grittings! rave is here with a slightly shorter part. voldemort appears to have vanished, but...er...oh well. warning: this contains mushy stuff, angst, and kissing. you've been warned.

a special paradise awaits those who read and review...full of golden gingerbread and chocolate cookies and wild parties every night. sherry's definitely going there, as are kali ma and Hyphen and Rowena Alana and Soz and Firecross and WolfieTwin1 and Blaise and Sassy and anyone else who reviewed the earlier parts. i'm a very insecure person; help me out here. make me feel loved. ;P

this is dedicated to the lovely and talented Cassandra Claire, my beta reader and, of course, a fantastic author. if you haven't read Draco Dormiens or Draco Sinister yet, you must have been living in a cave. On Mars. For the past year. Go read it now, you silly twits. and yes, she too is going to my special gingerbread heaven.

oh yes, and the title belongs to Frank Herbert, who once said "Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken."

Bryter Layter--Part VI

The Sleeper Awakened

"...And I discovered Mr. Potter there, and Mr. Snape, robes torn, with him...It is my belief that Potter forced his fellow student into this fight, hoping to lure him into trouble...he has been caught doing things of this nature before.."

For once in his life, Severus Snape didn't look--or feel--smug. He was staring out the window of Dumbledore's office, his thoughts in turmoil, unable to look across the room at James Potter, who had gone white under his deep tan at Rookwood's accusations.

Dumbledore turned to James, the lines in his face worn and severe. "Is this true, James?"

"No, sir," James managed.

"But you were out of bed..."

James took a deep breath, trying to steady his still-jangling nerves. "Yes, Professor."

"Severus?"

The darker boy roused himself, still unable to think straight. "Sir?"

"Can you explain this?" Dumbledore watched him, his blue eyes not straying from Snape's black ones. "Why were the two of you out of bed? You must understand...the consequences for Mr. Potter's actions could be severe..."

Lie, Snape told himself furiously. 'Severe penalties.' Get that stupid git expelled once and for all, him and his stupid friends too if they want to follow him...But he couldn't make himself. He opened his mouth; only a squeak came out. "I..."

The room was silent. Just say he provoked you! Say he threatened you, say he insulted Gretchen, say anything...

"He--he was saving my life, sir." Oh, God! He regretted the words the instant they exited his mouth. Stupid, stupid, stupid, he berated himself furiously, taking in Rookwood's aghast gasp and Dumbledore's sharp intake of breath. I can still get Black, he thought with some grim satisfaction. "I...I was curious about what happened to Loop--er, Lupin, sir...Sirius Black told me how to get in, so I took his advice. Potter must have realized what the consequences would be...he came after me."

"Why, Mr. Snape," asked Dumbledore gently, "were you so curious about Mr. Lupin's state of health?"

"I...I just wanted to know, sir. He's--sir, you know he's a werewolf? I can't believe you'd accept that kind of--"

"He was trying to get Remus expelled!" James burst out, unable to bite his lip at this.

"Whom I accept at this school is my concern, Mr. Snape, not yours," said Dumbledore firmly, turning to James. "And Mr. Potter, please refrain from--"

He never got any further. A furious pounding was heard on the door to the office--that of a frustrated someone attempting to figure out the password.

"Open," said Dumbledore carefully, turning towards the portal. A creak was heard; a moment later, pounding up the staircase, Sirius came into view, clutching at a stitch in his chest and breathing hard. He skidded to a halt in front of Dumbledore's desk, gasping out, "I...told Snape how to get out...James didn't know anything about it...Nor Remus...just me...Because of what he said...about Ani..."

Dumbledore had heard that before. Somehow, Sirius always took the blame for everything; he didn't seem to mind too much, as it meant he also got most of the credit for it. He was always the first to sacrifice his own innocence for the sake of a guilty friend, cheerfully and even without thought. Now, though, he seemed almost desperate, his usually-laughing face as far from cheer as the Headmaster had ever seen it. Dumbledore was quite inclined to believe him.

"Mr. Black, please sit down for a moment." Sirius collapsed into a chair, his breath burning in his throat. "I find myself believing you, but your confession does not excuse your actions."

"He could have killed Severus!" yelped Professor Rookwood, his rod-thin body trembling in rage.

"He could have kiwwed Sevewus," Sirius mimicked under his breath. "Poor ickle Sevvie."

"Yes, Augustus, but you must admit Severus was not entirely blameless himself..." Dumbledore turned piercing blue eyes on his students, making all three of them shrink back slightly in their armchairs. "Mr. Black, you deliberately endangered another student's life. That is no small crime. Such an action could result in suspension, or even expulsion, from Hogwarts." James was on his feet in an instant, while Sirius went very, very white and Snape squirmed happily in his chair. "However, I must admit it seems that your motivation was not entirely meaningless. I will not expel you, but I will be observing your actions very closely from now on." His eyes twinkled for a moment. "Your urge to defend your friends is almost...admirable, though the circumstances seem to suggest that if I say anything complimentary about you, Augustus here will strangle me with his bare hands." Rookwood was, indeed, looking positively murderous. "Thirty points from Gryffindor, Mr. Black, and detention for one week." He turned to Snape now, lined face enigmatic. "Mr. Snape, you tried to get a fellow student expelled--not as serious an offense as Mr. Black's, but certainly nothing to be proud of. In addition, you were out of bed past curfew, which merits a point deduction of its own. Detention for three days, and twenty points from Slytherin."

And now he turned to James. A faint smile lit his features, surprising his student with its quirkiness. "As for you, Mr. Potter, you too were out of bed past curfew time...but your actions showed an amazing amount of courage. Risking a life for a friend is one thing...for an enemy, quite another. Only one in a thousand has that fortitude."

Damnit! cursed Snape furiously, knowing what was coming. Why didn't I lie to them?

"Forty-five points to Gryffindor--" Rookwood made a strangled sort of noise "--but I'm afraid I'm forced to also punish you for not being in bed. Five days of detention. And I'm going to have to ask all of you--" his gaze rested particularly on Snape "--not to mention what happened last night. Mr. Lupin's condition is a secret, and I intend for it to remain so. If I hear that any part of this rumor has leaked out, I will have to take extremely drastic action."

I hate them, thought Snape furiously, raging and humiliated. I hate them all. Potter, Black, Lupin, Whitby, Donelan, Pettigrew, all of them. I'll make them pay. God, I'll get them back!

But when he looked at James, something twinged in his guts.

*

Moony Blues whapped her feline head into the door, trying to get out. She was not, perhaps, the smartest specimen of cat; though pretty, she had an alarming tendency towards banging into things and eating everything. Anika had already had to put a Repellius Hex on every piece of furniture in the dormitory, to prevent Moony from gnawing on them.

Right now, though, even Moony's actions couldn't cheer her up. Rather, they sent her deeper into depression, thinking about the other Moony, wondering where he was.

It's been a week, she thought miserably. The moon must have waned by now. Isn't he going to come back?

Just for a change of scene, she opened the door and stepped outside. Moony, who had been building up momentum for a particularly ferocious attack on it, skidded out into the hallways and tumbled down the stairs, landing with a faint squeak on the landing, her green eyes dazed and slightly crossed.

"Hey, Ani," Erin called, waving to her from across the common room. Anika waved back, rather halfheartedly. "Your boyfriend's waiting for you outside--he must be back..."

"Oooh, he came to see you first thing," sighed a third-year, romantically.

"Oh," Anika said, her heart fairly beating out of her chest. "So he's out in the corridor, is he?"

"Yeah," Erin confirmed, and went back to filing her nails.

Anika almost flew out the statue passage, dashing into the hallway as fast as she could. Remus stood there, the bones of his face pronounced and haggard, the dark circles under his eyes deeper than they had ever seemed before. Somehow, to her, he looked more handsome than he ever had.

She wrapped herself around him, trying not to sob as his strong hands came up behind her back and she felt his ragged breathing in her ear, and she was whispering over and over "I love you, I love you..."

He pulled himself free of her, still grasping her wrists, took a deep, shuddering breath and, in tones that sounded as though they were being dragged out of him with grappling hooks, said: "Ani, I don't think we should...should see each other anymore."

Anika froze, stunned. She felt as though she had been kicked in the throat. "Wh-what? Is this about--your--because you know I go through a similar thing once a month, and I'm almost as unpleasant--" She forced a laugh, but he would have none of it.

Remus closed his eyes, and she could hear the harsh pain in his voice as he went on. "I never want anything to happen like--like what happened the other night. I couldn't stand ever thinking I could be capable of hurting you like that. You could never totally trust me again--"

Her heart seemed to have suddenly stopped working. "Of course I trust you, Remus, you're still you, you haven't changed--"

"I don't want to hurt you," he whispered. "I never wanted to hurt you."

She impulsively put one hand up to his cold cheek, forcing him to look her in the eye. "Please...please..."

He looked away. "I'm sorry, Ani--Oh god, I'm sorry..." and then he fled down the corridor, leaving her staring after him, a strange buzzing in her ears and a leaden feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Slowly, her hand dropped to her side.

*

"Moony, what's wrong?" asked James gently, nudging his friend in the side with his elbow and noticing, not for the first time, the excessive whispering and hate-filled glares of the Ravenclaw girls on the other side of the dining room. "Come on, tell us."

"Yeah, Moony, buck up," Sirius said comfortingly, putting an arm around Remus's shoulders. "Can't be that bad. Think about everything good around here--Snape got the scare of his life, I didn't get expelled--"

"That's not so great," muttered James.

"--James earned us points out the arse, and Ani's still absolutely mad over you--"

Without warning, Remus got up, shrugging away the comforting hands, and left.

Sirius watched, open-mouthed.

James pointed in the direction of the Ravenclaw girls, who were now watching Remus race for the door as though he were some particularly nasty sort of bug. "Ani's not sitting there," he whispered to Sirius. "You don't suppose they--"

Sirius sighed and got to his feet. "I'll go talk to him." This has been a really rotten week.

He found Remus back in the Gryffindor common room, his head in his hands. "'Lo, Sirius."

"What happened between you and Ani?" asked Sirius, as kindly as he could.

Remus looked up, flashing him a wan smile. "Trust you to get right to the point, Padfoot..."

Sirius crossed his arms.

"I told her I thought we shouldn't see each other any more," recited Remus in a dull voice. "I told her I didn't want her to get hurt..."

"But she's in love with you! Don't you understand that?"

Remus stared at him, his amber eyes tortured. "Of course I do. I mean, think I do...I don't want her to die for me--because of me. I love her more than I've ever loved anyone before, and I don't know how to deal with it...but I had to. I had to let her go. I didn't want to hurt her..." he repeated, trying to screw up his face against the howling tempest of rage and anguish that was threatening to overwhelm him from the inside.

"You're being dense," said Sirius shortly. "She doesn't care about your stupid lycanthropy any more than I do. She's smart enough not to let herself get hurt. If you throw her away now, you're losing the best thing you've ever had. You know that perfectly well."

"You don't know what you're talking about," said Remus wearily. "What if I keep this up? What if I keep trying until we leave school? What if I try to--you know, some analysts and researchers say that any kind of prolonged contact can pass on the disease. What if we get so attached that she thinks she can get through to me even when I'm a wolf? If we reach that level of trust--"

"She's not stupid," said Sirius patiently.

"Stupid has nothing to do with it," Remus said, staring at the floor. "Whenever I get attached to people, they get hurt."

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," Sirius said bluntly, a part of him wondering Why are you trying to help him get her back? Can't you tell what she means to you? He squashed it, firmly. "I'm not hurt. Prongs isn't hurt. Wormtail isn't hurt. Go back to her, you witless prat...tell her you didn't mean what you said..."

"Sirius, I did mean it." Remus stood up slowly, picking up his books. "I'm not going to take the risk of hurting her just because of my own selfishness." He pushed past his friend, clambered out the still-open portrait hole, and was gone.

*

He didn't have the chance to speak to Ani until that night--she didn't come to Arithmancy, lunch, or dinner, and whenever he tried to sneak down the corridors to the Ravenclaw tower, Professor Rookwood always seemed to be there. Sirius had the unpleasant feeling that the man was spying on him. After dinner, though, he convinced James to lend him the invisibility cloak, pulled it on, and hurried silently towards her common room.

The eagle statue glared impassively at him. What had the password been? "Asphodel," he muttered, and the thing creaked open. He snuck inside.

Though the room was full of people, no one seemed to have noticed his entrance; they were all too deeply involved in conversations of their own. Catching the word "Ani", he quickly crept over to a group of girls sitting by the fire.

"--Didn't even come to Quidditch practice, Erin. I'm worried about her."

"She's not up in the dorm?"

"No...I checked there. She's gone off somewhere to cry, probably...not that I blame her..."

"I just can't even imagine. Remus Lupin! Dumping her like a bad habit. He always seemed so sweet."

"And they were such a cute couple. So devoted to each other. It was like they were married."

"I always thought she and Sirius Black would end up together, actually..."

Sirius moved quickly away, not really wanting to know where this conversation was going. Of course, girls would pair up their friends with almost anyone in their imaginations, but still...So Ani wasn't up in the dorms at all. Where would she go...if she wanted to be alone...

It struck him like a lightning bolt. He'd told her about where Remus went, when he had to transform...what better place, Ani would think, to hide?

He crept out the exit again. This time, several people noticed the hole opening and closing for no apparent reason, but chalked it up to a ghost and went back to their own business.

The grounds were absolutely still. There was no wind, and even the Whomping Willow was absolutely unmoving. Well, of course it is, idiot, he thought impatiently. She's been in there since this morning.

Snatching up a stick from the ground, he moved cautiously towards the still-dormant tree--just before it began to whip around, trying to get at him, he poked the knot and it went back to sleep. He sighed in relief. I needn't have worried...if Snape could get in, there's no reason I shouldn't be able...

Hurriedly, he jumped between the roots and into the tunnel towards Hogsmeade.



The door to the Shrieking Shack hung loosely on its hinges. Yanking off the invisibility cloak, Sirius pushed it gently open, where it swung, creaking, for a moment. Crossed the scarred, pocked floor, and tiptoed up the stairs into the bedroom.

On the ravaged four-poster in the corner of the room, there lay a tiny lump of miserable robes and black hair, back to him.

"Go away," said the lump forlornly, in a muffled sort of way.

"I won't," Sirius said stubbornly. "Not until you talk to me."

"There's nothing to talk about." Sniff. "Please go away."

"Ani, it wasn't about you."

"Oh, wasn't it?" she said bitterly, rolling over to face him. Her eyes were dry, but every line of her face was heartbroken. "I told him I didn't care that he was a werewolf, I told him it didn't matter...he didn't listen. Oh, God," and she buried her face in the mattress, trying desperately not to cry. "I failed him, Sirius...I ran away when he needed me..."

He sat down beside her, a gentle, comforting weight on the bed. "Of course you didn't fail him, Ani. None of this was your fault. It's just...you mean more to him than anything in the world, and he's so afraid of hurting you that he can't be close to you." He pulled her upright, leaning her against him. Now she really was crying... "Shh," he said softly, moving her disheveled hair out of her face. "It's going to be all right, somehow. I don't know how, but it's going to be all right...God, you mean the world to him, Ani, you know that. Even if you can't be...that way...you can always be friends..."

"I don't want to be friends!" she wailed in misery, hiding her face in his shoulder. "I want to be loved."

"You are," Sirius whispered, and something in him that wanted, more than anything, to protect her, moved--he reached out for her, his arms going around her. And then, before he knew what was happening, he was kissing her.

He'd never been kissed that way, and he'd been kissed often enough to know the difference. Anika smelled, tasted, like the wind off the sea, salty and wild and beautiful--her lips were wet and smooth with tears, hard and demanding and yet soft, yielding...he wanted nothing more than this, this sweet electrifying bite that swept through him with every touch. "Ani," he whispered softly against her mouth, his arms tightening around her.

She entwined her long fingers in his smooth hair, bringing him closer still, melting against him, feeling her sorrow and pain wash through her in a blazing, intoxicating wave, forgetting who she was and what she was, remembering only him...

*

The warm, soft weight of her in his arms brought him back to reality, to the cold, hard bed and the dark, boarded-in room. She pressed herself against him, and he held her closer, pushing a soft, fat tendril of hair out of her face, pushing down the beginnings of the feelings that threatened him...willing himself to think only of her.

Sirius found himself quite unable to understand his own feelings. It had something to do with his proximity to Ani--there was something about her that he couldn't quite hold on to, something strong and luminous and indescribably good, something he could spend a lifetime adoring and never quite define. She glowed, it seemed, with an inner light that took his breath away every time he saw her, something that had nothing to do with physical beauty...

"I didn't mean to do that," she said, after a time of this wonderful silence. The tears were beginning to prickle at the backs of her eyes again. "I made things harder, didn't I?"

"You?" He laughed, though he had never felt less like laughing in his entire life. "You didn't do anything except be who you are." You betrayed your friend, screamed the voices in the back of his mind. You hurt him more than anyone else ever could--making out with the girl he loves in a sordid shack, while he mourns her up in his dormitory!--and he doesn't even know.

I did what I had to...what I felt was right. God, how can things that feel so perfect be so...wrong?

She looked up at him through a curtain of dark lashes, her eyes haunted. "I never wanted things to be complicated. I just wanted to be happy...that's all anyone wants, isn't it? And I thought I was happy. No, I didn't just think it--I really was happy. I had friends...and I had Remus...and now I've messed everything up. Oh," and her voice was misery again, "why can't things just be simple?"

"I don't know," he said honestly, kissing the top of her head.

"Of course you don't. Sirius, I don't know what to do..." She pulled away from him, straightening her rumpled robes. "Maybe it's best if we just spent some time apart. Not just you--Remus, James, Peter, Lily." She sniffed, wiped her nose with her sleeve like a child and attempted a watery smile. "House pride, you know...maybe I'd better acquire some of it." She leaned over him, kissing him wetly on the mouth, and drew back. "Thank you...for everything."

And then she was gone.

*

"Prongs," muttered Sirius under his breath in no uncertain tones, "I have to talk to you."

James didn't ask questions; he knew his friend well enough that he was fairly sure he could understand what this was about. They trooped up into the empty dormitory, Sirius shut the door, and they stared at each other for a minute.

"You shagged her, didn't you," said James. It wasn't a question.

Sirius seemed to have a momentary speech impediment. "How--" he croaked, unable to get any farther. After a moment, he managed "We didn't literally, you know. Just kissed." After a very pregnant pause, he added, "A lot."

James nodded curtly. "I suspected you might."

Sirius sank onto his bed, running a hand through his hair. "I didn't mean to! Honestly I didn't. I'd never hurt Moony that way, you know I wouldn't. It just sort of happened...she was so unhappy, I couldn't even look at her...I only wanted to comfort her, and I ended up..." He swallowed hard. "Now she doesn't want to see any of us, probably ever again." He looked up at his best friend. "What should I do?"

James laughed humorlessly. "You're asking me for advice? After the Lily fiasco?"

Sirius waved it aside. "That'll get better if you stop thinking about it so much."

The other boy sighed. "You know, Padfoot, sometimes separation is best. Maybe Ani's right about this...things are too hard for everyone right now, and I don't just mean among us. Voldemort's attacks...they're affecting everyone, subtly or not-so-subtly. She might have gotten over her father, but--I don't know. Let her be for a while. She knows we're here if she needs us."

But what if I need her?