Written for the QLFC, Season 4, Round 9.
Title: Put your Behind in your Past
Team: Wigtown Wanderers
Position: Chaser 2
Position Prompt: Lion King ('Hey, Timon. It's just a little lion. Look at him. He's so cute, and all alone! Can we keep him?'/'Pumbaa, are you nuts?!')
Optional Prompts:
2. (word) clumsy
7. (word) clandestine
11. (restriction) exactly three characters must feature
Word Count: 2,450
Beta(s): CrazyRopeDragon, CUtopia, DinoDina, NeonDomino, Firefly81 (Thankyou!)
The tunnel was cool and damp. The only light shining in came from a small crack in the trapdoor, which led into the house above. There was one other mode of escape possible, and it was a mile of clambering behind them. Sirius and James squinted at their ankle-level view of the mysterious dwelling. Their roommate, Remus Lupin, was lying just within sight in the early morning sun. They could see his sandy hair and one freckled shoulder blade, its outline carved by a deep, bleeding laceration.
"We have to tell someone, Sirius. We can't live with a werewolf; it's not safe." James's glasses were askew, and he was holding the timber slab open with one brown finger as if he might somehow catch lycanthropy from the fixtures.
"He's only a little werewolf." Sirius hated to admit it, but he had similar concerns. How many times had he grabbed a half eaten morsel out of Remus's hand and finished it? Was he at risk?
"Hold on." James pushed the door open a little wider now, alarmed, forgetting his one finger precaution. "Can you tell if he's breathing?" The two boys squinted pointlessly as if that might improve their vision. Sirius didn't need to respond. They both realised the answer at once. Remus was bleeding, pale, and so small.
They scrambled noisily out of the hole, into the shack, and over to their friend. Neither of them dared to touch him. They became utterly still, listening.
There was a soft rattling in Remus's throat as he took each wet breath.
"He's still alive," Sirius said.
"Eww," James replied. Sirius looked up and saw that he had slipped a little in the pool of blood gathered at Remus's back. They grimaced at James's blood-stained hand. James looked terrified, and he rubbed the offending appendage vigorously on his robes.
"Do you have any open wounds on your hand, you clumsy bugger?" Sirius demanded. "Do you think you're infected?!"
"I don't know." James stood, the whites of his eyes in high contrast with his black skin as they widened behind his glasses. They were both already shaken from catching the tail-end of Remus's transformation from wolf to boy. "We gotta get out of here; it's not safe."
Sirius agreed. What if James became a werewolf too? He wouldn't have anyone except Peter. He pushed himself onto his knees and was about to stand when he spared another glance for Remus. Remus the swot. Remus the Gryffindor. Remus the werewolf.
"He'll be all alone."
"Well, sometimes when we have contagious life-altering illnesses, we have to be left alone. Like now. Muggles call it quarrying, let's go."
"He's our friend."
"Friends don't eat their friends. Sirius, are you mental?" Sirius sank slowly back to the floor.
"So as his friends we have nothing to worry about." Sirius pulled off his robe and draped it over the werewolf. "He's never tried to eat us. Do you think he'd eat my mother for me?"
"We are not keeping a man-eating, dark creature with near-human intelligence as a pet," James said. He then turned away, using the edge of his cloak to wipe away the last of Remus's blood carefully. "Come on!"
"He's not our enemy," Sirius grumbled. James stopped and ran his uncontaminated hand through his black hair. "He's top of the class," Sirius pointed out, as if that might somehow cure his lycanthropy.
"I know, but he's…" James struggled to describe what exactly Remus was. Then he gave up and said: "Do you think we could ask him to finish Snivellus off?"
Sirius snorted. For a moment Remus's gurgling breaths were all they heard.
"We won't turn him in?" Sirius asked. He meant it to sound like a statement, but it came out as a question. They shared a look. They should turn him in.
"I can't."
"We can't," Sirius agreed, feeling flooded with relief. It was clearly a weight off of James's shoulders as well.
"Right, grab your cloak and let's go." Sirius felt bad for taking his cloak back off of Remus. If he could hardly bring himself to leave his friend a little cold, how could he face turning him in?
Remus was not due to return from his 'grandmother's funeral' until the following morning. Sirius and James waited in the dormitory for him.
When the door eventually opened Remus looked pale and downcast.
"Sorry for your loss. Your poor mum and dad," said James. Remus only nodded meekly in response. He walked past Sirius and placed a small suitcase on his bed. He didn't open it to unpack.
"Losing five parents between them in the space of two years can't have been easy," Sirius added.
"It must seem unusual to you two. Purebloods aren't big on divorce are they?" Remus replied smoothly. Of course, Remus's fictional step-grandmother had pretend kicked the bucket.
"Did Mrs. Lupin send you back to us with any treats?" James asked, eyeing the show-suitcase. Remus snickered hoarsely and it was nearly lost in a pained cough. His shoulder must have still been in bits.
"I knew you two weren't waiting up here just to express your condolences." He tossed the suitcase at James, and Sirius was surprised to hear it hit James's chest with a weighty thunk. "Help yourself," Remus told him and sat carefully on his bed. James put it on his desk and clicked the latch. Worn formal robes and some chocolate biscuits were carefully packed inside.
Sirius and James looked at each other, struck by the lengths Remus had gone to keep his secret. Remus was watching them carefully. None of them moved.
"What were you expecting?" he asked blithely, "Scones?"
"We thought it would be empty," Sirius replied. He and James hadn't quite decided how to confront Remus but this seemed a fine place to start.
"Well, it's not," Remus said, furrowing his brow and making a show of being confused. James continued to stare at Sirius uselessly. There was a telling pause.
"What happened?" Sirius asked eventually, because he couldn't stand the slight clicking he could still hear when Remus breathed. The mild wet breath of his damaged lungs.
"I don't want to talk about it." Remus toed off his shoes. He had arrived in a shirt and slacks; an outfit that could be construed as part of his uniform or as an outfit from home.
"Good. We don't want to hear about it," James announced as if that settled it. He then allowed himself to become very distracted by the biscuits Remus had handed him. Sirius would've elbowed him if he was within range. He was not helping.
"Can we do anything?" Remus knew something was wrong, but he was not about to give the game away.
"What do you mean? You can't bring her back to life." Because she never existed.
"You don't seem well."
"Is that what this is about? You two are being unnaturally quiet. I'm fine, I'm just.." A werewolf. "Grieving."
"He's probably been keeping this secret for as long as we've known him. He's not going to admit the truth unless we confront him properly," James said. Sirius tapped his Beater bat against the leg of the bench morosely. They had just finished Quidditch training, and they had dawdled in the changing room so they could discuss what to do about Remus. James was halfway into his uniform, but Sirius had hardly budged.
"He thinks we suspect him," Sirius pointed out, the tap of his bat echoing around the empty rooms.
"We do."
"If we tell him we know he might just run away incase we try and lynch him." They grimaced.
"What if he eats us so that we can't out him?" James asked.
"Or bites us?" Sirius added, in a tone that suggested he felt this scenario was better than most.
"Maybe if we let him bite us he'd stay," James muttered.
"I still can't believe he's the same creature we've read about in class. Last night he spent three hours talking Peter through his Potions essay."
"If he's trying to lull us into a false sense of security, consider me lulled."
"He sure can lie though," Sirius said. James eyed the ever-tapping bat with irritation.
"I just wish it had been someone terrible up in that shack."
"Like Snape."
"Or Malfoy."
"Or Filch."
"Or your Ma."
"Yeah."
But it had been Remus.
The atmosphere in the dormitory had been bizarre since the full moon. Sirius and James tried to pretend they hadn't seen what they had, but it was all they wanted to talk about. It was all either of them could think about.
They continued to have clandestine conversations whenever they had an opportunity, as if enough talking could actually bring about a solution.
Remus sat on his bed, writing neatly on a roll of parchment. Sirius was tapping his leg on the base of his trunk where he sat pretending to read a magazine and occasionally glowering at James. James was fiddling with the wireless, aimlessly switching from one channel to the next: "Dragonhide. The only gloves you'll ever… but a goblin never stole my heeeart, oooh a gob… another generous donation was made today by… fire retardant, and stylish…"
Remus cleared his throat, and both boys froze like they'd been charmed. When it became clear he wasn't going to say anything, their fidgeting resumed. To his credit, Remus seemed unruffled by their hyper-awareness. James lowered the volume slightly and asked:
"What's the worst thing you've ever done?" Sirius paused in tapping his foot and stared at his best friend.
"With my upbringing? It's hard to say. Do you think just being there while people do horrible things makes you responsible?"
"I dunno."
"I guess that time with Andromeda." When Sirius's father made him send her a letter saying he was alone in the house so that they could confront her. "I shouldn't have helped them get to her."
"She didn't come though," Remus chimed in, his quill hovered over the scroll. She had. Remus obviously remembered Sirius's original creative retelling.
"She could have," Sirius replied cagily. "They could've done something really awful to her." They had.
"Like what?" James asked. Sirius felt like there was a pressure on the back of his neck. What was James angling at?
"Something unforgivable," Sirius answered, talking around the lump in his throat. His mouth felt numb.
"Sirius?" Remus said, sitting up a little straighter. "We wouldn't blame you, you know? We know you wouldn't hurt Andromeda on purpose." Sirius snorted quietly to himself.
"Mate…" James trailed off, evidently pulling a confession from Sirius was not what he intended.
"Am I that transparent?" Sirius asked. The damage was done.
"She did go then?"
"I just want to forget about it."
"Right," Remus seconded. "I know how you feel." Sirius understood then, understood what James had been trying to achieve.
"If there's nothing you can do about it just put it behind you," James said, trying to give Sirius a covert, meaningful look, and failing.
"But what if it was still going on?" Sirius said, and this caught Remus's attention. His concern overrode the hesitance that had built between them since his return from the shack, along with his suspicion at James's alarm bell of a poker face.
"Then you shouldn't have to deal with it alone," Remus said. The static buzz of the wireless was just audible. James switched it off. Remus waited for Sirius to confess to an ongoing issue that didn't exist. The other two boys tried to think of a way to make Remus understand that their friendship was greater than the sum of their faults.
"No, you shouldn't," James eventually spoke, taking the plunge. "People have flaws, you know? You got momentarily caught up in your family's deranged politics. I make everyone jealous with my beauty. Remus… uhm.." You could've heard a pin drop. James looked lost.
"Remus is a werewolf," Sirius finished for him, his tongue felt like lead.
"Right," James croaked. Remus gawped at them both, shaking his head.
"No, I'm not," Remus said. His lips were white.
James ran a miraculously steady hand through his chaotic hair.
"We saw you," James confessed. Before he could quite get the words out, Remus had already clambered off the bed and bolted for the door.
Sirius hesitated for a moment too long, but James must've been ready. In the time it took for James to grapple the other boy to the floor, Sirius had only just hopped off his trunk. He rushed past them to block the exit.
"Please, I'm sorry. I'm going, let me go!" his voice was choked, and he started to cough. He continued to struggle as if his life was at stake. Sirius realised with horror that he probably thought it was. He probably thought they had planned to corner him.
"Remus, stop, calm down. Come on." Remus just coughed.
"James, get off of him. He's still hurt." James was already standing up. He offered Remus a hand, but Remus rolled onto his stomach and launched himself at his desk where he'd left his wand. He turned, wand in hand, and faced his friends.
"Are you happy now?" he asked them. "You solved your little mystery. I'm a monster, you're heroes. Congratulations."
"You're still you though." Sirius had to fight to stop it sounding like a question. Remus frowned at him.
"I'm a werewolf."
"I'm a Black," Sirius said.
"You wish," James sniggered, caressing his own mahogany cheek proudly.
"This isn't a joke. You saw it... me. I could've killed you."
"You worry too much."
"Are you kidding?" Remus had his free hand wrapped around his ribs, as if he was holding himself together.
"No, I'm dead Sirius." James snorted.
"Don't start."
"Are you dead, Sirius? You look fine to me." Remus's mouth dropped open.
"James!" he warned, and coughed.
"If I'm alive it's a miracle. I've been living with a werewolf for years."
"Exactly! So just-" James spoke over their confused friend whose words were lost to a laboured breath.
"Oh, does he stay in your room on the full moon? The one night a month when he's dangerous."
"I would never-" Remus lowered his wand. He took his hand off of his ribs to distribute some of his weight on the desk beside him. He gripped it's edge carefully.
"No, but he eats everyone's chocolate."
"It's not everyone's chocolate! I buy it!"
"A true monster," James said as he closed the space between himself and Remus to help his friend into his chair. "He must be a good bloke for you to put up with all that."
"He is."
"I'm not."
"He is," James confirmed, and Remus looked at them one at a time. He smiled wearily at Sirius, who still stood at the door.
"I try to be," he croaked.
"Then forget the rest," James instructed.