Your user name: lj user="eprime"
Team: Team AU
Title: Sometimes You Weep
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Genre(s): angst, hurt/comfort, romance
Word Count: ~4400
Summary: An obscure branch of magic long since fallen into disuse may help Sirius and Remus find what is lost.
Prompt: a href="http:/ .com/rsgamesmods/pic/0005kaba"#40/a
Life is like an onion.
You peel it off one layer at a time;
And sometimes you weep.
- Carl Sandburg, American poet
The dog snuffled his way across the leaf-scattered hollow underneath a rotting log, where the wind and rain had carved away the earth and created a small pocket of hidden warmth and shelter. Nosing through the damp dirt, the dog unearthed a wriggling worm, snapping it up in one bite and licking its chops before resuming its explorations. The world was gray and dim from his dog's-eye view, black and less black, shading into the dingiest of whites only rarely. A fat beetle glistened as it trundled across a powder of crushed, dead leaves. The dog ate it, too, never minding the twitching legs and relishing the crunch of carapace.
A far off sound sent the dog into a crouch, ears up and forward. It whined as the sound came again, nearer this time. Slowly, the dog crept closer to the edge of the overhang where the log sheltered the hole from the Outside. The dog had never left the hollowed out den. It had almost forgotten there was an Outside. The voice, for that was what the sound was, rang out again. The dog's tail thumped wildly on the damp ground and it loosed an involuntary bark.
"Padfoot?" the Voice called, coming nearer still. "Padfoot!"
The dog trembled, poised between conflicting desires. Should it cower back into its safe hole and burrow under the leaves or should it greet the Voice? The sound of the Voice filled the dog with more warmth than he could ever remember, much more than eating wriggling bugs and rolling in the lonely earth of his den. Ever so slowly, the dog inched forward.
"Padfoot, please! Where are you?" The Voice whistled and the dog went on full alert. It was calling him! Still the dog hesitated. The Outside was unknown, full of bad things that just the hint of made the dog want to slink into the deepest corner of the den and hide with his nose under his paws. But the whistle sounded again, and gathering his courage, the dog bounded out from under the log, scrambling up the muddy slope choked with brambles and vines until he cleared the small rise.
"Padfoot!"
In the shadowed copse the Voice became a Boy, darting through the trees recklessly and falling upon the dog with a sob. "Oh, Padfoot!" The Boy buried his face and hands in the dog's fur, warm, so warm, breathing moist, hot air into its ears. Even the Boy's tears were hot and welcome as they fell onto the tip of the dog's nose. Joyfully, the dog lifted its head and licked them away from its own nose and the Boy's face. The Boy threw back his head and laughed and laughed, and the dog barked its own merriment, bowling over the boy until they lay side by side on a bed of stiff pines needles. The Boy's arms held him close.
"Padfoot. Padfoot. I finally found you."
The dog opened his jaws, letting his tongue loll out as he panted happily. The Boy laughed again.
"I looked for you for so long, but I couldn't find you. I was..." Trembling, the Boy buried his face in the scruff of the dog's neck, and mumbled into the fur. "I was almost ready to give up. I almost...but then I thought of Padfoot, and I knew. I knew."