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Chapter 19 - Beautiful

Sirius woke and felt, for the first time in what must have been an eternity, warm.

He curled into the source of that warmth, cuddling down into the blankets. Arms wrapped around him, and for a time he thought of nothing save for the rightness of his ear against the rhythmic thud of another's heartbeat.

Until the chest beneath his cheek shifted, and Sirius remembered why he had felt so dead inside since entering and leaving Azkaban.

Too dead inside to even begin to flirt effectively, much less be the rogue he had been after graduating from Hogwarts.

So how the fuck did he end up in bed with a…

A very naked man.

Who maybe was as not upset at this situation as Sirius was.

Slowly, he rolled back onto his shoulder, to look up at a truly familiar face.

Remus caught his gaze, cheeks flushed as grogginess warred with the confusion of how this had happened.

They came to the dawning conclusion at the same time, and they yelled in unison, "JAMES!"

There was muffled laughter from downstairs, and James, the bastard, called back up the stairs, "My name is not the one either of you should be shouting!"

Remus covered his face with his hands. "I forgot that Lily and James used to do that."

That being trying to set them up. Wizarding Britain was not the same as the muggle world was in the UK about gay relations.

It wasn't taboo, but it also wasn't something done publicly. Their culture was so obsessed with heirs and lineage that marriage was reserved solely for furthering one's line. So in that regard, marrying another man, if neither could produce an heir, was seen as a way of condemning your family.

Not that disgracing his family was something Sirius personally gave a flying fuck about. No, although one could say that he was concerned by Pureblood families perpetuating incest in their endless pursuit of "purity" and "nobility".

Which meant, there being two adult dicks in a bed belonging to men who weren't related to each other didn't bother him in the least, however, Remus's apparent shame at James's teasing was as much a turn-off as it ever had been before.

Sirius turned away, slipping out from beneath the sheets and leaving the comfort of the bed.

Comfort that he coveted.

But they weren't like Lily and James.

Because James hadn't fallen in love with a self-sabotaging idiot. James never doubted the person he loved.

And Lily would never have let James rot in a jail cell while being tortured into insanity without a trial.

No, if James did what Sirius had been accused of, Lily would have killed him herself after making him explain in perfect detail what his motives had been or if he had been possessed by some muggle demon.

Remus hadn't even come to spit in his face.

Lily had been brave in all things.

While Remus was still running from his own shadow, more in love with his shame than he could ever be with another person.

Not that Sirius wouldn't eagerly take on the fight with Remus's demons along with his own, but within his limited intelligence, Sirius was at least wise enough to know that you couldn't save someone who didn't want to be saved.

You couldn't heal someone who refused to stop drinking poison.

You could only live in hope that one day, their attachment to their grief, their attachment to things staying the same, would become a greater fear than what change could lie ahead if they but tried; whether that change was for the better or another a disappointment.

As Sirius shut the door behind him, retreating to his own room, he couldn't help thinking what a constant companion disappointment was to his heart.

oOo

Luna turned in early that night, pacing her and Harry's room, still the sense that something was wrong.

So she dropped to the floor, folding her legs beneath her to meditate.

She wasn't precisely clearing her mind, so much as focusing on something else.

Unlike Harry, she had identified her animagus form, though she could find no record on any of the animagus lists of someone else taking that form.

Luna's spirit animal was a skvader.

A hare from lore with large falcon wings and a tufted tail. It was a beautiful animal, said to live in the Swedish mountain ranges. It was rarely seen.

Magical animagi forms were not unheard of. Magical cats and wolves native to their regions were seen all over the globe, and probably would be a lot more common if more witches and wizards bothered to identify their spiritual sisters and brothers.

There were legends of people turning into dragons, unicorns, and even a few fables of phoenixes.

She had seen nothing about skvaders among lists of animagi.

Perhaps that was what was holding her back.

Her skvader sat across from her in the tall class, the wooden breeze tipping its long ears to the side as it did the field flowers.

Luna's inner mind was large, so much so that at times it appeared to overlay reality.

It wasn't real, of course, but it was real in the ways that mattered. It was her mind's way of processing all that she felt, all that she sensed, all the things she had no words for but knew all the same.

Her mind protected her from being overwhelmed, overtaken, by painting this world in for her.

Too bad it could be as dangerous and fickle as reality itself.

This nighttime field surrounded by woods, the ocean calling to her just out of view, the distant rush of the tide and the scent of salt permeating the air; the world called to her.

The skvader made a low chirping sound, something between the meow of a cat and the warble of a songbird. Its snow-white fur and feathers glowed in the moonlight. As its wings stretched to catch the wind between its feathers, she made note of the markers. Black tipped its ears, wings, and tail.

Luna had yet to figure out what the skvader was waiting for, what message it needed to impart.

She already knew that it was a manifestation of her compassion and intuition, the former often being more burden than gift, but she couldn't decide why it—

It.

"Oh," she breathed, emotions catching in her throat.

The beautiful little creature who watched her with dark knowing eyes, flicked her ears in amusement.

Too beautiful, too cute, too altogether lovely between fur and feather to be hers.

But it wasn't hers.

It wasn't an it at all.

"I'm sorry," she apologized, not to the skvader but to herself.

Luna did not often think of herself as she thought of others, her body more a host than her temple. Therefore it had been difficult to associate such a delicate creature with her own being.

For the skvader was not an it, it was her.

And she was Luna.

She could not become an animagus until she saw herself.

Acknowledged herself.

The skvader was not beautiful.

Luna was beautiful.

The skvader purred.

Luna purred, giddy as the sight before her changed from human and creature to her true form reflected in a mirror.

Luna chirped in gayety, spreading her black tipped wings and opening her eyes. Her vision was so much better in this form.

Her body might have been that of a rabbit's but her eyes were that of a hawk's.

The room she was in was brighter, the colours deeper. She hopped to the window. She had no thumbs, but her slim tail appeared to be prehensile and easily undid the latch.

She did not hesitate for a moment before launching herself from the windowsill, into the night air. She trusted her wings, she trusted herself.

Luna followed her instincts toward a separate wing of the castle. She whispered a spell in her mind to unlock the window, allowing her to slip through into the hospital wing.

Harry was there, the only one filling a bed in the cavernous room.

She glided down to him, landing on his pillow.

Harry, her Harry, who had been lying awake in the moonlight, recognized her immediately, seeing her as no one else seemed to.

"Luna," he whispered, opening up his arms to her.

She curled into his chest and neck as he brought the blanket up around them.

He was large and warm and safe.

She did not know why he was in the hospital wing, but she knew that they were together and therefore she knew that they would be alright.

As she ducked her head beneath his chin and breathed in his familiar scent, she felt the unwelcome presence of another. Someone as familiar as he was unwelcome.

He was an it, a parasite. A parasite embedded deeply in and around Harry's magical core, choking and feeding off his magic like ivy slowly strangling a birch tree.

Luna didn't know how to untangle it without risking Harry's life further than it already was, but she would.

She had no doubts that she would.

Evil could never endure so long as the fight was never surrendered.

She gave a low growling purr.

Harry stroked her elongated ears, down her back and wings, his words filled with tangible pride and admiration as he murmured, "You are so beautiful, Luna."

She purred again, knowing that he didn't mean her skvader form or her human form.

He just meant her.

He thought who she was, was beautiful.

She closed her eyes, sleep finally claiming them both.

Whatever the future brought, it would be worth living so long as they had each other.

oOo

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oOo

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