Nature's First Green
A/N: Hello everyone. This is my first fanfiction, a short story posted to get me started before I try anything bigger. All material contained herein is property of J., and are appropriated solely for non-profit entertainment. If you need me to tell you this, you are either intellectual challenged or a lawyer, but I'm putting this notice here for propriety's sake. Thank you for reading, and please review.
It was against school rules to go into the forest, or so they were told. Sirius remembered his first day at Hogwarts, when the old man with the ridiculous robes and long white beard warned them to avoid the aptly named region of the castle grounds. Back then, he had just been sorted into Gryffindor, and was too shocked to appreciate the twinkling glance that Dumbledore shot in his and James' direction, as if he knew.
It was not until later that night, when the 5th year prefect explained to them some of the ins and outs of Hogwarts, that he truly begun to understand what the Forbidden Forest meant to the students. Hushed whispers of centaurs and acromantulas and werewolves passed through the common room, and everybody knew a friend of brother of a distant cousin in a distant branch of the family who had gone wandering in during the full moon…
Sirius snorted at the irony as he ran, the scent of soil fresh in his nostrils. The ground felt soft and wet beneath his paws from the recent rain, and his paws sank easily into the mud, leaving prints in his wake. He moved steadily, surely, with confidence born of seven years spent wandering through these trails.
He remembered his first night in the Gryffindor dormitory, his first night away from home. Everyone else had fallen asleep soon, and Peter's snoring echoed through the rafters. He figured that he would last until maybe November before he snaps and kill the boy, then use his family's status as a defense against the aurors. But despite the noise, there was a certain warmth to the room, a certain camaraderie. He simply sat staring out the window that night, letting the stars above spill down and illuminate the speckled trees in the distance. The next morning, he woke up twenty minutes late for tranfiguration.
Suddenly, he halted, and his hackles rose. A snap rang out from the trees behind him, the sound an animal makes when it steps on dry branch. His ears twitched, and his tail swished through the air as he turned and squinted in the darkness.
The forest was a dangerous place, Sirius knew. Even if he was inclined to dismiss Dumbledore's warning- and he wasn't, no matter how batty the man seemed or how blind he was to fashion- the sights he had seen with his own eyes these last few years were more than enough to convince him of the risks it pose. They were risks that no students should take, and Dumbledore had been right to warn them away from the forest.
Which, of course, made it all the more appealing.
Even at eleven, he had been eager to explore the place. Now, six years later, he, along with his friends, knew the place better than everyone at Hogwarts, with the possible exception of Hagrid. It was a part of his world, the world of Hogwarts, as integral as the dorms and the classrooms. And when he took off his shoes and transforms into the dog and allow his paws to tread on the earth every month, it felt like not only was the forest becoming a part of him, but he was becoming a part of the forest.
A howl broke through the silence, his only warning before a wolf pounced from behind the tree trunks. Sirius turned enough to avoid most of it, although the wolf still struck his shoulder. Down they went, rolling around the ground as they scrabbled against each other, growling and biting. The wolf managed to pin him against a rock before he slapped a paw against the side of its head, distracting it long enough for him to flip it around. He let out a bark of triumph.
Up ahead, a magnificent stag strode out. It paused for a brief moment, before lowering its head and charging. Its rack of antlers slammed against Sirius's side and lifted him off the wolf, causing him to tumble down for the second time that night against the soggy ground. But he was up quickly, snapping at the stag's kicking hooves.
The sky above lightened, and soon the darkness gave way to the palest of blue. The stars dimmed, and the moon grew white and translucent, like a sheet of paper held aloft by the wind. Then it too faded, as red broke itself out behind the wispy clouds and thin strands of sunlight shone down on the leaves waiting below. The wolf, lying in a bed of twigs, twitched. Its snout contracted and into a nose, its forelegs bent and snapped themselves into arms, and its feral yellow eyes grew amber and intelligent.
The dog and the stag spared the shabby man lying on the ground a glace before morphing themselves. For a long moment, the three men simply lay there and let the breeze tickle their skin.
"You're late." Sirius was the first to break the silence, nodding his head at James.
"Sorry. Lily kept me longer than I thought she would on our patrols."
Sirius snorted. "I bet she did," he muttered under his breath as James blushed bright crimson. "And must you hit me so hard? That's gonna leave a bruise."
"Aw, quit whining," a ragged voice said from behind him.
"Shut up Remus. You've been knocking me around for past couple of hours, I deserve to complain a little. With Peter out visiting his mother and our residential head boy "busy on patrol," I was the only one keeping you entertained."
"You mean, you were keeping yourself entertained, the way you usually do." Remus remarked. "And speaking of Peter, how is he?"
"Alright, even if his mom has been ill so often lately," James said. "Shame he couldn't make it tonight though."
"Yeah, too bad." Sirius sat up with a grunt, stretching his limbs out as he did so. His arched back brushed against a rock and he leaned against it, letting the moss graze against his neck. His hands came to rest against the grass, and he made small fistfuls to throw at Remus. "Too bad. It's our last time here too."
"We'll come back and visit," James said, but there was little conviction in his voice.
In reply, Sirius swept his hands out at the gnarly branches and trunks surrounding the grove. "Yeah, but it won't be the same. The forest won't be forbidden to us anymore. We'll be," he paused and shivered, "adults."
"Oh come on," Remus said. "That means that for once, you won't be breaking the rules when you enter here."
"Exactly! Where's the fun in that?"
Remus shrugged. "Werewolf transformations aren't fun."
"You can't tell me you didn't enjoy running through the forest these last few years."
Remus looked down at his tattered robes, now green with grass stains from where he had landed, with more frays in the hem and a patch threatening to come off. Then he looked at the path, and the indents where two sets of paws and one set of hooves had carved into the mud. He smiled reluctantly. "Alright, it's been…nice."
Sirius followed his gaze. "Nice? Seven years in this forest, and all you can say is nice?"
"Since when did you get so sentimental, Sirius?" James asked.
The lanky man froze. He kept his eyes along the road, and absent-minded twirled a blade of grass between his fingers.
"You know," he said after a pause, "Ever since I was born, my parents had this plan for me. I was the firstborn, so of course I was expected to become head of the family after my father dies. Of course, that didn't go quite according to plan. Still, even before I was conceived, my parents already knew who I am going to be."
James and Remus were silent as he spoke. His dark eyes grew distant, and his next words were whispered. "I think I always knew, even at eleven, that I don't want to be quite like that, don't want to be the person my parents see me becoming. But it's been seven years now. We're heading out into the world in a week. I know what I don't want to be, but I still don't know who I want to become, or where I want to go."
Remus allowed his gaze to travel along the road, following its familiar path out the clearing and through the forest, seeing it as Sirius is seeing it. With a pang, he realized that it leads back to Hogwarts.
"You'll find a way," James said soothingly. "You always do."
"Yeah," Remus agreed. "I mean, you've already been accepted at the auror academy, so you'll have somewhere to go. And even if you decide that's not for you, your NEWTs are good enough for…well, just about anything."
Sirius shrugged. "Yeah, well, I guess I just don't really want to find out, at least not yet. But come on, this is our last run through the forest as marauders, so why're we talking about our careers? Let's go take a walk, go see this place off and to- to-"
To what? To walk through the Forbidden Forest one last time with James and Remus by his side, the way it always way? To say goodbye to it all? To say goodbye to his life?
He froze. Merlin, it sounded so silly when he put it like that, like something a melodramatic third year Hufflepuff girl would say. But wasn't this what he was doing? Ever since he was eleven, Hogwarts was his home, a home that he had painstakingly explored and mapped out. No matter how many times he snuck out to Hogsmead by the secret passages or wandered the castle at night in search of the best spots for pranks, he never got tired of it. The forest too, had become part of that, as the place where he would run through with his friends when the moon was bright. Wasn't that why he was here now, to see the ancient trees and laden groves one last time?
And in two weeks, he would be in the ministry, filling out forms and taking his first lessons as a recruit. In two week's time, there would be no more snores from the bunk next to his for him to wake up to, no more Slytherins to transfigure at breakfast, no more midnight raids to Honeydukes. In two week, if he transforms into a dog, he wouldn't see a wolf and a stag and a rat running besides him.
"Sirius?" James' voice broke him out of his reverie.
"Sorry, I was thinking."
"Sirius, thinking?" Remus teased. "Now the world is coming to an end."
No, not the world. Just one small part of it, but the only part that he had known. He laughed softly, and watched the pale morning sky wrap itself around Remus and James like a shroud. They all wore a smile as they walked, pausing every now and then to point at a particular spot where they remembered seeing an unicorn or running away from an acromantula.
"You know," James said, "I just realized how lucky we were some of the times. Maybe if we had listened about those spiders in the forest, we wouldn't have gotten so close to being eaten."
"Maybe if we had listened about those werewolves, we wouldn't have gotten so close to being bitten," Sirius retorted with a grin. "But if we had, Remus wouldn't be here now, and we probably wouldn't have been as good friends. I'm quite glad we were a bunch of blockheads."
Remus also grinned, although his eyes glistened suspiciously against the sunlight. "I'm glad too."
They paused as they approached the edge of the forest. Only a last row of trees stood between them and the fields back to Hogwarts. This time, their branches seemed to bent forward, not like sinister guardians of the forest, but like hands stretched out and waving goodbye. The brambles felt rough and dry against their feet, and the wind slapped against their skin. The sky was blue now, the stars barely visible in the early June morning. The full moon had faded, and Sirius knew that the next time he sees it would not be through thickets of the Forbidden Forest.
Remus stretched himself out until he heard his bones pop, and took one last glance behind him. He lingered for a moment, before turning to Sirius, wondering why he was so quiet. Then his friend returned the look, and smirked.
"Hey, we're gonna be late to transfiguration if you don't stop standing there staring! Last one back is a greasy hair Slytherin!"
Their yells shattered the morning quiet as they took off across the grounds. In the distance, Hogwarts' gleaming spires beckoned them back again, one last time.