(A/N: Finally out of Chapter Twenty-Four! This brings us to the end of Twenty-Seven, actually.)
Sirius was the first one up at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, the next day. He brewed a pot of coffee, then hung it in midair with his wand, along with three mugs, milk, sugar, and spoons. After charming the whole string to follow him, he set off up the basement steps.
Emmeline, in a peach-colored dressing gown, was standing in the front hall, yawning. When she saw him, her eyes widened, and she pressed a hand to her mouth so as not to laugh loudly enough to set off the portrait.
"What's so funny?" Sirius mumbled, starting to climb the second set of stairs.
"It's like ducklings," Emmeline got out around the hand. "Everything following you like that..."
Sirius shrugged. He was always a little groggy after full moon nights, as much as he enjoyed them.
Not as young as I used to be...
He pushed that thought firmly away. He was only thirty-six. That was young for a wizard.
But you'll be thirty-seven in a few months, and thirty-eight the year after that, and then what? Huh? Then what?
I'll be thirty-nine.
See?
Sirius rolled his eyes at the bizarreness of holding a conversation with himself and opened the door with his non-wand-holding hand. "I bring caffeine," he announced quietly, since the small, round, golden bird on the bed was still asleep. "And a visitor."
"A visitor? Sirius, I'm really not presentable..."
"You think I care?" Emmeline leaned on the doorframe and covered another yawn. "Can I have some of that?"
"If you insist," said Remus, waving her inside with a smile. "Oh, just so we don't have to explain later – would you mind shutting the door? – Harry's an illegal Animagus, that's him on the bed."
Emmeline looked at the Golden Snidget and giggled. "I bet he hates his form."
"Hates it?" asked Sirius, lowering everything into position on Remus' desk. "Why?"
"It's not exactly a very manly form. I mean, it's so little, and so round, and so cute..."
"And so fast," said Remus, accepting a mug from Sirius, and the sugar bowl a moment later. "And so maneuverable, and able to fly, and easy to overlook if he rolls in dust to darken those feathers a bit. It may not be manly, but it's an excellent escape route, should he ever need one."
"An escape route?" Emmeline widened her eyes in mock surprise. "But he's Harry Potter! The Boy Who Lived! His class voted him Most Likely to Die Before He Leaves School! Why would he ever need an escape route?"
The object of conversation awoke in confusion to the sound of very loud laughter. Remus was doubled up where he sat, having prudently set his coffee aside first. Sirius was pounding on the desk with his fist, making absurd noises. Emmeline bowed slightly to each of them, looking very pleased with herself.
Remus recovered first and noticed the small bird hovering in midair, looking at each of them in turn. "It's all right, Harry," he said, carefully swallowing another laugh. "You can change back."
Harry vanished behind the bed and emerged a moment later, tousle-haired and blinking sleepily. "What were you laughing about?" he asked.
Unfortunately, this just set everyone off again.
Sirius was still chuckling an hour later when he set off for work. Most Likely to Die Before He Leaves School, indeed. Not if I have anything to do with it.
And I will.
"Morning, Hagrid," he said as he passed the half-giant in the hall. Then he stopped for a second look. "What happened to you?"
"Rough life," said Hagrid, shrugging a little. "Buckbeak's bin restless, even with his new friend."
"New friend?"
"Yeah. Wild winged horse, jus' flew in out'a nowhere the other day. Looks like she's fixin' ta stay a while. An' I foun' a little doe deer by the Forest a couple days back. Sweet little thing – tame's a kitten. Sleeps curled up with Fang an' everything."
Sirius grinned at this image. "I bet Fang loves that. I have to go, I'll be late. See you later, Hagrid."
"Cheers," said Hagrid, heading down the kitchen stairs.
Still chuckling at the image of Fang sharing his basket with a deer, Sirius Apparated to the Ministry and made his way to his office. "Morning, Dawlish," he said to his acting second-in-command. "What've we got today?"
Back at Number Twelve, the argument of the century was in progress. But it wasn't really an argument, Remus thought. It was too polite to be an argument. Call it a discussion. But that didn't have the right ring of two opposing points of view, and each side determined to make the other see reason...
He frowned, confused. His thought had trailed off in a significant way, as if he were expecting another voice to come in and supply the word he was looking for. But that was ridiculous. No one could eavesdrop on his thoughts like that. Even a Legilimens had to be looking at you before he, or she, could get into your head.
Debate.
He blinked. His mind, now busy with something else, had found him the solution to his original problem.
Shaking his head at the strange nature of thinking and thoughts, Remus turned back to the business at hand – persuading Albus Dumbledore that it would be better for everyone involved if the Weasleys were allowed to return to the Burrow and Sirius, Remus, and Harry to Remus' cottage in Kent.
"They're going stir-crazy in here," had been Sirius' contribution before he'd left. "They can't even go outside, for fear some Muggle'll notice people coming and going from nowhere, or some wizard'll spot them and identify them. Just because no one can find the house doesn't mean they couldn't stake out this entire section of London. Or blow it up, for that matter. They've already proved they like killing."
This, and the various arguments Molly Weasley and Remus mustered, eventually managed to sway Dumbledore, and he agreed to the moves, but not without stipulating very careful warding around each house, and as much security as could be managed. Something also had to be decided about Hermione. She couldn't stay at Headquarters by herself.
"She'll come with us, of course," said Molly decisively. "Not that you couldn't take care of her," she added to Remus, "but a teenage witch in a house with two grown wizards and one her own age, none of them related to her... people would talk. She can share Ginny's room, she's done it before."
"What if I went along?" said Emmeline. "Not with you, Molly. With Remus and Sirius. Do you think Hermione could come to the cottage then?" Her tone was ever so gently needling. It seemed to irk her that Molly had appointed herself guardian of Hermione's morals.
Remus stared at her. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked in an undertone as Molly thought this over.
"Do you have a problem with it?" Emmeline smiled at him.
"Not personally. But I wasn't sure you were ready for anything like this."
"Let's say, for the moment, that I'm doing it for Hermione's sake. We'll deal with what comes later, later. All right?"
Remus nodded, resigned. "Separate bedrooms, then?"
"What are you, nuts?"
He grinned at her. "That's what I was hoping you'd say."
"We'll have to ask Hermione what she wants to do," said Molly, emerging from her thoughtful trance. "But I see no reason that couldn't work."
Hermione, when asked, thanked Mrs. Weasley very kindly for her offer, but said she would rather go to the cottage, "if you're sure I won't be in the way," she said to Remus questioningly.
"Of course not," said Remus, pressing her hand a bit awkwardly. "You're always welcome."
"Thank you," Emmeline murmured to him as they left the room.
"For what?"
The question, which Remus had thought was simple, seemed to nonplus Emmeline a bit. She mumbled something incoherent about being kind. Remus left it alone. Confused women could be dangerous.
"Why aren't you working?" he asked as they found an empty room.
"It's an exotic new thing called a 'day off'. I thought you might not know about them, since Sirius never seems to take any."
Remus shrugged. "What can I say? He loves his work. I never see him happier than when he's elbow-deep in a case. I don't know what he'd do if he was ill, or injured, and couldn't work."
"Oh, he could always do paperwork," laughed Emmeline, snuggling close to Remus.
"Evil woman. You know he hates paperwork."
"Well, if it was a choice between paperwork and no work at all..."
"I still don't think he'd take the paperwork."
About halfway through the afternoon, Sirius looked up as a commotion erupted outside his office door. Tonks nearly fell in through it, saving herself at the last minute by grabbing the doorframe. "Someone in the Atrium," she panted out. "Started yelling and making a fuss, then drew his wand – we got him down before he could throw any curses, and the identity spells aren't working right..."
Sirius was up and following her out the door before her last word was fully out of her mouth.
"Said his name was John Springer at first," said Dawlish in the Atrium. The wizard in question lay at their feet unconscious, long brown hair half-obscuring his face. "Then he yelled out that it wasn't either, that he was cursed, and started pounding on his head."
Sirius grunted. "Might be Imperius," he said. "Identity spells aren't working?"
"No, sir."
"Ideas on why?"
"He might have done something with his blood," volunteered a young Auror, one of the newest on the force. "Muggles give each other blood if they're ill. He might have done that to confuse the spell."
Sirius turned away for a moment to disguise the fact that half of him wanted to laugh and the other half wanted to find a loo right away. Why would you give a sick person blood? What good would that do them?
"Might be," he said noncommittally. "Where's his wand?"
Dawlish handed it over. Sirius examined it for a moment, then drew his own and touched them tip to tip.
"Prior Incantato," he said.
Remus felt ill. How could things change so quickly from good to bad?
He had his new job. He had Emmeline back. He and Sirius and Harry had inaugurated a new tradition for full moons. And they had been about to go home, for the first time in far too long...
And now this.
He sat with Emmeline, Tonks, and Harry in the Ministry cafeteria, each of them staring into something hot and caffeinated.
"So Sirius doesn't have any magic now?" asked Harry, for what seemed like the millionth time, but was probably only the sixth or so, Remus thought as rationally as he could.
Tonks shook her head. "Dad says he's basically a Squib at the moment." Ted Tonks was a Healer. Remus hoped, for the sake of the man's patients, that his daughter didn't get her clumsiness from him. "But they think his magic might come back eventually."
"Might," said Harry bitterly. "Eventually."
"Harry, calm down," said Emmeline soothingly. "He's not dead, not even badly injured."
"No, he's just lost something as central to his identity as his speech or his sight," Remus said, sounding angry even to himself. "I guess he's going to get a chance to see how well he'd do without work. We can't have a Head Auror who can't do magic."
Only in his own mind, with his eyes safely away from Emmeline, could he admit that he was badly frightened. What if Sirius' magic never returned? What if he had to spend the rest of his life like Argus Filch or Arabella Figg, an outcast in a world of magic-users?
No, it's even worse for him. They've had their whole lives to get used to not having what others do. Sirius had it. Now he doesn't.
What's that going to do to him?
It was nearly midnight at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. No one was awake to see the large black form moving across the lawn. No one heard the joyful note in its quiet whimpers as it lifted its nose into the air.
Soon. Any minute. Now.
The two scents were here. He had not been led wrongly. But one scent should be in the house. Instead, both were coming from behind it. Wasn't that wrong?
Don't argue with good luck. Getting in there without waking anyone would have been hard.
He leapt over the wall of the paddock lightly, hoping he wouldn't wake the grey creature dozing in one corner. His business was with the others.
There they were. His joy urged him to bark, but he held back. Silence was better for now.
Silently, he retransformed, and drew his wand from within his robes. This would be tricky.
Emmeline had offered to stay with Remus that night, as a friend, nothing more, but he'd told her he wanted to be alone for a while. It was half a lie and half the truth, he thought, as he lay in bed and stared at the wall.
Everything is half and half these days. Half of me is sure Sirius will be fine, the other half wants to hide the rat poison. Half of me thinks we might actually win this war, the other half is sure we're headed for darkness and doom. And half of me wants to go to sleep, and the other half doesn't.
The first two dilemmas remained unresolved by the time the first half of the third one won out over the second. Remus slipped into an uneasy sleep.
Half and half. What a distinctly ironic way to put it.
Can the halves be separated, though?
That's what I'm going to try to find out.
Danger pushed her hair back from her face, noting absently that it was absurd for dream hair to get in her way as the real stuff did. Dream things should be better than real ones, or what was the point of dreams? It was just logical.
Hair has never been noted for its logic.
She stood beside a lake of lava, mostly red but swirled with other colors – blue, green, silver, gold. It was Remus' mind, or rather, the way her mind saw his. But that didn't matter. What mattered was finding her Remus, the man she loved, the man she'd married, somewhere within this.
It's impossible, part of her nattered. It's insane. No one could live in that. He's gone, long gone. Run, save yourself. It's what he'd want.
She shook her head. No. I'm going to solve this. Those colors. Do they mean something?
She knelt by the side of the lake and touched the surface of the lava. It was warm to her touch, but not hot.
Why am I surprised? I haven't used potholders in years, I boil the kettle for tea by touching it – why should this hurt me?
She pulled her hand away. A drop of red clung to a finger. Experimentally, she stuck out her tongue and tasted it. A shudder ran through her, and –
She sat at a long wooden table, watching a boy with messy black hair and glasses sit down on a wooden stool and have the Sorting Hat lowered onto his head by Minerva McGonagall.
Harry?
But it wasn't Harry. Something about the scene made her sure of that.
She looked around and realized what. A very young Sirius Black sat several places down at the table, and a few seats away from him was a young Peter Pettigrew. If she had a mirror, Danger realized, it would reflect the eleven-year-old face of Remus Lupin. She was inside his memory of the night he'd been Sorted.
It ended. She was kneeling again beside the lake.
Try a different color. She dipped her finger into green and tasted.
Emmeline Vance smiled at her. "I get the feeling subtlety is not Sirius' strong suit."
"Oh, you can say that again," Danger's mouth said without her willing it.
"And if I were Sirius, I would, wouldn't I?"
"Yes, you probably would."
They both laughed.
Danger was herself again, with an idea tickling the edge of her brain.
Try red again.
She dipped and tasted.
Laughter was all around her. "Success!" toasted James Potter, pulling the cork out of a butterbeer bottle. "Success beyond our wildest dreams!"
"I can't believe he leaves his stuff out like that for anyone to get at," said Sirius, tearing open a Cauldron Cake. "Don't the other Slytherins do things to it?"
"There were lots of charms on it, though," said Wormtail in moderate surprise. "Weren't there?"
"Of course there were," said James patiently. "But they were very simple charms. Even a second year could have gotten through them, I think. You should have been there, Moony. It was brilliant."
"We cursed all his things to spit at him," said Sirius, clinking bottles with Peter and James. "He'll be drenched by tomorrow."
Danger blinked. The idea was closer.
Green again.
She pulled out of this memory very swiftly indeed. That is not something anyone else should be knowing about, thank you very much. It had involved Remus and Emmeline in what could only politely be called a compromising position. But it did reinforce the idea, which had now landed and was disembarking troops.
The colors mean different kinds of memories. Red ones seem to deal with his childhood, or maybe just with him. Green means Emmeline. So what's silver?
Only one way to find out.
A drop of silver liquid fell onto her tongue.
"Daddy!" She was lying on the ground, shrieking. Her leg hurt terribly, and a monster stood over her, its teeth red with her blood. "Daddy! Mummy! Help me!"
A man's voice shouted nearby, and she heard the whistle of a spell. Dirt and stones pelted the creature. It yelped, then turned and ran off.
A man was holding her close. Dimly, she recognized Remus' father, John Lupin. "I'm so sorry, Remus," he whispered into her hair. "Merlin, I'm so sorry." He picked her up and carried her inside the house. She whimpered as every motion sent new stabs of pain down her injured leg.
Danger knelt on the lakeshore, shuddering all over. Werewolf memories. I think I'll leave that one alone for now. So that leaves blue and gold. Hmm. Which to do first?
A tendril of blue drifted towards her, and she dipped her finger into it.
"Disgusting," she spat, throwing down the Daily Prophet.
"What?" asked five voices in dull unison.
"Another Muggle family's been murdered," said a quiet voice beside her. She turned her head to see a blonde woman with hazel eyes leaning against the same tree trunk. "Death Eaters tortured them..."
Danger pulled away. She'd seen enough.
Naomi.
She wasn't yet sure what to think of the woman. If this had only been her home universe, she knew what she would have done...
But it's not. And I've done my part by telling Emmeline the truth about that kiss. As much as I'd love to do everything Emmeline threatened Naomi with, and a little more besides, it's not my job.
So that leaves gold. I wonder...
The gold leapt readily to her finger, and from there into her mouth.
She sat on a couch, her arm around a woman's shoulders. Her voice was teasing. "Did you only marry me for my pretty face?"
"No, of course not." The woman turned to look at her, smiling coquettishly, and Danger yelped, breaking the memory instantly.
She pressed a hand against her racing heart, breathing slowly and deeply and willing her mind to calm.
She had been sitting next to herself.
Okay, that's just gone a little beyond weird. Into utterly and totally bizarre.
But it's also good. I think.
She looked carefully at the lava, really taking the time to see the patterns. The blue, green, and silver, she noticed, were strewn all about, mixing in lovely fractal-looking patterns with the red, while the gold was almost all to one side, though it too was starting to mix. And... was she imagining it?
No. I'm not. There's varying shades of red here. And some of the silver looks darker than the rest...
"This might just work," she whispered. "If I don't think about it too much."
That's right. No fear, no doubt. You'll sink yourself before you even start.
Instead, she surrounded herself with thoughts of her Pack, and the qualities from each of them that she would need the most. Sirius' restless energy, Aletha's calm determination, Harry's boundless confidence, Hermione's sureness of purpose, Meghan's cheerful willingness, and that way Draco had of looking at a situation differently than anyone else...
This last filled her suddenly, and she knew what she had to do.
She got to her feet and stepped out onto the lava, which rippled but held her weight. Carefully, she made her way over to the golden blotch, finding a place where it bordered on a patch of red and a swirl of silver.
She knelt down and thrust her hand into the place where the three colors converged.
Drifting... that was the word for what he was doing. Funny that he hadn't thought of it before.
Funny that he hadn't thought of anything before, really. Thinking seemed to be a new skill to him. Or one long disused and suddenly taken up again.
Most things that think have names. Do I have one?
He did, somewhere, but it seemed that he shared it with someone else, and that was a bit of a puzzle. Most people didn't share their names with others.
Regardless, he concentrated on this. What is my name?
Remus!
Remus?
It seemed to fit him. All right, he was Remus. But this brought up a new question.
Who are you?
Danger.
The word itself didn't go particularly well with the emotions that rushed through him – joy, playfulness, a sense of teasing – but it worked, nonetheless.
I know you, he said, moving closer to the strange, not-strange other presence, his thoughts growing clearer and more detailed as he did. How do I know you?
We are one.
The thought took him aback a little. This presence was not the same as the other presence which had been insisting so successfully of late that he and it were one.
No, that is another. You and I are one of our own accord. And our joining is not so complete as this. This joining was forced upon you. I do not believe you desired it.
I did not. A sudden burst of memory came over him. He was dissolving in a wind, dissolving and blowing away and being pulled into another, subjugated and made into a fantasy, a moment's idle thought, a dream...
Am I a dream?
You are not a dream to me. Her thought was clear and strong. Am I a dream to you?
I do not know. He drew closer to her. He could see her now, indistinctly, through the surface of something, something which he knew would not allow him to pass. He had vague recollections of trying, and not succeeding, at some past time. But her hand was penetrating it, that barrier he could not cross. He could touch her to see if she were real. May I find out?
Please. She could see him now – her eyes had widened, her mouth was open as if she were panting –
He stretched out his hand and closed it around hers.
The lava suddenly ceased to be the semi-solid thing it had been up to now. Danger had time for one scream, which was cut off short as she fell through the surface. She thrashed, but got nowhere – it was as if she were insubstantial –
She screamed once more, soundlessly, staring at her arms. It was happening again, what had happened when the Pack had been thrust out of their own world – she was dissolving, losing herself, and her magic was gone, she'd drained it calling to Remus, there would be no more Gertrude Granger-Lupin in just a moment or two –
Strong arms wrapped around her, pulling her back into herself and upwards, out of the lava. She gasped in air as her head broke the surface, then was busy for a few moments coughing up what she'd swallowed, which meant she only got a look at her rescuer once she was back on land.
"You again," she said flippantly, since her real emotions could only be expressed non-verbally.
Remus didn't even bother with words, opting instead to take her in his arms and kiss her very thoroughly indeed, a courtesy she returned with pleasure.
"May I assume this means you know who I am?" she asked when she had caught her breath a second time.
"You," said Remus, rearranging them into a more comfortable position, "are my wife, and Hermione's sister. You are not some kind of strange sex fantasy about one of Harry's friends."
Danger gawked for a moment, then started laughing. "Is that what he thought? Oh, the poor man!"
"We have lived with Sirius Black and his wife in an arrangement we call a Pack for a little over fourteen years, and it seems to work very well. We have raised four children together, and none of them have become mass murderers yet, despite doom-sayers who will remain anonymous, who were so very sure that the son of Lucius Malfoy could never be anything but evil, and that children raised by a Dark creature – yours truly – must be Dark wizards and witches."
Danger giggled and glanced at the pool of lava. The gold was gone from within it, as was about half the red and a third of the silver. The rest remained, in fanciful patterns as before.
"And we seem to be reverting to type quite easily," said Remus, drawing her attention back to him. "You save me, I save you, we go out for drinks, everyone's happy."
"I wish we could go out for drinks." Danger shivered a little. "You're yourself again, but for how long? Are you going to be able to stay together?"
Remus shook his head, his face grave. "I don't think so. I can already feel a pull to join back in." He nodded at the lake. "We're just too similar – not you and I, but he and I. There's no way I can share his body without eventually getting drawn into him."
"So you need your own body," said Danger. "Or at least a body without a soul – a human soul – currently resident."
"Yes. Why?"
"When are you going to ask the obvious question?"
"Which obvious question? The What are you doing here one, or the How did you survive that one?"
"I was going for the second one."
"There is actually a reason I didn't want to ask you that," said Remus lightly. "Have you ever heard the saying, 'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth'?" His arms tightened around her. "This seems awfully likely to be a dream, and I'd rather not investigate it too closely. The longer I can believe it's real, the better. The moment I find a mistake..."
"You're not going to find any mistakes. It was our Animagus forms that saved us. I'm currently residing in the body of a very nice wolf bitch who goes by a name that doesn't translate well, but praises her ability to bear healthy pups."
"Saved us?"
"Aletha's cohabiting with a mare called Night-without-Moon, and Pearl met up with a yearling doe called Brookside Moss, if I understand it correctly."
The relief on Remus' face was embarrassing to see, even though Danger understood it perfectly. "They're all right," she said quietly. "A little shaken up, but healthy. No one died, Remus. You haven't failed."
"I should have known, though. I should have seen..."
"What, that a Death Eater would choose that day, that place, and that way to attack us? I thought I was the person with future dreams in this marriage."
Remus laughed shortly. "You're right. But I still feel I should have done something."
"What?" Danger understood Remus' feelings – he was the alpha, responsible for the Pack's safety, it was a blow to him when they were endangered like this – but he had to come out of this quickly. "What could any of us have done to counter that? There wasn't time, and even if there had been, do you know any counters to that kind of magic?"
"None that work very well," he admitted. "All right, you win. I'll stop obsessing over it."
"Ha."
"Out loud."
"I'll settle for that. Now, back to this business of finding you a body. I think we should start at the London Zoo..."
Albus Dumbledore, coming back from a late night at the Hog's Head, stopped as he stepped onto Hogwarts grounds. Something was... not quite amiss, but mildly unusual. He wondered what it could be.
"Headmaster Dumbledore?"
He turned in the direction of the voice and lit his wand. "Yes?" he said politely.
"Good evening, sir." The speaker was a woman, dressed in simple black robes. A girl of about twelve stood beside her. "My daughter Meghan and I have been robbed of all our possessions, besides the clothes on our backs. We hoped to find shelter for the night at the school."
"I believe that can be arranged," said Dumbledore. "May I know your name, madam?"
"Aletha. Aletha Freeman."
(A/N: OK, so I didn't get everything into this chapter I thought I would. I'm still vacillating on a lot of stuff. This story could go a LOT of different ways. Please review, and let me know what way you want it to go!
There's a small allusion to one of Neurotica's other stories somewhere in this chapter. Can you find it?
And I'd like to thank the person (you know who you are) who, in a private communication, informed me that she hoped I wasn't going to do what I had originally planned to do with the ending here, because that would just be lame. Thanks for your input. :-P)