter‘s forehead was smooth and unscarred. As Lupin said, Voldemort's mark was magical and therefore did not affect the alter.
Then Lupin gripped his shoulders in strong, calloused hands and turned him smartly away.
“Don’t look at it,” he said, urging Harry upright and propelling him towards the door. “It’s a bit disconcerting.”
Ron had backed away from them and was leaning on the frame. His face had gone the color of Swiss cheese. “Cor,” he said. “I hope I never see anything like that again.”
“What did it look like?” Harry’s tongue and lips felt thick and unwilling to move, as if he’d just got back from the dentist. He wiped away a string of spit that slipped over his chin, and saw the vile watch had vanished from his wrist. He went weak-kneed with relief, as though a tenacious blood-sucking tick had been yanked from his skin.
“Best you cut along, Ron,” Lupin said, not unkindly, as he herded them into the hallway. Harry ducked his head under Lupin‘s arm. The alter remained sitting, staring into space with less animation than a basking lizard. "And take care that you don't tell your mother about what happened. Harry's safe, and you know how she is. There’s no point worrying her unnecessarily."
Lupin shut the door behind them. Ron waited till they had gone down the corridor and turned the corner before saying in a low tone, "What do you want to bet he doesn’t want me to tell because that's a forbidden spell?"
"It is."
"How do you know?"
"I read it in one of Hermione's werewolf books. At one point the Death Eaters were trying to create an army of werewolves. They snuck legislation through the Ministry and had a bunch of werewolves rounded up and put under lock and key. Supposedly it was to keep people safe from them and to work on a cure, but really they were looking for a potion formula that'd make them transform anytime of the month."
He was glad that Ron was so shocked he neglected to wonder why Harry was doing extracurricular research on lycanthropy.
"That's rotten," Ron said. "So, what'd the Death Eaters use Allosegō for?"
"Food."
"What!?"
"You catch werewolfery when you're bitten by a werewolf and survive, right? Well, the only reason we're not overrun by a crop of new werewolves every full moon is because hardly anyone survives."
He and Ron had reached the kitchen by this point, and stood in front of the great stone fireplace. Ron somehow went even paler than before. "So they . . . duplicated people . . . and fed the meat puppets to the werewolves?" He looked resignedly down at the pinch of Floo Powder between his fingers. "I may sick all over Mum's fireplace, what with all the spinning on top of that choice little bit of pleasantness."
Harry had to laugh at Ron’s hangdog expression. “She’ll love that. Just tell her you got into some of the twin’s experimental candy. That’ll be a good excuse to keep away till this curse thing sorts itself out.”
Ron cast an eye back the way they’d come. “Good thinking. I don’t know as how I’d enjoy sharing a house with that thing. If you’d seen the way it . . . never mind. Better get going.” He rubbed his stomach, then tossed the powder into the fire. The flames leapt up, brightly viridescent. He stepped in and disappeared.
Harry was abruptly hungry, ravenous, as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. He rummaged in the pantry and tried to put what had happened out of his mind.
So Harry and Lupin were left alone at Grimmauld Place.
A week passed. Harry knew he’d be bored without Ron, and there was that, but something else gnawed at him, too. Lupin normally kept to himself, but he’d never turned Harry away when the boy felt the need for company. Now, however, his time was almost entirely taken up with caring for the meat puppet.
Harry had not seen the duplicate since those first moments of its creation, but he pestered Lupin about it whenever they happened to bump into each other. He felt a sick fascination with the thing. But Lupin remained closemouthed, telling him again and again it was best not to know too much. He’d developed a furtive, harassed demeanor, and Harry began to suspect Lupin was deliberately avoiding him. That hurt more than he would have suspected.
Although he’d grown used to the loyal friendship of Ron, Hermione and Hagrid, the more distant affection of adults like the Weasleys and some of his teachers, and the unavoidable notoriety of being the Boy Who Lived, Harry had grown up an outcast. He'd grown more accustomed to being on his own than he’d formerly realized. He couldn’t understand why the sudden lack of Lupin’s quiet presence now bothered him so much.
Finally, he managed to corner the older wizard over a dinner of leftover soup and sandwiches. Lupin was visibly reluctant to discuss the alter, but he admitted that Harry had a right to know what was happening.
Normally, he elaborated, one cast the Allosegō on oneself and invested the alter with a simply worded command at its creation, programming it like a robot (Harry had to explain this metaphor to Lupin). But since this spell was cast by a third party, himself, the meat puppet’s mind was a perfect blank. It was helpless as a baby, he said, unable to feed, wash, or dress itself and requiring constant supervision to keep it from accidental harm. It had to be kept alive and safe until the curse activated. The watch was ticking very slowly now, he added, and would probably stop sometime tonight.
Harry looked up questioningly from his soup, but Lupin was concentrating on his own dinner and seemed disinclined to elaborate. Still, Harry could detect a certain relief in his manner. He was even dressed fairly nattily, for him, in a bulky Aran sweater that looked as if it were knitted from oatmeal, leather loafers and a comfortable old pair of pants. Harry'd bought him the sweater, feeling bad that his own clothes were so shabby, and had been baffled when Lupin seemed uncomfortable with the gift. He realized with a sudden stab that he’d never even seen him wear it before.
Harry wondered aloud what the point was of feeding the meat puppet if it was due to be destroyed in a few hours. Lupin merely looked pained.
Belatedly, Harry remembered something else he’d read in Hermione’s werewolf books. Lycanthropy was unlike other sorts of transfiguration in that it fed upon the victim’s own life force to power the change. It was a degenerative disease, each shape-shift more punishing than the last. Lupin was almost unique in having lived with it for so long . . . but eventually it would take its inevitable toll.
Silently, Lupin took another bowl of soup and hurried away. It was the meat puppet’s feeding time.
Harry sat alone in the vast, dark kitchen, idly stirring his cooling soup. More than ever he felt as though an invisible sword were dangling over his head, hanging by a thread. After all, they couldn’t besure the curse as well as the gargoyle watch transferred to the alter until it actually wound down.
Suddenly, he made his decision.
Dropping his bowls in the sink, Harry took off after Lupin. Again he felt the rise of outraged anger. Lupin had said himself that Harry had a right to know. After all, he was the one threatened with this unnamed curse. He wasn’t a child who needed to be protected!
Harry had no idea which direction Lupin had gone, so he cast a quick Lumopedivis charm. Lupin’s footprints lit up, outlined by a faint glow. He followed, taking care to stay to the outer edge of the runner carpets, because the much-tread center boards of the corridors tended to squeak. The trail took a winding route through the ancient house, and he soon found himself in a section he’d never explored. He climbed endless narrow, twisting stairs and ended up in a hallway decorated with black oak paneling below and peeling, soot-stained wallpaper above, the faded, nearly obscured design seeming to consist of snakes intertwined with sharp-thorned roses. The gas-lamps feebly lighting this stretch of hallway were set in holders shaped like human hands.
The trail vanished into a heavy oaken door carved with leaping stags. It was slightly ajar, and a yellowish light glowed behind it.
He paused, anticipating a disgusting sight. On one of the rare occasions he’d answered Harry’s questions about the alter, Lupin had described how it ignored the utensils and simply pushed its face into the bowl and lapped up the food like an animal. The first few days it could not even do that: Lupin would have to load the spoon with something soft, like pumpkin pudding, and put it far back in its mouth to trigger the swallowing reflex. But gradually it was becoming more aware. More . . . lifelike.
Lupin’s face had twisted oddly when he said that, and he’d abruptly changed the subject, inquiring if Harry was progressing on the extra-credit summer work he was doing to raise his grades in hopes of qualifying for Auror training.
Still, Harry's anger had calcified into furious resolve. He took a half-step in, then froze. The threadbare tapestries and rough-hewn furniture looked medieval, but Harry recognized many of the same books and wizardly paraphernalia he’d seen in Lupin’s office. The patchwork quilt on the bed was a homey touch certainly not original to the room. There was even a glowing, pixyish creature sleeping contentedly in a cage on the nightstand.
He hadn't realized that Lupin was keeping the meat puppet in his own quarters. In retrospect, it made a certain amount of sense. This suite of rooms had its own bath, so it could be kept isolated from the entire rest of the house. Lupin half-joked that the Blacks quarantined the madder of their relatives up here; that is, the ones who didn’t practice dark magic.
He could hear splashing coming from a door in the bedroom’s far wall. Lupin must be in there now with the meat puppet.
More determined than ever not to give into the squeamish sensations curdling in the pit of his stomach, Harry crossed the floor and peered into the washroom.
It was a singularly uninviting looking place, despite being extravagantly spacious. The tiles were mottled shades of green with a reticulated black mosaic, giving the effect of dragon scales. Rich floral scented steam fogged the air, but barely disguised a stronger stench of mildew and neglect. The tub was big enough to drown a horse in, and stood out from the wall on four stout clawed legs. And in the tub was Harry’s double, up to its chin in a bubble bath.
The disorienting almost-but-not-quite déjà vu swept over Harry with the force of a tidal wave and he staggered, nearly falling into the bathroom. Harry managed to regain his balance and draw back far enough that he wouldn’t be seen even if Lupin happened to turn around.
Not that it seemed likely he would. Lupin was totally absorbed in what he was doing, which, at the moment, was gently wiping foam from the meat puppet’s face. The alter played with the bubbles, swirling its hand around, scooping up a handful and then blowing on it.
Lupin blinked soap out of his eyes. “That’s quite enough, young man.” He reached into the water and pulled the plug. The alter watched with uncomprehending sorrow as the suds swirled away down the drain.
Harry squirmed with embarrassment. The Dursleys had never kept pictures or home movies of him, naturally, but they’d documented Dudley’s development as if he were some rare and fascinating zoological specimen. Dudley always protested loudly but with barely concealed pride when his mother would drag out photo albums and videos of him as a child to inflict on unsuspecting guests. Harry had never had the experience of being a spectacle.
Of course the alter wasn’t actually him, but it was almost as bad to see Lupin helping it out of the tub, dripping wet and naked except for the cursed watch strapped to its thin wrist. It was indeed a nearly flawless replica down to the long thighs muscled from gripping the broom during Quidditch practice, the swirls of dark hair on its scrotum, the delicate paleness of its penis nestled above them. The meat puppet contorted its Harry-face into a clownish expression of sadness as Lupin wrapped it in a towel, still watching the disappearing suds.
Lupin rubbed the towel over its shoulders and it twisted underneath his touch like a happy cat, murmuring wordlessly. There was something touching, almost motherly, about the scene that seemed at bizarre odds with the truth of it. Lupin was not at all feminine, with his angular, drawn face, and there was something about the way he was touching the meat puppet . . . his hands straying to places they didn’t need to be, lingering a bit too long as he swabbed off the alter’s privates . . .
Watching, Harry felt himself getting hard. His hand slipped into his robes.
He'd long since stopped questioning his feelings toward Lupin. At first he'd been guilty and confused, but it had given him such excitement - not the comfort he felt with Cho, but a wild, naughty feeling, the spiced of perversity and secretiveness making it far more exciting than he could resist. He was old enough to acknowledge there were too many obstacles to ever do anything about it. And of course, there had never been even the slightest indication Lupin felt the same way about him.
But now the quiet professor was pushing the alter down to the furry bathmat. The mindless replica submitted happily, oblivious to anything besides the delightful feeling. It was like seeing one of his own hormone-addled daydreams played out in front of him. Added to that was a fierce jealousy that it was the alter’s mouth that Lupin tongue thrust greedily into, the alter’s nipples reddening under an onslaught of quick, nipping kisses.
Harry stroked himself harder, his Quidditch-roughened palm on the delicate skin of his member causing delicious friction. He could feel the veins popping out of clammy skin stretched taught by his iron hardness, until even the gentlest touch of his own fingertips was almost too much to bear. He knew he should leave now, before he saw any more, before he lost control, but the spasming muscles in his thighs and shoulders held him to the spot surely as shackles.
Lupin tore his oatmeal sweater off over his head, unbuckled his belt and let his pants - worn shiny at the knee, the cuffs threadbare, the zipped missing teeth - fall to the floor. His bare body was whipcord thin but not frail, the muscles corded and knotted with a lean, stripped-down predatory strength. The scars inflicted by his wolf-teeth delineated a map of pain, mountains of thick keloid scars, continents of bruise bordering a sea of weeping, ugly wound that had never fully healed.
The look in his eyes, which had gone pale amber in the light of the three-quarters full moon, was a fixed gaze of absolute concentration, the total focus of a beast about to pounce. The meat puppet huddled rabbit-still under that searchlight gaze.
Tenderly but relentlessly, Lupin devoured its innocent body. Even Harry had to egotistically admit there was a certain beauty to it. Freshly cleaned, the chalky-white skin almost glowed in the rippling, subaqueous lamp light. Every oiled and gleaming inch of it was explored, exploited, by Lupin’s strong, slender fingers, every muscle traced and kneaded, every curve of its young body voluptuously stroked. Lupin drew his hands over the downy thighs and forced open the meat puppet’s buttocks. The alter sighed and squirmed in an encouraging manner, raising its taut bum for more pressure, exactly like a cat being scratched at the root of its tail.
"Harry, Harry . . . " Lupin’s voice devolved into a ravenous growl. "Hrrrrrrr . . . "
Aroused, he was all beast, biting down on the meat puppet's exposed nape, licking away droplets of sweat and water, leaving little tooth-dents in the moist silk of its skin. The meat puppet was groaning quietly, but with delight, not pain. It crouched on all fours beneath his pawing, rough embrace, looking vague but content, like a pedigreed Persian being brushed by its adoring owner. At that moment, Harry hated it with all his heart - that galling expression of mindless self-satisfaction on its stupid face hurt him like a dagger twisting in his guts. It didn't even know what it had.
A helplessly captive audience, Harry was more besotted than before. To say he was crushing was to understate the feelings washing over him, these rich, mysterious, enormous feelings. He entertained wild thoughts: perhaps he could somehow disguise his scar, cobble together a fake cursed watch, lock the meat puppet away in a closet and take its place . . .
But the curse was due to strike this evening. Lupin would be watching the thing carefully. Even if he could somehow trick Lupin into leaving the room long enough to make the switch, Harry knew he could never make his eyes take on that empty, unknowing gaze.
And besides, after tonight it would be gone.
Would Remus turn to him now that the threshold of perversity had been crossed?
Harry caught his breath, pausing mid-stroke. The back of his neck prickled as his hackles rose. Maybe up until now, Lupin hadn't been able to admit what he was feeling to himself either. Might he now, having taken the first step with the meat puppet, come to Harry in full acknowledgment?
No. Harry realized with a dull thump of certainty that this surely must be why Lupin had lost control. He'd known this would be his only chance to sip at the pleasure they might have known together without fear of rejection or repercussions.
Lupin took the meat puppet in a tumult of passion, but it was not the sweet intimacy of humans, adoring, gentle, accepting, full of fun and play. It was not a caring embrace - it was fierce and immediate and full of snarl.
He gripped the velvety back of its neck in his teeth and drove himself into the meat puppet, searching, struggling, straining. The alter grimaced, momentarily resembling the silent gargoyle watch.
Harry’s heart beat so hard he thought it would explode, but it didn't. Instead, his loins exploded as if a grenade had gone off in the small of his back. Cum gushed from his jerking member, soaking the inside of his robes. He moaned desolately, not caring if he was heard.
There was no danger of that. Wild, and relentless and passionate, Lupin threw back his head and let out a mournful howl as he came. For all that, it was over in the space of a few minutes. Spent, his dignity splattered across the tiles, Lupin collapsed on his side, breathing in hard, hoarse gasps as if he had just run a marathon. The meat puppet reached out and gave his face a clumsy pat. Lupin smiled wearily.
"I love you, too, Harry." He let out a guilty cut-off yelp of laughter. “But you’re not Harry, are you?” He sounded wistful and mystified. “That's good, though, isn‘t it? Good enough, I suppose. This is the best I’ll ever have. All I deserve.”
The meat puppet rested its head in the crook of Lupin’s arm, and he petted it in a distracted manner.
Soundlessly, Harry backed away and left them there. He was mad with lust and love, ignored by the one whose touch he craved. He padded dazedly back down the corridor, ignorant of the telltale wet patch cooling and stiffening on the front of his robes.
After all this time, he knew Lupin was as desperately, hopelessly in love as he himself..
And he also understood now that his curse was this: to look but never be allowed to touch, to always desire the unattainable, to be trapped in his own personal psychosexual Gethsemane, to slowly be driven mad by measures daily . . .
*end*