Fantastic Beasts and How to Win Their Hearts (3/7)
FANTASTIC BEASTS AND HOW TO WIN THEIR HEARTS: A RETELLING OF BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
by
stereolightning and
starfishstar
SUMMARY:
A man with nowhere else to turn agrees to live forever in a remote mansion that exists in perpetual autumn, his host a reclusive character known only as the Beast. By turns attentive and taciturn, the monstrous lord of the house keeps his dark secrets close to his chest, yet both host and guest find themselves increasingly captivated by one another. But how can a Beast give his heart while he remains a prisoner of his own curse?
A fusion of Harry Potter with Beauty and the Beast, told in seven chapters.
CHAPTER THREE
The Beast did not appear again for several days, but Remus sensed his presence sometimes, in a deepening of the shadows in an unlit room, or a padded footfall at the end of a corridor.
Remus took breakfast alone, and went outside and stood in a patch of scarlet poppies in the back garden. Snidgets and jobberknolls flitted between the branches of a flame-leafed tree. Remus sprinkled crumbs of his scone for them onto the cobblestones. They pecked at his offering, and he smiled.
“Are you captives, too?” he asked.
They didn’t answer. The jobberknolls, as ever, were completely silent, except for the soft sounds of their feet as they hopped on the cold cobblestones, and the beating of their wings to keep their small, plump bodies warm.
Remus wondered again that the leaves were still red, and hadn’t fallen. It was nearing the first of April. The trees should be budding and green now. There should be white apple blossoms, not full red fruits.
He wondered whether he had wandered into another world, a storybook world, where the seasons were different and time passed differently. He’d read stories of people spirited away to fairy countries, who thought they were gone for a night or a year but were in truth gone for centuries, and returned to their homes one day to find that everyone they had ever known was dead.
But on the off chance he had wandered into another world, he needed to know when moonset and moonrise were here-that was of utmost importance. He couldn’t assume they were the same. He circled the house several times, and finally spotted the moon, a plump, pale hemisphere in the wash of blue sky behind the trees, low in the western sky. Setting, waning gibbous. The same phase as the moon should by now have reached in the outside world, given the number of days that had elapsed since the last full moon Remus had lived through.
Hm, perhaps not spirited away into a fairy world, then. Regardless, he must find a place where he could transform without endangering his host. He still had three weeks until the next full moon, but this was not a matter on which Remus could afford to sit idle.
All that day, Remus stayed outside in the mild autumnal weather, exploring the gardens, watching the shadows shrink and grow long again. He didn’t find anywhere yet that he was certain would be secure enough to hold a full-grown werewolf, but at least he became acquainted with the grounds, with each potting shed, each bench, each stone in the path.
As dusk fell, Remus’ ramblings brought him again to a potting shed around the side of the main house, where he found a dark figure bent over the Velocette. The man-mechanic?-had opened up the bike and was tinkering with the mechanical insides, alternating between wand and torque wrench. It was hard to see in the purple dregs of daylight, but it seemed to Remus that the man’s hair was long, matted, to his elbows, but his hands were finely shaped, and pale, and clever. Was this another willing captive of the Beast? How had Remus not met him before?
The mechanic looked up.
Then the light changed, and the illusion-or misapprehension, or fantasy-melted, and Remus saw that this was no strange dark man, but the Beast, with his black fur and his dog-like ears. There had been a moment when Remus could have sworn it was a man who stood there, absorbed in the complex inner workings of the motorbike. But now he saw that of course it was hairy paws, not human hands, that deftly wielded the mechanic’s tools.
“Found me, have you,” the Beast said, without inflection.
“I wasn’t looking for you,” Remus said. “But it’s good to see you.”
The Beast stifled a sound, something like a choke mixed with a laugh. “Really?”
Remus frowned. “Yes. I do more than read, you know. I like your company, at dinner.”
The Beast grunted, and returned to repairing the engine.
Remus glanced up again; the waxing moon shone more brightly now that the rest of the sky had faded around it. He surveyed the potting shed in front of him and decided he doubted it could contain him at the full moon; its locks were old, and their charms nearly worn off. A full-grown werewolf could easily break them clean off the doors.
The stars came out, and the planets, Mars brightest of all.
“Shall we go in for supper?” Remus asked.
The Beast made a noncommittal noise.
“Or we could stay out here all night, grunting at each other,” Remus said. “But I’m not a mountain troll, and neither are you. I should know; I’m pretty sure I once shared a train compartment with one.”
The Beast let out a snort of surprised laughter, and Remus smiled, pleased to have amused him. His host was so often brooding and in dark spirits, but there was something delightful about his expressions of good cheer when they occasionally broke through the gruff demeanour.
They repaired to the dining room together, their conversation less stilted this time.
“I saw you in the garden today,” the Beast said, his muzzle bent low over a wide bowl of fragrant soup.
“Yes,” Remus said, not sure what the Beast was asking.
“Do you like it?”
“Do I like what, the garden? Of course! The grounds here are stunning, as I’m sure you well know.”
How he wanted to ask about the strange unchanging season of the place, the autumnal cast to all the plants when it ought to be spring. But the Beast seemed open and good-humoured tonight, hard though it was to read expressions on his non-human face, and Remus hated to break that spell.
“And I saw you, working on your bike,” he said instead. “You seem very fond of that old motorbike.”
The Beast looked up, clearly affronted-funny how that expression was unmistakeable, even on his unusual features. “‘That old motorbike,’ I’ll have you know, is a classic! When I first bought it…” He waved his spoon, decorum forgotten, and launched into an impassioned narration of the life of the Velocette, every detail and every repair he had carried out over the years. Remus smiled quietly to himself, pleased to see his host enjoying himself.
All too soon, their meal was finished and the carafe of wine empty. Sopping up the last of his soup with a bit of bread, the Beast smiled sheepishly, clearly aware he had been dominating the conversation. “When were you in a train compartment with a mountain troll, then?” he asked.
“Train from Padua to Budapest. You get all sorts,” Remus replied. “I went to write an article on the lidérc. They’re a sort of magical Hungarian chicken. Fascinating things.”
“What do they do?”
“They’re good at finding gold. A bit like nifflers. But they do have an unfortunate habit of sitting on people, and they’re incredibly heavy for their size. And they’ll drink blood, if they’re not properly trained from the time they’re hatched.”
The Beast chuckled. “Speaking of nifflers, there was one time I-” He broke off, pain flashing across his face. “Never mind,” he said gruffly. “Just a school memory, nothing of note.”
Before Remus could ask more, a house elf appeared, bearing a tray of desserts and a bottle of port. This had never happened before. But then, he and the Beast had never lingered at the table for so long. There was treacle tart, and various cakes, and a raspberry trifle smothered in whipped cream that was threatening to overspill its bowl.
The elf disappeared with a bow.
Remus gazed at the opulent tray of desserts. “This looks wonderful,” he admitted. “I don’t know when I last had treacle tart. I loved it as a kid. What about you, was treacle tart a favourite of yours?” He glanced up, meaning to continue on to ask if the Beast would have the tart or a cake or the trifle, but the look on the Beast’s face stopped him.
“Yes,” the Beast said, staring fixedly at the desserts on the tray. “It was a favourite of-my best friend… He always...” He trailed off again.
“It sounds like he was a wonderful friend,” Remus said softly, treading carefully here, for the Beast’s memories were clearly painful. “You must miss him.”
“Every day,” the Beast growled. “Both of them.”
“Do you want...does it help to talk about it, at all? Would you like to tell me about them?”
“I-no,” the Beast said. “I’d better-” He rose abruptly, the legs of his chair scraping against the stone floor of the banquet hall, his dessert fork rattling against his still unused dessert plate. “Good night, Remus. Sleep well.”
He stalked from the hall, footsteps heavy against the flagstones, and disappeared into the recesses of the house. In the silence that followed, Remus stared at his empty wineglass and at the gorgeous desserts in front of him that he now had no interest in sampling, and wondered where he’d gone wrong.
He’d trod too close to things that were painful and personal, that much was clear. Remus knew himself to be a competent observer of human nature-he’d had to become one, since his survival among witches and wizards hostile to his kind so often depended on it-and he didn’t think he was mistaken in thinking the Beast enjoyed his company. They got on well, the rare times when they managed to occupy the same physical space within this massive house for any length of time. And Remus enjoyed the Beast’s company, despite his gruffness.
He only wished his host wouldn’t flee whenever the conversation showed the least sign of growing personal, wished he weren’t so loathe to show any tender part of himself. The Beast seemed unwilling to allow himself the human emotions he surely still had.
Remus wished he could show his host that the two of them were far more alike than he might realise-both less than human, both with good reason for their feelings of unworthiness. But Remus knew himself to be a coward. Even here, in this remote place beyond the usual bounds of human society, he feared the Beast’s reaction if he learned he was harbouring a werewolf under his roof.
Repairing to his room for lack of any other occupation that evening, Remus nonetheless tossed and turned, unable to sleep for many hours. When he did finally sink into the oblivion of sleep, he dreamt a strange dream.
A handsome young man with dark hair and flashing eyes approached him from out of the heart of a strange, grey mist. In the first moment, Remus thought it was the Beast, though that made no sense-this was a human man, without the Beast’s stooping shoulders and oversized, monstrous head.
“Don’t think that you know me,” the man said, his voice strange and familiar at once. “Don’t think you can guess at the man I am, the man I once was.”
The grey mist swirled around him, playing tricks on Remus’ dreaming eyes. One moment the man was there, another he disappeared into fog.
“Twelve years,” the man went on. “Twelve years I’ve lived imprisoned in this curse, forever caught in the moment of my greatest regret. Hidden away from the world in this old house, because I should not be inflicted on the world.”
Remus shook his head, confused. Surely this graceful, handsome man had no reason to hide.
“The curse is my fault,” the man said, his voice heavy with sorrow. “I pursued the one who took everything from me, but in our confrontation, he denied me the satisfaction of destroying him. He cursed me, then turned his hand and killed himself. The curse can never be lifted, because the one who cast it is dead.”
Such pain constricted the man’s voice that Remus felt the strangest desire to reach out and hold him, stranger though he was.
“Don’t,” the man said, raising his hands in warning. “You must not approach me. I am cursed forever.”
“But-” Remus began. He reached out a hand, but the mists swirled, and the man disappeared into that formless mass of grey.
The mist swirled and parted several times, revealing a series of surreal images. A cottage with its roof caving in. Rose petals falling like snow from the sky above. Then, a man with his back turned, wearing a curious suit of thorns, dust, and smoke. He turned-it was the same handsome young man, and he began to shed his strange suit. His body was pale as marble, but fine and healthy.
Remus awoke, parched and sweating, filled with a profound yet abstract desire. It took a long time for sleep to find him again.
( continue to CHAPTER FOUR)
by
stereolightning and
starfishstar
SUMMARY:
A man with nowhere else to turn agrees to live forever in a remote mansion that exists in perpetual autumn, his host a reclusive character known only as the Beast. By turns attentive and taciturn, the monstrous lord of the house keeps his dark secrets close to his chest, yet both host and guest find themselves increasingly captivated by one another. But how can a Beast give his heart while he remains a prisoner of his own curse?
A fusion of Harry Potter with Beauty and the Beast, told in seven chapters.
CHAPTER THREE
The Beast did not appear again for several days, but Remus sensed his presence sometimes, in a deepening of the shadows in an unlit room, or a padded footfall at the end of a corridor.
Remus took breakfast alone, and went outside and stood in a patch of scarlet poppies in the back garden. Snidgets and jobberknolls flitted between the branches of a flame-leafed tree. Remus sprinkled crumbs of his scone for them onto the cobblestones. They pecked at his offering, and he smiled.
“Are you captives, too?” he asked.
They didn’t answer. The jobberknolls, as ever, were completely silent, except for the soft sounds of their feet as they hopped on the cold cobblestones, and the beating of their wings to keep their small, plump bodies warm.
Remus wondered again that the leaves were still red, and hadn’t fallen. It was nearing the first of April. The trees should be budding and green now. There should be white apple blossoms, not full red fruits.
He wondered whether he had wandered into another world, a storybook world, where the seasons were different and time passed differently. He’d read stories of people spirited away to fairy countries, who thought they were gone for a night or a year but were in truth gone for centuries, and returned to their homes one day to find that everyone they had ever known was dead.
But on the off chance he had wandered into another world, he needed to know when moonset and moonrise were here-that was of utmost importance. He couldn’t assume they were the same. He circled the house several times, and finally spotted the moon, a plump, pale hemisphere in the wash of blue sky behind the trees, low in the western sky. Setting, waning gibbous. The same phase as the moon should by now have reached in the outside world, given the number of days that had elapsed since the last full moon Remus had lived through.
Hm, perhaps not spirited away into a fairy world, then. Regardless, he must find a place where he could transform without endangering his host. He still had three weeks until the next full moon, but this was not a matter on which Remus could afford to sit idle.
All that day, Remus stayed outside in the mild autumnal weather, exploring the gardens, watching the shadows shrink and grow long again. He didn’t find anywhere yet that he was certain would be secure enough to hold a full-grown werewolf, but at least he became acquainted with the grounds, with each potting shed, each bench, each stone in the path.
As dusk fell, Remus’ ramblings brought him again to a potting shed around the side of the main house, where he found a dark figure bent over the Velocette. The man-mechanic?-had opened up the bike and was tinkering with the mechanical insides, alternating between wand and torque wrench. It was hard to see in the purple dregs of daylight, but it seemed to Remus that the man’s hair was long, matted, to his elbows, but his hands were finely shaped, and pale, and clever. Was this another willing captive of the Beast? How had Remus not met him before?
The mechanic looked up.
Then the light changed, and the illusion-or misapprehension, or fantasy-melted, and Remus saw that this was no strange dark man, but the Beast, with his black fur and his dog-like ears. There had been a moment when Remus could have sworn it was a man who stood there, absorbed in the complex inner workings of the motorbike. But now he saw that of course it was hairy paws, not human hands, that deftly wielded the mechanic’s tools.
“Found me, have you,” the Beast said, without inflection.
“I wasn’t looking for you,” Remus said. “But it’s good to see you.”
The Beast stifled a sound, something like a choke mixed with a laugh. “Really?”
Remus frowned. “Yes. I do more than read, you know. I like your company, at dinner.”
The Beast grunted, and returned to repairing the engine.
Remus glanced up again; the waxing moon shone more brightly now that the rest of the sky had faded around it. He surveyed the potting shed in front of him and decided he doubted it could contain him at the full moon; its locks were old, and their charms nearly worn off. A full-grown werewolf could easily break them clean off the doors.
The stars came out, and the planets, Mars brightest of all.
“Shall we go in for supper?” Remus asked.
The Beast made a noncommittal noise.
“Or we could stay out here all night, grunting at each other,” Remus said. “But I’m not a mountain troll, and neither are you. I should know; I’m pretty sure I once shared a train compartment with one.”
The Beast let out a snort of surprised laughter, and Remus smiled, pleased to have amused him. His host was so often brooding and in dark spirits, but there was something delightful about his expressions of good cheer when they occasionally broke through the gruff demeanour.
They repaired to the dining room together, their conversation less stilted this time.
“I saw you in the garden today,” the Beast said, his muzzle bent low over a wide bowl of fragrant soup.
“Yes,” Remus said, not sure what the Beast was asking.
“Do you like it?”
“Do I like what, the garden? Of course! The grounds here are stunning, as I’m sure you well know.”
How he wanted to ask about the strange unchanging season of the place, the autumnal cast to all the plants when it ought to be spring. But the Beast seemed open and good-humoured tonight, hard though it was to read expressions on his non-human face, and Remus hated to break that spell.
“And I saw you, working on your bike,” he said instead. “You seem very fond of that old motorbike.”
The Beast looked up, clearly affronted-funny how that expression was unmistakeable, even on his unusual features. “‘That old motorbike,’ I’ll have you know, is a classic! When I first bought it…” He waved his spoon, decorum forgotten, and launched into an impassioned narration of the life of the Velocette, every detail and every repair he had carried out over the years. Remus smiled quietly to himself, pleased to see his host enjoying himself.
All too soon, their meal was finished and the carafe of wine empty. Sopping up the last of his soup with a bit of bread, the Beast smiled sheepishly, clearly aware he had been dominating the conversation. “When were you in a train compartment with a mountain troll, then?” he asked.
“Train from Padua to Budapest. You get all sorts,” Remus replied. “I went to write an article on the lidérc. They’re a sort of magical Hungarian chicken. Fascinating things.”
“What do they do?”
“They’re good at finding gold. A bit like nifflers. But they do have an unfortunate habit of sitting on people, and they’re incredibly heavy for their size. And they’ll drink blood, if they’re not properly trained from the time they’re hatched.”
The Beast chuckled. “Speaking of nifflers, there was one time I-” He broke off, pain flashing across his face. “Never mind,” he said gruffly. “Just a school memory, nothing of note.”
Before Remus could ask more, a house elf appeared, bearing a tray of desserts and a bottle of port. This had never happened before. But then, he and the Beast had never lingered at the table for so long. There was treacle tart, and various cakes, and a raspberry trifle smothered in whipped cream that was threatening to overspill its bowl.
The elf disappeared with a bow.
Remus gazed at the opulent tray of desserts. “This looks wonderful,” he admitted. “I don’t know when I last had treacle tart. I loved it as a kid. What about you, was treacle tart a favourite of yours?” He glanced up, meaning to continue on to ask if the Beast would have the tart or a cake or the trifle, but the look on the Beast’s face stopped him.
“Yes,” the Beast said, staring fixedly at the desserts on the tray. “It was a favourite of-my best friend… He always...” He trailed off again.
“It sounds like he was a wonderful friend,” Remus said softly, treading carefully here, for the Beast’s memories were clearly painful. “You must miss him.”
“Every day,” the Beast growled. “Both of them.”
“Do you want...does it help to talk about it, at all? Would you like to tell me about them?”
“I-no,” the Beast said. “I’d better-” He rose abruptly, the legs of his chair scraping against the stone floor of the banquet hall, his dessert fork rattling against his still unused dessert plate. “Good night, Remus. Sleep well.”
He stalked from the hall, footsteps heavy against the flagstones, and disappeared into the recesses of the house. In the silence that followed, Remus stared at his empty wineglass and at the gorgeous desserts in front of him that he now had no interest in sampling, and wondered where he’d gone wrong.
He’d trod too close to things that were painful and personal, that much was clear. Remus knew himself to be a competent observer of human nature-he’d had to become one, since his survival among witches and wizards hostile to his kind so often depended on it-and he didn’t think he was mistaken in thinking the Beast enjoyed his company. They got on well, the rare times when they managed to occupy the same physical space within this massive house for any length of time. And Remus enjoyed the Beast’s company, despite his gruffness.
He only wished his host wouldn’t flee whenever the conversation showed the least sign of growing personal, wished he weren’t so loathe to show any tender part of himself. The Beast seemed unwilling to allow himself the human emotions he surely still had.
Remus wished he could show his host that the two of them were far more alike than he might realise-both less than human, both with good reason for their feelings of unworthiness. But Remus knew himself to be a coward. Even here, in this remote place beyond the usual bounds of human society, he feared the Beast’s reaction if he learned he was harbouring a werewolf under his roof.
Repairing to his room for lack of any other occupation that evening, Remus nonetheless tossed and turned, unable to sleep for many hours. When he did finally sink into the oblivion of sleep, he dreamt a strange dream.
A handsome young man with dark hair and flashing eyes approached him from out of the heart of a strange, grey mist. In the first moment, Remus thought it was the Beast, though that made no sense-this was a human man, without the Beast’s stooping shoulders and oversized, monstrous head.
“Don’t think that you know me,” the man said, his voice strange and familiar at once. “Don’t think you can guess at the man I am, the man I once was.”
The grey mist swirled around him, playing tricks on Remus’ dreaming eyes. One moment the man was there, another he disappeared into fog.
“Twelve years,” the man went on. “Twelve years I’ve lived imprisoned in this curse, forever caught in the moment of my greatest regret. Hidden away from the world in this old house, because I should not be inflicted on the world.”
Remus shook his head, confused. Surely this graceful, handsome man had no reason to hide.
“The curse is my fault,” the man said, his voice heavy with sorrow. “I pursued the one who took everything from me, but in our confrontation, he denied me the satisfaction of destroying him. He cursed me, then turned his hand and killed himself. The curse can never be lifted, because the one who cast it is dead.”
Such pain constricted the man’s voice that Remus felt the strangest desire to reach out and hold him, stranger though he was.
“Don’t,” the man said, raising his hands in warning. “You must not approach me. I am cursed forever.”
“But-” Remus began. He reached out a hand, but the mists swirled, and the man disappeared into that formless mass of grey.
The mist swirled and parted several times, revealing a series of surreal images. A cottage with its roof caving in. Rose petals falling like snow from the sky above. Then, a man with his back turned, wearing a curious suit of thorns, dust, and smoke. He turned-it was the same handsome young man, and he began to shed his strange suit. His body was pale as marble, but fine and healthy.
Remus awoke, parched and sweating, filled with a profound yet abstract desire. It took a long time for sleep to find him again.
( continue to CHAPTER FOUR)