Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
A/N: This story is dedicated to my best friend and beta Lauren (Sparkling Patronus) who helped me refine my idea and waded through my horrible spelling and run-on sentences.
It was nothing more than a stupid dare, and Regulus Black was no coward. Nor did he consider himself a fool, though wandering alone through the Forbidden Forest in the middle of the night was no intelligent act, especially if you were planning to spend the night. He considered himself quite lucky that his seemingly clever dorm mates had not decided to send him into the forest wandless, as it would have been impossible for him to keep himself protected and comfortable in such a savage setting had he been reduced to camping out like some filthy muggle. It already irritated Regulus enough that his housemates had purposefully made it impossible for him to reject such a ridiculous dare, though he supposed that he should have expected this humiliatingly scrutinizing treatment from his friends. He did have a traitor for a brother after all, though as far as his mother was concerned, Regulus Black was, and always had been, an only child.
In a way all of this was Sirius's fault. Regulus almost smiled to himself at this new revelation, pleased that he had once again found a way to cast the blame on his brother, rather than on himself. That was the way things had always been and as far as Regulus was concerned, it was the way things were meant to be. He was the favorite and Sirius was not. Regulus was the one who had to prove to everyone else (or at least everyone else who mattered) that the Black family was not falling apart, although the two burnt spots on their tapestry would clearly indicate otherwise. It was because his brother had stupidly gone and gotten himself disowned that Regulus was here tonight, fulfilling some stupid dare so that he could prove to himself and his classmates that the Blacks were still a force to be reckoned with. He was here because Evan Rosier had quite purposefully stated that camping out in the forest was definitely the most important thing Regulus needed to do to in order to prove his loyalty to Slytherin; to prove that he wasn't, and never would be, a disgusting and worthless blood traitor. Hopefully this time his friends would keep their word and Regulus wouldn't be cajoled once again into doing something so utterly ridiculous and life-threatening. He had suffered enough humiliation because of his brother, and he was tired of having to remind people that he and Sirius were two very different people.
Thankfully, the moon was full tonight and there was no need for Regulus to light his wand in order to see where he was going. He reminded himself that he wasn't a coward, but the looming and unmistakable light of the moon was still comforting, especially when he had no idea what was lurking in the ever-present shadows of the Forest.
&&&
Emotions were always so much simpler when one was an animal. If Sirius had been human at the moment, his mind would have been home to quite a few radically different emotions. This would have made it impossible for him to concentrate on the fact that he was essentially babysitting a rather volatile creature whose behavior could quite easily fluctuate between domesticated and uncontrollable. If Sirius had been in possession of his own humanoid mind while he routinely watched one of his best friends writhe in pain as the moon rose and the wolf took over, he would have been too preoccupied with the paralyzing combination of compassion, disgust, and fear that would inevitably follow as he would be forced to remember that yes, his dear friend Remus was secretly monstrous enough to tear Sirius's face off without a second thought.
Before Sirius had met Remus, werewolves had been his greatest fear, a reality he had been forced to deal with at the age of thirteen when once, by accident, he had encountered a boggart in his old house. The creature had surprised him by sprouting fur and howling. He had never told anyone what shape his boggart had taken, and thankfully it had never come up.
But now, as a dog, Sirius could take refuge in his canine mind. Life as a dog was much simpler than life as a person, and Sirius had occasionally been motivated to make the change permanent. It would certainly make life much easier to deal with.
Tonight was the perfect night to deal with things as a dog.
Ahead of him, Prongs stamped his foot impatiently, reminding Padfoot to stop pausing every two steps to smell a bit of grass, or an upturned log. Padfoot was indignant. It wasn't his fault the forest was filled with all sorts of interesting smells, and it wasn't his fault that Moony was being particularly boring tonight. Something scurried by, brushing against his leg, and a strange disembodied voice inside his brain told him to repress the instinct that fat scurrying things were chew toys by default. Assured by the fact that Moony was being particularly docile tonight, Padfoot shifted to the right, breaking the Prongs-Moony-Padfoot formation that been designed to ensure that there was always someone nearby who was large enough to keep the wolf under control. Padfoot called ahead, urging Prongs to let Moony have a bit more freedom. He was, after all, being strangely calm tonight, so it was only fair to adjust the defenses accordingly. Padfoot did not have time to see if Prongs had understood the message, for he was promptly distracted by a faint human smell that had been carried towards him by the wind, a scent that was vaguely familiar.
It appeared the wolf had picked up on the scent as well. It paused, and almost imperceptivity sniffed at the air, his huge paws quivering. Instinctively, Padfoot recognized this as the beginnings of something dangerous, and slowly emitted a low and threatening growl deep in his throat as a warning. This was useless of course, for both wolf and dog knew which was the more powerful. The wolf threw back its head and howled, its eyes bloodshot as drool dripped like venom from its fangs. The howl, cold and predatory, served as a reminder that the wolf was the dominate canine in this relationship, and the dog would do well to submit. Unfortunately, it was not in the dog's nature to be submissive.
The wolf remained motionless, his body tense and prepared to strike. He growled fiercely, his fangs exposed and his haunches raised. The dog was openly and characteristically defying authority. He was not afraid of the wolf, no matter how threatening it seemed, despite the fact that he had failed in his attempts to contain the wolf before, and despite the fact that he instinctively knew that such an open display of defiance could very well cost him his life.
The wolf was impatient. The sweet scent of human blood was wafting tantalizingly through the air, and still this pitiful, subordinate mongrel dared to stand in his way. The scent in the air consumed him, causing him to drool in ravenous hunger, causing his heart to throb wildly as he anticipated the glorious chase and capture and the taste of blood! He had no time to deal with the insistent subordinate, who was little more than a mere pup in his eyes. The wolf sprang instantly and impatiently, sparing no time for theatrics like the growl and stare-down of traditional canine battles. His sudden movement caught the dog off guard, but the dog wouldn't have stood much of a chance in combat anyway.
The wolf sprang, catching his opponent violently by the neck, and his fangs, driven by impatience, hunger and rage, dug deep into the dog's flesh, making it impossible for the dog to breathe. This seemingly fatal pose was held only briefly as the wolf, eager to dispose of this impertinent interruption, flung the dog's body into the air, shaking it once before releasing it suddenly, allowing its fangs to tear through even more dog-flesh. With a scream-like yelp, the black, bloodied offender fell pathetically to the ground, his head striking hard against the forest floor. Unconscious, Padfoot lost control of his magic and slipped back into humanity, leaving the crumpled body of a teenage boy in place of the fallen dog.
The results of the brief battle for dominance greatly pleased the wolf. Now, instead of one tantalizing scent of human in the air, there were two. The two scents were so similar in essence that the wolf almost did not realize that the very body it had flung behind itself was now distinctly human. Not wasting another moment, the wolf turned and leapt towards its human prey, which was now lying defenselessly on the forest floor. The wolf was determined to sink its teeth into the perfectly unprotected flesh, to feel the drip of human blood run down its throat…
But yet another contender dared to step between the wolf and its prey.
The wolf was not sure how to deal with this opposition. Prongs was much taller than the wolf and it doubted that it would be able to defeat this disturbance as easily as he had dismissed of the other one. The wolf paused for a moment, unsure of how to strike. The stag immediately took advantage of the wolf's hesitation and lowered its head, preparing to strike while the wolf was vulnerable. Prongs stepped forward, keeping his head bent, and drove the wolf backwards gently, trying its hardest to remind his quiet animal mind that the wolf should be hurt as little as possible. The wolf slowly retreated, for it wasn't stupid. He knew that the stag was much too large for him to fight it on his own and was willing to abandon this prey. After all, there was another body waiting for him only a few yards away; one that, by the smell of it, was gloriously unprotected.
Once the wolf had retreated far enough, Prongs raised his head, eyeing the wolf carefully. The stag was most certainly not expecting the wolf to suddenly turn tail and sprint in the opposite direction. The stag lacked a canine nose and was oblivious to the scent in the air. He hesitated before following the wolf's trail, torn between his obligation to follow the monster and his obligation to the bloodied, unconscious body behind him.
That moment of hesitation was all the wolf needed to escape.
James wished that he and his friends had devised some way to communicate with each other while in animagus form. If they had, James wouldn't have needed to hesitate. He would have been able to just sprint after Remus, using the hypothetical form of communication to remind Peter that he was not to leave Sirius's side. James hoped that Peter was smart enough to realize that such a command was understood, but perhaps a frantic-minded rat would be too wrapped up in his own animal instincts to remember the fundamental rules of friendship. James's own frantic animal mind prevented him from spending too much time worrying, but the faint remains of his human consciousness were still strong enough to allow some wisps of worried thought to remain. It was almost as if two very different and distinct commentaries were playing in James's head as he sprinted in the direction he'd seen the wolf head.
"Don't worry," the stag in his mind reassured him, "Just keep running running running running. The wolf is that way."
"Maybe I shouldn't worry," human-James agreed softly, "The only really dangerous creature in this forest is Remus. I think…. Unless I'm wrong...or unless he decides to loop back around…. He did seem very set on biting—"
"Running, running, running. It went that way. Go," the stag continued, and James's long, lithe legs obeyed.
"But what if something dangerous does find them? Peter's just a rat after all, and that's not a very reassuring source of protection. Whatever might come could just as easily tear him to pieces as well…"
It occurred to James that it was almost ironically inconvenient that the marauder who would have been best suited to find a lost werewolf in the dark was lying unconscious with only a rat-boy for company. All James could do was run, run, run, which was useless considering the wolf could have very well changed directions by now and Prongs would have no way of knowing. James wanted to stop running, irritated by how futile this was, and he was by now desperate to make sure that Peter and Sirius were safe. But he was a stag at the moment, and the instinctive stag mind that was currently in control of his body was determined to keep running. In an instant, in order to avoid further arguments with his stag-self, he was a boy again. The now human James turned on his heels, sprinting back to where he had left his friends only moments before.
&&&
Peter hated being a rat.
In essence, being any sort of animal at all when he was really just supposed to be a boy was quite exciting, especially considering the fact that it was illegal and he had been able to figure out how to do it mostly on his own. The only irritating part of the transformation was the fact that he, by some strange twist of fate, was meant to be nothing more than a stupid, fat rodent. It sounded so horribly unimpressive when he could think of at least a million other useful animals he could have become, but he was unfortunately stuck as a veritably useless rat. It was nowhere near as impressive as he would have liked, and nowhere near as awe-inspiring and brilliant as it would have been to be anything else; anything else like say, a stag or a dog.
Peter hated going on romps in the moonlight with Remus every month. He could never really do anything while he was with them. All he was there for was to stop the stupid tree from attacking them, and quite frankly Peter imagined that James and Sirius probably could have managed that task without him anyway. All they needed was good reflexes and a particularly long stick. Once they had made it into the shack and had set Remus loose, Peter had to be sure to stay out of the way. He couldn't exactly wrestle like Remus and Sirius, or race through the trees like James and Sirius with Remus oftentimes chasing behind. Playing with a wolf or a dog would most likely result in him getting accidentally eaten, and hanging too close to Prongs put him at risk of being stepped on. So unfortunately, Peter was stuck just being there, tagging along as always, watching the fun but uninvolved unless the others needed someone to play look out or tap a knot on a tree.
Still, Peter would never breathe a word of these feelings to his friends. It was much better pretending as if he belonged with them than to mention that he considered himself the odd man out. His friends didn't really mean to exclude him, Peter reasoned. The other boys did count him as one them, but the fact of the matter was that when it came down to it he wasn't exactly Marauder material unless one of the other three coaxed it out of him. It was also much better to stick around than to go off on his own, and being known as "that small, chubby bloke who follows Lupin, Black and Potter around" was much better than being anonymous or known as "that poor fat boy with no friends." Perhaps someday he could prove to his friends that he was more than just a tag along. Perhaps one day, when the opportunity presented itself, he would actually do something that would change the world.
Tonight Peter, as a rat, felt even more insignificant. He could do nothing but watch as Remus proceeded to toss Sirius around, and he could do nothing but gape in awe as James heroically frightened Remus away from Sirius, who had somehow ended up human again. The scene was enough to give Peter nightmares for months, and he had to constantly try and suppress his primary rat instinct to run, far, far away from the two potential predators that seemed ready to attack. Only when James chased after Remus did Peter's rat-self finally seemed to calm down, and he was able to relax, secure in the knowledge that his rat body wasn't going to be writhing in fear. His first human thought was annoyance at being once again left behind, though as he scurried forward to follow after James he remembered that someone had to sit and watch over Sirius. Once again, James was off being the hero while Peter was forced by obligation to stay behind.
Once human, Peter's resentment disappeared as he caught sight of what Remus had really done to Sirius.
Sirius's head had fallen back at an odd angle, and his forehead was pallid, stained with deep crimson blood that had partially begun to clot. He was still bleeding significantly from a deep gash on his forehead, though it was hard to tell just how much blood he was losing because his hair, sweaty and matted, had begun to stick to the wound. The droplets of blood bent and slid down his temples, no doubt pooling somewhere in his hair towards the back of his head.
He was bleeding from his neck too, no doubt from the puncture wounds Remus had made when he had used his teeth to fling him around. The bleeding here was much easier to identify and, judging by the location of the bites and the frequency at which the blood was dripping from the wounds, Peter was pretty sure that it could be fatally serious. Weren't there some major arteries right around that point on your neck? Peter wasn't positive, but he hoped for Sirius's sake that Remus had managed to miss them.
It took Peter several seconds to take it all in. Once he had, he did the only thing that befit the situation: he screamed.
Peter immediately descended into a state of panic, and his body was suddenly overflowing with endless, frantic energy. Once he'd finished screaming, Peter's next course of action was to begin waving his hands frantically, clapping them together and chaotically twitching as if he was having some sort of conscious, standing-up seizure. He began mumbling incoherently to himself, his panicked ramblings spoken too rapidly to be understood, while he stuttered, breathing erratically. He collapsed to the ground, a perfect victim to shock, and he fidgeted while rocking back and forth.
"This can't be possible", he began, muttering wildly to himself. "I knew th-this was a b-baddd idea, I knew it was going to be dangerous and we shouldn't have come out here in the first place, and Remus is d-d-dangerouss and unpredictable and ohdearMerlin is he alive? He must be or he wouldn't be bleeding and ohfuckinghellwhereis James? James James James James help!" He continued to rock frantically, his chest starting to constrict as he realized he was about to start wailing. His breathing grew shallow and he began making loud, alarmed noises in the back of his throat. "Ohhell-ohfuckingohfuckinghell what if he comes back and James isn't here? I'm just a fucking rat and Ohhhhhh!" His helplessness caused him to lose all control and in that instant he began wailing, screaming and sobbing, his eyes welling up with burning tears of hopelessness and despair.
James would come back, and James would make this all better. James wasn't a coward like Peter was.
&&&
A noise suddenly reached James's ears. In the distance, someone was wailing.
James willed his Quidditch-toned body to move faster. His legs ached, and he was so exhausted from sprinting that every breath he took caused him to shake, his lungs expanding to greedily take in oxygen that was somehow never enough to satisfactorily keep him going. His extremities were numb, which gave him the feeling of painfully gliding a few feet above the ground, though his mind was too preoccupied calculating all possible scenarios that could have resulted in someone wailing. Morbidly, death was the first thing that he came up with. James forced himself to stop thinking about of the possibility of returning to find Peter wailing over a newly-dead Sirius. Instead, he concentrated on willing his body to continue, his anxiety serving as an adrenaline rush
If Sirius dies, James thought suddenly, then it would really have been Remus who had—
James cursed, begging his subconscious to remain silent. He hoped that all of his thoughts were needless and that he would return to find a completely-alive-if-not-a-little-scratched-up Sirius.
Sirius was still alive, but he was more than a little scratched up.
"James!" Peter squealed, scrambling forward on his knees. He seized hold of James's leg suddenly, sobbing into it and shaking, apparently hoping that James could give him some support.
James made no sign that he had even noticed Peter. His eyes were glued to Sirius's mangled body. He didn't move. He could barely breathe.
"James!" Peter implored, "James, look at him. He'll be al-alllright won't he? Won't-he, James?"
James was quiet. His face was set, and his body had gone rigid.
"James," Peter continued, his voice cracking deliriously, "Look at how red his blood is! Do you think its extra-red because of how pure he is?"
James wanted nothing more than to slap Peter hard in the face. He wanted to shake him violently and scream at him, telling him to shut his fucking mouth before James was forced to silence Peter himself. But James did none of those things. Peter was obviously distraught and delirious, and James had no right to scream at him for that. Besides, James doubted he was even capable of movement or speech at this point.
"James," Peter began again, the hysteria in his voice slowly subsiding. "James, where is Remus?"
"I couldn't find him." His own words seemed meaningless and echoed hollowly in his own ears.
"James," Peter added quietly, "James you do realize Remus was the one who did this?"
Of course he realized it.
He just refused to believe that it was possible.
