Disclaimer: I own none of the characters or settings to be found herein.
A/N: Originally created a year and a half ago for a friend of mine who asked me to write her a HP/Discworld crossover featuring post-veil Remus/Sirius.
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Sirius grinned. "It's okay officer we can explain everything."
Remus thought that he was about to die of embarrassment.
The officer in question, a blonde haired woman in an archaic looking uniform merely gave them a look of extreme scepticism. "You can, can you?"
Sirius nodded, an expression comprising of 50 amicable mischief 50 mock shame settling on his face. "Oh yes."
"Very well sir, why are you both standing naked in the middle of the Plaza of Broken Moons at half past three in the morning?"
"Because we left our clothes in the Shades."
The woman raised an eyebrow. "I see. One too many games of Cripple Mr. Onion, was it?"
Remus, who was currently preserving his marginal modesty with the aid of a helmet that had been handed to him by a dwarf in a skirt who looked even more embarrassed than he felt, opened his mouth to speak. "Well, you see… I'm a…." He trailed off, quite unable to explain the events of the last couple of hours in a form that would sound even half-way believable.
"Look, I know that you're a werewolf," she said. "But that doesn't explain your friend."
"Yes, well the thing is that he's a wizard."
"A wizard?"
He nodded wearily. "We both are."
The expression on the Guardswoman's face went from sceptical to outright disbelieving. "Neither of you look like wizards."
"That," Sirius said confidently, clearly experiencing nowhere near the same level of mortification as Remus, "is because we we're from a completely different planet."
The two guards looked at each other. The words it's going to be one of those shifts, isn't it seemed to hang unspoken in the air between them.
The blonde haired guard looked at Remus. "Is this true?"
He gave a long suffering sigh. "You probably won't believe me, but yes, yes it is. It's a long story."
"I see. Well, you'll have all the time you need to recount it down at the station."
He could almost feel himself blanch. "The station?"
"Look, we can't let you carry on standing around like that for much longer. This place will be filled with people in an hour or so, sober people."
"I suppose when you put it like that…."
"Exactly."
A lot had changed for Remus over the last few weeks.
It had all started shortly after three Death Eaters had thrown him down a supposedly bottomless well. When Voldemort had given the order for him to be cast into the legendary Abyss of Aberystwyth the Dark Lord had clearly assumed that it would lead to a horrific and quite probably very painful death.
It hadn't.
Although a significant proportion of the multiverse's residents might have felt that his actual destination was far worse than any of the available afterlives. For Remus J Lupin had fallen to the Disc; or, to me more precise, he'd fallen out of a narrative vortex located two hundred feat above the Disc and crashed at great speed into the river Ankh… and bounced.
It was thus that a very disoriented ex-Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher had found himself ambling dazed and alone into the heart of the Big Wahoonie.
When one considered what generally happened to those wondering the Disc's most untidy city in such a state, one had to acknowledge that it was a very good job that he'd met Gaspode when he had.
"Woof, woof. Give the poor little doggy a biscuit. Woof, woof."
Even in his confused state it had been enough to make Remus turn around and stare at the unkempt looking canine from which the words emanated. "A talking animagus!" he said, unable to keep himself from staring.
"An animiwatsit, what's one of them when it's at home? I'm just Gaspode. And stop gawping, will you. Anyone'd think you'd never met a dog who can talk before."
Remus made a tired and helpless gesture. Surviving a few rounds of the cruciatus curse, followed by a two hundred foot fall into what appeared to be a completely different world, could really take it out of a man. "Well, to be perfectly honest I haven't. At least not a dog that can actually speak while it's dog shaped. As for animagi, well, they're wizards and witches who can take on an animal form."
"What, you mean like Dog Star the Bastard?"
"Who?"
"This bloke who turned up at the University library a couple of years ago. Can turn himself into a dog at will. Not a werewolf like you though."
Remus's jaw quite literally dropped. "How on earth do you know?"
He'd never seen a dog roll its eyes in exasperation before, but Gaspode seemed to be a master at it. "Can smell you a mile off, can't I?"
"B…but…." He trailed off, not quite sure what he wanted to say, but more than a little panicked at the idea of a virtual stranger recognising his condition, even if said stranger was a grubby, talking mutt.
"Anyway," Gaspode continued, "old Dog Star's always talking about being a wizard. Course, most of us don't believe him, I mean, he doesn't even have a hat, or one of them sticks with a knob on the end."
A pang of something that was half hope half despair surged in Remus's gut. It was impossible, too much of a coincidence to warrant any serious consideration, wholly implausible… yet, he knew that he had to ask. "This 'Dog Star', is his canine form large and black?"
"Yeah, that's it; massive, thing, he is. Incisors like you wouldn't believe too." There was something in the old, world weary dog's voice that sounded almost like admiration.
For a few moments Remus thought that his heart was about to pound its way out of his chest. "And… and his human form, what does that look like?"
"I dunno, never paid much attention really. He's sort of tall and has dark hair and there's sometimes this manic gleam is his eye. Especially when he's talking about getting even with that Demented Bitch Bella."
For several moments Remus stood in the alley open mouthed. He was almost certain that he was about to wake up at any second. When a particularly foul smelling gust of wind his nostrils however, he was forced to conclude that the whole situation was, against all probability, one hundred percent real.
"Gaspode," he said, doing his level best not to allow his voice to tremor. "Could you take me this 'Dog Star'?"
Gaspode gave himself a casual scratch behind the ear. "Alright then, but you'll have to change into your wolf form. Can't be seen walking across town with a human, can I?"
"I don't think you understand. I can't change into a wolf at will, it only happens during the full moon. Besides, it'd be too dangerous we're in a city full of people. I'd probably end up killing somebody. Please Gaspode, I… I need to see him."
Dogs shouldn't be able to raise single sardonic eyebrows, yet Gaspode seemed to manage this with great aplomb too. "I reckon that this place works a bit differently from the one you're used to."
Half an hour later and with a great deal of prompting, encouragement and stern barking on Gaspode part, Remus Lupin made the first of many startling discoveries about how just how different life on the Disc could be.
When they'd finally located Dog Star the Bastard AKA Padfoot AKA Sirius Black, he found it rather difficult to resist the urge to howl with great joy. However Gaspode had been very clear that the Reformed Dogs' Guild came down rather hard on any mutt howling without good reason in the area surrounding the Unseen University.
The Watch house was blessedly warm and the temporary clothing provided by Captain Carrot was only marginally uncomfortable.
"So let's get this straight," said the blonde haired werewolf, who'd eventually introduced herself as Sergeant Angua. "Mr. Black here, who's a wizard with the power to turn himself into a dog, got into a fight with One Eared Bullseye, who chased you both away from the place you left your clothes."
Sirius nodded. "That's about the long and short of it. Though it wasn't just Bullseye who chased us away, there was a whole gang of them, wasn't there Remus?"
Remus nodded, despite the fact that the word 'gang' was stretching it slightly. In actuality Bullseye had been accompanied in his assault by two normally timid poodles from Scoone Avenue.
"Okay, I can buy that," she said. "The thing I don't understand is why, at the time you were apprehended, you seemed to be trying to stick your tongue down Mr. Lupin's throat."
She looked directly at Sirius, who looked sheepishly at Remus, who went bright red and fixed his eyes on the floor.
Sirius cleared his throat. "Would you believe that it's cultural?" His voice contained more than a hint of 'grasping at straws'.
"No, Mr. Black, not really."
"Ah, I see."
"Fortunately for you however, the Low King's son has just come of age and the resulting celebrations have meant that the cells are filled with drunken dwarfs."
Remus looked up. "You mean you're going to let us go."
"With a caution for indecent exposure, of course."
Sirius nodded in the overblown fashion of a school boy who's just been discovered raiding the potions cupboard and is hoping that he's going to get off with just a couple of detentions.
"Corporal Visit will take you through the necessary paper work," she said, indicating that they could now move from the uncomfortable wooden seats in the interview room. "Of course, he'll probably give you some of his pamphlets and a little talk on the glory of Om. We've found that petty crime in the area's been cut by half ever since he was assigned to the front desk."
"Thank you Sergeant," he said, in what he hoped was a suitably polite manner.
"Good bye Mr. Lupin, Mr. Black. I hope we're not going to be seeing you here to often." Her voice seemed to betray a great deal of doubt about this. "Oh, and next time you feel the urge. Please do us all a favour and get a room."
Corporal Visit's lecture proved to be even more prolonged, tedious and, in places, downright disturbing than Angua had suggested, but after over an hour long diatribe on how the Great Om was known to rain down fiery wrath upon the immodest and lustful, they were finally free to go.
"I certainly wouldn't want to end up in there with that nutcase again," Sirius said, as they walked towards the University, still resolutely light-hearted about the whole mortifying incident.
"Well, we'll just have to take it as a sign that we should avoid doing things like that in public spaces, in future."
Sirius laughed. "Oh no," he said, grinning. "I think that it's a sign we should stop getting caught."