I am so tired, I forgot it was Tuesday. Puppy is very cute, doesn't feel real except when it's nighttime and she has to pee at 3am. I've gotten half as much sleep as I usually get.

The Hulk and the Beast: Chapter Fifteen

June 21, 2014

Mr. Stark got to work immediately, pulling out his many interdimensional gadgets to try and get a read on where the Book brought them. He had the mirror on the table next to him and was asking them questions. Remus and Captain Rogers were sitting a ways away, giving Mr. Stark space to work. They tried to get Remus to go to bed, but he informed them in no uncertain terms that he was too panicked to sleep.

"We'll get them out," Captain Rogers said.

"Are you and Mr. Stark dating?" Remus blurted out. "It's cool if you are, I'm not homophobic."

Captain Rogers laughed, "It's too early to say."

"But you like each other?"

"We're very good friends. Dating on the team can get… messy… but it's not against any rules. I'd still appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone. I'm not out of the closet, as the term is these days. Maybe it was in my time as well, but I avoided it."

"Me too," Remus whispered. "I can keep a secret."

"I know you can."

"I think I like both," Remus said quietly. "I had a crush on Meriam last year but also a crush on Sirius. I didn't do anything about either because it's bad for werewolves to get close to people… and… well… we're still kids."

"You are a bit young for dating," Captain Rogers agreed. "And it's hard for enhanced people to get close to anyone. I'm afraid sometimes that who I am will put the people around me in danger."

"Mr. Stark's in the same amount of danger, either way," Remus shrugged. "Because he's Iron Man."

"If anything, that just puts him in more danger. It doesn't stop me from worrying about him. Or you."

"I'm in danger anyway, too. I'm sure Red Skull wants me back. I'm just scared my friends will get hurt or… worse. They wanted to get me something from my house. I don't know what. I barely remember what I left behind other than my books and I've got… better copies of all of them now. And I've got my family's photo album. The only thing I left behind was my friends."

"Most things pale in comparison to a good friend," Captain Rogers agreed. He left everyone behind as well. Seventy years is a long time. "Tony won't let anything happen to them."

Remus fell asleep some time at four in the morning. When Steve tried carrying him back to his room, he started thrashing around when his friend's voices faded, so he got a blanket and settled Remus down on a bench across the room. Tony should get a murphy couch or something in here, Steve couldn't count the amount of times he'd had to tuck Tony in on that bench because he squirmed too much when Steve tried to get him to go to bed.

"It's not your fault it took him so long to tell you about us," Sirius said. "It took him ages to even talk to us."

"Three months is hardly ages," Meriam said.

"He talked to me in the first month," Lily said proudly.

"You asked him to do homework with you, that's practically a bribe with him," Sirius

"You four are really risking a lot for him," Tony said.

"He's our friend," James said, like doing anything else would be ridiculously outlandish.

Steve would be lying if he said that didn't make his heart ache. The similarities were few between Bucky and James, they looked nothing alike, for starters, but they both had the same fierce loyalty. All four of Remus' friends did. None of them could fathom the idea of leaving a man behind.

"What I'm trying to ask is why you're so desperate to run away."

"Prejudice," Lily answered.

"Shit homelife," Sirius followed.

"Mum and Dad died last month," Meriam finished.

"Ah."

"If there was anything to run towards, it's Moony, anyways," James shrugged.

"Why are you calling him that?"

"Cause he's Moony," Sirius shrugged. "And it's a pun. James is Prongs, cause of his antlers."

"The rest of us haven't got one yet."

"You've got earn it," James insisted.

"Earn it!" Meriam scoffed. "I'm the only one who's managed the full transformation, if anyone's earned it, I have. It's hard coming up with code names."

"I got mine from the news," Tony said. "I'm not actually iron, but Titanium-Gold Alloy Man doesn't have the same ring to it."

"I was a bit too patriotic," Steve said with good humor. "And it sold more war bonds."

"My parents fought in WWII in our world," James said. "Well, sort of. They were volunteer medics but they definitely broke several wizarding laws to save lives. There was a wizarding thing going on at the same time, but no one stepped in unless it started effecting other wizards. They didn't stand for that."

"They sound like good folk."

"They were, yeah," Meriam curled up against her brother.

"Oh, we're wizards!" Lily shot up.

"Yeah, I already knew that," Sirius said sarcastically.

Lily drew her wand, "Aguamenti!"

Mist burst forth from her wand and dissipated shortly after. Nothing drinkable, which had to be her intent.

"Aguamenti," She repeated. "I've done this before! Aguamenti, aguamenti, aguamenti."

"Let me try," James said, drawing his own wand.

He was met with similar success.

"That spell doesn't conjure water out of thin air," Meriam sighed. "You can't make something with nothing, even with magic. There are rules, you know."

"It works easily at Hogwarts," Lily said.

"Yeah, cause the water comes from the lake or the plumbing. There must not be any liquid water nearby. And if there was, I doubt it would be potable."

"The Black Lake's enchanted so you can drink from it. Something about several dysentery breakouts in the sixteen hundreds, I don't remember," Sirius added. "Binns is boring but crapping yourself to death is kinda funny if you don't think about it too hard."

"I'm not getting any good readings," Tony whispered to Steve.

He was desperate. The situation got worse with the hour. Humans could only go so long without water, and they had none, not even with their magic. It had been five hours and there was no change in light levels, either.

Steve looked at the readings and thought very hard. He wasn't nearly as smart as Tony, but then again, no one was, and Steve wasn't an idiot. Two heads were better than one, even if they were unmatched. And Steve did the reading. Tony did not.

"Have you got the readings from when Remus teleported on the Tricarrier?" Steve asked. Some of the numbers looked the same.

"Yeah, I… holy shit," Tony looked blankly at the numbers. Too many of them matched for it be a coincidence "Why didn't I see that?"

"When was the last time you slept?"

"Uh, Thursday…"

"Tony, it's Saturday. You know if you don't sleep, your brain won't function properly."

"I'm still smarter than you."

Steve hummed in amusement, "I'm well rested."

"Coffee…"

"Is a lie," Steve chirped.

"Don't tell me that. Never… never say that to me. This doesn't help as much as I'd like."

"What is it?" James asked.

"Remus teleported accidently last December."

"Oh, he told us about that," Sirius said. "He was panicked that the Ministry was gonna come kill him for doing magic in front of muggles."

"They do that?" Mr. Stark squawked.

"No, but Remus catastrophizes," James said.

"They could do it to him," Meriam said. "He's a werewolf, he's not considered human."

"Well, yeah… but they wouldn't… couldn't… that would be…" Sirius stammered.

"He's not got rights," Meriam continued. "They'd say they were protecting the children of Hogwarts from a dangerous beast."

"Dangerous beast," James scoffed. "Oh no, he folds his socks, I'm terrified. What if my socks are next? The horror. What a bunch of wankers."

"The Ministry doesn't consider him a person, James," Meriam insisted. "They don't care if he's harmless or gentle or kind or the biggest swot in the world, they'll just say he's faking it, waiting for the first opportunity to strike, even if that's ridiculous. Why do you think he's so jumpy all the time? One wrong move and it's off with his head!"

"Meriam's right," Lily said darkly. "He doesn't have rights under the current government and pretty soon, neither will I. I read in the paper yesterday that Muggleborns are being accused of stealing magic from real wizards."

"They didn't run it positively," James scoffed. "Did they?" He looked to Meriam.

Meriam grimaced.

"Evans, they can't be serious, that's malarky," Sirius said, quite aghast. "You're top of our class, possibly the entire school. You're not stealing magic, that's absurd."

"Just because it's not true doesn't mean people won't believe it if it gives them a scape goat," Meriam said. "Even if the paper doesn't believe in it, pandering to… certain crowds sells more papers."

The four of them quieted. It was a good thing Remus was asleep. Talk like this usually made him nauseous and run from the room in a state of panic. Off with his head, good grief. Meriam didn't sound like she was joking, either. Remus' reaction on the Tricarrier was starting to make a lot more sense. It was a miracle he'd opened up to them at all.

"What's Apparating got to do with where we are?" James said when he couldn't take the quiet anymore.

"He did it on the Tricarrier, which is loaded to the brim with state of art security feeds. I made the thing to Fury's specifications so it scans for everything. When Remus blipped I got a lot of interdimensional readings. It's similar but not identical to what SHIELD's got on Nightcrawler."

"Nightcrawler works by shifting himself to another dimension, where time works differently, he moves in that world and comes back into this in a different spot only milliseconds after shifting," Steve said. He did the reading.

"It's incredibly likely that Apparating… did you call it?"

"Yeah."

"I think it works in a similar way."

"There's a theory on that," Meriam shot up. "That when someone Apparates, there's two dimensions, ours and another, and when you Apparate, the squeezing sensation is you pressing up against the other dimension, like a conveyor belt."

"I've never heard of that," Sirius scoffed.

"Well, of course you haven't, it was made by a Muggleborn. His parents were physicists. He dropped out of Hogwarts after his OWLS to go to Cambridge University."

"He went to school with our dad," James said. "He tried to publish a paper on the relation of magic and physics and was exiled for inappropriate use of muggle technology."

"He always attends… attended Mum's annual Hallowe'en party," Meriam said. Her voice hitched when she amended her tenses, but she stayed focused. Steve respected that, even if it made his heart ache for her and her brother. He knew how hard it could be to lose your parents before you were barely old enough to take care of yourself. They were doing admirably.

"So we're in the Apparition dimension?" Sirius said, still skeptical.

"Oh, Dr. Sharma would be thrilled to be here. He's been trying for nearly half a century."

"Well, I'm not thrilled to be here. How do we get back?"

"Manually Apparate?" James said.

"We don't know how to Apparate in the first place! They don't teach that until we're seventeen!"

"If Remus can do it accidently…"

"What does manually Apparate even mean, Prongs!"

"I thought you worked better in do or die situations," Lily snapped at Sirius.

"I thought I did, too. Running from Filch after turning his cat pink isn't actually a life or death situation, apparently!" Sirius panicked.

"What resources do you have on you?" Steve asked, slipping into mission mode. They needed a solid foundation and he had a hundred years of experience, give or take, if you counted sixty years on ice.

"Our wands," James said. "And Remus' wand."

"So five wands."

"What else?"

"The mirror?" Lily said. "We've got the mirror."

"Keep going."

"The book!" Meriam said. "We've got the book. It got us here."

"It's been quiet for five hours."

"Help us, you stupid packet of parchment!" Sirius grabbed the book from the ground and started shaking it. "Ah! It zapped me!" He dropped it on the ground.

"Don't manhandle it," Meriam snatched it up.

"Cap, they shouldn't be using Cosmic powers. That's what drove Skull mad."

"He was deranged before he got the Tesseract," Steve said, He had to remain calm even if he did agree that Cosmic powers weren't something children should be handling.

"All I'm saying is it's dangerous and they're not even legal to drive. Or teleport, apparently."

"Can you get to them?" Steve said.

"Maybe, with a bit more elbow grease and…"

"Estimate time of arrival," Steve hissed under his breath.

"A week," Tony admitted, not loud enough for the kids to hear. "I've got the tech, but even with these readings, I can't reliably lock on yet. It fluctuates randomly. We'd be flying blind with no map. The success rate is too low, it'd be gambling with their lives and ours at this point."

"Do you know anyone who could get there faster?"

"Maybe Dr. Strange, but they're not in our local multiverse and even the Wonderful Wizard of Oz has his limits. Getting the Tesseract from Skull would work, but it'd take even longer than calibrating what we've already got and that's assuming we could harness it effectively if we had it. I got nothing safe enough."

"I agree with you, Tony, the Book is dangerous. I don't like it, but it's the best chance we've got of getting them home safe," Steve said. "If we can't help them, then the mission is to help them help themselves."

"It's always a mission with you."

"Missions make sense. They keep people on track and keep them from panicking."

Remus woke up two hours later. He was quiet and subdued, only awake because a nightmare had pulled him from sleep. He hadn't said much, just sat down next to Steve and tentatively taken his hand for comfort. Steve gave it a little squeeze to let him know that no matter what, Steve, Tony, and the rest of the Avengers would be there for him. Remus was a good kid, he deserved that much.

The four young wizards were meditating around the book, like they had with the ritual to contact Remus in December. The farther into the meditation they got, the more wild the readings Tony was getting from the mirror became. It was either working, or going horribly, and they couldn't stand not knowing. If they interrupted, it could have disastrous consequences.

Meriam was full red fox and James had grown antlers and ears. Lily's hair was turning into iridescent black and white feathers. Sirius was still a fully human child, but he was shrouded in more shadows than he should be.

Then the clock struck metaphorical midnight. The power source spiked so high the mirror went white and the Tower experienced a small brownout trying to keep up with the readings.

"Guys!" Remus rand to the mirror and grabbed it, nearly yanking it out of the rigging. "Guys!"

All that was there was his reflection.

"Dammit, what happened?" Tony panicked.

"I think they got home," Steve said.

"But Greyback was there!" Remus cried. "They… they were supposed to come here, right?"

"Let me look over the footage, kiddo."

The last frame they got was three glowing animals, a fox, a magpie, and a stag. The final shape was a shadowy black dog with glowing silver eyes. In the center was the Grimoire, open wide and shining like a spotlight. Above them, a faint outline of the wolves Remus saw in his dream. They were massive, made of stars, with great big nebulous eyes. They looked proud.

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