Sirius Black had never particularly liked Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Grounds and Keys at Hogwarts School. He'd never not liked him, either, mostly because James and Peter would hang around at his house after lessons were over, begging for a bit of brandy or to have a peek at whatever new and fascinating creature Hagrid was attempting to hide from Hogwarts management. Once, he'd allowed the boys to venture a little ways into the Forbidden Forest (it was James' hope they'd see a unicorn) and then, soon realizing his error, had scooped all three boys up under one arm and trundled out of the forest, berating himself as he went. He was loud, and big, and sometimes crude, but Sirius had never been especially unfond of him, because he'd never had reason to. He tolerated his bizarre obsessions with dangerous magical creatures because of James' fascination with said creatures; he tolerated his mangled speech and horrid biscuits because of Peter's fondness for hearing Hagrid's long stories by firelight. It had never occurred to Sirius, however, that Hagrid would ever become even marginally important to him.

That all changed the night the Marauders found out Remus Lupin's secret.

Remus had never accompanied the rest of the boys on their visits to Hagrid's cottage – a pity, thought Sirius, for he thought privately that Remus was the most fetching thing he'd ever seen, and desired to have him. But when the other three discovered, because of the curiosity of James, that Remus was in fact a werewolf and knew Hagrid far better than he was letting on, Sirius' interest was roused.

Hagrid knew more than one could ever fit into volumes about magical creatures, and Remus would often go to him before and after his transformations, seeking simple potions Hagrid brewed to ease the pain and help him sleep. He would go, too, to hear stories of the werewolves of old; and more recent tales about Hagrid's narrow escapes in the Forbidden Forest with some of its current werewolf population. Sirius was at first jealous of this secret relationship now revealed, and envied Hagrid – yet after awhile he found it a good excuse to spend time with Remus, and instead of accompanying Peter and James he would spend Saturday afternoons in the warmth of Hagrid's cottage, watching the light play over Remus's ginger hair.

The years passed. James was working furiously on a plan he and Sirius had conceived to help Remus, which involved breaking nearly every Ministry mandate, and Sirius helped him accordingly. Becoming Animagi was an adventure, as he saw it, and though it would take time and effort, Remus was worth every last drop of sweat.

Once, after a Quidditch match in their sixth year, when the process of becoming an animagi was nearly complete, Sirius kissed Remus, a careless, joking thing, and the werewolf turned white and fled, stammering something about being 'ill-fated to be loved'.

Sirius had already read every book in the library on werewolves, and a few in the Restricted Section as well, spending hours of free time poring over ancient lore and practical knowledge. Now, in his desperation to make Remus his, he turned to his last resource – the Groundskeeper.

"I dunno, Sirius," Hagrid said doubtfully when the boy had played hooky from class and come to ask him. It was mid-winter and the huge man stretched out his slush-covered boots, sipping morosely at something in a tea cup. "Remus doesn't know yer comin' t' me?"

"Of course not," Sirius explained impatiently. "He's scared, of all things, but he wants to know as much as I and he has some silly notion that he has about his –" the boy paused, wondering what to say, and finally settled on "– condition."

As Hagrid thought about his reply, Sirius studied him – a ruddy face, half-hidden in curling black beard, couldn't have been over twenty-five, though he was roughly the size of an adolescent dragon. His eyes were black like his beard, and though not particularly intelligent, still shone with something vaguely attractive. They made the beholder want to listen.

"Hagrid," he said suddenly, "if you'll allow me to…to do what I've asked, I'd be happy to help you out any way I can."

Suddenly the huge man brightened. "Yer dad breeds hounds, don't 'e?"

Sirius blinked. "Yes. Strictly as a hobby, though."

But Hagrid refused to be deterred. "If yer could git me a boarhound puppy, I'd let yer do what yer askin'."

"You're not serious."

"Perfect'ly."

Then it struck Sirius how incredibly lonely Hagrid was, and he stood up and went over and self-consciously put his hand on Hagrid's knee. The great oily-black eyes, each as big as shooter marbles, reflected his own face glassily and sadly back at him, and he leaned forward and nudged a vague kiss to the reddish cheek.

Things were never quite the same after that.

Hagrid repaid his favour by accompanying him into the Forbidden Forest one night when the new moon was nigh, and they came upon a naked and shivering werewolf in man-form, in pain from his transformation, and Sirius put to him what kinds of questions he needed to ask.

At Christmas there arrived for Hagrid a wet, rollicking bundle of dark-brown fur that constantly drooled and jumped at his own shadow. Hagrid called him Fang, a fine name for a pup with not a tooth in his head (as James pointed out) and Sirius had Remus over for the holidays and they did as teenagers are wont to.

The holidays ended and life shifted back into its normal flow, starting only a little at the aberration on the smooth river-banks. Sirius, guilty, did not go to see Hagrid with Remus anymore, but instead made his own night-time visits with James' cloak on the full moon of each month. On those nights he would climb into the ample bed and feel guilty at the change in Hagrid's breathing and the shift in the way he lay, but flesh melting onto flesh made it easier to forget everything and made him feel a bit better about the choices he'd made and the treason he'd committed, while the boarhound puppy whined in the corner.

Early that spring James, Peter and Sirius became Animagi, and then there were no more excuses for any night-time excursions to Hagrid's lonely cottage. Sirius did not see the Groundskeeper again until that summer, after exams were over and the Marauders were lying by the lake trying to keep cool – James reading, Peter watching a group of Ravenclaws fuss over an exam question, Remus curled close to Sirius in the lush summer grass and he drowsy with heat and warm lust.

Suddenly a large black shape came bounding through the grass and the four sat up, alarmed, but James said,

"Oi, Sirius, it's that puppy you gave Hagrid!"

It was Fang. He barked joyously to be out and about and pranced for them. He was nearly full-grown and a glorious sight. The sun played on his dark coat and made it ripple like oil, as eyes Sirius had known not long ago.

"Gosh, he's pretty," Remus said, and stretched out to touch the shining pelt. Sirius, perturbed, looked away and then he saw the great dark outline of the Groundskeeper like a sentinel turned to stone, looking lost and frozen to his place on the verdant, sprawling lawn. At this distance Sirius could not discern the details of his face, and so from then on never could be sure whether at that moment Hagrid was smiling or crying.

When Sirius confessed to Remus, black hair shadowing his face and the tip of his bare toe edging into the brackish waters of the lake, he had not expected the former's anger, and so was crestfallen when Remus swore, viciously flung the pebble he was handling into the lake, and stormed away. Sirius watched him go and knew it was his fault.

Later, pinned on his pillow, he found a crumpled, hastily written parchment –

Fix it.

As if he could. He would try, though he wasn't sure what there was that he could do, or how he would be received after these many months. He took James' cloak from underneath the bed and set off, trying not to blunder into any students along the way. The sun was not yet down even though dinner was over, and some still lingered on Hogwarts' verdant lawns, talking or napping or riding low on their brooms, attempting to not be noticed by Madam Hooch.

Sirius knocked on Hagrid's door, letting the cloak pool in a silvery mass at his feet. His legs were wobbly as he recalled the memory of their intimacy, and how wrong it had been, and how he had enjoyed it even so. He was a boy, he reasoned, and he enjoyed anything of that sort, even if it was a shameful scandal and wrong in so many ways.

There was a long pause and then – "James?"

Remus, in a blind rage, spent most of the afternoon in the library, staring at the same page of the same book, his fingers clenching and unclenching around its edges, feeling dirty, feeling betrayed, feeling vengeful and wishing the book were something alive and squirming so that he could wrap his trembling fingers around its throat.

"Want to talk?"

He recognized the voice; it was Lily, James' girlfriend. He did not want to talk to her, or sit placidly under her cheerful, green-eyed stare, but out of sheer politeness he forced a little smile and some proper response.

She was having none of it, however, and pried his fingers off of the book and led him into the rows of bookcases. Remus followed her obediently, not moving of his own volition, his body acting in accord to the shock he had recently undergone. Once they were safely out of sight, she spun him around with his back to the shelves, pressed herself very close, and said,

"Is it something with Sirius?"

James was pink and white – his upper body, unclothed, flushed with arousal. He still wore white trousers – odd that they were white, a colour James hated – and was slightly out of breath, his glasses knocked askew. Just over his shoulder Sirius could see Hagrid, sitting slumped on the bed and staring at the floor, whether in shame or anger Sirius could not discern. He was still clothed, though this did not surprise Sirius, for every time he had known Hagrid the Groundskeeper clung tightly to his tattered and mothball-smelling clothes.

"Get in here," he said shortly, and Sirius obeyed without thinking. James shut the door behind him, pushed his glasses back into place, and folded his arms. There was silence, and then James spoke,

"I know what's happened between the two of you, and I know what's happened with you and Remus."

Sirius said nothing; feeling as the condemned man does when he sees the empty noose swing in the distance and damns everything he's ever done with one silent curse.

Almost convulsively, James fixed his glasses again, and Sirius found himself concentrating on the thin line of black hair that traveled downwards from James' chest, swirled briefly around his navel, and descended deeper, darker. He felt vaguely ill.

"Lily had an idea to help with Remus, but honestly I don't know what we're going to do with you."

Now he raised his head, pleadingly, feeling like a dog – like Padfoot – in James' glare. "Please, Prongs…you're my best friend…"

James laughed, but it was only a cruel snort. "Some difference that makes." More silence, and then he gestured knifelike at the bed. Hagrid moved back in silent acquiescence and Sirius's heart (though he did not know it had even stopped) started to hammer again.

"Let's go. If you've messed things up as you say, now's your chance to bloody well make them right."

Lily took him to the Slytherin dungeons, which in this time of year were thankfully cool and almost comfortable. Remus moved along with her numbly, his mind still spinning from what she had offered – a chance to knife Sirius quick and close in the chest, as he had stabbed Remus, and as he had stabbed Hagrid. But there would be no ill effects on anyone involved in this, Lily assured him. She had spoken to James already, and indeed he was busy talking to Sirius and Hagrid and setting things right.

They rounded a corner and then they were in a disused classroom which obviously had been cleaned up, with some pains. There was a circle of cushions, Slytherin green and Gryffindor red, in the center of the classroom and a few well-placed candles added light but none of the uncomfortable warmth of the outside heat. Lying naked, half-hidden among the cushions, was Narcissa Black. Her icy blond hair cascaded about her shoulders, and Lily's green eyes gleamed with an uncommon, feral light as Remus struggled not to be sick, watching the interaction between them.

"I'm to Sirius as Hagrid was to you, little one," the blonde Slytherin purred. Remus had never heard her speak before (he'd never had occasion to) and her voice was milky and sweet, and almost even engendered a bit of trust in him. "Though certainly not so dear, and there is no affection lost between your lover and I; the stroke will be the same and it will cleave him (whether by heart or by mind) in two. That is what you want, yes?"

He let Lily disrobe him and then lay next to Narcissa as she stroked his hair. "Oh, dear little one," she murmured. "The world is full of pain and suffering and ugliness. Be mine for a small while. I am betrothed to the great Lord Malfoy, and the earth moves in eerie and odd paths about the sun and I am tired; be mine for a little while."

Remus thought he spoke to him, but Lily leaned over his other side and the two girls kissed gently and he understood that this was not the first time that they had met in this room. Their combined scent was musty in the cushions beneath him, and one half of each of their bodies – Narcissa's right and Lily's left – pressed over him, enfolding him completely in a sort of Sapphic womb, within which there was no desire but only a kind of aching red light.

Sirius moved behind James, hardly daring to breathe into the sweat-slicked back, and matched his rhythm with his friend's. Hagrid was not moving at all but that was how he was, as Sirius vividly and nauseously remembered from times past.

Hagrid would not touch him so James hit him instead, great open-palmed blows, and a limpness in the wrists and a wantonness attributed to passion. James was careful not to bruise or draw blood and it did not hurt very much; or not quite so much as Hagrid's defeated eyes that refused to look at Sirius the whole while.

Sirius flushed dark purple as he watched Hagrid's chest rise and fall to the rhythm of James' touch, simultaneously repulsed and aroused. The sink dripped and the bed squeaked and over by the dead hearth Fang whined and grumbled, a steady cadence of noises that kept him grounded. He reached forward, though he knew he was not permitted to, and took James by the bicep, pulling him away, knocking their teeth together in a crushing kiss, and the other boy responded out of as much hate as he did lust, and meanwhile Hagrid lay on the bed, abandoned in the cruel parody of the machinations of life, lost among the sheets and the sin, the great rumpled chest rising and falling as the backdrop to the two fauns that clutched at one another in a symphony of malice.

After a while he was hot and uncomfortable with all the blood raised to the surface of his skin with each new smack of flesh against flesh, and he let out a long shuddery sigh and James paused, and then turned away to Hagrid, silently dismissing Sirius.

He dressed and left his shirt unbuttoned, and then slid off the bed, feeling fiery and slightly redeemed and ignoring the black button eyes that now bore into his back. He stopped and stooped to pet Fang, who whined in subservience and made a fawning gesture, and then left the house and crossed the now-dark lawns with James' cloak in hand, feeling a vague sense of having atoned for his crimes (and he would not call them sins). Sirius felt that Remus would forgive him, now that the horrid stink of two fleshy bodies was upon him, and that somehow, like the odor of burning ox fat and blood, he had somehow become holy and worthy of Remus's continued affections.

Lily and Narcissa had dozed off into a light sleep on the sweaty cushions, leaving Remus unasked after, though not unsatisfied, for he had not wanted them in the slightest and only touched them to hear them moan. He donned his clothing and set off, making sure that he did not run into any Slytherins on the way, and a vague sense of having gotten even entered him. By their moans (much like the lowing of sacrificial cattle and the clink or heavy chains) he had become wise and risen above what Sirius had planned for him, the cage of sins (he would not call them crimes) that he had built with Hagrid's quickened breaths and his own adoring glances given at daybreak, while Sirius was still asleep. He had become worthy of Sirius's respect and would no longer need to fawn on him like some puppy, nor continue affections that were base and degrading when there was meat in the offing.