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
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Remus knocked once on the door to the room that the slip had instructed him to report to. It was a single knock of warning rather than a request to enter. He opened the door, fingers playing with the blue detention paper. It bent on the well formed crease frontwards and then doubled over backwards.
"Do you mind?" A voice growled in surprise and a half naked figure streaked toward the door, ushering him outside and slamming the door in his face.
Remus stumbled backwards, his feet crisscrossing over one another. Balance regained, he waited patiently on the other side of the door. It was another minute before the swearing stopped and it opened. On the other side was Sirius. An annoyed look dominated his aristocratic features.
"What? You said eight."
"It's ten till."
"You said not to be late."
"Next time wait for me to get the door."
"I didn't know you were getting dressed. Why did you give me the door to your room? Why not your office?"
"Don't have one."
"You don't have an office? I was pretty sure our last defense teacher did."
Sirius shrugged and drew his wand to silently lock his door.
"They needed the extra room for storage or something like that, I guess. I really don't mind either way," he said and started to lead the way to the gym. Remus followed. At first Remus lagged behind, but by the time they were halfway down the corridor they were walking side by side.
"Okay," Sirius sighed as they stood outside the locked doors that opened up into the gym. He pulled a keyring from his pocket and flipped through the few keys that were attached to the metal ring.
"Front door, yard doors, dorm doors, lunch door, oh, right, gym doors. The castle battlements group to defend the fort," he muttered to himself as he jammed the key ridges up into the lock.
With a twist of his hand, the lock clicked and they pulled the reluctant doors open.
"Alright, give me a hand with these mats real quick—" Sirius started as he headed for the equipment room.
He stopped dead in his tracks, not even halfway across the floorspace of the gym. Behind him, Remus stood completely frozen in the doorway.
–
Fights were not uncommon at Stonegate. There were several everyday, it was just another something to learn to live with. Most teachers turned a blind eye to the situation completely and ignored it for fear of being the next designated target. The students joked about it, saying it was just another way to say hello. Yeah, the harder you got hit, the more someone really liked you.
Because fighting occurred so often, so did the occasional death. Although they were not as common ground as fighting, an abnormal amount still took place over the course of the school year. Deaths were not only limited to students, but extended to encompass the teachers as well.
Although both Remus and Sirius knew that death was just another risk factor for attending Stonegate Academy, both of their stomachs turned at the sight of the body tied to the backboard of the basketball hoop at the other end of the gym. Or what was left of it at any rate.
All of the appendages had been removed and all that remained was a bloody torso tied to the backboard. The eyes stared blandly and numbly at nothing. Eyes that would never see anything ever again. Blood stained the backboard an atrocious maroon color and cascaded down it in streams. It dripped off of the end and splattered to the floor, leaving bloody freckles along with the scratches of tennis shoes.
Sirius' head jerked violently to the side. His eyes snapped shut with the image of the ghastly corpse ingrained on the inside of his eye lids. Sent there by God to haunt him forever more. He felt the hot surge as his stomach turned and his dinner tried to push its way up his throat.
He pushed it back down with a grimace at the foul after taste and opened his eyes slowly. His head was still snapped away from the torso tired to the recreation equipment and his silver orbs couldn't help but land on Remus.
The boy was rooted to the spot. Standing perfectly still with his eyes trained on those of the dead.
God, that's one of his classmates. Someone he knows. Sirius thought as his feet started to automatically carry him toward the equipment room.
His head was still turned away from the scene. He was surprised that the hand that searched for his key ring again did not shake while it hunted for the equipment room key. When it was located, he wasted no time getting the door open and rushed inside.
Once inside, he turned and looked out of the small window cut into the tan, fake wood of the door at the gym. All that was visible now were the freckles of blood that were scattered on the floor. Remus had disappeared from the doorway that connected the gym and corridor.
Sirius took a deep breath and turned from the window. It felt good to be surrounded by all the musty sports equipment. Almost as if everything beyond the door didn't even exist. He started to hunt through boxes and totes in a search for something, anything that might work for what he had in mind.
That something came four minutes later in the form of a large off white cotton sheet that an odd number of baseball mitts in various conditions had been wrapped in. Sirius waved it out and started for the door, bracing himself for the gruesome sight beyond the safety of the storage room.
Sirius was relived to have found something to wrap the body in. And he wouldn't have to use the shirt on his back.
He went back into the gym and used the ropes dangling from the wall to lower the basketball hoop. The bottom of it dipped and stopped when it was about three feet from the floor. Leaving the corpse and Sirius nearly at eye level.
I do not remember this being part of the job description, he thought as he quickly undid the knots of the blood soaked tangle of rope.
The body started to sag away from the backboard, those blank eyes looking down at Sirius' shoes. As he tugged the last restraining knot loose, the corpse fell heavily forward, all dead weight. Dead weight.
His quick reflexes saved him from being toppled over by the bloody corpse. The off white sheet was draped over his arms and it sagged with the weight of the body. Blood quickly seeped through it and Sirius could feel it wet and slick against his skin. He took the body out the back door and wrapped it tightly in the sheet.
Sirius stepped back from the wrapped corpse. He drew his wand and made sure it would be kept dry and safe from all of the wondering things at night until tomorrow came and they'd be able to put it in the ground in the back of the school yard with the others. The parents rarely minded.
He leaned heavily against the door, taking deep breaths and wiping off the blood on his arms.
In his profession he'd seen a lot of death, but somehow this one struck a cord. The mere brutality of the murder was something that he rarely saw, what with his own preference of the cool and calculated.
He dragged a hand slowly over his face and looked toward the open double doors. Remus was not in the doorway.
Shit, that's the last thing I need. Wilton would have my ass if he caught that kid wandering around by himself.
Sirius started toward the doors, careful to keep his eyes focused anywhere but the backboard. He leaned out the door and saw Remus sitting beside it. Knees drawn up to his chest and chin resting on top of them. He tried to speak, but his vocal cords failed him, like a child's play toy with red rust in the gears that made it impossible for them to operate. Remus looked up at him with blank eyes.
Blank eyes of a corpse, Sirius thought and shook his head to banish the thought.
"C'mon," he managed to get out at last. "There's somewhere else we can go."
Remus followed without question with his eyes lowered. The way that he moved reminded Sirius of a wind up toy. Mechanically. Without reason. Without cause. Without a destination.
"That's one reason," Sirius said as he shut the door to the empty classroom upon entering.
"Excuse me?" Remus asked quietly, head inclined upward slightly.
"That's one of the best reasons why you need to learn how to defend yourself." So you wont end up like him.
The werewolf sat on top of the desk nearest the door, hands gripping the edges and read over the notes that had been left upon the board from the last lesson of the day.
Third year Transfiguration.
"I don't plan on getting myself into a situation like that."
"Are you saying that he did?" Sirius snarled and spun around to face him sharply.
Remus' head jerked up. His eyes were completely unreadable, the perfect poker face.
"I never said that. I just said that it wont happen to me."
"Oh, really?" Sirius asked sarcastically, sliding over to Remus so that he stood directly in front of him.
"I bet this wasn't going to happen either." He brushed his thumb roughly over the faint scab that still remained from Remus' split lip.
He flinched, but didn't pull away. Remus met Sirius' gray eyes with a challenging stare of his own.
"That was only once."
Sirius turned away and threw his hands up in the air. "Whatever you say. Fine, I don't care. But tonight you're with me and tonight I say that we're going to make up some crucial parts of class that you've been neglecting to do. That alright with you?"
The werewolf didn't answer and when Sirius turned sharply to attempt to intimidate a response out of him, Remus turned his head away. Sirius sighed and moved the desks silently against the far wall of the classroom with a mute, irritated flick of his wand.
"Okay," he muttered, pacing the cleared spot on the floor. "Let's get started."
Remus slid off of the desk he had been perched on, the only one, other than the teacher's desk, that had not been moved.
"May was well start from day one. You've got a lot to do, kid. Two weeks to make up in one night. C'mon"
Two arms length separated them. Sirius stood on one side with an annoyed expression with Remus across from him, wary with his arms crossed tight. Sirius sighed and grabbed him by the wrist.
"I said come on."
Remus gritted his teeth and allowed himself to be dragged closer. He looked at Sirius, broke eye contact and went back to reading the black board. His mind couldn't wander away from the backboard in the gym.
A heavy weight settled around his neck. For a moment, Remus thought that his professor was hugging him. The one sided hug quickly evolved into a headlock.
He yelled faintly in surprise and back stepped rapidly. When he moved, Sirius moved with him.
"You didn't expect it to be that easy did you?"
Sharp fingernails bit the lightly browned skin of Sirius' forearm. They left long, white trails in their wake.
"That isn't going to work," he hissed, catching Remus' fingers in his own hand and restraining them.
"Get off," Remus said in a voice that was controlled and terrified all at once.
"If peeling my skin off didn't work, what makes you think that would?"
"Please?" Remus growled, nearing the end of his patience.
Sirius snorted.
"That's not going to work, I can tell you that for sure."
Remus clenched his jaw and twisted his body. Sirius twisted with him.
"Not quite. We went over this yesterday. What do you do, Remus?"
Irritated, Remus balled his hand into a fist and drew it back from his body.
"Are you going to punch me, Remus?" Sirius asked with an undercurrent of amusement laced into his tone of voice.
"No," he bit out and elbowed Sirius hard in the stomach.
The breath left Sirius' lungs with an audible sound and he fell to his knees. Remus scrambled forward, only to find himself caught short and dragged to the ground. Down on one knee, Sirius inhaled deeply, regaining his breath. He had one hand wrapped tightly around Remus' ankle. In front of him, Remus pushed himself up from his stomach to sit on the back of his heels with his back to his teacher.
Remus breathed, annoyed, and as if it were some signal that Sirius had been waiting for, he found his head back in a headlock.
"Interesting approach, but as you can see, it's not the most effective. Back to basics it is then," Sirius said as he stood up and released his student at the same time.
As soon as he felt the grip loosen, Remus lunged for the opposite end of the room. Face flushed, eyes guarded, and fists clenched.
"I think this detention is over, sir," he said, with more emphasis on the 'sir' than was needed.
Sirius looked up at him with a curious expression on his face. "No. It's not over until I say it's over. Now get over here and show me the ground rules."
Remus approached the other man slowly with wary eyes and his arms crossed protectively. He stopped short just beyond Sirius' reach.
"Okay, now if you go like this," he said, taking a step forward and quickly placing a hand on Remus' shoulder before he could take a step back.
Already tense muscles snapped and sent Remus ten feet away in a second.
"I'm not going through a repeat."
Remus was suspicious enough to keep a safe distance for the remainder of the time that they had together. It was even reluctantly that he allowed his teacher talk him through the motions of the fine art of self defense.
Sirius sighed and glanced at the clock mounted high on the wall. It read eleven thirty. They had been at it longer than he had originally suspected.
Nearly four hours and we didn't even manage to get anything done.
"Alright. Fine. Enough, you're done," Sirius said and magically moved all of the desks back into their proper places.
Without a word, Remus started for the door. Just as his hand wrapped around the knob, his teacher's slapped down on top of it, tightening in assurance that Remus wouldn't be able to open the door and flee.
"I expect you to show up to every single one of my classes," Sirius whispered lowly behind him. He could feel the heat from the younger boy's body as Remus' muscles shifted nervously beneath the surface of his skin. "And to participate in all of them. Do you understand me?"
Remus tried to make the tendons in his neck move in response. He could barley move his head.
"Do you understand me?"
"Yes, sir."
It really is hard to be mad at him when he does shit like that.
"You're not fooling me, you know," Sirius said as he turned the knob by guiding Remus' hand as if he were a puppet. He followed his student out into the hallway.
"I wasn't aware that I was trying to fool anyone."
Sirius snorted as they took a right turn, headed in the direction of Remus' dorm room. The boy would be in a whole mess of trouble if any of the nightly patrols happened to find him out of bed at such an hour and without an escort.
"It may work on the other teachers here, but it's not going to work on me."
"Sir?" Remus' voice was a mixture of complete confusion and curiosity as they started to climb the flight of stairs that would take them to the floor where all of the student rooms were.
"That. Acting all polite and innocent. It wont work on me," Sirius said, stopping in front of the door that opened up into Remus' quarters that he shared with sixteen others.
He unlocked it with a combination of the metal key from his pocket and the wand hidden stealthily up his sleeve. Remus turned from the door, his hand lingering behind him on the knob and shared a small smile with Sirius.
"I'll have to remember that next time. Looks like I'll need a new approach. Thanks, sir," he said quietly, turned away from Sirius, and let himself into the dark room.
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