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.