Author's Note: Let's give a warm welcome to our newest HotW friend… Badass!Remus. Hi, Badass!Remus. How are you?
Hellz yeah.
I had a little too much fun with Stefan Ellis. Sorry about that. Plus I left you guys in the middle of the climax. I'm a mean, mean person.
And if you're ever in doubt… This is NOT SLASH. EVER. AT ALL. IN THE SLIGHTEST. REMOTELY. NO. BLECHHH.
This was a public service announcement from Tierfal. Thank you for listening.
Two last things: Sorry to make my Awesome Climax into more of an exercise in dry humor; and once again I owe this chapter's grammar to the inimitable Eltea.
Your reward for reading all that is that this chapter is frigging huge. And that the last chapter should be up by Halloween at the latest.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Thick
Sirius Black was having trouble thinking.
This was not, though his enemies might have trumpeted the conclusion far and wide, because he was stupid. On the contrary, Sirius was very intelligent, and he knew it. Maybe if he'd gone and gotten himself Sorted into Ravenclaw, dear Mum and Dad might not have blasted his name right off of the fucking family tree, ha-ha-ha.
No, he wasn't stupid. Just terrified to the verge of hysteria.
When he reached the border of the Forest, he stopped, and James and Peter caught up momentarily, puffing prodigiously. Sirius was bent over, palms on his thighs, panting for all he was worth. He couldn't think, couldn't think, couldn't THINK; and consequently he was powerless.
"James, head left; Peter, go right, towards the Willow," he gasped out, pointing vaguely. "I'll go straight ahead. Yes? Yes."
Without waiting for their answers—or, more likely, their protests—he heaved himself up and took off again.
It was only after he'd lost sight of them that he remembered the Map.
Tripping over one piece of plant matter or another, he managed to come to an ungainly halt and wrangled the folded sheet out of his pocket. Hearing his pulse like rhythmic thunder in his ears, like war drums on the final charge, like a resonating death knell, he flattened the parchment against a nearby tree with shaking hands.
He saw the Remus Lupin dot, stranded in an empty field of cartoonish trees. It wasn't moving.
"OhfortheloveofChrist," he heard himself breathe. His unsteady fingertip traced its way down to the Sirius Black dot. It was directly southeast of the Remus one.
Crumpling the paper carelessly in one hand, he ran.
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The others were flowing around Severus again by the time they reached the designated clearing. Despite the slight delay, they were just about on time. Severus supposed that he could take some small comfort in the fact that he knew his spell worked.
It did not, however, assuage the overwhelming guilt prompted by the cowing knowledge that he might well have killed Remus. If it had been, you know, Sirius, they would have named a holiday after him and had him lead a parade, but Lupin—someone might actually miss that kid.
He had to clasp his hands tightly behind his back to prevent them from fidgeting nervously. They wanted to toy with his robes, with his hair, with his wristwatch; they wanted to pluck spiny leaves off of the squatting bushes, tear them into strips, and let the pieces flutter to the ground, just to give his fingers something to do.
But that would be the end of him.
A couple of snooty Ravenclaws managed to make their way through the Forest to arrive a few minutes fashionably late, and on their heels came a pair of sullen-looking Hufflepuffs. The girl, who had plain brown hair tied in two even braids that flopped over her shoulders, was pulling impatiently on the boy's sleeve. The boy, who was sandy-haired and dark-eyed, was largely ignoring her.
Ten minutes ago, Severus would have clapped him on the shoulder. Now he wanted to slap him in the face.
Biting back a wordless cry was significantly harder than he would have imagined.
Douglas Reid curled one meaty hand inside the other and cracked his knuckles melodramatically. "Guess that's everyone," he remarked. "So. Obviously if you're here, you know where the power is. Because it's not back in that pansy-ass castle, with that fuckin' phoenix singing it lullabies, I can tell you that."
Douglas was not known for his public speaking abilities.
Stefan Ellis, a Fifth Year, stepped in front of him. The action proved two things: first, that Stefan was smart enough to realize that Douglas, left to his own devices, would scare away the entire school down to the last hotshot Third Year; and second, that Stefan was stupid—or perhaps suicidal—enough to interrupt Douglas Reid.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Stefan declared, setting his hands on his hips, "I've got something I'd like to tell you all." Thinking about it, Stefan would have been a remarkably good choice for the mouthpiece of the movement. There was something about the set of his slim shoulders that made you want to trust him, something about the glint of intellect in his eye that made you want to listen to him, and something about the conspiratorial tilt of his slightly crooked smile that made you feel special when you did. He boasted his fair share of imperfections—an unimpressive height, for one, and rather protrusive ears, for another—which only served to make him seem more approachable. Stefan combed his dark hair back almost like a helmet, and however much Severus might mercilessly ridicule the style under his breath, it opened Stefan's face and only contributed to that odd, preternatural charm of his. Somehow, between the words and the face and the demeanor, Stefan Ellis managed to be unerringly slick without ever seeming oily.
Thus it was that the assembled students fell first into silence and then into fascination.
"That's right," Stefan went on pleasantly, adjusting his green and silver tie, the perfect measure of self-satisfaction in his smile. "Like my illustrious colleague so eloquently pointed out, you wouldn't be here if you weren't interested, but maybe you don't realize just how interested you should be. Here, take a look at this." He waved his audience in closer, and Severus had to concentrate to prevent himself from obeying the summons. Stefan Ellis was like that. It was at once completely captivating and utterly disgusting.
Pausing just long enough to allow the congregation to suck in an anticipatory breath, Ellis drew back his sleeve, slowly and deliberately, until the faint outline of the Mark was visible on the skin of his forearm, pale in the weak light. For his pains, Ellis earned himself two gasps, a few appreciative murmurs, and a sprinkling of mutters about flashy showmanship that came from his fellow initiates.
"Wicked," Regulus Black whispered. The irises of his wide, shining eyes looked almost white in the light cast by his wand, brandished like a torch in his right hand.
"More than you can imagine," Ellis assured him, his voice soft and low. "More than you can begin to dream. You want to know what it's like? I'd tell you if I could. But words—words just won't do it. They're not enough. You have to be there, to feel it, to try it, to know. There's no other way."
"I'll do it," Regulus responded immediately, his gaze locked onto the grayish lines carved into Stefan Ellis's skin. "I'll do whatever it takes."
Just as the words left his lips, the tree behind Regulus Black was obscured by a burst of blood-red smoke accompanied by a sound like a gunshot.
Severus very nearly jumped out of his skin. He had one hand on his heart and one on his wand when Lucius Malfoy strolled out of the diffusing smoke and brushed a bit of something—probably imaginary—off of one shoulder.
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James Potter was lost.
Or at least, he thought he was. None of this looked remotely familiar, and for someone who'd gone traipsing around in the Forest on more than one occasion, that was really saying something.
It wasn't that he liked the Forest. He didn't, not at all. It gave him the creeps—in that deep, bone-chilling, shiver-so-hard-it-hurts way that nothing else but recurring nightmares could do. What he liked was the idea of braving the wilderness and the stigma, turning up his nose at the danger.
Right now, that danger seemed just a little too pertinent. And just a little too likely.
"I hate you, Sirius," he mumbled, more to give himself something to listen to than anything else. The shadows shifted like things alive, and his glasses were sliding down the bridge of his nose as if they, too, wanted nothing more than to flee with arms flailing, screaming like a little girl.
He stared into the darkness a bit more. He was getting that feeling in his stomach—the thick nausea that always came with the unfortunate and inevitable revelation that whatever he was doing was totally pointless. If there was anything he could have done, he would have done it, but there wasn't.
Drawing in a deep breath, he let it out as a long sigh. He looked both ways, checking for potential observers, and then he became the stag.
Suddenly, he felt a lot less hopeless. Instead he felt… calm. Confident. Regal.
He put his nose to the breeze and sought the scent of the dog-boy.
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The mist was thick, and the darkness was thicker.
Sirius stumbled and faltered; stumbled and staggered; stumbled and fell. He pulled himself to his feet, scrabbled for his wand, found it, and started off again.
After eons, after forever, after eternity had come and gone, after Sirius Black had had years upon years to wonder whether he was moving erratically in the right direction, after he had checked the Map a thousand times, his wand illuminated a pale foot, visible where it rested upon a tree root.
He stopped short. Then he darted forward, dropped unceremoniously to his knees, and gathered the unmoving boy up against his chest.
Sirius cradled Remus's torso in both arms, looking down into the white face of its owner.
"Don't be dead," he managed to warn the boy slung over his arms, his voice strangled by the vice-like tightness in his throat. "For the love of God, Remus, don't be dead. You love God, don't you? He's a great guy, really."
Grains of dirt were lodged in Remus's eyelashes, more of it smeared on his bloodless cheeks like war-paint. The bruises looked even darker in contrast to the horribly pallid skin, as though the hand of death had grazed him with a fingertip, leaving lifeless blots of grayish purple in its wake. Remus's eyelids flickered faintly like butterflies' wings and then rose, and in his eyes there blazed something Sirius had never seen there before.
It was unprecedented, unparalleled, unadulterated rage.
"...Remus?" Sirius prompted hesitantly.
Before he had finished the second syllable, the owner of the name was drawing himself to his feet. Bewilderedly Sirius helped him up.
"Let's go," he urged, tugging at Remus's arm, alarmed at the way his friend stood still, his gaze on the trees before him. "Come on, Remus. Time to get the hell out of here, eh?" His attempt at a nervous laugh yielded nothing more than a wheezy breath that sounded very scared.
"No more running," Remus said quietly, his voice so hoarse as to be barely audible. "Not now. Not anymore."
"What are you talking about?"
Remus turned on him, and his eyes glinted sharp and dark and cold. "I have run," he replied, slowly and distinctly, "from every hint of danger in my life—every harsh word, every veiled threat, every moment of unease. No running this time. I'm finished running."
"You're going over there?" Sirius demanded incredulously.
"'There is a tide in the affairs of men,'" Remus said, "'which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.'"
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It's Shakespeare." Remus added this part over his shoulder as he started off into the trees.
"Yeah?" Sirius shouted at his retreating back, sounding embarrassingly shrill even to his own ears. "Is 'You've lost your fucking mind' Shakespeare?"
Remus ignored him.
"Remus Lupin, you get back here!"
Remus ignored him again. Before Sirius could articulate another command, the ravenous woods had swallowed the shadowy figure of the vulnerable boy.
"Fuck!" Sirius screamed at the trees, knitting his fingers into his hair, trying to yank it out as if he could rip out his frustrations in the same motion.
The trees—those unfeeling bastards—weren't listening.
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Malfoy had always had a flair for the overdramatic.
Like wire in a flame, a thin smile curled its way onto his face. The expression was just as cowing as the smoke and mirrors section of the program.
Predictably, the Lestrange brothers appeared, by unadorned Apparition, on either side of Lucius where he stood smirking.
"Good evening," he drawled. "I presume you're all having a pleasant time."
That's because you're a presumptuous bastard, Severus thought absently.
"I would like you to trust me," he went on, "when I say that if there is anything making you hesitate to take the Mark, there shouldn't be. Hesitation is an outward sign of cowardice. Don't succumb to that." He put on his sympathetic face for a moment to drive the point home. People were shifting uneasily. Lucius had never been particularly popular. He was too insidious by half and too clever by three-quarters, and everyone here was old enough to remember him strutting around Hogwarts like his father had gone and bought the school for the hell of it—a concept all the more unsettling for its plausibility.
"I hope you'll consider it a matter of utmost importance," Malfoy was going on. "We have to do something, don't you see? The Dark Lord is the first person in centuries who has worked for the welfare of people like you and me—the real wizards. The heirs of real sorcery. Are we going to let Mudbloods clutter up our classrooms, pretending they belong?" His voice was gradually rising in volume; there was genuine passion in it. "Are we? Are we going to bow aside, handing privilege upon privilege to mere Muggles with circumstantial claims to our skill?" He cast an eye over his audience, one white eyebrow arched high. "I'm not. Neither is the Dark Lord. But he and I can't do it alone."
All things considered, it was a pretty decent piece of propaganda, Severus thought. Concise. Racist. True.
"Now," Malfoy said softly, "I'd like to open this up to questions."
Regulus Black's hand shot up into the air.
Malfoy frowned. Clearly he remembered Regulus. "Yes?"
"When can we get start—"
It was then that Remus Lupin, mud-splattered and wild-eyed, wearing nothing more or less than his pajamas, stormed into the clearing.
"This is a safe place," he declared into the silence. "As such, you have no right to be here." His eyes narrowed. "So get out."
There was a long pause, and a little more of Remus's sanity seemed to evaporate away.
"Go on!" he shouted, making a dismissive motion with one outstretched arm. "Get out of here! Go home!"
Lucius Malfoy's light, light eyes roved lazily to the Lestranges, who shrugged in unison. Then they roved lazily to Lupin. Languidly Malfoy raised his wand, the very angle of his wrist teeming with elegance and superciliousness. "Petrif—"
"Depulsia coacto!" Lupin roared.
Malfoy did the most undignified thing Severus had ever seen him do: He got thrown against a tree and was quite summarily knocked unconscious.
Severus hated how impressed he was that Lupin had performed his spell—performed it perfectly, no less. On the first try. Without practicing. Having only seen it once, mere seconds before being hit by it. There was just something deeply unfair about the whole thing.
There wasn't much time to ponder the subject, as the firefight began almost immediately.
The Lestranges stared for a moment at the recumbent figure of their leader, his limbs splayed at unnerving angles, before the shock on their faces dissolved into fury. Both delved hands into robes in search of wands; Rabastan, thin face alight with malicious excitement, was faster than his brother.
"Furnunculus," he snarled.
"Protego!" Lupin countered. Barely had the shield fallen after absorbing the spell before he added, not without some vindictiveness, "Locomotor Mortis."
Rabastan's sputtering rage was a thing to behold as the curse snapped his legs together and locked them, and he tottered once and then tumbled to the ground, arms pinwheeling.
The dust hadn't settled before Rodolphus pointed his wand unrepentantly at Remus, bellowing, "Defodio!"
Remus ducked it and retaliated with a Conjuctivitis Curse that missed Rodolphus's shoulder by centimeters, and by then the stone had unfrozen and the others had remembered their own existence.
In a matter of seconds, the duel had become a fray.
Before Severus had even figured out the odds against Remus, Sirius Black's unbearably arrogant face was right up in his.
"Hey, asshole," Sirius greeted him cheerfully.
"You—" Severus began.
"Reducto," Sirius interrupted equably.
Severus heard himself yell as the spell swept him aside. He heard himself hit the tree, heard himself groan faintly, and, through blurry eyes, saw Sirius's small, thin, bleak smile at his handiwork. Then everything went black.
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James loped placidly through the forest. The night was beautiful. The night was beauty.
He was following the trail that the dog-boy's scent left in olfactory neon when the impression of its color changed from yellow to red. James paused, considered, and continued. Shortly, the trail went blinding white. Then it entered a clearing full of chaos.
A stag became a boy, and a boy darted into the mêlée and flattened a Slytherin with a deft Confundus Charm.
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Either Sirius had gone mad, or he'd just caught a glimpse of James.
Both explanations were about equally probable.
He dodged a curse, snapped a nice Full-Body Bind on his short, dark-haired opponent, and glanced around again. Yes, there was James, fighting side-by-side with the Hufflepuff girl with the two braids, her comrade not far off. And beyond them was Remus, scattering spells with reckless abandon as if it was what he had been meant for all his life.
Maybe it was.
He pushed the grim thoughts away, as he always did, because grim—haha, Grim—things made him feel like his head and heart were competing to see who could explode faster.
Turning abruptly on his heel, he almost smashed right into Regulus.
"Wh—" he began.
Regulus's eyes were narrowed to slits. His lip curled, his wrist bent to adjust the angle of his wand, and he spat, "Crucio," as if it was the ugliest word in the world.
It was.
Sirius stared at him dumbly. There was a response in his mind, whirling around and around its edges, slamming against the walls, but he couldn't choke it out.
How could you? My best friend, my little brother, my Regulus—how could you?
"Stupefy!"
The pain was gone almost before it came. Stars combusted, blazes of blinding white, against Sirius's eyelids, for no more than a moment, and then he was looking down at Regulus where the boy lay sprawled on the ground.
His knees gave way, and he sat down hard, his tailbone making a vociferous protest. He wanted to sit there, sit there forever, sit there and sob until his tear ducts ran dry; sob until the tears cut canals into his cheeks, their channels lined with accumulated salt; sob until sleep or death or Judgment Day came, and all the insanity swirled slowly to a halt like a merry-go-round.
Instead he took the hand James offered and pulled himself to his feet.
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Remus was not thinking about the fact that he had just Confunded one Slytherin, Stunned another, and used Incarcerous to immobilize a third. His proverbial engine was running on fragments of leftover anger, on wisps of noxious fumes, on… empty. The spells leapt to his lips and jerked free, sailed through the air, and found their marks almost of their own volition now. Instinct was all he had and all there was.
Fortunately, the wolf's instincts were sound.
"Remus!"
He had almost conjured a shield when he realized that it was his name rather than another curse—and, furthermore, that Sirius was grabbing his arm and yanking him out of the thick of things.
They ran. It seemed horribly natural, running like hell.
Thinking about it, there were no two guys in the world alongside whom Remus would rather be panting for breath, leaping over tree roots, and shoving through brambles, racing like the highest-ranked and the hungriest of demons hounded his heels. It was a comforting thought.
Well, sort of.
They were on the shining castle lawn before they stopped to breathe.
"Do you have the Cloak?" Remus managed.
The noise that James made might have been a laugh. It might also have been the sound of him dying.
"I've got the Map," Sirius volunteered, his voice low and hoarse. Moonlight played on pale skin as shaking hands retrieved it and unfolded it. "I solemnly swear that—HOLY FUCK!"
The tip of his wand inches from the face that had appeared at Sirius's shoulder, Remus shouted, "Petrific—"
Then he saw.
"Wh—Peter?" he asked.
"Sorry," Peter squeaked, removing his hands from Sirius's arm to hold them up in surrender.
James made the dying sound again, and this time, Remus joined him.