What happens: Sirius and Remus are reconciled after the incident at the Whomping Willow, and Padfoot, Prongs and Wormtail join the wolf on the night of the full moon. Hell, and there's always that whole "Evil Dark Lord's Rise to Power" thing in there, too.
Main Characters: Remus J. Lupin, Sirius Black
Subsidiary Characters: James Potter, Lilly Evans, Peter Pettigrew; Severus Snape, Lucius Malfoy; Professor Voldemort, Professor McGonagall; Etienne Ibert
Couples You Will Find In This Fic (Whether You Like It Or Not): Sirius Black/Remus Lupin; James Potter/Lilly Evans; Severus wanting Remus's body; a hint or two of Lucius Malfoy/Severus Snape; other relationships of both a homosexual and heterosexual nature
Dedication: This fic is dedicated to Saiyanhobbit, my beta, my muse, my inspiration, the one who sent me Sirius/Remus fics until I got back in the mood, the one who did everything an amazing person would. The reason for that is because she is an amazing person. Also, thank you to everyone who's reviewed. You are nice, wonderful, fantastic people. I love to get reviews. I am shameless about them. If you're reading this fic, then please! Review!
This is: chapter eleven of a work in progress. Like all my works in progress, it is possible that you will be waiting a very long time between installments, or they could come out daily in a psychotic and rather frightening fashion. Do Not Worry! Just take it as it comes, and feel free to send me demanding fan mail (all demanding fan mail should be sent to MISBEGOTTENMOON@aol.com) if you feel you've been waiting an egregiously long time. Demanding fan mail is annoying sometimes, but on the whole it makes me feel incredibly cool. And that's what it's all about, right? Oh yes. And I am also constantly updating chapters that have already been uploaded, whenever I find a hideous spelling error or a problem with grammar. So check back often.
C&C: is demanded. Or, you know, desperately longed for, in a rather pathetic sense. Just gimme some of that good ol' fashioned R&R, and let me know you actually do want to see more of my work.
Chapter XI: Un Troup d'Animaux
It had been a long time since Achille had seen the light of day. He had deep gray eyes, the color of granite, no blacker and no softer, and they were bright and keen, despite the dark surroundings. For a while he had lived upon the edge of dusk, where the sun rose late and slept early, and darkness was to him no problem, no hindrance, at all. Those gray eyes were sharpest in the pitch of night, after all.
Sometimes, his eyes tracked the path of a rat around the length of his cell. When it seemed near to escaping, Achille would stalk the creature with only his gaze, fleckless and focused, so that its small body and smaller brain knew for a few breathless seconds of pure instinct what fate lay in store for it. His hands, which were by all means bigger than paws, had only one flaw and that was the blunt, broken edges of his fingernails, no good for skewering, for clutching, for rending flesh or fur. But he was alone now, he knew that much, and the only flesh to rend was his own, the only fur to tear at short rat fur.
The lack of sun was not what bothered Achille, for the sun had never been his friend, and in daylight he was never truly in his element.
No, it was the freedom that he missed, because stretching your legs and truly using them were two different things.
Sometimes, he paced his cell, the length over, watching the bars above him, too high above him for him to even hope to reach, and it was not helplessness he felt, just a calm annoyance at his own, caged self. Sometimes, he did not pace but walked and studied, running broad palms over the line of cold stone upon the walls, feeling the bumps in the texture, feeling the twitch in his muscles. If he were stupid, he would break his flesh to bleeding in an attempt to pry open rock and get himself out. But he was not stupid, he was far from it, and instead he studied the stone and the lack of space between forever-shut door and the length of yet more stone, and felt the rippling of magical wards tingle along his flesh. He was trapped; he had learned that from the second that door slammed shut, had known from the way the sound echoed desolately over the high walls for hours. If even sound could not escape, then Achille Baudouin could not, no matter how strong or sly or skilled he had become.
Now, dark brown hair streaked with gray the slate color of his eyes hung shaggily into his face, and bathed him a pleasant shadow. Now, his nails were broken and dirty, cracked down to the quick, and he barely gave a damn. Now, his knuckles were warped and his muscles less compact, more wiry, but his back was still straight and he sat in aloof silence, would, no doubt, sit that way for the rest of his days. When the moon came, he felt his bones change and his flesh melt and his muscles shift and merge, and he would sit in the center of his cell and howl. The sound he made was loud enough and chill enough for Azkaban to get two of its fireside tale nicknames: Wolf Trap and The Graveyard of the Wind.
"If you find yourself in the deepest, darkest corner of the world, where there is no escape and there is never any hope, then you have found yourself in Wolf Trap, devourer of souls," an old woman would say to her young children on a hot summer, with the firelight flickering up to her features and devouring them in craggy shadows, "and there is no rescue, for this is the darkest pit of no-life upon the earth, where punishment has no name and no form, creeping up upon you as would a plague in the depths of night."
Achille would have laughed, would have shrugged his shoulders, would have listened to the sound of free wind and smiled, just remembering this place.
"If you find yourself in the deepest, darkest corner of the world, where there is no escape and there is never any hope, then you have found yourself in The Graveyard of the Wind, destroyer of youth," a stony-faced Gypsy would tell a ragtag group of children, their eyes wide and fixed upon her kohl-smeared eyes, "and there is no saving you there, for it is the darkest pit of no-life upon the earth, where shadows have full rule and flesh festers and hands touch you, singing the song of rats in the depths of night."
But he had to get out of it, in order to look back, to remember.
Most times, he would crack his knuckles in a slow, snapping line, and would then stretch his arms above his head, and would tell stories to himself, or to an audience of rat skulls. Then, he would pull out at the roots a few strands of his long, thick hair, braiding them into what might have been called rope, but was only Wolf Hair. Through their eyeholes he would string the rat skulls, and he adorned his neck with them, as well as his wrists. He would stretch his arms again, above his head, and he would howl a man's howl. He would pace the floors again. He would braid rat spines into his hair when he sat once more, after his legs had been properly stretched. When he moved, his braids clacked, like tongue against teeth clicking, like crows' beaks upon metal bottle caps and broken bits of glass, catching the sunlight.
What he wouldn't give for a man's weapon, the slick blade of a knife.
He would shave his beard with it, and it would be more comfortable for sleep.
In the depths of his not-madness he remembered the girl he had found., once upon the banks of a river, long ago. She knew how to howl, a pure, high howl, rich and thick with the morning dew. She had smelled of dirt and of sunflower seeds and of river water, and Achille had touched her neck with his nose. He did not know her name but he knew when he saw her deep eyes that it meant betrayal, and he thought of her here often as he touched his tired body, and felt his own skin. For what she was she had had the softest hands, and had touched him here, here, here, with the flat of her plump palm. There had been a graveyard with names Achille cared nothing for, and she had tossed back her head and laughed, before she'd disappeared into the woods. Lupin, he had read upon the gravestones, Lupin. He wondered if he might find her again, but then one day he had known she was dead, and on that day, when he howled, all the Wolves across the Thousand Seas howled with him, mourning the great loss of a sister.
So maybe, what Achille missed, was his pack. He had had one, once, and he roamed the dark earth with those familiar bodies. One by one they had died, and then he had killed a man when only two others were left, and he had been put here to rot, blood still dripping from his muzzle.
He had licked himself clean, but from then on the place smelled pleasantly of blood, in the dusty corners and on the ragged sheets and upon his own fingers, down beneath his fingernails. Now the smell of rat blood had almost taken all of that over, but there was still the man blood that lay beneath, and sometimes it made him grin.
Still, despite it all, he had perfect white teeth, and they glinted when they caught the moonlight. He grinned like a wildcat and howled like a wolf and moved like a tiger, pacing, pacing circles, within the confines of his cell. From this place he had learned silence when appropriate and hush in his feet and muscles and from this place he had discovered the power of a howl when you put all your own rage into it. That was the only place he felt rage, any longer, in the ululation of a throaty howl.
Once, a crow had perched upon the lip of the window above and they had watched each other for a very long time. In fact, this had not been so very long ago. The crow had black, beady eyes, and watched the polished rat skulls glint with a muted interest shown only in its beak's nostrils. He had looked up at the crow. The crow had looked down at him. It was odd, seeing life held elsewhere than in a rat and in himself, the veins that laced and pounded through his wrists; he had very broad wrists, it had been hard as a child to find gloves that would fit him. But he had long fingers, long and thick, and the middle one was as long, or as short, as the ones that flanked it. There were burn scars upon the knuckles of the hand he lifted to the bird, but when he lifted his hand the bird flew away, leaving only crow shit upon the stone as a reminder, as a smell, as a marking. Such markings meant, though, that the one who had left them would be coming back. Achille did not trust crows and he thought perhaps the shit it had left behind was some sort of pointer, some sort of sign, and killed eight rats that day to mask the smell of the fresh droppings.
One day, Achille heard a voice.
"You speak English," said the crow, who woke him from his sleep, dreamless and still. Achille lifted his head and watched the crow for a little while, who had perched in the same place, a spot where crow shit had been once, but wind and rain and snow and time had weathered the memory away.
"I speak a lot of things," Achille replied, resting upon one elbow, the crow watching him watching the crow, "I speak to myself, I speak to crows, I speak to rats before I kill them, I speak to the corners of the room, I speak to the bars of the window. Outside, I speak French. Inside, I speak my own language. I speak with the Wolves, but that is not speech as the world understands it. I speak English, yes," he said, and his braids set up a chorus of laughter as he cocked his chin cockily.
"Would you like to be free?" asked the crow, who shifted in amusement from one spindly red leg to the other, wings lifting and shaking in braid laughter, then settling back against his sides.
"I have been here a very long time," Achille replied, moving from one elbow to the other but always watching the crow watching him, "and it smells here like rat blood and crow shit and my body if my body truly smelled of old straw and stone and metal and chain, and the burlap which they use for my bed, and the slop which they give me to eat. I'd rather eat rats. I'd rather be free. But I won't go free without knowing the name to call, not just speaking to a crow with no name."
"You are Achille Baudouin," said the crow, "and I am known as many things; as Black Crow; as Scavenger; as Long Legs; as Smallwing; as Crookbeak or Riptalon; as Ratsbane or Mousebreath; yet in those forms I do not speak but caw, as the world sees it, and I dance upon the ground in search of gold. With this speech, I am gold. I am the very name of it. In this form I am Liamcrow, and I am myself, but I am not."
"You certainly talk a lot," said Achille thoughtfully, and he grinned his hyena grin, "for a little crow."
"I will come again," said Little Crow, and he shat upon the stone once more, and lifted wing, and flew off.
"If I had that many names," Achille said to a rat that trembled in death throes, impaled by one of his blunt-tipped fingers, "I would not know what to call myself in the night, and I would not know what to ask others to call me, and I would leave no markings upon the ground I had walked, and I would find that the trees sung no songs of me. That, perhaps, is stealth. Having so many names, and so little substance." The rat made no sound. It was dead. Achille began to skin it with his chipped fingernails, while two clean rat skulls, eyeless, watched.
Three days later Achille Baudouin did not escape from Azkaban, Wolf Trap, The Graveyard of the Wind. His freedom was bought by a man as trustworthy as gold, with eyes the color of snakeskin, a man who had a Thousand Names to cross the Thousand Seas, and none of them real.
Remus, of course, looked just the same as always, if not a little more haunted, a little more shadowy around the edges. Sirius drunk in the sight of him as would a man stranded for years in a desert, watching him through the window, gathering his courage. Then, he grasped at the handle of the car door, and slid it open. It was obvious Remus had already known he was there, for he only turned slowly, thoughtfully, eyes lifting up to Sirius's face. They were shielded and unreadable, and for a moment, unfamiliar.
And then, Sirius realized, the boy was terrified.
Sirius didn't even have to think. He catapulted himself forward, ignoring the lurch and the sway of the rocking train, finding himself in Remus's arms, against Remus's chest, exactly where it was he had needed to be for so very long. It didn't even occur to him for a few minutes that he might be crushing the smaller boy beneath him, fingers in his hair, face buried in his neck. When he finally realized he pulled back with a choked little gasp and simply tumbled back against the seat, pulling Remus forward, and up against him. His arms found their way to wrap, strong and warm and tight, around that smaller, more compact frame, and he held Remus close, and he wept.
Just the very scent of him was welcome relief enough; the sight and the feel was too much, and he found that all the apologies in the world, all his need for them, could not bring him to speak. Not then, certainly not then.
Sirius found that he could smell Remus more acutely, could sense little things about the way he felt and the way he smelled and the way he moved that he had not previously noted. Perhaps some awareness, some sense of understanding, had been awoken in Sirius, or simply heightened. He realized, he liked it. 'The better to hold you with, my dear,' but the wry irony of thinking that made him wince.
And, he discovered, Remus was crying, too.
"Don't," he whispered, helpless. He'd only seen Remus cry once before, and then he had been half drunk, and more able to handle it. It hadn't come after all of this. It hadn't come after holding Remus through the night, and understanding him better, and knowing him deeper, and loving him all the more for what he'd uncovered.
"All right," Remus replied, but his voice was thick with the fall of his tears and the tightening in his throat and the words, it was quite obvious, meant absolutely nothing. He had buried his face against Sirius's neck, which was salty and wet now because of it, his fingers clutching in the front of Sirius's t-shirt.
There was some violently desperate part of Sirius that needed, somehow, to grasp onto the smaller boy and kiss his face and pull him close, but he remained just the way they were for a long time, the both of them shaking with the force of their emotions. Sirius held Remus tight, rocking them both back and forth, the fingers of one hand pressed against the back of Remus's neck, the other at his lower back. It felt right to be close this way once more, right to be curled up around Remus curved up against his chest, but Sirius could feel the wrongness of the air, the aching of it, the sadness in the embrace.
"I'm sorry," he found he was whispering, hot against Remus's ear, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Remus lifted his hands, then dropped them, then lifting them again, wrapping his arms around Sirius's neck. If he could just hide himself here, he thought, where no one could find him, where it would be all warmth and all Sirius's scent, then he would be safe, and the tears would stop. But he had to let himself trust again, had to hear the despair in Sirius's voice, had to say or do something to make this end. Because really, he decided at last, when you really thought about it, Sirius felt more, in that innocent way of his, and therefore hurt more, over all that had happened.
However flawed Remus's logic might have been, it was what he believed, and what he clung to, and it was what he acted on.
He pulled back, wild-eyed, too mindless for thought, and simply sat backwards, hard, against the seat beneath him. His arms tugged lightly at the bigger boy, and Sirius found himself curled up to fit in the smallest of spaces, but it was worth it, his head in Remus's lap, Remus's fingers in his hair. For a long while Remus held him that way, and found that without feeling Sirius shake with tears, it was easier for him to stop. Certainly, Sirius was still crying against his thigh but when he wasn't so close, wasn't so crushed against the body that trembled with such deep emotion, it was easier for his own tears to ease. Sirius felt hot, almost feverishly so, and Remus let his fingers trail over the other's forehead, down the side of his cheek, brushing away the course of tears from cheekbone, nose, and lips alike.
At last, Sirius's breathing steadied, and the tension in the room faded. He held tight to the hem of Remus's shirt, fingers tangled in it, and that hold did not loosen, but the rest of him did, muscles relaxing, pain soothed away.
"Don't tell anyone," Sirius whispered helpfully, "but I really thought you'd never talk to me again." Whatever brave face he had worn all summer, ever since that night at the Whomping Willow, in fact, had melted away with the onslaught of his tears. Now all he was, was just a boy, small and scared and previously alone. Remus was made terribly aware of the force of youth, the burning innocence of it, the eventual helplessness. His fingers stilled against Sirius's cheek, and he drew in a deep, long breath.
"I didn't understand," he admitted, softly, "I didn't understand why you would ever--" He cut off, and frowned to himself, and never finished that thought. "I'm sorry."
They were silent for a little while longer, the only sound the hum of air over the sleek body of the train.
"Remus." Sirius's voice was still shaky, but it was firm now. For any other occasion, he would have been embarrassed, would have denied breaking down that way. Now he was too drained to feel any lesser, petty emotions.
"Men don't cry lightly," Orion Black said to his son, surveying the scraped knee bemusedly, "certainly not for a little scratch. At death, maybe, if it were a real mate, or a lover, but never over a little scratch." Sirius had tried never to cry in front of anyone after that, until he realized his father's advice was shoddy, and pigheaded, and stubborn as a rule.
"Sirius." Remus sounded the same as always: immovable. Sirius should have known he would regain composure that quickly. But now, he understood what it meant, the shell of protection Remus needed always to have around himself, for fear of being hurt by the truth of all he felt.
"Should've promised you this before." He found Remus's hand, and pulled it away from his own cheek, simply holding it against Remus's knee. He toyed with one long, graceful finger, almost absently, and closed his eyes, wanting somehow to cry again, that he was allowed so close, once more. Even after he had broken so much, and nearly ruined so very much more.
"Promised me what?" Remus's voice was light, enveloping that animal thickness it had harbored before. Sirius had never heard him cry that way, and vowed he never would again.
Such vows were not made lightly; he never heard those sounds, again.
"That I wouldn't let anyone hurt you," Sirius replied softly, voice muffled against the side of Remus's thigh, "not even me, and I'm the worst."
Only because I need you, so much, Remus thought, can you hurt me this way.
Only because I need you, so much, Sirius thought, do I act so foolishly near you.
"Sometimes," Remus murmured, eyes flipping up to the ceiling, his voice deceptively careless, "sometimes promises are broken, it's better not to make them. At all." Sirius felt as if he'd been punched in the stomach. It took a few moments, for him to regain his breath.
"I'm not gonna break mine," he insisted, voice low and forceful, and suddenly change, "I'd never break a promise I made you, no matter what happened and no matter how I change. You're not the only one can keep your word, y'know, I can do it to and I bloody well intend to, Remus Lupin." I kissed you under the starlight, beneath the moon which marks your face in such pale light, the coming and going of a deep scar. "'Cause just as simple as seeing you the first time I knew I was supposed to stay with you for as long as you'd have me and that's what I intend to do, until-well, until the moon stops its its changing in the sky and I can't lift a finger or move my lips to make a promise, much less keep one." I kissed you when clouds passed over the face of the moon and you were bathed in shadow, too, and I loved you then only you didn't see it, and neither did I.
Remus was silent.
"And just because I'm not smart the way you are, the way-the way Snape is, just because I'm not the star of everything, like James, just because I can't convince anyone of anything the way Lilly can-- it doesn't mean I don't intend to keep my promise, do all I can to and make sure thatthat even if I can't be the one to help you to ityou're gonna be smiling. For some reason, any reason." Sirius swallowed, wincing. "I love it when you smile, Moony. I love to see you smile." He lifted himself up, one hand resting on Remus's shoulder, eyes focusing on those mud-brown ones, midnight blue the color of indigo and ink and more deeply passionate than ever they had been. It was just as simple as if he'd said something else, those words but changed around just a bit. "I do," Sirius said helplessly, all the wind leaving his sails. "I do."
Remus could have told him, then, that the way Sirius laughed filled a room with its sunshine song, and ever since the first time Remus heard it, it took his breath away.
Remus could have told him, then, that the way Sirius moved through air and space was like a bright star in the darkened sky, the sort that guided weary travelers home after many years of a fruitless journey.
Remus could have made absolutely clear, right then, that he loved it when Sirius did foolish things and brilliant things alike, when Sirius touched Remus's lips with his thumb, when he looked up with a cocky grin or bowed his head to hide the sparkles in his eyes or took Remus out to the snow and laughed in the crisp air with him, or listened to him read on a winter's day by the fireside.
Remus could have told him, then, that ever since the beginning Sirius had saved him from small things and yet what it meant, what it truly meant to him, was that Sirius was his brightest star and his truest friend and he would never let him go, could never let him go.
Instead, Remus Lupin ducked his head for a moment, and then lifted it again. Along the lines of his lips played the shyest but most honest smile that he had ever worn, and from the look in Sirius's eyes, Remus realized he had done the right thing.
"Thank you," Sirius said. Remus shook his head, still smiling shyly, his hair falling over his eyes.
"I missed you, Sirius," was all he said in reply, and then Sirius wrapped him up in his arms. There was no desperation in the embrace, this time, only affection and tenderness, only the feel of Sirius's breath against Remus's lips and Remus's breath against Sirius's lips.
And they kissed, after that, not to make up for lost time but simply to kiss, as the world moved past them, just outside the window: a rolling summer countryside, unimportant yet dazzlingly green.
There was a moth upon the screen window, disturbed only by the breeze that filtered through its torn wings.
He watched it. Small bug. Small creature.
Some longing could be sensed inside of it, for the porch light that flickered outside, on and off and zapping when the stray wasp or moth found its way too close.
Such a trap, he enjoyed such traps, and felt amused that the moth wanted such brightness so, when it would result in such unexpected death.
Unexpected death amused him, as well, for he watched the Redcaps as they bathed in blood, crept up from their holes and feasted upon the battlefield's rotting flesh, and he laughed to himself a low chuckling sound like wind over the moors. ( Upon the moors wind did not whistle or howl, it moaned, encircling man or tree or house and laughing a crazed, low chuckle, such as his own. No less powerful, for all that it was a soft sound. It would barrel into you, knock you over before you saw it coming, when you thought the world laughed with you, rather than against. )
Unexpected death amused him as did traps, for he saw the Harpies flock to despoil what they could, chased away from great feasts of old they had once smeared with their foulness, and their retching, and their blood and their mirth. ( He was not yet old enough to know such feasts, but he was very old, as old as the great oak outside his cottage window, which flickered in the lamplight. Bzz. Flicker. The moth looked on with what he imagined to be hungry longing. The porch of Nazaire Yseult was reminiscent of life itself, because he worked in such amusing circles, enjoying them, and thriving upon them. Just as he thrived upon death, and the life born of all that it became, fertilizer of life forming life afresh. )
There was a moth, clinging to the screen window, a ratted brown creature that did not move much, as if it had forgotten how.
The house of a Murdrum was very plain, and very sparse, and made of old wood that splintered beneath the fingers, and rotted beneath the shoes.
Murdra grew out from their centers like trees, each new skin almost reptilian, each knew fingerprint representing another decade tucked behind their belts. But they were hardly serpentine, the lines of their bodies deserving plumage, it seemed, their noses arched and their faces sharply cut, as if they once had beaks. Nazaire had dark eyes, dark hawk eyes, near onyx in his dark face. His hair was the color of hawk feathers, and he had been given that name, once, Hawkfeather, by a man who had come to his village long ago upon a great wooden ship, bearing Maize from the Americas.
"I was brought here by a man who searched the seas, even, for gold," the Murdrum from another land said, his face the color of mahogany and his eyes bright pinpoints in that dark face, "and he did not look in our fields, he did not look in the places where battles stretched blood and flesh to make the ground supple for our golden corn. See?" And he held the Maize upwards, towards the sunlight, and they ate that night, hard bread with soft, sweet corn. They smelled gunpowder from far away and tasted the scent of anger, unfounded and unexplained, upon their tongues, licking their lips, smacking them afterwards. The unnamed brother lifted broad, scarred hands up to the sky, and framed the stars with his fingers, but did not try to catch the points of light that flickered on, bzz, off, bzz, on, bzz, so very far away. He knew what he could do, and what he could not, and he could sow battlefields like fields of corn but he could not catch the stars.
"What is your name?" Nazaire asked him. "Quel est votre nom?"
"Do not be formal with me," the Murdrum said, "and I will tell you my name. It is Songless, and I creep where the youngest lie, breathing their last breaths. I kiss their lips. I do not help them rise or fall, simply steal their life and their death as my own and leave their eyes glassy, as powerful and as lacking as gold planted in the ground."
He left Nazaire with seeds for corn, and Nazaire planted them, and made his living through selling the sweetest corn in all of France, for he knew what to feed his earth and told no one the secrets of battle-flesh feeding cornstalks.
Nazaire had no respect for men, though he was in man-form, man shape. What you saw was an illusion, things crouching down by the bodies of fallen soldiers in the mist and the gray of night, feeding off of marrow and muscle with sharp teeth that made bone into kernels of corn.
"But we are not Songless," Nazaire told the moth, who flicked antennae nervously, "our songs are simply softer than human ears can hear. Human hearts listen, and pull their cloaks tighter against us, our reach which they think is the cold. They move through our keening from body to body upon the battlefield, but we, we are faster."
Nazaire could think of nothing more foul than a graveyard, all once living things trapped there beneath the earth, instead of mixing with the air and settling upon the lives and filling the air with that pungent scent. His cottage -- he has not seen a war in years, many long years; not, at least, a true and glorious war, where death is clean and simple, an arrow through the heart, a cry of sharp pain, a gasping of the earth as a body falls against the dirt beneath -- smells of old, old pine, and wet redwood, and cannot be found now even if you search it out. Against the coming of a dark plague, a black scourge, technology giving rise to an era of cunning death and bone shattered with smog upon the wind, Nazaire has hidden himself, watching moths die at his porch lamp.
There are none who speak his name. The only memory of it is the cawing bzz, flicker, bzz, flash, just outside the screen, and the hunger with which the moth watches this cycle it cannot truly understand.
The sweetest corn in all of France grew out back, yet only he feasted upon it. After each meal he fed his small garden with cornsilk and cornstalks, and watched time pass along the wingspans of eerie green Luna Moths, and every day corn grew up afresh. It was a cycle of the earth that the Murdrum understood, deep within their not-blood; the words for that cycle what others would call morbid, but what they knew was true beauty. The Murdrum did not die but faded out into the wind, and wished that for all their understanding of the world they could die just once.
Nazaire Yseult would have become the fertilizer for corn, and he would have been both green and gold unfurled to the sunlight. This, he thought, as he watched the moth, would have been the grandest destiny of all, for in the fulfillment of it he would have been sweeter than life itself, and perhaps would live, or would not live, for a short but blessed time in the belly of a child.
There was a moth upon the screen window, and then it seemed to shrink in terror to an indivisible size. It trembled. It pulled back. It fluttered off into the darkness of Nazaire's room, and disappeared through a crack in the ceiling, desperate to hide.
The maggots in his wood burrowed deeper down, searching for the safety of the earth, the familiarity of its moist, bug-sized caverns.
Even the termites stopped their endless eating, hunger banished from their minuscule minds, starvation forgotten in the face of their irrational fear.
Outside, the porch light stopped its flickering. A place that was known as Mothtrap to the animals, tales passed on without speech, with only the flicking of whiskers and the panting of heavy breath, fell suddenly silent, as if it were about to rain.
"There are darker times coming," Songless warned him, yet Nazaire had thrown back his head, and laughed, a sweet sound, yet not as sweet as the corn. He had looked so young, then, a bird wild and untamed, who lived for prey in the shivering North. "There are darker times coming," Songless repeated, though his advice fell upon deaf ears, "when we will be too weak upon our own feet. I will have faded by then but you, you will be but the shadow of a pawn, and a greater hand, more powerful than the ripples of death, will move you. You will forget your own feet, you will move through the Redcaps upon his battlefield, and you will not remember a time when it had been any different." Still, Nazaire had not listened, had smoked a pipe made of a corn husk, and had watched his smoke circles fade into the darkened sky.
With an ancient, creaking sound, the porch door swung open, and in it stood a dark shadow, darker than new warfare and darker than the Gatling Gun had been, darker than all the shadows Nazaire now ignored as unimportant presences in his mind. It seemed at first to be a shadow only but then it took shape, and form. The only thing that was truly clear to be seen, though, and not a misty memory later on, were slatted green eyes that burned in the pupils a rusty, bleeding red.
"Nazaire Yseult?" The voice was clipped, and well pressed, and incredibly polite, but Nazaire was reminded of a snake in a bird's nest, and so he did not smile.
"That is what I call myself," he returned.
"Well, then, it is what I must call you, for the time being at least, for everyone should be called by some name, or another."
"Then what is it I can call you by?" It was hard, even for Nazaire himself, to focus upon the intensity of those painfully bright, almost green eyes. They were, he realized later, the color of a battlefield in the glorious morning: green grass spattered with drying blood, blanketed in the scent of death.
"I am known by many names," came the reply, "but you shall not need to call me anything at all."
"You will forget your own feet, you will move through the Redcaps upon his battlefield, and you will not remember a time when it had been any different."
"There is to be a war," said the dark shadow in Nazaire's doorway, "and it will be greater than any other before it. There will be need of those who thrive on death in such places. I am not a fool; I cannot bribe the gods of Death, I cannot have them begging favors from the palm of my hand. But the demons of Death, the legends of Death, the ghouls and the ghosts of Death, can be as easily mine as they were Napoleon's, as the Crusaders', as any fool king or prince who gathered forces and sounded the charge."
The unnamed brother lifted broad, scarred hands up to the sky, and framed the stars with his fingers, but did not try to catch the points of light that flickered on, bzz, off, bzz, on, bzz, so very far away. He knew what he could do, and what he could not, and he could sow battlefields like fields of corn but he could not catch the stars.
"I suppose," Nazaire Yseult said, toying with a strand of cornsilk caught in his teeth, "there is no point to saying yes or no, for it will happen, and perhaps I will regret less if I decide now. Even if it is simply to pretend I had some voice in the matter, when I know as I speak, that I do not now, and never will."
"Shall we?" the Shadow-man said. He did not ask, simply directed, opening the screen door behind him.
And in that dark night Nazaire Yseult, the last of the Murdra, stepped out into the darkness, away from the comforting smell of rotting wood, and thought he saw a wolf's eyes glinting at him through the trees, curious and unreadable for all their fierce brightness.
And in that dark night Nazaire Yseult could smell the sort of blood that was so pure and therefore so sweet, untainted with progress or with gunpowder or with gunsmoke, coming to him upon the air, and he straightened his shoulders, looking for all the world like a hawk ready to take flight.
All anxiety over returning to Hogwarts had faded from both Sirius's and Remus's minds, and by the time they sat down to eat Sirius's appetite had returned, along with that powerful and unavoidable good cheer at being back, at being by Remus's side, and at being a Fifth Year Gryffindor with all the world before him on his crowded plate. Things seemed right, James noted, with Sirius snatching food out from under his classmates' noses, offering the choicest prizes to Remus and grinning like a fool from ear to ear. Even Peter seemed unable to resist the laughter and the chaos all around him, smiling as he ate, talking more in that one night than he normally did in a week, and about more pleasant things, at that. Of them all, Lilly was in some ways the happiest, sitting with James on one side and talking quietly with one of her best friends, Blythe Harold, who sat on the other side of her. All she could think of was how she had, in some ways, succeeded, and in that she was tremendously proud, holding James's hand in her own beneath the table, just to stay her giddiness.
"Well," Blythe had said, dark blue eyes sparkling, "don't you look happy. Anything special happen this summer, then?"
"No," Lilly had answered, and it had been truthful, but she gave James's hand a little squeeze all the same. It was her pleasure to note that he returned it.
During the course of the evening Remus realized how unused to the crowds he had become, and discovered that he was not as uncomfortable as he should have been, under the circumstances. He kept close to Sirius's side, sitting next to him once more, and there seemed to be nothing wrong at all with the world, certainly nothing wrong with his place in it. When Sirius at last leaned over, brushing hair from Remus's face so he could whisper in his ear, Remus realized barely an hour of the feast had passed, yet it seemed almost an eternity of laughing and joking and catching up. Too much time had been missed between them for them to sum up in an hour, but they had certainly tried.
"D'you wanna maybe, go somewhere more quiet?" Sirius asked Remus in a stage whisper, breathing softly against his ear. Remus paused, weighed the situation, felt himself suddenly realize how tense he was with the crowd and the shouting and the lack of privacy, and he nodded.
"All right," he said, resisting the urge to press a hand against his cheek, to rub his fingers over the tickle of breath upon his earlobe.
They needed no further planning than that. Sirius would one day no doubt be an escape artist, or something along the lines, for they snuck out of the Great Hall without even being seen. The halls were eerily quiet, deserted as all the other students, and teachers, feasted behind the great doors, which Sirius and Remus left behind, only their footsteps disturbing the silence.
Their bags were already laid out by their beds, and Remus felt suddenly tired, a weariness born of too much activity, both emotional and physical. He blinked towards Sirius, but the boy was already tugging off his school robes and readying himself for bed, as if he'd read Remus's thoughts before he'd even thought them, himself. Remus shook his head, and then bowed it to hide a smile, searching through his things for an oversized t-shirt to wear during the warm summer night. It was an easy, quick change; unlike Sirius, who threw his robes into a crumpled heap by the side of his bed, Remus folded his, smoothing out the wrinkles, and setting them neatly on top of his bag. Sirius watched this procedure with a little rueful smile on his face, the smaller boy with those somber, whiskey-brown eyes focused in concentration upon the task at hand. Remus ran his fingers over the smooth fabric, making sure everything was just right, before he straightened, and looked back at Sirius over his shoulder.
Though he had known the entire time, this was the first time that Remus actually acknowledged the fact that Sirius was watching him. Their eyes met, for a moment, and then Sirius shrugged, suddenly shy, running his fingers through his hair and tossing it back over one shoulder.
"Y'look tired," Sirius managed to say, frowning at the failure of his own words, the fumbling of his own tongue, "and I've always liked your bed better anyway, so let's get some sleep, for tomorrow. We have Potions, first, and that's nothing to look forward to." You're babbling, Sirius Black, said the voice he always ignored in the back of his mind. He kicked it aside.
"I am tired," Remus admitted, "it's been a long day, hasn't it?" He toyed with the frayed hem of his shirt and shifted, eyes focused on his bare feet below him. It was for that reason he felt Sirius come close before his saw him, felt the hand slip into is before he saw it, and felt himself move along with the pull of Sirius's warm and convincing body, before he could even think to make his legs move. It was all on instinct, but it felt right enough. Leaning back into Sirius's arms, sinking into the warmth of the cloud-soft Hogwarts' canopy bed, was enough to convince him. His eyes fell shut.
But only for a moment.
Sirius's lips were against his cheek as soon as Remus relaxed back against his chest, and Remus felt suddenly deeply aware of the place he had settled himself, in between both of Sirius's legs. He shifted, felt rather than heard the soft, hissing sound Sirius made at the change in positions, and fell hurriedly still, breath quickening in his throat.
But Sirius's lips remained where they were, not even searching out Remus's own as he drew the covers up over them both, and burrowed back against the pillows. Somehow, Remus felt both relieved and disappointed, all at once, but said nothing, anything other than silence seeming fundamentally wrong in the moment.
Naturally, Sirius was the first to break the silence; but even as he spoke, his hands were busy, slipping easily up underneath the hem of Remus's nightshirt, dancing over smooth and scarred skin alike.
"I never got to tell you," he said softly, throat humming with the words, "about Padfoot, and the others."
"About who?" Only Sirius could get this close. Remus shifted again, and felt the muscles in Sirius's thighs tense as body brushed against body.
"Padfoot," Sirius said, the name coming naturally to his tongue, just as kissing Remus did. Remus understood, quickly enough, without having to question Sirius further about what he meant.
"What does-- I mean, what does it feel like?" he asked softly, breath hitching in his throat as Sirius's lips moved down over the line of Remus's cheek, tracing the cheekbone and jaw beneath.
"It felt kind of funny," Sirius admitted, voice rumbling over Remus's skin, "kind of like looking at yourself, from outside of yourself, but not seeing what you normally would, in a mirror. And then, after that, it just feels-- it just feels right, almost, because it is you, entirely you, just a different reflection of yourself."
Remus had never known Sirius to be so poetic. Remus had also never known such complete jealousy.
It just feels right, Sirius had said. So changing from yourself to a not-self but true-self all the same could feel right, could feel like coming home. Well, Remus decided, quelling that jealousy before it was even fully realized inside of him, well, it made sense, after all, for this changing was voluntary, was what Sirius had wanted, and so why should it feel wrong?
It wasn't as if he could ever wish pain such as his on anyone else, anyway, he told himself. Not even on an enemy. Certainly not on Sirius.
"Padfoot is -- well, I suppose, I am -- well, he's big," Sirius continued, lips trailing down over Remus's neck as the smaller boy shifted to the side to give him full access to that soft expanse of skin. "And black, and has these dark shadowy eyes, and he makes jokes sometimes, mostly about me, though. It's annoying, because a lot of the time he's completely right. I bet Prongs -- that's James, y'know -- I bet Prongs doesn't make fun of James, but James is just like that, only Lilly can make fun of him, and even she doesn't really want to. And Peter, Peter is Wormtail -- did I tell you, James, Prongs, is a stag, I've seen him once, he looked all...regal, and proud -- and Peter, Wormtail, is a rat, small and kinda gray, and I don't think he likes being a rat very much, but we didn't choose 'em, they chose us, so there's really nothing can be done about it. But Prongs, he's glorious, and Padfoot-- I like him, a lot, I think you will too, and-- and I'm just running off at the mouth again, aren't I." Sirius fell still, silent, for a sheepish moment. "Sorry," he murmured, face hidden against Remus's neck.
"Don't apologize," Remus encouraged him, smiling faintly, fondly, "I wanted to know. I wanted to hear what I'd missed."
"You'll see soon enough," Sirius went on, softer, this time, his tone more gentle. "Because after all, they're for you," and he gave the side of Remus's Adam's Apple a sweet, chaste kiss, "but it's got to be just the right time for them, if you know what I mean."
"Yes," Remus said, suppressing a thrill, "yes, I think I do." Sirius traced a lazy, absent pattern over Remus's stomach, fingering that scar gently and warily, skirting along the edge of it. It was tender flesh -- Sirius had a few scars from being careless as a boy, and he knew scar tissue was quite sensitive -- and so it made Sirius nervous, and Remus equally so, because he'd realized early on that Sirius liked, thrived on, needed, simple touch, and the multitude of scars made the bigger boy cautious.
"I'll be able to go with you everywhere," Sirius said softly, to distract them both from his roving hands, "everywhere you want me, or need me..."
"You'll get in the way and draw such attention," Remus said, but Sirius noted the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes and felt warmth flood through him. It was as if Remus had said, that's everywhere, then, everywhere I am, always, and they both knew it, even if it had been impossible to actually say.
Some things, Sirius was slowly learning, were so, so much better than words could say them. With Remus, the most soft-spoken of confessions was normally the deepest and most important. The small boy made you lean forward in your seat, strain to listen, and it underscored the importance of him and his presence each time, not to mention that it made Sirius feel like a blustering, screeching git.
Which, admittedly, all signs said he was.
Remus smelled sweet, sweet in a fresh-rain sort of way, the feel of that scent just a little humid when they were so close, but that was understandable, after all. Sirius wondered if Remus could smell him so acutely, and decided finally that he must, and then made himself a promise to shower more often. Little things, he reminded himself, little things are what matter most.
And, of course, the few Big Things, big enough that they had no name and were yet unspoken between them. But Sirius thought Remus must have thought they were perhaps to young, and Remus had never put such feelings into words, had never had the need to, for he had never had them. So neither of them spoke it, neither of them truly felt as if they had to, and both were content.
For the time being, there was a little touch here, and a little touch there, and a nuzzle and a nip at Remus's neck, and a shifting back into the warm hold of Sirius's arms, and the feel of Sirius pushing forward into something that wasn't there, and the sound of his breath hitching in his throat.
For the time being, there was Remus running his fingers in a somber way through Sirius's hair, and Sirius loving the touch, and Sirius's fingers tensing against the skin at Remus's sides, and kneading at the muscle, and pulling him close, pressing body against body, his breath quickening.
For the time being, there was Sirius, who still wore a flannel pajama set, clothing which underscored his irrepressible youth, and Remus, who wore an impossibly large t-shirt and pajama pants, one to which the top was long since gone. And the clothing, all soft flannel and cotton, rustled between them, skin on fabric on fabric on skin.
Fingerpads against scalp, fingers tangled gracefully in dark hair, body arched so they were face to face, and watching, always watching, and loving all they saw.
The side of Remus's hip, pressed in between Sirius's legs. Sirius's knees drawn up, his eyes only half focused, his own hips moving in a clumsy, boyish way, but there was some hunger there that Remus sensed, and the smell of the air, the feel of it, had changed. Remus's eyes, on Sirius's face, the way it changed and the brow furrowed and a little line of sweat stood out over his forehead. Then, Remus's lips pressing up against that suddenly lined skin, tasting, and a breath breathed in deep, just to remember, and mark, and revel.
"Remus," Sirius was whispering, his voice sounding trapped and far away, hidden in the back of his throat, and something about the sound of his name spoken that way made Remus's eyes glitter, made the backs of them burn, until he closed them, the cool of the lids soothing to that heat. "Ah--n, Remus." Sirius's hips lifting, against Remus's hipbone, everything awkward angles and uncomfortable twisting but there was something, something in that awkwardness, something in the way Remus felt so foolish and fumbling, that was satisfying, and whole, a pleasure that ran deep.
Remus wasn't all that naive. He wasn't experienced, but he wasn't a fool, and the way Sirius was moving terrified him. Suddenly, he was grateful for the clothing that stood in between them, all-too-rough against all-too-sensitive skin. Suddenly, he knew that whatever this was it could all be summed up in a word: intimacy. And the easier he found it, the easier lying in Sirius's arms would be, the more often it would happen. Suddenly, he knew what he had to do, following instinct as he found he did, so often, where Sirius was concerned.
But that was mostly because no one had given him a book of rules to follow, for no book could properly describe this.
Remus shifted again in Sirius's arms, pressing himself closer, searching for the hissing sound, like air escaping a balloon, that he was sure would follow. It came. Quick. Remus trailed his fingers through Sirius's hair, and rested them at last, laced, over the back of Sirius's neck. The bigger boy shivered -- soft touches, soft words, soft sounds; soft skin, soft lips, soft kisses; everything about Remus so soft, and speaking volumes for such delicacy. This was the first time, Sirius's mind said somewhere, where it was still thinking coherently, that Remus had ever taken charge. And it felt good; just as soft, just as delicate, as touching Remus had been, only now Remus was touching him, and he thought he might lose his mind.
"That's-- Remus-- ahh--" It was as if it wasn't really him speaking, but Remus could hear the soft gasps, the hushed whispers, the little, wonderful sounds like a song on the cool night air, and he shifted again, and brought Sirius closer. A hand dropped to his thigh, the space between them constricted, and tight. And yes, Remus admitted, he felt small, like a child, and impossibly foolish, and terribly inept. It was embarrassing to the extreme, but Sirius's face had grown smooth, and the skin and the spiky, short hairs at the back of his neck were velvety, and in the end it was worth it, worth being this clumsy and therefore this vulnerable, because the result justified every moment of it.
Sirius Black pressed himself closer, and then made a gasping sound, his eyes flying open as he stiffened, and Remus felt the heat between them coil, and tense, and grow. Muscles were stiff and there was something against his hipbone that he recognized, and then he realized that heat in his cheeks meant he was blushing.
And fortunately, Sirius was kind enough or perhaps shy enough or perhaps both not to make any sound louder than a short "oh!" and then a deep sigh, which might have been Remus's name, and might have been nothing altogether, or something else entirely. It was hard to tell. All Remus knew at the moment, was that he was blushing straight to his ears, and he had to hide himself up against Sirius's chest -- the very closeness which made him blush in the first place -- to calm himself.
He shouldn't have been blushing, he told himself, he simply shouldn't have been. And yet, simple as that, he was.
He was also tight in his muscles and hot in his clothes and a little shaky right down to his bones. Then, Sirius came back to himself from the shock of orgasm, and found himself stroking the side of Remus's arm, over his shoulder and to his elbow, repeating, repeating, repeating again. It was a soothing caress, and Remus let himself relax with the pull of Sirius's sated muscles, the satisfied aura that seemed to pulse from his skin.
"You're amazing," Sirius said, voice awed, and though the two words muffled in Remus's hair, their intent and the emotion behind them was made perfectly clear.
And, just for a peculiar, shining moment, where the world felt strange and the air smelled exotic, and Remus felt a stranger in his own skin, Remus believed those words to be true, simply because they had come from Sirius's lips.
Lurking under beds and in dark corners of closets was all very well, until, of course, the children you haunted ran screaming to their mums and dads and lights were turned on, comforting darkness obliterated, and that wailing and that crying and that soothing quelled the weakened reach of the fear you could yet instill, and then it was back to scurrying among the dust bunnies, looking for somewhere else, someone else, who still believed.
In the depths of the middle ages the Noctumbra had hid among ship rats, had fed off the shadow of the Black Death, and the fear they brought to the hearts of children had been born within the velvet petals of posies. From thereon in, they had been so strong and so cruel, rearing up in dark corners, striking terror into hearts and devouring the sight of such wide, petrified eyes.
They could turn tree into rock in those days, their cruel claws clutching around chests, puncturing lungs, keeping hearts from beating. Those were the days of true power, where floorboards creaked and people believed in ghouls and bogeys and banshees, when they left out saucers of bread soaked in milk for the piskies upon their doorsteps, when they hung garlic over windowsills to keep out what lurked in the night. When the sun fell over the horizon, and at last dipped beneath, they were quiet as rats and swift as bats in the skies, and they found places where fear was so thick it could pilfer breath from the strongest man's lips. They hated churches and crosses but simply because of the combating forces of belief that lay within those symbols, not for the religion they represented.
In those times, when death was rank and filled the streets, when that death heightened belief and drew cloaks around shivering bodies against the cold, the Noctumbra had been their strongest, had thought of such power that one day, they would rule All Things. They were the opposite of fairytales, and crept into bedtime stories with whispers of hate, and promises of the abject terror that was to come.
Now, things had changed. Instead of old, creaky houses there rows of
shining steel flats seeming to reach up to the sky, and the crush of people that filled them chased out shadows and old wives' tales, and the Noctumbra could not live there. Legends were forgotten for cities that sprouted up around factories; even mining villages spewed out smoke and progress and left their past and their folk tales behind amidst the tree stumps. England was a cold place and gray smog had settled over London, misty nights forgotten beneath the bright glare of street lamps.
Ricell was one of the few that remained of its kind, and it was small, and its only friends were the mothballs packed into the closets. Once it had been tall, and proud, all angles, a trap for light and a black hole of darkness. It had spread fear as easily as chaos in warfare, and its targets were not only small children, irrational and foolish, but also men and women of all ages, all over the countryside, and even in the city. Now, it was a slithering wisp of a shadow, curling through spaces, as would a detached wing of a bat, causing momentary horror, brief and flickering and dissatisfying to its desperate belly.
For a while, it stalked a particularly gulli ble eight-year-old who wore thick-rimmed glasses and read horror stories, hungrily licking her lips at the turn of each page. Such a target, Ricell thought in waves of annoyance and faint amusement, to be reduced to. The Noctumbra were only a sum of that which they scared, in the end, and Ricell was quite aware of how pathetic it had truly become. But such were the times they lived it.
The girl felt the shadow curl like sharp fingers over her ankle, and her back stiffened in terror, her eyes opening wide. In her story the spunky heroine had finally flung open the door to the evil creature's lair, only to discover she had been outnumbered. The cool hand of death was now upon both their shoulders and suddenly, suddenly, the girl discovered it was not so enticing, this love of fear, when it was real and settling irrationally upon you. She felt as if she would panic, and yet she remained dry throated, but calm.
"Who are you?" she asked, breathless.
There was no answer, the silence painful and terrible and echoing in her ears.
But soon, in a space of a few years, the girl had discovered makeup and the opposite sex, and her love of holing herself up in a dark room reading darker paperback novels from the local library waned. She stopped believing altogether soon after, the first time she'd been kissed; her flare for what she thought was romance replaced for what it really was, and Ricell was left alone again, homeless, and without a place to stay.
Next, it haunted the cribs of babies, making them cry out in howling despair in the depths of the night, as he flapped through the bars around them, and lay upon their sweaty chests. There was no end to the babies of the world, and though they grew up fast there was always another one, pure and innocent and therefore easily, illogically terrified. But again, the Noctumbra were only a measurement of that which they could rule with fear, and to be king of small babies lying, drooling and cooing, in their cribs was to be king of nothing at all.
And so Ricell moved on, living in caves and hanging bat-like from tree branches in forests where the animals still knew its presence, if not its name. A creature of shadows and claws, it was a ratted leaf to those who did not believe, or perhaps a very old bat, and the name of the Noctumbra were forgotten to most men and women.
But not all.
The legend of the Noctumbra was written only in the dustiest of volumes, collected as specimens for the counting, and taken as lightly as such past entities as the Minotaur a legend, of course, naught remaining of him or his winding lair and all other forgotten creatures that not even Wizards found time to believe in, anymore. Existence in this fashion was tiresome but so long as there were those who still spoke the word Noctumbra whether through pen or through voice or through barside laughter, Ricell lived on, fluttered on, lights as tissue paper, as unimportant as dust.
And then, on one dark night, in the midst of a chase Ricell watched, barn owl swooping down upon field mouse, it felt forgotten brethren approaching, two creatures from legend such as itself, and one that was man but warped and twisted into something bigger, more powerful, ferociously insane yet deceptively quiet. The presence was fear itself in a way Ricell had never been, and in the cool, calm summer night Ricell found that he was growing, reaching the tree branch from the ground with the infusion of such insanity.
"I have searched for this memory of the Old Fear for a long time," Voldemort said, when he came face to not-face with the fear that stood before him. "I do not fear you, and I never will, but I will give you fear to feast on such as you have never seen before, and will never have the chance to see again. Come with me, bind yourself to this, and times will be as they were, only better than ever before."
Ricell paused. The air smelled of wolf and man and hawk and man, of blood and of moonlight, of moss and of corn. Ricell had no blood in its form, just a shadow of darkness upon more darkness, but it felt something powerful seep through its non-veins, and it made no sound, just a chorus of shivers upon the wind. The trees shrank away from it, the stars drew back in pain, the barn owl froze with the dead mouse dropping from its talons. The walls of the barn close by trembled, as if they would disappear into nothingness with the force of this new aura.
"So you will come with me," Voldemort said with a smile that slithered upon his lips. All was quiet, and then one lone wolf let out one long howl, the sound of bones rattling in the sudden lack of wind.
The Noctumbra were only as powerful as that which they filled with fear.
One day, Ricell had the foolishness to presume, it would be all powerful again, more than it ever had been, for it would drink this man's fear as a vampire bat drank cow's blood, though the desire was misinformed and the idea was born of impulsive youth. As legends went, the Noctumbra were yet very young.
Voldemort could sense whatever aspirations Ricell had, and his smile widened. Best to have no trust at all, for you would be betrayed and you would betray, and the more powerful you became, the more powerful grew your friends, and they became your enemies.
But three had already been gathered, and he had time, yet, the element of surprise still on his side.
Basil St. Hemlock was not, as they said, best pleased. Though Albus had set out the most appetizing of late-afternoon tea spreads -- resplendent with crumpets, scones, and finger sandwiches -- Basil could see through his game, as could Minerva, and both sat in tight-lipped silence as Albus cheerily made headway through a crumbling raisin scone, complete with clotted cream.
"More tea?" Albus asked, gesturing towards Basil's still empty cup, and Basil drew upon all he had in the way of disdain to give the older man his most unamused look. Albus blinked once, twice, and then shrugged. "All the more for me, I suppose, since Minerva doesn't seem to be wanting any, either; what a pity. It's rather the best brew I've had all year!" Minerva coughed, once, and attempted to faze Albus with a cautionary glare. Naturally, the headmaster of Hogwarts was anything but fazed, finishing up his scone with a smacking of lips and a beaming smile.
"Don't you think we should be doing something other than having tea?" Minerva queried at last, tight-lipped, but seeming more threateningly so than usual. "It's hardly a time for such frippery," she added, for emphasis, because it took a lot to get through to Albus, sometimes, or at least to force Albus to show some of what he was thinking.
"Ah, Minerva," Albus said, now sipping his second cup of tea, "what wouldn't be a time for a nice spot of tea? Mm?" When Minerva proved too huffy to respond, Albus sighed, and grew fractionally more serious, even if it was only for a moment. "It soothes the spirit, after all, and calms the mind. Best way to start off grave discussions; a bit of tea, a sandwich or two, a crumpet."
"Though some may say it's impossible to think on an empty stomach," Basil cut in, voice icy and sharp, "we shall have to do so soon, no doubt, when time is more of the essence and it may be as such as we speak, as we waste it! so perhaps we might better prepare ourselves for it sooner, rather than later. Don't you agree, Minerva?"
"Quite," Minerva replied, the word clipped.
"Oh, you would," Albus said, grinning widely and waving a dismissive hand, "because it seems I've done something to rub your fur the wrong way. Come now, both of you; it's quite evident that harder times are upon us, times more dangerous and times more fierce, so why do you both find it absolutely impossible to enjoy the good times while they last?"
"Because while we sit here and snack upon watercress," Basil snapped back, thoroughly aggravated, "there is an enemy approaching our gates, casting our safe havens into shadow, and gathering his forces in the pitch of night."
"Well," Albus said, blinking from behind his spectacles, "that was very poetic of you, Basil; the next time I want a very gloomy prediction, I shall have to come to you for it!"
"It's the truth," Basil ground out, "not a foolish prediction of doom, and you'd be all the wiser for listening to it over the rumblings of your stomach!"
"As you well know, Basil, I have no cause yet to let ludicrous tales of 'safe havens' in 'shadow' disturb my tea. But if you must know," and here Albus selected another scone, this one seeming to be flecked with lemon rinds, and began to scoop cream upon it, "preparations are being made, because I am not a doddering old fool, at least not yet, and you are not the first to have such an epiphany over the future! I drink tea, after all; not simply to read the tea leaves, but in my leisure I have time to survey such things, and therefore, I do." Both Basil and Minerva were stunned momentarily silent.
"So you know, then, about the Noctumbra he has found, and is keeping as pet, though where, we cannot say." Minerva found herself taking the cup of tea, now lukewarm, that Albus had poured for her at the beginning of this atypical meeting.
"But of course, dear Minerva," Albus said, with his mouth half-full.
"But of course," Minerva echoed, feeling somewhat sheepish, then continued, "and, you're right, after all."
"Mm?" Albus blinked up from the mere remains of his second scone, eyes seeming owlish, wise and round.
"This is very good tea." Albus grinned cheekily, still the vision of unbridled youth despite his age, and Minerva coughed and ducked her head, pretending to choke, in order to hide her matching smile. Such a man was a danger, beneath, and such an impossible dolt, on the surface. It drove you to sheer distraction, half the time! ( But you knew you simply would not have it any other way, in the end. He was an endearing, if not vaguely batty, old man. )
"Now," Albus said, "we shall just have to convince Basil of that, so that he, too, shall join us in having some." His blue eyes glittered in his kind, ageless face, and it was quite apparent to his two guests that, whatever was to come, he was ready, and probably had been for at least twenty years.
The amusement park smelled, as all amusement parks do, of things too sweet and too sugary for good health, of children and money and laughter, and tears. On the Saturday afternoon it was, of course, packed full of cheerful or not-so-cheerful families, milling about in the direction over-zealous children chose. There was no end to the corn dogs being eaten, no end to the ice cream being spilled down the fronts of white t shirts, and certainly no end to the pizza and the nachos and the cheese sauce and the french fries and the ketchup that found their way into laps onto tabletops more often than into hungry mouths.
Pete Thomson liked cotton candy in the same way all small boys do; he liked it because it said 'amusement park' to him, he liked it because he always got it if he whined hard enough for it. And he liked it in great, gobbing fistfuls, shoved greedily into his mouth. He liked it when he had so much that for a brief, glorious second he felt as if he were spun of light, cloud-puff sugar. Hell, he even liked it when he crashed down from that cloudy place, and sometimes threw up all over his new shoes. That was just the way cotton candy worked.
Pete Thomson had finished his own and was working on his sister's, which he'd surreptitiously taken from where she'd left it, while his mother and she had gone to the bathroom. His had been blue - because that's what the bubble-gum popping concession girl gave little boys - and his sister's was pink - for the same reason, only feminized - and he decided that he liked pink better. If only because he didn't normally get to eat it. His fingers were stained a hideous pink-blue color, as was a large ring around his mouth and on the tip of his nose, and he was watching the big roller coaster ride that he could see from halfway across the park grounds, where he was standing in the doorway of the arcade. Pete Thomson had developed the uncanny ability to be an absolutely fantastic road block; most small children had the potential, but Pete had perfected it down to an art.
He was an uncanny little child, that way.
It was only when he had finished his sister's cotton candy down to the last suck of a sticky-sweet finger, that he heard the voice, like the squeak of the unoiled hinges on the Ferris Wheel, like the rush of air through your ears on the Tilt-A-Whirl, like the sweet crunch of a candy apple in your mouth.
"Pete," it said, "come here, Pete."
Dropping the unneeded cotton candy stick - he'd already licked it entirely clean - he turned and trotted over to where the voice was calling him, confused and thoughtless. He wound himself through the taller legs above him, belonging to those trying to win dinky prizes at Whac-a-Mole or various types of basketball games. One man was getting excessively worked up, using a neon, plastic water gun to shoot a clown in the mouth. Pete promptly ignored him after a preliminary glance, trotting onward through the Arcade to find who was calling him. It wasn't his mother - it didn't sound like his mother, for one, and his mother was in the bathroom, at that.
"Pete," that gravel-and-sandstone voice was saying, "Pete." It sounded as if it were a desert, in desperate need of water. It felt like claws dragged lightly, almost ticklishly light, down over the length of his spine, to hear it.
"I'm coming," Pete said. It was funny that no one else seemed to hear the voice, as if it were directed only to him, and therefore caught only by his small ears.
He found his way into the darkened back of the Arcade, which smelled musty, and old. A plastic crocodile head with a gaping mouth and lolling red tongue had been shoved into a corner there, along with a few chipped wooden balls and a large, gloved hand, that had no body. Pete poked at the hand with a toe, noticed his shoe was untied, and ignored it.
"Pete," the voice was still saying, "come here, Pete."
On one side of him was a tall, shadowy glass box that held a plastic, motionless gypsy torso and head, swathed in dusty yet once-bright shawls, wearing gaudy, plastic rings with gaudy, plastic jewels set in them. It had huge, glittering green eyes and lips of a red so bright it was impossible to think of it as anything other than a confused, too-big Barbie doll, stuck inside its glass casing. But that, it was obvious, was not what had been calling him, for this was a thing, voiceless and unimportant and, most of all, inanimate. It had never been otherwise. It would never be otherwise.
Pete turned, and looked to his left. On that side of him was another glass box, this one raised up on the top of a metal one, the sort you put coins in and pressed a button and it made, you know, stuff happen. There was a stool in front of it, and Pete, who was rather too short to see into the top box, stepped up on it, placed his hands on the glass (ignoring, of course, the faded sign that said DO NOT TOUCH GLASS) and stared inside.
For a moment, it seemed as if there was only shadow, there, another forgotten relic in a graveyard of old arcade memorabilia. And then, the shadow shifted, stretched out long, feline legs, spread sharp, feline claws, licked wide, female lips and tossed long, bronze hair over its feminine yet furred shoulder.
"Good boy, Pete," the Sphinx said. Her name was Nephthys, and she had been waiting, a long time. But she had felt the rise of the Dark One upon the horizon, and she had felt her powers grow, rusty joints beginning to bend, the sound of her own voice remembered in her eyes. Today, when the sun had risen and the flush of laughter had grown strong in her conscious, signaling the arrival of the many park goers, she had known that her power had grown enough to lure another to her.
And that would only be the beginning.
"What are you?" Peter asked. Nephthys had forgotten how amused she used to be, by children.
"My name, is Nephthys," she purred, and her teeth clacked, and the glass shivered.
"Is that Japanese?" Pete asked, his breath making condensation marks on the glass, his fingers smearing sticky fingerprints all along them. Nephthys tried not to be disgusted, and tried also not to laugh.
"I will ask you a riddle," was all she replied, "and if you cannot tell me the answer, I will kill you, and you will taste sweeter than cane sugar when the sun is setting." Pete blinked, and laughed, nervously. "I will begin," Nephthys continued, and she stretched herself up to a height and size that threatened to shatter the glass all around her sleek, golden brown body. "What draws and warps and remains unclear, a part of you that is not held dear; what cannot be lost and is kept always near, a part of yourself that is all that you fear?" The sound of her voice was like the stretch of the Nile, pulsing muddily against the shore; the sound of long reed boats pushing through water; the sound of a cat when it was sleeping; the sound of a scarab beetle upon the air. Pete blinked, and frowned, and repeated the question to himself a few times under his breath, and finally shrugged, once, lazily.
"Dunno," he said at last, flippantly, as he licked the back edge of his teeth, still tasting the flavor 'pink' there.
"Wrong," Nephthys said, and the glass did shatter, and the foundations of the building did shake, and Pete Thomson did not know what hit him to so much as recoil from the terrible, sharp claws that drew him close, from the terrible, sharp teeth that flashed but once before there was nothing left to see.
Nephthys stretched out muscles atrophied from long disuse. She shook her head, and rolled her shoulders, and kneaded the ground which was strewn with glass. Thigh muscles and the muscles of forelegs came next. She licked her lips clean of blood with dry, rasping cat spit. It had been a long time since she had eaten anything at all, and she was pleased to see that riddles still came easily to her as they ever did, once, long ago, when she had lived in the midst of an oasis the color of lapis lazuli. The boy had tasted industrial, but that was only to be expected, the fibers of his clothes mass manufactured, the cotton candy far too sweet for her tastes.
But now, there would be others, better, stronger, more filling, more suitable to her palate. Her strength had returned. Someone, for the past ten years, had been calling her name. It had grown stronger, so insistent that her eyes had at last opened.
And now, she was free.
When the shadow of which she spoke in her riddle came to her, two days hence, she was perched and golden atop the carousel. She had been hunting in the dipping dusk of night, and she was full, and sated, as she had not been for a thousand years. The shadow spoke with her over the tinkling calliope music that stopped and started beneath them, and then, in the brightly flashing colors of painted horses and neon lights, the two of them left the carousel and left the amusement park and left also America, heading together, and with others, for a colder climate.
The first full moon of the term fell on a Thursday that year. Its approach, the waxing of the moon in the sky, seemed to fill the entire group with a hushed anticipation that none of them found courage to voice. Such worries lingered for almost a full week between them, worries and excitement and sheer fidgeting nervousness, until at last the day arrived, and Remus was taken away from them. Almost 'as always,' but not quite.
It was far harder for Sirius to concentrate on his classes than usual on such days; in Potions, he nearly singed James's eyebrows off, and lost a centimeter or two off the sleeves of his own robes. Professor Hemlock was not best pleased, but seemed to let him off lightly, which was a blessing. After all, it would hardly do to miss the first full moon of the school year, after all their carefully laid plans, because Sirius was forced to stay in detention.
At supper, Sirius hardly ate, and however much he did manage to force down his throat was only a result of James and Lilly's urging.
"You've got to eat," James had muttered into his ear, "or who knows what could happen. That's hardly fair to Remus," he added, and Sirius had grudgingly taken a few bites of a roast chicken leg, if only because James had guilted him into it.
When night fell and the moon rose, Sirius could feel Padfoot calling to him, could feel Padfoot calling to something - someone? - no, something else, that lurked in the darkness outside. It was unsettling like a shadow, but felt comfortable after the initial confusion, as if that shadow were his own.
They waited until all of Hogwarts had fallen asleep, fully dressed and sitting in their beds; James, doing some extra homework to keep himself busy, Peter, imagining quite, unknown things, and Sirius, restless and impatient and unable to focus enough to concentrate on anything other than the wait itself.
At ten thirty, they snuck down the quiet, empty halls, narrowly avoiding Mrs. Norris twice. Using a secret passageway James had found by accident during a fight with Lucius, the three of them wound their way outside of Hogwarts and onto the grounds. There, in the shadows cast over the pale moon by secret, thick clouds, they changed, or did not change but simply believed themselves to be changing. James was first, Sirius and Peter watching. Something dark, like a shadow but not quite, like a cloud but much lighter and much less tangible, passed over the line of his face and his form. Both Sirius and Peter found themselves blinking, and in that fraction of a second the boy before them was gone, replaced by the graceful lines of that forest-brown beast.
Sirius went next. Prongs and Peter both found they couldn't keep from blinking, once, while they watched; and then, there was the great body of that shaggy black dog, pale eyes set in its dark, intimidating face. It barked, once, very softly, and shook its head towards Peter. Padfoot was just as impatient as Sirius, but in a quieter fashion. For a moment, Peter considered taking his time, and then he felt Wormtail upon his shoulder, lifting a claw to the spot where he'd once bitten his ear. Peter made a face, and chose not to stall. He turned his face to the side, and Wormtail's pale eyes met his own, pale, and there was a blinking tremor in the air. Instead of Peter, there was the gray body of a rat in the grass.
Padfoot bowed his head and snuffed at him, getting his scent in a wet and smelly fashion. Wormtail chittered in annoyance; it seemed as if at any moment a pink rat paw might be lifted at the black dog in a scolding fist. Good-naturedly, Padfoot woofed at the rat, and then turned to sniff at Prongs beside him. That scent, he liked better, something that smelled like the moon upon a still lake, something that smelled like marble and majesty, and yet like grass and the earth. The rat smelled rusty, like closed gates that had been rained on for many years, as well as dry earth, and cold climates.
Let's go, Padfoot said at last, and though they were hardly spoken words, the other two 'heard' them as clearly as if they had been.
And through the dark night, they were off, streaking towards the edge of the forest, and the clutching, vicious branches of the Whomping Willow.
Wormtail, they had decided, was small enough to escape the willow's reach, and he was to find the knot that froze the tree, so that all three of them could make it through the passageway. That part of the plan had been Sirius's idea; for while James worked best with figuring out long, complicated plans in explicit detail, Sirius had always been the one to amend them on the fly, if need be.
And so Wormtail found himself scurrying along the ground, dodging those flailing branches and searching out the specific knot in the wood that Sirius had described. Naturally, he thought to himself, naturally, I get this job. But it also filled him with a sense of bitter pride. They needed him, whether they acknowledged that or not, and he'd be content with such little things, for the time being.
As soon as the willow was still Wormtail squeaked out something that could have been construed as the rat version of 'follow me!' The other two obeyed, taking it as such. Padfoot went first into the passage, leading the way, and Wormtail took up the rear, with Prongs in the middle. It was slow going, the stag's great horns caught on roots, his size sometimes getting him stuck in smaller parts of the tunnel. Still, something seemed to want them to go on, and, no matter for how long Prongs was snared, he always managed to get free, to continue on.
We'll have to make the passageway bigger, Padfoot said, and it seemed to echo all around them, even though the words were far from real.
Time in the tunnel did not seem to pass; it simply went along with the movement of their paws until at last there was the winking of light before them, and the scent of a wolf at their nostrils, and the surge of anticipation in their chests. Padfoot bounded forward, and out, and into the small room, claws clacking on the floor as he skidded to a halt. The steps, and the door, would be hard to handle in these animal forms, but he was quite sure they would be able to do it. After all, they had done so much and gone so far, that a flight of stairs and a shut door could not keep them from the end of the path now.
Padfoot switched gears and switched directions and started up the steps at a loping gait, as fast as he could manage it on the creaky boards. There was a small landing in front of the door, and Padfoot barely blinked down the stairs to see if the others were following. The scent of wolf was too strong and too irresistible on the air, lingering right across the barrier caused by that closed door. Padfoot barked, once -- I'm coming -- and threw his great, shaggy body and all his great, shaggy weight at the feeble wood of the door.
In one instant, the wood splintered, and the hinges gave way, and Padfoot was launched forward into the room that smelled of years and years of blood and wolf fur, the room that echoed with the sound of a wolf's lone howling.
In one instant after that, the wolf had thrown itself at Padfoot, the intruder, and they were rolling on the floor, growling and tearing and biting. But Padfoot had no anger behind his actions, and it seemed, from the way nothing really hurt, as if the wolf were only playing. The tussle lasted no more than a handful of minutes, though it seemed to stretch on for hours and hours, and at last, both canines breathless, the wolf came out on top, snarling down at Padfoot with a familiar brown glint in its eyes.
Silence drew out between them, snout against snout, hot breath against hot breath.
Then, Padfoot made a soft barking sound, and nuzzled his nose up against the wolf's muzzle, licking at the side of its face. He was only half-aware of the other two presences he felt in the room -- Prongs's and Wormtail's -- so intense was the scrutiny the wolf put him under.
With a flicker of recognition that could not be placed, the wolf ducked its head down, and broke the tension between them by licking Padfoot back. Its tongue was rough and hardly sweet, but the gesture meant all the world to the dog, who barked twice, short and happy, in return. It was clear, though, which was the stronger beast; the wolf, with its black lips pulled back into what was more of a sneer than a grin, was still in the dominant position, forepaws placed on Padfoot's chest.
Padfoot discovered in the flood of oddly familiar scent that of all things, this was one he didn't mind.
The wolf turned at last from him and moved to survey the other two, not quite daring to attack Prongs -- the stag was too proud and too tall and too imposing a figure for petty games -- but curling its lips back again to snarl at Wormtail, sending the poor rat scurrying to hide behind Prongs. If a wolf could have laughed, then this one would have, the great, russet-colored beast with its golden eyes scenting out its friends as if they were foes and finding both Prongs and Wormtail highly amusing, yet comforting, as well.
At last, it turned back, its attention on Padfoot once more. The gold eyes warmed, fractionally, and it puffed out a questioning breath into the air. Padfoot barked back in return, and the wolf lifted its head and moved back on its hind paws, and howled fiercely, yet mournfully, into the thick air. Padfoot paused, then mimicked the action and the sound. The two howls mingled in their ears, and when they stopped, the wolf seemed to be satisfied.
It trotted forward, sitting down in front of Padfoot and snuffing up against the side of his face, chuffing hot breath against his nose. Padfoot shook his head, settling his fur back into place, and sneezed, once. The wolf seemed to find the sound very amusing, eyes twinkling for a moment. Pushing down the urge to be affronted by the mockery, Padfoot found himself relaxing, trusting the fierce beast that sat complacently before him.
That, he learned, after the wolf body catapulted against his for the second time, was his very first mistake. The wolf was oddly playful, and over-eager, and it seemed that it needed to be far more active than it had ever been given the chance to be. And, while Padfoot had left himself completely open, and quite obviously so, the wolf had taken the opportunity, as any true beast of instinct would have, to tackle the dog to the ground. With a yelp of surprise, Padfoot felt teeth sink into his neck, and felt blood being drawn. It was painful at first, and then, as he fell still, he felt the wolf licking at the wound, tending to it.
The wolf, he realized suddenly, in a flash of dog instinct, was marking him, not as it would mark a tree or a corner of a room or a particular spot of earth, but as it would mark a member of its pack. The tenderness of the neck, the symbolism of its vulnerability, suggested that the wolf had been marking its mate, for when it pulled back and went to tussle with the other two, it never once went for the throat. Padfoot wondered, as he watched, when he would be strong enough and at home enough in this place, to mark the wolf back, or if he would even ever be allowed to.
But it was not a time to mull such things over. The wolf led the three of them around the room, into corners, exploring splinters and chunks of wood from a chair it had torn up. Wormtail skittered along at the rear nervously, Prongs moving graceful, Padfoot with an eager lope. The wolf, simply seemed at home; it was hard to describe how it moved in any way other than unearthly, and dangerously quick.
There was the window to look out of, too, where the moon could be seen bright and clear in the dark sky. At that point, the wolf stopped to howl, and Padfoot bayed with it, and Prongs snorted and stamped one hoof, and Wormtail squeaked and tried not to be trampled.
All through Hogsmeade, men and women awoke in the dead of night, and shut their windows and drew their curtains against the shivers that crept down their spines at the strange sounds coming from the Shrieking Shack. They had dark dreams that night, but they were not nightmares, simply misty shadows pierced only by the pale, fierce light of the full moon.
Padfoot and the wolf tussled more, rolling about on the floor together, but always, the wolf won, coming out on top and triumphant and howling its victories to the skies.
And then, on some unspoken agreement, they all moved for the door, leading the wolf down the stairs and onto the first floor, where Padfoot trotted alongside of it cheerfully, and learned new scents, and made new marks. When they had finished it smelled of wolf fur and dog fur alike, of squeaking rat and noble stag. The wolf seemed to be quite satisfied, moving easily in and out of corners, winding around Padfoot's body to get to places more than once. Padfoot let it; if that was what it pleased, then he was not the one to stop it. Not there, not then.
Again, they play-fought, and the wolf let Padfoot win, if only for a second, before it flipped their positions and came out on top again. They both howled at that, and nuzzled each other's faces, and fell still for a while.
Outside, an owl stirred in the branches of a tree, and young, plump rabbit hid in the comforting arms of a prickly bush. The wolf's ears pricked upwards at the sound, and scented something sweet and young and innocent fill with fear.
It moved suddenly, leaping for the opening to the passageway in the side of the wall, but Padfoot sensed its intentions and tackled it down to the ground, growling low and fierce. Both Wormtail and Prongs moved to block the exit, and watched as the two canine creatures fought, snarling and serious, in the center of the room. The wolf was wild and frenzied when it fought, Padfoot intimidated by the already established order of things, but they both fought with all they had in them, skill and lack of it, anger and refusal.
Outside, the wolf begged, outside!
No, Padfoot insisted.
The wolf howled and buried its teeth in Padfoot's shoulder. Padfoot fell backwards, but used that momentary fumble as a part of his strategy, powerful hind paws kicking up at the wolf's belly, knocking it backwards. They tore at each other's fur with teeth and claws. The wolf bit Padfoot's ear; Padfoot snarled, and whirled, and at last managed to sink his teeth deeply into the tender spot at the base of the wolf's neck. There was a long silence, but the wolf had fallen still.
Outside, it still begged him, whining now, outside!
No, Padfoot repeated again, shaking his head, and dragging the wolf with him in the motion, scraping across the floor. The teeth against the wolf's neck were too much to argue with. Later, Padfoot promised, and he pulled back, outside, later. The wolf snorted, still, surveying Padfoot above it with cold, glittering eyes. The tension in the room caused Wormtail to squeak, riding in between Prongs's antlers now to better watch the fight. Slowly, the wolf relaxed, flopping over onto its side and panting with the effort of the fight. Padfoot barked once, questioning, and the wolf made a whining sound, one of submission, of acceptance. The wolf lowered its head, and Padfoot turned himself to the task of licking clean the wolf's neck wound as the wolf bathed his bleeding ear in return.
At last, the two curled up on the old mattress set upon the rickety bedframe, as the dark hours began to wane and the world was filled with the eerie gray light of an approaching dawn. Prongs and Wormtail had already fallen asleep, Wormtail still perched on Prongs's forehead, Prongs rested gratefully in a wide corner of the room.
Padfoot licked the wolf clean as it began to doze off, tired out from excitement, still not satisfied with the lack of blood it had spilled that night. It shifted in against his side, and they flanked each other, one black and one brown, two halves of the same beast. The wolf itself was more content than ever it had been, sleeping on a soft bed next to a soft body that fit in up against its own.
Soon after the wolf eyes closed and the wolf body relaxed, side rising and falling in a slow, soothing rhythm, Padfoot felt sleep tug at his own eyes, and settled himself down to rest, chin upon the wolf's shoulder, breath puffing softly out his nose.
In the wee hours of the morning those who lived in Hogsmeade found at last they could sleep undisturbed, and they dreamt unusually sweet things for times that were so dark and grave.
When Sirius woke he was Sirius once more, only black and white memories of the previous night held in his conscious. The sun was just coming up over the horizon, spreading golden warmth through the small, dusty room. Remus was curled up, naked, in Sirius's arms, and there was a halfmoon mark on his pale neck, made by sharp teeth against supple skin. Sirius's fingers lifted to his own neck, traced the lines of the matching teeth marks that were blatantly felt there, and he grinned foolishly, though sadly. He leaned over the smaller boy, and pressed a kiss to that mark - he knew both marks would leave matching scars that would never truly fade - before he pulled away. If they were all of them to do this again then they would have to get out of there, before Madam Pomfrey came and uncovered their secret.
"James," Sirius hissed, pulling back as carefully as he could from the mattress. But James was already up, putting the place back to normal again, with Peter's help.
"Just get Remus back upstairs," James murmured in reply, "and hurry." Sirius nodded, and moved back to the bed, pulling Remus gently into his arms. Climbing the stairs was slow going, so as not to jostle the boy in his arms -- when he slept this way, he looked so miserably weary, how could Sirius live with himself if he woke him? -- and managed somehow to settle him down lightly on the floor.
There was no one else in this part of the shack, just him, and Remus, though Remus was sleeping. Sirius paused, thoughtfully, then leaned down, and ghosted his lips once more over the mark Padfoot had made the night before, necessary and claiming, against the wolf's thick fur.
"Love you," he whispered against that contrastingly soft skin, then pulled away and closed the door behind him and hurried down the stairs.
"Ready?" James asked, giving him a thoughtful look from behind those glasses.
"Ready," Sirius replied.
"So let's get out of here," Peter said, exasperated, and the three scurried toward the tunnel, nothing more and nothing less than what they were: three very normal boys in very abnormal times.
It had begun with just a handful of dark creatures, with a Werewolf named Achille and a Murdrum named Nazaire, a Noctumbra named Ricell and a Sphinx named Nephthys, but others came, and yet others followed, leaving dark tales in darker corners of the shadow that crawled over the earth.
There was a Sylvicorne, the black brother of the Unicorn, one of the blackest beasts there were, with rolling silver eyes and stomping silver hooves, blood on its teeth and on its broken, jagged horn. It was a creation of the modern age; the opposite of innocence, its teeth and its horn and its hooves made of metal, its breath made of smog. When it scented the Murdrum Nazaire on the air it came prancing out of the depths of a forgotten forest, and joined the parade.
There was the Medusa, and it was said she had been born of the blood from a decapitated Hydra head. Her eyes were an ice green color, the same as that of a Basilisk - though Basilisks were pacifists by nature, and the Medusa was far from being as such -- but no one alive knew this. One glance from them was death, was stone creeping into blood, was the heavy suffocation that her truly petrifying eyes wrought.
There were the Gorgons close behind her, because they could smell her smell and hear her breath upon the air, and where she went, always, they followed.
There was the Kraken, that made the tar colored depths of the Mediterranean roil with its anger, and it promised the destruction of ships and bound itself to serving the shadow with chains of flotsam and seaweed.
There were the Harpies, their bare breasts smeared with blood and dirt, both fresh and old, their caws filling the air with terror and a metallic, rusted taste. Three of them were all that were left when there once had been hundreds, but between the three of them there was feasting and despoiling enough to make up for hundreds of years during which they had Slept the Sleep of Disbelief.
There were the Sirens, and they learned to sing again when their throats had been dry for centuries. Men and women alike were dashed to bone shards upon their rocks, and they braided their hair with seaweed and seashell and coral, and laughed the light laugh of seafoam.
And they spread their chaos throughout Europe, by sea and by land, sending doubt into the hearts of those who were true and sending shadow into a land of sunlight.
It was a growing shadow, deep and velvety, and just as suffocating. But somewhere, there was someone, telling stories of golden things - for there is to every dark shadow, the bright sunlight that has cast it.
It was a dark night, a culmination, perhaps, of all things, held in the simplicity of the costumed evening.
Dobbins was pruning the hedges, though he knew there was no point in doing so. Soon, fall would claim the leaves, and things would turn brown and dead to prepare for the coming of winter. It was an oddly chilly day, for the end of summer, and the sun, it seemed, had set early. Master was entertaining again, had invited the shadowy man over yet again, only this time, the shadowy man had seen fit to accept. Dobbins was far more interested in the shadowy man than he could ever express with words, and so he kept himself busy and from thinking the dark thoughts the shadowy man made him think by pruning the hedges needlessly.
As always on such dark nights, he found himself in the rose garden, though the rosebuds had long since bloomed and wilted and curled up, drifting lifelessly to the earth to feed the roots of the plants that had once given blossom to them.
"The season for roses is past," Mr. Riddle said.
He had the uncanny habit of just creeping up like that, when you were least suspecting it. Dobbins clipped off a branch he hadn't meant to.
"S'posin' so, sir," he murmured faintly, trying to undo the damage. ( If Master saw that, he would be displeased; best fix it now, before anyone had a chance to see the mistake. ) "But roses has their seasons, after all."
"And roses always bloom again," Mr. Riddle said thoughtfully, "unless, of course, you nip them in the bud."
"You'd have to rip 'em up by the root, pardon my sayin'," Dobbins returned, satisfied with his handiwork for the moment, "they grows back quick sometimes, and they don't fade easy. People rememberin' 'em better 'n most things, when it's been a good season, and all, sir."
"You know so very much about roses, Dobbins," Mr. Riddle said, smiling his thin, dark smile, and Dobbins thought for a second that his eyes had a touch of the color red to them. It must have been the poor lighting, he decided later, for Mr. Riddle's eyes were most certainly an emerald green.
"Spent most o' my life tendin' to 'em, after all, among other things." The sound of the garden shears clipping at leaf and branch commenced once more, Dobbins talking to himself more than anything, as he worked. "I'm lucky to have such a big garden t' tend to, in th'end, seein' as it keeps my hands busy an' it keeps my mind occupied, if y'know what I'm sayin'."
"Oh, yes," Mr. Riddle said, "gardening is a rather pleasant occupation."
"It's more a pleasant pastime," Dobbins murmured thoughtfully, "but as an occupation, it ain' so bad, at tha', after all. An' I like roses, all sorts a roses. Y'get to know them, and y'get to understand them, and all aroun' you, they grow up each season again. Though y'haven't exactly made 'em grow, you've helped 'em to, an' it's nice, sir." There was silence. "Isn't tha' so, sir?"
But when Dobbins turned around, Mr. Riddle was gone.
