(no subject)
who? Remus Lupin, Fenrir Greyback, Amycus Carrow, and Harry Potter
What? Part of the au_muses storyline with Remus, Sirius, Cedric, Luna, Harry, and the bad guys
When? THIS DOESN'T TAKE PLACE UNTIL APRIL. I'LL REPOST IT WHEN IT'S TIME. Sorry for the caps, but yeah, this is not angsty stuff we're getting into before Siri's birthday. It will be played out sometime in April, but yes it is canon and will be used there.
Why? Because MITZI IS FREAKING EVIL????? This was her request for the evil thing I requested from her. I'm sure she will call me evil when she posts it so ya know I'm beating her to the punch.
Author's notes: This was a request from r_moony in exchange for what I asked her to write.
Title: We Do What We're Told
Rating: PG 14ish I guess for mentions of torture and so forth. Don't read if the angst bugs you. Again this is au_muses timeline and doesn't effect any of the above mentions muses that are not playing in that community in this particular storyline.
The pensieve memory arrives via owl. It's a little after eleven pm on a Tuesday evening. It's not the vial that first catches Harry's eyes. No. It's the ring. The ring that his father gave to his uncle. The ring that symbolized so many spoken things, and so many more unspoken things.
His uncle would not take the ring off. Not willingly. There is only one person that he can picture sending him a pensieve memory along with this ring. One person who delights in tormenting not only the one he captures, but the one he sends in for the rescue.
The note attached says:
Come alone or he'll be dead the moment you enter the room.
Harry's running as fast as he can toward his uncle's office. He throws open the door and heads straight for the pensieve. The silvery substance swirls around, and then Harry dives face first into it. He surfaces in the shrieking shack. The same place Carrow had tortured him when he grabbed Harry.
He sees his uncle tied to a chair by magical ropes. Remus is a master at wandless magic. Harry knows he's trying to figure out a way out of the binds.
"Crucio. CRUCIO. SING FOR ME, LUPIN. CRUCIO."
Remus doesn't sing. He shakes in the chair. His eyes shut tight and he bites down so hard on his lip that Harry can see the blood trickle down his chin. Fenrir is there. He's howling with laughter. Carrow is more serious. He's got the concentration of a master painter putting the final touches on a masterpiece.
"Never disturb the artist while he's working." The familiar voice whispers in his head. He smiles as he squeezes his uncle's hand. Harry is seven in this memory, and they are at a local museum in one of the many countries they visited together. The artist in question is an older man who is putting the final touches on a landscape piece. It features an ocean.
"I won't," Harry whispers softly.
"Do you think he'll like it?" Remus asks, as he lifts Harry up so he can better over the crowd that is watching. He's smiling when he asks.
"Dad will love it."
He did love it. Sirius loves all gifts that Remus gives him. Harry shakes out of that memory and flinches as he sees the sharp nails on one of Fenrir's fingers slice into the scar he left on Lupin's face years before.
"LEAVE HIM ALONE," he snarls, as he lunges at him despite knowing that it's no use. It's just a memory.
"Why are you protecting a lost cause, Pup? Didn't I teach you better than that?" Fenrir asks in a paternal tone.
Remus lips curl up into a snarl. The sound he emits is feral. How long have they had him? Is he alright? Why is Harry still watching the memory instead of rushing for the shack.
"This is the boring part, Uncle Remus," Five year old Harry Potter whines. He looks up at his uncle who is sitting on the edge of his bed, storybook in his hand, and pouts.
Harry gets his hair ruffled for his trouble. The dramatic sigh it invokes in the boy makes Remus chuckle. "It's important to pay attention to the entire story, Harry, not just the beginning and the end. It's in the middle that you will find your clues to solve the mystery."
"But the end reveals it anyway."
"Isn't it better when you figure it out yourself?"
"...Sometimes. Alright then, I won't interrupt again. Please continue."
He shakes off the memory again as he tries to pay attention to this story in pensieve form that he's been given. It flashes forward suddenly and Harry gasps at the condition of his uncle. He's curled in the middle of the floor, shaking, blood and sweat have soaked his cloak and the floor beneath him.
Carrow kicks him in the ribs.
The howl is more wounded animal than tormented man. Harry blinks back angry tears. "You can't save him, Lad. The one for the many. You understand don't you?"
"Never," Remus manages to say before he passes out.
Harry is thrown out of the memory and lands with a thud on Lupin's classroom floor. He wants to get his dad, to have him race alongside him to help Remus, but the note says that if he doesn't come alone they will kill Remus the moment he arrives.
He leaves a note in case his godfather is searching for either of them due to the late hour.
"It is midnight. Went for a walk with Remus. If we are not back in twenty minutes come to the shack for us, please.
Love,
Harry.
With that he races out of the castle and toward the Whomping Willow. He runs as fast as he can, wand drawn, ready to attack. He wishes he had his invisibility cloak, but he can't do anything about that now. When he reaches the shack, he enters as quietly as possible, expecting to find Carrow and Fenrir still there. His fear for his uncle outweighs his fear of either of men in question.
Making his way up the stairs, he finds his uncle Remus in the same spot he was when he passed out in the memory. No one else is around. Quick healing spells to stop the bleeding and then he turns Remus's wand into a portkey. They arrive at the infirmary moments later. It is then that he patronuses his father, Cedric and Luna as he sits next to his uncle's bedside. Once the patonuses are cast, he takes one of his uncle's hands in his own and holds on to it. Just the way Remus held on to his so many times when Harry was growing up.
A week passes. Remus is fine. He tells everyone he is fine. Sirius and Harry don't believe him, but what can they do? If Remus doesn't want to talk about it then what right do they have to push him too. Harry is sure that his uncle is having nightmares. He's sure of it because he knows he had them when he was attacked.
He doesn't ask if Remus is alright when he finds him pacing the halls between the apartments he and Sirius share. "Hi."
"Hello," Remus says and offers the same half smile he normally greets Harry with. "Couldn't sleep."
"Me either."
"Fancy a walk then?" Remus suggests, and Harry nods his head. They walk in silence all the way through the castle's twisting staircases and long hallways. Harry isn't paying attention to the pictures on the walls. He's trying not to make it obvious that he's watching his uncle closely, searching for any sign of what he can do to help.
Once they are outside, they walk toward the lake. It's one of their favorite spots.
"We can have lunch together here every Saturday and Sunday," Eleven year old, freshly sorted into Gryffindor, Harry Potter says in an excited tone. He's holding on to his uncle's hand and bouncing with excitement.
"Oh, I'd like to have lunch with you anytime you'd like, Harry, but you may wish to leave some free weekend afternoons for your friends." Remus Lupin's smile is indulgent. After ten years of Harry and Sirius being on the run, Harry will now be in his primary care. Sirius will now be settled in London.
"I'll never want to spend time with anyone more than you, Uncle Remus." He pauses and gives a sheepish look. "Am I still allowed to call you that?"
"Yes, but perhaps not in class?"
"I think this is my favorite place at Hogwarts," Harry exclaims as Remus chuckles.
"Is that so? I suppose I won't need to show you the Quidditch Pitch then."
"Oh please do! I want to see it. Do you think they'll let me play? First years so rarely get the chance, but Dad and you have said I fly as well as my father did. He was bloody well brilliant according to the lot of you."
"This is still my favorite place on the castle grounds," Harry says quietly when they stop beside the lake. Memories of the past colliding with memories of the present.
"It is extraordinary. I'm very proud of you, Harry." Harry looks up at Remus when he says the latter. It seems to come out of nowhere.
"Thank you. I'll come walking with you anytime you want you know." Which translates into 'I know the nightmares are bad, and we don't have to talk about them. I'll simply be here for as long as you need me to be.'
"How much did you see?" His uncle's tone is so quiet that at first Harry isn't certain he understood him. Replaying the words in his head, he tenses just a bit at the memories that wash over him. Blood and sweat, and his uncle refusing to sing for Carrow or submit to Fenrir.
He shrugs and looks away at the water. "Enough. I'm sorry I didn't get there sooner."
"You came alone for me."
"Of course. They said they would kill you if I brought anyone with me," Harry tells him just a bit too defensively. He'd been expecting his uncle to bring that up.
"Let's walk," Remus says, reaching out to take Harry's hand in his own just as he had so many times before. Harry falls into step with him easily. The snow is gone, but the air is still chilly.
"It didn't matter anyway, Uncle Remus. Please don't be cross. They weren't there waiting, and I got you back as soon as I could." Harry believes he sounds very reasonable. His uncle's expression is unreadable.
There is silence for a bit. Harry doesn't even realize they've reached the apparation barrier . They pause and Remus reaches up with his free hand to straighten Harry's robes. "I'm not cross with you, Harry James. I simply wish you would not be so trusting of everything you see presented before you. Sirius and I raised you better than that did we not?"
Harry's cheek flush pink out of shame more than the chill in the air. He nods his head and says quietly, "Yes, you did. I...you were being tortured. I had to save you! You'd have done the same for me. You have done the same for me."
"Yes, I have done the same, but I understand things better now, Harry." He tightens his hold on Harry's hand as they suddenly apparate to the basement in Carrow's home. It's only after Harry looks around, clearly startled to be away from the castle, that he smirks.
Approaching him in a way that Moony would approach prey, he cups Harry's face in his hands and whispers, "You see, Lad, it's simple math. The few for the many. The one for the others. It's you or all of the others. You'll be a brave boy won't you? Just like your father and I have raised you to be?"
Harry stumbles back and stares at his uncle. His eyes widen with shock as Lupin's wandless magic allows the chains to shackle around his wrists and ankles. "Uncle Remus???" Polyjuice potion, it has to be Polyjuice potion.
Blinking back tears of betrayal, anger, and fear he presses his lips into a firm thin line. "It's not you. It's not truly you."
"When you were eight years old you had a nightmare about giant ants eating you because Sirius allowed you to watch that Muggle horror film believing it wouldn't frighten you. I'd told him it would, and we had a row. It ended when you demanded we stop fighting and read you a happy story." Remus pauses and then smirks in a way that makes him look so very much like Fenrir. "Do you want me to tell you that story now, Harry? I remember it of course."
The realization that his uncle has somehow turned on him is too much to take. The tears fall and he sounds so very young when he asks, "Why?"
"Yes, Remus, why?" Carrow asks as he appears. "Why would you turn on the child you raised? Is the many truly worth the one that belongs to you?"
Remus nods his head and says clearly, "Yes."
Harry slides down against the wall and stares past both of them. It's not real. It's just a dream. He'll wake up anytime now. His uncle wouldn't betray him. He couldn't betray him. He...
Why?
Why?
It's not until Remus is in chains on the opposite room and they lift the Imperius Curse from him that Harry begins to understand. However, judging by the horrified look on Remus Lupin's face, Harry would wager that Remus hasn't caught up that far yet.
What? Part of the au_muses storyline with Remus, Sirius, Cedric, Luna, Harry, and the bad guys
When? THIS DOESN'T TAKE PLACE UNTIL APRIL. I'LL REPOST IT WHEN IT'S TIME. Sorry for the caps, but yeah, this is not angsty stuff we're getting into before Siri's birthday. It will be played out sometime in April, but yes it is canon and will be used there.
Why? Because MITZI IS FREAKING EVIL????? This was her request for the evil thing I requested from her. I'm sure she will call me evil when she posts it so ya know I'm beating her to the punch.
Author's notes: This was a request from r_moony in exchange for what I asked her to write.
Title: We Do What We're Told
Rating: PG 14ish I guess for mentions of torture and so forth. Don't read if the angst bugs you. Again this is au_muses timeline and doesn't effect any of the above mentions muses that are not playing in that community in this particular storyline.
The pensieve memory arrives via owl. It's a little after eleven pm on a Tuesday evening. It's not the vial that first catches Harry's eyes. No. It's the ring. The ring that his father gave to his uncle. The ring that symbolized so many spoken things, and so many more unspoken things.
His uncle would not take the ring off. Not willingly. There is only one person that he can picture sending him a pensieve memory along with this ring. One person who delights in tormenting not only the one he captures, but the one he sends in for the rescue.
The note attached says:
Come alone or he'll be dead the moment you enter the room.
Harry's running as fast as he can toward his uncle's office. He throws open the door and heads straight for the pensieve. The silvery substance swirls around, and then Harry dives face first into it. He surfaces in the shrieking shack. The same place Carrow had tortured him when he grabbed Harry.
He sees his uncle tied to a chair by magical ropes. Remus is a master at wandless magic. Harry knows he's trying to figure out a way out of the binds.
"Crucio. CRUCIO. SING FOR ME, LUPIN. CRUCIO."
Remus doesn't sing. He shakes in the chair. His eyes shut tight and he bites down so hard on his lip that Harry can see the blood trickle down his chin. Fenrir is there. He's howling with laughter. Carrow is more serious. He's got the concentration of a master painter putting the final touches on a masterpiece.
"Never disturb the artist while he's working." The familiar voice whispers in his head. He smiles as he squeezes his uncle's hand. Harry is seven in this memory, and they are at a local museum in one of the many countries they visited together. The artist in question is an older man who is putting the final touches on a landscape piece. It features an ocean.
"I won't," Harry whispers softly.
"Do you think he'll like it?" Remus asks, as he lifts Harry up so he can better over the crowd that is watching. He's smiling when he asks.
"Dad will love it."
He did love it. Sirius loves all gifts that Remus gives him. Harry shakes out of that memory and flinches as he sees the sharp nails on one of Fenrir's fingers slice into the scar he left on Lupin's face years before.
"LEAVE HIM ALONE," he snarls, as he lunges at him despite knowing that it's no use. It's just a memory.
"Why are you protecting a lost cause, Pup? Didn't I teach you better than that?" Fenrir asks in a paternal tone.
Remus lips curl up into a snarl. The sound he emits is feral. How long have they had him? Is he alright? Why is Harry still watching the memory instead of rushing for the shack.
"This is the boring part, Uncle Remus," Five year old Harry Potter whines. He looks up at his uncle who is sitting on the edge of his bed, storybook in his hand, and pouts.
Harry gets his hair ruffled for his trouble. The dramatic sigh it invokes in the boy makes Remus chuckle. "It's important to pay attention to the entire story, Harry, not just the beginning and the end. It's in the middle that you will find your clues to solve the mystery."
"But the end reveals it anyway."
"Isn't it better when you figure it out yourself?"
"...Sometimes. Alright then, I won't interrupt again. Please continue."
He shakes off the memory again as he tries to pay attention to this story in pensieve form that he's been given. It flashes forward suddenly and Harry gasps at the condition of his uncle. He's curled in the middle of the floor, shaking, blood and sweat have soaked his cloak and the floor beneath him.
Carrow kicks him in the ribs.
The howl is more wounded animal than tormented man. Harry blinks back angry tears. "You can't save him, Lad. The one for the many. You understand don't you?"
"Never," Remus manages to say before he passes out.
Harry is thrown out of the memory and lands with a thud on Lupin's classroom floor. He wants to get his dad, to have him race alongside him to help Remus, but the note says that if he doesn't come alone they will kill Remus the moment he arrives.
He leaves a note in case his godfather is searching for either of them due to the late hour.
"It is midnight. Went for a walk with Remus. If we are not back in twenty minutes come to the shack for us, please.
Love,
Harry.
With that he races out of the castle and toward the Whomping Willow. He runs as fast as he can, wand drawn, ready to attack. He wishes he had his invisibility cloak, but he can't do anything about that now. When he reaches the shack, he enters as quietly as possible, expecting to find Carrow and Fenrir still there. His fear for his uncle outweighs his fear of either of men in question.
Making his way up the stairs, he finds his uncle Remus in the same spot he was when he passed out in the memory. No one else is around. Quick healing spells to stop the bleeding and then he turns Remus's wand into a portkey. They arrive at the infirmary moments later. It is then that he patronuses his father, Cedric and Luna as he sits next to his uncle's bedside. Once the patonuses are cast, he takes one of his uncle's hands in his own and holds on to it. Just the way Remus held on to his so many times when Harry was growing up.
A week passes. Remus is fine. He tells everyone he is fine. Sirius and Harry don't believe him, but what can they do? If Remus doesn't want to talk about it then what right do they have to push him too. Harry is sure that his uncle is having nightmares. He's sure of it because he knows he had them when he was attacked.
He doesn't ask if Remus is alright when he finds him pacing the halls between the apartments he and Sirius share. "Hi."
"Hello," Remus says and offers the same half smile he normally greets Harry with. "Couldn't sleep."
"Me either."
"Fancy a walk then?" Remus suggests, and Harry nods his head. They walk in silence all the way through the castle's twisting staircases and long hallways. Harry isn't paying attention to the pictures on the walls. He's trying not to make it obvious that he's watching his uncle closely, searching for any sign of what he can do to help.
Once they are outside, they walk toward the lake. It's one of their favorite spots.
"We can have lunch together here every Saturday and Sunday," Eleven year old, freshly sorted into Gryffindor, Harry Potter says in an excited tone. He's holding on to his uncle's hand and bouncing with excitement.
"Oh, I'd like to have lunch with you anytime you'd like, Harry, but you may wish to leave some free weekend afternoons for your friends." Remus Lupin's smile is indulgent. After ten years of Harry and Sirius being on the run, Harry will now be in his primary care. Sirius will now be settled in London.
"I'll never want to spend time with anyone more than you, Uncle Remus." He pauses and gives a sheepish look. "Am I still allowed to call you that?"
"Yes, but perhaps not in class?"
"I think this is my favorite place at Hogwarts," Harry exclaims as Remus chuckles.
"Is that so? I suppose I won't need to show you the Quidditch Pitch then."
"Oh please do! I want to see it. Do you think they'll let me play? First years so rarely get the chance, but Dad and you have said I fly as well as my father did. He was bloody well brilliant according to the lot of you."
"This is still my favorite place on the castle grounds," Harry says quietly when they stop beside the lake. Memories of the past colliding with memories of the present.
"It is extraordinary. I'm very proud of you, Harry." Harry looks up at Remus when he says the latter. It seems to come out of nowhere.
"Thank you. I'll come walking with you anytime you want you know." Which translates into 'I know the nightmares are bad, and we don't have to talk about them. I'll simply be here for as long as you need me to be.'
"How much did you see?" His uncle's tone is so quiet that at first Harry isn't certain he understood him. Replaying the words in his head, he tenses just a bit at the memories that wash over him. Blood and sweat, and his uncle refusing to sing for Carrow or submit to Fenrir.
He shrugs and looks away at the water. "Enough. I'm sorry I didn't get there sooner."
"You came alone for me."
"Of course. They said they would kill you if I brought anyone with me," Harry tells him just a bit too defensively. He'd been expecting his uncle to bring that up.
"Let's walk," Remus says, reaching out to take Harry's hand in his own just as he had so many times before. Harry falls into step with him easily. The snow is gone, but the air is still chilly.
"It didn't matter anyway, Uncle Remus. Please don't be cross. They weren't there waiting, and I got you back as soon as I could." Harry believes he sounds very reasonable. His uncle's expression is unreadable.
There is silence for a bit. Harry doesn't even realize they've reached the apparation barrier . They pause and Remus reaches up with his free hand to straighten Harry's robes. "I'm not cross with you, Harry James. I simply wish you would not be so trusting of everything you see presented before you. Sirius and I raised you better than that did we not?"
Harry's cheek flush pink out of shame more than the chill in the air. He nods his head and says quietly, "Yes, you did. I...you were being tortured. I had to save you! You'd have done the same for me. You have done the same for me."
"Yes, I have done the same, but I understand things better now, Harry." He tightens his hold on Harry's hand as they suddenly apparate to the basement in Carrow's home. It's only after Harry looks around, clearly startled to be away from the castle, that he smirks.
Approaching him in a way that Moony would approach prey, he cups Harry's face in his hands and whispers, "You see, Lad, it's simple math. The few for the many. The one for the others. It's you or all of the others. You'll be a brave boy won't you? Just like your father and I have raised you to be?"
Harry stumbles back and stares at his uncle. His eyes widen with shock as Lupin's wandless magic allows the chains to shackle around his wrists and ankles. "Uncle Remus???" Polyjuice potion, it has to be Polyjuice potion.
Blinking back tears of betrayal, anger, and fear he presses his lips into a firm thin line. "It's not you. It's not truly you."
"When you were eight years old you had a nightmare about giant ants eating you because Sirius allowed you to watch that Muggle horror film believing it wouldn't frighten you. I'd told him it would, and we had a row. It ended when you demanded we stop fighting and read you a happy story." Remus pauses and then smirks in a way that makes him look so very much like Fenrir. "Do you want me to tell you that story now, Harry? I remember it of course."
The realization that his uncle has somehow turned on him is too much to take. The tears fall and he sounds so very young when he asks, "Why?"
"Yes, Remus, why?" Carrow asks as he appears. "Why would you turn on the child you raised? Is the many truly worth the one that belongs to you?"
Remus nods his head and says clearly, "Yes."
Harry slides down against the wall and stares past both of them. It's not real. It's just a dream. He'll wake up anytime now. His uncle wouldn't betray him. He couldn't betray him. He...
Why?
Why?
It's not until Remus is in chains on the opposite room and they lift the Imperius Curse from him that Harry begins to understand. However, judging by the horrified look on Remus Lupin's face, Harry would wager that Remus hasn't caught up that far yet.