Author's Note: Thanks always to the people who reviewed Part One when I had it up, and I'm really, really sorry for the delay in this sequel. And also, another thank you to Amity (I just knew that was you, I saw you on the favorites list of I know the Truth Now, and your profile just fit perfect with the way you articulate), whose feedback goes aboe and beyond helpful into extraordinary. I hope you enjoy.
More In French
English possesses a single, all-encompassing verb concerning knowledge for everyday usage—in its infinitive form, it is to know. French, however, acknowledges that there are two distinct ways of knowing, based upon what it is that is being known. The first verb in its infinitive is savoir: to know a fact. For example, savoir would be used in the case of knowing that two times two is always four in base-ten mathematics. Things we know with savoir are irrefutable, provable trivia—they are not subjective. It is folly to use savoir when we describe our knowledge of another human being.
Part Three
Tick-tock.
It's rather amazing to watch even the most war-wearied of men deal with the miracle of birth for the first time. For James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter, all of whom were twenty-one, trapped in a bland room together with only the infuriating tick-tock of the wooden wall clock to assuage their (and particularly James's) incalculable fears, it was torture—and, for the Healer who sometimes poked a head in with news of progress for the panicking father-to-be, it was downright hilarity.
James Potter had not sat down once during the twelve hour, fourteen minute, and twenty-seven second labor. He was nearly as haggard as Remus after a full moon, which indeed it was, robes drifting over his pajamas which he hadn't bothered to change out of when Lily's water had broken the night before—it was a thankful thing Sirius had been sleeping on the couch that night so assure his even wearing shoes. Up and down the room he traveled, pacing from one end to another, an animal in a cage, sometimes mumbling to himself; outside the dawn was rosy and pearlescent, the last day of July. He'd been praying, in whispers that somehow sounded sacred, that Harry would be a day late. Or that he might receive a Lizzy instead—anything to beat the prophesy. His blood boiled with shame at the thought. It shouldn't matter, when his child was born, or whether it was a boy or girl. But it did.
The other Marauders had never seen their best friend like this before; he smelled of cold dampness, sheets stained by sweat spiked with alcohol, the floor was off-kilter, the world was wrong. He smelled of fear. The grass had been poisoned with valerian, lemon tea musty in the dark; he had a secret. The Marauders didn't have secrets—it's what made them special at Hogwarts and in the Order. They were a world within worlds, a group that could not be divided down again into separate parts—an atom. Electrons spinning agitatedly, happily, irrevocably, around a nucleus, bonded together by forces they did not know or understand.
Remus watched James attentively, himself in a chair, deep shadows under his eyes, already feeling ten years older, a great deep gash across his face from his and Sirius's last run-in with Death Eaters. The full moon had come and gone like clockwork, a few days ago. Still, despite the panic of the Lily's labor, the scramble to St. Mungo's, he was the only one who had begun to calm down and grow content, far too tired to pace with James's voracity. Light tinted the windows—the sun gave its hints, shining somewhere just over the next horizon. It knew. Someone was coming into the world; how could not every person be awake right now, anticipating? Their waiting seemed to fill up the universe.
They were an atom—and a neutron was being introduced. One neutron, named fear, and they absorbed it, slightly heavier, slightly burdened, but stable.
Tick-tock.
Sirius stood again, going for what must have been his twentieth cup of tea. His hand was shaking as he pounded James's shoulder as he passed, the ghost of his rakish, doggish grin flitting about his handsome face. The caffeine was getting to him—the whole room must have heard his heart beat sounding out something like the Chicken Dance. The very thought of Sirius's ventricles suddenly flapping like hen wings made Remus smile unabatedly. He felt a fool—James was obviously suffering, the four of them hadn't spoken in hours, Peter looked positively green in the face, and Sirius appeared as though, despite his insanely loyal disposition towards James, this childbirth dilemma might send him screaming from the room any second toward his motorbike, bachelor flat, and records.
"I hate this," Sirius said abruptly as he sat down with his tea, sipping it obsessively, eyes bloodshot, his foot tapping (Remus again thought of the Chicken Dance, and wondered if he were going slightly insane). "At least Death Eaters wouldn't toy with us for twelve hours—they'd've gotten the whole messy thing out of the way a lot sooner. The waiting's murder…"
Remus smiled. "Men have been waiting for women to give birth since… well, the dawn of man. I'm sure we can manage."
James had begun to breathe rapidly in and out of his mouth. "What if… what if she's in danger? What if there's something they haven't thought about? What if the baby's stillborn, or… or he shows up…"
Sirius grabbed a paper bag, near at hand from an episode similar to this one only a few hours previous. "Prongs, mate, you're hyperventilating…"
The breathing grew worse; James's eyes flashed. "I'm not hyperventilating!" Part of this, however, was spoken from inside the bag, as Sirius had shoved it over his face.
"Breathe in and out slowly, you great git," Sirius said threateningly, though he sounded as though he might laugh. "Lily's the one giving birth, not you. And you!" he said, whirling on Remus. "No more history lessons, Moony. Just because men've been trapped in waiting rooms for ages doesn't make it any easier on the four of us, now does it?"
Remus just smiled; after bringing himself under control, James took the bag off his face.
"I'm sorry… I don't mean to panic… I've never been so… in my life… when she said she was having contractions, and right after the Prewetts, too, with Death Eaters everywhere… It's like I've been stretched out like a rubber band… I've never been so… so…"
"Bloody scared?" Sirius finished for him, grinning wryly as he ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah… especially with Lily screaming and threatening us the whole way…"
"Well, if you two hadn't panicked," Remus reminded, filling in for Lily's absent voice.
"Shut up, Moony," James and Sirius said at the same time; Remus snickered softly.
At long last, the door opened; Peter didn't make it any further, though—the moment the click sounded throughout the waiting room, he was on his feet, the shade of wintergreen toothpaste, dashing for the nearest bathroom, hands over his mouth.
"Can't say I wasn't waiting for that," Sirius said, looking after him; James ran toward the Healer who came in, his face a mixture of mingled panicked delirium and eagerness.
"What—Lily—okay?"
Something wonderfully sharp came up off his skin—part of him, and part of Remus and Sirius, already knew the answer from her face—it peaked in the center of their stomachs, fluttered against their ribcages. The light outside was persistent, red, yellow and gold, tangerine orange, the image through melting caramel. For a moment they forgot fear again, forgot it as though they had never even heard the word.
"You have a perfectly healthy son, Mr. Potter, and your wife is just fine—though she's already telling us she's ready to get out of bed, and I'm afraid some of the Healers are rather amazed…" The old Healer beamed, unable to restrain it. "She instructed his name is to be—"
"Harry," James said, his face suddenly blank, wavering on his feet. "I have a… I have a son…"
"Get the bag, Padfoot," Remus said, now on his feet and grasping James's shoulders, a wide grin on his face.
"Forget the bag," Sirius said, chuckling. "He's gonna pass out."
James blinked and shook them off, squaring his shoulders. "No taking the mickey out of me today, you two. I'm a father now."
Sirius and Remus roared. A balloon was swelling in the room—it made them suddenly breathless, lifting up off the ground—indeed it must consume the world—James's eyes glowed, and there was triumph there, burning bright and eternal, no power could extinguish it—and they were there with him at its center, transported with the smells of newly-hewn grass, with strong lemon tea and soothing steam, with morning dew drops—meeting on the pitch early on Saturdays when they'd been seventeen melded suddenly with James at his desk, the tousle of his hair after coming victorious out of battle with a dementor, the toss of his head and the twinkle in his hazel eyes: Everything's gonna be just fine.
Without knowing it, the men had fallen into reverent silence.
The Healer smiled. "You'll be able to see both of them shortly, Mr. Potter, and congratulations." Something sad lingered in her eyes. "It's good to see some life and some love and laughter in times like these."
She left; the silence deepened.
Tick-tock.
They were an atom, and another neutron intruded upon their nucleus, named reality. And somewhere in the great, vast space between worlds, lay neutrons traveling at vast speeds: sorrow, and loss, and suspicion, and survival. Instinct knows of these neutrons and braces for the impact, but the mind refuses to understand until it's far too late.
Boom; worlds can end with a neutron.
Part Four
I look in the mirror, see your face
If I look deep enough
So many things inside that are dressed like you
Are taking over…
Perhaps I should explain, as I sit here now beside the hearth, why it is that I love the smell of chocolate. It's a story, in part, that I'll tell anyone. Chocolate is the natural remedy for a dementor attack, because nearly every human being associates the taste and the texture, its very melt, the difference between the warm sweet on the tip of your tongue and the smoothness of a small flat slab on the back, with childhood, and with happiness. It's a constant of the human condition—a part of a collective unconscious. We all try chocolate at different points in our life and in different ways, and we don't all remember when, and certainly some people are even slightly allergic, or their Uncle Martin vomited chocolate over their front when they were seven, or they dreamed when they were five that chocolate bees were chasing them until they dove into a creek of marshmallow—and certainly none of these things can be good. And still, chocolate cures dementor attacks of a mild nature for everybody. There are private connotations and meanings, and there are communal ones.
Shortly before going to Hogwarts, I had an unfortunate run-in with a dementor looking for a mate; and I assure you, if you think dementors are terrifying in their normal state, imagine them breeding. In any case, I'm half-Muggle and I happened to have a Mars Bar and the happened-by partial knowledge from overhearing my father that chocolate saves one from dementor attacks—as the great floating horror came at me, I held the chocolate out in front of me like a talisman. I believed so strongly that the thing would protect me that I wasn't at all surprised when the shrieking, in-heat shadow whirled and floated off in another direction. Looking back, I laugh at how ridiculous I must have been, holding out my magic Mars Bar as though it were the Holy Grail or the Spear of Longinus, when I know now that dementors looking for mates are often confused, easily frightened or disoriented, unable to attack. Still, sometimes when I lie awake and alone, longing for the sound of someone else's breathing swelling in the dark, I remember my talisman, I remember how good that Mars Bar tasted because in the silky richness of milk and sugar, the tang of salt, that indefinable childhood glory, I sensed victory, and I believed it, too, with all my heart. I hadn't been victorious over the werewolf—but nothing got my soul.
It is not ironic at all, then, that Harry smells of chocolate.
I told him this story, just here beside the hearth, one night after dinner, before our discussions reopened on the subject of Golding—omitting moral, of course, because that's his to work out.
Harry thought for a moment, fire flickering as it reflected off his glasses—I could smell the scent of the outside grass and the dust from inside lifting off his jean leg as the flames heated him—from his skin, the scent of electricity: his cells buzzed with static whirring in busy electron chains, undergoing quick-paced mitosis, accelerating cell growth to make his limbs extend, and the counter-current of heat generated in the processes, the cooling efforts made rapidly by sebaceous and sweat glands releasing metamorphosing pheromones, the tawny scent of proteins and the natural, fatty and soapy scent of steroids and lipids supplied to his muscles almost snapped my senses—teenagers have too many hormones. Somehow, though, when I dulled my focus and let the wave pass over me, it always came together, unmistakably chocolate, and just below it the sunny smell of orange, and sharp, fresh smell of peppermint so tangible I could taste the humbug rolling about in my mouth.
"That's kinda scary,' Harry mused. " I never really thought about dementors breeding. I mean, first off, what would you call a baby dementor? And do mother dementors have to take them around and teach them how to suck the happiness out of people like lionesses have to teach the cubs to hunt? And are they like black widows, because I sure can't see a dementor mating for life, that'd be kinda weird…"
He'd stopped being so self-conscious; by this time he had me laughing outright. One more reason to love my story about chocolate, I suppose—or to love chocolate itself. It felt good to smile as I do with him, but I, of course, know that he will not always be this way—that his eyes will dull forever, that he'll grow jaded and bitter and cynical, that the death will stick in his pores and scrubbing him with new grass will stop working, that the taste of chocolate will stop bringing up memories. I wanted to ask him when he'd first tasted chocolate—it seems an important thing to know about someone.
"I noticed you'd started A Separate Peace, so I assume you're ready to talk about your conclusions on Lord of the Flies, Harry?"
He looked exasperated, though not with me; he seemed to plead with the fire for help. "Conclusions? There are no conclusions for something like that."
I cocked my head; Harry has seen death, he knows very well there are conclusions. There are no second chances—there is only the ever-moving bullet train to Hell, the pull to death, the world's obsession with coming to room temperature, with the fight against the fire which consumes us in the greatest glory before burning out. Nothing rekindles it. It must be kept burning, small and guarded, at the center of a great galaxy of darkness: a candle in an abandoned house wrecked and haunted not by ghosts but by laughter.
"Really? What makes you say that?" My scholar's voice again.
"Ralph got away from the island, but that doesn't erase the fact that Piggy's dead and Jack betrayed him and they all turned against him and hunted him… Just because they're going back to civilization again doesn't undo everything that happened. They'll probably have to stay together, right? Who's to say they won't still try to kill him?"
"Why would they want to do that?" I asked, resisting the urge to smile.
"Well…" Harry paused, seeming to weigh what he was about to say. "You can take the boy out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the boy."
I sensed an edge to his words and in the keen way he allowed his gaze to linger in my eyes, reversing us for a moment—just then, it was he who irritatingly knew all and refused to tell, causing my heart to pause before adrenaline surged out, egged on energetically by a very pleased wolf down in my chest, pumping heat behind my eyes and fingertips; in my ears was a womb-like warm rushing sound, blood pumping through my brain tissues, a static sweep, crackling hairs. I swallowed, clammy sweat on my temple, coldness at the base of my spine and creeping upward, the rushing slowed—Harry continued to watch me, knowing full-well the power he'd held in that second, flirting with an idea. He'd acted as a moon, as a howl, as a high-frequency pitch, as the overpowering scent of a kill; he'd been inducing me to transform, standing as a light through shattered church windows, a broken gold cross, shafts of light which can be felt but never held, a truth sensed but not known, lingering at the edge of my lips, bliss punctuated by pain unimaginable, flight with a broken wing, a run through lonely forests. There is an ever-present gap between conception and action—between what should and what can be—between a move just not taken and surrender to a dream—between waiting and understanding; and it seems you've been existing your whole life just to comprehend that one truth though you've never been aware of it, and you wonder how in hell you were ever happy before, a wolf's howl transmutes seamlessly… Hallelujah…
I took a breath: chocolate.
Green eyes and flames, a warm hearth, skin like pearls—the scent of grass and citrus—these things in my present world longing to mold to one of the past, a place dimming; I see there in my mind's eye the ghost images of Lily and James dancing at their wedding, eternal behind a haze of time, yet how I feel time I do not know, except in the vision of that music box couple, twirling about to tinkling, unreal music which slows, slows… slows… until I wind it up again, but there's the protestation of the gears, the quiet creak, a world of dust moats and shafts of light on fading photos, and no way to recapture it or freshen it but with laughter as I remember my stupidity, the sting of embarrassments, joking reminders, ever the past reformulated, re-imprinted on the present in odd strings of clinging connection. I have traveled a thousand miles since then, without moving very far at all.
"You're supposing too much," I said, trying to correct him. "Remember: think of them as symbols. What does Ralph represent on that island."
Harry thought. "Well, he's certainly the only sane one in the end." I raised an eyebrow to prompt him further. "I'd say leadership, but he'd make a better leader somewhere where people actually want to be diplomatic and sensible." He blinked as I cleared my throat. "Good sense?"
I smiled. "And Jack?"
Harry thought; he knows characters like Jack. "Not evil, I'll keep that one for Roger. I'd say fear and savagery, he's pretty loony."
I nodded. "Cheers, Harry. You see the conflict? They're both educated in the same fashion, but when faced with the exact same dangers on the same island, Jack and Ralph have entirely different views on how to do things but the same basic motivations."
"Safety," Harry said, something clicking behind his eyes. "They waged war against each other, because they couldn't agree. The monster was different for both of them."
To say the least.
He continued, now gazing into the fire, some odd excitement trickling toward me, pushing outward in the air around him. "They were just afraid—it made Jack crazy when he was out in the forest by himself—he wanted the others with him, he couldn't get Ralph to understand what it was he felt out there, and Ralph was scared of foregtting civilization and everyone losing their better judgment and they just… collided."
"Precisely," I said in my scholar's voice; at the base of my neck, however, was a faint disruption, a feeling of unease. Collision is something I understand.
Thump.
In the darkness that night I heard it—the sound of a final heartbeat—I slipped into wakefulness expecting to see Peter's face again disappearing behind the Veil, falling forever Sirius, fear and a dauntless grin respectively, both realizing the burn of mortality. A spark and extinguish.
What I saw instead, with bleary night vision, was Harry's wild head pop up beside the couch, gazing around confusedly. He'd fallen off, and the floor had most likely not been particularly kind.
"Professor Lupin? Are you alright?" he asked, lacking my ability to see in the near-perfect dark; a note of panic lay in his voice, and I sat up directly, alarm flooding me. I seldom hear him scared—as it did with James, Harry's fear unnerves me and throws the world off-balance; I could smell it, the chemical bite of salt and ammonia—cold sweat, and it glistened in the starlight flooding the window, though he could barely see it, a sheen of white. He was ghostly pale—his eyes had grown wide, the waxing moon revealed an otherworld green tinged with blue, something seen in dead things under the water's surface, a mist of spider webs. Harry's head fell; a strange, hissing sound escaped him, mutterings in Parseltongue, and I purposefully carried myself, faster than I thought possible after just waking up, to a kneeling position beside him.
"Harry—it's okay, Harry, I'm right here, I haven't gone anywhere, everything's alright."
He shook his head violently, a manic gleam in his eye. "No—someone was after you, someone was trying to kill you, the snake knew where you were—"
A stab went through me at the panic in his voice, the way his stare looked but didn't see at all what was in front of him—I was a ghost, he could not let me be a ghost and then disappear from my grasp, that I wouldn't allow. I shook him by the shoulders.
"Harry, this is exactly what happened to Sirius, you're letting your fear of losing someone cloud your better—" I stopped short, realizing I hadn't quite said what I'd meant to say… and realizing I wasn't sure what exactly I meant to say, either. Where had the fear been, and when?
It never occurred to me before, all these years having gone by, that Sirius had been afraid during the first war. He seemed incapable and yet… Peter once thought the same of all of us: James, Sirius, Lily, myself. And while he often hid it well, James was terrified of losing us, and of losing his family—and I know I couldn't bear the thought of losing them either. Even after his death, it's still easy for Harry and I to believe he'll simply come up the walk someday, shaking his hair out of his eyes, triumphant again. I suppose that's the Marauders' real triumph—even after death, they remain immortal, seventeen, almost palpable, just on the edge of your sight and your touch, lingering in the shadows yet still wholly powerful. Light that cannot be grasped.
I had his attention, though. "You… you do think I killed him, don't you?" he asked, sounding suddenly perceptive.
I looked away, avoiding the question—how to explain to Harry that he didn't kill Sirius—that the beast of war did: the Lord of the Flies, the demon on a stick that laughs and laughs at our boundless stupidity and arrogance, the hungry mass of putrid flesh and maggots, the endless wall of names, the unquenchable thirst, the unassailable fortress, the bottomless, boundless void, the hill upon hill upon fucking, fucking hill of markers. Bottomless, no echo. The demon of worthless fear and wasted, paranoid effort in late-night hours, working away toward death.
"Harry, are you afraid?" I asked, unaware I'd taken his arm, longing to be reassured as I sought to reassure him. My voice sounded stronger than I felt.
I heard him take a breath in the dark, the rush of hair as it moved in on a base curve toward him, creating a slight intake, and the expanding as he let it out.
"No… no, it's just a nightmare… You're here, it's not real."
Good boy.
These fifteen years, I have been close to nobody—I have shunned human contact as they've shunned me, and shunned wolves with equal disdain. The feeling of another heartbeat so close against mine has grown foreign and distant, a whisper from another time. I have lived dormant, inhuman but not savage—it is the belief of many African tribes that one's humanity is defined by belonging, by the nearness of others, and not by individuality or knowledge. I wanted to wrap him up in myself, to fight off the deep, empty dark with beating wings, to nurture a spark selfishly in the center of spatial wilderness. But I hadn't the courage—I hadn't the words—I hadn't the ability to communicate a feeling so deeply inlaid in what it is to be myself and to be the wolf and to be Remus Lupin and Professor Lupin and Moony and to be a man—
And in the dark he surprised me, my ghost and shadow and pup and sparkling eyes in firelight, in the center of the wilderness, in that gap between what is and what should be, creeping in under the walls to beneath the blankets, and I surprised myself as I wrapped an arm around him, as a pocket of warmth formed between us, as a tendril of some memory—some impression of light off water and sunset streams and warm rock and the scent of mud and milk and lemon tea and violets—set in, and yet still it all combined back together into one consuming, wondrous scent.
Chocolate is a wonderful cure for fear.
