Rating of R.
I do not own the characters, JKR does. I simply borrow them.
As a hired hit man, Sirius Black's newest target is a potential danger to the motives of the Death Eaters. The only information that is available to him is an age, gender, location, and the condition of werewolf. Werewolf narrows it down a fair bit, yet that's not going to help him when the location just happens to be an all werewolf school.
Major Alternate Universe alert and mild slash.
Coffee Stains
–
Although Sirius would never admit it to anyone, he was starting to like his profession as a self defense teacher. It was only his first day, but he was enjoying it much more than he thought he ever would.
The kids he was to teach really did know their stuff and they were proving to be a real challenge, forcing him to put all of his raw strength forward.
That was exactly what he was learning that they were, too.
Kids.
Kids with problems with parents and school and dating. Just the same as he had been at one time.
Not kids with blood down their chins and death on their breath.
What was more, they were warming up to him.
He wasn't a cruel professor and wasn't a push over. They were entirely surprised when he could pin them to the mat.
To the mat in a classroom that wasn't really even a classroom.
It was an over sized recreation room with two mounted basketball hoops and a closet of assorted sports balls in the back.
Sirius didn't mind, not really. He'd personally always done better in the practical lessons anyway.
"Alright, it's called a hook, I'll show you why," Sirius was saying to the group gathered around him with tight and quivering muscles, all ready to go.
He stopped in the middle of the demonstration as one of the twin doors leading into the gym opened and slammed closed. Sirius looked over the heads of his students around him toward the back of the gym. A boy sat next to the door, back against the wall one knee drawn up to his chest and the other out in front of him. His keen eyes watched the crowd with a sense of brooding impatience.
Sirius nudged the boy closest to him. The blond haired teen turned sharply and relaxed visibly when he become aware that he was not being attacked. Sirius nodded toward the boy at the back of the gym. The blond haired boy craned his neck and shook his head, prodded the boy next to him and whispered into his ear.
"Can I help you?" Sirius called, parting the group of students and moving to stand in front of them.
It took a moment for the boy to realize that Sirius was addressing him. He shook his head.
"No, I'm just here for pubs."
"Pubs?" Sirius asked, looking at he boys on either side of him for assistance. "What's pubs?"
They only snickered and shook their heads in response.
"What?"
"Pubs. This class. Self defense. Pointless. Utter. Bullshit. Pubs."
"Pubs," Sirius repeated lazily, starting toward the boy at the back.
"Yeah, that's right," he gained his feet as Sirius neared.
The rest of the class followed behind Sirius, giving cat calls. Sirius stopped about six feet in front of him.
"I say otherwise..."
"Lupin."
"Anything but pubs, Lupin," Sirius said quietly and lunged for the boy, meaning to show him just how useless self defense could be.
His hands met the wall when they were supposed to fist in Lupin's shirt. Sirius turned sharply, back against the wall so that he'd only have to defend one part of himself at a time. His fists balled, expecting an attack of some sort from any direction.
Instead, it wasn't an attack, but Lupin stood calmly behind him. He had his backpack slung across one shoulder.
Damn, he's fast, Sirius thought. He had enough time to grab his stuff, move, and turn while I could only turn around. Damn. He is fast.
A small smile graced the boy's lips as his eyes drifted down to Sirius' balled fists.
"I've no intention of fighting you, sir," he said a moment before the bell rang. "Right," his eyes flickered from the door and then back to Sirius. "I'll see you tomorrow for our next pubs lesson."
Sirius watched as he left out of the door with his backpack slung over one shoulder.
–
Breakfast, or any meal time for that matter, at Stonegate was a chaotic affair. The mess hall was set up as a large room with a number of round tables scattered around it in no apparent pattern. Each table was bolted to the floor, as were the six chairs that were clustered around them.
A mandatory addition that had been added in 1931 when a girl had been bashed over the head with a chair. Her skull had cracked down the middle and she stumbled blindly and alone, screaming in agony as the blood poured from her split skull. She was reported dead shortly after. Another reason why the all werewolf school now only housed boys. The co education at Stonegate Academy ceased shortly after this final strife in a long bout of gender related offenses.
The Ministry of Magic thought it mandatory that the chairs and tables in the entire building be bolted to the floor due to safety precautions after this particular incident.
The students were not pleased that they couldn't move the chairs at random. It always caused a massive dispute in the first week of term when the bolted chairs kept the self proclaimed packs from sitting with one another during meals. Groups that had more than six people were outraged that they couldn't sit together. A few times in the past a force of Aurors had been called in to subdue them. This was also the reason why only plastic forks and knives were used from then on.
Sirius tilted his own chair back. Well, tried to. He swore under his breath.
The bolted chairs were really something he could do without. He gritted his teeth together in annoyance and flipped open the small, pocket sized notebook in his hand. In it on the first page was a list of sixteen names.
All names of the eighteen-year-old boys in the school that he had obtained from the file room. He was lucky to teach all of them at one point during the day or another. So he'd have close contact with them and be able to narrow the list down in time. He flipped to the next page where he'd compiled anything and everything he knew about any of the suspected.
Like David Craw. Who he saw during the sixth period of the day. Short, blond, curly hair and brown eyes. Or like Remus Lupin.
Sirius scowled as his eyes went down the list to land on Lupin's name. The 'pubs' kid with the freckles on his arms. Long hair that needed a haircut and was brown for lack of a better descriptive word. Annoying as fuck. Fast. Smart and number one teacher's pet from what he'd heard from the other students. The loner. 'No place in any pack' as they said. Took his meals early and left to eat them outside. Snow, rain, or shine.
He frowned and studied the rest of the list. Next to most of the names was only a physical description. Some didn't even have that yet. Only a few odd other notes. Most of which consisted of who a person interacted with and when he had them in class. But nothing personal.
Why is it that I know so much about him, anyway? Sirius wondered as he traced patterns in the upper corner of the notebook.
From scratches of conversation at the table next to his, he heard Remus' name mentioned.
Oh, he thought as he closed the notebook and put it away.
That's why.
–
Something was missing.
Something was wrong.
Sirius frowned from his spot in the middle of the red mat. He'd been teaching for a month now. He had a sense for his classroom, for a lack of a better word, and knew when something was out of place.
Now the only problem that remained was what was out of place. He stepped off the mat and surveyed the surroundings of the gym.
Everything still looks the same.
Sirius thought until his eyes landed on the twin doors at the back of the gym.
Well, almost the same.
The spot next to the door that Remus normally vacated during self defense was void of the brown haired boy.
Sirius turned back toward the group of students that were gathered around the mat where three of them were wrestling animatedly. He opened his mouth to tell them not to go so rough. The way they were going at it was enough to bring blood.
"Does anyone know where Lupin's at?" Where the hell did that come from?
A few of the boys toward the back turned and glanced back at the doors. One of them snorted.
"Looks like pubs is skipping again."
"Again? Wait, has this happened before and I never knew about it?"
Two of them exchanged brief looks.
"No, he always skips this class."
Sirius gritted his teeth together. He started for the doors, seemed to think better of his decision, and turned back sharply. His eyes wearily scanned the crowd of twenty-nine werewolves that would be left alone to their own devices.
Wilton would have my head and I'd be outta here faster than...Lupin can move, he thought, torn between leaving and staying. And then Quarry would really have my head.
"I'm just going to step out for a minute, do you all think you can handle staying put till I get back?"
There was a collective murmur of affirmatives and a few sarcastic negative answers thrown into the mix as well.
"Okay, I'm just going—"
He broke off when he realized that he didn't rightly know where he was going. "None of you would happen to know where he skips to, would you?"
Most of the students just shook their heads absently and went back to their own conversations. Some didn't even shake their heads and simply continued on with the conversations that they'd never put on hold in the first place. One, however, shrugged his shoulders. Not as if he didn't know nor care, but as if it were common knowledge that everyone knew.
"The east yard."
"Thanks," Sirius said, pausing for one last look over his shoulder at a group of kids that very well might be capable of bashing a fifteen-year-old girl over the head with a chair and killing her. Kids that were capable of getting every single chair bolted to the floor and to never come up again.
Kids that'll be fine for just a minute, he thought as he sprinted down the corridor that headed toward the east yard.
I hope.
He skidded around a corner and kept on running.
–