I was going through some old files, and I ran across this. It's one of my first attempts at a fanfic, and it's very good, but very depressing. I never finished it, but I thought I'd post it here and see how many people want me to take a stab at finishing it. I should warn you, there's a rather blatant Mary Sue, but I'm sure you'll forgive me for that, won't you?
Takes place during OotP. Or maybe in a universe where Sirius didn't die. It's not really important.
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it isn't mine.
I'll weep all night, with stars I'll fight
The fray shall well become me.
Remus and Sirius were arguing. They'd been arguing for the better part of the morning, much to the annoyance of the females in the house, and the amusement of the males. Harry sat between the two friends, grinning madly as they flipped through old photo albums and wrangled over who had dated the prettiest girl. It wasn't exactly a bragging fight, though, as Remus was arguing that Sirius had had prettier girlfriends, while Sirius argued otherwise.
In that one morning Harry had learned a great deal about his mother and father, as well as his godfathers, just from listening to them argue. He'd learned, for instance, that Remus actually was his godfather. Or should have been, except that wizarding laws prohibited werewolves from obtaining custody of human children, no matter what their parents' wills said. He'd also learned that Remus was almost as much of a ladies' man as Sirius had been, which came as a surprise to the werewolf's former student. Although… come to think of it, most of the girls in school had spent a lot of time cooing over their sickly professor, and offering to bring him tea or anything else he might need.
Pushing his glasses up his nose, the teenager took in the scene, beaming. He was seated on the floor between two battered armchairs, as each of the two men looked through a stack of pictures, periodically showing them to him for a final judgment as to which girl was more attractive. To his left, Lupin suddenly crowed with delight, brandishing a picture in apparent victory.
"Magdalena Bishop! The Hogwarts Hottie, and most sought-after girl in the entire school. You went out with her for three months in sixth year before she dumped you to go with that Hufflepuff boy. Beat that, Padfoot!"
Harry found a picture thrust into his hands, of a voluptuous strawberry-blonde with bright blue eyes, her arm linked with Sirius's. She winked flirtatiously up at him from the picture, and flashed a pearly white grin. The teen looked up at the escaped convict, raising an eyebrow. "She is pretty hard to beat, Snuffles."
"Oh, ye of little faith." A self-confident smirk crossed the dark-haired man's lips as he selected a picture out of the pile and handed it to Harry with a flourish and a mischievous wink. Skeptically, the boy lowered his eyes to the photograph, and his jaw nearly hit the floor. She was absolutely perfect. Blue-black curls framed a pale triangular face. Coral lips, curved into a smile. Wise eyes-- almost too large-- the colour of sunlit honey, dancing with mischief and fringed with long black lashes. Nose just a shade too long, but somehow the imperfection was exactly what was needed to make the face unforgettable. Dressed in a thin sundress that flowed and clung to her form, the woman was smiling and joking with a young-but-already-greying Remus Lupin.
Harry opened his mouth to ask who she was, when Sirius provided the answer for him. "Maddy Call-her-Maude-and-you-die Thorne. Arguably an even bigger troublemaker than the four of us were. And also James's first cousin." That drew Harry's attention back to the picture, studying this relative he'd never heard of before, and ignoring Padfoot's continuation. "I believe she wins the argument for me, doesn't she Moony? … Moony?"
The silence dragged on, and Harry tore himself away from his renewed scrutiny to look up at the werewolf. Remus was staring into the fire, apparently fighting off tears, his hand clenched around a chain at his neck. Finally he shook himself like a dog shedding water—or, in this case, a wolf shedding water—and turned to them with a wistful smile. "Yes, Padfoot. You win. There's no way you dated someone more perfect than Thorny."
Sirius looked slightly puzzled, but shrugged it off, and the two of them began to regale Harry with stories of the exploits of Maddy, most of which seemed to end up with either the Marauders or the girl in detention, sometimes both, but usually only the boys. The dark-haired man explained the phenomenon. "See, Thorny was trouble, sure, but she had this innocent look that would come on her face. She never cracked. And who'd suspect her when we were around? Of course, Moony here used to deliberately take detentions for her to keep her out of trouble, gentleman that he is. Ow! What'd you do that for, Moony?"
Flinging the pillow back somehow initiated a pillowfight, and soon the three of them were laughing and pummeling each other with cushions, and the argument over beautiful girls was lost in the snowfall of feathers from a ripped seam.
0o0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0o0
Later that night, after Harry had gone to bed, Sirius was picking up the pictures. Looking at Maddy's for a long moment, he stood and went in search of Remus. He found him in the library, reading. As usual. "Remmie…"
The werewolf looked up, blinking. He hadn't heard that nickname in years. "Yeah, Siri?"
"What ever happened with you and Maddie? We spent that last day before…" He took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair. "Before James and Lily died. We spent that entire day looking for a ring for her. And you found the perfe—"
He was cut off as Remus pulled a chain out of the collar of his shirt, at the end of which was the ring they'd shopped for all day. The perfect ring. Both men looked at it in silence for what felt like hours. The diamonds were small but perfect, flaring in the firelight and forming a background of blazing stars for the opal and moonstone in the center. A crescent moonstone, wrapped around an opal, in a platinum setting. Maddy's two favourite stones. And platinum, to replace her beloved silver, which she'd given up because it burned Remus. The silence between the friends lengthened, stretched. The animagus's words, when they finally came, shattered the silence, sent it tinkling and crashing to earth.
"So what happened?"
"I'd made her dinner. There were candles and firelight, and a half moon in the sky. And just when I was about to go down on my knee, the fire turned green, and Dumbledore was there with an immediate assignment for the two of us." The werewolf gazed unseeingly into the fire, the ring clenched so tightly in his hand that one of the diamonds drew a drop of blood.
"You could have asked her later, though, couldn't you Moony? One setback shouldn't stand in the way of true love."
Remus remained mute, still staring into the fire, until Sirius repeated his question. "There wasn't a later, Padfoot. The assignment we'd been sent on ended up being an ambush. A diversion, to keep everyone away from Godric's Hollow long enough. There was a spell… aimed at me. Maddy got between me and it, throwing up a shield. But it went through the shield…"
The rest of Sirius's night was spent holding his friend while he sobbed, sniffled, and finally cried himself to sleep. Holding back his own tears, he carried Remus to bed, and tucked him in, then went to his own room to lie awake and mourn yet another friend he'd lost to Voldemort.
0o0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0o0
"Hey, Padfoot, what would you say about an excuse to get out of the house? You'd have to go on a lead, but…" Sirius looked up from his breakfast to see a sad smile hovering around his friend's lips. He wondered at the cause of it, but wasn't about to turn down a chance to go outside.
An hour later found the two of them in front of a large white building a few blocks from Diagon Alley. It was guarded from muggle eyes by an 'urgent business elsewhere' charm, but Padfoot had no trouble seeing it, or reading the sign out front. 'Rhymer's Hostpital.' One of the most prestigious mental institutes in the wizarding world, and one of the most expensive. The dog looked up at the man holding the leash and whined inquiringly.
Inside, a trim, tidy witch smiled up from the front desk. "Hello Mr. Lupin. Right on time as usual. And who is this handsome fellow?"
Following her smiling gaze to the now-preening Padfoot, Remus couldn't help a chuckle. "This is Snuffles. I… She used to have a dog jut like him, and I thought… could I take him in to see her? He's well trained."
Whether it was the appealing look in Remus' eyes, or the obvious good behavior and friendliness of Snuffles, the nurse decided that it would be possible to let a dog in 'just this once.' She even led them down the hallway so that anyone who might object would see that this was a sanctioned visit.
"How is she today, Ella?" The sadness in Remus's voice almost broke his friend's heart, and he nuzzled the hand holding his leash, trying to be comforting.
"She's been singing. All week. The same song, over and over. Something about Mad Maudlin, and the Man in the Moon. It's a strange song."
"I know it." The song came to him without bidding, and he didn't realize when he started singing it almost under his breath. "For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam/ Ten thousand miles I traveled/ Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes/ To save her shoes from gravel."
Snuffles perked his ears up when he heard an echo of the song Remus was singing. The echo was in a feminine voice, and sounded infinitely sad. "Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys/ Bedlam boys are bonny/ For they all go bare and they live by the air/ And they want no drink nor money."
The nurse who'd guided them there opened the door, smiling sympathetically at Remus, but he wasn't paying attention to her. She was in there. Her hair had been cut short, because they couldn't spare someone to brush the thigh-length curls and keep them from getting matted. Short, they framed her triangular face like a dark halo, and combined with the tragedy in her huge eyes made her look uncanny, not quite human.
Only Sirius noticed the door shutting as the nurse left to give them privacy. Moony had gone to sit beside Maddy, one hand lightly resting on her arm. She didn't seem to notice that she was no longer alone in the room, still hugging her knees and rocking back and forth, singing softly to herself. "I know more than Apollo/ For oft when he lies sleeping/ I see the stars at mortal wars/ In the wounded welkin weeping."
At the word 'weeping,' a tear rolled down her cheek, and she reached up to brush it away, then paused and looked down to see why her arm was suddenly so heavy. Honey eyes started at her hand, then followed the wrist down to where slender scarred fingers lay on her arm. She covered them with her own fingers, just as slender and scarred, but much smaller. Then her gaze traveled up the arm to a shoulder, and over to see a face, smiling sadly at her. He spoke her name, barely audible. "My Maddy."
Her eyes smiled at him, although the rest of her face remained still. Fingertips caressed his cheekbone, and lips came close to his ear to whisper, "The moon embrace her shepherd/ And the queen of love her warrior/ While the first doth horn the star of morn/ And the next the heavenly farrier."
And there's where I stopped writing. If I get, say, ten reviews, I'll see about finishing it. In case anyone was wondering, the song is a very old ballad, Tom O'Bedlam's Song. I've been trying for years to work it into a fanfic, and this is about the closest I've come.