He's gone after people - killed them! You can't tell me that's not the Dark Arts!
Not people, Sirius. Werewolves.
And there's a difference?!
Gentlemen, please. Calm down. It is true, he is not using the Dark Arts, else we would have had more information about him. No, his magic is older. Wilder...
We have reason to believe he's heading this way.
So what do you propose we do? Fight him? We hardly know anything about him. And in any case, he's doing something we should have done...
What the hell are you talking about?! These aren't monsters he's murdering, they're people! People!
Sirius! Please! What information do we have?
The killings are all done in the same way. By some type of enchantment, he is able to...well, reach inside his victims and pull out their hearts. In the most literal sense. We're not sure what type of spell he's using, else we would have been able to counter it.
My G-d.
But how is that possible? It's not...
Remus? Remus!
My G-d...Mr. Lupin, are you all right? We are idiots; we shouldn't have...
No...no...it's not that. I'm all right, Sirius. It's...not that. The killer. He's a boy, a child. Isn't he.
What?
How could you know that? We haven't told anyone...
A little boy with blond hair and such piercing eyes...
Remus, what?
And his name is Israel...
Mr. Lupin, how do you know this? Have you been in contact with him?
My dream...oh G-d, the dream...
What dream?
No...no...
Remus, it's all right, it's all right! You can tell us. It's all right.
Go ahead, Mr. Lupin. You have nothing to fear here.
It's cold, so cold. My breath freezes and hangs in the air, but I'm untouched by it. I'm standing in a white; no, gray place. It's featureless and empty, so blank that it's as though I am blind. I'm in my...other form, the wolf. And I'm still blind, there's no smell, no sound of anything. There's no one there, but then...suddenly I'm fighting an enemy I can't see! Just when I think I'm winning, he...I can hardly explain it. How did you put it, Minister? He goes...inside me. And I can feel him in me, his thoughts, his feelings. Each time they get stronger and clearer. For a moment, the two of us are one, with souls intertwined. And...and then...
It's all right. Go on.
No. Please...there's nothing more.
Remus, tell us what happens next. It may help us to understand these murders.
He finds the wolf. And...I suppose the best way to say it is that he jumps back. And suddenly where there was pure innocence there is a terrible fire, a hatred emanating from him. And he pulls out my heart. And I feel no pain. Just...an extreme cold, a...oh, I can't explain it! As though the greyness of the place is seeping into me, filling me, and yet I'm hollow all the same. And then suddenly the gray disappears, and I can see...all the senses come back. And he is standing there in front of me, holding my heart dripping black onto the ground. And I see him and know his name; know him better than when he was a part of me. And there is so much fear....then nothing. I wake up.
Silence
What does it mean?
I wish I knew.
Are you all right, Remus?
I...I have to go.
Remus...
You'd best follow him, Sirius. There is quite probably a tie between this dream and the other victims. We need to understand it if we are to prevent any more murders. In any event, I don't believe Remus should be left on his own, especially when the moon is full. Be there for him, Sirius.
G-d yes. With your permission...
Yes, of course. Meeting adjourned. Severus, Cornelius, if I may have a word...
~*~
The voices stopped with a whir and a click; there was a moment of horrid Muggle music that blared through the room, and then another mechanical sound and the tape was finished.
Remus stared up at his friend. "G-d, I didn't sound that awful in real life, did I?"
"'Fraid so. We'll have to work on that."
~*~
Sirius woke to the sound of muffled screaming.
"My G-d," he muttered; for one, horrible instant he thought he was back in Azkaban. Memories of insane laughter and soul-freezing fear rushed through his mind, rising in him every reflex possible. He bolted upright in the familiar bed and looked around the room. The noises from next door stopped, and Sirius suddenly remembered where he was and what he was doing. "Moony."
It had only been that morning that he'd moved his belongings from the east tower to an empty room in the west one next to Remus' own. His friend had helped him in the move, saying nothing about the suspicion of the change. Sirius had been glad of that; if there was one thing Remus loathed, it was being protected. Neither he nor the wolf enjoyed feeling weak. While Remus was far from blind, he had learned that when Sirius got a notion into his head, it was nigh ere impossible to deter him, and so it was best to simply try and ignore something he did even if it provoked disapproval. Although Sirius was fully aware of Remus' feelings, that did not stop him from being extremely protective of the last of his childhood friends.
Sirius dashed out of bed and threw on a robe, hurrying out his door and down the short passage of hallway that separated his room from Remus'. Not knowing what he would find, Sirius rushed into the next room to find his friend curled up in as tight a ball as was humanly possible at one end of the bed. Remus was pale and shivering violently.
Sirius was at his side in an instant. "Remus, what is it?" He shook the man sharply, seeing he was still asleep and trapped in the dream. "Wake up!"
"What...no...NO!" Remus sat up sharply, staring with unseeing eyes at nothing in horror. But it wasn't that that made the man who'd survived twelve years of hell gasp and recoil away; Remus' deep gray eyes were a bright gold color - the color of the wolf's.
Sirius froze, finding it hard for a moment to find his voice. In those seconds, the tawny color slowly drained out of Remus' eyes, taking with it the look of absolute terror on his face. Slowly, his breathing became more regular, coming out in less violent, gulping gasps. A moment more, and the now gray eyes focused on Sirius for the first time since he'd come barging in.
There was a moment of silence, broken only by the still-ragged breathing. Then...
"Nightmare?" Sirius asked in as mild a tone as he could manage, trying to keep both worry and deeper emotions out of his voice. He wasn't that much of an idiot; Remus did not need to be baby-sat. As he himself would say, 'I don't need you hovering over me; I've a big boy now.'
Remus gave a weakly wry grin, unbending himself into a more comfortable position and pulling together some shreds of dignity. He looked terribly thin and pale in the darkness of the room; seemingly made of fragile porcelain that could break at the slightest touch, and this movement only made to enhance that effect. "I'm sorry, Sirius, did I wake you?"
"Of course not," Sirius lied. "You know me - chronic insomniac."
"Despite the fact that you never wake up for anything less than a lightning bolt striking the bed," Remus replied with a smile for fond memories at the old joke, "and it's no use lying; I can see right through you."
"Hopefully not literally. There are enough ghosts here in the castle." Sirius didn't add that Remus himself could easily pass as one of them.
"I'm sorry," Remus said again, sitting on the edge of the rumpled bed. Sirius knew what he meant although Remus hadn't explained, and sat beside him.
"Was it...the dream you talked of today?"
There was a pause of thoughtful silence, as both men thought back to the discussion only half a day before with different emotions. Sirius remembered the meeting with anger; the Minister of Magic's transparent authority, Snape's ridiculous call for giving protection and even aid to a murderer simply on the grounds that it was werewolves and not others who were dying, and Dumbledore's infuriating appearance of calm during the entire thing. The entire discussion had seemed pointless at first, then moving on towards something actually resembling torture, as the three turned on Remus, forcing him to go into something which had obviously troubled him. No wonder he'd run out of the room as soon as the interrogation was over! Sirius glanced to the side and caught a fleeting expression on Remus' face. Apparently anger was not a feeling he associated with that meeting, but rather something deeper. He was, after all, the one with the dreams.
Remus nodded slowly, trying to keep his expression blank. He'd caught the look Sirius gave him. "He's looking for something."
"Who is? The..the murderer?"
Another nod. "He doesn't know what it is, or why he's looking for it, or even that he is looking for it. But he is all the same."
"You do realize that that made no sense whatsoever?" Sirius asked, used to his friend's ramblings as he sought for words to express things that were sometimes beyond mere language. He'd gotten surprisingly good at it, over the years, and Sirius himself joked that he was the only one capable of translating. "You're starting to sound like Dumbledore; or worse - Trelawney."
"Thanks," Remus laughed at the insult, then grew sober again. "That's the only way I can put it. I still can't see or hear or smell him until the very end, but when we're fighting, that's what I feel. He's looking for something. Sirius, I think it has to do with the other victims."
"How so?" Sirius didn't quite catch the connection to that one.
"Maybe they're dead because they didn't have whatever it was that he's looking for," Remus said.
"That's shit," Sirius said hotly, standing up as his overly-active temper took control and anger and frustration washed over him. "If that asinine murderer doesn't even know what he's looking for, how does he expect to find it?!"
Remus dropped his head into his hands, imploring and despairing in the same breath. "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know! I wish I did! Maybe we could stop this if I knew. But I don't."
Sirius could finally hold it in no longer. He simply could not hear that tone of voice and not take action; he knew that he should not be telling the man this gravest of secrets, but needed some way to explain to him why he was acting the way he was. "Remus, you know that Dumbledore thinks you may be next. The boy was last seen headed this way."
Although Remus had heard Fudge say something to that effect at the meeting, the news that Dumbledore actually believe and agreed with it was obviously new. Remus stared at Sirius with large incredulous eyes, feeling something akin to physical sickness rising in his throat. "No..."
Sirius didn't notice the tone of his voice, but barged right ahead, letting his emotions take control. "Dumbledore thinks that this dream is connected to it all; that maybe the other victims had the same one just before the bastard showed up to slaughter them."
"No, Sirius, that...that can't..." Remus sprang to his feet so quickly that his face lost what little color it normally had and he almost lost his balance. He ignored Sirius' worried support. "Dumbledore is wrong, he has to be!" he said vehemently.
Sirius just stared. Remus so rarely showed any emotion that when he did it meant that something was drastically wrong.
"You don't know, you haven't seen him," Remus continued forcefully, pacing angrily like a wolf in a cage, spanning the small room in brisk strides as though doing so would help him find the words he needed. "You don't know what it feels like to have someone... something you can't even smell or see....something go inside of you and rip out your heart! You don't know that intense feeling of cold; cold so deep it burns without pain. You don't feel that...aura of magic emanating from him, a power so deep and pure and strong that you feel crumbled to dust. You don't know what it's like...to be a monster in all it's evil before innocence." His voice dwindled down to a whisper and he began to shake again.
"Oh, G-d, Remus," Sirius said, embracing his friend tightly, trying to absorb the violent convulsions into his own body. He felt a sudden wetness on his cheeks and realized that he was crying, although the eyes of his companion were, as they always had been even in times of greatest sorrow, dry.
"I feel so...incredibly...afraid," Remus said haltingly. "Afraid as I've never felt before. Even the wolf...I can't...I can't..."
And that was what finally reached through to Sirius and touched the deepest part of his soul. Remus was never afraid. Never. In all the years Sirius had come to know him he'd seen worry, pain, doubt, and occasionally anguish in his friend, but never fear. That was what had truly set him apart from everyone else; not the fact that he was smart or kind or even a werewolf, but that everyone could always count on him to have that one strength even when no one else did. That this bastard of a little boy could take that away...that was what burned Sirius to the core of his very being.
"Nothing is going to happen to you, Remus, I promise," Sirius said fiercely, holding him out at arms length. "I swear, that boy is not going to come anywhere near here. We're going to stop the killings. The dreams will not come true. Look at me, Remus! You hear me? They won't; I promise!"
For a moment, Remus wouldn't answer; simply stood there in the drab room with light from the half-moon pouring in through the window. Then he looked Sirius straight in the eye and spoke in a voice colder than ice. "Then you'll have to be stronger than the universe itself."
Author's Note: This is kind of like the babble that I do before I write a story. I've had this idea for a while, ever since I read a book called The Devil's Arithmatic, in which on of the characters tells the story of a boy named Israel that fights a werewolf and kills him by going inside him and pulling out his heart. There's more to the myth and I don't want to spoil it, but I just wanted to know if I should write more of the story, of if it's too angst-y and stupid right now. So please review - I have another part written up, but it's not in sequence with this one and I'd like to know if I should be writing the in-between part. Reviews are very welcomed, of any type!
Also, the first part of the story is kind of confusing: it's supposed to be a record of a meeting of Dumbledore, Fudge, Snape, Lupin, and Black. I actually wrote it while I was doing the MSPAP and didn't feel like actually putting it in story sequence, hence why it's in the format it is now. I wanted to use it to give a bit of the background on the myth and plot, and to kind of show Remus' reaction to it all. The two speakers at the end of that section are Remus and Sirius.
Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me, but rather to the infamus author J.K. Rowling. Don't sue, as I have no money. Thank you.