Potter and Black were the worst kind of bad news, the kind you've been steeling yourself against each night between closing your eyes and losing your thoughts to sleep and each morning with the eddied return of conscious thought. The sort of thing you have to ward off or box up in order to face the day. They were as inevitable as the death of grandparents, as the New Year, as the tart crunch of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, as pubic hair, as a wet dream.
Remus had known they were coming for him. You have to walk around, every day, with tender awareness of your Achilles heel. Feigned ignorance or innocence won't protect you from the potential fatality of such a flaw. He'd had to protect it each moment of his waking life, even as he abjured knowledge of it. He had no desire to further trace the lines of his death-wish. None. Not any. Honest.
Thing was, he'd been marked for strangeness long before he'd been bit. You could tell something was afoot, prowling, in those black-flecked grey eyes. He had always been a keen observer of human vagarity, disconcerting even as a child. He had never been a sharer, not that there had been much of anyone with whom he might have traded toys, blows, or secrets.
It wasn't for lack of wanting. When he'd walked in that cacophonous hall, thick with the feedback whine of powerful youth, his yearning had twisted up his gut and stoppered his throat. The tables and the cups all gleaming under candlelight; the faces round and soft; the air so open. The weakness in his knees had kept him in check. It helped him avoid eyes he knew would mark him: a wrong 'un. By all rights, he shouldn't be here.
And still, he'd watched his classmates through down-cast lashes, as they were called to account by an ancient hat. So many of them burned with that potent something, that visible yet intangible charismatic frisson that shines out the skin of young magicians and burns in their joints and gestures. Here, his heart sang, there might be kin – and he hushed his heart, and abjured its wish. Aberrations, by definition, stand alone.
There was a boy with black curls and merry eyes set in hard sockets that sauntered up the dais to be sorted. Black, Sirius. The Hat seemed shocked to find itself on his head, nodded querulously a few times, as though the contents of his brainpan gave him pause, and pronounced, "Gryffindor," with an up-turn in pitch. The boy's face, as he rose from the stool, seared itself into Remus' memory. It was incandescent with triumph, so consuming he made no attempt to hide it from his audience, but not meant for them. Black, Sirius. Remus felt sick with longing to know why and what – and who.
It was an open secret with the next few days. Sirius was the first of the Noble House of Black to be sorted outside of Slytherin. His mother had all but disowned him. Remus had avoided speaking of anything of note to anyone at all, so wasn't quite sure how he had come to know this. But know it he did, and he'd watched Black, from his windowsill haunt in the Common Room late one night, shred silvered letters and feed them to the fire with no expression on his face.
The hat had whispered to him, in the expectant silence, "You need to lighten up, boy – let go, let your hair down," and put him in Gryffindor. He'd found himself a place at the furthest end of the table, the safest distance from the black-haired boy.
Their dorms had been a final blow and drained the last ouch of strength from Remus. It was a large stone room, fire-warmed, with two rows of four-postered beds and milling with his punch-drunk, overfed classmates half in pyjamas. He found his trunk at the foot of a bed in the middle of the room, opposite the hearth. Automatic motion could not propel him through this, though it had served him well at dinner. He shucked his robe and left to find the bathroom.
Under the clean white lights, mirrors showed him the hairline fissures etched into his face and neck. He rubbed at the ridges of scar tissues at the back of his head, and turned his eyes to the running water.
A gaggle of boys entered, and he moved down to the far sink.
"– the point of a giant squid, if you can't even talk to it?" one was saying.
"Forget talking to it, they say the real problem is finding it," said another, in a soft Welsh accent.
"Liv says Dumbledore's managed both."
"Pfft, it'll take years for us to get on that level."
"I dunno," offered a scruffy brown-haired boy in glasses, "I think I'm plenty deep already."
Tentacular, said Remus' mind.
"Want to test that theory, Potter?" challenged Sirius Black, who Remus sharply noticed was grinning by the towel rack, his shirt unbuttoned.
"Hogwarts Induction by Forced Drowning?" mused Potter.
"Kraken v. Speccy First-Year."
"Boy Wizard woos Cephalopod."
"Gets abducted by merpeople."
"Oooo," one whistled, "those are scary, they are."
"Weds merman," suggested Black.
"Alright, alright, I hear you," said the scruffy boy – Potter, Remus reminded himself – to general guffaws. "I hear you, I'm getting ahead of myself. Maybe fifth-year, eh?"
Black was bent over with laughter. Remus spat out his toothpaste and left. He undressed to his undershirt and willed himself to sleep.
The moon was waxing, and he was still worrying at his broken incisor and habitually pressing into the meat of his shoulder to assess his bruise. Not yet healed, and already he was readying himself for another brutal battle with himself through an endless night in the desolate rooms of the boarded-up house. His appetite had been growing vast for days, but no matter how much food he shovelled in he still felt pinched and breathless. His body was getting several sizes too small for him.
He'd taken to squeezing himself in a window alcove in the Gryffindor Common Room, writing against books across his knees as he went a little numb until the work was done. It helped to keep himself well-contained, on the outskirts, near the fire. Then he let himself be, just thoughts and eyes. The work was almost interesting, but would only become truly so if he let go of the assignment itself and let himself in deeper. So he took pains to keep himself at the surface. When so many have staked so much on your right to a magical education, getting distracted is not an option.
Black and Potter had spent the last however-long ragging on O'Leary, the Gryffindor Quidditch Captain, to promise them spots on the team next year. After enough wry asides from the sixth-year about their reputed pre-adolescent athleticism, the two boys' self-advertising had devolved into a scrappy wrestling match. Older students had put aside wandwork and enchanted chess and make-out sessions to place bets and heckle.
Remus was trying and trying to find the index reference that would let him check his sources for his 19 inches of parchment on the Comparative Efficacy of Worts and Wrack in Cheering Potions due tomorrow, but the scrap was moving ever closer to him. He could hear their sotto voce exchange between impact noises.
"You know, umph, I'm not sure exactly, oof, how getting slapped," Black promptly slapped Potter over his head, "in front of every Gryffindor is supposed to demonstrate your – Jeeeesus, James – supposed agility."
"It's because, Sirius, you never fail – ughh – to make me look good," Potter panted. Black promptly tripped him and dove down after, trying to pin his hands.
"Why you – even want – to spend hours – next year – straddling a gods-forsaken broom… Fuck yes!" Black yelled to the room, finally having managed to kneel on Potter's wrists.
"Better than you straddling me," Potter winked, before sending Black flying with a knee to the arse. He surfaced with a murderous look and launched himself back at Potter.
The whirl of fists and elbows sent the side table near Remus – and a fair number of his reference books – thumping to the ground. He couldn't bring himself to look. He felt very stupid, trapped in this corner with these books he couldn't focus on to read. It was almost certain they would come flying into him. He felt certain others had clocked the impending collision. Should he move? Would that make him more likely to get hit? Why the fuck was he still sitting here? Why hadn't he moved earlier? What should he do? Why wouldn't they stop?
Then the full belly of the moon sailed out from behind the clouds and Remus shivered as his body softened. Each sinew softened and his blood roared ecstatic through his veins. He uncurled himself from his perch, put his books to the side, and, as the boy-tussle whirled at him, said,
"You want to watch yourselves."
It was almost a question, delivered matter-of-fact and edged with a slice of menace. The onlookers turned away embarrassed and feigning disinterest, while the boys broke apart, breathing heavily, and appraised Remus.
"He fucking spoke," said Potter.
"What a pleasant surprise," Black replied, running his eyes over Remus' forehead, cheeks, nose, mouth, neck, shoulders, arms, hips, knees, which were all picked out in moonlight, before raising his gaze to meet his eyes. "Did we disturb you?" He raised an arch brow.
Remus sighed to himself, as Sirius knelt to gather his books off the floor. He'd been set in motion and now? He was glad it couldn't be taken back. He wanted it.
