Fic: Timeless Like the Wolf's World
The reveals are finally up at Remus Lupin Fest. I can take the blame for this canon-divergent-after-OotP gen fic.
Title: Timeless Like the Wolf's World
Author: paulamcg
Characters: Remus, werewolf OCs, the three Animagi in memories
Rating: G
Word Count: 2900
Summary: In May 1997, after defying the Ministry, Dumbledore and a werewolf leader, Remus Jaws Lupin invites some members of his pack to run with him under the full moon so as to reach and share memories.
Read here on AO3
or right here:
Timeless Like the Wolf's World
A breeze filled with fragrance, brightness and spring air caresses Bruce's snout. They are both welcome: the wind that carries the riches of the wilderness, and the wolf who's able and willing to receive them all.
Bruce remembers being greeted by this name when he was emerging from the wizard's body. Remembers feeling relief, revelling in the full relaxation now finally brought to that aged body by the shelter of companions.
For a fleeting moment he can remember names. Moony, too - that's what he still remembers being called by the first peers who loved him.
This new name now was pronounced with a tender chuckle that turned into a gasp when the pain reached its peak. Bearable when shared, the torment heralded no complete loss of mind.
Acknowledged as a gift, the change means surrendering words, and embracing the world of amodal sensory experience without being deprived of the sense of a subjective self.
These, of course, are concepts contemplated only by Remus Jaws Lupin, when he's resting high on the slope of Birks Fell after the transformation.
At moonset Bruce huddled here with three of those members dearest to him in his pack. The strong, mature female, the barely adult male, and the cub. They regained their human forms and their names when their glorious, supple canine bodies had changed together in such close contact that Remus still wonders how they haven't irrevocably twirled into one.
Hecate, Adam and Nathan are all used to shifting their shapes in company and to confirming the new ones' dimensions with help from fellow werewolves' caresses.
The four of them formed two pairs in random. Remus and Adam stroked each other's arms, and went on to draw the outlines of each other's bodies.
Although six months have passed since he joined the pack, Remus still finds this intimacy overwhelming - disconcerting, albeit only because he craves it too much. He's aroused too easily.
Only when guided by Adam's own hands did he dare let his trembling fingers approach the lean youngster's genitalia. He hugged Adam once more, pressing a palm and his stubbled cheek against the youthful, smooth skin, and withdrew to get dressed.
They've left their clothes up here, by the ruins of the stone wall, a remainder from centuries past when there used to be mines here. Stiff and aching, despite the ideal circumstances for a full moon, Remus settles against the edge of one of the boulders to pull on his worn-out jeans. They've arrived in Muggle attires, planning to fly down to Hubberholme for a hearty breakfast in the village inn.
Their vehicle, one of the carpets provided by Remus's most prosperous allies before the battle against Umbridge's army and the revolt in the werewolf village, is being rolled open with all the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old who's enjoyed his very first flight at the previous sunset.
For this full moon Remus chose to invite a part of his new family here, to a specific place in North Yorkshire which means... perhaps too much to him. He's wanted them to explore together the heather moorland where he enjoyed running free first in the '70s and again only last year with the Animagus whom he had the joy to welcome back to life, to a shared life, too.
Perhaps it was not wise to bring others right here. It's hard not to feel acutely the loss of such sharing that he and Sirius had the chance barely to start re-establishing after thirteen years of separation and worse. On the other hand, this is how he wants life to go on, with connection to his past. Here the wolf, too, can better help him reach memories of long-ago bliss.
After pulling the jumper over his head, Remus scans first the huge open sky where the sunrise glow on the wispy clouds has paled. He's glad to have registered the variations of orange as soon as opening his human eyes and tilting his head back, and he now enjoys naming silently the range of colours as he's stored them in his mind: coral and apricot and xanthous. Turning his gaze to the dales below, he finds them still in shade, the fresh and light green of May still muted.
And finally his eyes are inevitably drawn to his companions. They have sat down on the carpet here where the early morning rays reach to illuminate them, challenging him to paint them someday as real and lovely as they are at the moment, renewed and precious.
To his joy and amusement, he catches his regained humanity bursting into words (in convoluted phrases, too) as well as colours - treasures that were lost only temporarily.
The beaming smile on Hecate's handsome face reflects, for sure, his own. She's lifted her arms so as to braid her golden brown - indeed, in this light, xanthous - hair into a crown around her head. Soon she'll look as regal as the first time Remus saw her - as a chief's most skilled warrior - and also confusingly much like his late mother. But now she lets the curls cascade down as she pats the carpet with a palm.
"Let's stay here for a while!" she says.
Adam stops in the middle of putting on a sock, and he rubs the carpet's thick pile with his bare toes. "The carpet's still warm."
His pleasure reminds Remus of finding a wretched band of werewolves forced to seek shelter among Snorkacks, and of being welcome as the awaited teacher and ally and, first of all, as someone to take the watch and to allow this youngster to fall asleep, sharing body warmth with a beast. And of the following night spent holding the feverish child... It's still a special joy to see that boy, too, now lively and curious and no longer malnourished.
Nathan, kneeling and reaching a hand to the edge of the carpet, draws a finger along the fringe. "But it's ready to fly, too."
Indeed, the tassels of the fringe ripple and dance.
"You're right," Remus says, and he's grateful to hear no hoarseness in his voice. "The ground must still be so cold that the magic in the carpet stays in the heating mode. But the sunshine makes the travelling mode possible. Anyway, it's too early for breakfast in the George."
He's now settled next to Hecate, and having fixed her hair, she wraps an arm around his shoulders.
"It shouldn't surprise me you've chosen a place with a magnificent view," she says.
It's true that back in the '70s Remus, who needed to take care of coming to the wilderness early enough in the afternoon, before the instability in his body made Apparation impossible or at least risky... that he was the one to prefer Apparating close to the ridge, where he could take in the whole of the landscape. That's where Sirius learnt to follow him, while James and Peter sometimes arrived on the tarn's shore or in the woods, and after their fluent, painless transformations, Prongs strode uphill with Wormtail on his back so as to join the two canines.
No, Remus doesn't want to dwell on those memories now. There are, at last, deeper and more detailed ones available for him. New and old ones, or rather reminiscences that are timeless like the wolf's world.
"Tell me," he asks, "how did you as wolves like it here?"
"I liked the flying best," Nathan says, "but okay, at night... the lake!"
"I'm glad you liked it." Remus is fully aware of how his wide smile exposes his teeth - and of the sharp cuspid's sad absence. "It's called Birks Tarn."
Here he goes again with his focus on names. It's still hard for him to connect with the wolf's experience, but he's getting used to trusting it's possible, and some words from a fellow werewolf can guide him.
"Tell me," he says again.
"Its waters enticed me, too," Hecate offers. "The glint, the humid air, the susurration."
"Yes, that's how it was!" Remus closes his lids for a moment, but it seems that meeting these comrades' eyes helps him compose descriptions, which can convince him that, miraculously, the night has been preserved in memories that are his.
"Bruce..." he says, but he starts again, "I was trotting downhill... right beside the dear female. I was pecking on her snout, and... The rhythm of our feet and our hearts and our breathing was joined by silver light, wafts of moisture, sound of lapping - all woven into a pattern."
Listening, Adam furrows his brow. "You followed us down to the shore to drink."
Nathan falls down on his back and laughs. "Downhill, yes. It was so steep it made my paws go that way, and my paws go from under me, and I fall and roll, and get heather and dirt in my nose."
"And I run in circles around you and poke you," Adam adds, tickling Nathan's tummy. "The slope takes us down, and the water's calling to us. And then he pushes us. You..." He flashes a mischievous grin to Remus. "Our great greying leader!"
Yes, at the moment of reaching the low bank, Bruce collides with the two young wolves, forces his way between them.
There's fur brushing against fur, and his head turning, some playful nibbling.
Splashes, and loss of balance.
His snout plunges into the ice-cold, the water caresses his bowels, and when he draws the next breath, there's... no more of any...
No separate sense. Because they've become one?
He's one with the water and wind and soil, as real as they are in the light he's no longer feared.
The heather bends under his tread, and there's a sting - a thorn? - and a crush - some berries?
Yes, with the crush comes something that entices his snout, and there's a small fresh joy soon inside him, soon deeper.
He's one with his pack and with all the creatures he can sense living around him.
There are some swooping above him, now one shifting to a fiercer rhythm: there's flapping and dashing, then scrabbling.
Life bursting out of a fragile, crushed body and into the bird of prey, who, glowing like another moon, rises again with new energy, while other tiny creatures carry on scurrying...
"Oh," Remus catches himself spelling out his amazement at the memory, "I think Bruce remembered Hedwig. The snowy owl who spent some full moons with me before I joined you."
"Why do you call yourself Bruce?" Adam asks, not surprised at all that the wolf carries memories as old as those.
Hecate reaches to nudge him so as to hush him. "Remus is still learning that the man and the wolf share the same mind."
"But why Bruce?" Nathan demands.
"That's what I mean," Adam explains. "You were making a joke about it just when the moon rose, and you said welcome to the wolf in you, and called it Bruce."
"You're right. Its name was Bruce only last night, or right after moonrise in any case. Just because I wanted to tell you how my first friends made fun of my official name."
"Remus Jaws Lupin, that's what we called you in our village," Hecate says.
"A compromise made by my parents and the Werewolf Registry. I was meant to lose my right to be their son, and all rights of a human, and to acquire a new beastly name. My parents came up with names that would allow only somehow cultured people to suspect what I was, and very few people learnt my middle name."
"Your first friends..."
"Of course. I shared everything with them. And loved the gentle fun they made of me, my furry problem, and... They were excited to hear there was a new sensational thriller film called Jaws. About a monster, unlike us, of course."
"What..."
"A man-eating great white shark." Remus lets out a laugh that now sounds more like a hysterical giggle hiding a sob. "I've still got this...."
He fumbles in his jeans pocket, eager to share more with his pack, because that can make the details in his past more alive as part of the present. He shows the pendant on an open palm.
"This shark's tooth that my... boyfriend gave me."
"Is it real?" Nathan pokes the pendant with a forefinger, but, to Remus's relief, doesn't grab it.
Indeed, what is real? "It's only plastic. That's a material the Muggles use a lot. Cheap, but indissoluble."
Adam sighs. "What's this got to do with Bruce?"
"Oh." Perhaps the story isn't very entertaining. Just self-indulgent. "I later read about the making of the film. You know, due to lack of magic, they struggled to achieve an illusion of a living great shark in the role they needed it to act. They tried mechanical shark props, which mainly malfunctioned. And they called those mechanical sharks Bruce. I adopted that name when, towards the end of the '70s, I started going out to Muggle night clubs. Incognito, you know. To gay discos."
"Anyway..." Instead of waiting for a response, Remus feels like changing the topic. Or the name. "Right after the moonrise, before giving up all words, the wolf... I remembered another name. Moony."
"That's a beautiful one," Hecate says, smiling. "But it's like poking fun at you in case you have to hide that the moon means something special to you."
Yes, and back when he didn't comprehend that the full moon could ever mean anything good, he could have felt the nickname was a taunt. But he needed to cherish it as affectionate teasing.
Nathan has sat up, and he's reaching for the carpet's edge again. "Can we fly now?"
Remus pulls out his wand and glances at Hecate and Adam, who both nod.
"I'm Disillusioning us first, all right?" He touches his wandtip to Hecate's crown of braids.
Ungedwimore is the incantation, but only voiceless in his mind as long as he's using the spell on the youngster and the child, too, as well as on the carpet. So as to succeed in merging his own form into the moorland and the morning sky, he still needs to pronounce the word carefully aloud. "Ungedwimore!"
Cold trickles run down his forehead, his whole face and his neck, and the icy flow covers all of his skin, making him tremble.
In the end, he decides not to use the wand any more, but to try and stir the carpet's flying mode only with what humble Magic of Needs life has led him to manage. Perhaps this will allow the carpet to choose the most beneficial route and speed.
He fumbles for Nathan's hand, places his left hand right next to Nathan's, and moves their fingers together along the rippling fringe.
As the carpet rises, undulating, the four of them press against each other. Remus is still shivering, but his companions' bodies have already regained their heat, and their closeness warms him up. As sunshine pierces them, it binds them together as the moon did.
The flight takes them swiftly to the tarn. And while they are hovering above it, looking down, their bodies are one with its surface, which, in turn, reflects the bluest of skies.
"This is fun," Nathan whispers, expressing awe with his tone if not with the simple words.
"It's not so different from the full-moon night, is it?" Remus says, hoping they'll still continue to share what they felt as wolves.
The carpet turns abruptly, making Nathan shriek with delight. As it starts speeding across the moorland towards the woods, they all cling to each other.
"No. It was somehow like this." Hecate must understand what Remus hopes. "Feeling this close to you. But when running under the moon, I felt it even without the weight of your bodies against mine."
"Feeling... connected?" Remus asks not so much her as himself, or... Moony. Himself. "I was heading to the woods, speeding up, leaving first the cub, then the other two of you behind, but I knew that your snouts joined mine to sing praise to the moon. And perhaps... it was rather that I did feel the weight of your bodies, too. Our bodies together. And the others...
"Who were... no longer lost. I was finding... someone beside me. I was not only remembering. I was living it again. The glory of all that we were together. The other rhythms approaching, changing the harmony: the rodent's small, quick feet, and the deer..." He stops to smile to himself - to Moony, and to Padfoot, Wormtail and Prongs - and repeats the last word with its other meaning, "The dear hooves, and paws. Yes, I was with my first friends, too, last night - or outside of time."
The carpet has gradually descended and dived into the woods. Trees bend and sway, allowing passage for it. The sun, still low, shines horizontally, tying the travellers' chameleon forms together with the lush new green of the tiny translucent leaves, and the lemon-coloured clusters of little wings that contain elms' ripening seeds.
These sights separate themselves from the warmth Remus feels on his skin, and from the fragrances he breathes in. And the dawn chorus, which has been one with other wonders, is disintegrating into voices distinct in his ears: those of a sandpiper and a flycatcher, a redstart and a thrush.
The Disillusionment is wearing off little by little. After a moment more of sharing, Remus and these three individuals will enter the troubled time of diverse human worries and challenges.
Notes: My prompt was: Adult Remus runs through the woods in his werewolf body on the night of the full and enjoys the feel of the wind in his fur. Awooooos at the moon, lives his best life. No humans or Remuses were harmed in the making of this fic or art. Just Remus running free, chasing rabbits or something.
Title: Timeless Like the Wolf's World
Author: paulamcg
Characters: Remus, werewolf OCs, the three Animagi in memories
Rating: G
Word Count: 2900
Summary: In May 1997, after defying the Ministry, Dumbledore and a werewolf leader, Remus Jaws Lupin invites some members of his pack to run with him under the full moon so as to reach and share memories.
Read here on AO3
or right here:
Timeless Like the Wolf's World
A breeze filled with fragrance, brightness and spring air caresses Bruce's snout. They are both welcome: the wind that carries the riches of the wilderness, and the wolf who's able and willing to receive them all.
Bruce remembers being greeted by this name when he was emerging from the wizard's body. Remembers feeling relief, revelling in the full relaxation now finally brought to that aged body by the shelter of companions.
For a fleeting moment he can remember names. Moony, too - that's what he still remembers being called by the first peers who loved him.
This new name now was pronounced with a tender chuckle that turned into a gasp when the pain reached its peak. Bearable when shared, the torment heralded no complete loss of mind.
Acknowledged as a gift, the change means surrendering words, and embracing the world of amodal sensory experience without being deprived of the sense of a subjective self.
These, of course, are concepts contemplated only by Remus Jaws Lupin, when he's resting high on the slope of Birks Fell after the transformation.
At moonset Bruce huddled here with three of those members dearest to him in his pack. The strong, mature female, the barely adult male, and the cub. They regained their human forms and their names when their glorious, supple canine bodies had changed together in such close contact that Remus still wonders how they haven't irrevocably twirled into one.
Hecate, Adam and Nathan are all used to shifting their shapes in company and to confirming the new ones' dimensions with help from fellow werewolves' caresses.
The four of them formed two pairs in random. Remus and Adam stroked each other's arms, and went on to draw the outlines of each other's bodies.
Although six months have passed since he joined the pack, Remus still finds this intimacy overwhelming - disconcerting, albeit only because he craves it too much. He's aroused too easily.
Only when guided by Adam's own hands did he dare let his trembling fingers approach the lean youngster's genitalia. He hugged Adam once more, pressing a palm and his stubbled cheek against the youthful, smooth skin, and withdrew to get dressed.
They've left their clothes up here, by the ruins of the stone wall, a remainder from centuries past when there used to be mines here. Stiff and aching, despite the ideal circumstances for a full moon, Remus settles against the edge of one of the boulders to pull on his worn-out jeans. They've arrived in Muggle attires, planning to fly down to Hubberholme for a hearty breakfast in the village inn.
Their vehicle, one of the carpets provided by Remus's most prosperous allies before the battle against Umbridge's army and the revolt in the werewolf village, is being rolled open with all the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old who's enjoyed his very first flight at the previous sunset.
For this full moon Remus chose to invite a part of his new family here, to a specific place in North Yorkshire which means... perhaps too much to him. He's wanted them to explore together the heather moorland where he enjoyed running free first in the '70s and again only last year with the Animagus whom he had the joy to welcome back to life, to a shared life, too.
Perhaps it was not wise to bring others right here. It's hard not to feel acutely the loss of such sharing that he and Sirius had the chance barely to start re-establishing after thirteen years of separation and worse. On the other hand, this is how he wants life to go on, with connection to his past. Here the wolf, too, can better help him reach memories of long-ago bliss.
After pulling the jumper over his head, Remus scans first the huge open sky where the sunrise glow on the wispy clouds has paled. He's glad to have registered the variations of orange as soon as opening his human eyes and tilting his head back, and he now enjoys naming silently the range of colours as he's stored them in his mind: coral and apricot and xanthous. Turning his gaze to the dales below, he finds them still in shade, the fresh and light green of May still muted.
And finally his eyes are inevitably drawn to his companions. They have sat down on the carpet here where the early morning rays reach to illuminate them, challenging him to paint them someday as real and lovely as they are at the moment, renewed and precious.
To his joy and amusement, he catches his regained humanity bursting into words (in convoluted phrases, too) as well as colours - treasures that were lost only temporarily.
The beaming smile on Hecate's handsome face reflects, for sure, his own. She's lifted her arms so as to braid her golden brown - indeed, in this light, xanthous - hair into a crown around her head. Soon she'll look as regal as the first time Remus saw her - as a chief's most skilled warrior - and also confusingly much like his late mother. But now she lets the curls cascade down as she pats the carpet with a palm.
"Let's stay here for a while!" she says.
Adam stops in the middle of putting on a sock, and he rubs the carpet's thick pile with his bare toes. "The carpet's still warm."
His pleasure reminds Remus of finding a wretched band of werewolves forced to seek shelter among Snorkacks, and of being welcome as the awaited teacher and ally and, first of all, as someone to take the watch and to allow this youngster to fall asleep, sharing body warmth with a beast. And of the following night spent holding the feverish child... It's still a special joy to see that boy, too, now lively and curious and no longer malnourished.
Nathan, kneeling and reaching a hand to the edge of the carpet, draws a finger along the fringe. "But it's ready to fly, too."
Indeed, the tassels of the fringe ripple and dance.
"You're right," Remus says, and he's grateful to hear no hoarseness in his voice. "The ground must still be so cold that the magic in the carpet stays in the heating mode. But the sunshine makes the travelling mode possible. Anyway, it's too early for breakfast in the George."
He's now settled next to Hecate, and having fixed her hair, she wraps an arm around his shoulders.
"It shouldn't surprise me you've chosen a place with a magnificent view," she says.
It's true that back in the '70s Remus, who needed to take care of coming to the wilderness early enough in the afternoon, before the instability in his body made Apparation impossible or at least risky... that he was the one to prefer Apparating close to the ridge, where he could take in the whole of the landscape. That's where Sirius learnt to follow him, while James and Peter sometimes arrived on the tarn's shore or in the woods, and after their fluent, painless transformations, Prongs strode uphill with Wormtail on his back so as to join the two canines.
No, Remus doesn't want to dwell on those memories now. There are, at last, deeper and more detailed ones available for him. New and old ones, or rather reminiscences that are timeless like the wolf's world.
"Tell me," he asks, "how did you as wolves like it here?"
"I liked the flying best," Nathan says, "but okay, at night... the lake!"
"I'm glad you liked it." Remus is fully aware of how his wide smile exposes his teeth - and of the sharp cuspid's sad absence. "It's called Birks Tarn."
Here he goes again with his focus on names. It's still hard for him to connect with the wolf's experience, but he's getting used to trusting it's possible, and some words from a fellow werewolf can guide him.
"Tell me," he says again.
"Its waters enticed me, too," Hecate offers. "The glint, the humid air, the susurration."
"Yes, that's how it was!" Remus closes his lids for a moment, but it seems that meeting these comrades' eyes helps him compose descriptions, which can convince him that, miraculously, the night has been preserved in memories that are his.
"Bruce..." he says, but he starts again, "I was trotting downhill... right beside the dear female. I was pecking on her snout, and... The rhythm of our feet and our hearts and our breathing was joined by silver light, wafts of moisture, sound of lapping - all woven into a pattern."
Listening, Adam furrows his brow. "You followed us down to the shore to drink."
Nathan falls down on his back and laughs. "Downhill, yes. It was so steep it made my paws go that way, and my paws go from under me, and I fall and roll, and get heather and dirt in my nose."
"And I run in circles around you and poke you," Adam adds, tickling Nathan's tummy. "The slope takes us down, and the water's calling to us. And then he pushes us. You..." He flashes a mischievous grin to Remus. "Our great greying leader!"
Yes, at the moment of reaching the low bank, Bruce collides with the two young wolves, forces his way between them.
There's fur brushing against fur, and his head turning, some playful nibbling.
Splashes, and loss of balance.
His snout plunges into the ice-cold, the water caresses his bowels, and when he draws the next breath, there's... no more of any...
No separate sense. Because they've become one?
He's one with the water and wind and soil, as real as they are in the light he's no longer feared.
The heather bends under his tread, and there's a sting - a thorn? - and a crush - some berries?
Yes, with the crush comes something that entices his snout, and there's a small fresh joy soon inside him, soon deeper.
He's one with his pack and with all the creatures he can sense living around him.
There are some swooping above him, now one shifting to a fiercer rhythm: there's flapping and dashing, then scrabbling.
Life bursting out of a fragile, crushed body and into the bird of prey, who, glowing like another moon, rises again with new energy, while other tiny creatures carry on scurrying...
"Oh," Remus catches himself spelling out his amazement at the memory, "I think Bruce remembered Hedwig. The snowy owl who spent some full moons with me before I joined you."
"Why do you call yourself Bruce?" Adam asks, not surprised at all that the wolf carries memories as old as those.
Hecate reaches to nudge him so as to hush him. "Remus is still learning that the man and the wolf share the same mind."
"But why Bruce?" Nathan demands.
"That's what I mean," Adam explains. "You were making a joke about it just when the moon rose, and you said welcome to the wolf in you, and called it Bruce."
"You're right. Its name was Bruce only last night, or right after moonrise in any case. Just because I wanted to tell you how my first friends made fun of my official name."
"Remus Jaws Lupin, that's what we called you in our village," Hecate says.
"A compromise made by my parents and the Werewolf Registry. I was meant to lose my right to be their son, and all rights of a human, and to acquire a new beastly name. My parents came up with names that would allow only somehow cultured people to suspect what I was, and very few people learnt my middle name."
"Your first friends..."
"Of course. I shared everything with them. And loved the gentle fun they made of me, my furry problem, and... They were excited to hear there was a new sensational thriller film called Jaws. About a monster, unlike us, of course."
"What..."
"A man-eating great white shark." Remus lets out a laugh that now sounds more like a hysterical giggle hiding a sob. "I've still got this...."
He fumbles in his jeans pocket, eager to share more with his pack, because that can make the details in his past more alive as part of the present. He shows the pendant on an open palm.
"This shark's tooth that my... boyfriend gave me."
"Is it real?" Nathan pokes the pendant with a forefinger, but, to Remus's relief, doesn't grab it.
Indeed, what is real? "It's only plastic. That's a material the Muggles use a lot. Cheap, but indissoluble."
Adam sighs. "What's this got to do with Bruce?"
"Oh." Perhaps the story isn't very entertaining. Just self-indulgent. "I later read about the making of the film. You know, due to lack of magic, they struggled to achieve an illusion of a living great shark in the role they needed it to act. They tried mechanical shark props, which mainly malfunctioned. And they called those mechanical sharks Bruce. I adopted that name when, towards the end of the '70s, I started going out to Muggle night clubs. Incognito, you know. To gay discos."
"Anyway..." Instead of waiting for a response, Remus feels like changing the topic. Or the name. "Right after the moonrise, before giving up all words, the wolf... I remembered another name. Moony."
"That's a beautiful one," Hecate says, smiling. "But it's like poking fun at you in case you have to hide that the moon means something special to you."
Yes, and back when he didn't comprehend that the full moon could ever mean anything good, he could have felt the nickname was a taunt. But he needed to cherish it as affectionate teasing.
Nathan has sat up, and he's reaching for the carpet's edge again. "Can we fly now?"
Remus pulls out his wand and glances at Hecate and Adam, who both nod.
"I'm Disillusioning us first, all right?" He touches his wandtip to Hecate's crown of braids.
Ungedwimore is the incantation, but only voiceless in his mind as long as he's using the spell on the youngster and the child, too, as well as on the carpet. So as to succeed in merging his own form into the moorland and the morning sky, he still needs to pronounce the word carefully aloud. "Ungedwimore!"
Cold trickles run down his forehead, his whole face and his neck, and the icy flow covers all of his skin, making him tremble.
In the end, he decides not to use the wand any more, but to try and stir the carpet's flying mode only with what humble Magic of Needs life has led him to manage. Perhaps this will allow the carpet to choose the most beneficial route and speed.
He fumbles for Nathan's hand, places his left hand right next to Nathan's, and moves their fingers together along the rippling fringe.
As the carpet rises, undulating, the four of them press against each other. Remus is still shivering, but his companions' bodies have already regained their heat, and their closeness warms him up. As sunshine pierces them, it binds them together as the moon did.
The flight takes them swiftly to the tarn. And while they are hovering above it, looking down, their bodies are one with its surface, which, in turn, reflects the bluest of skies.
"This is fun," Nathan whispers, expressing awe with his tone if not with the simple words.
"It's not so different from the full-moon night, is it?" Remus says, hoping they'll still continue to share what they felt as wolves.
The carpet turns abruptly, making Nathan shriek with delight. As it starts speeding across the moorland towards the woods, they all cling to each other.
"No. It was somehow like this." Hecate must understand what Remus hopes. "Feeling this close to you. But when running under the moon, I felt it even without the weight of your bodies against mine."
"Feeling... connected?" Remus asks not so much her as himself, or... Moony. Himself. "I was heading to the woods, speeding up, leaving first the cub, then the other two of you behind, but I knew that your snouts joined mine to sing praise to the moon. And perhaps... it was rather that I did feel the weight of your bodies, too. Our bodies together. And the others...
"Who were... no longer lost. I was finding... someone beside me. I was not only remembering. I was living it again. The glory of all that we were together. The other rhythms approaching, changing the harmony: the rodent's small, quick feet, and the deer..." He stops to smile to himself - to Moony, and to Padfoot, Wormtail and Prongs - and repeats the last word with its other meaning, "The dear hooves, and paws. Yes, I was with my first friends, too, last night - or outside of time."
The carpet has gradually descended and dived into the woods. Trees bend and sway, allowing passage for it. The sun, still low, shines horizontally, tying the travellers' chameleon forms together with the lush new green of the tiny translucent leaves, and the lemon-coloured clusters of little wings that contain elms' ripening seeds.
These sights separate themselves from the warmth Remus feels on his skin, and from the fragrances he breathes in. And the dawn chorus, which has been one with other wonders, is disintegrating into voices distinct in his ears: those of a sandpiper and a flycatcher, a redstart and a thrush.
The Disillusionment is wearing off little by little. After a moment more of sharing, Remus and these three individuals will enter the troubled time of diverse human worries and challenges.
Notes: My prompt was: Adult Remus runs through the woods in his werewolf body on the night of the full and enjoys the feel of the wind in his fur. Awooooos at the moon, lives his best life. No humans or Remuses were harmed in the making of this fic or art. Just Remus running free, chasing rabbits or something.