Fic: Full Moon, Chapter 2 (Autumn) (NC-17)
SEPTEMBER
Remus had studiously avoided sitting with Sirius on the Hogwarts Express; the motorcycle was not allowed to accompany him to school, though nobody doubted he’d find a way to get it there within the month.
But not sitting with Sirius meant not sitting with James or Peter; he’d been hoping they’d rally to his side and agree that Sirius had been absolutely horrid and they would stick by him, but no such luck had been his. They’d all tossed themselves into the compartment together, legs and arms and bags and robes and owls all falling over each other, and Remus doubted whether “where’s Moony?” had even come up. He’d ended up in a compartment with Reginald Finsbury of Ravenclaw, and been subjected to a thirty-minute lecture on the various uses of deadly nightshade, followed by an extended debate between Reginald and an earnest-looking girl with freckles and pigtails about whether the laws affecting the appointment of the Minister of Magic should be made more democratic. Remus considered himself among the school’s most intellectually curious students, and even he was bored.
It provided the most hospitable environment for sulking.
He was halfway through a really good one, which involved him and an extremely pretty girl going off together while Sirius had to stay home and tend to his enchanted boils, when there was a knock on the window of his compartment.
“Moony?”
James’ face peered in, and Remus was ridiculously delighted to see it; the glasses, the hazel eyes, the untidy hair, the quick grin.
Making his excuses to Reginald, he jumped up and joined Potter in the hallway.
"James, it’s been ages, I’ve -“
“Moony, what’s happened?”
He suddenly wanted to confess.
“It’s nothing. Sirius has been being … Sirius … and he got a bit on my wrong side, that’s all.”
“Well, if that’s it, then there’s no reason you can’t make up. Come on.”
Remus pulled his arm out of James’ grip, and slouched back against the wall.
“I’m not talking to him.”
James sighed.
“Give him a punch in the nose, and be done with it, would you? This is ridiculous.”
Remus looked up and down the hall of the carriage. Every compartment was filled with shrieking, chattering students, every rack filled with luggage and owl cages, every hallway filled with prefects and bored students trying to find their friends. He wanted to talk to James, and had the sudden sense that James would understand - James, who was looking at him with perplexed concern over his glasses, whose freckled face and light hazel eyes had none of the snapping recklessness of Sirius’. James, who with the Marauders’ Map in one hand and a book in the other, struck the balance between Sirius’ wildness and Remus’ responsibility. Sober, reflective, daring, sharp, intelligent James, who would be his confidante, who was safe and adventurous at the same time, who would study with him and listen to him and explore with him and be his friend and save him from Sirius.
But not now. Not in the lurching train carriage, not without thinking of what words he needed. Not without realising that this would change everything, that confessing how Sirius had wounded him meant confessing everything. Not without taking one last look at Sirius, without saying good-bye to everything Sirius had been - in his reality and his imagination. Not without resigning himself to leaving Sirius behind, to burying that hope and that longing and that love. Not now. Not here. Not quite yet.
“There’s something I need to tell you when we get to school, Prongs. Can you meet me in the North Tower after dinner?”
James looked confused, but he nodded, said, “sure - whatever you want, Moony,” gave Remus’ shoulder a squeeze, and walked back to his compartment.
* * *
Remus had been waiting in the Tower for about twenty minutes before James arrived, swinging his feet up through the trap door and settling down with his back against the curving wall.
“Sorry I’m late, Moony, I got involved in a very long fight with Professor McGonogall about whether the Regulation of Magical Creatures Act of 1945 applied to Animagi or not.”
“It does.”
"It doesn’t! The wording is very clear that it applies only to magical creatures that are one hundred percent creatures -“
“That’s actually ambiguous; you’re basing your opinion on a strictly literal reading of the Wizard Protection And Dangerous Animal Control bill of 1938, in which the words ‘creature’ and ‘animal’ were used interchangeably, but if you’re looking simply at how it’s been enforced, it’s a question of -“
“You wouldn’t care to bet on it, would you?” James was smiling.
"Oh, not you too …”
“Moony, this is a question of purely intellectual curiosity, unlike the tests of skill to which you put Sirius over the summer.”
“How did you -“
“We’ll agree to have the answer verified by two Professors; we’ll briefly present our cases, and let them decide. I think they’ll be thrilled that I’m putting my brain to productive use for once, and unlike your bets with Sirius, there’s a chance - minimal though it may be - that you might actually win.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” Remus said, but he was smiling back.
“Now, what is it you wanted to tell me?”
The Tower was old, and round, and empty - there were windows at even intervals, and a vaulted wooden roof. Only the sky was visible, silver-edged clouds that flirted with the moon, and a few cold-looking stars that blinked with different brightnesses.
This is your friend. James is your friend. He was all right with your being a werewolf, for fuck’s sake … do you remember what he did for you then?
James was looking at him with curious expectation.
Are you going to be a coward the rest of your life? Is Sirius right, that you can’t do anything for yourself?
Remus took a deep breath.
“James, Sirius and I had a fight because he wanted me to write love poetry to a girl in Ravenclaw as a penalty for losing a bet and I got upset because I said it was like Cyrano de Bergerac and it wasn’t fair and then he said that I was just a hanger-on who couldn’t deal with you and he having girlfriends and that you had adventures you left me out of last year but the real reason I was so upset is because I didn’t want Sirius to go out with girls from Ravenclaw I wanted him to go out with me.”
There was a long pause. James’ expression didn’t change, except his eyes retreated away from Remus’ a bit, and his mouth grew a little thinner.
“Say something,” Remus muttered after a minute.
“What on earth is Cyrano de Bergerac?” James whispered.
“James!”
“Why Sirius?”
Remus shrugged.
“How long?”
“Since fourth year.”
“Does he know?”
“I hope not.”
“I think he probably does, Moony.”
Remus was sitting with his back to the wall, his knees pulled up to his chest. He let his head fall between them; he could feel his ears burning.
“I was wondering what was wrong with him last year. I chalked it up to things being bad at home, but he … he picked a lot of fights, and he seemed … out of sorts a lot. And he would go all contrary whenever you showed up.”
Remus still didn’t lift his head up, but some wild hope flared in him - if Sirius had known - and had still - all that distance - if he had known …
But he crushed it, mercilessly, even as it rose; the memory of Sirius with his arm around some twittering girl, of Sirius standing by his window and slicing his heart out, was still too close, too real.
“Do me a favour, Moony, talk to him. Like normal, all right?”
Remus nodded, head still down, one side of his mouth turned up because James’ life was too simple for him to know that nothing would ever be normal again.
* * *
"Ten knuts says you didn’t.”
“And if I can prove it?”
“Then you can make me do whatever you like.”
Sirius tossed a letter in Remus’ lap, and he had to concede that the wording of it definitely made it sound as though Sirius had, indeed, made a complete physical conquest of Calendula Jones.
Sirius was standing by the window of the dormitory, shirtless, lean chest and stomach curving up from black jeans and the silver belt buckle with the Animagus symbol on it, dog collar cutting the line at his throat, fingers delicately clutching a cigarette. He waved the smoke out the window.
“Why don’t you just go outside? There’s a balcony right there.”
“Because then I wouldn’t be able to make fun of you as easily. Stop changing the subject.”
“What’ll you have me do?” Remus murmured.
“Kiss Sarah Fletcher.”
“You’re insane.”
“Those were your terms. Whatever I want. I want you to kiss Sarah Fletcher, and I want you to do it where I can see you.”
“You’re a nutter.”
“Those were your terms.”
“Barmy, crackers, and utterly round the twist you are.”
"Were those your terms or weren’t they??”
Sirius stood above him now, cigarette burning in his outstretched hand.
“Yes.”
* * *
Remus had to admit Sirius hadn’t chosen a difficult target; Sarah Fletcher would kiss anything that bought her a butterbeer, and would have done a lot more if Remus hadn’t suddenly remembered an urgent prior engagement and run out of The Three Broomsticks. The blurry crowd of faces swam together as he neared the door, but Sirius - smirking, dark-haired, lounging, Sirius - caught his eye and raised his beer at him as he left.
* * *
“Let me tattoo you.”
“Uh-uh. Never. No. You’re crazy.”
Remus raised his book like a shield.
“Not permanently, you nutter, just a little Death Eater mark in ink - let a few Professors see it -“
“Not a fucking chance!”
Remus got the edge of his book in the chin as Sirius dove at him and tried to grab his left wrist. He swatted at Sirius with the book, and soon found himself pinned against the couch, his best - former best friend’s thighs gripping his hips.
“I AM NOT LETTING YOU TOUCH ME.”
“I’m touching you right now -“ Sirius swept his index finger across the tip of Remus’ nose. “And now -“ he flicked a wisp of hair off Remus’ forehead. “And now -“ he tugged at the back of Remus’ neck.
“Stop it!!”
“What are you going to do about it, hmm? You lost another one, Moony, and we forgot to set terms. You’re not a werewolf now, you’re just a skinny, pathetic sixteen-year-old boy who can’t even stand up to his friends. Hmm? What are you going to do?”
Remus shoved at Sirius, but the dark-haired boy was stronger; it was like pushing at a wall. He felt his body pressed against the back of the couch, Sirius moving closer, relentlessly - there was an odd expression in his eyes, an unusual twist to the side of his mouth; it reminded Remus of Bellatrix.
“I could fucking kill you if I wanted to.”
“Sirius, this isn’t funny!!”
“It’s not supposed to be. Say yes.”
"Sirius! Stop it!!”
“SAY YES.”
“I’M NOT LETTING YOU DO IT!”
“YES, YOU FUCKING WELL ARE!!”
“GET OFF ME!!” Remus was choking, he was going to die, Sirius was going to kill him, he was all cold and icy, what was wrong with him, what was …
“SIRIUS ALEXANDER BLACK!!”
James was standing in the doorway with his hands on his hips, his eyes blazing.
“Get off him.”
His voice was chilly and firm, and it didn’t shake. Sirius turned to look.
“I said, get off him.”
With a casual drag on his cigarette, Sirius slid away from Remus, who took a deep, gasping breath, and tried in vain to settle his glasses and his book nonchalantly back in place and look as though nothing had happened.
“Apart from being a fellow living creature and supposedly one of your best friends, the boy you just did a very good impression of attempted murder on is, in fact, a prefect at this school, and you are not.”
“Fuck both of you,” Sirius snarled.
“Not that you’d have the stamina, but I’m certain Remus and I have both received more appealing offers,” James said without changing his expression. “However, I think, given the circumstances, Master Lupin here would be well entitled to inflict upon you the punishment of his choice. Don’t you agree, Moony?”
Remus looked from one of them to the other - Sirius standing in the middle of the rug, turned halfway towards the fire, the orange and red dancing off his bare chest, cigarette still clutched in his fingers, and James, in impeccable robes, cold-eyed and stern and solid in the doorway.
The punishment of my choice.
James raised an eyebrow at him.
No. Not like this. Not with James giving me permission. It shouldn’t be like this.
“I think my never speaking to him again will be punishment enough,” he whispered, and tried to keep his dignity intact as he left the room.
“You know what your problem is, Prongs?” Sirius said, turning on James, cigarette raised in one hand for emphasis. “Your problem is that Lily Evans is such a goody two-shoes, and she has you following her around like a house elf.”
“You’re going to land yourself in trouble if you keep up like this,” James said, and turned to follow Remus, a piece of paper fluttering from one hand.
* * *
He found Remus - thanks to the Marauders’ Map - huddled in the North Tower, his robe serving as an impromptu handkerchief for the embarrassing tears that he couldn’t seem to stop.
“It’s all right,” James managed awkwardly.
“No, it isn’t!” Remus had to cut off and swallow a gulping sob. “He could have bloody well killed me back there, and I don’t think either of us really knew what he was doing or could have stopped him.”
“Sirius has a lot of problems -“
“Yeah, right, his problems being that he’s rich and gorgeous and pure-blooded and not a werewolf and dating girls -“
“Calendula Jones cut him loose; that might be why he’s -“
“- and his entire bloody family has ended up working for You-Know-Who, so this might just be when that particular trait starts to show up!”
“That’s not fair - you know he’d do anything to be rid of -“
“Whose side are you on?” Remus was standing now, pacing, and James looked up at him. He’d half-wondered, when he walked into the Common Room, whether Sirius and Remus were fighting or making out - Sirius’ bare shoulders had been covered in sweat, and Remus had lost his glasses, and there was a moment when James had stopped short with the abandoned beauty of the line, before he realised his friend was in danger, real danger -
“I’m on yours, Moony.”
Remus made an odd, disbelieving noise, like a hiccup.
“And I’m on his,” James continued, sternly. “That’s what being your friend is about.”
"He tried to kill me, he did!!” Remus screamed.
“He thinks he’s losing you,” James said quietly.
“WHAT?”
“He told me. We snuck in a bottle of firewhiskey and got sloshed beyond belief last year, and he got maudlin and confessional and he told me you think he’s stupid and childish and he’s going to lose you, and that we’re the only good thing that’s ever happened to him, and -“ James shrugged. “That’s why I keep telling you to talk to him. Not to give up on him.”
“I’m bloody well in love with him, if you hadn’t noticed!” Remus shouted. “Nothing, nothing, nothing is ever going to be the same again, because I’m in love with him, and he’s not with me, and he’s insane and possibly criminal, and you can’t just pretend this isn’t happening while you’re off somewhere in Safe Happy Heterosexual Lily Evans World!!”
He kicked the wall of the tower, then turned around and tried to punch James, but James caught his somewhat off-balance swing, and tossed him back against the wall.
“Simmer down.”
“Where’s a full moon when you need one?” Remus murmured dangerously, not breaking contact with James’ eyes.
“That isn’t funny.”
“Wasn’t supposed to be. I’ll be in the dormitory.”
He pulled free of James’ grip, and threw himself down the trap door.
OCTOBER
Gryffindor had beaten Slytherin at Quidditch, and Remus had stiffly congratulated Sirius, gotten a cup of tea and an apple from the kitchen elves, and retired to an afternoon on his bed with a book, when James appeared.
Without a greeting or preface, he held up two sealed envelopes. Remus peered at them curiously.
“I gave our position papers to Professors Piddly-Stink and Roonwit, both of whom were soundly impressed with our intellectual zeal, and they have delivered their decisions.”
What with one thing and another, Remus had almost entirely forgotten that he and James had placed a bet on whether an obscure clause of the Regulation of Magical Creatures Act of 1945 applied to Animagi or not.
“Well?”
James idly ran one fingernail across the seal to Professor Roonwit’s answer.
“First, what if it’s a tie?”
“We ask Professor Dumbledore to break it.”
There was another long pause.
"We never made terms,” James said.
Remus hardly looked up from his book.
“So? Name ‘em.”
“If I’m right, you have to do a Polyjuice Potion and take all my detentions for me next week.”
“Where the hell am I supposed to find those ingredients in a week?”
“I have a few sources.”
“Mmm, Monsieur Prongs hasn’t entirely gone goody-goody, has he?”
“And if I’m wrong?” James asked, slinging his long body out across his bed, one foot jiggling idly. “What then?”
Remus didn’t look up from his book. He took a bite out of his apple, and chewed for a moment.
“You come to bed with me,” he said, and flipped the page.
There was a moment’s silence, and then James whispered, “what?”
“You heard me. Those are my terms, and a bet is a bet. Open them up.”
James slowly sat up and slid his finger under the seal of the first envelope. He read quietly to himself for a while, until Remus put down his book and sat up, watching him.
“Professor Piddly-Stink is of the opinion that the wording of the Act does mean that it applies to part-time creatures such as Animagi,” James said. Remus stopped breathing for a moment. He noticed that James’ fingers were shaking a bit as he reached for Professor Roonwit’s envelope. Its seal was much fancier than the other one; all purple and silver, the seal of the Ambassador to the Centaurs, Unicorns, and Thestrals - once you held the office once, the seal and the title were yours for life. Roonwit preferred to be addressed as Professor by his students, though -
Remus forced his train of thought back to the paper James was unfolding, and scanning, and reading.
“… Professor Roonwit … agrees.”
“Come to bed.”
“Remus -“
“Now.”
“Moony, it’s not -“
“Yes it is.”
It was getting dark outside; the moon was almost full. The dormitory was empty except for the two of them, lit only by a few spare candles spitting in hurricane glasses on the bedstands. One side of James’ oval-shaped face was in darkness; the other one was tanned and hazel-eyed and smooth, with half a full mouth and half a straight nose and half a head of messy black hair.
“Please -“
“Come to bed with me. It’s fragmenting, and you know it, Prongs. Peter’s nowhere to be seen, unless it’s skulking around in corners watching us. Sirius and I are twisting around and pulling away from each other, and you want to marry Lily Evans.”
“You and Sirius haven’t even touched - it’s as it’s always - ”
“Isn’t,” Remus whispered, crossing the floor and leaning on James’ bed, hands on the bedposts, torso forward, making a point. “The spirit side is shifting; watery and transparent, but it is a third of who we are. We have tried to deny it, tried to make it all the Animagus and the controlling human pulling the strings, but there is a subtlety to the mind that changes who we are, and Sirius and I have become as lovers just by the power of one of us imagining it. That is a border to be crossed just as much as the touch.”
“Moony, this is going a bit far -“
“You’re being pushed off by yourself, into a world of solitary achievement and family life. Who are your friends when you have a wife? Second best, if not less. We’re falling to pieces, James; your childhood.”
“Remus -“
James bent down over the letters; Remus tried to pretend he didn’t know his friend was crying.
"And you have tried to believe it isn’t happening, that it’s just an adolescent temper tantrum, not that I would die for Sirius, and he is fighting for his very soul and his very self, and you are beginning to look to your future as something that relates to your present and not liking what you see. And all of us are trying to pretend that Peter is still one of us, that he has not faded into obscurity and memory. That the Marauders still live. It’s a lie, James, and the truth terrifies you. Come to bed with me, and we are bound to each other, and you are bound through me to Sirius, and he to you. Come to bed with me, and for a wild moment, I am first for you. Come to bed with me, and something may yet be saved. Or declare this nothing but a childish bet, remember that you are too old and too serious - all of a sudden - to have time for it, turn on your heel, and go off to a future with Lily Evans. And never know.” He paused, gazing steadily at the back of his friend’s neck, where the hair ended against smooth tanned skin. “Come to bed with me, James.”
With a sob, James raised his wand towards the door, murmured “Impervius,” and then trailed the wand in Remus’ hair and whispered “Silencius” as half a dozen locks sprang up across the door. Remus’ breath caught, and he climbed onto the bed and half-fell into James’ arms, their lips meeting - warm, soft, utterly unexpected.
* * *
There was a simplicity to sex with James that surprised Remus. He’d expected awkward fumblings, a sort of self-conscious grasping after what they were losing, but James’ body took to his with fluidity and ease.
“Moony,” James murmured into that first kiss, as he slid Remus’ lips apart and flickered his own tongue between them. “I love you.”
Remus curled against him and settled into kissing - if he’d been with Sirius, he’d be tearing at the other boy’s clothes and desperately running his hands over every inch of his skin, but kissing, with James, satisfied for now. With Sirius, I must catch him before he changes or runs away, but you are here, you are staying. With you, there is time. With you, I can kiss you at my leisure.
“Love you too,” Remus sighed, and raised his hand to the hair falling over James’ temple, smoothing it back in place, curiously hearing the sigh James gave against his own mouth, letting it slide over his body like warm water, not like the electric shock that Sirius making that sound would give him.
It is right and natural and good, Remus somehow thought.
There was a brief struggle as James tried to push Remus onto his back; the hazel-eyed boy eventually won, but lost his spectacles in the tussle. And he is beautiful; I can see that without partiality or passion. He is clear-skinned and his mouth is full and smooth, his body long and lithe from years of playing Quidditch. The boy in my bed is beautiful, and I have neither won nor lost.
James’ hand slid down the outside of Remus’ thigh - no curving hip, no stocking, just the smooth line of a boy’s leg, and the same uniform trousers he was wearing himself.
Some part of James’ mind was running over facts - this is cheating on Lily, this is cheating on Lily, this is one of your best friends, you don’t do this with boys - but the rest of him was standing by in astonishment at how normal it seemed, how intimate and luxurious it was to be kissing his way down Remus’ neck, flickering his tongue over Remus’ collarbone, smiling into Remus’ skin as he pulled open the buttons on his shirt. Wondering if Remus has ever done this before.
He thought not, as his hand slid between Remus’ legs, and the boy’s pale and slender body jerked with surprise. It is you and not Sirius, he told himself silently, and grinned slyly, burying his mouth in the soft curve of Remus’ stomach to hide it.
"James …”
James gently took Remus’ wrists, holding his arms at his sides, nuzzling at his stomach, teasingly kissing and licking the sensitive skin just below his navel.
And then that warm, flickering tongue was … somewhere else … it was oh James, my James … Remus’ arms struggled and his hands curled into fists, clutching at James’ wrists.
"Don’t leave us …” he murmured.
James released one of Remus’ hands and stroked up his stomach and chest instead, his hand coming to rest at Remus’ throat. The brown-haired boy bent his head, raised his hand to grip James’, to twine their fingers together, as he kissed the palm of his friend’s hand, kissed each fingertip, kissed the pale underside of his wrist, and finally, with a choking cry, fell back on the red-and-gold blankets, his eyes closed, his mouth open, as if in pain.
* * *
In the stillness that followed, James crept slowly up Remus’ body to settle on top of him. And he couldn’t tell if he imagined it, but in that shifting darkness, he thought he saw a pair of gleaming yellow eyes just past the window, and thought he heard something snarl.
NOVEMBER
Not love, because it isn’t always, but the tangling of souls.
It was almost curfew, and they were very tired and a little drunk (James had come through with the firewhiskey again) and James had his head in Lily’s lap, and Remus was considering him. It was true, there had been a certain comradeship to the two of them since that - that - bloody miraculous - night in the dormitories, and it seemed to Remus that Sirius was easier to endure than he had been. He was almost looking forward to visiting Potter over the holidays, even though he knew Sirius would be there and he couldn’t get away from him.
“What’s wrong with you?” Lily asked after a while. When there was no response other than a gentle snore from James, she said, “Hullo? Lupin? Paging Master Lupin …”
“What? Oh - me - sorry - right - what?”
“I asked what was wrong.”
“Is there something wrong?” Remus asked.
“You’re smiling. That’s not normal.”
“I’ve just thought of a bet.”
Lily had some idea of the tradition, though none of the details, except for one regrettable incident last year when James had been subjected to an ill-thought-out penalty and had to walk around for three days with a horse’s face.
“And it makes you smile.”
“It does.”
“A second ago you looked about to cry.”
“Yes, well, it’s complicated.”
Lily shrugged and stretched.
"About time for me to be off. Shall I wake the lummox or simply deposit him on the floor as I stand?”
“Wake him; his head may not be particularly clever but it is rather pretty.”
The red-haired girl considered this and gently leaned over to kiss James’ slightly open mouth.
“Wake up, love, it’s curfew,” she whispered, and Remus leaned back in his chair, watching. There was a slight squishing of his insides, but less than there had been before. He knew now. He knew. It was sealed.
“Oh, and Remus has a new bet,” she said, as she kissed James again at the door to the stairway to the Girls’ Dormitory. “Promise you’ll stay … normal … would you? My parents are coming to visit this weekend, and it’s odd enough for them that you’re a wizard to begin with, so if you ended up at all equine … well …”
James nodded, and kissed her one more time, and then turned back towards Remus, who still sat in the red armchair with its back to the fire, staring at James where he stood in front of the door.
“You’ve got a new bet?” James asked in a weary voice.
“Yes.”
“Dare I ask what it is?”
Remus looked up. James noticed that his face looked long and thin and sketched in hard lines.
"The one bet I’m certain to win. And the only one I’ve wanted to lose.”
* * *
The moon is cold in winter, when death is made of ice and the nights are long. The moon is cold because she loves the warm nights when the fertile, sighing world draws close and desires her, but she is forced to wander the empty, frozen skies, to brush her silver kiss over a sixteen-year-old boy and make him a monster. She watches him prowl the empty shadows, where in the summer the leaves would hide him, watches his grey fur slink among the black and white of the world she illuminates, and she feels herself turn to ice, feels herself turn cold and dead and stab him.
* * *
It is the first time he’s spoken to Sirius in weeks.
So he doesn’t actually speak to him.
He sends a paper crane across the Potions classroom, and watches it alight on Sirius’ shoulder. There is a perfect, unspoiled delight in watching the way Sirius’ neck curves, the way his finger comes up and the crane hops onto it. And there is a delight to finding out that the joy of watching Sirius is undiminished. That something doesn’t die. He flicks his wand and turns the paper crane yellow, like Pandora’s, and smiles.
We need to talk. R.J.L.
Sirius frowns and rips a piece of paper from his notebook.
So talk. S.A.B.
Remus catches the crane and turns it over, writing on its flip side.
Did you meet with McGonogall last year regarding career prospects? R.
The crane veers off course this time due to a breeze made by a passing Calendula Jones as she goes to fetch a Barking Bean from the cabinet, and makes a crash landing in Sirius’ pile of parchments. The Professor looks up, muttering, but Sirius makes a big show out of rustling through his parchments, and Remus hurriedly adds the waiting draught of magnolia juice, a bit too fast, so his potion turns green, screams loudly, and explodes.
So he doesn’t get the reply crane from Sirius until next period, when it lands on his hand as he’s taking notes in Defence Against the Dark Arts.
Yes. Of course. What’s it to you? S.
He smiles, turns the crane over, writes his reply, and sends it off.
Care to make it interesting?
* * *
It was dark by the time Sirius found him in the common room.
“What are you on about?” Sirius asked, with no preface, as he lit a cigarette and leaned out the window.
"I thought that if we were never going to speak to each other again, we should at least have one more bet, for old time’s sake.”
Sirius turned a look on him that was a mixture of contempt and pure hatred.
“Really original, Moony. What is it?”
“On your future.”
Sirius rolled his eyes and took a long drag on the cigarette.
“I’ve got a very drunk Sarah Fletcher waiting for me in the North Tower, so unless this is important …” He strode halfway across the common room, but Remus stopped him, one hand held up, a few inches away from Sirius’ chest.
“I want to bet on your future.”
“So you said. What of it?”
“That you’ll end up joining You-Know-Who. By the end of the war everyone says is coming.”
Sirius looked as if he’d been slapped. Remus expected Sirius to hit him, to shove him against the wall by his throat, to claw at his face. But he stood unmoving, rooted to where he stood in front of the fire. Remus watched the reflections of the flames shoot up and down Sirius’ body. They used to burn us at the stake.
“You … bastard,” Sirius whispered finally.
"Are you in?”
“This is what you wanted to tell me? That you think I’m …”
“How did you get here?” Remus asked.
“Well, Moony, when a shrieking harpie and a treacherous bastard love each other very much …” Sirius began in a sing-song voice.
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t think I do,” Sirius said. “How did I get to be your friend? How did I get to be at Hogwarts? How did I get here, in a cosmic sense?”
“Well, you ended up my friend because you very foolishly thought I could help you with your Defence Against the Dark Arts homework. You ended up at Hogwarts because you come from the Most Ancient And Noble And Bloody Tiresome House Of Black, and you ended up here on earth because God in his wisdom or the fates in theirs or nature in hers decreed that it be so. But what I meant is how did you end up in Gryffindor?”
There was a long silence while Sirius smoked, staring at the fire, before he threw the tip of his cigarette into the flames and watched it turn black and shrivel into ashes that flew up the chimney into the cold winter air.
“Because I knew you, Moony,” Sirius said, and his voice was strangely tight.
“What?”
“You just said you don’t remember meeting me before that day in first year when I asked for help with Defence, right?”
“Yeah - you were this skinny little kid who sat next to me and who never talked, and we both failed that assignment miserably.”
“We’d met before.”
“When?”
“On the train.” Sirius was suddenly very quiet. “I was scared to death, you don’t know what I’d been told about Hogwarts. All these horror stories of ‘it’s all politics, boy, get in there early with the powerful ones and you’ll make your mark yet’ and all about how I should make myself the favourite of all the older boys from good families - and all about beatings and hangings and thumbscrews, not that I didn’t get enough of the beatings at home, but … at least that was the devil I knew.”
Remus began to feel oddly ill.
“And I ended up in a compartment with you, and you gave me a chocolate frog and said your name was Remus and I said I had a brother named Regulus and that was sort of the same. And then I thought well, that was an awfully stupid thing to say, and then you told me that Remus was the name of a Muggle who’d apparently founded a city and he’d had a brother named Romulus, and that was sort of the same, and then you gave me another chocolate frog, and I started think … maybe I’d like it here. And then Potter stopped by, and …”
Sirius’ face flickered in and out of shadow.
“My whole family had been in Slytherin. It was taken for granted I would be too. But do you remember that year there had been an accident in the headmaster’s office, and the Sorting Hat had gotten a Reversal charm put on it, so you and James were sorted before I was?”
Remus remembered that vaguely - he was near the middle of the alphabet, so it hadn’t mattered much to him.
He was standing closer to Sirius now, and Sirius was talking quietly.
"You were put in Gryffindor. I asked to go with you, and the hat was so shocked it nearly fell off my head - it said never in twelve generations had a Black … questioned his place …”
Sirius looked up, cheeks flushed from the fire. Remus was kissing him before he knew what he was doing, and Sirius was growling and pushing Remus backwards until he was pressed up against the side of the fireplace, Sirius’ mouth prying his open and sliding his tongue between Remus’ lips.
Remus made a noise halfway between a pant and a moan, and Sirius responded by gripping his hips and dragging them into contact with his own, tugging his shirt out of his trousers, running his hands up Remus’ stomach. The skin was soft and firm and warm, and he could feel the muscles fluttering underneath it.
“Don’t you ever say that again …”
“Sirius -“
“Don’t you ever.”
“Sirius -“
Sirius was crying and kissing him and pressing him against the hot stone, moving his hips sinuously against Remus’ - he could feel his erection through two pairs of trousers - and they were half-fighting as Sirius clawed at Remus’ neck and groaned, “I’m on your side and I hate you and …”
Remus pushed Sirius away; he was halfway to crying himself, could feel the hot prickliness in his chest and he screwed up his face to stop it.
“I hate you!” he screamed. “Because you have fucking everything and you’re mean because you can be, and you always always win, and you - and you -“
He lunged at Sirius, grabbed a fistful of his hair, and ended up astride him on the couch. They stared at each other.
“Remus is fighting,” Sirius said quietly, dangerously.
“I hate you!!” He gave a tug on the hair, and Sirius’ mouth opened, exquisitely. His eyes never left Remus’.
“Remus never fought before. Remus never broke rules before.”
Sirius pressed his hips upwards, between Remus’ legs, and Remus forced them back down.
“Sirius makes Remus do a lot of things he’s never done before. So does James.”
"Shut up!!”
“It goes both ways, doesn’t it, Moony? The tangling of souls?” He reached up and pressed his mouth on the other boy’s, hard, twisting so that he was on top and Remus was on his back on the red leather sofa, one hand pinned behind his back, the other still clutching at Sirius’ dark hair.
“Be joined to me, Remus, tangle with me. Come on, twist us together, we can never ever ever break it, Remus …” he was deftly stripping the boy as he growled the words into his shoulder, pulling open the buttons of Remus’ shirt as Remus twisted and writhed underneath him, trailing fierce kisses that burned down Remus’ chest, sliding one hand between them as they lay naked and firelit on the sofa -
"Impervius -“
“Silencius -“
“Oh GOD …”
Sirius entered him expertly, smoothly, surely, and Remus grabbed his shoulderblades, slick with sweat from the fire, and threw his head back, letting Sirius slide teeth down his neck, his whole body convulsing with every thrust of Sirius’ hips, oh God at last - his own hand tangling with Sirius’ between their bodies -
When he came, he gripped Sirius’ fingers so hard he thought they’d break.
DECEMBER
“It isn’t blood, Sirius.”
“No, it’s fire.”
Remus opened his mouth for the kiss.
“I love you, Moony.”
“Yes. I love you too.” He paused. “Will it be enough?”
“On one side, blood and temptation. On the other, choice, and the flames. We’ll see.”
“We will.”
“If I stay on your side?”
“I’ll stay in your bed.”
“If I do join him?”
“Then I win,” Remus said. “And I get to kill you.”
Sirius paused for a moment.
“If you can find me.”