Happy Birthday, Jazzypom!

[nyxfixx]

Hello, Jazzy, hello, flist:

Birthday Fic for Jazzypom ahead...

Thought I'd send over a little birthday present for someone who has been one of the best friends my fic ever had. Jazzypom noticed my first work in the R/S genre where it was loitering in a very bad neighborhood over at FF.Net, and has remained a great supporter of it ever since. And no one, among all the wonderful people I've met here at LJ, has done more to help me feel at home in this environment, or been a more dedicated reccer of "A Feast in Azkaban".

Jazzy, I am and remain so grateful for all your help, and so glad that you have been a fan. This would be a far poorer fandom without you! HAPPY BIRTHDAY (though I'm running a bit late).

I'm afraid I couldn't come up with some dysfunctional Remus/Tonks to satisfy your cravings, so I wrote a bunch of R/S smut instead. Just smut, not a lot of plot or meaning, but, what the hell, we like smut too, I think.

Hope you had a wonderful birthday and that there was lots of cake, and plenty of presents. Hope you'll get some fun out of this present!

- Nyx



Curing the Potion
Nyx Fixx
Rated R (for sex, lewd thoughts, not paying attention in class and some truly appalling nicknames)
Word Count: 7193
Disclaimer: I do not own any of these events, characters or plotlines. No profit is being made.
Beta: Many thanks, as always, to profcricket , for keeping my shirt tucked in and my hair combed and being the objective viewpoint that I always seem to lack. 
Summary: Remus can't keep his mind on the lecture in Potions, or not exactly...

“In the pursuit of perfection in potion-making, it is not always what one does, but what one doesn’t do,” said Professor Slughorn. “Today, we will discuss the theories of curing, steeping, stilling and fermenting in potions. We will consider the advanced application of the virtue of patience…”

Remus Lupin had elected to take NEWTs-level Potions in seventh year out of a growing awareness that he would need every academic advantage he could get once he left school and entered the wizarding work force, and not, as Sirius had suggested when he’d first heard of Remus’ intention, out of sheer bloody-mindedness. God knew, a werewolf such as himself might well need an unnatural amount of NEWTs on his record just to get a job as a dog-catcher, once outside the shelter of Hogwarts.

And though it was true that Remus did not much enjoy Potions, and was not especially good at it, he had still managed to scrape the grades to qualify for the class through a combination of fanatically perfect study habits and blind, relentless determination. Never mind that old Slughorn had looked as though he might burst into tears when he’d discovered Remus sitting in his accustomed seat as always at the first class meeting. Remus had made a solemn vow to himself in second year that Potions would never defeat him, Remus Lupin, Pillar of Homework, Shy Bookish Prefect Type, and Insufferable Swot Extraordinaire.

But that wasn’t bloody-mindedness. No indeed. It was realism. Sirius was an ass. And a mouthy one at that.

It hadn’t hurt that both James and Sirius had done everything in their power to get Remus through six years of Potions without loss of life, or worse, any grade lower than an Exceeds Expectations, Remus had to admit to himself. They’d both been convinced he’d summarily execute himself should any such grade ever appear on his transcripts and Remus wasn’t entirely sure that they were wrong.

So, Sirius was an ass who was, nevertheless, ace at Potions and willing to help carry a bona fide menace to the entire Potion-making world through yet another year of class. But he was still mouthy.

Just how mouthy, Remus thought as he stared, unseeing, at Slughorn and the blackboard behind him, he had only recently begun to discover.

“…curing, for example, is an essential step in the brewing of a successful Polyjuice Potion. Can anyone tell me for how long …”

Remus did not hear Professor Slughorn droning on about curing and Polyjuice Potion. He was thinking of the mouthy way Sirius had kissed him only last night, in an emptied Greenhouse #3. They’d broken in after midnight and had spread some canvas sacking on the floor, then lit their wands for a bit of light and stuck them in a clay flowerpot, lit ends up. They’d made an impromptu nest for themselves amidst a luxuriant crop of potted Spotted Amaranth and had both agreed that the verdant and jungle-ish atmosphere of the greenhouse was far preferable to the more commonly used stone roof of the Astronomy Tower, which was so popular a snogging spot at Hogwarts that one almost had to book an hour up there a week or two in advance. The greenhouse, however, was all kissing, no waiting. Which was just as well, Remus thought, since Sirius, as it happened, was a fiend for kissing.

Once Sirius started kissing, it seemed, nothing short of an Act of God could get him to stop.  He kissed up, and he kissed down. He kissed sideways and backwards, forward and to the left, to and fro and hither and yon and everything in between. Remus had never been kissed so much in his life. Just when Remus had gotten halfway used to the idea of Sirius kissing his ears in that hot, light, heart-stopping way that he apparently had developed only for kissing ears, Sirius had transferred his base of operations to the insides of Remus’ elbows and kissed them in an entirely different way, a sort of bitey-sucky-ticklish way. And when Remus had gotten into a fit of the giggles over that, and was only beginning to get back in control of himself so he could catch a breath, Sirius had switched again and somehow gotten hold of Remus’ ankles and pulled his boots and socks off with a flourish and had started kissing the soles of his feet; nibbling on the heels and licking between the toes and running his long fingers over the insteps and then kissing the places where he’d just touched.

Remus had not known whether to laugh or have an orgasm on the spot about that. He was not accustomed to having a lover.

Remus stopped this train of thought hurriedly and looked up from the small spot on his work counter where someone must have once spilled something caustic and burned the wood. For all he knew, he might have done it himself at some point over the past six years. He looked up and Slughorn was still talking and Remus was still sitting in the same seat he had always sat in for Potions and he was still the same Remus Lupin he had always been and nothing much had changed, so far as he could see.

But everything had changed, just the same.

It was a fact. Incontrovertible. A done deal. He, Remus Lupin, Insufferable Swot Extraordinaire and Arguable Dark Creature and Shy Bookish Prefect Type had, at the age of seventeen, somehow taken a lover.

It was because it was Sirius, of course. That explained it. Sirius was a walking nexus of the improbable. The regular order of things simply unspooled in unexpected and crooked directions wherever Sirius was.

Of course it was Sirius. Sirius in the beginning and Sirius in the end. Sirius and his soft, mouthy mouth and his warm, creamy skin and his bright eyes and the unabashed way he had trembled under Remus’ hands the first time he had ever kissed Remus’ mouth. Remus, at seventeen, could not now remember a time when he hadn’t loved Sirius. So, really, this new thing - this kissing and touching and fire in the veins - all this that was so new between them was only another way of loving Sirius, which was actually an old thing.

Q.E.D., Remus snorted to himself. Rationalize enough and maybe you can make it so it never happened - isn’t happening still - at all. The whole thing will simply disappear in a puff of logic and you can remain an eternal virgin through determined application of the Think System. It was absurd. As if Sirius hadn’t always defied rational explanation.

And who, after all, would want to remain an eternal virgin? Remus had discovered, recently, that he quite liked sex; that he had turned out to be, in fact, monstrously greedy about it.

Fortunately for Remus, Sirius had turned out to be the sort of lover who was positively inspired by greed. Once he’d finished with Remus’ feet last night, leaving Remus feeling like nothing so much as a pulsing blob of jelly with a diamond hard erection in the middle, Sirius had suddenly changed tactics yet again. He’d sort of wriggled around Remus until he was in back of him, or perhaps it had been more a case of Sirius turning Remus around, or perhaps a combination of the two, but however it had happened, when Sirius had put his hands into Remus’ hair and gently rolled his head forward, he had begun to suck, quite hard, on the knob of bone at the nape of Remus’ neck. Remus’ entire spine had jackknifed in response and he’d pitched forward involuntarily, Sirius right behind him, hands busily working Remus’ robes open in front, still sucking on that small mound of flesh and bone behind. Remus had never before suspected that feeling as if one were being devoured alive could be so incredibly …pleasant.

Well, if the truth were to be known, Remus thought, crossing his legs in his seat, ‘pleasant’ wasn’t precisely the right word for it.

The first word Remus had used last night, or rather the first sound he’d made (among many) that had been recognizable as a word, had been “Oh.”. But “Oh” had soon given way to “Uh” and from there to “God” and from there to “More”. There had also been, Remus now recalled with a bit of a blush, other words, but mostly there had been incoherent sounds.

So, there it was. He’d turned out to be not only an Insufferable Swot, but an Incurable Sex Maniac as well. Who’d have thought?

“…must be stilled in a cool, dark place for precisely three phases of the moon, and decanted and filtered slowly during a retrograde conjunction of Saturn and …”

Saturn and what? Retrograde something or other? Remus stared again at the blackboard behind Professor Slughorn and wondered which potion he was talking about now. He ran the balls of his fingers over the burned spot on his counter idly.

Last night, he had run his fingertips over another spot he’d discovered in exactly the same way.

Having Sirius sucking on his nape like that had driven Remus wild. He’d twisted himself until the two of them were face-to and had simply launched himself at his friend’s head, throwing himself into Sirius’ arms so precipitously that he’d knocked them both over and had wound up lying atop a laughing, gasping Sirius, belly to belly and hip to hip and Sirius flattened out on his back, spread out like a picnic on the canvas sacking they’d put on the greenhouse floor.

Remus had groaned and bent his head to kiss Sirius, ravaging that laughing mouth avidly, now the devourer rather than the devoured. Sweet. The taste had been so sweet. He had not known how he could get enough, if he’d ever get enough. When he’d felt Sirius’ tongue against his lips, responding to his kiss, he’d sucked that hot, wet confection deep into his own mouth with a tiny growl of hunger and had felt the way Sirius’ back arched beneath him in response. Remus had buried his face in the smooth flesh of Sirius’ throat and had thought, crazily, that if he could only have found a way to do it without hurting him, he would have eaten Sirius whole.

When Remus had needed to breathe again and had raised his mouth and nose from Sirius’ skin, he’d seen a small, pleased smile on his friend’s lips and noticed that his eyes were wide and sparkling in that lively way they sometimes had.

“That’s the first time you’ve been the one to snog me rotten, Moony,” he’d whispered, happily. “It’s all right if you want to be the one in charge this time, you know.”

And a small revelation had suddenly broken open in Remus’ mind. Part of having a lover, it seemed, was having the exquisite luxury of doing anything you liked with him. Touching him anywhere you wanted or pleasing him in any way you could think of or moving as slow or as fast as you wished or doing as well as permitting. This thing, this becoming lovers as well as friends; it was all so new to them both, and had been such a source of flabbergasted astonishment to the congenitally reserved Remus in the first place, that the idea that lust could work both ways was still a terribly heady concept to him.

“But it really is all right, isn’t it?” Remus had whispered back to Sirius. “I can… I mean… if I want to…”

Sirius’ mouth had curved in a mind-bendingly sensual smile and he’d slowly stretched his arms up over his head and gripped the legs of a long potting table behind him firmly.

“You can do anything you want with me, Remus,” he’d said, staring into Remus’ eyes steadily.

And Remus had suddenly known, perhaps for the very first time, that this was absolutely true.

He had been able to feel Sirius’ skin burning underneath all his layers of clothing and had felt the way his own skin had burned back, a heated mutual dialogue in the secret language of the flesh. Flares and fleshly sparks crisscrossing in the night. He had realized that the first thing he wanted to do with Sirius was to unveil all of that speaking skin of his and see it, though he suspected that the sight alone might well drive him mad. He’d rocked back onto his knees to give himself some room and brought shaking fingers to the fastenings of Sirius’ robes and clumsily undone the first of them, and then had attacked fastenings and fabrics in earnest, revealing one pale expanse of skin after another, rapidly unwrapping Sirius as though he was a birthday present.

“…so you see, sometimes it is more the use of restraint that makes the potion, class,” Slughorn was saying. “Both action and passivity are called for in this art, and …”

Remus still wasn’t really hearing all that Slughorn was saying. He was thinking about the way Sirius had helped him a bit with the unwrapping process, by twisting left here and shrugging right there, but had never removed his hands from the table legs or moved his limbs in any way that Remus had not prompted first. He was thinking of the way Sirius had so easily put himself entirely at Remus’ disposal.

He had run his hands in wide, long swathes over Sirius’ body once he’d had it completely unencumbered by superfluous fabric, learning the purely tactile rhythm of sharp angle of bone giving way to smooth round of muscle, hard hipbone to firm flank to flat belly. He’d groaned anew and closed his arms around Sirius’ hips and pulled up, Sirius again arching helpfully beneath him, and Remus had worked himself in between his friend’s long legs and splayed his fingers out on his buttocks as he’d continued to pull upward at his hips. He had doubled over Sirius then, so that he could press his face against his stomach, tongue plumbing  the depths of Sirius’ navel almost of its own accord, plunging in and out again in the old, old rhythm that all humans are born knowing in their blood. Sirius’ soft cries of pleasure had sounded, Remus had thought, amazed, exactly the way that silk felt.

Remus rarely felt as perfectly, solidly, gloriously human as he did in these new moments with Sirius, he had discovered. All of his most secret fears and worst doubts were always swept away like the cobwebs they were in the riot that being with Sirius like this caused in his flesh. He had never before been so utterly aware of his own tricky, shape-shifting flesh in a way that did not also include horrifying pain; he was afflicted by a uniquely fleshly curse, being in the flesh and of the flesh had never been a matter of delight for him before.

“…fermenting has the added dimension of altering not only the individual ingredients of the potion, but also of altering their synergy in concert…”

Remus looked up at Professor Slughorn again and saw that he was still talking, though Remus had no clue what process of curing or stilling he might be expounding on now. He looked back down at the small burned spot on the counter before him, again tracing the outline of the small, black spot with his index finger. A faint, slightly dazed smile curved his lips, though he was unaware of it.

This spot was shaped a bit like a flattened bell, Remus reflected, or perhaps an upside down mushroom. But Sirius had one that was shaped more like…like…like a key. Not quite black it was, not exactly. More a dark, dark sable brown, rather like the color of bittersweet chocolate. A birthmark. Remus had discovered Sirius’ spot just last night, and he remembered how he’d been struck by the hue, how he’d wanted to lick that key-shaped dab of color, had wanted to see if it tasted as much of dark chocolate as it looked.

A faint blush in Remus’ cheeks joined the faint smile on his lips. Sirius’ birthmark was situated in a very private place not widely accessible to the general public and not normally visible to the eye unless one happened to look when Sirius was in a particularly amorous frame of mind. It had not, Remus had determined, tasted much like chocolate after all, but Remus had not been disappointed by the experiment at all. Sirius’ grateful sighs had been sweeter than any chocolate Honeydukes had to offer.

Remus remembered the way he had looked up from what he was doing, listening to those lovely sighs, so soft and contented they were almost like purring, and had gazed his fill on Sirius, looking as well as touching, staring as much as he wanted. This too, he had supposed, was a part of what one was allowed to do with a lover.

Sirius’ skin had looked white in the light of their wands, pale on a bed of mingled canvas and the black of opened school robes, dappled here and there with shadows. His mouth had been partially opened but his eyes had been closed, black lashes fluttering darkly on his cheeks, sooty hair coming loose from the tail he’d tied it into earlier in the day, arms still raised above his head and hands still wrapped around the table legs behind him in a visual gesture of absolute trust. Remus had gazed until he had not been able to stand it anymore and he’d suddenly stretched himself out atop that long expanse of skin, fitting himself perfectly to the body beneath him, hard spots to hard spots and soft to soft.  He’d kissed Sirius over and over again as he’d reached above him and taken his hands down and away from the table and kissed the palms to show Sirius how much he appreciated the gesture, even if he now no longer needed to see it. Sirius had opened his eyes and smiled at Remus when he’d done that.

“Your hair…” Remus had whispered to him. “Your hair is getting all tangled.”

Sirius had laughed at that, a deep, throaty laugh that was, again, very like a happy cat purring. “Oh? Is it?” he’d answered.

Remus had smiled shyly and had reached up to untangle the small length of twine from the mass of black strands. Sirius would sometimes get impatient with his hair and tie it all back out of his face with any old thing that came to hand. Ribbon, string, shoelaces, whatever. This time it had been a bit of twine from an owl post package. Remus had worked the twine out carefully and tossed it aside and then scooped up great handfuls of the black, silky stuff once he’d gotten it freed, enjoying the feel and look of it in his hands.

“There,” he’d said to Sirius, cheeks heating in that familiar way that he knew signified blushing while his hands, unbidden, drew swathes of the loosened hair across his lips and flushed cheeks. “Is that better?” he’d asked.

“A zillion times better, Moony … a zillion times three,” Sirius had said and raised his head to kiss Remus, smiling in that almost unnaturally beautiful way that he set aside only for Remus. “Thank you,” he’d added, once he finished kissing, still smiling, still that rarest and most special of smiles.

So sweet it had been unbearable, really. The kind of beauty that pierces the heart. Remus had put his face into the dark cloud of Sirius’ hair when he’d found he was too overwhelmed to look any longer, seeking a moment of refuge in all that inky silk. He’d turned his head until he could feel the skin of Sirius neck against his mouth, until he’d found the pulse-point and had been able to feel Sirius’ blood, just beneath the skin, pulsing under his lips.

“You’re so beautiful…” Remus had gasped into the trembling skin of Sirius’ throat, shaking like a leaf himself. “So beautiful… I’m sorry … I know you don’t like to hear that…I just… I want to…I’m sorry if-”

“Shsssssh,” Sirius had interrupted in a whisper. “Just…hush. It’s all right, it’s all right…Moony…Moony…do what you want take what you want anything you want …just …ohhh…yesss…like that …just like that…”

Sometimes, Remus had learned of late, his hands worked much better than his voice. Sometimes, it wasn’t what one said that communicated best, but what one did.

“Like this..?” he had asked Sirius, lips moving against his ear.

“Oh, yes…yes…yes, like that,” Sirius had answered.

“…steeping is, of course, a less comprehensive process of change,” Slughorn droned on. “It is more the wedding of two discrete elements than the transformation of all. The change wrought in one through a calculated period of being immersed in the other…”

Remus tried to bring his attention back to the class lecture as well as he could. But his distracted mind only got as far as seizing on the idea of total immersion. He and Sirius were both very new to the ins and outs of sex and there was so much that they both knew very little about. Remus wasn’t quite sure if Sirius had been a virgin, and some mysterious sixth sense for the mercurial moods of his dearest friend had warned him that it might not be wise to ask, but he knew for a fact that he had been. There had been quite a lot of trial and error so far, and Remus supposed, with some lingering astonishment, that there would be more in the future. People were born, Remus now believed, knowing how to fuck. But, more often than not, by the time they’d reached their teen years, they’d forgotten virtually every instinct they came naturally equipped with, and didn’t know they knew.

In that heated tangle of kisses and caresses and cries and whispers last night, Remus had come to notice that his hips were thrusting frantically into Sirius, though he could not have said exactly when that had begun; he certainly hadn’t planned it or even willed it. His cock too had begun to behave as though it had developed some primitive brain of its own and had started to seek, independent of his will.  He had lagged behind, mentally, unable to fathom, for several long moments, just what it was that his body seemed so desperate to find. Once he had made the required mental leap and put the frenzied thrusting of his lower body together with certain naughty literature he had once seen in a Muggle bookshop with an extensive adult section, he had blushed so hotly from head to toe that he was sure Sirius must have been able to feel it. So, of course he’d then blushed even more, and had tried to pull away, a bit mortified with himself.

But Sirius hadn’t let him pull away. Sirius, it seemed, had forgotten a great deal less of all he’d been born knowing than Remus had. A lucky thing, really, for both of them.

“Do you want to..?” Sirius had mumble-gasp-whispered to him.  “If you’d like, I could…I mean…that is…would you like to?”

Remus had blushed even more still. Good thing, he’d thought, in passing, that it was a bit dim in the greenhouse. He probably looked a lot like a tomato.

“Oh…” he had answered in an equally garbled tone of voice. “Oh! I hadn’t thought about…you know…that…”

This was a barefaced lie. Once the idea had migrated up from his loins and into his higher consciousness, Remus had been able to think of nothing else.

Sirius had, rather incredibly, laughed, thus causing Remus to blush so much that he thought his head might explode.

“You mustn’t lie, Moony, you sly thing,” Sirius had said, still chuckling softly. “You’re not really in a position to deceive just now. Er…from what I’ve heard…it’s supposed to be…nice.”

“What have you heard?” Remus had asked, a bit desperately.

“Oh, I dunno…just…different things…”

Sirius’ skin now felt hot under Remus hands and it had occurred to him that Sirius might be blushing a bit himself.  Somehow, that had made him feel much better. He’d dipped his head and kissed Sirius once again, gently.

“No…” he’d whispered, unsure just what he meant to say until he heard himself saying it. “I don’t think…let’s not. I wouldn’t want to hurt you…” He’d kissed Sirius again and then unexpectedly added “…because I love you.”

Remus had been utterly shocked to hear himself saying that and had fought with an intense impulse to clap his hands over his mouth, only long enough to put them over his whole hot face instead. “Ahh…God…I am such a girl…” he’d moaned, morosely.

“Not hardly,” Sirius had pointed out in a maddeningly cheerful whisper, and had then rolled his hips in a fluid motion that was simultaneously astonishingly filthy and astonishingly stimulating to illustrate his point. Remus could have smacked him for it. Or kissed him.

But Sirius had pulled Remus’ hands away from his face and kissed him first once he’d gotten Remus’ traitor mouth uncovered - and the taste of him had been so wonderful, so warm and wet and welcoming. He had put his hands around Remus’ face and pushed up, enough so that Remus would be able to see his eyes before he spoke again.

“You could never hurt me,” he’d said softly, certainly.

Remus had thought for a moment of all the moons since fifth year that Sirius, along with James and Peter, had bet his life on that very premise. Remus had been so terrified, at first, that something would go wrong, that one of his friends would come to harm. But it had been Sirius and the others, at least so far, who had been right.

Remus had shivered; so much want and need had been coursing up and down his spine in small shocks and spiraling in his blood and he had been so very close to all that his body clamored for.

“But what if-” he had started to argue and then Sirius had somehow managed to wrap his legs around Remus so tightly that Remus had, for a moment, seriously wondered if he could have had an extra pair of joints somewhere in them without any of his roommates noticing until now. Remus had instantly forgotten whatever objection he had been about to make.

“Now I’ve gotcha,” Sirius had said, comically triumphant, and he’d crossed his ankles at the small of Remus’ back. And this was so absurd that Remus had unexpectedly started laughing, because Remus had never seen anyone in a more vulnerable position than the one Sirius had just contorted himself into.

“Oh? I beg to differ, Mr. Padfeeties. From here, it looks to me as if I’ve got you,” Remus had argued through his own chuckles, which had caused Sirius to cackle like the mad thing he was. Wordplay with his various names always made him laugh. Remus could feel this laughter in Sirius’ limbs, beneath him and clasped all around him.

“But what are you going to do with me, eh?” Sirius asked thorough his cackling. “Eh? That’s the pertinent question here, Mr. Moony-woony-oony-with-a-ukelele.”

“Good God,” Remus had answered, aghast. “What did you just call me?!”

“…and so we see how a calculated period of steeping strengthens the emollient properties of the soapwort, thus facilitating the introduction of solid ingredients into the potion with no muss or fuss…”

Emollient properties could be useful, Remus thought as he listened, or at least, tried to listen, to Slughorn. But steeping was a process that took much too long. It was Sirius, Remus recalled, who had retrieved his wand from the flowerpot and had cast some charm that had sounded a bit familiar to Remus, but had also had unfamiliar elements. Sirius was especially good at taking existing spells and spinning them toward novel purposes on the fly. He was especially good at improvisation.

This charm had caused an odd but not at all unpleasant tingling and mild warmth in Remus’ skin, and when he’d bent to kiss Sirius again and had hugged him a bit tighter, his mouth had gone sliding past Sirius’ entirely and he’d wound up, again, with his nose in Sirius hair. The solid body he’d had in his arms had threatened to squirt right out of his grasp like a wet bar of soap.

“What the hell did you do?” Remus had gasped, trying again to get some sort of purchase on Sirius’ suddenly slick skin. “You’re as slippery as an eel!”

“Household spell, with a few new twists,” Sirius had replied, laughing once more. “It’s for getting the lids off of jars when they’re stuck; eliminates friction.” His legs around Remus were slipping and sliding and he couldn’t keep his ankles clasped at Remus back; it seemed Remus too was now as slippery as glass. “Though I may have overdone it a bit,” Sirius added, still sounding vastly amused.

“I’ll say! I feel like I’m up to my ears in a vat of warm oil! Now I know what a basted turkey feels like!”

“I will, of course, refrain from making any crude remarks about ‘basting’,” Sirius had said loftily. “Because I am much too well-bred for vulgar double entendres.”

“Hmmph. In a pig’s eye, you are,” Remus had snorted in response. The slow, sensuous slipping and sliding of their skins against one another was insanely exciting and detracted quite a bit from the high moral tone of Sirius’ comments. And Sirius also was not in any way too well-bred for any crude comment. He would often make the most cheerfully lewd remarks at the most extraordinarily perfect times, Remus had learned of late. Remus had also recently learned that he actually had a definite taste for dirty talk himself; he’d found Sirius’ ribald commentary during sex to be both amusing and arousing.

That was the thing about taking a lover, Remus had thought. It was full of surprises. Before the whatever-it-was had happened with Sirius, when Remus would, like all young men, speculate about the mysteries of sex (and sometimes that speculation would include some lotion, a bit of privacy, and solitary hands-on experimentation), he would imagine that love-making would be passion and pleasure and maybe even the temporary lightening of that profound sense of isolation that his unique condition had made a part of him. But he had never guessed how much sheer fun sex could be. He had never imagined that it could be play as much as it was passion.

“So, baste me, baby!” Sirius had crowed then, with the filthiest smile imaginable. Thus derailing Remus’ entire train of thought utterly. “Roast me like a turkey and serve me with gravy. Cook me until I’m alllllll done!”

Remus had performed a superhuman feat of self-control in response and had somehow stifled his own guffaws. “Oh my - that was really…terribly rude! For shame, Padfoot,” he’d added, sadly. “I am deeply disappointed. You promised you wouldn’t.”

“I lied,” Sirius answered, still grinning. There was not the slightest hint of remorse in his eyes, either.

“Then you’re a very bad dog,” Remus answered, still trying not to laugh.

“Are you going to chastise me?” Sirius had asked Remus, wriggling lasciviously under him and batting his eyelashes outrageously.

A sudden vivid image of Sirius turned over his knee, arse up and bare as a babe’s, ready to be spanked soundly, had sprung out of one of the darker corners of Remus’ libido and all but mugged his more rational mind. He had felt his guts twisting pleasantly in response to this surprising yet wildly erotic mental image and had felt the hard, hungry throbbing in his nether regions redouble promptly.

He’d gasped as he’d tried to set the naughty mental image aside as quickly as he could, but some small, less conservative part of him had whispered to him that one day, maybe one day soon, if he asked Sirius to do this for him, Sirius would very likely agree, simply to please him. That too was part of having a lover, he’d discovered; knowing that you had the power to ask for what you wanted. It was both an exhilarating and slightly frightening kind of power to have, and despite the strangely satisfying pictures of Sirius’ pale, shapely rear end, faintly pinkened by a few good swats, that were chasing one another merrily through Remus’ head, he knew the idea of having such power would be something that would take some getting used to. He had known that he wouldn’t be asking Sirius how he’d feel about getting a right thorough spanking any time soon. Or, at least…not tonight, in any case.

One first was already quite enough to be going on with. Sirius clearly expected to be…basted.

Soon...

Now.

“…so, we see how stilling the potion can sometimes be a working fall-back position, while the brewer gives further consideration to the next steps. Adding or subtracting ingredients, stirring, heating or blending, or any active manipulation can, if applied improperly, often ruin the potion. But a calculated period of doing nothing at all rarely does any harm…”

Stirring, heating or blending? Remus had once again missed the gist of what Slughorn was saying. What was all this talk of stirring, anyway? He’d thought, albeit rather vaguely, the lecture was about steeping and stilling and other passive techniques? And why was Slughorn suggesting that doing nothing at all was sometimes best? If they weren’t going to do anything at all, then why on earth were they all wasting their time sitting in Potions class in the first place?

Really, it just wasn’t on to do nothing at all. Eventually, you had to do something…

“Moooooooony?” Sirius had finally asked him last night. “Hello? Still with us, old boot? Haven’t dozed off or anything, have you? Not bored into a coma, are you?”

Remus had sighed, a bit shakily. “You have no patience, Sirius. It’s a marked flaw in your character.”

“Ah. You must forgive me. I hadn’t realized you were overbooked. Next time I’ll make an appointment.”

“No need to be sulky. I’m just…I’m…just…”

“You’re…just …what?” Sirius had asked when Remus had not gone on, his tone a bit less snotty, a bit more gentle.

Remus had taken himself by the mental throat and forced himself to be honest about it.

“I’m not sure I can do...I don’t…oh, bugger, I just can’t do this. I have no idea how.”

Sirius had laughed then. But it was not unkind laughter, not at all. “Oh, Lupin,” he’d said. “You really are a terrible swot. You just kill me. Don’t you know that some things are so incredibly simple that they don’t come with instructions?  This isn’t homework - it’s not ten inches of parchment on the ninth Goblin rebellion due Tuesday. You won’t be graded, I promise. Now come here, come a bit closer…”

Remus rather felt that if he came any closer to Sirius he’d be in back of him, but he somehow managed to snuggle in a little closer anyway, or maybe it was that Sirius had pulled him in a bit closer, held him a bit tighter, legs and arms and heart too. Remus had been able to feel Sirius’ heart beating wildly where their breasts were pressed so closely one against the other. Or had that been his own heart?

Sirius had started whispering things in his ear at some point, filthy things and sweet things and tempting things and funny things. Wonderful things. And there had been his breath, warm and a bit moist and tickling the tender, sensitive skin of Remus’ ears - and very possibly working its way deep inside his ears and into his brain, thus driving him wild all over again. Remus had begun to tremble violently once more, so shaken by desire, but it hadn’t mattered, not in the least. Because Sirius had had him, he would never falter or lose his way, Sirius had been there to hold him fast.

“I don’t know how, either, Moony,” Sirius had finally confessed to him in a whisper; the last thing, the best thing. “But we can blunder through this together, you and I. We can learn. It’s just love, isn’t it? Easiest thing in the world.”

There was only one gift that Sirius had that Remus had ever truly envied, and this was it. It was his absolute, perfect knowledge that love was easy, that love was life, that love was the natural way of the world. Being with Sirius like this was a way that Remus too could partake of all the unconditional love that was the essential truth of who Sirius was. That Sirius loved so much and so hard and so utterly, and that he had chosen to shine so much of that great light on Remus, was something that Remus considered both a privilege and a miracle. Sirius believed that love was the proper way of the world. But Remus knew a different truth: for him, love was scarce and precious and very, very hard to come by. For Remus, love was the rarest magic of all.

“Is it?” he’d asked Sirius, needing the solidness of his best friend’s most enduring faith. “Is it really that easy? Can you promise me that it is?”

Sirius had kissed him. “I can do more than promise. I can prove it to you. Close your eyes. Good…that’s it, like that. Relax, let it go...just let go. Now, imagine you’re falling…just falling slowly. Give me your hand.”

Remus had given his hand to Sirius and had felt him lay it over his own chest, just above the left side, where Sirius’ heartbeat was the strongest. His eyes were shut, just as Sirius had suggested.

“Can you feel that?” Sirius had asked him, still whispering softly. “That pulse, that’s us, that’s the two of us, together.” He had blown a puff of breath across Remus face. “And that, that’s us too,” he’d said. “Our breath, our hearts, our skin, our blood, together. All the life in us. All right here. It’s easy, Moony. So easy. All you have to do is let go and just…fall in.”

Remus’ quaking had eased to a stop and he had to admit to himself, it was beginning to seem as though Sirius had had the right of it, all along. Love could be easy.

“Fall into you?” Remus had asked Sirius, his own whispers evening out and sounding more certain, more eager, even to his own self-critical ears.

“Fall into us, Remus,” Sirius had corrected. “We’ll fall together. Let’s fall.”

They fell…

It was a long, long slow fall, and they had drifted to and fro as they’d fallen, thrust to counter thrust, like leaves swaying back and forth in an errant breeze, floating along in a spiraling downward path, moving together through one layer of newly discovered sweetness after another, and no doubt or fear or embarrassment or awkwardness ever marred their journey, once it had been properly begun. And there had been such wonders at the end of it, rewards beyond all nervous, youthful expectations, the kind of truth that could, if permitted, exalt the heart.

Love had, as Remus now recalled it, sitting in Potions class and not paying as much attention to the lecture as he should, turned out to be easy after all. It was the best thing in the world, the sweetest pleasure he had ever experienced, more poignant and more piercing and more perfect than any dream of beauty he had ever known.

Sirius might believe that such delights were common, that love was always this way for everyone. But Remus was certain that Sirius was mistaken, that all they had sought and found last night was special, was a most rare sort of magic, something found but seldom, if ever, in any lifetime. He idly ran his first and second fingers over his lips, thinking of how Sirius had kissed him at the end, of how he would never think of kissing Sirius again without also thinking of falling, of falling endlessly and gladly, always of falling...

A long fall from a great height that he now believed, and hoped, might never end.

“Mr. Lupin? Mr. Lupin. Mr. Lupin.” Slughorn was saying.

Remus had no idea how long he might have been saying it. His tone of voice sounded a bit ill-tempered, certainly.

“I wonder if you’ve heard one word in ten I’ve said over that last hour and a half, Mr. Lupin?”

Remus blinked, still somewhat befuddled. “Sir?” he’d asked.

“One word in ten? Stilling, steeping and curing? Potions, that is?”

“Ahhh…yes…potions. Quite right, sir, this is NEWTs-level double-Potions, I think? Er…meets Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I believe? I’m certain it must be...”

Professor Slughorn looked as though he’d just bitten into a slice of rancid candied pineapple.

“What a relief,” he’d answered tightly. “To discover that you at least have some idea of where you are, Mr. Lupin. That’s a step in the right direction. But have you been listening to a single word I’ve said during the entire course of this lecture?”

Remus’ fingers were still lightly pressed over his mouth, and he could feel the small smile quirking his lips long before he knew he was smiling.

“Ummm, actually, no, I don’t believe I have, sir. Well - there was something about steeping, and something else about total immersion, and possibly you may have mentioned something about basting, but that could just be my imagination. I apologize for being inattentive. Please do continue the lecture, sir. Those parts that I did hear seemed …really fascinating.”

There was a low, pleased chuckle audible from a far corner of the room, from one of the work stations nearest the back. A unique variety of laughter that Remus Lupin would, for the rest of his life, recognize anywhere. Slughorn glared toward that section of the dungeon.

“Did you have something to add, Mr. Black?”

“No indeed, sir. Only that I found the lecture quite fascinating myself. I’m in a perfect frenzy to hear more, really, to be quite honest.”

Remus clamped his whole hand tightly over his mouth to stop himself from laughing out loud. He did not dare turn around and look backwards. One look at Sirius might well lead to a case of full-on hysterics.

Slughorn glared back and forth between Remus and Sirius for a moment, both offended and puzzled and clearly certain that the two of them were making fun of him in some way that he could not quite determine.

So egotistical, really, Remus thought to himself. It has nothing to do with him at all.

“Very well,” Professor Slughorn declared, still looking most put out. “Please take out your cauldrons now, class, and your mortars and pestles. And, Mr. Lupin?

“Yes, sir?” Remus answered politely, still trying (and failing) not to smile.

“Ten points from Gryffindor.”