Mercury Lies
Chapter 10: to abdicate
When Remus had climbed back through the window, he found Black already waiting for him. There was something impatient in Black's stance, the grin on his face ear-splittingly wide, and he was holding out his hand for Remus to take. Remus blinked, but took it, hopping off the sill with Black's help in a movement that showed more grace than he had ever had. Black's hand was warm and slightly clammy, and Remus let go of it, smoothing down his robes and adjusting the strap of his book bag.
'So,' he said, would-be-casually, 'what are we doing?'
'You'll see,' Black responded, with a twinkle in his dark grey eyes, and then Remus had to hurry to keep up as Black all but raced through the deserted corridors. Snatches of lectures and applied spell-work drifted up from the open classrooms they passed, and Remus felt suddenly quite self-conscious of the badge on his chest, and wondered what people would think if they were to see them like this. Even though Remus knew the chances of them having an unexpected free period at the same time were about nil, Black appeared to not care about the fact that he was skipping class at all, and he was strutting through the corridors with a languid ease.
When Remus pulled himself out of his thoughts, he realised that something had gone wrong, because he was stood alone in an empty corridor on the fourth floor, and Black was nowhere to be seen. Surprised, Remus looked around to see if he might've missed something. A second later, it appeared that he had, because Black appeared from behind a nearby suit of armour, an impatient look on his face. 'Keep up,' he said, sharply, and disappeared from sight.
Remus blinked, confused, and then made his way to the suit of armour, which looked identical to the one stood directly across from it. Still, he carefully pushed himself into the alcove behind it, touching the wall with his hand, and watching, mesmerised, as his fingers easily fell through. It turned out that what he had always believed to be a solid stone wall was, in fact, not one at all, but a secret passageway. He stepped through the fob wall and found himself in a dimly lit, chilly corridor.
'I never knew this was here,' he whispered to Black, who was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest.
'You wouldn't,' Black returned, not unkindly, and then pulled himself away from the wall and started walking, Remus falling in step behind him.
The corridor was small, but thankfully, it didn't take very long for them to reach what Remus presumed to be the end of it. A very large boulder was stood, with a halo of sunlight around it, blocking the exit. With a murmured spell from Black, it rolled aside noiselessly to reveal a large crack in the castle wall, and part of the grounds behind the greenhouses. Remus blinked a few times to adjust to the bright sunshine, and then carefully climbed through the crack, following Black outside. Once Remus had clambered through, Black repeated the spell, and the boulder slowly rolled back in place, merging itself seamlessly with the bricks, until Remus was unable to see where exactly it began and the castle ended.
'Yeah, yeah, it's magical, come on,' Black said impatiently, grabbing hold of Remus's sleeve, and Remus allowed himself to be pulled away.
They followed a well-trekked and familiar path behind the greenhouses, walked past the eastern part of the lake, and finally, stepped into the Forbidden Forest. Remus's protests were swiftly dismissed, and they trudged on, deeper, with Remus feeling increasingly more uncomfortable, following Black as he expertly navigated them through. The trees were quiet around them, leaves only occasionally scattered by the flapping wings of birds, until finally they reached a small clearing, in a part of the forest Remus had never seen before.
For some reason, Remus hadn't expected to find James Potter and Peter Pettigrew already waiting there but, in the end, it started to dawn on him. Potter was leaning on a broomstick, and Pettigrew was sitting on a rock, wearing what appeared to be Potter's entire collection of Quidditch gear, down to the Gryffindor robes Potter wore as a Chaser. There were two more brooms leaning against a nearby tree, and Remus drew in a breath.
'Oh-ho! Didn't think you had it in you, Lupin,' Potter said, by way of greeting, giving him a grin. 'You don't seem to be the kind to skip class for a game of Quidditch.'
'Free period,' Remus said.
'Ah,' Potter said, pushing the glasses that had slid off his nose back up. 'That makes more sense. Have you ever played before?'
Remus hesitated, and then slowly shook his head. 'Not outside of flying lessons.'
Black's grip on Remus's robes slackened, and he let go, walking towards the brooms. Remus felt, quite suddenly, out of his depth, and fervently wished that he'd listened to reason and stayed in the castle.
'Don't worry,' Black said, fiddling with the fastening of his robes and abandoning them, thoughtlessly, onto the forest floor once they came loose. He was wearing a grey jumper underneath and there was a grin on his face. 'You can be on my team.'
For what had been his first game of Quidditch, Remus rather thought it hadn't gone too badly. Black had been more than able to compensate for his inexpert flying, and, in the end, they only lost by ten points. Potter and Pettigrew were still in the middle of flying a victory lap around the clearing when Remus landed on wobbly legs, secretly relieved to feel the ground beneath him. His cheeks were red from the cold, and he couldn't quite feel his fingers, but he was grinning from ear to ear, and when Black landed next to him, he, too, was grinning.
'That was fun,' Remus told him, slightly out of breath.
Black caught him by the shoulder and managed to stabilise him. 'Yeah, it was,' he said, and there was a flicker of something on his face that Remus couldn't quite put his finger on, but then it was abruptly gone, because Potter landed right in front of the pair of them, hair messier than ever.
'Good effort, Lupin,' he said.
'Thanks,' Remus responded, taking the well-meant compliment even though he was sure he hadn't truly earned it.
'And what shall we do to celebrate this amazing victory, Pete?' Potter asked, turning round and finding Pettigrew, who had landed beside him. He slung his arm over Pettigrew's shoulder, who looked very pleased about something, and then Potter looked meaningfully at Black.
'Butterbeer!' Pettigrew and Black exclaimed, at the same time.
Remus realised what that meant, and he felt, given the fact that these three had cheered him up immensely, he should, perhaps, pretend not to have heard that. He glanced, discreetly, down at his watch, and found that it was almost time for his next lesson; if he didn't hurry, he was going to be spectacularly late. He broke away from the other three, carefully leaned his broom against a nearby rock, and then turned round, heading back to the beginning of the clearing, where he'd left his book bag.
He had just slung his cloak over his shoulders when Black appeared next to him. 'You are coming, aren't you?' he asked, but there was something off about his voice, something Remus couldn't quite figure out.
'Oh,' Remus said, surprised at the invitation, looking up at him, his hands stilling on the buttons. 'I –'
'– have to get back to work,' Black finished, with a sardonic smile.
Remus nodded.
Without a word, Black pulled back from the tree that he had been leaning against during their conversation, and his eyes found Potter and Pettigrew, who could just be seen disappearing into a copse of trees at the end of the clearing, brooms slung over their shoulders.
Remus followed his gaze and then, a bit self-consciously, did up his robes, the Head Boy badge glimmering softly on his chest. Black looked at it, then back up, meeting Remus's eyes.
'Thank you,' Remus said.
'You're welcome,' Black responded, and it was then Remus realised that the set about Black's mouth may very well be disappointment. He opened his mouth to say something, but then Black lifted his hand up in a wave, and turned round, shouting for his friends to wait. He ran to catch up with them, and Remus watched until he, too, had disappeared, making his way back towards the castle only when the bell that indicated the beginning of class rang shrilly out towards the edge of the forest.
The October full moon fell just a week later, precisely in the middle of the month, and although the transformation hit Remus harder than it had in a fair while, the damage the following morning was, thankfully, nothing to write home about. He had a couple of painful bruises alongside his back and neck, and he had also, somehow, gotten a deep gash in the middle of his right hand, which made holding things painful and a bit awkward. Madam Pomfrey gave him a tub of green septic-smelling salve and a new roll of bandages, and firmly told him to redress the wound every night before bed.
'It'll take about a day or three to heal, and if you apply that properly,' she said, pointing a finger at the salve, 'you shouldn't get a scar.' At Remus's surprised look, she added, 'It's not a bite wound.'
'Oh,' was Remus's intelligent reply.
With a fond smile, she dismissed him from the Hospital Wing, and Remus gratefully changed back into his own clothes, slung his book bag over his shoulder, and headed left in the corridor, towards the library. A corridor and a half up ahead, he realised that the pain he felt came from the strap of his book bag, which was digging uncomfortably into his shoulder and, after checking to see if he was alone, he gingerly put his bag down on the stone floor, and pulled the collar of his jumper aside to have a look.
It was the first time he had seen the bruise for himself and, currently, it looked more painful than it felt. The angry flush of purple started from his left shoulder and seemingly looped around the back of his neck, because he could see that it dipped back down towards his right shoulder, disappearing underneath the fabric of his jumper. Remus sighed, let go of his collar, which softly thumped back against his neck with a small gust of air, and picked his bag back up, slinging it resolutely over his shoulder. He'd suffered worse injuries before.
The library, when he reached it, was deserted. A glance at his wristwatch revealed that it was just past ten in the morning, and classes would be well underway. Grateful for the solitude, Remus headed towards the History of Magic section, which was so large it encompassed over ten rows of magical volumes. It was usually the quietest place in the library, despite the fact that the tables were easily the largest, and the fact that the view from the tall windows looked out, amazingly, over the mountains.
Remus claimed a set of tables for himself at the very back of the library, contentedly unpacking his bag and putting it down on a seat near him. Although he hadn't fallen behind on all of his work, just yet, he would be soon, if he didn't do as much work as he could today. He searched around for a bit, and finally fished out the calendar he had drawn up for himself from between his Advanced Charms and History of Magic books. He spread it out and studied it, his eyes protesting slightly at the strain.
Today, he was supposed to be finishing another draft of the translation for Professor Flitwick's article, do his Arithmancy homework, draw up an outline for the Potions essay that was due early next week, correct and proofread the five Prefect reports he hadn't gotten to yet, and come up with a set of new passwords for the Gryffindor common room for the upcoming months. With a small sigh, he retrieved the draft for his translation, a quill, a pot of ink, and the books he needed, and got to work.
An hour and a half into his study session, Remus was suddenly overcome by the nettling suspicion that someone was watching him, and he looked up, meeting the cool, mercurial gaze of Sirius Black, who was stood next to him. In his hands, Black was holding a book, and it was only then Remus realised that the bookcase that was stood right beside the table he was sitting at was missing one.
'Hello,' Remus tried, putting down his quill, and flexing his fingers.
'What happened?' Black asked, pointing the book at the bandages around Remus's hand.
'I cut myself,' Remus said, because that was true. He had discovered, quite early on, that when it came to his werewolf-induced injuries, it was safest to keep his words as close to the truth as he could manage them.
Black let out a low whistle, and took a step forward, pulling out a chair at Remus's table. His eyes landed on the translation Remus was working on, and he tilted his head, almost like a dog, to the side in question. 'For Flitwick?' he asked, reaching for the parchment.
Flattered that he should remember, though confused as to why he was interested, Remus nodded and pulled his hand up so that Black could pull it towards him. Black's hair had grown longer, and when he bent over the parchment to read it, part of it fell over his forehead, almost obscuring his eyes.
Remus managed to make out the title of the book Black had put on the table. 'What are you trying to do?' he asked Black, curiously.
Black looked up from Remus's translation and blinked at him. 'Sorry?' he asked.
Remus pointed at the book, and Black looked at it, and then back at Remus, eyebrows raised. 'I'm working on something,' he responded dryly, and then pushed the parchment back towards Remus over the table. 'You spelled the incantation wrong.'
Surprised, Remus looked down to where Black was pointing at the parchment, only to discover, to his horror, that Black was right. He grabbed his quill, ignoring the jolt of pain the movement sent straight to his hand, and crossed out several lines with care. He wasn't sure how he had managed to make such an elementary mistake, but he was grateful to Black for pointing it out to him. 'Thanks,' he said, but Black had gone, leaving only an empty chair. Frowning, Remus returned to his work.
Suddenly, there was a heavy thump, and the table Remus was sitting at wobbled dangerously for a moment. Quickly, Remus grabbed hold of the corners and managed to stabilise it. He looked up, irritated, to search for the source of the sound, only to see Black guiding a massive amount of stuff from a nearby table over to Remus's with the aid of his wand. Slightly ruffled, Remus pulled his books and notes away, and looked at Black reproachfully. 'What are you doing?' he asked.
'Sitting here,' Black returned, somehow making it sound like Remus was being daft. With a flick of his wand, his things ordered themselves neatly into rows and stacks, and Black hung his book bag on the back of his chair, before plopping down into it.
'Er,' said Remus, shocked.
In response, Black only gave him a winning smile, and got to work. Remus stared at him for at least five minutes, and then, feeling even more confused, returned to his own work.
'No,' said Black, horrified, looking down at the parchment in his hands.
'I'm afraid you have no say in the matter,' Remus said, reaching, and failing, to grab the parchment that Black was holding.
Black narrowed his eyes at him, and pulled the parchment further out of Remus's reach. 'You are rubbish at passwords and as a Gryffindor, I am hereby revoking your right to decide them,' Black told him, sternly, waving the parchment at Remus with every other word, as if to emphasize his point.
Remus, unimpressed, pointed his wand, muttered a spell, and grinned triumphantly as the parchment dutifully flew out of Black's grasp and landed into Remus's outstretched hand. Black looked shocked for a moment, but then, before Remus could respond, he had summoned the parchment back.
Remus opened his mouth, but Black held up a hand to silence him. 'I'll make you a deal,' he offered. 'You get to keep five of these and I get to make up the other five.'
'No,' said Remus, and caught the parchment as it flew back into his hands.
'You're being stubborn,' said Black, and before Remus could do anything, he had summoned not only the parchment, but also Remus's wand out of his hands, catching both deftly as they came zooming towards him. He gave a triumphant smirk as he pocketed Remus's wand, and then bent down over the parchment, which he made a show of smoothing out on the table in front of him. 'I'd say this one goes, this one, definitely this one, and yes, also this one,' Black said, crossing out the passwords Remus had written down with flourish. He made a humming sound in the back of his throat, and then crossed out another password, leaving only five. 'There we go, that wasn't so hard, was it?'
Remus looked at him crossly, and then, with a strength that wasn't really his own, pulled the parchment out from underneath Black's fingers. Black made a protesting noise and scrambled up from his chair as Remus held the parchment over his head. For a moment, Black did nothing, and then suddenly catapulted himself forward, making a rather messy and slightly uncoordinated grab for the parchment in an attempt to catch Remus unawares. Black missed, and Remus let out a low hiss of pain when Black's palm smacked painfully against his bandaged hand. Remus immediately let go of the parchment, which fluttered down to the floor.
'Fuck,' Black blurted.
Remus lowered his hand and pressed his finger to the wound, which was stinging, in an effort to try and stop it from bleeding, but he was too late. Blood was beginning to seep through his bandages, and he carefully unpinned the front, unravelling them onto his lap. The gash in his hand was bleeding, and Remus dabbed at it a bit hopelessly with his bandage, biting the inside of his cheek as blood spilled, messily, down onto the library table.
'I'm sorry,' Black said, quietly, his voice sounding very close by.
Remus looked up to find Black's face inches from his own, and wordlessly, he held out his uninjured hand for his wand, which Black produced out of his back pocket without further prompting. Remus murmured a spell to clean up the blood from his wound, and then tried to get his bag, which was just out of reach. Black retrieved it for him, and put it down on the table, pushing open the flap. Remus reached inside and found the tub of salve and a new set of bandages and, ignoring Black's offer of help, he took off the lid of the tub, applied some cream to the wound, and then redressed it, gingerly, with a new bandage.
'I'm sorry,' Black said, again, when Remus had finished. He sank down to his haunches to retrieve the parchment off the floor, putting it back on the table. 'For the record, I still think "Brutum Fulmen" is a stupid password,' he added, in a poor attempt to lighten the mood.
'That's because you probably don't know what it means,' Remus told him pointedly, vanishing, with a simple twist of his wrist, the blood off the library table in front of him.
Black snorted. 'I wish. I had to learn that sort of wank when I was growing up. Scientia potentia est, and all that,' he said, pronouncing the words perfectly.
Remus stared at him.
'Shut up,' Black told him, and then, for a third time, 'Sorry about your hand.'
'It's fine,' Remus responded, softly.
In the end, Black had simply acted as if the whole password thing hadn't happened and he had worked, quite diligently, alongside Remus for the better part of the next two hours. He had, at some point, headed to the Great Hall for lunch, and then presumably to class, taking all of his things with him. In the middle of his Arithmancy problems, Remus's hand started bleeding again, and he gave up, packing his things and heading back to the Hospital Wing. Madam Pomfrey made a big fuss over his wound, and confined him, unfairly, Remus felt, to his bed.
She released him the next morning, because Remus had insisted he couldn't very well miss any more classes if there was nothing wrong with him, and she had been forced to agree. Remus's day began with a quiet Charms lesson, which was followed by a rather awkward Potions lesson, during which, somehow, he managed to lose some of his bandages in his Hiccoughing Solution, although it wasn't worse off for it. After lunch, he had Transfiguration, and his final lesson of the day was Defence Against the Dark Arts during which, despite his bandaged hand, he managed to beat his duelling partner.
Remus looked at his timetable as soon as class had let out, and realised he had three hours between now and dinner during which he could finish his work, which he was now, for the first time this year, a little behind on. He headed towards his table in the library and found, to his surprise, Black already sitting there. There were volumes and volumes of books spread out on the table around him, and he was chewing on the end of his quill.
He hadn't heard Remus approach, and looked up, startled, when Remus set his bag down on the table. 'Hello,' Remus said, confused.
'Huffo,' Black returned, then seemed to realise that that hadn't been a word, and spat out the end of his quill. 'Sorry. Hello,' he offered, giving Remus that familiar grin, and then returning to his work.
Remus stared, and then finally shook his head, and took out his things, making room for his own work on the table. He carefully pushed aside several of the books and noticed the titles on some of them, recognising them as books he had read before, for Flitwick's article. He looked over, and could just see the top of the parchment that Black was now stabbing at, annoyed, with his quill.
'All right?' Remus ventured.
'No,' Black responded, heaving a big sigh. He pushed aside the parchment he had been working on, and put his arms on the table, resting his head on them.
Remus bit his lip, and wondered if he should do what he was thinking of doing. He was a year above Black, and easily one of the top students in his year, so if Black was having a problem with his homework, Remus should, theoretically, be able to help him. Remus breathed out an inaudible breath, and peered at the parchment. Finally, making up his mind, he asked, 'May I?'
Black raised his head a little, blinking. He seemed to be considering something, but then he nodded, and allowed Remus to pull the parchment out from underneath his elbow. Remus put the scroll down on the table, unrolling it carefully. It was full of half-finished calculations, crossed out formulae, and haphazard notes that seemed to encompass a series of spells that Remus had never heard of. Frowning, Remus moved his finger further down, until he found something that seemed to make the most sense.
It was a drawing of the first floor of Hogwarts, complete with corridors and a passageway behind a painting that Remus hadn't known was there. Beside it stood a series of vague scribbles, of which Remus could make out "Plinovsky" and "footsteps" and, underneath that, "socks", which he presumed wasn't related to the other two things. For all it probably was, homework it certainly wasn't.
'This -' Remus said, and then looked again, and finally added, 'A map?'
Black looked at him for a moment, and then slowly nodded, raising his head up off his arms.
'I see,' Remus said. 'What are you having trouble with?'
Black pointed wordlessly at a set of runic, Arithmancy-like equations that were scribbled down in a corner of the parchment, which continued all the way down to the other side of the page. Remus studied them, and then looked over them again with his quill, trying to follow the way Black had broken the main equation down and how he had attempted to solve it. In the end, he appeared to have gotten stuck around the third step, which wasn't too surprising, Remus realised suddenly.
Slowly, he crossed out the rune "isaz" in the equation and replaced it with the symbol for "sowilo". Then, he added a number, and slid the parchment back towards Black, who was frowning at him. Black took the parchment off the table and, shooting Remus one last look of incomprehension, he held it up in front of his face, reading through Remus's work.
After a few minutes, he put the parchment back down, copied the equation anew, and attempted to solve it with the help of Remus's additions. With some effort, and a nudge from Remus to remember to carry over his forgotten numbers, he managed to solve it, and he stared at the parchment for a few moments, before glancing up, grey eyes bright. 'You're brilliant, Remus,' he said, breathlessly.
For some reason he couldn't really explain, Remus's cheeks flushed a heavy shade of red, and he had to pretend to be suddenly very busy looking for something in his bag until it went away.
Author's Note: I wish you all a very, very happy New Year, and I hope that it's wonderful and magical and full of love. Thank you for your support of this little fic so far, it is so appreciated, and I'll see you all next week with a new chapter :)
