by Kelsey
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling and assorted others have the rights to Harry Potter, alas.
Warnings: None really, except perhaps for bittersweetness.
Notes: First Sirius/Remus fic, hear hear! I've only loved the pairing for ages. At any rate, I hope I captured the feel of what it is to be a human in the shape of a dog. The challenge proved interesting! Also, thanks to Garth Nix for coming up with the term that become the piece's title.
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Nose to the ground, picking up first the scents of cats and birds and the occasional toad. Overlaid was the smell that meant wizard, people-scented with a sort of crackle. His tail wagged faintly, the impression of a warm hearth flickering across his mind, a warm hearth and a full belly and someone to scratch his left ear. That meant something. The dog in him didn't know names, not really. Home. That was it. He was home.
Kitchens. That way. He could go there, find something to eat, go to sleep by the stove. The notion was so compelling that he had already taken a few steps forward before not-Padfoot stopped him in the hall, sent him back into the shadows. Padfoot was tired of hiding and seeking and wanted to play something else, something exciting, like fetch-the-stick. That was a good game. But at least this game of hide-and-seek was a little new: find a way into the Gryffindor common room, without getting caught.
The game was progressing slowly, though.
Sights and smells, smells and sights. Not-Padfoot (had he a name, long ago?) concerned himself with the sights, the looking and the straining for something out of reach, the cold thrill of the hunt. But Padfoot scented something that meant home more than anything else and trotted after it, single-minded in his purpose. Home. Home. Coming home. Instinct overrode the seething hatred bubbling in Not-Padfoot as well as the strange fear. Fear of home? Home meant only good things, and Padfoot's tail set to wagging as he nosed open the door to a room--unlocked and slightly ajar, of course, because home was something wild and free and open, always open, never entrapping.
Padfoot almost leapt up on the bed before he remembered that only bad dogs did such things; instead he sat on the floor, inhaling deeply as his tail made soft thumping noises against the floor. Chocolate and pine trees and magic overlaid with the brittle, acidic scent of the moon. Then the man in the bed, the man that meant home, turned over and the act jolted Not-Padfoot into the forefront, and gaunt arms and legs grew and a man sat on the floor, a man now forced to define himself with a name rather than with what he was not. A name: Sirius Black.
Remus did not wake at the sudden transformation taking place only a foot to his left, but his brow creased; perhaps his subconscious sensed a swirling in the currents of magic. Still befuddled by his abrupt switch from dog to man, Sirius at first was merely confused that he had no more tail to wag, and then a sliver of moonlight illuminated the gray of Remus' hair and he felt pain, agony, something seething and burning and pouring like molten lava into the hollows inside of him. Years of screaming without being heard stilled his voice and his fingernails squeezed into his palms until they drew blood. It hurt.
Memories. He writhed in pain through the reliving of a first kiss, a first time, a first meeting, a first fight, so many firsts and then so many constants, the warm melting of chocolate and the bright moonlit adventures and the exact sound of a certain breathless little half-cry and the warm glint of golden eyes and the bed that always, always smelled like home, like Remus, Remus Lupin.
Love.
Just like that, Sirius Black remembered what it was to be in love.
And finally his fingers relaxed, and the torturous realization faded to the gentler ache of nostalgia, and he wondered whether Remus would wake up if he got into bed beside him--wondered what he would say the next morning, if he would kill him quickly before he had a chance to say anything, to explain at least something. Remus looked so old and yet so young as he slept; beautiful of course, but careworn and timeworn and oddly translucent, as if over the years he had been stretched too far and given away more than he should have.
A mirthless chuckle died in Sirius' throat. Giving your heart away to a Black--now that was far more than anyone should give. A little unsteady, he climbed to his feet, readjusting himself to having only two to balance on, and his self-hatred passed... he had had enough of that at Azkaban, a lifetime of loathing and self-recrimination and maddening, despairing hatred. This old-yet-new feeling, this terrible and tender wound--only this mattered right now.
Sirius sat on the edge of the bed, and with shaking hands touched one graying brown lock of hair, as if to affirm its place in his memory. How fragile a thing memory could be--even things eternal could be forgotten, not disappearing but merely misplaced, a dog lost in the dirty streets of London while its owner made a frantic search of the opposite end of town. Remus' hair had always been so soft; how could he have forgotten this? Half-moon tonight, and he already looked pale, washed out by the bedsheets. Sirius had a moment of irrational anger that Remus should have to sleep in a bed alone. He was meant to do as little as possible alone; he needed someone. Remus, Moony, Moony, Moony. Childhood nicknames turned into terms of endearment, and then fading away to dust with one colossal betrayal.
His gaze turned away from the man sleeping beside him, and the hatred tore at him, a dark elixir luring him away from the sweeter taste of what it meant to love. Wormtail, the rat, the traitor, the hunt, the lust for blood. Have to find him, have to find a way, have to kill him and make him suffer a thousand pains so that he would be able to pay for even a tenth of the pain he caused. Sirius' gaze focused on a scrap of paper on the bedstand, drawn to it because it was not in Remus' handwriting but in a rather more sloppy, childish scrawl. Picking it up, he made out at last its title: Passwords to the Common Room. A list, and at the bottom, it read: If found, please return to Neville Longbottom.
The grin that pulled at Sirius' mouth did not contain any mirth.
Longbottom--a Gryffindor name if ever there was one.
The bed groaned faintly as he stood up, and behind him Remus sighed, a slow sad exhalation of breath, and Sirius cast a regretful glance over his shoulder, wishing again for an instant to seek the home that Padfoot wished, to abandon this mad quest for revenge and curl up in that bed and never leave. But the affairs of men differed at times drastically from the affairs of the heart, and his hand closed around the unrelenting hard handle of a knife.
And just before he slid open the door, Sirius promised himself that he would return home someday, and that this promise could be kept because home was forever, and forever was all the time in the world.