4.
Remus went home to the cottage he shared with Sirius, and by the time he got there, Sirius, just as he'd said he might be, was indeed there ahead of him, vastly excited by what he'd discovered following Bagman as Padfoot.
"Augustus Rookwood!" he'd crowed. "He's the one, I'm sure of it. Ludo hit a few more pubs after we left, got himself good and pissed, and then dropped in to catch a spot of exotic dancing at Salome's Veil down at the end of Knockturn. And who should show up just as Bubbles the Great was halfway through her Dance of the Vanishing Mists but that fine, upstanding Ministry official … Mr. A. Rookwood!"
Remus tried to imagine a big black dog creeping inside an after-hours strip club without being seen by any of the bouncers and came up a bit short. But Padfoot was nothing if not ingenious, he knew.
"Quite an eye-opener, in any case…" Sirius was musing. "I must say, that Bubbles has the most enormous pair of-"
"This is suggestive information, Sirius, certainly," Remus interrupted. "But hardly conclusive. We'll have to wait and see how and if the planted information filters into the Ministry. Rookwood might have been there for any number of reasons. After all, he could have come just to enjoy Bubbles and her huge set of-"
"Oh, honestly, Remus," Sirius interrupted. "I've never taken old Gussie for a wizard who'd frequent sleazy strip joints in the worst part of Knockturn Alley, have you? Not at all his sort of thing – he must have been there for Bagman, not Bubbles, well-endowed witch though she is. You'll see that I'm right, in the next few weeks. How did it go with the … the effigy? No problems?"
Remus blinked at this question, and found himself doing some very fast mental back-pedaling. He was still unsure what, if anything, he intended to tell Sirius about the magical reflection he'd cast, and he still needed some time to think it all over. All he knew for a fact was that he never wanted Sirius to cast this particular spell again; but he really had no idea at all of how he would go about explaining his feelings to his friend.
"The … effigy … served its purpose perfectly," Remus finally answered, after some hesitation. At least he could be truthful on that score, up to a point. "I have no doubt that it looked absolutely convincing to anyone who might have been watching. It was … it was extremely lifelike, you may be sure. But …but right now … I'm tired and I'd like to get some sleep. We can discuss everything in the morning, all right?"
Sirius looked at Remus sharply. He'd heard the slight strangeness in the tone of Remus' voice, of course. Remus sighed. It was damned near impossible to hide emotional upheaval from Sirius Black. He could sense the subtle twistings of the heart as unerringly as Padfoot could sniff out a bone.
"Remus?" Sirius promptly asked. "Did anything go wrong? Was there some problem with the spell? Did you-?"
Right on schedule, Remus thought to himself, both resigned and annoyed, and sighed again. "Look, Sirius – I really am completely knackered. Everything worked fine, all right? We can go over all the details tomorrow. I'm going to bed."
Sirius, of course, was also perfectly capable of sensing when Remus had shut the iron door, and he'd temporarily abandoned all further questioning as a pointless waste of time and energy. So, they had gone to bed, just as Remus had insisted, and though Remus had imagined that he'd find sleep elusive that night, in the end, he turned out to have been mistaken. Fatigue and the evening's excitement and all his uneasy indecision about what to say to Sirius had worn Remus out more than he'd known, and he'd fallen deeply asleep not long after his head hit the pillow.
But only an hour or two later, he'd awakened suddenly in the dark, and had sat bolt upright in the bed he shared with Sirius.
He could see nothing, and he heard nothing other than the soft, even breathing of Sirius in bed beside him. But something had awakened him abruptly – he just couldn't say exactly what. He fumbled about on his bedside table for his wand, feeling for it in the dark.
Sirius beside him stirred, aroused by Remus' movements, and then spoke, voice thickened with sleep. "Mmmm? Moony? Something – something wrong?"
Just as Sirius was shaking off the last shreds of grogginess and sitting up in bed himself, Remus' hand closed on his wand. He took it up and muttered "Lumos."
The sudden dim glow revealed Sirius' effigy, standing silently at the foot of their bed like a specter and gazing at both of them intently.
Sirius uttered a short, sharp cry and Remus dropped his wand on the bedclothes between his knees. The effigy's face was painted with changing shadows as the light at the end of Remus' wand was muffled in the blankets.
"What the fuck?" Sirius gasped, hand pressed against his chest.
"You!" the effigy barked, glaring at Sirius. "You idiot! You fucked up the Arithmancy calculations! I'm still here!"
Sirius gazed, slack-jawed, at his magical copy for a long moment. Then he turned slowly to Remus.
"Was there … anything …about tonight … that you forgot to tell me, Moony?" he asked.
Remus managed to get his own wild breathing under control enough to sigh a bit. He might have known that in the end, he'd be the one to get blamed for the whole bizarre fiasco.
"I went to the pentacle, just like I was supposed to," the effigy was saying. "My purpose was fulfilled, my time was closing, everything according to plan, no hitches. I stood there and I waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing happened. You got my duration interval wrong, Sirius."
Sirius was getting out of bed, shaking his head. "Not the only thing I got wrong, apparently," he muttered, with a small accusing glance at Remus.
"I was going to tell you, Sirius, really I was," Remus said. "I just didn't know … exactly … how to put it. I needed to sleep on it."
"Hmmph," was Sirius' only reply. He began to rummage in the large chest where he kept all his notes, implements and magical supplies. Remus retrieved his wand and lit the lamps at either side of the bed.
The effigy drifted over to where Sirius was furiously pulling stacks of untidy papers and so forth out of the chest and looked over his shoulder.
"It's not his fault, you know," it said to its creator. "Are these your notes? Is this where I came from? What a mess! Honestly, how can you find anything in here?"
"I know where everything is…" Sirius answered absently, still shuffling through stacks of scribbled notes and calculations. The effigy touched his arm to get his attention. He jumped a bit, and then forced himself to look it in the eye. Remus was struck by a sudden realization of how terribly strange it must seem to Sirius to do that.
"What?" he snapped at his magical copy.
"Sirius. Sirius, please…" it answered, after a pause, in a small voice. "Please tell me what I'm supposed to do now?
Sirius stared at himself for a moment, and then slowly put his own hand on his copy's shoulder and squeezed a bit. "I … we… the first thing we're going to do is see … where we went wrong on the formulae, all right? We …we'll need to recalculate your interval."
"Oh. Oh, that's good, then. Yes, that makes sense," the effigy said.
"Ah, all right, here we are," Sirius muttered, gathering a motley assortment of notes into a single bundle. "These are my calculations, and here are some of the development notes, lists of ingredients, some of the original incantations … Remus, come here, would you? I want you to rerun my formulae, recheck them, see if you get the same results as I did … and … and you …" he said, glancing again at his effigy. "When did you first notice that you'd become …aware? Do you remember?"
Remus rose from the bed and took the stack of Sirius' papers over to the bureau and pulled a quill out of one of the top drawers while Sirius guided the effigy over toward the bed.
"Sit down for a moment," he said to it. "Think. What do you remember?"
It sat down slowly and then looked up at him. "I don't know. There wasn't a specific moment, exactly. It was just … I just felt more and more … alive. Moony was talking to me, and I was listening to him, and I … I remembered how much I loved him … and …"
Sirius was staring into his reflection's eyes. "You remembered that you … loved him?"
"Well … yes and no, in a way. I did remember, yes, but I was also thinking it was ridiculous, you know? Because how could I ever have forgotten it in the first place? I've always loved him."
Sirius sort of sagged into a sitting position beside the effigy. "But you can't have, you know. You can't always have loved him, because four or five hours ago, you didn't exist at all. You … you have no history."
The effigy looked intently at Sirius. "I have yours, I suppose."
Sirius buried his face in his hands and groaned. "Godric's Blood. This is, without a doubt, the most bollocksed-up botch of things I've ever made!" He uncovered his face and looked at the effigy again.
"I am so sorry," he said. "You must know I'd never have wished any of this on you deliberately. I'm sorry for what I've done to you."
Oddly enough, the effigy smiled. "I think … we … may be a bit too eager to take all the blame and snap up all the guilt, if you don't mind my saying. It's not entirely realistic. You thought I'd just be an empty-headed straw man, I do understand that. Nothing in my head, nothing in my heart, not much more than surface to me at all. But you know, I actually don't mind being a little more than that, when all is said and done. Even if it is only for a little while."
Remus had just finished double-checking Sirius' notes and brought them back over toward the bed where Sirius was sitting side by side with his effigy. He was struck, for a moment, by the sight of them side by side like that, legs loosely crossed in precisely the same way, dark heads tilted at the exact same angle. He felt a minute tightening in the muscles of his lower belly, a faint and passing heat in his skin. His steps slowed momentarily, and then he shook it off.
"All right," he said to both of them. "I can't find anything wrong with the calculations, per se. But I do have an idea. Sirius, did you factor in the Law of Three-Times-Three when you were running these formulae?"
Sirius blinked. "No, of course not. It's essentially a transfiguration spell. Three-Times-Three doesn't apply – I didn't cast the spell on anyone, I just transfigured a preexisting object. A reflection from a mirror."
"Is that right?" the effigy said, interested and a bit impressed. "That's really very clever, I must say. Magically defining a reflection as an object. I think I'd have guessed contagion and sympathy rather than transfiguration as the essential principles, if I'd had to hazard a guess."
"Well, there were some small elements of contagion too," Sirius assured his mirror image. "A touch of sympathetic magic as well. I did use some of my hair, sweat, and a drop or two of blood. But the real heart of the pentacle was the mirror and the reflection in it, because-"
"Because you had to have the image as the baseline, right? But you also had to separate the image from the mirror, yes? And to keep the magical framework fluid, you must have-"
"I used mercury, that's right. But I had to balance it out with-"
Remus snorted, trying not to laugh. They both looked up at him, slightly startled. The two of them, it appeared, would very likely have been content to talk shop all night long, if he didn't interrupt them. He felt an unaccountable sense of bemused delight.
"If the two of you will forgive me for interrupting your little chat, I was still wondering about the duration interval and Three-Times-Three. Sirius, it's true that the Law only applies if you're casting a spell on a sentient being, so it was logical not to allow for it, originally. But your …your copy, here – he is a sentient being. Or he was, as soon as you brought him into existence. So …"
"What are you saying?" Sirius asked. "Are you saying that-?"
"I'm saying that I think you got the duration interval right until he materialized in the pentacle. But as soon as that happened, and he was sentient, the Law was invoked retroactively. I think the interval increased by a factor of three the moment he appeared."
Sirius and his copy looked at one another for a moment.
"That could…" Sirius began.
"Make sense," the effigy finished.
"So, then, the correct interval would be-" Sirius said.
"Eleven hours and fifteen minutes," Remus said, and moved around the bed to his bedside table, where he picked up his watch. "Of which, about five hours have already elapsed. It's almost midnight now, so ..."
"Ah. All right, then," the effigy said, sounding a bit relieved. "So, I'm done about … a quarter after six this morning."
Sirius stared at the effigy, hard. "And that … that doesn't bother you?"
"Of course not. Why would it? At least I know where I'm going and exactly when I'll get there. But you and Remus – real people – you don't. Frankly, I don't know how you can stand it, not knowing. All that uncertainty would drive me round the twist."
Remus sank down into his side of the bed while he thought about this. Profound philosophical questions coming on top of profoundly weird magical mishaps seemed a bit much to him, at that moment. Sirius, slightly amused, grinned at the effigy.
"Oh, well," Sirius said. "Part of the price one pays for being human – not really knowing anything about anything important. In a way, the uncertainty can be … what makes it interesting. It's just something we all get used to."
"With varying degrees of success," Remus added. "Mortality has always presented something of a problem to the thinking being."
Sirius chuckled. "Moony here has the makings of a first-class cynic somewhere in him," he remarked to the effigy. "That's why he needs a scatterbrain like me on his team. To cheer him up."
"I know he does," the effigy said, also chuckling.
Remus did not know whether to be charmed or irritated by this apparent like-mindedness between Sirius and his magical copy. On the one hand, it was amazing and entrancing and an utterly, utterly unique experience. On the other hand, he just wasn't sure how much he liked the idea of the two of them ganging up on him.
They were both looking at him, identical fond smiles on their handsome faces.
Remus felt another small stirring in his lower belly and this time, he correctly identified it as an owl-post from his libido. His scholar's mind immediately supplied a literal translation:
Potential once-in-a-lifetime erotic encounter! Golden opportunity! Seize the day!
He did his level best to squash these stirrings before they could take hold and cause him to do something untoward. His libido might not have any standards of decency or conscience, but his higher intellect certainly did. He opened his mouth and heard himself talking to the effigy.
"So, now that we know how long you have, the question is – what are we going to do with you for the next six hours? We'll have to think of some way to pass the time…"
Remus heard the slightly husky tone in his own voice, and could have strangled himself on the spot for making such a suggestive remark.
Both Sirius and his effigy had also clearly heard that husky tone as well, since they both immediately came to full attention in all the subtle ways that Remus, over many years of being Sirius' lover, had learned well. Their bodies shifted slightly on the edge of the bed, turning to face him more fully. Sirius tossed his head lightly, shaking his hair back out of his face. The effigy's posture changed by a fraction, spine curving fluidly and head tilting just a bit to the side. The effigy's nostrils flared a tiny touch and Sirius' lips parted minutely. They both gazed at him intently, both sets of pupils dilating.
And then they both smiled at him, both spontaneously displaying that uncannily beautiful smile that was for Remus alone. An expression that had always melted Remus' heart on sight and that he had never had one iota of resistance to. This time, magically doubled before his eyes.
Another message from his libido followed; this time, a Howler:
OH! OH YES! GIMME THAT! AT ONCE!
"Hmmm…" Sirius purred. "Moony, did you have some specific pass-time in mind?"
"Mmmm…" the effigy also purred, and glanced at Sirius. "He looks like he knows some wonderful secret, doesn't he?"
"Maybe he does," Sirius said. "He's certainly blushing enough."
"I'm not blushing," Remus asserted forcefully and completely untruthfully.
Sirius turned to the effigy. "You know, I think the real question is – what would you like to spend the rest of your life doing? Any ideas?"
To Remus' great surprise, the effigy blushed. Sirius seldom blushed; he was so rarely embarrassed by anything. Remus discovered that he found it delightful, seeing that slightest rosy cast on Sirius' cheeks, even if they weren't really Sirius' cheeks. His belly tightened by another notch and he felt a heat rising in his nether regions.
"Well, I …" the effigy said, and paused to swallow. "Moony did sort of … promise me a kiss at the pub, earlier tonight…"
"Did he, now?" Sirius asked, with a certain comical severity.
"I think he was just being polite, though," the effigy quickly added.
Sirius laughed outright. "He is very well-mannered. Everyone says so."
Remus had had just about enough. "You supercilious wankers can just stop making fun of me right this minute! It's hardly fair, you know, both of you! And stop talking about me as though I wasn't even in the room!
"You…" he then said to the effigy. "Come here."
The effigy grinned, delighted, but then paused and turned to Sirius. "Is it …is it all right? You don't mind, do you?"
Sirius' face curved into a slow sensuous smile and he settled back a bit against his pillows. "Go ahead. I can deny him nothing, after all."
"You know, I have a strong suspicion that I won't be able to either," the effigy said. He leaned in toward Remus, stretching himself across Sirius' legs. "So … Moony, old thing. Moony. May I kiss you?"
Remus looked into the effigy's beautiful face, taking in the full, expressive mouth, the milky skin, the glossy black hair and the bright eyes. Then he glanced at Sirius, taking in all the same familiar features once again. A previously undiscovered door opened in his mind and heart.
"Yes," he said to the effigy. "Yes, you can kiss me. In time. But kiss him first, though."
He waved his hand at Sirius, who, to Remus' distinct pleasure, immediately also blushed, thus completing the resemblance to his effigy to the last, intimate detail.
"Oh. Oh, wow," Sirius said, very quietly. "I … I don't know…"
The effigy was staring at his maker. "That … that would be …"
"… incredibly strange," Sirius finished.
Remus smiled. "Just think of it as-"
"The most unbelievably complicated example of masturbation ever devised?" Sirius asked sharply.
"If you like…" Remus said, now grinning. "Go ahead. Do it. Unless, of course, you're chicken…"
Both Sirius and his copy looked mortally offended by this comment.
"Both of you," Remus added.
"Hmmph," Sirius snorted, and put his hands on his mirror image's shoulders and pulled him closer.
"Right, then," the effigy snapped, and curled himself into Sirius' lap and put his arms around his neck.
Their heads tilted toward one another and a sheaf of Sirius' hair fell forward into the effigy's face. He brushed it away slowly, and their lips met. Met and held, and then met more deeply. It was the most insanely erotic sight Remus had ever seen in his life. The burgeoning erection between his legs promptly firmed right up and began to throb.
The magically enhanced kiss went on, and deepened still more, and Sirius put his hands into his copy's hair and the effigy dropped his hands to Sirius' waist and pressed himself more fully against his creator. Remus' mouth slid open as he watched them and his breath became ragged. The two of them finally broke apart with an identical weak groan.
"Voyeurism…" Sirius gasped.
"Exhibitionism…" the effigy gasped.
"God Almighty," Remus gasped. "Do it again."
Sirius and the effigy both burst out laughing.
"He doesn't look at all kinky," the effigy remarked.
"I know," Sirius said. "He looks like a tweedy, bookish, stodgy stuffed-shirt of a professor. It takes everybody in."
"But we can deny him nothing," the effigy added, and put his hand to the fastenings at the collar of Sirius' robes and stroked the partially exposed skin of his throat. "May I … would it be all right if I …"
Sirius slow smile became unimaginably sensuous as he arched his neck into the effigy's caress. "Ask Moony. He seems to be the one calling the shots here."
The effigy duplicated Sirius' sensual smile precisely and kissed Sirius' throat while gazing directly into Remus' eyes.
"I was wondering if you'd like to see a little more skin, Moony?" the effigy asked.
"I find that I wouldn't mind too much," Sirius put in, also staring into Remus' eyes while slowly running his hand down the effigy's backbone. "In case you were concerned…"
"I … I'd like to see a lot more skin," Remus answered, breathlessly. "Now. Please."
Sirius chuckled; it sounded almost like a purr. "We have our orders," he said to the effigy.
Sirius only had light silken bed-robes on, loose and comfortable and easy to open. The effigy, of course, was still dressed in a perfect copy of Sirius' street robes, from earlier in the evening. The two of them seemed to have hit on some unspoken mutual agreement, because they concentrated on unwrapping the effigy's more complex costume first. Sirius pushed the cloak off the effigy's shoulders and let it fall to the floor while the effigy undid all the fastenings at his own throat and at his breast and shrugged the loosened fabric off of himself. It pooled around his waist and Sirius laid his hand on the effigy's now bare chest.
"Would you stand up for a moment, please? Don't trip on all these clothes, though."
"Moony?" the effigy asked. "Do you want me to stand up?"
Remus nodded silently, absolutely rapt.
The effigy rose to his feet and the bunched robes at his waist slipped down his hips and legs to the floor. Sirius reached out and curled his hands around the effigy's almost bare hips, gathering the waistband of his copy's pants into his hands. He glanced over his shoulder at Remus.
"Shall I? Last chance to change your mind, you perverse thing."
"Change my mind?" Remus answered him. "Are you mad?"
Sirius laughed and slid the pants away, maddeningly slowly. The effigy bent forward and braced his hand on Sirius' shoulder while he stepped out of them. Then he rose again and stood to his full height, completely nude, pale flesh gleaming in the dim light of the bedroom, smooth chest rising and falling rapidly, body visibly aroused.
"Good God," Remus whispered. "God. Now do you see, Sirius? Do you see why I say you're beautiful, even when I know you don't like it? Even you have to admit …" He broke off and waved his hand at the effigy helplessly.
Sirius looked at his copy critically for a moment. "We-ell … objectively speaking … maybe you might have a point … but I have to tell you, from the neck up, he looks a whole hell of a lot like my mother."
"Or like his horrid cousin," the effigy added. "I seem to have some vaguely unpleasant memories about her, for some reason."
"Let's not discuss my family just now, if you don't mind," Sirius snapped. "All us inbred, pureblood genetic dead-ends look much too much alike, it's a grotesque fact of life. Remus, you're the director of this bizarre little psychodrama. What's next?"
Remus rolled his eyes. "He always gets snippy if I mention his appearance," he said to the effigy. "Maybe you can think of something to do to put him back in a pleasant temper?"
The effigy settled himself on the bed beside Sirius and kissed his cheek in a friendly sort of way.
"He'd just prefer to look like himself and not a dozen generations of other Blacks," he said, and kissed Sirius again. "Wouldn't you?"
"Can you blame me?" Sirius replied and leaned into the kiss a tiny touch.
"Oh, no worries, mate. I understand perfectly. Could you raise your arms? We'll pull this robe off."
Sirius smiled, apparently over his momentary fit of pique. "No, just open it. Moony likes me all undone, but partially clothed. It drives him a bit mental. You'll see."
"Oh, yes?" the effigy said, interested. He pulled the fabric away from Sirius left side, baring one shoulder and most of Sirius' chest. "Like this?"
"Yesssss," Remus commented. "Like that."
"Let's see how much interest in this 'bizarre little psychodrama' you really have," the effigy said into Sirius ear, and then licked it. "Shall we? Empirical evidence, don't you know. Roll to the right, a bit."
Sirius twisted to his right side and his magical copy pulled his robe more fully open and then kissed his hip once he'd gotten it cleared.
"Mmmm," Sirius mumbled in response. "Nice. That's … really nice. I like that. So, anyway, will you need a ruler and calipers to make your evaluation, or can you just … eyeball it?"
They both snickered like naughty little boys at the exact same time and the effigy rubbed Sirius' bare belly in a circular motion, as though he was rubbing a magic lamp with a genie inside. Remus simply moaned outright.
Then Remus noticed something special and leaned forward toward them a bit.
"Oh. Oh, look, he has it too. Oh … my … umm …"
"Who has it?" the effigy asked, confused.
"Has what?" Sirius asked, equally confused.
"Your birthmark," Remus explained to Sirius, suddenly unable to stop grinning like a maniac. "That little key-shaped spot you have. He's got one too."
Both Sirius and the effigy looked down at themselves, and then down at one another.
"Oh, oh I see," the effigy said. "I hadn't noticed that before. What a peculiar place for a birthmark."
Sirius reached out and lightly touched the corresponding spot on his magical duplicate, a slightly intrigued look on his face. "How odd. I've never really seen it before…" he said. "It's at a bad angle for me. Remus always makes such a fuss over it, though …"
"Only because it's just about my favorite thing in the world," Remus explained, still grinning madly.
"Is it really?" the effigy asked him, somewhat bemused. He put his own forefinger on Sirius' spot. "This little thing?"
"Yours is a just a little bit to the left," Sirius remarked to the effigy. He glanced at Remus. "Is that where it is on me?"
Remus grinned so much he was surprised the top of his head didn't fall off. "No, no it isn't, Sirius. Yours is a little to the right."
"Oh, Merlin's Whiskers!" said Sirius, and burst out laughing. "This is all just so … so incredibly odd. I'm all at sixes and sevens, truly I am!" He continued to laugh, hard, and in short order, the effigy also started laughing.
"C'mere, handsome," Sirius finally cackled to his effigy. "Might as well give us another kiss. I suppose Moony'll never forgive me if you don't."
"No," Remus confirmed. "I guarantee you I won't."
"All right, all right," the effigy spluttered, through his own guffaws. "I'll do it, Moony. But first he has to promise not to call me 'handsome' ever again!"
And then, of course, both Sirius and the effigy simply dissolved into crazed cackles like the rather eccentric creatures they both, via a slightly miscalculated spell, were.
Sirius made a great effort to stop laughing enough to talk. "Sorry," he gasped to the effigy. "How about 'glamour-puss'?"
"How about I tickle you dead?" the effigy replied. "Don't think I can't do it. I was born knowing all your ticklish places. Every last one of them."
"That information could work both ways, you know," Sirius growled through all his laughter and tackled the effigy in one fell swoop, long fingers instinctively seeking and finding all the most ticklish spots as he bore his copy to the mattress beneath him. The effigy struggled wildly against the playful assault and tickled back and laughed so hard he choked. Their roughhousing almost bounced Remus right off the bed.
An odd thought occurred to Remus as he scrambled to maintain his place. He suddenly realized that Sirius had never and would never play so rough with him. He had never before seen such a clear demonstration of how much of that wild, manic spirit that imbued Sirius he customarily kept damped down. And then, Remus realized how good it made him feel to see Sirius with the one partner in the world with whom he could truly take the gloves off.
"Give up …yet … handsome?" Sirius was huffing to his temporary opponent.
"Fuck … you … and the … the bike you flew in on …" the effigy replied, still laughing his brains out.
Sirius tickled harder and mock-bit the enemy's left flank, still laughing himself. "Surrender!" he demanded.
"You surrender!" The effigy heaved himself up and dumped Sirius onto his own back and then immediately pounced on him, trying to pin him in a wild tangle of flailing limbs.
A doomed attempt from the outset, Remus could see. They were, of course, much too evenly matched for one or the other to prevail. In the melee of white skin and flying black hair and wild peals of laughter, Remus would not have been able to guess which of them was which, were it not for the effigy's state of total undress, compared to Sirius' skewed and tangled robes.
Another insanely erotic sight, really. Remus waited patiently for the two of them to tire one another out.
In time, their struggles slowed and finally subsided, and they both lay panting and still laughing occasionally, across the bed, long legs still comfortably tangled.
"I think we'll have to call it a draw…" Sirius admitted.
The effigy shrugged. "I have no objection. Could you move your elbow? You've got it in my ear."
Sirius raised himself up enough to rest his shoulders against the headboard and propped his head in one hand. The effigy twisted himself around and rested his head lightly on Sirius' stomach. Then they both languidly turned in the same moment to gaze at Remus.
"Oh, dear," Sirius said. "We've gotten distracted and neglected you, Moony. How very rude of us."
He reached out his free hand and stroked Remus' cheek. The effigy put his hand on Remus' knee.
"Well, we are terribly rude sometimes," the effigy said. "That is, I'm all right, mostly, but Sirius here is an unmitigated boor. How you tolerate him is a mystery to me."
Sirius smiled lazily, amused by the insult, and reached down to clamp his hand over the effigy's mouth to shut it.
"How do you tolerate me, Moony?" he asked, softly.
Remus smiled. "Well, it is a bit difficult, to be quite honest, but you do have your strong points. And, of course, it doesn't hurt that you're the sexiest wizard alive."
The effigy laughed so hard at that reply that he shook Sirius' restraining hand off. "Oh … honestly! Of all the absurd nonsense…"
"What are you laughing at?" Sirius asked him, also laughing. "That makes you the sexiest wizard alive too, moron."
"Only for a couple of hours or so," the effigy reminded him lightly. Most of the laughter went out of Sirius' face at once and he stared down at the effigy in his lap.
"Is that starting to … to make you unhappy?" Sirius asked.
"No … no, not really. I was … just thinking how much I've enjoyed being here, like this, with the two of you. That I'll be sorry to leave when the time comes. You've both been so kind to me."
Sirius sighed and drew his hands across the effigy's temples, massaging gently with his fingertips. Remus recognized the movement; it was something that Sirius had always particularly liked when Remus did it for him. Remus wondered if Sirius knew what he was doing, or if it was purely unconscious.
"Remus has been kind to you," Sirius amended. "But me - I'm the one who put you in a severely limited existence and then accidentally made you aware enough to know it. I am clearly not qualified to be God. You shouldn't thank me for anything."
The effigy reached up to Sirius' neck and pulled his head down, down close enough to kiss him.
"You're too quick to take the dim view," the effigy said, once he'd finished kissing Sirius and released him. "I told you – I don't mind being aware and … alive. Especially considering the alternative – just being a brainless, emotionless … illusion. It's been a good life, Sirius. From my perspective, it really doesn't much matter that you did it by mistake."
"Or that it's coming to an abrupt end?" Sirius asked.
"Isn't your life coming to an abrupt end?" the effigy countered. "And Moony's? And everyone else's'? When your time comes, will you be saying 'I wish I'd never lived at all'?"
"I hope not…" Sirius said quietly, more to himself than to the two of them.
Remus felt strangely troubled by the turn the conversation had taken and commented a bit more harshly than he'd intended. "It's not the same thing! Sirius' life isn't coming to an end at six this morning!"
Sirius looked up into Remus' eyes quickly, and then his face softened. "You can't know that, though, Moony," he said gently. "None of us knows the day or the hour."
"I do," the effigy reminded them softly.
Both Remus and Sirius stared at him, and he smiled at them. "See? I keep telling you silly gits that it's a good life. But … you know, I don't think I really can be the sexiest wizard alive. After all, Moony won't even kiss me."
Remus laughed. Perhaps the effigy, an ephemeral magical construction made only of smoke and mirrors, had somehow guessed more about the nature of existence than either he or Sirius ever would. The future would unfold as it unfolded. What truly mattered was the moment.
Seize the day…
"I never said I wouldn't," Remus argued, smiling. "Only that there were a few things I wanted to see first."
Sirius heaved a great mock-sigh. "So now we're back to his previously unknown voyeuristic kinks. Work, work, work!"
"But we can deny him nothing," the effigy added in long-suffering tones. He turned his head in Sirius' lap and, while gazing at Remus, deliberately licked Sirius' key-shaped spot.
"…holy … fuck…" Sirius gasped, galvanized by the intimate touch. His hips arched upward and he blindly reached out and grasped one of the effigy's slim hands, then brought it to his lips to kiss the fingertips.
"Is that the way, Moony?" the effigy asked, lightly stroking Sirius' hip with his free hand as he gazed up at Remus.
Remus could only stare, fascinated to silence by the bizarre sight before him, a wash of subtle contrasts and colors: the effigy's pale fingertips with the pink tip of Sirius' tongue among them; the stark chiaroscuro of the effigy's black hair flowing over the white skin of Sirius' thighs; the dusky scarlet of the effigy's lips so near the deepening rose of the living blood they had summoned to Sirius' quickening cock, the cool, familiar grey of the effigy's eyes and the warm, dark sable of the birthmark.
"Oh, yes," Remus said at last. "Yes. That's the way."
The effigy took Sirius into both his hands, beautifully shaped hands that were achingly familiar to Remus. He looked up into his creator's eyes and then kissed the birthmark again, almost as though he was saying hello.
"Would it be all right, then? More, I mean ..?" he said quietly to Sirius. "Do you want … would you like … how should I ..?"
Sirius' eyes slid closed and his head slumped back against the headboard. His own hands slid gently over the effigy's head and the sides of his face. "Only what you want - only if it's what you want…"
"I want to please you … I …I'd like that … but I'm not sure how to…"
"I think you'll just know…" Sirius whispered, voice faint.
Self-gratification, magically squared. As it turned out, Sirius was right. The effigy did know.
Remus had never seen a more perfectly synchronized sexual act. The effigy knew all that Sirius wanted before he could ask, even before he knew himself. Every movement, every desire, every slightest hitch of breath or twitch of muscle, anticipated and realized before the mental conception could even begin to take form. Even Remus, Sirius' intimate since they had both been little more than children, was able to learn much from the unique demonstration. And in all the years that followed, Remus would never forget this bizarre and amazing and ultimately haunting vision, his beautiful, beloved Sirius - dancing with himself on the edge of doom.
At the end of it, when Sirius was trembling with pleasure and gasping for breath and laughing as he always did in his furthest extremity of physical joy, Remus suddenly moved over close to both of them and pulled the effigy to himself, smoothing the sheaves of inky hair out of his face and holding him close.
"Oh, Moony," the effigy said, staring up at his alter-ego's transported face. "Is it always like this? Do I … does he… do we always laugh that way?"
"Every single time," Remus assured him.
"No wonder you love him," the effigy said, now gazing directly into Remus' eyes.
"No wonder I love you both," Remus corrected, and kissed the effigy deeply. He could still taste the essence of Sirius in the effigy's warm, soft mouth. "How could I not?"
"Ah," the effigy breathed, that familiar, weirdly beautiful smile on his much-loved face. "A promise fulfilled. Thank you, Moony."
Sirius stirred then and wriggled down a bit to curl himself more fully into both of them, Remus and the effigy. He lazily kissed his magical copy's cheekbone and then stroked Remus' hair. "He always keeps his promises," he said to the effigy. "I've never known him not to."
It was Remus' pleasure, then, to kiss them both in turn, first Sirius and then the effigy, then Sirius and then the effigy once again, over and over until he had lost track of whose mouth he was sounding or of whose breath he shared. It was the oddest, most dizzying sensation for Remus, overwhelmingly pleasurable and yet, at the same time, indefinably bittersweet.
There was something so fragile about it, and Remus was caught in a vivid sense of having somehow captured a momentary glimpse through a temporary and purely accidental loophole in the normal fabric of space, or of having pulled a single perfect moment out of the general wrack of time.
And he was aware of a great desire to make the effigy's last hours in the world as full and as rich and as complete as he could.
After all, wasn't that really all that he wanted for Sirius too?
Remus looked away from the effigy and Sirius met his eyes. What he saw there assured him that Sirius too wanted what he wanted. They had been partners for far too long for Remus to ever mistake the message of agreement in Sirius' gaze. Sirius would do all he could to help Remus ensure that the effigy would never have cause to regret being made alive, for as long as he was alive.
While Remus bent to kiss the effigy's throat and chest, Sirius raised himself to his knees and pulled the effigy against him, until his backside was resting on Sirius' bent knees, his back against Sirius' midsection, his head rolling into the hollow of Sirius shoulder. Sirius dipped his own head down to kiss the effigy's ears, to whisper in them, to massage his temples again, to run his hands lightly over the effigy's shoulders and down his sides.
"Now let us please you," Sirius murmured to his magical duplicate.
Remus was struck anew by the sight of Sirius' face just behind his mirror image's face, his lips against the effigy's ear, the sheaves of their hair commingling. Sirius raised his eyes to Remus' again as he tugged gently at the effigy's earlobe with his teeth and the effigy moaned softly and rolled his head once more, eyes closed.
Remus took the nonverbal cue. He put his hands on the effigy's knees and slowly pulled his legs apart, then raised himself up slightly and knelt between them. He opened his own pajama shirt, hands trembling on the buttons, and then slid the bottoms down off his hips.
"Look," Sirius was saying into the effigy's ear. "Look at him. See how beautiful he is, our Moony? How superb? How singular?"
The effigy had opened his eyes and was taking in the unclothed Remus, head to toe, pillar to post, scars and all. He reached out a hand toward Remus, long fingers outstretched to touch him, then hesitated.
"Your scars," he whispered, a bit awestruck. "All your scars. Do they hurt?"
Remus took the effigy's outstretched hand and laid it on his own belly, on the long hooked scar that zigzagged down into his abdomen. "Not always," he answered, and smiled.
Sirius kissed behind the effigy's ears and swept his hair aside to blow on the back of his neck while Remus kissed the palms of his hands and let him familiarize himself, through touch, with the visible history of lycanthropy etched on Remus' skin. While the effigy, by magical proxy, had Sirius' memories, not the simple touch of a hand and nor the poignant warmth of living flesh could ever be truly recreated in memory alone. The present reality of these things, these sensations, was entirely new to the effigy, a magical entity only a few hours old. He accepted and marveled at and treasured the marks on Remus' flesh in exactly the same way Sirius once had, the first time Remus had permitted him to touch however and wherever he wished.
Sirius slipped both his hands under the effigy's arms to slide his palms over the effigy's chest and belly, down past his navel and up again to his pectoral muscles, fingertips just barely skimming the nipples in the light, almost not-there way that Remus knew from experience Sirius himself most preferred.
Remus was shaken with delight, watching Sirius, in effect, touching himself, pleasing himself, loving himself. Remus hoped that somehow, through that extra degree of magical separation, Sirius had begun to understand all the good that Remus saw in him, even if only in fleeting hints. Remus was very aware of the realization that he would never see or feel anything quite like this again.
Sirius slid his hands down his magical copy's belly and then gently took himself in hand, stroking and softly kneading the effigy's trembling cock in his hands. The effigy moaned and writhed in response and his eyes went heavy-lidded and unfocussed, showing that same complete sensual abandon that Remus had so often rejoiced in with the real Sirius. The sight of Sirius' elegant hands between the effigy's trembling thighs ignited a blaze of hunger in Remus' own heart, and he surged forward to lie between the effigy's outstretched legs, pressing his own hips against the effigy's, pressing Sirius' still-working hands inside the small, warm interstice between their bodies. He could feel the pulses of the effigy's heartbeat and Sirius' against his own skin, in Sirius' wrists, in the effigy's throbbing member, in the answering pulse deep down inside his own belly. A compelling rhythm and pace that was, in all three cases, perfectly matched.
"He can be closer to you still…" Sirius was murmuring into the effigy's ears. "There can still be more. Moony, cast the charm, yes?"
Remus nodded jerkily and fumbled about in the bedclothes until he found his previously discarded wand while the effigy continued to utter soft, pleased cries at Sirius' uniquely knowledgeable ministrations. Remus could barely summon the stillness of mind he needed to cast the simple household spell that Sirius had adapted for this intimate purpose when they had first become lovers, and that they had continued to use for all the years since. Practice and repetition had refined their application of the charm over the years, and though Sirius had overdone it the first time and had rendered both of them as slippery as glass, Remus now cast the charm perfectly, and felt the familiar warm, mild tingling along the surface of his skin. The effigy's skin and Sirius' hands took on an easy silk-like slide against the flesh of Remus' belly.
Remus parted the effigy's legs still further and slid his own hands along the insides of his thighs, stopping for a moment to lay his hands atop Sirius' and pressing lightly, and then sliding them under the effigy's buttocks, fingers splayed out.
"Raise your hips a bit," Sirius was whispering to the effigy, taking the intended words right out of Remus' mouth. "Do you want to? Raise your hips for him."
The effigy opened his eyes and looked up at both of them for a moment, seeking out their eyes with an expression of mild wonder for both. "Like this?" he asked, raising his hips to a new, more convenient angle.
"Just like that," Remus answered softly and kissed him while he settled himself more comfortably between the effigy's long legs. He angled his own hips upward and began to slowly press himself forward, gently nudging for entrance.
"Closer still…" Sirius was whispering, working the effigy's cock with his hands and licking and nipping at his ears. "Always closer – I always want him closer. And he can be closer; he can be inside you … inside and outside and all around you if you want him to."
"Ohhh …" the effigy gasped, shaking with pleasure and thrusting forward into Sirius' hands. "Yes. I want … I want …"
The effigy's voice trailed off into incoherent moans and he could not go on, but it didn't matter, because Remus knew what he wanted anyway. He pushed forward himself and fell into that familiar and well-loved sweetness that was absolute access to Sirius' body, to every part of it, inside and out. That was Sirius' body, and yet, in this one peculiar instance, was not.
"Yesssss," Sirius was breathing, still talking, still murmuring into his magical mirror-image's ear. "Like that. Like that. He feels so good, doesn't he? So good …"
"…so good …" the effigy echoed, trembling.
So good, Remus scrambled mind echoed them both, and he rocked forward, forward and back, forward and back. And both Sirius and his effigy rose to meet him naturally, completing the circuit he'd established.
The three of them found their rhythm easily, a rhythm and a perfect three-part cycle of movement that was both old and well-worn and wonderfully familiar, and yet was also entirely new. It seemed too strong and effortless and strangely fitting a pattern to ever cease or come to an end, but the exquisite pleasure of it seemed to increase exponentially with every thrust and counter-thrust, far too fragile to last, and Remus thought crazily that all three of them could be heading toward a magical cataclysm of such unbearable beauty that it might fuse them all into some new and unknown single entity.
But the furthest heights of orgasm, however heart-expanding, are always experienced alone. The coming critical mass of pleasure that Remus had guessed might overwhelm them all did occur, and it split the three of them off from one another momentarily, casting each temporarily adrift in his own private ecstasy. Remus could hear the effigy laughing somewhere through his dumbstruck haze, and a few moments later he heard Sirius laughing too, the way he always did. He himself took his own path third, silently, as was his particular inclination.
Some small breath of time after that, Remus heard the effigy laughing anew, laughing in both joy and almost childlike astonishment. Remus felt himself smiling. Sometimes … sometimes when things had been especially perfect between Sirius and himself, their combined pleasure would somehow exceed the sum of its parts, and all their delight would rush past the fleshly boundaries of their physical bodies. There was a delightful variety of surprising magical side effects; Remus' favorite was the spontaneous levitation.
Remus, listening to the effigy's gasping peals of astounded laughter, wondered if he and Sirius might have forgotten to mention that odd little idiosyncrasy to him in advance. Certainly it must seem a bit strange - even to a magical chimera-gone-wrong like the effigy – to come drifting out of the daze of orgasm only to find himself floating in midair about three feet above the bed. It was one thing to see a vague outline of that peculiar effect in the memories the effigy had borrowed from his creator; it must be another thing entirely for him to actually do it in the flesh.
They all drifted back down toward the soft surface beneath them in time, sinking back into the mattress together in a warm welter of entangled limbs and the faint diminishing laughter of both Sirius and his copy. All bundled together like lazy kittens in a basket, Sirius on one side and Remus on the other, with the effigy sheltered between them. The three of them spent a peaceful stretch just resting, with the occasional soft grunt of satisfaction or pleased sigh being the only quiet communication among them. Eventually the effigy laughed aloud.
"What?" Sirius asked him, gently stroking his hair off of his forehead. "What's got you tickled?" Remus turned onto his side and raised his head a bit, so that he could see both of them.
The effigy smiled. "I was just thinking that you both could teach a class in Advanced Fucking at Hogwarts."
Sirius laughed so hard that they could feel the bed shaking under them, and Remus, who was struck by a vivid vision of himself being introduced at the traditional Opening Day Feast as the school's new Fucking Master, could not help but laugh as well.
"Good heavens," Sirius said, sitting up a bit and still laughing. "Just imagine the NEWTS!"
The three laughed together some more, and then subsided once again into a comfortable, sated, peace. Remus, despite his own pleased body and contented mind, could not quite shake the awareness that this peace too was as ephemeral as the effigy himself. That the clock, despite all they had done and perhaps would do later to fill the hours, was still ticking.
How many permutations of three-times-three were there?
Remus wondered if they could discover them all in the time they had. How many perfect hours were actually needed to make up a single proper life?
The effigy, nestled in the combined curves of their bodies, his magical, fleeting flesh surrounded by their flesh, looked up again at both of them, Remus and Sirius.
"What will we do now, Moony - Sirius?" he asked them, visibly trusting completely.
Sirius himself, Remus knew to his own mild regret, could never quite bring himself to do that. Though he was, to Remus' thinking, essentially a creature of absolutes, absolute trust had ever remained just a touch out of his reach. But Sirius' magical duplicate, perhaps by virtue of having no history of his own, had managed to correct this flaw in his maker's nature.
"What will we do next?" the effigy repeated, still completely relaxed and still clearly content to leave himself in their hands.
We'll cushion your advent and your passing too, with all the love we have, Remus thought silently.
But it was Sirius who spoke it aloud, thus delighting Remus and startling him badly at the same time.
"Why, what else can we do? We'll fill the time we have the best way we can," Sirius said, and kissed the effigy again. "We'll seize the day."