I almost forgot to do my usual 'closing chapter' - one that hasn't got much to do with the story itself. An interview seemed to be getting kind of old, and I was having trouble making up questions anyway, so instead I present this jumble of odds and ends - deleted quotes, alternate endings and trivia. There are some spoilers for HBP, especially one plotthingy, but nothing really mayorly important, like who dies and stuff. Italics are my own comments, normal font is... normal story.
I hope you like it!
Alternate endings
#1 – the depressing ending.
Remus stopped for the traffic light. Yes, he thought hopefully, even though Sirius was gone, and he'd never again be able to talk to him again, he'd still be here, somehow.
The traffic light turned green.
Remus walked on.
He never saw the double-decker bus, and it was probably a good thing too as it hit him at full force. The last thing he saw was the snackbar on the opposite side of the street, a flash of blue sky, then nothing for a moment.
Then darkness.
Then light.
Then Sirius, James – Sirius glaring at him.
"Bloody hell, Moony, we weren't supposed to see each other again this soon!"
#2 – the romantic ending (made up before HBP, I swear!)
They walked on in silence for a few minutes. Tonks was still holding Remus' arm.
"You know what?" she said. "I missed you, actually."
"You know what?" he answered. "Me too."
"What," she laughed, "you missed yourself?"
He laughed too. "Well, in a way, sort of. But okay, I missed you too."
"Good to know." She fondly pressed his arm. "How much?"
"How much what?"
"How much did you miss me?"
He stopped walking. "How much I missed you?"
"Yeah." She looked up at him, her expression unfathomable.
"An inordinate amount. I can't possibly express how much." It was true, he now realised. He had missed her more than anyone else. Of all the members of the Order of the Phoenix, she was the one he most enjoyed spending time with. Her sometimes odd sense of humour, her constant cheerfulness – in a way, it was very much like having the Marauders back.
"Try," she pressed on.
"Try…" he sighed. How to go about it? He looked at her, her heart-shaped face turned towards him, smiling. Her violently pink hair would have looked weird on most people, but with her it fit. In fact, she looked quite pretty on the whole. And he couldn't believe he was thinking about her appearance in that way, right now. She was Tonks. Not a young woman of whom you think in terms of "pretty" – even though she undeniable was just that. Pretty. But he shouldn't think it. And he was definitely getting tangled in his own thoughts. "I can't find the words," he said somewhat lamely. "Or only the wrong words."
"Let me help you," she said, firmly taking the lead. It was pretty clear to her that if she waited for him, they would get nowhere. "Remus, I missed you this much."
She kissed him.
"Well," Remus said, blinking, as they finally parted. "That… sounds about right."
Or maybe I should just make this the real ending…
Deleted quotes
Sirius' last wishes.
"Besides getting laid?"
"Obviously…"
See the sunrise over the hills at Hogwarts one last time, like they used to when they were still students.
A quote for Remus to use in a conversation, shamelessly nicked from an interview with... someone, I once read.
"Someone once said that the angels in heaven play Bach, but in their free time they play Mozart."
Conversation between Remus and his mother about him being a werewolf.
"If you could go back in time, if you could stop it the werewolf, would you?"
"Oh God, yes, absolutely!"
Life with a werewolf as a child was difficult because he was suffering so much pain that she couldn't take away.
A little scene with Remus, Sirius and Tonks at 12 Grimmauld Place. Both Remus and Tonks are suffering... 'monthly problems' and Sirius is being annoying. As usual. First person talking is Remus, second is Tonks.
Sirius was humming his own composition called 'glad to be a man'.
"Tonks, would you be very sorry if you woke up tomorrow and you found Sirius murdered in his bed?"
"Yes, because I want to kill him!"
Conversation between Remus and Sirius after Remus found out Sirius asked Harry to call him Snuffles.
"Why Snuffles? Why not Padfoot?"
"Because… because Padfoot is a… a you-word. A Prongs-word."
A scene I meant to put in somewhere either during the summer vacation or the Christmas chapter - when the Weasleys were at 12 Grimmauld Place at any rate. Sadly, I completely forgot about it. Remus and Sirius are in the hallway, and the twins are just walking up the stairs... First person talking is Remus.
"Oh, by the way, Padfoot –"
Fred stopped abruptly, halfway up the stairs. His twin walked right into him and they nearly tumbled down the stairs. They barely seemed to notice this, however; they were staring wide-eyed at Sirius.
"Padfoot? The Padfoot?"
"..?"
"Marauder's Map Padfoot?" Fred insisted.
"Oh, yes."
They ogled at him. "We've met one of our gods," George whispered.
"Map?" Sirius said innocently. "What map?" He winked at Remus. "Do you have any idea what they're on about, Moony?"
Little scene with Remus and Tonks after Sirius' death, originally meant to be put before they go and pick Harry up from King's Cross, but never put it because of lack of time.
Tonks handed him his coat. "Here you are… Moony…"
Remus trembled for a moment, as though she had hit him. "Remus," he said. "I'm Remus."
Sirius' name for Dumbledore's Army: the little Phoenixes.
Sirius Trelawney
Honestly, Sirius should turn his last name to Trelawney. I joked about it in "RemusLupin" (way, WAY back), but rereading "Wolf's Fight" made me laughand sometimes look extremely weirdly at the times that Sirius joked about something - only to have it come true in HBP! The odd thing is, most of these occured during the Christmas chapter, or in relation to Christmas... Apparently Christmas enhances the power of the Inner Eye or something...
This was rather amusing in light of HBP - just you wait one year, Remus...
"I found out who's going to be the next Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher," Sirius said.
"Really? Who is it? How is it bad? Or, rather, how bad is it? It's not Lucius Malfoy, is it?" Remus said.
Sirius shook his head.
"Oh God, don't let it be Snape."
Sirius sighed. "Remus, it's Dolores Umbridge."
Remus gaped.
"Sorry."
"Sorry?" Remus repeated. "Sorry? Whoever is responsible for this is going to be sorry! God, I wish it had been Snape! Whatever was Dumbledore thinking? Really, I know I owe a lot to him and stuff, but – "
Rereading the Christmas chapter in HBP... I wasn't far off!
"It's just wrong, you know. Liking the people at the Werewolf Capture Unit. It's like… it's like liking Snape!"
"I like Snape," Remus said softly. Sirius' eyes widened in horror.
"No you don't!"
"Well, sometimes."
"Exactly. You sometimes like Snape. You like him, what, five seconds every six months. You like him for five seconds until he says something ridiculous or insulting again, and then you're back to disliking him." Sirius gave a fake gasp. "Oh my God, Remus, you like Snapefor ten whole seconds a year!"
I invented Vanishing Cabinets before Draco came up with it:
Sirius walked out of the room and quickly descended the stairs, to the kitchen. He had hoped to find an easier way to get six floors down – perhaps a closet on the top floor that you could walk into, close the door, and when you opened again you were in the kitchen.
Uhm, yeah... In light of HBP...
"Just so you know, I have an appointment tonight," Remus said. "I'd promised somebody to come over to his house, for Halloween." He had send Sirius a letter, just to prepare his friend for any disappointment, but he had planned on trying to go to Grimmauld Place nonetheless.
"Trust me, I wasn't planning on staying here this evening either." Romulus stopped and turned around. "Who're you meeting tonight?"
"I can't remember that being any of your business," Remus said evasively.
"Tied down a girl, have you?" Romulus said, with a most annoying look of amusement in his eyes. He looked rather smug, actually, and superior-feeling, and Remus was suddenly very aware that his younger brother already had a wife and children, and he was still a sad old bachelor, which was not the proper order of things, and it annoyed him to no end.
"I haven't tied down anyone," he said irritable. "And what a horrible expression anyway - it makes me think of cattle."
"Sorry, sorry, I was just asking." Romulus walked on again, but Remus was sure that he had seen an irritating small smile on his brother's face.
"And don't you dare get any funny thoughts," he threatened.
"The thought of thinking anything that's even remotely funny hasn't even begun to contemplate crossing my mind," Romulus replied. He was having difficulty keeping the laughter from his voice.
"Oh yes it has," Remus said darkly. "If Mum sends me an invitation for Christmas dinner, including a girlfriend, I know who to hit. Just so you know."
"'t would be a pity of the Christmas spirit, though," Romulus mused.
"Exactly."
And this was just me poking fun at the shippers through Sirius. In hindsight, it's Sirius showing his Inner Eye...
"Now, Moony, think of the Christmas spirit," Sirius reprimanded. "Besides, since when do you two take sides against me? Or…" he suddenly winked, "is there something you want to tell me? Hm?"
Sirius tried his best to be nice too. He wasn't one for comforting, but he tried, he really did. He poured a cup of tea, added lots of sugar and handed it to her with a slightly sheepish expression on his face.
"Remus is right," he said, "Percy will come round, honestly. Just wait, next Christmas you'll be able to give your presents in person."
Black Family library
Books in the Black family library.
Malleus Maleficarum, first edition
The complete works of Aleister Crowley
Macbeth with coloured illustrations
Demon Dictionary
Historica Serpentium et Draconum, by Odysseus Aldrovondus
Trivia
Just an assortment of things.
Hazel, one of Romulus' colleagues at the Werewolf Capture Unit, is named after the tree. The wood is said to have magical properties. She's the only one of the Capture Unit to have a name with a story behind it – the others just got the first name that popped into my head.
Right now, the entire story has about 130 pages with an Arial 10 font. That's almost twice as long as 'Remus Lupin' was. I reckon that if it was printed as a book, it'd be about as long as Goblet of Fire…
The first chapter (or, the first bit of the first chapter, because I wrote the introduction and the first paragraph and then didn't continue for another four weeks or so) was written on June 6, 2004. The very last chapter was written – in its entirety – on June 15, 2005, and posted about 13 hours before I bought HBP… The last four chapters were written in two weeks, with the last two being especially rushed. I wrote the bulk of that at work, continuing at home until late at night. But I managed to do it! (And in fact, those last four chapters seemed to go easier than all the previous ones. I also like them better than the others… Odd.)
'Wolf's Fight' is pretty much the reason why I really like Tonks now. I wasn't very fond of her at first – she was okay, nothing more. But she developed into a sort of Sirius, except less moody. More like the person Sirius was when he was young. I only really realised how much I liked her while writing the Christmas chapter. I suddenly realised that this girl was fun to be around – and to write! I was also starting to see where the Remus/Tonks shippers were coming from, and that the pairing wasn't as ridiculous as I used to think. A few weeks later, I was a true Remus/Tonks shipper – and HBP hasn't done anything to discourage that. Quite the contrary… Not that it stops me from shipping Remus/Sirius too. I'm weird like that.
Speaking of Remus/Sirius – the subtext! I frequently sat groaning behind my computer, going: oh God, the slash… Especially in the second-to-last chapter. Sirius was happy again, bouncing around the house at the memories of what had happened last night. Uh, yeah. I told myself that it was completely innocent. Myself replied that, girl, you had them sleep in the same bed. Yeah, sure, completely innocent. But for people who frequently keep their mind in the gutter… not really!
The parts I like the best: the last three chapters or so. A really twisted part of me particularly liked the big fight between Remus and Sirius about Snape. I'm firmly on Remus' side that Sirius was being a prat, but it gives an evil kind of satisfaction to just get all the frustrations out. Yeah, it's disgusting to shout that Snape deserved what he got, but it was fun. Diabolical fun! In the same vein: the Werewolf Capture Unit action scene was really exciting to write too, even though it meant having to kill off two small children.
Another part I really like is the Christmas-shopping with Remus and Tonks. It's just a bit of light-hearted humour. The wizarding world is always fun to write, because it's like the normal, Muggle world, only over-the-top. If Muggles decorate their shops with Christmas lights, wizards have to 'better' that with literally putting Christmas lights everywhere until everybody pretty much go blind. Add that with the slight goofiness of Remus and Tonks (it's like writing the Marauders, in a way!) and you get a scene that I just really like.
Also, I'm pretty fond of the bit in the Department of Mysteries, when Remus notices Bellatrix. It looked cooler in my head than it turned out on paper (but that always happens when writing action sequences) – that's why films are sometimes preferable to books or stories: slow-motion is a bit hard to write – but I nevertheless like it. For an unscrupulous bad-guy (bad-girl?), Bellatrix is pretty cool.
My favourite sentence in all the 130 occurs in the third-to-last chapter, when Remus and Sirius have just made up. Sirius is lying on his back in bed, staring at where he knows is the ceiling. And then: "he imagined a sky full of stars instead." That sentence. It's just… I don't know. I just really, really like it. Maybe it's to do with the fact that less than 24 hours later, Sirius was dead… Or it was the late hour at which I wrote that, or the music I was listening to, or the fact that the end was now coming dangerously close.
The bit that I hate the most is during the summer, when the Trio's still at Grimmauld Place, and Hermione is being an annoying little know-it-all when she starts channelling my Ethics teacher. Eurgh. That was completely unnecessary, and I honestly don't know why I kept it in.
Another scene that I'm having serious doubts about is that one with Margaret Wilson, the woman who didn't believe in werewolves even though she was one herself. I don't know, it's just… an annoying bit.
A couple of weeks ago (around the time I was writing the big fight about Snape) I was thinking about this story, when I suddenly noticed a theme. Throughout the fic, people seemed to be having arguments about thinking before you act. This is of course especially true for Sirius, who has had a big problem with it, but it's also true for Romulus' decision to go and work at the Werewolf Capture Unit – at that moment, he had thought it a great idea, but he hadn't stopped to think about the consequences. I didn't write this intentionally, but looking back it seems to fit.
Recommended music – apart from the Prisoner of Azkaban soundtrack (Window to the past!). I had made this whole list of music to listen to while writing the last chapters, and I ended up not listening to it while writing. Instead, I had The Phantom of the Opera on constantly, especially 'The point of no return'. Apparently it was just so dramatic, with so much a feeling that this really was 'the point of no return', that there was no way back, that it really fit my mood at that time. Strange.
Notes of thanks
To everybody who read this, of course. To my reviewers especially – the knowledge that people really did like it kept me going! Special thanks to Linda/Pixiedragon, Amy/Authorbynight, Eizoku and Kelly Zwarts for reviewing me more than once (in fact, Linda and Amy have been reading my stories for years) and giving tips and suggestions. I should mention Linda and Amy especially: Linda for always giving me long reviews with quotes that she noticed, and her comments on it; Amy for the long character-analysing conversations we had, and for the fact that she pretty much made me realise that Tonks was a nice character. She encouraged me to write Tonks in more often and to have her bond with Remus and Sirius, so I started writing her more, which lead to me becoming a Remus/Tonks shipper (so it's all your fault, Amy!).
The superspecial thanks to JK Rowling go without saying of course.
And now what?
The sequel of course! Oh c'mon, did you really think I'm going to let that slip past? It's brilliant! I already got half of it planned, scenes written out – in fact, I can hardly wait to begin! So keep an eye on this site: August 31, there'll be more, more, more…