Fic: Get Away, Come Out
The reveals are up at Wolfstargames. There were 19 works at the fest (almost exactly the same number as at recent Sirius Black Fest). You can find them all in this AO3 collection.
I can finally share here an odd little fic I wrote in August: another story about my damaged-by-Azkaban Sirius in summer 1994. This one is set between The Residue of His Mind and This Mind Now, This Far, but can be read separately, too, of course.
Title: Get Away, Come Out
Author: PaulaMcG
Pairing: Sirius/Remus (past)
Summary: A couple of nights after the reunion in the Shrieking Shack, Sirius can't help wanting to be hurled farther away across the skies. He remembers what he is able to, while it's hard to trust he'll manage to unveil who he's been and who he can be.
Word Count: 1400
Rating: G
Notes: This was written for Team Sky at Wolfstar Games 2021, and my prompt was: Nature is not a place to visit. It is home. - Gary Snyder. Thank you for the beta, justtoarguewithyou! Thank you for another round of Wolfstargames, lovely mods, participants and readers!
Read here on AO3
or right here:
Get Away, Come Out
The monstrous wings beat on, and Buckbeak keeps a steady speed through ever colder layers of air. But feathers on its neck are soft and warm against this chilled face.
Is there also heat seeping in through the back of the ragged robes, and a pressure... Someone's chest - someone leaning against...?
No, only an elusive ghost of someone riding behind on the motorbike that was painted black and, recklessly, named Grim. An unrelenting shard of memory, or rather one that was not happy enough to be devoured by even the most famished Dementor.
Only a moment filled with worry when rising towards storm clouds. Or when trying the ingenious charms - Grimardium Leviosa and Locomovera Aera - for the very first time, when together with... A flash of the sunshine that was piercing the two young, beautiful bodies as well as the heavy mass of metal, all Disillusioned, and a reassuring caress, and the sound of breath... and the opening of a song?
No, back here and now, up here, but in the depth of night, there's only this mount to hold onto.
The noble Hippogriff is a perfect companion in fleeing, in reaching for fuller freedom. Buckbeak enjoys rising to fly high, and confirms that there is no ceiling above, nothing but the constellations.
Tonight the stars have burnt sharper. The pale Scottish summer skies have been left farther behind.
And now, several hours after the sunset takeoff, the moon is still hanging heavy close to the horizon.
The moon's still gibbous. Its shape, this waning one, is less familiar, less clear in any remaining memories.
The waxing gibbous and the full moon must have got imprinted with anguish in the head of the schoolboy for whom the dog's form was an ambition and a crazy dream of turning the inherited darkness and the werewolf Marauder's pain into... what is so hard to remember after all these years, the twelve in Azkaban, and this past one on a mission of revenge and of protecting James's son. Even after seeing him... Remus, and holding him close for a moment.
Your Moony. The curiously gentle naming has been resurrected in the damaged mind. This mind that often fails to comprehend who you are, and refuses to reveal who you've been.
My Moony, you finally managed to scribble on the other side of the note, with the pencil attached to it, two or three days ago, when you'd flown to the Marauders' secret spot for furry antics in Yorkshire wilderness. The owl that had found you there kept pestering you, determined not to leave without a reply.
And yours had to be, No...
No, he mustn't join you. Professor at Hogwarts! He mustn't resign. He must stay with Harry, and fucking Dumbledore will believe Harry, if not him, and catch the rat.
Not yet, you added. He... Moony wants something from you, and he needs to be given a bit of hope. Perhaps you'll discover the meaning of what he went on about in the letter.
So far, what makes best sense is the list of faraway places where he travelled while you were incarcerated. At the moment there is only the need to fly away without much trust that you'll reach any hope for yourself. Hope to return to yourself, and to unveil who you can be.
The heir of a noble and ancient house - that's what you hated to be. And remember having been.
Remember more vividly again after the hours you were locked in at Hogwarts. By the time Harry came to rescue, steering the Hippogriff to the window, you feared not so much having your soul sucked out as staying trapped again, trapped inside the earliest of your worst memories - in the time before your very first escape - besides the rest of them, endlessly reliving all that went wrong.
To wipe away that terror, you need all the length and breadth of open sky.
Once that castle was a reprieve from family, but still an unnerving place, full of challenges. How to navigate the labyrinth of exuberant camaraderie among open-minded and cheerful, kind and trustful boys and girls.
And the maze of scorn and advances from those sons of family friends, older Slytherins who had... No. You learnt to hide that you still felt the hurt - that they, too, had managed to harm you before you came to Hogwarts.
You acted haughty and sure of yourself. Even with James, who became your true brother, you needed to pretend that a mate patting you on the shoulder didn't make your skin crawl. You learnt to conceal your inner reaction in an exaggerated wince. And to claim you were waiting for the right one, a witch worth snogging and shagging.
Even with Remus, after that last torture of a summer at Grimmauld Place, when you'd shared the embarrassing night of weeping for each other, it was slow, frustrating work to unlearn the fear of touch. He took you out to the lake shore and to the forest, and tried his best to teach you... also something more difficult than perceiving the tiniest distinguishing marks in birds and plants, and comprehending how all the creatures, mundane and magical, played their roles in a balance of life, and that there was a place where the two of you could belong.
He was sometimes irritatingly grateful for any meagre improvement as you struggled to be what he needed. And you didn't manage to become like him or to take his pain away. When you finally learnt to turn into a dog, shifting from one shape to the other was too easy, painless for you.
The dog desired the wolf, and... Whatever you shared under the full moon, he could never remember - and you can't remember now.
Instead, you've retained memories of... his disappointment when you kept transforming every time when he wanted to touch your human body too intimately.
And even when he was showing you miracles in nature, you felt like escaping further. You used to seek a view of the sky through the thinning autumn foliage, willing winds to bare the branches above you, to tear the last gold and red leaves off, and to hurl them, and with them you, two bold Gryffindors, away to... somewhere wider and wilder than the world down on earth.
Up here on your way again, you're tempted to give up trying to remember what he implies in his eager, emotional writing. Something that got better and was right when you were together? Wouldn't you rather have no memories at all?
The stars, too, are dimming in your eyes. A tattered, hazy curtain of cloud is moving across the sky.
And there's the pale, lopsided face: the moon's winking to you, promising or threatening to sail closer and catch you.
To be free, you've needed to get away, get out.
"Come out," he used to say, and he meant: reveal to others who you are, what you are.
Did you know it yourself even back then? Perhaps you did inside your own flat, a new home - when you shared it... But did you ever, after James married and moved out?
You looked forward, guiltily, to the full moons and the outings in Yorkshire, where you were best valued as Padfoot the dog. And to rising into the sky - on a broomstick, and better still, on the rebellious Muggle contraption tweaked with your original magic.
Having failed to invent your own spells for the purpose of concealment, you resorted to the challenging but common Disillusionment. And after the disturbing - therefore memorable - moment of losing the visible, distinguishable body of any form, perhaps you finally became yourself, real - and one with your... Moony.
Perhaps that was the best home for you, and you managed to ignore that he needed another.
And up here you are again, in the immensity of space, where no evil, no darkness can trap you. Free, a stray, satisfied with a single contact, this one with a fabulous bird-beast, pressing what's left of you against its feathers and fur, being hurled away, and hardly able to wish to find a way back to your full humanity. Or to his, whom at the hardest, unforgettable moments, you insisted on calling more than human.
The moon won't give up on him or on you. Following you over seas and shores and deserts, it will remind you of a joy you must have once known, as you can remember how such a bright gate was closed.
I can finally share here an odd little fic I wrote in August: another story about my damaged-by-Azkaban Sirius in summer 1994. This one is set between The Residue of His Mind and This Mind Now, This Far, but can be read separately, too, of course.
Title: Get Away, Come Out
Author: PaulaMcG
Pairing: Sirius/Remus (past)
Summary: A couple of nights after the reunion in the Shrieking Shack, Sirius can't help wanting to be hurled farther away across the skies. He remembers what he is able to, while it's hard to trust he'll manage to unveil who he's been and who he can be.
Word Count: 1400
Rating: G
Notes: This was written for Team Sky at Wolfstar Games 2021, and my prompt was: Nature is not a place to visit. It is home. - Gary Snyder. Thank you for the beta, justtoarguewithyou! Thank you for another round of Wolfstargames, lovely mods, participants and readers!
Read here on AO3
or right here:
Get Away, Come Out
The monstrous wings beat on, and Buckbeak keeps a steady speed through ever colder layers of air. But feathers on its neck are soft and warm against this chilled face.
Is there also heat seeping in through the back of the ragged robes, and a pressure... Someone's chest - someone leaning against...?
No, only an elusive ghost of someone riding behind on the motorbike that was painted black and, recklessly, named Grim. An unrelenting shard of memory, or rather one that was not happy enough to be devoured by even the most famished Dementor.
Only a moment filled with worry when rising towards storm clouds. Or when trying the ingenious charms - Grimardium Leviosa and Locomovera Aera - for the very first time, when together with... A flash of the sunshine that was piercing the two young, beautiful bodies as well as the heavy mass of metal, all Disillusioned, and a reassuring caress, and the sound of breath... and the opening of a song?
No, back here and now, up here, but in the depth of night, there's only this mount to hold onto.
The noble Hippogriff is a perfect companion in fleeing, in reaching for fuller freedom. Buckbeak enjoys rising to fly high, and confirms that there is no ceiling above, nothing but the constellations.
Tonight the stars have burnt sharper. The pale Scottish summer skies have been left farther behind.
And now, several hours after the sunset takeoff, the moon is still hanging heavy close to the horizon.
The moon's still gibbous. Its shape, this waning one, is less familiar, less clear in any remaining memories.
The waxing gibbous and the full moon must have got imprinted with anguish in the head of the schoolboy for whom the dog's form was an ambition and a crazy dream of turning the inherited darkness and the werewolf Marauder's pain into... what is so hard to remember after all these years, the twelve in Azkaban, and this past one on a mission of revenge and of protecting James's son. Even after seeing him... Remus, and holding him close for a moment.
Your Moony. The curiously gentle naming has been resurrected in the damaged mind. This mind that often fails to comprehend who you are, and refuses to reveal who you've been.
My Moony, you finally managed to scribble on the other side of the note, with the pencil attached to it, two or three days ago, when you'd flown to the Marauders' secret spot for furry antics in Yorkshire wilderness. The owl that had found you there kept pestering you, determined not to leave without a reply.
And yours had to be, No...
No, he mustn't join you. Professor at Hogwarts! He mustn't resign. He must stay with Harry, and fucking Dumbledore will believe Harry, if not him, and catch the rat.
Not yet, you added. He... Moony wants something from you, and he needs to be given a bit of hope. Perhaps you'll discover the meaning of what he went on about in the letter.
So far, what makes best sense is the list of faraway places where he travelled while you were incarcerated. At the moment there is only the need to fly away without much trust that you'll reach any hope for yourself. Hope to return to yourself, and to unveil who you can be.
The heir of a noble and ancient house - that's what you hated to be. And remember having been.
Remember more vividly again after the hours you were locked in at Hogwarts. By the time Harry came to rescue, steering the Hippogriff to the window, you feared not so much having your soul sucked out as staying trapped again, trapped inside the earliest of your worst memories - in the time before your very first escape - besides the rest of them, endlessly reliving all that went wrong.
To wipe away that terror, you need all the length and breadth of open sky.
Once that castle was a reprieve from family, but still an unnerving place, full of challenges. How to navigate the labyrinth of exuberant camaraderie among open-minded and cheerful, kind and trustful boys and girls.
And the maze of scorn and advances from those sons of family friends, older Slytherins who had... No. You learnt to hide that you still felt the hurt - that they, too, had managed to harm you before you came to Hogwarts.
You acted haughty and sure of yourself. Even with James, who became your true brother, you needed to pretend that a mate patting you on the shoulder didn't make your skin crawl. You learnt to conceal your inner reaction in an exaggerated wince. And to claim you were waiting for the right one, a witch worth snogging and shagging.
Even with Remus, after that last torture of a summer at Grimmauld Place, when you'd shared the embarrassing night of weeping for each other, it was slow, frustrating work to unlearn the fear of touch. He took you out to the lake shore and to the forest, and tried his best to teach you... also something more difficult than perceiving the tiniest distinguishing marks in birds and plants, and comprehending how all the creatures, mundane and magical, played their roles in a balance of life, and that there was a place where the two of you could belong.
He was sometimes irritatingly grateful for any meagre improvement as you struggled to be what he needed. And you didn't manage to become like him or to take his pain away. When you finally learnt to turn into a dog, shifting from one shape to the other was too easy, painless for you.
The dog desired the wolf, and... Whatever you shared under the full moon, he could never remember - and you can't remember now.
Instead, you've retained memories of... his disappointment when you kept transforming every time when he wanted to touch your human body too intimately.
And even when he was showing you miracles in nature, you felt like escaping further. You used to seek a view of the sky through the thinning autumn foliage, willing winds to bare the branches above you, to tear the last gold and red leaves off, and to hurl them, and with them you, two bold Gryffindors, away to... somewhere wider and wilder than the world down on earth.
Up here on your way again, you're tempted to give up trying to remember what he implies in his eager, emotional writing. Something that got better and was right when you were together? Wouldn't you rather have no memories at all?
The stars, too, are dimming in your eyes. A tattered, hazy curtain of cloud is moving across the sky.
And there's the pale, lopsided face: the moon's winking to you, promising or threatening to sail closer and catch you.
To be free, you've needed to get away, get out.
"Come out," he used to say, and he meant: reveal to others who you are, what you are.
Did you know it yourself even back then? Perhaps you did inside your own flat, a new home - when you shared it... But did you ever, after James married and moved out?
You looked forward, guiltily, to the full moons and the outings in Yorkshire, where you were best valued as Padfoot the dog. And to rising into the sky - on a broomstick, and better still, on the rebellious Muggle contraption tweaked with your original magic.
Having failed to invent your own spells for the purpose of concealment, you resorted to the challenging but common Disillusionment. And after the disturbing - therefore memorable - moment of losing the visible, distinguishable body of any form, perhaps you finally became yourself, real - and one with your... Moony.
Perhaps that was the best home for you, and you managed to ignore that he needed another.
And up here you are again, in the immensity of space, where no evil, no darkness can trap you. Free, a stray, satisfied with a single contact, this one with a fabulous bird-beast, pressing what's left of you against its feathers and fur, being hurled away, and hardly able to wish to find a way back to your full humanity. Or to his, whom at the hardest, unforgettable moments, you insisted on calling more than human.
The moon won't give up on him or on you. Following you over seas and shores and deserts, it will remind you of a joy you must have once known, as you can remember how such a bright gate was closed.