We Do Not Fall
Summary: It's sometimes hard to understand Sirius, Remus realizes. Perhaps... well perhaps he hadn't known the boy as much as he thought he had... It obviously showed when lack of communication draws the both of them into an exaggerated fight, only succeeding in hurting them both and their friendship. Oh, Remus would make a thousand wishes to take everything back and fix it up, but he can't change it... not after this... (male/male, rated m for mature scenes and sexual content)
Disclaimer: I do not own anything.
Chapter 1
-Prologue-
Remus twitched and turned away from the scene, finding it harder than he had thought. His hands clenched tightly and his face grew red with anger.
"So now you're fucking walking away! You fucking coward!"
Frozen, he felt his muscles tighten, the hot rage boiling underneath his skin, and spun to face the boy. He growled under his breath as he took a step, leering as he saw the fear spark in the older boy's eyes.
"Call me anything you want, you spoiled little shit, but one thing I am NOT is a COWARD."
His voice raised into a yell, causing the boy in front of him to flinch widely, a look of sudden shock and blatant hurt on the his face, and it tasted wonderful on Remus' tongue.
So, in a fit of confidence, Remus Lupin went on instinct, doing something so rash and unthinkable as to swing his arm back and punch his former best friend, Sirius Black, in the face.
-A few weeks ago-
Remus jumped back in surprise when a quick blur brought him from staring out into space. His thoughts revolved around quietly in his head, the weather glooming over grey in the air.
'Quidditch.' He looked up as his two best friends shot through the sky, arguing loudly as they dodged another attack from the bludger, all in good nature for practice and staying fit in the cool air.
It did not, of course, stop Remus from wincing as he swore the ball caught the edge of James' broom.
"You guys better be careful, I'm gonna head back. I don't particularly want to get wet if it rains."
Sirius grinned down at him from somewhere above, shouting an agreement to meet later, and Remus smiled at their antics before he turned and walked away.
It's not that he didn't enjoy watching Quidditch practices; in fact he loved watching James and Sirius play as they normally got fairly competitive and started yelling creative insults at each other, but he didn't like the violence as much. Being a werewolf was brutal enough for him to deal with anyways.
The werewolf, in quick decision, stopped in the Great Hall for some food (perhaps a little late in the afternoon, but one could always go for a raspberry tart), and ran into a few classmates on the way, who discussed the most recent transfiguration homework. Something about turning beds into horses, rather very advanced magic.
He then, unfortunately – and in a way, most luckily- also ran into Peeves, who had been floating along looking for students to maim. The poltergeist jeered at the walls and murmured phrases under his ghostly breath, flicking something similar to a button at one small looking first year- who was hit in the head and looked rather worse for wear.
Remus hunched over, slipping past Peeves quietly. He hoped that he was not one that would be caught by the mischievousness of that thing.
He ran in the opposite direction, praying in his head that he would have a place to hide. At that moment however, his robe caught underneath his shoe and sent him sprawling to floor with a crash.
Peeves' head whipped around to the boy, raising a clawed hand, and sporting a hideous grin. "And what precious little human have we got here?" he drawled lazily, as Remus scrambled to get up.
"Leave me alone, for Merlin's sake…" Remus dusted off his knees, straightening up with a false pretense of confidence.
The poltergeist's smirk morphed into an angry look and the jab, and Remus had barely time to dodge the flying objects that came towards him in a rush.
He ran quickly, but that did not stop the assault of Peeves, and the boy soon felt a sticky smack in his hair…
'Ew.' Another one flew past Remus' left.
"Goddammit Peeves leave me alone!" he shouted, not taking a chance of looking behind him in fear that his face might get the worst of it. He needed a place to hide, and quick.
By chance it seemed, as he stumbled around a corner, Remus spotted a broom cupboard and dived in, thanking Hogwarts' building for the miracle.
The darkened room was quiet, excepting the boy's harsh pants from running, and the vague sound of the jeers and hollers outside the door.
It was then that the sticky thing in Remus' hair decided to fall to the group with a sickening plop, making the boy scrunch his nose unhappily about the slime.
He pulled lightly at the gunk in his hair. "Probably potion's ingredients…" he murmured to himself.
The goo stuck between his fingers, which was not something Remus preferred having, so he violently tried to shake it off, no matter how vehemently it denied to leave his hand.
So when he struck his hand against a nearby table, he cursed loudly.
If you passed at that moment in the halls, I'm sure you could have heard a string of 'fucks' and 'shit's.
After the throbbing went down a little, Remus grimaced before berating his mind for not thinking about using his wand.
He quietly muttered a cleaning spell on his palms, causing the sticky stuff to vanish, but his eyes wandered around in the dark.
It was a fairly small cupboard, holding only a small table and stool, and a few shelves hosting a bucket and broom and a bottle containing some unknown murky liquid. The walls were dank and tight, and rather uncomfortable for the werewolf, who shimmied around the stool that looked at if it needed a lot of repair before he could sit down. Remus wished the stool had been the chair from his common room.
He looked longingly at the wood.
Which, in a sudden burst, changed immediately into the red cushioned chair Remus had wanted.
In shock, Remus jumped back and stared at what used to be the broken wooden stool, but had obviously been replaced.
The boy stared at the cushions. Right… magic. Remus didn't know how the chair had been changed, as normally it required an actual spell from transfiguration. And, normally with transfiguration, it wouldn't create an exact replica of what he had been thinking, even down to the smallest detail of the musty bread smell that had always accompanied the furniture. He acknowledged that the chair wasn't the chair from his common room, as moving it would have been apparition in a way, and that was something most definitely not allowed inside of Hogwarts.
Remus frowned as a faint prickling of a headache began in his temples.
"It's... mimicking the Gryffindor common room...?" He scratched the back of his neck in question, glancing around the rest of the cupboard that had not obviously changed size or color in any other way. 'That rules out the mimicking, then.'
The dark walls of the cupboard felt suffocating as Remus pondered why it was just the chair, and he found himself wishing for a bit more space and comfort.
The room, in a flash that rather blinded the werewolf for a moment, morphed again quickly and suddenly, just as it had for the chair.
He blinked. Furnished wood and red wallpaper now adorned the walls, now spacious and around the size of the dorm room, which now held two plush dark red couches and a small table with a lantern on top. A fireplace to the left of Remus quietly flickered, drawing his eyes to the flame in mental confusion.
What was this room? Would it give him whatever he wanted?
Remus sat down carefully on the sofa closest to him and closed his eyes as he relaxed and leaned back. There was no need to panic, or get woozy. He was obviously in no danger, or so he tried to convince himself of. His rapid heartbeat coursed through him, and he felt hot.
The boy shifted quietly, taking a breath in to try and steady himself and figure out what the situation was.
If what he had been thinking of, that the room would give him anything he wanted, then he could wish for something at that moment and he would receive it.
Remus paused to grin and lick his lips at the easy choice of what to get. 'Chocolate cake! Definitely chocolate cake.'
He squeezed his eyes tightly and tried to imagine the most perfect cake, and then opened them.
To nothing, of course. Everyone knew that the rules of magic included not being able to conjure food out of nowhere. But Remus still felt slightly disappointed after envisioning a wonderful chocolate cake.
It was fine though, after he remembered his raspberry tart, and began to nibble on it.
'Obviously it is a magic room, as it is in Hogwarts after all, and has to obey the basic fundamental rules of magic. It is to be expected.'
Remus licked his fingers and stretched.
If not food, what else could the room get him? It took him a few moments to think it over. "Books on transfiguration of large animals" he said to the room. "For class, of course."
After another moment, he added "nice writing quills would be cool as well." ('Another downside to being a werewolf,' Remus thought, remembering the fact that his strength would always snap them whenever he would have fits of frustration.)
He paused.
"Information on werewolves?" He quietly ended it on a question, hesitantly. "Or maybe books on making a werewolf's life easier?"
He let himself have a small grin with the list he spoken out loud. He finished it off with a vague topic, this time in his head.
'A bunch of stuff that's been lost?"
Thousands of things slammed onto his lap and all around him at once.
It hurt, quite a lot. Especially on his groin, which Remus whimpered slightly as it was hit very badly by… a heavy shampoo bottle? Filled, of course, to Remus' chagrin.
Remus groaned faintly as he pushed the stuff off his lap and looked around him. Everything was everywhere, on shelves, on couches and the chair and floor.
He crinkled his nose in disgust as he pushed off what he thought was probably a chewed up stick that landed in the sofa with him. Why that was there, he could only suspect.
When he realized that there were now shelves, the room expanded a little to give him more room to walk around the many piles of random things. Books upon books were lined there, all titled something to do with werewolves, at least from what Remus could tell.
He cracked his knuckles as he shuffled around the piles, following where his eyes led to all the books adorning the old wood. His fingers grazed the spines across the dusty brown, black, and blue books. It was an arrangement of many fine novels and informational things. Leather, cloth, dragon scales, and felt met his fingertips, and Remus grabbed a larger book off the shelf curiously.
The smell of molten leaves, sweet but a little odd, came to his sense as he read the title, 'The Moon Cycle', and opened the book to see small words written in ink.
He put it back, as the words swirled and reminded him of his headache and grabbed a newer one.
"Mated to a Werewolf…" Remus stuttered slightly, feeling his face warm up a little as he opened the book up to diagrams and pictures of paired males and females, and to his slight surprise, paired mates of the same sexes.
The book ended up on the chair, but Remus pushed the pictures to the back in his head and continued to browse the titles, wishing that the room would give him a little more of a specific type of book. Like things that would make the transformation easier, or even better- stop them.
Soon enough, the room changed with his thoughts, and a few of the shelves disappeared, leaving the rest to arrange themselves to fill the gaps. The ones that had been left displayed books that Remus glanced over briefly, before he started grabbing ones that caught his interest, and setting them down with the other book on the red chair. When the pile grew to seven or eight, Remus stopped his searching, happy with his finds, and looked at the piles on the floor and couches. He sat down gingerly on the couch after he made some room by pushing some more miscellaneous stuff aside.
"Perhaps it should be just the stuff my friends and I have lost?" Remus quietly asked the room.
As a response of sorts, the piles lessened some, and the boy nodded vaguely to himself as he started picking out certain things, and sorted them into what he knew of and what he didn't. The largest (and still growing) mountain was of Sirius' socks, and boxers, that of which left Remus grinning at, and finding himself trying to fight the urge to laugh at.
'Who knew he lost so much in just a few years,' Remus thought after picking up a, thankfully clean, pair of yellow boxer shorts with brooms on them.
He threw it on the pile as he noted to himself how small they were. Sirius probably lost them in first or second year, judging by the horribly written name on the inside tag.
His hands were reaching for the next thing beside him, a small note, when a glint caught his eye next to his foot, and he felt around, procuring a small rounded object. Remus rolled it around in his hand, the coolness of the glass feeling nice against his rough calluses.
Strange. Strange to find a lone muggle marble in the things that they had lost.
The werewolf, slowly lying back against the cushions, held it up in front of his eyes, staring through the glass as the light flickered through it in an array of greens and blues and greys. The reflections of the room danced on the round marble, and Remus smiled as he rotated it between his fingers lightly. The light greys and bright blues appealed most to him, rather than the bright orange glow from the fire which burned dangerously, as well as quietly and calmly in the fireplace.
He looked at the stone for a second, remembering his task, and set it down carefully next to him in a pile with objects that Remus had owned. It rolled slightly on the old fairytale book that Remus looked fondly at, remembering the gift for his twelfth birthday, and then on a graded essay with full marks, and landed next to Gryffindor tie.
There was also an odd necklace laying a bit farther off at the end of the table that Remus eyed with curiosity and bent to pick up, and was positive he didn't own, nor had he seen before, but he thought it absolutely beautiful as he drew it closer in his grasp. It was a short necklace, similar to a choker, he noticed, with smaller black beads surrounding a round pendant that sparkled in the low light of the room.
Remus drew his finger over it, his mind hazily reporting to him that it was most likely made of opal, defined by the hazy white shine and speckles of blues and greens and oranges. He slipped it on, clasping the back and settling it underneath his shirt.
With the chilled pendant resting on his sternum, he moved onto the stack of what he had yet to look through, and felt a warm feeling of satisfaction of wearing something so gorgeous.
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