Fic: Full Moon, Ch. 1 (Summer) (PG)
An old story, posted here for the first time.
Pairing: SB/RL, JP/RL.
Summary: Remus wants Sirius, James wants to think about his future, and Sirius wants to make bets on it all. Includes angst, gay werewolves, barely-legal sex, and Sirius swears a lot.
Disclaimer: Characters have wandered from J.K. Rowling's head into mine and taken up residence. However, they are legally still occupants of the address that created them, and so I cannot take credit for their presence at this one.
Slight change from canon - I give Remus and James the credit for the Animagus charm, not Sirius and James, as Rowling does.
* * *
FULL MOON, CHAPTER ONE
SUMMER
JUNE
As bets go, it was innocent.
And James had rather good odds.
He’d spent the entire year with his head in his books, ignoring Quidditch, pranks, and Lily Evans, living in mortal fear of failing his O.W.L.s and being sent to live in disgrace as a Muggle Hoover Salesman, whatever that was.
But he wasn’t about to let Sirius Black bet on it.
“The answer is no!” James shouted. “No, nein, never, ever, definitely not, and you can bugger off while you’re at it. I’ve had enough of your amateur bookmaking experiments! ‘Potter, bet you you can’t make an Animagus charm! Potter, ten galleons says you haven’t the guts to drink it!’ Three years and a jolly fierce stomachache later -“
“But you have to admit, he honourably paid up,” Remus put in.
“It was covered in dog slobber, but yes, he did. Thank you.”
He slammed his book shut, and stood up.
“Come on, Prongs, it’s just a joke.”
“Everything’s a bloody joke to you, Black.”
The black-haired boy was blocking the door from the Gryffindor common room, slouching against one side of it with his arm raised against the other. James resented how tweedy Sirius made him feel. He brandished a book at him to compensate for it.
“Now pardon me, some of us actually plan to study for our exams, and we can’t do that if you’re going to set up a Bookmaking And Pestering Shop in the common room.”
“Ooh, what are we studying?” Sirius cooed, reaching one finger out to stroke the bindings of James’ books. “Potions … of looove - Charms … of looove - Defence Against the Dark Arts -“
“- of Sirius Black. Now let me through.”
It was difficult sometimes to remember that Sirius was supposed to be one of his best friends. Sirius had always been petulant and unpredictable, and James relied on that, actually, when it was directed at other people. But he’d always felt immune from the temper of Sirius Black, taken in hand and put on some sort of Very Important Wizard list that got him off. It made you feel special to be on the list of People Sirius Black Didn’t Hate.
But this year had been different. Perhaps it was some bizarre side effect of the Animagus charm, but Sirius had turned his snarl on James more times than he could count. With a sort of false, sneering friendliness, Sirius would goad James into screaming at him and then sit back and watch the results.
Remus, meanwhile, had just gone quiet and fidgety. He was upset about exams, definitely - but he’d retreated into some dark center place where James couldn’t reach, and didn’t say much.
James would talk to him about it after exams, he decided. Until then, he could think of nothing.
“Honestly, Potter,” Sirius continued, still lounging against the door and flicking a silver cigarette lighter open and closed with one thumb and forefinger, “you’re not going to fail, but it wouldn’t be interesting if we didn’t have something riding on it!”
“I’ve got a bit of a something riding on it; it’s called my future, though I wouldn’t expect Sirius ‘Instant Gratification’ Black to understand anything about that.”
Sirius went a bit paler at this, and James saw his jaw tense.
"Right. You wouldn’t,” Sirius said quietly, and moved aside.
Remus Lupin looked up from his book as James stalked towards the dormitories.
“Honestly, Pads, you went a bit tough on him. He’s got a lot to think about.”
Sirius strode casually over and tossed himself on the couch next to Remus.
“Scratch between my ears,” he asked, letting his head fall into Remus’ lap, which made the book fall to the floor with a thud. Remus sighed and rubbed his fingertips into the top of Sirius’ head.
“That’s better,” Sirius said. “By the way, was this supposed to happen? The - the aftereffects?”
“By Merlin, Sirius is actually inquiring after how something works. Shall I alert the Prophet?”
“All right, but it’s my body in question here, so -“
“Well, the charm doesn’t so much add something new to you as mix up what’s already there; it makes the animal portion stronger, as well as the bit that controls it. There are a lot of technical terms -“
“Which you’re certain I wouldn’t understand -“
“Do you want me to explain this or not?”
“Go ahead.”
Remus sighed. Sirius’ head in his lap made it difficult to concentrate.
"All right. I’ll try not to get too tangled up. Imagine you’ve got three jars of water. The animal jar, the spirit jar, and the human jar. Some Muggle named Freud had a base idea of this; the Ministry’s been very busy discrediting his ideas. He split the animal jar into two pieces, though - put our pleasure-seeking and our follow-the-pack instincts in two categories, and then set everything else as the judge between them. Close - too close for the Ministry’s comfort - but not quite right.”
“Get on with it, would you?”
“Right. The animal jar is the Animagus; it controls your basic instincts - food, sleep, sex, competition. The way you go about each of these gives a clue as to what your Animagus match is. If the animal jar gets out of control, you can find yourself transformed into the physical expression of your Animagus - that’s what happens when a werewolf bites; you’re infected with their Animagus, and your own human immune system doesn’t know how to fight it.”
He shouldn’t be so wildly attracted to Sirius’ troublemaking. He shouldn’t be so wildly attracted to Sirius - for one thing, he’s a boy.
“All right, I think I’m with you.”
But he is wildly attracted to Sirius; something jumps in his stomach when he so much as breathes near him. Rich, spoilt, self-centred, sneering, bored, unimpressed, worldweary, miraculous Sirius. He’s vaguely disappointed in himself for it; there appears to be an old maiden aunt in his head clucking and shaking her head over his unfortunate choice.
“Excellent. The spirit jar is the Incorporus. Everything intellectual and emotional - it’s your reason, your logic, your intuition, your emotions, your spiritual powers, your magical abilities. Wizards are born with this part of their psyche unusually strong; it’s sort of like a mutation. It’s very very recessive, which is how families that have only produced Muggles for thousands of years can suddenly find themselves with a witch on their hands. But that means all witches and wizards have this mutation, so if they breed with each other, they can be pretty certain of getting a child with their powers.”
“So Squibs - “
“Well, there are two options. There are some even more recessive genes in the sequence that if combined properly can override the wizard mutation, or somewhere along the line, a baby got born on the wrong side of the sheets.”
"Got it.”
He’s only interested in things that have to do with himself. He wasn’t there when James and I were poring over books we’d stolen from the Restricted Section, when we were theorising other ways in which the psyche could be manipulated, when we were figuring out what would happen if you substituted rainwater or frost for early morning dew. He’s only interested because now it’s personal. And I don’t care; I’ll give him the lecture anyway, I’ll share this with him because it interests me and I want him to know it.
And because it lets me show off that I may not be the one and only Sirius Black, but I can do something.
“The physical expression of the spiritual jar is very wispy. Completely ineffectual for operating in the world. You could swirl around and think a lot, but not much else. Sort of like ghosts can’t handle the afterlife - people who have gone spiritual can’t handle the physical side of this life. There aren’t very many these days, but in Medieval times, it was pretty frequent. You’d get some incredibly lofty witch communing with the universe and feeling the ebb and flow of life, and suddenly - poof.”
“And the human jar?” Sirius asked.
"The human jar is sort of the mediator. It juggles the animal and spiritual jars. Its physical expression is this odd body of ours - large brain, no natural defences, so it would seem to align with the spiritual side, but still needing to eat, sleep -“
“Fuck,” Sirius added, tossing the syllable with a bit of a sneer. Something jolted in Remus’ insides.
“Yes, thank you - eat, sleep, mate - which would seem to align it with the animal jar. But it’s even a little more complicated than that - all our animal needs have been given a spiritual tinge by our brains - food has been tied up with life, death, and resurrection; sleep has been given dreams; sex has been given - well, not just love, because it isn’t, always, but the tangling of souls.”
Sirius was quiet.
“What the Animagus charm does is strengthen the animal and the human jars. It’s very delicate, thank you, and James and I put years into it. The animal jar is strengthened enough to give itself physical expression, but the human jar is strengthened enough to give it control. You’re sort of dangling yourself over the edge and then pulling yourself back.”
“I see,” Sirius said.
“So that’s why you’re able to sort of - feel the physicality of the animal even when you’re in your balanced physical form.”
Sirius shifted his head in Remus’ lap. Remus barely managed to stop his fingers from stroking Sirius’ neck, by his hairline.
“I see.”
"It’s a miracle we didn’t kill ourselves, so a few bugs in the system shouldn’t bother you.”
“It’s not the bugs, it’s the fleas.”
Remus wiped his fingers on his trousers.
“Ew. I so didn’t need to know that, Pads.”
“I’m taking something for it, but it itches. And I can still feel where my tail should be. I keep trying to wag it.”
“Oh, is that what you were doing with that girl from Ravenclaw last Saturday? I thought that was you trying to dance.”
Sirius sat up, suddenly lofty again, swung his feet onto the table, and commenced picking at his fingernails.
“Ha, look children, Uncle Moony’s funny.”
“Piss off, would you, if you’re going to be stroppy? I’ve got exams. And so have you.”
Sirius stood up, tall and lanky and sketched like charcoal in black and white - black jeans, black jacket, black hair, black leather collar, black eyes, breathtakingly white skin - and pushed a lock of hair off his forehead. Remus tried not to watch. Tried not to skip a breath. Tried not to hate the Ravenclaw girl. Tried unsuccessfully.
“The whole school knows he’s gone soppy over Evans - all I’m asking is that if he fails any of his OWLs he confirms it for them at dinner. That’s all.”
“Considering that you offered to do a striptease at the first Quidditch match of next year if he won, I’m amazed he didn’t take your terms.”
“Honestly.”
Remus glanced up.
Agree to leave your collar on, and I’ll take them.
There was a moment when Sirius stared at him and he worried he’d said it out loud.
JULY
It is warm and the air is damp, and it slides the wrong way through Remus’ hair and makes him shiver. Something inside him growls and pricks up its ears. This is the wild time, the hot summer moon shifting between shadows of clouds ahead, and somewhere in this forest there are three pairs of eyes prowling with him.
He is their master; they have become what they are to follow him. The animal comes from within, and the gracious stag, the scampering nervous rat, and the lithe sinuous canine all bear a certain resemblance to the schoolboy, but Remus … Remus is what he is not by nature but by infection, and no one would recognise the slim, pale, bookish boy in this yellow-eyed creature, this untamable beast, this fur-matted, slinking animal with fangs and claws.
Summer is hot and there are no borders to this world; winter divides dark from light, heat from cold, inside from outside, and you can see between trees in the forest. Summer nights are shorter, but there is a scent of wildness about them that makes Remus’ nose prick up even when the moon is waning, that makes him sniff and howl.
And there are no classes, no schedules, no exams, to divide the days and to order them.
He has spent the day lying in his room and watching the trees shift outside the window.
He wants to risk everything. Wants to die gloriously.
He throws his head back and howls - from the glittering eyes in the forest comes an answering scream, and then the stag is rearing on its back legs and tossing its horns about and the rat has bared its fangs and is laughing.
AUGUST
He waits for Sirius by the window, waits for the silent shining motorcycle to appear through the clouds and take him away.
His parents wonder why he is so tired in the morning; they don’t see him at midnight, perched on the windowsill, leaning out into the starlight and the cool mist coming off the moors, perched and ready to fly. They don’t see him careening over farms and villages - the whole world is his now - and sucking that clear air into his lungs as they expand. They don’t see his fingers clutching the slim hips of Sirius Black in front of him, the way the whole world opens up and he is flying.
Remus whispers, “bet you can’t do a figure eight around those two churches,” and he can feel Sirius grinning as he kicks the motorcycle into a higher gear and dives towards the earth. Cheek pressing into Sirius’ back, and the ground is hurtling towards them now, the sleepy town is careening upwards. Sirius straightens out and pulls the motorcycle around one steeple - oh Merlin I’m going to be sick - but Remus tosses his head back and lets the wind run through his hair as the high street streaks by and the other church approaches. Sirius banks to the left and the motorcycle is half sideways as he turns it back to the right and takes the loop, and then another, a victory lap, and Remus can feel his friend’s ribcage expand and contract as he wraps his arms around it and pleads with the fates never to make him go home.
* * *
Sirius leaves the note under Remus’ alarm clock. Remus had fallen into bed, looking vaguely ill, as soon as they returned, and Sirius stood and watched him for a while, hands jammed into his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched forward, one foot pawing a bit at the floor.
Finally, he’d tossed his keys in the air and caught them, watching the moonlight strike them and turn them silver, scribbled the note, shoved it under the clock, and flown off, inexplicably annoyed.
Moony,
I believe you officially lost a bet last night. There will be penalties. I expect, no later than next week, a 20-line ode addressed “To Padfoot.” You may mention your subject’s winning good looks, his irresistible manner with the witches of Ravenclaw, his superior flying ability, and his brilliance at understanding the complexity of Animagus charms.
ta,
Mr. S. Black, O.B.G.F. (Order of Bloody Good Flyers), 1st Class
* * *
Remus delivered the poem on time. It even rhymed. He was particularly proud of the way he’d switched from tetrameter to pentameter when discussing Sirius’ ability to pilot a motorcycle. He thought it reflected the experience of flying, in an elegant and subtle manner. The word “Milton-esque” sprang to mind a few times; Sirius had no idea Muggles even had literature, but Remus prided himself on a working knowledge of the greats. Beowulf was a favourite of his. Frankenstein was not.
That night, they flew north, over mountains and lakes that hid between them, where Remus could see the moon blurry and reflected in the water. The moon, crescent-shaped and harmless, but lurking behind clouds and biding its time, waiting for him.
“Can you skim the water without falling in?”
“What’ll you give me if I can?” Sirius mumbled, already starting to circle over the lake.
“I’ll send a Howler to Bellatrix.”
“And if I can’t? What terrible vengeance will you exact?”
He was flying low now; Remus had to look up to see the tops of the mountains.
“Let’s see, what would …” he grinned. “When we get back to school, every time you see Severus Snape in the hallways, you must fall to your knees and recite ‘My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose’ at the top of your lungs.”
“Recite what?”
“Bit of Muggle poetry.”
“Never heard of it.”
“You’ve got three weeks to learn it, haven’t you?”
* * *
To: Bellatrix Black
Third Bedroom
By the window
Extremely Creepy House
Grimmauld Place
London
Remus chewed on his quill.
STOP MAKING SO MUCH TROUBLE FOR YOUR COUSIN; HE DESERVES …
No, that didn’t work.
IF YOU HAD A HEART TO RIP OUT, I WOULD LOVE TO …
Howlers weren’t really his style, that was the problem. He didn’t go in for shrieking invective. That was Sirius’ department - after James and Remus had stolen his broomstick and enchanted it to sing rude versions of Christmas carols whenever it heard the headmaster’s voice, they’d had to sit on him with heavy coats to shut him up.
With a nod, he set quill to parchment again.
FOR VERILY I TELL YOU, JUDGEMENT WILL NOT DELAY FOREVER!! TO THE EVIL AND CORRUPT, I SAY, BEHOLD, MY VENGEANCE IS SWIFT AND MY ANGER IS GREAT!! ALL FLESH SHALL COWER BEFORE ME!!
He managed to work in the phrases “whore of Babylon,” and “harpies that feed their black souls with the blood of the innocent” before he was satisfied with it.
The next week, he found himself painting “Sirius Black Is The Champion Of Everything” on a banner, which he would be hanging off of Gryffindor Tower after curfew the first night back at Hogwarts, and explaining to his mother where one of her sheets had gotten to.
The week after, he was composing love poetry to Calendula Jones of Ravenclaw, and signing Sirius’ name to it, feeling especially disgruntled over the fact that Sirius hadn’t gotten his “Remus de Bergerac” jokes.
“You have no poetry in your soul; she’s not going to be convinced.”
“There are some people who appreciate my artistic side, Moony. People who aren’t jealous.”
“I am not jealous, it’s just that it’s my artistic side.”
“You agreed fair and square, and you knew the terms.”
“Nobody could have done that loop-the-loop three times in a row; it was really unfair. You must have bewitched the cycle.”
Sirius was standing by Remus’ window; his pale skin looked paler and more luminous in the moonlight, and he was leaning all his weight on one leg, the other one angled out from his hips. He was absolutely beautiful, absolutely unbeatable, absolutely unattainable, and absolutely infuriating.
“So now I’m a cheater, as well. Let’s face it, Moony, you just can’t bear the thought that I might go off and have fun and leave you behind. You’ve always been jealous of James and me, and the girls just make it worse, don’t they?”
“Stop it, Sirius.”
“You can’t imagine having a girlfriend, so you’ve got to do all you can to stop us from it, haven’t you? All that ‘James, study with me,’ ‘James, our O.W.L.s are coming up, it’s so important,’ you just couldn’t handle him wanting to run off with Lily, and now you’re doing the same to me. Because you’re too terrified and pathetic to have a life of your own, you’ve got to stop us, haven’t you?”
“Sirius, you’re going -“
The black-haired boy wasn’t listening; he’d started pacing around the room like some caged thing. Remus began to worry he’d start transforming and be unable to control it. He didn’t want to be alone in a room with an angry Padfoot; he might be domesticated but he still had teeth.
“You’ve always been a little hanger-on, and last year was the worst. ‘Oooh, look, I’m Remus Lupin the prefect, now my friends have got to listen to me,’ well, you know what? James and I had adventures you didn’t know about. We left you out on purpose because you were being such an insufferable little prat …”
“Stop it!!”
“And I’ve been making special trips out to see you because I felt guilty about that -“
“Well, don’t do me any favours,” Remus muttered through clenched teeth. If I could change at will, I would tear your throat open.
"And this is the thanks I get. Lovely, Moony, really lovely.”
“Take your fucking poem and get out of my house.”
“You know what? I won’t even bother. I don’t need you; Calendula liked me just fine last year, and she doesn’t need any sodding poetry to make her like me still.”
“Fine.” Remus turned back towards his bed, seeing through blurry eyes the memory of Sirius lying across it and laughing, Sirius and James jumping up and down on it when he got his Prefect’s badge last year, Sirius who used to be his friend.
He heard the motorcycle start off, and felt the breeze from its wake over the back of his neck, and he shivered involuntarily because Sirius had said, you can’t imagine having a girlfriend, and Remus knew it was true, and wondered if Sirius did.