Fic: Mulled Wine, a Motorbike, and Thou for imd10
Title: Mulled Wine, a Motorbike, and Thou
Author: lesyeuxverts00
Recipient: 10imd
Rating: PG-13
Highlight for Warnings: *AU, spoilers for Brideshead Revisited if you've not read/seen it*
Word Count: 1549
Summary: A Christmas spent at Hogwarts, a motorbike, and a visit to a mysterious friend - Remus will take any chance to spend time with Sirius Black.
Author's notes: Thanks to aunty_marion for the beta and all the help with British details!
Happy holidays, 10imd - I had a great deal of enjoyment out of writing for your prompt, and I do hope that you enjoy this!
A few additional notes: The title is stolen adapted from the Rubaiyat (A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread -- and Thou), the plot is shamelessly stolen from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, and the characters are all JKR's. The one thing that I will claim for myself - which Waugh and JKR may not wish me to have - is the possibility of believing in a happy ending for these characters. But what I believe is of little consequence, I think, and so I will leave it to you.
Over the winter holiday, Remus elected to stay at Hogwarts. It was far more comfortable, for one, both in terms of the castle's amenities and in terms of having the Shrieking Shack, for the full moon. If he was honest with himself, though, he might have admitted that the largest part of his reason for staying at Hogwarts was the fact that Sirius Black was also staying over the break.
Sirius Black, who was fascinating and eccentric and could have gone home to his wealthy, eccentric family, who would have doubtless loved him and - well, Remus couldn't imagine the rest. He had only his father, his mother having been killed during the war when he was quite small, and so the idea of going home to a happy family Christmas was at the same time so foreign as to be beyond the limits of his imagination, and incredibly attractive to him, the way such mysteries often are.
Sirius Black, however, had chosen to remain at Hogwarts for the entirety of the break between terms, a choice that he soon reversed, when it became clear that the Gryffindor common room was overrun by two of the first year boys, and all of their friends who persisted in coming to Gryffindor tower to visit them.
"Come on, let's go," Sirius said to Remus, who had been lazing about in his four-poster and contemplating the Transfiguration assignment that was due at the beginning of the next term. He hadn't begun it, yet.
It seemed that, in the days since he had fallen in with Sirius Black and his friends, there was a great deal of homework that he hadn't done. His first year at Hogwarts, Remus had made a pair of entirely unobjectionable acquaintances, the sort of friends that a chap might study with on an evening when yet another Potions practical was looming, with Horace Slughorn and his devilishly difficult questions. The fellows who did well on those practicals were often invited to join the Slug Club, and it was an elite set indeed.
It was the sort of thing that Remus's cousin Malachite approved of, and it was a path that he had been quite ready and willing to follow, up until the time that he met Sirius Black. Remus had known him in an off-hand sort of way - there wasn't anyone at Hogwarts who didn't recognize Black, after all, even the seventh years had taken note of him and the ridiculous pranks that he and his band of co-conspirators executed.
Sirius had stumbled over Remus - literally - in the course of a prank gone wrong, and through the apology that followed - he'd managed to completely remove the Slytherin green from Remus's eyebrows, once he had stopped howling with laughter at the sight of him - well, in the course of apologizing, he had asked Remus to lunch with him in the Great Hall.
Remus was a Gryffindor, but he'd never been completely accepted in the Gryffindor circles until that lunch. Even Peter Pettigrew, the boy with the stutter, had been completely charming, and James Potter, who was devilishly handsome and just as full of himself as Black was, had gone so far as to shake his hand.
After that, Remus had followed Sirius everywhere, and so when he proposed an outing on that particular December day, Remus was only too quick to put aside his Transfiguration work and grab his jumper.
"Where to?" he asked, fiddling with his buttons.
"Out," Sirius said, jerking his hand in the direction of the door. "I'm sick of this lot of first-years mobbing the dorms. Time we had some peace and quiet, isn't it?"
They were seventh years, and had the liberty of the school grounds, so Remus assumed that Sirius intended to go on a walk round the lake, or at his most daring, an expedition into the Forbidden Forest. He was completely unprepared, therefore, for Sirius to lead him to a large black motorbike hidden behind the Shrieking Shack.
"This is brilliant," he said, coming as close to it as he dared, without touching it. "Where'd you get this?"
Sirius shook his hair back from his face and looked smug. "Bought it off a friend."
He helped Remus climb up onto the bike and then settled himself in front of him. "Wrap your arms around me," he said. "Like that - perfect."
The bike's engine started off with a lurch, and Remus clung to Sirius when the bike took off from the ground and ascended into the air. He was too speechless to question Sirius for the first several moments, feeling the roar of the motor vibrate through their bodies and the subtle, stealthy feel of an invisibility spell spreading over them.
At least they wouldn't have to worry about Muggles spotting them, but that left several large questions still unanswered. Remus leaned against Sirius's broad back and shouted in his ear, "Where are we going?"
Sirius couldn't turn back without abandoning control of the bike's direction, but he did so, apparently without regard for the consequences. "You'll see when we get there," he said. Instead of turning back to steer the bike, he looked steadily into Remus's eyes.
Remus clutched his arms and forced him to turn back when they came too close to a flock of passing birds. "Watch where you're going!"
"Oh, all right," Sirius said, shouting to be heard over the wind. He turned the bike down, until they landed in a flat, empty field, apparently far enough from any Muggles that Sirius felt no compunction about canceling the invisibility charm. They came out of the field onto a narrow, empty road, and Sirius turned left without pausing to consult a map or discover their location.
"Let's stop here," he said, after they had followed the road for a good hour, and were both stiff from the cold.
"Here" was a Muggle inn. Remus warmed his hands by rubbing them together and followed Sirius.
They ate a full Christmas dinner, with Christmas pudding to follow, and drank mulled wine, which Sirius insisted were the perfect things for a cold winter's day. Remus, tasting them, watched Sirius eat and drink, his lips stained red with the wine.
"Where are we going?" he asked again, and Sirius answered him at last.
"To visit a friend," he said. "Name of Pendleton. Remus, you ask too many questions."
The "friend" turned out to be Sirius's nanny, an old woman who sat upstairs in the Black country house, overseeing a vast array of mementos given to her by the children she had raised, and keeping busy with her knitting. She knitted away while Sirius spoke to her, settling into a place on a cushion near her.
Remus, who had seldom seen Sirius sit still for more than half a minute, if he wasn't forced to do so in classes, was astonished by this - by the unguarded, open look on Sirius's face, and the easy way he told her about the goings-on at Hogwarts.
"We'd better be going," Sirius said at last, when Nanny Pendleton was about to ring the house-elves to bring up tea. "Regulus is bound to be home soon."
"Oh, you've just missed him," Nanny Pendleton said. "He's gone out carol-singing. Are you sure you can't stay? He'll be so disappointed."
Sirius, however, refused to stay, and he pulled Remus out of the house without further delay. They were back on the motorbike, Remus with his arms around Sirius, when he finally was able to draw breath enough to ask, "What was that all about?"
"Nothing, nothing," Sirius said. He waved at a car, which they passed as they turned out onto the main lane, and revved the engine. They sped away.
Remus had never heard Sirius speak of his family, though there were plenty of rumours about them at Hogwarts - most of them, Remus suspected, started by Sirius himself. Regulus was in Slytherin, and apparently doing quite well for himself there, if the gossip could be believed, but Remus knew nothing more than that about him. He didn't ask questions, though; he only clung to Sirius's waist as the bike took off and sped through the air.
It was Christmastime, after all, and this would be their last year at Hogwarts, and if Sirius preferred the mistletoe and the merriment that he could find in that draughty old place, instead of going home to his family - if, in fact, he had preferred it every year - well, that was rather part of Sirius's charm, wasn't it?
And Peter might dismiss Sirius as being insipid and vapidly charming, and James might follow him into whatever prank he could devise, and every student at Hogwarts might gossip and hold their breath whenever Sirius Black came close, but Remus - Remus knew better. Remus was the one who had seen him with his lips red with mulled wine, and Remus was the one who had held him, feeling the beat of his heart as he felt the hum of the motorbike's engine beneath them, and Remus was the one who had seen the puffs of warm air rise from his lips into the night, while they soared away over the world. That was more than anyone else had of Sirius Black, and it was more than enough.
Author: lesyeuxverts00
Recipient: 10imd
Rating: PG-13
Highlight for Warnings: *AU, spoilers for Brideshead Revisited if you've not read/seen it*
Word Count: 1549
Summary: A Christmas spent at Hogwarts, a motorbike, and a visit to a mysterious friend - Remus will take any chance to spend time with Sirius Black.
Author's notes: Thanks to aunty_marion for the beta and all the help with British details!
Happy holidays, 10imd - I had a great deal of enjoyment out of writing for your prompt, and I do hope that you enjoy this!
A few additional notes: The title is stolen adapted from the Rubaiyat (A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread -- and Thou), the plot is shamelessly stolen from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, and the characters are all JKR's. The one thing that I will claim for myself - which Waugh and JKR may not wish me to have - is the possibility of believing in a happy ending for these characters. But what I believe is of little consequence, I think, and so I will leave it to you.
Over the winter holiday, Remus elected to stay at Hogwarts. It was far more comfortable, for one, both in terms of the castle's amenities and in terms of having the Shrieking Shack, for the full moon. If he was honest with himself, though, he might have admitted that the largest part of his reason for staying at Hogwarts was the fact that Sirius Black was also staying over the break.
Sirius Black, who was fascinating and eccentric and could have gone home to his wealthy, eccentric family, who would have doubtless loved him and - well, Remus couldn't imagine the rest. He had only his father, his mother having been killed during the war when he was quite small, and so the idea of going home to a happy family Christmas was at the same time so foreign as to be beyond the limits of his imagination, and incredibly attractive to him, the way such mysteries often are.
Sirius Black, however, had chosen to remain at Hogwarts for the entirety of the break between terms, a choice that he soon reversed, when it became clear that the Gryffindor common room was overrun by two of the first year boys, and all of their friends who persisted in coming to Gryffindor tower to visit them.
"Come on, let's go," Sirius said to Remus, who had been lazing about in his four-poster and contemplating the Transfiguration assignment that was due at the beginning of the next term. He hadn't begun it, yet.
It seemed that, in the days since he had fallen in with Sirius Black and his friends, there was a great deal of homework that he hadn't done. His first year at Hogwarts, Remus had made a pair of entirely unobjectionable acquaintances, the sort of friends that a chap might study with on an evening when yet another Potions practical was looming, with Horace Slughorn and his devilishly difficult questions. The fellows who did well on those practicals were often invited to join the Slug Club, and it was an elite set indeed.
It was the sort of thing that Remus's cousin Malachite approved of, and it was a path that he had been quite ready and willing to follow, up until the time that he met Sirius Black. Remus had known him in an off-hand sort of way - there wasn't anyone at Hogwarts who didn't recognize Black, after all, even the seventh years had taken note of him and the ridiculous pranks that he and his band of co-conspirators executed.
Sirius had stumbled over Remus - literally - in the course of a prank gone wrong, and through the apology that followed - he'd managed to completely remove the Slytherin green from Remus's eyebrows, once he had stopped howling with laughter at the sight of him - well, in the course of apologizing, he had asked Remus to lunch with him in the Great Hall.
Remus was a Gryffindor, but he'd never been completely accepted in the Gryffindor circles until that lunch. Even Peter Pettigrew, the boy with the stutter, had been completely charming, and James Potter, who was devilishly handsome and just as full of himself as Black was, had gone so far as to shake his hand.
After that, Remus had followed Sirius everywhere, and so when he proposed an outing on that particular December day, Remus was only too quick to put aside his Transfiguration work and grab his jumper.
"Where to?" he asked, fiddling with his buttons.
"Out," Sirius said, jerking his hand in the direction of the door. "I'm sick of this lot of first-years mobbing the dorms. Time we had some peace and quiet, isn't it?"
They were seventh years, and had the liberty of the school grounds, so Remus assumed that Sirius intended to go on a walk round the lake, or at his most daring, an expedition into the Forbidden Forest. He was completely unprepared, therefore, for Sirius to lead him to a large black motorbike hidden behind the Shrieking Shack.
"This is brilliant," he said, coming as close to it as he dared, without touching it. "Where'd you get this?"
Sirius shook his hair back from his face and looked smug. "Bought it off a friend."
He helped Remus climb up onto the bike and then settled himself in front of him. "Wrap your arms around me," he said. "Like that - perfect."
The bike's engine started off with a lurch, and Remus clung to Sirius when the bike took off from the ground and ascended into the air. He was too speechless to question Sirius for the first several moments, feeling the roar of the motor vibrate through their bodies and the subtle, stealthy feel of an invisibility spell spreading over them.
At least they wouldn't have to worry about Muggles spotting them, but that left several large questions still unanswered. Remus leaned against Sirius's broad back and shouted in his ear, "Where are we going?"
Sirius couldn't turn back without abandoning control of the bike's direction, but he did so, apparently without regard for the consequences. "You'll see when we get there," he said. Instead of turning back to steer the bike, he looked steadily into Remus's eyes.
Remus clutched his arms and forced him to turn back when they came too close to a flock of passing birds. "Watch where you're going!"
"Oh, all right," Sirius said, shouting to be heard over the wind. He turned the bike down, until they landed in a flat, empty field, apparently far enough from any Muggles that Sirius felt no compunction about canceling the invisibility charm. They came out of the field onto a narrow, empty road, and Sirius turned left without pausing to consult a map or discover their location.
"Let's stop here," he said, after they had followed the road for a good hour, and were both stiff from the cold.
"Here" was a Muggle inn. Remus warmed his hands by rubbing them together and followed Sirius.
They ate a full Christmas dinner, with Christmas pudding to follow, and drank mulled wine, which Sirius insisted were the perfect things for a cold winter's day. Remus, tasting them, watched Sirius eat and drink, his lips stained red with the wine.
"Where are we going?" he asked again, and Sirius answered him at last.
"To visit a friend," he said. "Name of Pendleton. Remus, you ask too many questions."
The "friend" turned out to be Sirius's nanny, an old woman who sat upstairs in the Black country house, overseeing a vast array of mementos given to her by the children she had raised, and keeping busy with her knitting. She knitted away while Sirius spoke to her, settling into a place on a cushion near her.
Remus, who had seldom seen Sirius sit still for more than half a minute, if he wasn't forced to do so in classes, was astonished by this - by the unguarded, open look on Sirius's face, and the easy way he told her about the goings-on at Hogwarts.
"We'd better be going," Sirius said at last, when Nanny Pendleton was about to ring the house-elves to bring up tea. "Regulus is bound to be home soon."
"Oh, you've just missed him," Nanny Pendleton said. "He's gone out carol-singing. Are you sure you can't stay? He'll be so disappointed."
Sirius, however, refused to stay, and he pulled Remus out of the house without further delay. They were back on the motorbike, Remus with his arms around Sirius, when he finally was able to draw breath enough to ask, "What was that all about?"
"Nothing, nothing," Sirius said. He waved at a car, which they passed as they turned out onto the main lane, and revved the engine. They sped away.
Remus had never heard Sirius speak of his family, though there were plenty of rumours about them at Hogwarts - most of them, Remus suspected, started by Sirius himself. Regulus was in Slytherin, and apparently doing quite well for himself there, if the gossip could be believed, but Remus knew nothing more than that about him. He didn't ask questions, though; he only clung to Sirius's waist as the bike took off and sped through the air.
It was Christmastime, after all, and this would be their last year at Hogwarts, and if Sirius preferred the mistletoe and the merriment that he could find in that draughty old place, instead of going home to his family - if, in fact, he had preferred it every year - well, that was rather part of Sirius's charm, wasn't it?
And Peter might dismiss Sirius as being insipid and vapidly charming, and James might follow him into whatever prank he could devise, and every student at Hogwarts might gossip and hold their breath whenever Sirius Black came close, but Remus - Remus knew better. Remus was the one who had seen him with his lips red with mulled wine, and Remus was the one who had held him, feeling the beat of his heart as he felt the hum of the motorbike's engine beneath them, and Remus was the one who had seen the puffs of warm air rise from his lips into the night, while they soared away over the world. That was more than anyone else had of Sirius Black, and it was more than enough.