Summary: Through the eyes of several characters (and several fanfiction writers), the lives of our puppies are documented, from first year at Hogwarts to the death of the last.
Categories: Remus/Sirius Characters: None
Warnings: Slash
Challenges: Series: None
Chapters: 11
Completed: No
Word count: 22717
Read: 35772
Published: 11/08/05
Updated: 04/29/06
1. The Meeting by Legion of LSPM
2. Secrets by Legion of LSPM
3. Year Two: Confusion by Legion of LSPM
4. Year Two: Resolution Part One by Legion of LSPM
5. Resolution: Part Two by Legion of LSPM
6. I Sit at Your Side, Your Hand in Mine by Legion of LSPM
7. And Place on Your Cheek a Soft and Gentle Kiss by Legion of LSPM
8. Knowing that Most Important In Love by Legion of LSPM
9. Is Not Only Doing But Knowing That It Is by Legion of LSPM
10. Can't Stop the Moonlight by Legion of LSPM
11. An Unseeing Eye by Legion of LSPM
The Meeting by Legion of LSPM
First chapter by Slian Martreb
The Meeting
Four boys passed through the magical barrier at Platform 9 ¾ that day, four boys among hundreds. Each had their own story, their own history. Nothing particularly special about any of them. Nothing that set them apart from the others in any notable way. Not really. Not unless you considered....
*****
“Now Remus, Professor Dumbledore has taken care of everything, dear, you’re not to worry yourself about“”
“I know, Mother,” the eleven year old said, looking around the station platform anxiously. “You’ve already told me.”
She smoothed down the front of his collar, which was starched straight, and squeezed his shoulders. “Are you nervous?”
“No, Mother,” Remus answered patiently, his eyes darting to his father, begging. Please make her stop.
His father gently pulled his mother. “He’s fine. Leave the child alone.”
She exchanged a desperate look with him, but eased. “I know he’s fine,” she said, putting on a brave smile. “He’s always fine, isn’t he? Such a brave little soldier.”
Remus pulled a face. He hated being called her brave little soldier. And he wasn’t brave at all, was he? He was terrified. If he was braver“
“Remus,” his father said, dropping his voice as he hunched down to his son’s height. “We’re very proud of you, do you understand? You’re the first to try to do this and we know that you’ll be able to. Professor Dumbledore knows it as well. You won’t let us down, will you?”
Remus shook his head. Of course not.
“There’s a good chap!” his father exclaimed, clapping him on the back before drawing him into a tight embrace. “If there’s any trouble at all,” he murmured, so that his mother couldn’t hear.
“There won’t be,” Remus said strongly.
His father opened his mouth once more, but a sharp whistle cut through the air.
“That’s the train,” his mother said loudly, pulling him away from his father to give him her own hugs and kisses.
He pulled away from her. “I’m going to miss it,” he said.
“Of course,” she said, releasing him. “You have everything you need, right? Your books, your supplies, your...
medicines?”
He nodded.
“If you need anything at all,” she was saying in a rush, herding him onto the train. “Anything. Don’t hesitate to write home or ask Professor Dumbledore.”
“I won’t,” he said, turning to look at her from on the step.
There was a jerk, and he nearly fell off the train and back onto the platform. He heard his mother let out a little gasp, but he held tightly onto the railing and had himself upright with barely a stumble. Without another look at his parents, he moved from the stairwell and into the train corridor.
Remus J. Lupin was a boy with a monster of a secret inside of him.
*****
“Sirius, you’re to behave, you understand?” his mother said severely, shaking her finger at him, her long black hair waving in the wind.
“Yes, mother,” he drawled, bored by the speech he’d been given for the last two months now.
“Don’t you take that tone with me,” she snapped. “It is your duty to uphold your family name. You are the heir to“”
““the Black name,” Sirius said over her. He knew the entire speech by heart. “The successor to the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black. A shining star in the wizarding world. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I know mother.”
“You will not bring shame down upon this family!”
“Of course I won’t. Only a few moments of hell.”
“Sirius“”
“Oh, leave the boy alone,” his father cut in with a smile. “If he wants to break a few rules, what’s wrong with that? Let him be a man; there’s nothing wrong with that. But,” he continued, his face suddenly as severe as his mother’s had been, “if I hear that you’ve been making friends with half-bloods or Mudbloods, I will personally come down to school to bring you home. Do you understand?”
Sirius nodded as his mother pulled on his father’s sleeve, pulling his attention back to herself.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” she said. “They don’t let that sort into Slytherin and that is what our boy’s going to be. Isn’t that right?” she said, looking back down at him.
“The Sorting Hat is going to put me wherever it wants to,” he said logically.
“And it’s going to put you in Slytherin. The moment you place it on your head, it will know who you are; know your lineage. There’s no reason for you to end up anywhere else. And you must set a good example for Regalus. He looks up to you, Sirius, you’re a tremendous influence on him.”
Sirius rolled his eyes. As if he cared.
“And we’ve told Bella to“”
“What?” Sirius yelped.
“We’ve asked Bella to look out for you,” his mother went on, glaring at him. “She’s older than you, and in Slytherin, so she’ll be able to help you“”
Sirius snorted. “I don’t need her help. I can figure things out on my own!”
“There’s a man,” his father exclaimed, clapping him on the back. “Now“”
A loud blast cut through the air.
“Ah. There’s the train, then. On you go, Sirius. Just remember what I’ve said!” his father said, severe again. “We’re better than that filth and I don’t want you associating with it!”
Sirius did not answer his father. To be honest, he couldn’t be bothered to. As far as he was concerned, the only good thing about finally going off to school was getting away from his family, from his over-bearing father, his high-strung and his clingy younger brother.
He opened the door to the first empty compartment and settled himself in his seat, closing his eyes. It was a few hours ride to Hogwarts and he needed the sleep. He hardly noticed when the other boy entered and he was fast asleep within seconds.
Sirius Black was a boy with the heart of a lion inside of him.
*****
Peter waved to his parents from the stairwell until the train rounded a bend and he could not see them anymore and then stopped with a snort of disgust; as if he cared?. His parents were older, and worse than that, had no ambitions for themselves. He knew already that he wasn’t going to be the most talented boy in his year “ not by a long shot “ but he was going to make a name for himself somehow. No matter what the cost. You were nothing if you didn’t have a name.
He gripped the bag he held and started weaving his way through the corridors and the people within them to find a compartment. Within minutes, it was clear that there wasn’t a single empty compartment to be found. He grumbled; he hadn’t wanted to waste the time of discussion on the train. What was the point of making friends on the ride before you knew if you were even going to end up in the same House?
He looked through the compartments carefully, trying to pick out who he should sit next to. Not a single group of people looked promising. He rolled his eyes at this annoyance and then walked into the compartment occupied only by a single boy who looked to be about his age. His eyes were closed and he didn’t start when Peter opened the door. Fast asleep already by the looks of it. He turned his nose up at the boy whose eyes were covered by his black bangs, and sat down, placing his bag in the overhead compartment.
Finally, he was off to Hogwarts. Finally he was going to start doing something. He had hopes and dreams for the next seven years he would spend at Hogwarts. He was going to be Sorted into Slytherin; he had to be “ they were the only ones with the necessary ambition to get anything done. And he’d heard about the Potions professor; Slughorn, his name was. He’d been holding court in Hogwarts for years, making connections with every promising individual who walked through the castle doors and then putting the young faces with the old ones. He gave graduating students the push and pull in the right direction which was the only way to get anywhere in the wizarding world.
The door opened to reveal another young looking boy with longish brown hair and grey eyes.
“Can I sit here?” he asked with a sorry smile. “There isn’t a seat anywhere else.”
Peter shrugged and the boy walked in, carefully stowing a bag in the overhead compartment as well, before turning back. “I’m Remus Lupin,” he said, sticking his hand out. “First year.”
Peter looked over the boy, and making an instant decision, shrugged. The friendship didn’t look promising, but while he didn’t have to waste time with conversation, there was no reason to alienate people either. “Peter Pettigrew,” he answered, taking the hand and shaking it. “First year, too.”
Remus smiled nervously as he sat down, his eyes falling on the sleeping boy. “Who’s that?” he asked.
Peter shrugged. “No idea. He was sleeping when I came in.”
“Well, he looks like he has the right idea,” Remus said with a laugh. “I wish I sleeping.”
“Long last night at home?” Peter asked conversationally.
A dark look crossed the boy’s face, but it was gone a moment later and Peter was sure he’d imagined it.
“Yeah,” Remus said. “My parents are the nervous type.”
“I know what you mean,” Peter said; at least this was someone who could sympathise with him. “My parents are as well. Nearly didn’t let me get on the train.”
Remus laughed again. “Mother’s clingy?”
Peter nodded his head as he made a face. “Terribly.”
Remus smiled sadly. “It’s horrible, isn’t it?”
Peter nodded again and Remus sighed, nodding his head at the sleeping boy.
“I’m going to nod off too,” he said, leaning against the wall of the compartment. “I’m exhausted.”
Peter nodded and turned to look out his window as Remus closed his eyes, breathing deeply.
Peter Pettigrew was a boy who would cry ‘Wolf’.
*****
Five minutes after getting on the train, James was best friends with the prefects from each House, as well as the Head Boy and Girl, having charmed them with his wit and humor. True, they had called him cute, and James didn’t want them to think he was cute, but it was better than nothing. He was going to make best friends with everyone at Hogwarts. He just knew it; it was the kind of person he was.
Well, maybe not with that pasty, greasy looking boy he had passed before. But everyone else.
His parents had seen him off at the station, waving goodbye after hugs and kisses. It had been a fight, leaving them, because if there was one thing James was not, it was stupid. He knew his parents were older than everyone else’s his age. He was an only child, had come to his parents late in life; they were nearly fifty already. And he could see the greying hairs trying to hide in his father’s beard.
He put the thought from his mind. He was going to Hogwarts; was finally going to be around people his age. He was giddy with excitement. Storming into the nearest compartment with a bang, he only realised that two of its three occupants had been sleeping when they came awake with a start and a yell.
“What the hell?” shouted the boy with black hair, an angry look on his face.
“Sorry,” James said with a sheepish smile. “I didn’t see you sleeping.”
The boy scowled.
“I’m James Potter,” he went on. “Who are you?”
“Peter Pettigrew,” the small mousy boy who had been awake answered.
“Remus Lupin,” said the other boy who had been sleeping, brushing his brown hair from his eyes.
James looked expectantly at the last boy.
“Sirius Black,” he finally said grudgingly.
“Oh I’ve heard about you,” James exclaimed. “You’re a pure-blood, aren’t you?”
Sirius shrugged.
“I am too! So we must be related, somehow, right? What about you two?” he asked.
“Pure blood,” they both said at the same time.
James let out a laugh as he fell into the last empty seat. “So we’re all cousins then!” he said with a laugh.
Remus laughed with him, Peter smiled weakly and Sirius grunted before closing his eyes once more.
James Potter was a boy through whom the snitch would be found.
*****
No, there really wasn’t anything special about these boys. Nothing special about these four eleven year olds, young in life and experience. There never was much at the age of an eleven to separate one from another. At the age of eleven, most children were interchangeable. They can do anything, be anything. The world is open and theirs, filled with limitless opportunities. But put these four boys together, who alone were not much; combine these four destinies...and history was in the making.
Secrets by Legion of LSPM
Remus leaves the table complaining of a stomach ache. There is no reason for them not to believe him because, after all, he does look quite sick. He escapes the Great Hall thankfully and nearly runs up the seven flights to Gryffindor Tower, panting out the password before dashing up to the dormitory.
Professor Dumbledore is going to kill him.
He’s been an idiot, really. He had wanted to stay as long as
possible; was having the time of his life. Why did the stupid full moon had to come now?
He yanks out his valise from under his bed, throwing shirts and trousers into it, a necessity in maintaining the lie. If any of the others come up and see him leaving he has to have an excuse ready. Even he knows that the one Dumbledore suggested was weak; his mother might be weak-willed, but she isn’t weak. Or sick. Or dying. She is in perfect health and Remus hates having to use the lie to his new friends.
But he can’t tell them. Can never tell them or anyone else. No one can know his secret or he’d be dismissed from school, shunned for the rest of his life. Already shunned, for that matter, by those who knew. Only his parents understand that it wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t asked for it; didn’t know why it had to have happened to him.
It isn’t fair!
He rubs his eyes angrily. He will not cry. He won’t.
Crying dosen’t solve anything. It never has and it never would.
Angry now, as well as late, he pulls the zipper closed viscously and breaks it.
Suddenly, he finds himself on the floor, sobbing, shaking. Realizing, in a moment of irony, that he is strong enough to manage as a werewolf but is incapable of dealing with a broken zipper. He wants to destroy something.
He feels the monster begin to well up within him. Feel the savage animal awaken, feeding on his anger.
No!
He pulls himself up, forcing the monster down. Knowing that if he can keep it down for just a little bit longer everyone would stay safe. This is a test he has to pass; if they can manage this time, Dumbledore had said, they could manage all the others. He wipes his face with the sleeve of his robes and when he puts his arm down...they are there. He hadn’t heard the door open.
“Remus, are you crying?” James asks incredulously.
“I“” he starts, helpless.
“You were! Why were you crying?” James goes on, virtually bouncing into the room and onto his bed.
“I“”
“Where are you going?” James interrupts, spotting the bag on Remus’s bed as he lies down on his own, his chin resting in his hands. “Running away?”
“I“”
“You haven’t told us why you were crying,” James says suddenly. “Does it have to do with why you’re running away?”
“I“”
“Is it because you’re not doing well in Potions and old Sluggy doesn’t like you?” James cuts in. “Is that it? Are you running away to plot his“”
“James?”
“Eh?”
“Shut up,” Sirius says flatly.
“But“”
“He told us he’s going to visit his mum. Don’t you remember anything?”
James stares at Sirius dumbly.
Remus stares at Sirius, so filled with gratitude that Sirius has made James shut up, has remembered the excuse, that it nearly drowns the monster inside of him. He feels the sudden urge to kiss Sirius’s toes in thanks.
“His mum,” Sirius repeats. “She’s sick?” he adds, his voice falling.
Another moment of complete incomprehension on James’s face and then“
“Oh! Right! I remember! Is that why you were crying?” he asks, turning back to Remus.
“I“” Remus says while thinking it is a lucky thing he is going to be far away from James Potter tonight. He might kill him otherwise.
“James,” Sirius says.
“What?” James answers, sounding annoyed at the constant interruption.
“You’re being a prat.”
“I am?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Sorry Remus.”
“It’s“”
“What happened to your bag?” he asks, bounding off his bed and over to Remus’s.
“I broke the zipper,” Remus says quickly, knowing that if he
doesn’t finish a sentence, he will bite James, transformed or not.
“Oh. Why did“”
“Here,” Sirius’s voice comes again, saving him. “You can use mine,” he offers, tossing a black leather bag at him.
Remus catches it, stunned. “You“I“You don’t have to.”
Sirius shrugs. “I’m not using it, am I?”
Remus blushes. “No.”
He is definitely going to kiss Sirius’s toes one day. As soon as he gets over how embarrassed he is to be thinking it in the first place.
“Go on then.”
Feeling immensely stupid, Remus transfers all his belongings into the clearly new, clearly expensive valise. “Thanks,” he says, being careful to close the zipper slowly.
“Can I ask him how long he’ll be gone?” James asks, giving Sirius a snide look.
Sirius shrugs.
“Three days,” Remus answers when James opens his mouth to ask the question again.
His eyes fall on the window behind James...and the lack of sun outside of it.
“I have to go!” he yells suddenly, frantically, running out of the room without another word.
Dumbledore really was going to kill him.
A/N: Shame on me for not posting this chapter as soon as it was ready. I know. Sorry! Hope you enjoyed it. If you did, leave a review to inspire aopt for Second Year.
Year Two: Confusion by Legion of LSPM
Sirius Black is, by nature, a very curious person. Everything interests him. Magic. People. Learning how to put things together. Learning how to make them work. Learning how to take them apart. Schoolwork would interest him as well if he hadn’t figured it all out already.
So he is very quietly consumed by his curiosity in regards to what could possibly be so wrong with Remus J. Lupin’s mother as to require him to visit her every month but it, at the same time, not so wrong as to explain why, half way through their second year, she’s still alive. Not, of course, that he wants Remus’s mum to die. He’s just curious. In his mind, something so terrible that it can not be cured by magic should kill a person. And in less time than a year and a half.
So it is no wonder that Sirius is both confused and deathly curious.
He knows he should just ask. Suggest that they should all go with him on a visit once, just to see what Remus’s reaction would be. Except for the special sort of awkwardness of Remus’s that, aside for giving Sirius pause in suggesting this, fascinates him as well; it is almost as though his friend isn’t comfortable in his own skin. Which is yet another curiosity to Sirius who, at the ripe old age of twelve is in complete possession of his own body. It was the way he was brought up and raised to be.
Remus though, confused half-blood that he is, dorming with the two loudest, rowdiest and most mischief-making boys in the entire school, doesn’t simply look as though he doesn’t want to be where he is, he looks as though he wants to escape.
And Sirius is going to find out why.
*****
It is the middle of March and Sirius is lying in bed, feeling rather bored. Peter is muttering spells to himself and James has completely conked out on his own bed, having kept himself up too late for too many nights in the last few weeks to remain a functioning human being now, even at the incredibly early hour of six p.m. Remus has just left to see his mother and Sirius has no one.
He growls out of boredom, wishing for the barest moment that there was an Astronomy to look forward to tonight. Of course, he realizes that this is a completely insane thought for him or anyone“even Remus doesn’t like Astronomy for some reason“to think and he vanishes the thought as he rises from his bed to stalk to the window, leaning against the sill despondently.
He shakes the word out of his head. Remus has no right to put such words in his head if he’s just going to abandon them every month. Just going to up and leave like there are things in life more important that his friends. Like sneaking off with Madam Pomfrey is more fun than pulling pranks on her. Like taunting the Willow with her is more fun then doing it with them. Like“
He squints, pressing his nose up against the blurry glass. He hasn’t imagined it. Remus really is hurrying across the grounds, Madam Pomfrey’s arm around his shoulders as they move closer and closer to the Whomping Willow.
Sirius is very, very angry that Remus would rather get smashed with the nurse than hang out with them. With him.
He is very hurt by this clear betrayal, the obvious lie. Remus had lied to them all this time. He can not possibly be going to visit his mother like he says he is, because he’d have to go towards Hogsmeade to get to the train, which is off the school grounds. And the Whomping Willow is further onto and into the grounds, not off them.
Sirius’s eyes follow, curious and offended, as the pair as they move closer to the tree. He watches its branches tense, feeling the nearness of others. It freezes for a moment and then“the branches move. Flinging out as if to smash the two unwanted visitors. And it nearly does beat them into the ground. Sirius finds himself holding back a yell of warning as a heavy limb reaches out, makes an angry swipe, knowing they can’t hear but. He presses himself against the window, as though he might save them, if only he can get through the heavy glass.
He shuts his eyes as a branch strikes out like a basilisk, knowing he is helpless to stop it. They open again of their own volition and he watches, horrified when“
Everything freezes.
He lets out a breath when he realizes that he’s been holding it in. The Willow looks as though it is out of time“heavy limbs suspended, the trunk still, not a single leaf blowing in the late winter wind.
Sirius takes another breath. Everything is fine now. Madam Pomfrey and Remus are going to step away from the Willow, and then step away again. And again and again until they are back in the castle. At which point Sirius is going to demand that Professor Dumbledore fire the woman claiming to care for their health but is instead leading students to the tree that acts as though it’s got a branch stuck up its trunk.
Remus takes a nervous step backwards and turns to the Nurse.
From a distance, Sirius sees her place a friendly hand on his shoulder.
And then, just when he thinks that Madam Pomfrey and Remus are going to gather their marbles once more and come back into the castle where it is warm and safe and, more importantly, there are no mad trees trying to kill them“Madam Pomfrey, with that friendly hand, pushes Remus towards the tree.
He knows that he can’t reach them in time. He knows the leaves have already started to rustle, that the tree is shaking off whatever spell has caused its unnatural stillness. But that doesn’t stop him from running out the dormitory, through the Common Room, down what should have only been seven flights of stairs but managed to be thirteen and through the main entrance to come to a panting stop halfway down the front lawn, some safe feet away from the Willow.
Remus and Madam Pomfrey are gone.
Year Two: Resolution Part One by Legion of LSPM
Resolution-Part One
Remus sits on the bed, shivering in the cold. His eyes are glued to the window, watching the sun as it makes its steady descent into the horizon, disappearing. Soon it will be gone, replaced by the moon, and Remus Lupin will be gone too, replaced by a monster.
He has learned to time it, the rhythms of his body, can pinpoint almost to the minute when the transformation will begin. Methodically, he bends to remove his shoes, his socks. Straightens and stands up to remove his robes and places them out of harm’s way before he begins to unbutton his shirt. Goosebumps rise on his arms in the cold and he thinks, angrily, that once Dumbledore was providing the Shack for his transformations, he might as well spell it warm as well.
He folds his shirt neatly, unzips his pants and folds those as well, placing them with his other clothes to be worn back to the castle the next day. He sits on the bed, his feet dangling above the floor, feeling stupid. He always feels stupid at this time, the moments just before it happens, just before he will be shoved unceremoniously out of his body and somewhere else while the werewolf controls his body.
He thinks enviously, for a moment, of Sirius’s absolute command of his body. If ever there was a twelve year old completely conscious of the space he took up in this world, it was Sirius Black. Sirius Black who was born and raised an aristocrat of Wizarding society while Remus is just...Remus. A half-blood and a half-breed.
He shivers and he waits. There are only a few more minutes“
The sound of a scuffle reaches his ears. He cocks his head to side, his ears pricking up, the canine in him already awakened. He has not imagined the sound. Someone is here, in the Shack, and they are coming closer.
Voices now, louder, thumping up the steps to the bedroom where he waits. He knows that he ought to do something, at least get himself under the blanket so that whenever whoever has arrived barges in, he won’t be caught nearly naked. He has no interest in having Professor Dumbledore seeing him like this, seeing him now, the old scars slightly brighter with the approach of the new moon, his skin taught and pale. He doesn’t want“
The door is thrown open, the people behind it unheeding to the fact that something might be behind it.
Remus’s world stops.
Three mouths are hanging open, staring at him and it takes a very long moment in the face of this horror to remember that he is wearing practically nothing at all; that sitting the way he is, he would appear to be completely naked.
He yelps and buries under the cover.
He can imagine their mouths working, trying to figure out what to say, what questions to ask. What“
“Remus,” he hears Sirius say, the voice sounding oddly proud. “You and Madam Pomfrey? I’m impressed. And slightly disgusted.”
He shoots out from under the blanket. “Sirius!” he exclaims, scandalized, before he realizes that Sirius is suddenly much closer to the bed and considerably further from the door and burrows under the blanket again. Please make them go away he begs of some unknown and unseen deity. Please. Please just make them“
The weight on the mattress shifts and he is sure that someone, Something, up there is playing some horrible joke on him. Has been for years.
“Remus?” Sirius asks quietly.
“Go away!” he answers, his voice muffled in the bedspread.
“But Remus“” James’s voice.
“No! Go away! You don’t understand!” Remus begs. He will kiss Sirius’s toes, will suck them and massage his dirty, smelly feet if he will only just leave so that he can be left to his miserable curse alone.
Sirius snorts. “Of course we don’t understand. Why in the world would you go sneaking off with Madam Pomfrey once a month?”
Remus stops breathing. “How long have you“do you“”
“This is the fourth time we watched you leave.”
Remus feels some small part of him whither up inside and die.
“Go away,” he says again. He wants them gone when he starts to cry.
“No.” James again. “Not until you explain.”
Remus opens his mouth, and then freezes, his entire body tightening, the chords in his back taut. He waits the torturous moment out, knowing it will pass, the contraction that does nothing to prepare his body for the transformation. It is a tease, really, the werewolf taunting him, letting him know that it is what holds power over the body now.
The cover is thrown back and now he is naked and
vulnerable and cold.
“Should we get Madam Pomfrey?” Sirius asks, his voice quiet. Low.
“No,” Remus answers, the word coming out as a moan as he forces it out. “No. You have to leave now.”
“But“” Peter begins to protest.
“No“” It happens again. The pain lances through him and his hands reach out without any thought to grab the headboard, holding, holding tightly as the beast threatens. It is beginning.
He falls limply into the mattress once it passes. “Now,” he rasps. “You have to go now.”
Remus can feel their eyes boring into his back.
“A werewolf,” James breathes. “You’re a werewolf.”
“Now,” Remus repeats through clenched teeth. It is close. So close now. “If you don’t go I can’t“I won’t“”
The words are stolen from him as he arches off the bed.
“NOW!” he barks, and it is the last word he will say until the sun rises tomorrow.
They run, slamming the door behind them as the monster emerges, legs and arms transforming, torso changing, teeth sharpening and growing longer, muzzle emerging, fur exploding over his skin. He screams and he howls as the pain racks his body and for the first time in his life, he is thankful for the numbness that comes with it, the loss of memory. He will not know for the next few hours that he is friendless in the world.
Resolution: Part Two by Legion of LSPM
They don’t say a word as they gallop down the passageway, gasping for breaths and clutching the stitches in their sides as they run, without stopping, from a building in Hogsmeade and back to the Hogwarts Castle. They run, and they run and they run, slamming the door behind them and locking it when they are back in their dormitory. Safe.
They collapse on their beds, chests heaving, beads of sweat along their foreheads despite the late winter chill. The fear is still in them, the terror of being faced by a werewolf at the beginning of the transformation.
Sirius stares up the ceiling of his four-poster, remembers Remus’s body as it went rigid on the bed in the Shrieking Shack, remembers the moan of pain that came out of his mouth, realizes that it is Remus the rumors are really about and shudders. He can’t stand to stay on his bed“any bed for a moment longer and he rises it from it quickly, stalking over to the window where this whole mess started.
He stares out, his eyes passing over the Whomping Willow and curses the day it was planted. His eyes look further, reaching out, trying to see the Shack miles away and finds himself unable to make it out. He swears, hits his fist against the window sill, and then swears again, holding his throbbing hand to his chest, wishing he could punch the glass out of the window.
There is a fury within him, fury at this discovery, at the injustice of it. No one deserves to have this curse. Remus doesn’t deserve to have this curse.
Sirius turns back to the center of the room. James is sitting up in his bed, Peter looks as though he’s about to start hyperventilating.
“Do we care?”
“What?”
“Do we care?” Sirius asks again, sticking his hands in his pockets as he leans against the window. His foot taps anxiously against the stone floor.
James mouth works silently.
“I don’t think I do,” Sirius offers, while James tries to answer.
“But“”
“So he becomes...something else for one night a month,” Sirius says before James can argue, present valid reasons as to why this is completely insane. “Is that a good reason for us to not be friends with him anymore?”
“But“”
“It isn’t like he’d leave school,” Sirius says logically. “The
staff has to know; Dumbledore knows. They aren’t going to kick him out if we tell them that we know. They’ll just swear us to secrecy or something, make sure that we don’t tell.”
“What? About his furry little problem?” James scoffs.
Sirius stares at him for a moment and then snorts with laughter. In moments, James is laughing too, kicking his feet against the bed and Peter has gotten enough of his breath back to smile.
“Yeah. His furry little problem,” Sirius agrees, grinning.
“I don’t know, Sirius,” James says hesitantly.
Sirius rolls his eyes. “If I hadn’t dragged you there tonight you never would have known. Has he ever done“”
“A werewolf,” Peter says, slowly sitting up. “Sirius, he’s a werewolf.”
“Thank you Peter, I hadn’t realized,” Sirius snaps, and Peter blushes.
“He’s right,” James says quietly. “Peter’s right. Remus is a werewolf. And he’s dangerous.”
“Has he ever hurt you?” Sirius asks pointedly.
“No, but“”
“Did you ever think that he would hurt you?”
“No. But Sirius, that’s not the point. He could.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“You don’t know that,” Peter said practically.
“I do too.”
“You“”
“Remus wouldn’t hurt any of us. You know that. He kept on telling us to leave, didn’t he? Remus wouldn’t hurt anything as small as a fairy; he isn’t going to hurt any of us.”
“Sirius“”
“No.” Sirius is now truly annoyed. “I’m not talking to any of you,” he says crossly. “How can you have so little trust in him?” he asks, stalking to his bed and toeing off his
shoes. “We’re going to stay friends with him and we aren’t going to discuss it and now I’m going to bed.”
And because he now has nothing to say to any of his friends, that’s just what he does.
*****
The next day, Remus is, as expected, not at breakfast. Or at their first lesson, or second. He stays missing straight up until lunch, at which point Sirius marches straight up to Professor McGonagall, eating at the Head Table, and demands to know where Remus is.
“Mr Black, you know very well that he is visiting“”
He hardens his gaze and she sees it in them, knows that he is not going to take the excuse for whatever reason, and swallows.
“The infirmary, Mr Black. He is with Madam Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing.”
“Thank you,” he says with a curt nod of his head, and leaves the Great Hall.
He finds the door locked when he reaches the infirmary, and knocks, tapping his foot anxiously against the floor until Madam Pomfrey comes to open it. She seems surprised to see him.
“Remus,” Sirius says baldly.
“Is not taking any visitors.”
“He’ll want to see me.”
“No, he doesn’t, Mr Black. Perhaps, after he returns to classes, you may“”
“Tell him I don’t care.”
She blinks. “Pardon?”
“Tell him I don’t care. About“about what we were discussing the other day. Tell him it doesn’t make a difference.”
She eyes him. “Very well,” she sighs, and begins to close the door.
“You will tell him, won’t you?” Sirius asks, sticking his foot between the door and the jamb.
“Yes, Mr Black, I will tell him.”
“I“” He stops; he’s done everything he can. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Madam Pomfrey says, and closes the door.
Sirius starts down the hallway and is nearly around the corner when“
“Mr Black?”
“Yes?” he asks, turning around quickly.
“He says to tell you thank you.”
He stares at her, shocked.
“Mr Black?”
“Oh. Yes. Thank you,” he says, watching as she disappears again behind the door. He considers and then continues on, smiling.
A/N: The next set of four chapters are going to be MUCH longer than this one and are going to take you from third year to fifth and a spectacular *fun* realization. If you enjoyed, please review!
I Sit at Your Side, Your Hand in Mine by Legion of LSPM
The Most Important: I Sit at Your Side, Your Hand in Mine
The first time Sirius Black knows he loves Remus Lupin he does not recognize it as love. Or anything more than friendship anyway.
He is, after all, a bit preoccupied by the fact that he is sitting in his first Transfiguration lesson of his third year and Professor McGonagall is telling them about Animagi, wizards who can transform into an animal by just thinking it. She pauses during her lesson and without warning, turns into a cat.
Sirius stops paying attention abruptly. He is staring blindly at Professor McGonagall who has resumed her natural shape along with the broom against her spine“with the added bonus of now being the coolest human being he knows. He is also thinking that he would do this for Remus. There is no hesitation in the thought. It would help Remus, it is cool and it is illegal. He would do this for him. There is no question in his mind. It doesn’t matter that it takes years, and that most wizards attempting to become Animagi are only allowed to do it under Ministry supervision. It doesn’t even matter that he is only thirteen years old and underage and will get thrown out of school if he gets caught. (It doesn’t even enter his mind that his mother would kill him; his mother has wanted to kill him since he was Sorted into Gryffindor.) He is going to do this for Remus J. Lupin if it kills him.
It is that simple.
Of course, it is a few weeks before he dares suggest this to James and Peter, but when he does, they are just as excited as he is and all three of them pour themselves into the research. They are consumed by their hunt for information and it is a hard thing to hide this from Remus who, for all the cauldrons he blows up during Potions, is the most bookish of all of them and always around. They are forced to find out everything that they can on the days surrounding the full moon, days when he is weak and ill or simply not there, taking advantage of him so that they can use what they will learn to help him one day.
They get their hands on every book Madam Pince, the school Librarian, will let them. Not a single one of the three of them has ever put this much effort into schoolwork before, and knowing how many hours the trio is spending in the Library, many of the teachers wonder how in the world the lot of them can be doing so badly. It is clear that the standard they have held until this point in their schoolwork is failing and no one except for them knows why. But they don’t care.
They have a Purpose.
It is amazing how their Purpose overwhelms them, swallows them whole. How can they possibly concentrate on anything else but becoming Animagi? If any of the teachers knew that this is what they are doing, they would, of course, understand completely...before making sure they were expelled and their wands broken, the pieces scattered in the wind or thrown into the lake or something else as dramatic. This is clearly the reason none of them tell any of their teachers“even though they are sure that Professor McGonagall must be a wealth of information.
They hide their Purpose with the respect and secrecy due it. And if they serve a few more detentions than they ought to because they haven’t been sleeping a lot the last few months and their nerves are a bit frayed and so they curse Bertram Aubrey in the hallway, swelling his head, or Transfigure the ever-useless Slytherin Severus Snape into a pincushion because he won’t stop trying to find out what they’re up to, or because Ravenclaws are clearly not as smart as everyone makes them out to be...well, it’s worth it, isn’t it?
Anything is worth the price of helping Remus. Anything.
When fourth year comes, they are only marginally more informed of the process, but have come to school prepared. All came home from school with a list of books to buy and the ones the shopkeepers wouldn’t give them on their own, they asked their parents to get. James and Peter’s parents either are not smart enough to put the pieces together, or are simply too absent-minded to. Sirius finds a few interesting books in his family’s library and spends the rest of the summer lowering himself to be nice enough to his cousin Bella“who has already reached her majority“so that she will buy the rest for him. He is pretty sure that she does it because she, like his mother, wants to see him die, but it doesn’t matter. He’s gotten the books, hasn’t he?
It is halfway through fourth year and they are now quite a bit more knowledgeable on the process when Sirius notices something strange: he spends an awful lot of time noticing Remus.
He has absolutely no idea how long he’s been doing this, but one day while staring at the back of Remus’s neck in History of Magic, he realizes that he is actually staring at Remus’s neck and not into space. It amazes him that he has not noticed this until now. He is usually, after all, quite bright and quick to pick up on things. From then on, he pays careful attention to how much attention he pays Remus.
By the end of the week, he is utterly terrified.
What he should have done was mark how much time he doesn’t spend looking at, talking to, or thinking of Remus. He would have had a far smaller number, then. Because it seems as though that’s all he does. He wakes up, and Remus is there. When he eats, the same. And all through classes and in between classes and torturing Snape and throwing snowballs and skating on the lake. Remus is always there. He’s there at Halloween and Christmas and Valentine’s day, the last of which is particularly embarrassing because even older girls have asked him to Madam Puddifoot’s, rather good-looking girls at that, and he tells each of them ‘no’ and he doesn’t know why. He is horrified that it might have something to do with the way Remus is just always there.
At the start of last term, Sirius decides that if he simply ignores Remus, the problem might go away. This only makes it worse. He tries, he really does, not to talk to him. But that only makes Sirius think about him more. And every time he sneers at Remus, or ignores him, or makes fun of something he’s said, Remus only gives him a very hurt look, like a whipped puppy almost, and shuts up. Or goes away. Or talks to James or Peter instead. And he looks so sad doing it that Sirius wants to hug him. And he almost does. Until he realizes that the whole reason he said or did something to Remus to make him look that way to begin with is because he’s trying not to want to hug him in the first place.
Of course that’s not the worst of it.
The worst of it is that hugging is not all Sirius would like to do to Remus.
He realizes the truth of this on the last day of term, after they have finished their last exam and are lazing by the lake when they should be packing to go home the next day. They are all lounging about, sleeves rolled up, shoes and socks off as they push their toes through the grass. James and Remus have just gotten up to run into the lake. Sirius, too occupied with thinking about the next two horrible months he’s going to have to spend with his parents, is caught horribly unawares when, while watching as James and Remus dash in and out of the shallows of the lake, shirts half untucked and faces shining with laughter, he realizes that there is nothing more he would like to do at this moment than kiss Remus J. Lupin.
Being far more mature now than he was at Halloween, which is when he thinks this whole thing started, Sirius wisely does not run screaming from the lake to hide under his pillow. Instead, he watches Remus playing with James, realizing that he wants Remus to play with him instead. He watches a few strands of hair fall from where they are tucked behind Remus’s ear and wants to push them back. He watches as James splashes Remus and when Remus splashes him back, both laughing, Sirius wishes that he was the one now soaking wet and laughing instead. He watches as they come out from the lake, collapsing beside him near the tree after making sure to drip on Peter. When Remus gives him a nervous smile, Sirius smiles back and is both thrilled and devastated when Remus’s own smile tuns into a broad grin,
knowing that he’s been a right idiot these last few months.
Sirius watches Remus as they head back to the dormitory. He watches as Remus neatly removes all of his belongings from their place and packs his trunk. He watches Remus at the feast: the way he eats, the way he drinks, the way he talks. He watches as Remus warns a younger student who is carrying something illegal in the corridors, reminding the nameless girl that she can still get into trouble if a teacher catches her. He watches Remus in the Common Room and he watches him climb the stairs up to their room. He starts to watch as Remus gets into pajamas, and then turns away, embarrassed. He watches as Remus gets under his blanket and doesn’t stop watching even after Remus falls asleep.
He watches and watches and watches.
By the time he walks through the Barrier at King’s Cross Station, back into the Muggle world and his mother’s hateful glare, Sirius knows it without a doubt: he is hopelessly in love with Remus Lupin.
And Place on Your Cheek a Soft and Gentle Kiss by Legion of LSPM
By the time the summer has ended, Sirius also knows that there is nothing he can do about it.
He has spent the entire summer thinking about Remus. Dreaming about him too. And he has never in his entire life looked forward to something as much as he is looking forward to seeing Remus Lupin at King’s Cross Station on the first day of term. He even prepares for it. He takes a shower that morning, and is careful with his hair and his clothes and his shoes and if his parents can’t understand why he’s gone out and spent a fortune on Muggle clothing it doesn’t matter because he does. He makes sure his teeth are brushed and that he’s eaten so that he can greet Remus with his mouth instead of his stomach and that he’s packed and ready to leave so that he won’t get there as late as is possible while still being on time.
He is prepared for everything except actually seeing Remus.
The sight of Remus comes like a blow to Sirius’s stomach
when they meet at the station. It would seem that over the course of the summer, Remus has grown a few inches and well into himself. He doesn’t look like a little boy anymore. And Sirius no longer wants to kiss him. What he wants to do, actually, now that he comes to think of it, is fling Remus down on the pavement, unheeding of the hundreds of people bustling around, and inhale him. Sirius, of course, has no idea of whether or not this is physically possible, but it does nothing to bury the feeling which is quite insistent in the fact that he ought to try doing this anyway. The thought of how his mother would react upon finding out that her Gryffindor-sorted traitor of a son is queer manages to stop him just in time. He does not, honestly, care what his mother thinks, or care if she throws a hissy fit right there at the station, threatening double murder. He does know, though, that he could not possibly subject Remus to that.
He is trembling like he’s just drunk a potion gone bad when he finally gets onto the train and it is all he can do to say hello to James and Peter and Remus before he turns into a mass of quivering jelly. He thinks he does a fairly good job of covering up how he’s feeling and he gives himself an actual pat on the back when they get off the train at the Hogsmeade station hours later and he hasn’t done what it is killing him not to do.
Of course, this is before he realizes that he now has to get through an entire year of Remus being everywhere again and then another year after that and then yet another after that before he’ll finally have some peace. When he does realize this, he excuses himself from the table and goes running to the bathrooms to retch.
By the time he emerges, he knows there is no way in the world that he can handle this. He knows that he can’t. There is absolutely no way in the world that he can survive taking the same classes with Remus, eating at the same table, sleeping in the same room. He just can’t. There has to be some kind of potion he can take to make this all go away, this wonderful nightmare that is thrilling at the same time that it is terrifying.
The trouble is that he can’t do anything about it. At all. So he takes a fierce interest in making the life of Severus Snape an absolute living hell because there is no reason the stinking Slytherin deserves to be happy when he hasn’t had a moment’s peace in a year. Snivellus simply doesn’t deserve it and since that is the only simple thing he knows now, he acts on it.
Of course, now that the summer is over, he has lessons to take his mind off of the urges that have only become stronger since the day at King’s Cross. And if every teacher they have is shocked that he’s sitting closer to their desks instead of further away, he doesn’t explain. All it means is that he can’t look at the back of Remus’s neck all day. It works for a few days, and the Sirius finds himself itching to turn around so he can see Remus’s face. However, since he’s now sitting in the front of the classroom, he can’t, and halfway through the second week, moves back to his regular seat.
He is not the only one who is relieved by this return to normalcy. His closeness was causing palpitations amongst the older staff and they feared every day for some prank or the other. When none came, it was nearly worse than if one actually had.
And then there is becoming Animagi. They are closer to doing it and all three know it. They are creeping away to empty classrooms whenever they can manage so that they can practice. At this point, they already know the animals they’re going to become: a stag for James, a rat for Peter and a dog for Sirius.
They are alternatively pleased and upset with this turn of events as all the books they have read indicated that a wizard’s Animagi form chooses him and not the other way around. They needed someone small to dart through the branches of the Whomping Willow to press the knot and freeze it and in their Animagi forms, Sirius and James would both be big enough to hold the werewolf in check. The fact that they are a dog and stag respectively is, again, a tremendous stroke of luck: anything bigger would either attract too much attention or be out of place in the village if they were spotted.
On the other hand, Peter is quietly furious about the weakness of his form and Sirius is embarrassed by the lack of masculinity to his. They have yet to actually take on the shapes of their animals, but in Sirius’s mind, no matter how big of a dog he might prove to be, he will never be able to think of himself as anything more than a puppy.
James is, possibly, the only one who is content.
And so Sirius throws himself into the becoming of something else. As something else, he tells himself, he will be able to control himself. He has to. He must be able to do this or he will lose his mind. They start slowly, the way all of the books have told them they must. They take turns as well, heeding warnings that the animal mind is overwhelming at first. And it is.
The first time James takes on the mind of a stag, he charges at everyone, daring every boy who walks past him, including some of the professors, and paws the ground whenever a girl is in his range of vision. He is particularly embarrassing when Professor McG passes by them just outside the Great Hall. If she gives any indication that she has an idea of what they’re doing though, she doesn’t let on. Sirius and Peter are both eternally and privately thankful that Lily has already left for the holidays“she would have just stood there and laughed at James, which, it is safe to assume, would have only made it worse. And probably would have resulted in James charging at her as well.
Sirius, though, is still sure that he can keep a hold on the dog they are bringing out of him and convinces the others that it won’t be a problem for him to do so in their room. He actually manages until he realizes he needs the bathroom and, well...the room never smells quite the same after that.
Assuming Peter can’t cause any real damage as a rat, he makes the change for the first time in their dormitory as well and actually makes a good attempt to burrow straight through the walls before James and Sirius can stop him.
In short, they are a complete and utter disaster.
But they practice and they practice and they practice until they can keep control of the animals inside of them. Secretly, Sirius marvels at Remus. He can not even begin to imagine having something thrust upon you like the werewolf is forced upon him every month. The dog inside of him makes him eager, and slightly simple in the head, but he’s safe. He shudders every time he thinks of having a wolf take him over and he knows, with more conviction than he ever has before, that he must do this for Remus. It isn’t fair that Remus has to go through this all alone, month after month after month....
And finally, in February, it is done.
Knowing that Most Important In Love by Legion of LSPM
Remus wakes suddenly, feeling something wet and infinitely cold pressing against his cheek. He does not move. He couldn’t if he wanted to: there is a tremendous weight over him. God only knows what Sirius or James might have decided to surprise him with this morning. Slowly, his eyes adjust to the darkness, his senses awaken and he attempts to move his hands.
He can’t. They’re both trapped.
He waits a little longer, hardly daring to breathe. He knows that they would not leave something dangerous in his bed and yet he’s not quite sure. Knowing his affinity to the smaller Dark Creatures, they’ve been known to leave...surprises in his bed. But there is nothing small about what’s lying on top of him.
The weight shifts, blowing out a gust of the most disgusting air he has ever had the misfortune to breathe. It is hot and rancid, and smells oddly...familiar. He pulls out his arms quickly, and, rather daringly he thinks, puts them atop the thing that is threatening to crush every one of his ribs and then some.
It is soft.
Confusion now takes precedence over the original fear. Why in the world would James or Sirius put a heavy, soft, furry and smelly thing over him during the night? Where in the world could they have found something that was heavy, soft, furry and smelly and managed to smuggle it into the dormitories and on top of him without anyone realizing? Without his waking up?
Slowly, carefully, his hands skim over the weight that is smashing him into his mattress and nearly through to the floor. The thing is nearly as long as he is. The fur is thick and soft, reminding Remus instantly of a bear, even though he knows that what’s lying on him can’t be a bear. He’d be dead if it was. His fingers follow the body still. Two things that must be legs are half curled on the side of him, two more are stretched out on his right, and Remus imagines that they must be hanging off the bed.
The thing expels another gust of air and this time, Remus knows not to breathe for a few seconds as the body on top of his own stretches.. His hands follow the direction of the breath, and come to rest on a tremendous head between two long pointed ears. His hand recognizes what is lying on top of him before his mind does and unconsciously, absently, he rubs.
Suddenly, his bed begins to shake. He can feel that everything he is touching vibrating and a dull roar is filling the room. He is shocked into stillness and when his hand stops moving, so does the rest of his room.
The realization hits him: there is a dog on top on him.
He tests this theory by rubbing the head again, moving his hand to just between where he imagines its eyes must be. The vibrating is stronger this time and Remus bites down a hysterical urge to laugh as a tail thumps heavily on his bed.
A giant dog is crushing him and he has no idea why.
His mind considers this problem like any other. Of course, there is the added problem that this one is not like any other. Nothing he has faced in life has prepared him for waking up with a giant dog lying on his chest and crushing him.
And Remus J. Lupin does not like dogs. It is irrational, he knows, but there it is. Give him a kappa, a hinkypunk or a boggart any day. He has no problems with Mandrakes“fully grown or not“ghosts, merpeople, centaurs or any of the other creatures that Hogwarts has been host to over the course of his years as a student. But he can’t stand dogs. He has no doubt that is something to do with the four-legged monster he turns into once a month; any canine is too close a reminder to that.
It doesn’t seem to be killing him, though.
He sighs. Not as heavily as the dog did, but a sigh nonetheless. It is quite hard to do with the dog on top of him, but he manages. He has no idea of where to put his hands; the dog is simply everywhere. Lacking anywhere better, he rests them over the dog, realizing at the same moment, that though the dog is crushing him, he is actually quite comfortable.
He feels odd and then, after another flash of recognition, realizes why: he feels safe.
Smiling, he tightens his hold in the dog’s fur and drifts off to sleep.
*****
The next time he comes awake, it is to find an immensely different sort of body on his: Sirius’s.
He has no idea of where the dog has gone, or why Sirius seems to have replaced it. Perhaps he imagined the dog lying on top of him, but no...there are black hairs all over his bedspread and in his hands, too short and too thick to be human, even for Sirius who has the thickest hair Remus has ever seen.
As well as the nicest“
Blushing furiously in the early morning light though no one
has seen him“or them“Remus snaps his eyes towards safer and more familiar territory. He realizes that he is clutching Sirius’s shoulder quite tightly and he releases it at though burned.
Sirius is not wearing any clothes. At all.
Oh bloody sodding wanking hell he thinks. What is he
going to do?
It’s rather a damn good thing that he is in pajamas under his blankets and that the hangings are closed; if they were both naked they’d really be in trouble“
But then, the fact that Remus can feel something quite clearly even through the blankets and his pajamas pressing against his leg is, of course, a much bigger problem. Bigger. Bugger he thinks, groaning. And then, thinking a bit further on that particular word, groans again.
Sirius snorts and Remus nearly jumps through the ceiling of his four-poster. He would if Sirius wasn’t on top of him.
Sirius blinks himself awake, and Remus’s heart, which had stopped beating upon waking, thumps. Once. Sirius, whose head is practically in Remus’s armpit, meets his eye.
He is achingly beautiful when he wakes up, Remus realizes, awake enough to appreciate how devastatingly gorgeous Sirius looks with the veil of sleep still over his eyes, his hair mussed, the muscles in his back moving as he“
Bugger Remus thinks again, unable to help himself and past caring.
“Morning, Remus,” Sirius says slowly with a sleepy smile, obviously only half-awake.
Remus nods, unable to even choke out a reply.
Sirius stretches slightly, and his arms, which were until now tucked beneath him, fling out, one hanging off the bed as the other settles itself across Remus’s waist. Sirius tightens his hold on Remus and closes his eyes again, his cheek now resting on Remus’s chest. Sirius’s thumb is moving back and forth over Remus’s ribs, as though checking to make sure each one is there.
Remus wants to cry.
It is too much to hope for that Sirius has gone back to sleep. His wand is out of reach and it too much to think that he can somehow get Sirius off of himself and into his own bed without Sirius realizing what has happened. Too much to hope that this has happened on purpose. Much too much. There’s no chance that God would perform this miracle for him. He doesn’t deserve it. Of course, he has no idea of what he’s done to deserve this hellish torture either, but“
Sirius’s eyes open slowly and Remus holds his breath, watching as Sirius stares off to side before saying quietly, “Am I on top of you, Remus?”
Remus nods.
“Are we in your bed?” Sirius asks in that hushed voice, still not looking Remus in the eye.
Remus nods his head once more.
“Oh.”
An odd sort of silence forms over them and, if Remus tries very hard, he can pretend that there aren’t two other boys on the other side of his hangings who are going to be as confused as he is when they wake up. Except...that they won’t be. They would make fun; they’d think it was a humongous joke. They would not be wondering why they were unable to breathe with another boy lying on top of them. And Remus can’t not breathe because someone is on top of him, it is because it is Sirius lying on top of him. Sirius who is one of his best friends in the entire world. Sirius who was the first to accept him when they had discovered his secret. Sirius who is as naked as the day he came into the world and sixteen years more beautiful.
He wants to cry again.
Sirius opens his mouth to say something and then stops, his mouth freezing half-opened. A fly could zoom in and Sirius looks as though he wouldn’t notice. He seems to have noticed something else though. “Am I“am I starkers?” he whispers.
Remus would rather be a werewolf for a month rather than answer this question. This, though, does not seem to be an option and, wretched, he nods once more.
“Oh.”
Remus is so thankful that Sirius is not making a joke of this that he wants to kiss Sirius. Of course, Remus always wants to kiss Sirius. However, considering their position and Sirius’s lack of clothes, a kiss might be construed as something more. And while he knows that that construal would be true and welcome on his part, he can not imagine Sirius being very happy about it. So he waits.
His hands are itching. Itching to touch Sirius, to run his hands through Sirius’s hair, over his back and“ He chokes back a groan, but it doesn’t help. He has never wanted to touch anything as badly in his entire life as he now wants to touch Sirius. He has wanted to touch Sirius before, naturally, but never like this. Sirius has, of course, never been naked in Remus’s bed in the early morning. Or ever, for that matter, but Remus wants to touch him so badly, kiss his confused face so badly that his itching hands feel as though they’re going to fall off. They’re shaking as he holds them as far away from Sirius as is physically possible.
There are hairs stuck to his sweaty palms. He pinches them off and flicks them away.
“There was a dog in my bed last night,” he says, his voice wavering as he tries to force a conversational tone out of his throat.
“A what?” Sirius asks, looking more confused.
“A dog,” Remus repeats, thinking suddenly that Sirius looks utterly delicious when he is confused.
The urge to kiss his best friend suddenly becomes unbearable and Remus goes on in a rush, “I woke up in the middle of the night and there was a huge, you know, dog lying on top of me and I have no idea of where it came from but there you go and I thought you and James had left it there and it was crushing me and I was terrified because after all, there was a tremendous dog on top of me“at least I think it was a dog“but it was sleeping and didn’t seem to want to maul me to death so I fell asleep again and then when I woke up it was gone and you...were...here,” he trails off. He seems to have brought them back to the uncomfortable awkwardness. Bugger.
There is a pause and then, quite suddenly, Sirius laughs. It
starts as a low sort of chuckle, rumbling in the part of Sirius’s throat that is touching Remus’s chest and pouring out of his mouth and into the room, growing and growing until Sirius is laughing hilariously, clutching Remus tightly as he shakes.
“Shut up!” James’s voice yells out, annoyed and tetchy.
Sirius buries his face in Remus’s chest, using Remus’s body to muffle the sound of his laughter. He is shaking spectacularly now and it seems to Remus that Sirius is nearly hysterical.
He is now more confused than he feels a living thing ever should have the misfortune to be and for the moment, it overwhelms how wretched he feels about the situation. None of it matters if Sirius has lost his mind and it looks as though that’s what he’s done.
“Sirius?” he asks quietly. “Sirius?”
Sirius doesn’t answer and Remus is at a loss for what to do.
None of their textbooks had ever covered what to do when your best friend turns up in your bed quite naked, neither of you knowing how he got there, before he proceeds to lose his mind. Why didn’t they teach you anything important in school? Like what he should do now? Or what he should do about the fact that he fancies his best friend? A bloody bloke? That he feels warm and fuzzy inside whenever Sirius agrees with him, or laughs at a joke he’s made? That he wants to touch Sirius’s hair so badly it is nearly ripping him apart? That he was so miserable at the end of last year when he thought Sirius was never going to speak to him again? That even now, he is wretched for hours if Sirius, however jokingly, snubs him for an instant? That he wants to kiss Sirius so desperately he thinks he might not make it through the next two and a half years of school and might just jump out of one of the windows of Gryffindor Tower and be done with it? School has not taught him the answers to any of these questions. In fact, he feels as though the system has let him down.
Sirius has finally stopped laughing and is looking up at Remus with the a look so smug he looks like the cat that got the cream and the canary. Quite suddenly, so suddenly that Remus forces himself to believe that Sirius is not truly aware of what he’s doing, Sirius rolls over on top of Remus completely and steeples his fingers, looking down into Remus’s eyes.
“I have something to tell you,” he says.
Remus can not breathe. Sirius is lying on top of him. Sirius is lying on top of him, all of his parts matched up against his, as though the blanket aren’t even there: Sirius’s stomach on top of his own which is filled with butterflies; Sirius’s thighs touching his which have turned to mush; Sirius’s knees against his which would be knocking together if Sirius weren’t on top of him. He’s trembling as it is. Sirius, Sirius, Sirius. Everywhere. Sirius is bloody everywhere. Touching every single part of his body. On top of him. His“
Bloody““Yes?” he manages to croak out. He has never sworn so much mentally in his entire life as he has since he woke up this morning.
“Do you promise not to tell James and Peter that I’ve told you?” Sirius asks.
Remus, beyond comprehensive and civilized speech, nods. He can not imagine that there is anything Sirius could say right now that he would want to repeat to anyone, let alone James and Peter. And he has yet to get his mind around what Sirius is doing. There is no way that Sirius is not aware of what he’s done“of what he’s doing. He’s naked for Merlins’s sake. It’s February and he must be freezing his arse off Remus thinks logically, desperately. But he can’t be, Remus thinks on. He simply can’t. Because if Sirius realized that he was lying in another boy’s bed completely starkers he would hex that person so badly the boy’s great-grandchildren wouldn’t feel it because he’d never have any. And he has yet to hex Remus. Which means he doesn’t know. Except that he must. But he can’t because“
Remus wants to scream.
“Good,” Sirius says, and then, as suddenly as he rolled onto Remus, falls silent.
Remus is going to lose his mind if Sirius doesn’t say something. He can handle secrets, he can handle the never touching, the never knowing. But he is going to lose his mind from the bloody on-going silence“
“We decided,” Sirius says, “that you might be better off every month if you had...company.”
Remus does not understand and he says so.
“We read up on werewolves when we first found out, remember?”
“Yes, but“”
“And one of the books said that if a werewolf is kept locked away from people, it will hurt itself instead.”
Remus blushes royally; he has never realized that they knew about that. But of course they would have wondered why he came back scratched and bleeding every month. Remus is mortally embarrassed and Sirius doesn’t seem to notice.
“So we thought,” he goes on, as if it were nothing. Nothing at all that Remus becomes enough of a monster to hurt himself. Sirius can joke about it being a furry little problem all that he wants, but it doesn’t change things. Still, Sirius pays no attention to Remus’s unhappy state and he continues, “me and James, that if we were there, you might be...less wolfish and more human“”
“But I’d hurt you!” Remus says, horrified and terrified to find out what Sirius is getting at.
“I“we knew that,” Sirius says. “So I had a brilliant idea ”
Remus, having much experience with Sirius’s ideas, is very scared to know what this one is. “What?” he asks, his voice thin. “What did you do?”
“We became Animagi!” Sirius declares in an excited whisper.
Remus has just a moment to absorb the ridiculousness of this. There are only seven registered Animagi in this century; becoming one is incredibly difficult and it takes years. Professor McGonagall had told them. There was no way three fifth years had become Animagi without help. Remus considers laughing until he sees the look in Sirius’s eyes. Sirius is not lying. Sirius never lies...to his friends anyway. To teachers, yes; friends, never. And there is the fact that they are the two most gifted Transfiguration students Hogwarts has seen in some time“
“You did what?” Remus hisses, trying to sit up so he can be properly angry and furious at Sirius for attempting something so utterly stupid without having to think about which of his parts are touching Sirius’s and the other way around.
Before he blinks though, he finds that Sirius has grabbed his wrists and slammed him back down against the mattress. Remus’s arms are somehow bent over his head, pressing against the headboard and trapped. Not painfully, but Sirius definitely has a strong grip on him.
Shocked, Remus stares up at Sirius and their eyes lock. He is amazed by the very basic instinct it took for Sirius to have done what he had, stunned by the animal anger he sees in Sirius’s eyes and feeling things even he can’t put a name to“things that are nearly painful they are so strong”
Remus shivers.
Sirius is breathing a bit heavily as he leans over Remus, his legs pressing against Remus’s, forcing him to stay down. He looks utterly furious for some reason that Remus cannot imagine. He isn’t the one who woke up in bed to find the boy he fancies lying there with him, with no clothes on. His friends hadn’t put their lives in danger and done illegal magic for him. What right does Sirius have to be angry, glaring down at him through his black bangs, his chest collapsing with each deep breath, his teeth bared“
Thinking only of the parts of their bodies that are now touching, Remus licks his dry lips.
“Fuck!” Sirius hisses before releasing Remus’s hands to grab his face in them and kiss him.
Remus becomes a shocked statue. There is no way that Sirius is doing what he thinks Sirius is doing. There is no way. He must still be dreaming. That’s it. He is dreaming that Sirius is naked and on top of him and kissing him and pressing against him in a way that is making parts of him frantic that he never knew could be. Even his toenails are in agony. He hadn’t known they could be before now. Dreaming is the answer. Dreaming. He is dreaming.
But dreams have never been this real before.
Sirius pulls away from him sharply, a stricken look on his paling face.
“I’m“fuck it“I’m sorry“Remus“I“”
He starts to move away, off, and Remus realizes that this isn’t a dream. This is a nightmare. It has actually happened and he is lying there like a board and Sirius just kissed him, just bloody kissed him and he didn’t do anything about it Still isn’t doing anything about it Not doing a blessed thing about this wonderful dream made flesh“
“Don’t move,” he says to Sirius, who freezes, and Remus is amazed at the amount of control he is managing to keep over his voice as well as stunned that Sirius has listened to him. “Just“don’t“Gods“please don’t“”
Sirius stares at him as he sits up and now Sirius is, somehow, on his lap. On his lap!
Remus wants to cry and kiss Sirius and get down on his knees and give his thanks to God for this miracle all at the same time.
“You“” Remus starts, nearly shaking with all of the things that he’s feeling now. Worry. Thanks. Fear. Apprehension. The prospect of the hundreds of different ways this can go. Wanting Sirius to kiss him again. Wanting Sirius to put on some clothes so that he can yell properly. Never wanting Sirius to put on clothes again “You“”
“Yes,” Sirius says and Remus has no idea of whether this is a question or a statement.
Remus has, in his life, never felt so completely out of touch with words. Words used to be his friends. He’d been able to turn to them before for...everything. They seem to have deserted him now. All except for two.
“Oh hell,” he says, and kisses Sirius. His hands, finally allowed freedom, touch every part of Sirius that they can reach. His face, his hair, his shoulders, his arms, his back, his stomach. No part of Sirius’s body is safe from Remus’s hands, although they seem to keep going back to Sirius’s face. For some reason, touch does not seem to be enough. He had thought it would be, all the times he’d thought about it, that finally touching Sirius would make everything...right. But it hasn’t. Everything seems to be on fire now and he can’t stop it, doesn’t want to stop it, hopes and prays that James and Peter don’t wake up because if they do then they’ll really be in trouble.
There is a whimper and Remus is nearly sure that the dog has finally returned except that he’s sure he would have felt it if something that size had joined them on the bed. There is another whimper and this time he realizes that it is coming from him, the sound rising up from his soul and out of his mouth and into Sirius’s where it is, amazing and miraculously enough, echoed.
Remus breaks away suddenly, gasping for breath and Sirius makes a whining noise.
“You!” he manages. “The dog“you“ ”
Sirius nods and Remus falls on top of him again, the blankets twisted uncomfortably around their legs as he is the one forcing Sirius against the mattress. Not that he notices. He is kissing him frantically and Sirius is kissing him back and as they roll around on the bed Remus is so aware of the Sirius’s nakedness and his own pajamas and the heat and friction between them that he is amazed they haven’t been burnt off already. And he realizes, desperately, that the reason touch is not enough is because he isn’t really touching Sirius at all. There is far too much material between them. He wonders, as he clasps his hands around Sirius’s back, why in the world he doesn’t sleep in the nude like James does.
He doesn’t have to try hard at all to get the image from his mind. He is after all, kissing a very naked Sirius who is kissing him back!
From outside the curtains of their five by eight world, there is the sound of blankets being thrown aside, hangings being shoved open and“
Damn Remus thinks, so out of character for himself that he blushes. He wants to go on kissing Sirius. Needs to. He can feel Sirius beginning to draw him away and he lets him go with heavy reluctance.
“Sorry,” Sirius says, his voice a low wail before he kisses Remus once more, quickly, and then he is gone and the dog is back, staring up at him with sorrowful brown eyes.
Feeling shameless for some reason, Remus rubs Sirius between his eyes and then behind the ears. He is rewarded by having his bed vibrate once again as Sirius closes his eyes in obvious pleasure, his tail thumping happily as his now huge head falling into Remus’s lap.
He is shaking as he leans over and hugs Sirius fiercely, so full of gratitude for what he and his friends have done he doesn’t know where to begin thanking them. He wonders what James and Peter’s Animagi forms are and, feeling deliciously evil, realizes that werewolves and dogs are both canines.
Remus wants to laugh.
So he does.
A/N: If you are enjoying the joint fic, please leave a review which is the food upon which our starving authors feed. Honestly, there are eighty of you faithfully reading this, but the story only has twelve combined reviews. This confuses and saddens us. If you're enjoying it enough, eight chapters in, please leave a review, even if it's nothing more than 'Great chapter' or 'I really liked this.'
Slian's Note: Much love to the brilliant and wonderful Vindictus Viridian for the extensive beta on my baby. *love and huggles*
Is Not Only Doing But Knowing That It Is by Legion of LSPM
Sirius stares around the Common Room, silent and observing until the entire room empties. When James asks if he is coming up to bed, he waves him away with a request that the door be left open. He has plans for tonight. When everyone is finally gone, hours after midnight, he stands up from his chair, the dim light from the flames of the dying fire casting moving shadows on his body as he strips.
They have been practicing becoming Animagi for months now. The theory and the practical magic. So far, they’ve only succeeded in gaining animal characteristics, nothing more. Not so much as a tail among the lot of them. The three of them were together the first time they attempted even that, and since that disaster, have only done it one at a time, knowing they need the other two there or the animal would take them over. There is no reason for Sirius to mark another carpet as his own, especially as a human. There had been far too many curious looks from the house elves when they’d asked for someone to come and clean it. It was possible Sirius had never felt so mortified in his life. Even now, thinking of it, he wants to curl up and hide, his tail between his legs in shame. Fitting, then, that he is going to become a dog.
The Journal of an Animagus: Highlights and Low Points of Self-Transfiguration is pompous and convoluted enough to be a help, but was neglectful in mentioning the issue of clothes, and Sirius has no wish to take the risk. He is very aware of the fact that McGonagall was fully dressed when she did it, but he’d rather not risk the extra possibility of something going wrong. So he folds his clothes neatly, placing them over the back of his chair and shivers. It’s cold enough to freeze his bits off. He rubs his hands together to warm them and then lies down on the floor. He has no idea of how the change will come and he has no wish to find himself up in the air and falling with an extra two legs. He has thought about this carefully, considered every angle. Instinctively, he sits cross-legged, but imagines it would be a painful position for a dog. Lying down seems safest, so this is what he does.
The floor is more uncomfortable than his body remembers it being with clothes on. He figures it would be safe to rest his head on his hands and does so, positioning his arms at his sides and putting his cheek on his hand as he empties his mind.
He retreats into it, hiding everything that is Sirius Black inside a tiny room and locks it, leaving his self a small window to look out of. He then draws on everything he knows of dogs and their behavior. This is the easy part; he has done this before with James and Peter. It is easy to pull out the dog in him. The traits he shares with them that his friends know about and the ones that are secret. He has never been playful in front of any of them. But they know of his loyalty, his mischievousness, what they believe to be his desire to shag anything that walks. The last one is a lie, there’s only one person he wants to shag and he knows that one person has no interest in said activity.
He pushes this very Sirius-like thought from his dog-like mind.
It is done then, he is now not himself. The part of him that is Sirius is sitting between what is now only a metaphorical pair of pointed ears. He is dog. Now he must become it.
Sirius, watching from between his own ears, chants out the instructions and his body obeys. He lists the body parts to himself and slowly they become less theory and more reality, ears rising up from out of a skull that has flattened and gotten longer to accommodate his muzzle. His legs shorten and change beneath his body, his arms turning into forelegs. A tail shoots out from his rear and Sirius is so struck by how incredibly odd this feels that he barks a laugh. He feels his legs grow longer and thinner as his torso widens. He feels humongous and...freezing. The fur appears almost instantly at his thought and he is now amazingly warm.
Sirius Black is no longer the boy he was.
He stares around the Common Room, seeing it with new eyes in varying shades of grey. It is disconcerting. Everything is grey. He wonders if he can see through his own eyes instead of the dog’s and, concentrating, does. The room rushes back into color. He grins wolfishly, his tongue
lolling out. Cool!
Slowly, he rises to his feet, dropping back instantly when the urge to chew up the sofa overwhelms him. Down he tells himself.Down. Good dog that he is, he obeys his own command. With a steady leash on his body, Sirius get up again, slowly padding towards the steps leading up to the dormitory. He passes the spot Lily Evans had been sitting only a few hours ago and sneezes at the smell. He can’t wait to tell James that he’s allergic to the object of James’s crush.
It takes some time figuring out how to get up the stairs; it is far harder to coordinate four legs than two. Made harder still by the fact that he is dragging his robes up the stairs, bunched awkwardly in his mouth. But he makes it and is pleased to see that James has left the door open. He barely made it up the stairs, he does not know if he could have managed the round knob. He steps off the carpeted floor of the hallway and onto the wooden floor of their room. He is trapped with too many smells once he nudges the door closed with his snout and the dog takes over, dropping the bundle of clothing in surprise before Sirius can think anything.
Smells. Everywhere. There are smells bloody everywhere and the dog he has become is ecstatic to taste each one. There are clothes and shoes“shoes!“and books and parchment and quills and ink and wood and people and food and Sirius rolls around on the floor, feeling euphoric. Smells. Everywhere!
A gust of wind comes in from the open window and Sirius-the-dog shivers, his fur coming to stand on end before“
A new smell enters his nostrils. Or rather, he has picked out a smell, from the hundreds that permeate the room, that saturate it. The smell is seeping up his nasal passages and straight to his brain with the following message: friend. Amazing that a smell has identified a person for him, rather than a name or a picture. He follows the scent carefully, breathing it in deeply. It is now more than friend. The smell belongs to someone...safe. Curious, Sirius-the-dog comes up to a bed and finds himself blocked by hangings. He knows there has to be a break in them because he can smell whoever or whatever is behind them. He has to get to what’s behind the hangings. He can feel the desperation in his bones. Sirius-the-dog must do this.
But how?
He cocks his head, inspecting the bed curiously. If he leaps onto it, he will tangle himself in the hangings and upset whatever is on the bed. He must not upset the friend on the bed. It is very important that he not do this. He does not know why or how he even knows this, but much in the same way he knows that if a cat came into the room he would chase it, he just does.
He starts around the bed and sees a block in front of it. He nudges it with a paw and then his head. It seems solid enough and it is lower than the bed but higher than the floor. He can step onto the bed from it. He scrambles onto the chest, his claws scratching the smooth wood. Sirius-the-dog is panting when he is finally sure of his balance and he noses aside the hangings, stepping with a gentleness Sirius did not know this body could possess and onto the bed.
The smells overwhelms him again. The body on the bed is not the same as his is, but his brain classifies it as dog. This is how the body smells. He wrinkles his nose. Not dog. Wolf. He considers this and the body. Wolves are dangerous. Wolves kill. Wolves are very bad and a dog should run away from a wolf as fast as he can or prepare to fight. But it doesn’t look like a wolf. It doesn’t look like a dog either. It looks like“
Master.
The brain of Sirius-the-dog knows this instinctively and without question. Body is Master and Master must have fought the wolves and that is why he smells like them. Sirius-the-dog is content with this explanation. Things are not usually complicated when you are a dog. Confusing sometimes, but always simple.
More cold air comes in, rustling the hangings, and Master shivers in his not waking. Worry fills Sirius-the-dog instantly. Master only shivers when cold. Master must be kept warm. Sirius-the-dog knows what he must do and he does it immediately, stepping onto the bed and lying down on top of Master. He will keep Master warm. He is big and his fur is thick and healthy and he will keep Master warm.
He settles himself carefully on Master, knowing at the same time that though his weight will keep Master warm, Master is small and his weight might hurt him. He must not hurt Master. Ever.
He eases into his position, resting his head over Master’s shoulder and notes happily that Master smells like himself and not the stuff that made him sneeze before. His forelegs are hanging off the bed, his back legs stretched out behind him on the side of Master. And waits for morning to come.
Master is his to protect.
He is sad when Master wakes up, when the body beneath his, that had been relaxed until now, stiffens. Sirius-the-dog does not move. If he moves, Master will think he is not safe. He must be a statue. After a few moments, he wonders why Master is not touching him. Could he have displeased Master already? He considers this, knows he could not have, and then realizes that he is lying on top of Master’s hands. Stupid Sirius-the-dog tells himself and shifts, allowing Master to free his hands, which Master does, pulling them out and resting them on Sirius-the-dog’s back.
He would like to lick Master’s face in thanks, but doesn’t. Darkness is not the time for playing, it is the time for protecting. He will thank Master tomorrow. He will get Master’s slippers and keep Master’s feet warm and lick his face and his toes and“
Master’s hands are moving all over his body now and it is all
Sirius-the-dog can do not to bark his thanks. It takes a lot of control, but he does it, even as Master runs his hands over his legs and head and he sighs with happiness and stretches and then“
He can’t help it. Master is rubbing the top of his head and Sirius-the-dog feels pleasure he has never known before. He rumbles from deep within himself so that Master should know he is grateful and Master stops. He does not whine or beg. If Master doesn’t wish to pet him, Master doesn’t have to.
And then“then Master moves his hand and rubs him between his eyes Sirius-the-dog wants to howl at the moon,
he is so happy. He rumbles again, long and deep, his entire consciousness easing into that small area that Master is petting, his tail wagging happily against the mattress. Master rubs him between his eyes for a little bit longer and then rests his hands on Sirius-the-dog’s back, tightening in the fur. Sirius-the-dog is sure that Master is pleased with him or he would have been kicked from the bed. Exiled.
The thought is so horrible to Sirius-the-dog that he promptly releases it from his mind.
He means to stand watch the entire night, but he is so warm and he feels so important to Master and he is so content and happy that he falls asleep before he knows it. When he awakes the next morning, he is not what he was.
*****
A groan wakes Sirius and he snorts, blinking himself into a state of being half-awake and opens his eyes to see someone’s armpit. He looks up and sees Remus looking down at him with the most interesting expression on his face.
“Morning Remus,” he says with a relaxed smile, still half-asleep as he stretches, freeing his arms from under his chin and letting one hang off the bed as he throws the other over Remus’s waist. He tightens his grip on Remus and closes his eyes again, his cheek on Remus’s chest, content and
comfortable.
He is a little confused, though. He has no idea of what he was doing with his nose in Remus’s armpit. His thumb absently strokes Remus’s side through the sheets and Sirius’s toes twitch in the cold. Sirius follows the path of the twitch to find that his legs can’t be anywhere but over Remus’s.
Bugger.
He opens his eyes slowly, hoping that he is not where he thinks he is, where he hopes he is. “Am I on top of you, Remus?” he asks, staring off to the side at the hangings, unable to meet Remus’s gaze. He has become aware of another problem; a problem he usually has in the morning that he never viewed as problem until now. Well, it’s always been a problem, but a problem in private is considerably different than having said problem pressed up against the person who was causing it.
Damn!
He felt, rather than saw, Remus nod.
“Are we in your bed?” he has to ask, still unable to look at Remus.
Remus nods again.
“Oh,” Sirius says faintly.
He considers this information and realizes that he has no idea of what he’s doing in Remus’s bed or how he got there. He can not believe that he is lying on top of Remus, in Remus’s bed and that Remus has not screamed yet. He cannot believe he is where he has wanted to be for what feels like an eternity, with the person he wants, naked and with no memory of how he got there.
He opens his mouth to jokingly ask if Remus enjoyed it as well and then freezes in time to reexamine the thought he has just had.
Damn and bugger he thinks.
“Am I“am I starkers?” he whispers.
Remus nods, looking as though he would like someone to kill him now and be done with it.
“Oh.”
Sirius has no idea of what to say. He was in no way prepared for this to actually happen. He is trying to decide what to do about the fact that he is lying on top of Remus“who is under sheets, but still“quite naked and with something quite painful between his legs. What in the hell is he going to do?
He knows, that somehow, he has to get himself under control, think about...Snape or someone equally horrible to relax a certain part of him that is quite rigid at the moment.
He doesn’t want to though, and that is yet another problem. He is lying on top of Remus“Remus “and he is naked and he feels as though his bits are going to fall off from the cold if not from something else entirely first but he is so comfortable he can not bring himself to move. Or talk. Or...anything besides continuing to lie on top of Remus while he is naked. He imagines, though, that if he tries, he might be able to bring himself to kiss the confused look from Remus’s face. If of course it wasn’t for the fact that Remus looked pained, as though he wishes he were anywhere but lying beneath a naked boy who is also his friend. Remus is, after all, holding his arms as far away from Sirius as it looks to be possible.
Sirius would like very much for Remus to put his arms down. Maybe even hold him. Sirius imagines that that would be very nice, but it doesn’t look as though he’ll ever know. It strikes him as incredibly unfair that girls can lie all over each other, and play with one another’s hair and lounge around with their heads in their best-friend’s lap and no one says anything about it. But if a boy were to do any one of those things, then people would think“
It just isn’t fair, is all, even if it is true, Sirius notes with annoyance.
He does not know what to do as he watches Remus pick black hairs off his palms and flick them off the bed.
Come on he tells himself. Don’t be a prat“. This was the wrong word to tell himself. Come on, he tries again. This has got to stop. It has to. Somehow. Think about Snape or Divination or girls or“ah. ‘Atta“
“There was a dog in my bed last night,” Remus says suddenly, interrupting Sirius’s mental pep-talk, his voice shaking a bit.
“A what?” Sirius asks, confused.
“A dog,” Remus repeats and then says so quickly that Sirius only gets the gist of it: “I woke up in the middle of the night and there was a huge, you know, dog lying on top of me and I have no idea of where it came from but there you go and it was crushing me and I was terrified because after all, there was a tremendous dog on top of me“at least I think it was a dog“but it was sleeping and didn’t seem to want to maul me to death so I fell asleep again and then when I woke up it was gone and you...were...here,” he trails off.
Sirius gets his brain around the rush of words Remus has just let out of his mouth and realizes in that moment with a fierce sense of relief a lot of memories that had been locked away. He spent nearly the entire night thinking of Remus as ‘Master.’ This strikes him as so utterly ridiculous and true that he can’t help himself and quite suddenly, Sirius is laughing. It is pouring out of him insanely and he feels as though he is going insane, laughing as he clutches his friend even tighter, shaking with completely inappropriate hilarity and terror.
He is unable to believe what his mind tells him he did last night. He is mortified and terrified by it and what it might mean. Because the fact is he went to Remus. Not Peter, not even James. Remus. The person he wants to protect more than anyone else in the world. The person he watches out for because there is no one who needs more watching than their perfect prefect and resident werewolf. This is far more serious than he thought it was and Sirius knows he must stop laughing. He just can’t.
“Shut up!” James yells from his own bed angrily.
Sirius practically buries his face into Remus’s chest, breathing in the scent of him deeply as he hides the sound of his laughter, knowing that this is probably as close as he’s going to get to Remus in a very long time. He’s ruined it all. Remus who is as straight as a board is never going to speak to him again after this. Sirius is also painfully aware that he is now definitely hysterical. He needs someone to slap him. Hard.
“Sirius?” Remus asks in a whisper. “Sirius?”
There is no way that Sirius can answer him. He is too far gone. Somehow, he must find a way to explain what has happened without explaining why and get back to his bed without anyone but Remus knowing that he was naked in his bed.
He does not want to do this, really. What he wants to do is kiss Remus. Everywhere. He wants to rip Remus’s bloody pajamas off and kiss him everywhere. Kiss every single scar that is a memory of a painful transformation. Each one of those scars breaks Sirius’s heart; each is a memory of a horror Remus has gone through that he hadn’t been there for. Now that he is an Animagus of course, he can be there
for him. He can“
Ah!
Sirius realizes in this moment the perfect solution. All he has to do is explain what he’d done. He can say he’d been confused as a dog, hadn’t been able to find his bed or something. This would explain his lack of clothes as well and everything would be fine.
Sirius stops laughing and looks up and Remus, knowing he has hit on the answer. Without thinking, he rolls completely on top of Remus, bending his arms on either side of Remus and resting his chin on top of his steepled fingers.
“I have something to tell you,” he says, while trying not to think about what he’s done now that he’s done it. Is doing it. He had not considered what rolling on top of Remus would mean. He is completely covering Remus with his body and Remus is giving off so much delicious warmth that Sirius, aside for wanting to climb under the covers with Remus to get closer to him, is no longer cold.
“Yes?” Remus asks, his voice cracking.
“Do you promise not to tell James and Peter that I’ve told you?” Sirius asks.
Remus looks as though it is killing him when he nods.
“Good,” Sirius says, and then, suddenly, finds himself unable to continue. He is lying on top of Remus and he is completely starkers and there is only a thin blanket between them and Sirius has to fight down every natural instinct within him not to throw the bloody thing off the bed and ravage Remus’s mouth. He is close to shaking with restraint.
“We decided,” Sirius finally manages to get out, “that you might be better off every month if you had...company.”
“I don’t understand,” Remus says.
It is clear that he doesn’t. His eyes are filled with confusion.
“We read up on werewolves when we first found out, remember?” Sirius asks.
“Yes, but“”
“And one of the books said that if a werewolf is kept locked away from people,” Sirius goes on, speaking over Remus, knowing that if he stops talking, if he stops thinking, he will kiss Remus and then all hell will likely break loose and he can’t have that and so he says, “it will hurt itself instead.”
Remus blushes royally and Sirius realizes that he has embarrassed Remus horribly. Somehow, Remus must have thought they hadn’t noticed, hadn’t known. He should have realized. Sirius damn well knows that Remus is embarrassed by the monster he turns into each month. Of course, Sirius has never thought of Remus’s transformation as becoming a monster; he’s been calling it Remus’s ‘furry little problem’ with James ever since they found out about it.
“So we thought,” Sirius decides to continue, figuring that ignoring what he’s just said is best, “me and James, that if we were there, you might be...less wolfish and more human“”
“But I’d hurt you!” Remus says, sounding horrified.
“I“we knew that,” Sirius says. “So I had a brilliant idea ”
Remus looks terrified.
“What?” he asks, his voice thin, on the verge of panic. “What did you do?”
The question gives Sirius just a moment’s pause. But it is just a moment and then“
“We became Animagi ” Sirius declares in an excited whisper.
Remus is utterly still and silent for a moment and then he all but yells, “You did what!?!” as he tries to sit up.
Without thinking, knowing only that he is furious at this lack of gratitude for what they’ve gone through for him, Sirius grabs Remus’s hands and shoves him back down onto the bed, locking Remus’s arms above his head. How dare he!
He is breathing heavily from shock at what he’s just done and anger at what Remus has just said. Years, bloody years they’d spent on this and he was angry? Sirius can feel his blood pumping through him, fast and angry, feeling an animal-like ferociousness fill him at Remus’s refusal to accept the gift they had given him.
He is angry, hurt and so painfully in need that he can do nothing but stare down at Remus as he leans over him.
Remus looks fairly terrified of what Sirius has just done, is continuing to do. He looks so vulnerable that Sirius does not know what to do when a rush of protectiveness floods the anger and overwhelms him. He feels Remus shiver beneath him and he remembers climbing on top of Remus during the night to keep him warm. Remus hadn’t been scared then.
The injustice of this infuriates him further and he knows that he is glaring at Remus through his stupid bangs which are stupidly hanging down in front of his stupid eyes. He dares not let go of Remus because if he does, Remus might shove him off, or slap him or something. He can not relinquish his position. He can not move. He is frozen as he is, his teeth practically bared at Remus in his anger, only his chest moving as he breathes. He is still too much dog to trust himself to do anything but stand protectively over what he feels is his.
His brain is utterly feral and Remus’s vulnerable and nervous expression is only making it worse. His legs are pressing against Remus’s through the blanket, forcing him down and he watches, utterly fascinated, as Remus’s tongue comes out of his mouth to lick his lips.
There is absolutely no hope for it now.
“Fuck!” Sirius hisses and releases Remus to take what the dog in him is choosing to understand as an open invitation.
He takes Remus’s face in his hands gently, amazed at how softly he is holding this face he loves so much while he is kissing Remus’s mouth with all the fierceness that is within him, the anger, the possessiveness. He is sure that he must be hurting Remus, bruising his mouth and pressing against him too hard, but that has nothing on the hurt he feels when Remus doesn’t kiss him back.
He had really thought“
Sirius pulls away from Remus abruptly, heartbroken, every happy memory rushing from his mind in the now. The now in which Remus is clearly not kissing him back.
He would like to cry.
“I’m“fuck it“I’m sorry“Remus“I“” He flounders, and then gives up, beginning to swing his leg over Remus so he can go crawl into his bed and die.
“Don’t move,” Remus says suddenly and Sirius, his mind still largely dog, even if his body is not, freezes. “Just“don’t“Gods“please don’t“”
Sirius stares at Remus as the smaller boy struggles to sit up. Sirius is now on Remus’s lap. On his lap It is a close call which part of him is happier: the dog or the boy.
“You“” Remus says, pointing a shaking finger at Sirius. “You!”
“Yes?” Sirius asks, having no idea of what Remus is saying and figuring it safer to agree.
“Oh hell,” Remus says.
And just when Sirius believes all to be lost, Remus is kissing him back. A bit belatedly, but kissing him nonetheless.
He feels Remus’s hands roaming over his body, so thankful that he transformed without any clothes on that if touch wasn’t consuming him, thanks would. Remus’s hands are everywhere on his body. Bloody everywhere and Sirius is going to lose his mind from the frantic feelings swamping him. Remus’s hands are soft and his fingers are long and they are touching his hair, his arms, his back. They dip low to his stomach and Sirius knows that he would not have held himself responsible for whatever might have happened next if Remus hadn’t brought his hands back up to touch his face. Sirius’s body is burning and he wishes that Remus sleeps in the nude like James so that they could be that much closer to each other. He still wants to kiss every one of Remus’s scars.
He whimpers, a sound born from the depths of a thousand emotions and when Remus echoes it, he whimpers again.
Please, he prays, please don’t let them wake up.
It doesn’t matter because Remus pulling away and Sirius wants to cry because he’s not touching him anymore. He whimpers at the loss, at the separation.
“You ” Remus gasps. “The dog“you“ ”
Sirius nods and finds that Remus has leapt atop him, is
kissing him again. Sirius kisses him back desperately, unable to breathe when they’re kissing and unable to breathe when they’re not. He is, again, painfully aware of the fact that he is naked and Remus is not. He wants Remus to be out of his pajamas so badly he is in danger of losing his mind from want. When Remus puts his hands around his neck, Sirius knows a level of peace utterly foreign to him until this moment.
The sound of curtains being pushed aside breaks through their private world and Sirius feels an overwhelming urge to kill James or Peter, whichever one of them it is that has just woken up and is going to make them stop. They have to stop. They have to. Sirius knows that they do. Knows that he has to do something so that when James and Peter push open Remus’s hangings to ask if he knows where Sirius is, they won’t catch them.
There is only one thing he can do.
“Sorry,” Sirius says, his heart wrenching from his body as he wrenches himself away from Remus.
Unable to stop himself, he kisses Remus once more and
hardly thinking, melts back into his dog shape.
He has never felt sorrier for doing anything else in his life, and he looks up at Remus, hoping he understands that there was no choice.
And then Remus goes and rubs Sirius between the eyes and before he knows what has happened, the dog takes him over once again. He feels both human and canine euphoria and thinks he ought to be floating, feeling like this. He closes his eyes, the rumbling rising from deep within him once again and without conscious thought, his head falls into Master’s lap.
He is dimly aware that his Master is trembling and he pushes himself closer to his Master, reassuring him. Master bends low over him, wrapping his arms around Sirius-the-dog who allows himself to be held in the stifling embrace. He can handle this because it is Master who is hugging him. Master who is laughing, clearly pleased.
His Master.
Can't Stop the Moonlight by Legion of LSPM
Author's Notes:
This was originally posted by Slian Martreb, as one of her own stories, but it fit so nicely with the joint fic, we just had to use it.
Can’t Stop the Moonlight
Were you but the silver bullet that pierced my flesh
I would die a happy death
were you the night air in my lungs
I would gladly draw my last breath
Were you the healing to my scars
I would suffer every one
were you the light that brought me back
The dark would have never won.
Were you the sun that gives me life
I would let the monster out and free
were you the thought that keeps me sane
I could remember I was me.
Remus stares down at the twelve lines that have inappropriately interrupted his History of Magic notes. He doesn’t have the faintest idea of where they’ve come from. He is not a poet and he is most certainly not in love, as the werewolf who wrote this obviously is. And yet“and yet he’s the only werewolf in school and these are his notes.
He is, to say the least, very confused.
He’d like to ask James and Sirius which one of them it was that took his notes and managed to re-write them so perfectly with this little poem stuck in. He doesn’t, of course, because that would be an infinitely stupid thing to do; it isn’t like he even fancies anyone as to make this a joke. He is just Remus.
He is, in fact, very happy being just himself, by himself. It’s okay to be with James and Sirius and Peter, but they are extensions of himself, not additions. The person this poem was written about was clearly an addition. Remus would be very happy if he went the rest of his life without any additions; it’s more than enough taking care of himself, he doesn’t need the added worry for another person, thank you very much.
He re-reads the poem once more. It is most assuredly not the best poem he’s ever read and it reads quite unfinished at that. He would never write something like this. He’s much better with words than this. See, here, the flow is off. And over here, the meter. It is ridiculous to think that he’s written poetry at all. But poetry that is this bad? It is nearly laughable.
And who has he written it about?
He manages to keep down the snarl. He did not write this. He didn’t. It is ridiculous to think that he has written this because there isn’t a blessed soul in all of Hogwarts or the world that he would write this about; could write this about. There is no one he knows that keeps him sane during the transformation, no one that makes the change easier. Not a blessed one.
No one except for“
He pinches his wrist, hard, and nearly yelps. It is not true. It is not true. It. Is. Not. True.
And yet, his eyes fall upon that face, that hair, those eyes. That smile that makes others go weak in the knees. It’s a good thing he’s sitting on his bed because he’s sure that his knees would have given out beneath him if he would have been standing. That smile. He nearly melts off his mattress and into a puddle on the floor.
A voice rises in some anonymous complaint from the floor beneath them and Remus finds himself returned to normalcy.
It isn’t true.
And yet, when he looks back down at his notes to continue studying, the words are there, haunting him. It isn’t true. They aren’t true.
But they’re there. And Remus Lupin has learned in life that while there are very few things in life that one can trust“his body has betrayed him, people have betrayed him“but words, things that are in front of him, anything he can touch or smell or see“ those things tend to be truer than not. It is the intangible things that turn on him. Trust, friendship, a taken-for-granted that his body would stay in his control. But words? Words have never lied to him. They have never pretended to be anything than what they are. And these words are“
No.
“What are you studying?”
He holds back a groan, thankful more than anything that this person is finally talking to him again after the weirdness of last year. “History of Magic.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re being tested tomorrow,” he says patiently.
A snort. “Don’t be stupid. Binns won’t notice if you copy off your notes. And who cares about History of Magic anyway?”
“I do.”
“Liar.”
That cheeky smile.
Remus nearly has to pinch himself again. “I do too like History of Magic.”
“Yes. But that’s because you’re mad.”
“I am not“” he begins indignantly.
“You are too. But don’t worry. We like you that way.
You’re our Mad Moony.”
A hand reaches out, tousles his hair. He hates getting his hair tousled. Had thought that by the time he reached the ripe old age of fifteen that the whole thing would stop. But it seems as though someone has never gotten the message. Then again, Remus doesn’t seem to mind so much when he does it.
He scowls at himself and the hand jumps back.
“Well, if it bothers you so much“”
“Don’t be an arse,” Remus says without thinking. The last thing he wants is to push this person away, push this person from him the way he seemed to have done those few months ago; those terrible months of frowns and sudden anger and silence. The silence was the worst. “I mean“I really need to study,” he explains, begging. If they aren’t so close to each other, he can handle it. If they aren’t so close that he can’t tell where his breath begins and the other’s begins, he could handle it. If they weren’t so close that he could count the individual pores on“
“I have to study,” he says again. “Not everyone is as brilliant as you are. Not everyone can ignore every word said in class, study for ten minutes and then pull a perfect score.”
He got another cheeky smile for that and nearly did slide off his bed.
“Yes. Well. It comes with the genes,” Sirius says flippantly.
“I’m sure it does,” Remus mutters.
“Ah, don’t be jealous,” he says, and Remus knows Sirius is continuing to be obnoxious on purpose, knowing how much it infuriates him. “You just weren’t born under a lucky star is all.”
Remus gapes at Sirius. Surely he didn’t say that on purpose“
“I mean,” Sirius goes on, “it’s not everyone who gets to be born into the House of Black. I’m practically royalty, you know. Heir to the Black name and all that. Thank Gods all my cousins are girls and there’s no one to contest it. You don’t know about the bloody battles of Black House,” he says. “That’s what they should be teaching in History of Magic. The spells that were invented,” he goes on, his voice lowering with the promise of mystery. “The intrigue. The romance. The incest,” he finishes with a dramatic whisper.
Ah. Sirius is making fun of himself then. This is familiar territory.
“Somehow, I think even Binns could manage to make that sound boring,” Remus says dryly.
Sirius flops down on the bed beside him, staring up at the ceiling of the four poster. “I suppose you’re right,” he says, heaving a heavy sigh. “No one really cares about my family, pureblood nutters that the lot of them are. Right?”
Remus nods as he is required to.
“Right,” Sirius says, and then grabs for a piece of parchment off Remus’s lap.
Remus yells, lunging for the page as he silently swears and they are tousling in moments. All of his notes are flying but the most important page is still stuck in Sirius’s fist, getting crumpled. Ruined. They yell, they poke, they kick and they pinch.
“I’m going to have a black eye,” Sirius pants when Remus has finally gotten the paper away.
“Good,” Remus snaps. “You can call it the Black Eye and trademark it.”
Sirius stares at him and then starts laughing, the sound filling Remus’s ears with ringing as he blushes.
“That hardly even counted,” Sirius says. “Try again.”
“Try“what?”
“Bad comeback. Try again. I know you have it in you. You can’t be hanging around with me and James for so long and not be able to come up with something better than that. Try again.”
Remus considers Sirius for a moment and then strings together an explicit suggestion of what Sirius can go do to himself with a goat for company.
When he’s done, Sirius is staring at him, open mouthed.
“Well,” he says, his mouth working like a fish out of water. “Well.”
An Unseeing Eye by Legion of LSPM
Author's Notes:
An end of fifth year moment following the Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L. inspired by number 81 on the Wolfstar ship list: "Because Sirius didn't notice ANY of the girls in the penseive scene.”
“Who wants to see me take off Snivelly’s pants?” James asks, glowering at the three of them, as if daring them to affirm what had happened. As if he is challenging them to admit that Lily Evans has just defended Snivellus and loudly declared her utter loathing of him. Sirius gives a shallow nod, noting with the BANG that Snape is hanging in the air again.
Poor James; Lily is turning out to be quite bad for his ego.
But there are other girls at Hogwarts and Sirius isn’t particularly worried. James is one of the best looking boys in school at the moment, excepting himself, and since he isn’t paying attention to girls, that’s opened the playing field considerably for James.
What he is paying attention to though, is Remus. He is always paying attention to Remus now, can’t seem to help himself from doing it. Whenever he is bored during class, or, well, anywhere for that matter, he finds his eyes drifting to Gryffindor Tower’s resident werewolf. And when Remus isn’t there for his eyes to drift to, his thoughts float on instead. He can’t get Remus out of his mind, doesn’t want to.
He moves closer to Remus, so conscious of what he is doing, of the body next to him, that it nearly makes his hair stand on edge. “Watcha reading?” he asks.
Remus snaps the book shut. “I’m studying Transfiguration, as well you know,” he says crossly.
Sirius moves away a bit. “What’s wrong?” he asks, the relationship new enough to cause him doubt.
“Nothing,” Remus says shortly, opening the book again and glaring at it.
Sirius looks at him, sees his eyes aren’t moving, that he is trying to hold himself as still as possible, and sticks his own face between Remus’s and the book. “What’s wrong?” he asks again.
Remus shoves him away, an angry hand on his shoulder.
“Moony!” Sirius exclaims, hurt beyond reason by the reaction.
Remus rolls his eyes. “Fine. If you must know“”
“Yes?”
He seems to lose his nerve a bit at Sirius’s eagerness. “If you must know,” he says again, sounding irritated, as he gently closes the book once again, “I wish you would stop torturing Snivelly“I mean, Snape the way you do.”
Sirius can’t help it, he laughs. And Remus’s eyes go dark as he opens the book once more.
“I’m sorry,” Sirius says quickly, though he is unable to completely wipe the grin off his face.
“If you were sorry, you wouldn’t do it.”
“But“”
“He’s a half-blood with a Muggle father; he has no friends and he has his head stuck so far down in the Dark Arts“”
“Ah! Do you think that’s why his nose is so greasy?”
Remus glares at him. “It’s unkind.”
“He can hold his own,” Sirius reassures him. “And he does too have friends.”
“Who?” Remus asks. “That Malfoy? Or your cousins, Bellatrix and Narcissa? Your brother? They aren’t friends. Having a common interest in the Dark Arts doesn’t constitute a friendship. You saw that they didn’t help him when you and James went after him.”
What Sirius sees is that this is going to be fighting a losing battle.
“Fine. So he doesn’t have any friends. Do you expect me to feel bad for him?”
“Not bad, really. I just wish you would leave him alone. How would you like it if you didn’t have us and those Slytherins were cursing you your every waking moment?”
Sirius feels something uncomfortable rise in his stomach. “Not have you? And James and Peter?”
Remus nods.
Sirius pushes the feeling away, refusing to admit it for it what it is: a shadow of guilt. “Wouldn’t happen.”
Remus scowls. “Well, you wouldn’t like it. I can tell you that much.”
“I’d fight back,” Sirius argues.
“So does he.”
Sirius snorts. “You call that fighting back?”
“You call it fair?” Remus challenges him. “Two against one? Especially when he’s smaller than the both of you?”
The uncomfortable feeling is back, but Sirius refuses to feel bad and he shoves it away with an angry push.
“We’re helping him build character,” he says, leaning against the tree.
“Yes. I’m sure he really appreciates it,” Remus says, following this with a snort of his own.
Sirius rolls his eyes.
“What is wrong with the two of you?” James exclaims, collapsing beside them, Peter in fast pursuit. “You look like somebody died.”
“Moony here was just taking me over the finer points of his argument,” Sirius says, scowling as he crosses his arms over his chest.
“What argument?” James asks, and Sirius notices that he’s short of breath.
He looks up, and spots Snape some feet away on the ground, scrambling to get his papers and books together, greasy hair falling into his eyes. He feels an immense dislike fill him; someone that socially unaware deserved to be made fun of.
“On whether or not we should leave Snivelly alone,” he says unkindly, spitefully, almost as much to annoy Remus for being so self-righteous as out of habit.
“What?” James yells. “Leave him alone? What else would we do?”
Remus gives him a calculating look. “Don’t you think that makes you a bit...well...shallow?”
“Shallow?” Sirius echoes with a bark of laughter. “It makes us fifteen.”
“No, I don’t think it makes me shallow,” James answers. “I think it makes him an idiot for leaving himself such an easy target.”
“Well, I think you’re going to get yourselves into trouble,” Remus says, looking at his book once again.
“Trouble? The Marauders don’t get into trouble!” James crows.
“Oh. Right. You get into detention,” Remus says. “What is now? Once a month?”
“A week“” Peter puts in.
“Every other day at least!” Sirius declares.
There is a reluctant smile on Remus’s face now. “Of course. How could I have forgotten. You’re sitting one tonight, aren’t you?”
James and Sirius both pull a face. “Yes. Separately.”
“What are they making you do this time?”
“Sluggy is making me clean the dungeon classroom,” James answers.
“And I’ve got to do the hospital wing. Ech.”
Remus smiles now. “Well, it serves you right.”
“Nah. It’ll be worth it,” James says dreamily. “For the look on his face....”
They all laugh; the memory of Professor Slughorn’s expression when the cauldron exploded, spewing its rainbow colored contents all over the walls, priceless. The look on his face when he had find the little rocket that had done it though....
Sirius relaxes as they all fell into meaningless chatter once again. His eyes rove over the grounds, to the paths, the Forbidden Forest and the Lake. The squid is out, its tentacles creeping lazily over the bank of the the lake.
But always, always his eyes come back to Remus.
A/N: I'm so sorry to be doing this to all of you who are enjoying. However, due to the wait-time to get chapters in Q, and through it, posting as many chapters as are already written, and running it concurrent with the LJ posting, has become slightly impossible. The story will no longer be posting here on MNFF. For those who would like to continue following, the main user page of the joint fic on LJ can be found here:
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