The Way We Were

TWO

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Excerpt from

A Case for the Werewolf,

Chapter six: Mimetic Negotiations - lycanthropy as Self-proclamation

by Anonymous Author

(London: Flourish Books & Co Ltd., 1991, pp. 478-9)

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Those werewolves who were bitten as children are often the ones who grow best into their altered existences and environments, and the ones with the least resulting traumas*. The werewolves receiving their bite later in life however - from the age of sixteen and upwards - often have more difficulty adjusting to the divided self in which they are unable to make a choice of side, and these are therefore often the most dangerous specimens (see the statistics section on suicide rates and attacks in Chapter ten). This danger is also partly due to their wolfish passions being less liable to human control, on account of the sheer force of the passions when compared to the weak human mind that the person has grown so used to being in charge of by the time of puberty. The adult mind is thus more easily alienated in this situation. The child's mind on the other hand, has a remarkable adeptness at assimilating to the new experiences and making them its own. This is of course part of the process of growing up as well, but in this, the tables seem to be turned from the usual evaluation of a child's ability to cope, or rather lack of it, as opposed to the conception that fully developed, experienced and reason-oriented adults ought to be the best suited for the challenge.

However, the ability to cope with being contaminated is evidently not merely a question of physical influence (the contamination) versus milieu (social and physical conditions). And additionally, age differences do not account for expressions of occasionally extreme individuality within the werewolf-population. This occurs in all age groups. Individuality, as an unquestionable distinctive feature of all beings, is certainly developed by the interaction of these two important factors, but in addition, it is necessary to see the Self not as a product, but as a flexible unit that somehow evades cognitive meaning. As a meaning beyond the cognitive is not accessible to the mind, however, it is easy to distrust this level. But in its expression through the werewolf's change of form, it is highly significant when we are to discuss werewolves as beings. The Self can, if we accept this approach to it, be flexible although it is predetermined in the physical and social sense (as shown by A. P. W. B. Dumbledore, Dissertation on Magic as the Great Social Equalizer, 1893, Salisbury: Stonehenge University Press, p. 41). More on this in Chapter seven.

Back to the late bitten. A certain danger connected with these can also be said to derive from frustration at being suddenly out of eligible partners. "Who'd want to a werewolf?", as a disappointed, newly bitten werewolf once asked me [...]

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* But then again, some wit in the Shack said upon reading this, Remus Lupin had never been your typical werewolf. That is true, and it did constitute a part of his problem. The time he could stand spending in his fellow werewolves' company was less than his conscience and compassion wished, and more than he actually could. (A/N)

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1988

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He was the thinnest human being Siren had ever seen. As she watched him enter through the door, stop, and then walk down the stairs into the pub, she was reminded of a dragonfly; hovering above a waterfall of stairs and then gracefully gliding into sight. Remus was reading with his cup of tea at the bar, and only looked up briefly as one of the boy's heavy boots hit the floor with a muffled 'bonk'. The boy stood there for a moment, one foot still resting on the last stair, and his other on the floor. He looked around at the werewolves with an expression revealing a curiosity which seemed deliberately positively inclined. He was frowning, as though concentrating hard on the attitude. The room was high-roofed, and the warm, orange light from the numerous candles seemed to expand more than would be expected in this large a room, its glow almost reaching the roof. Talking or growling did not cease around the tables as the boy had arrived, and nobody paid any special attention to him; they were too occupied with their drinks. He frowned a little, and slowly moved over to the bar to stand before the counter, still looking around interestedly and not resting his gaze anywhere. Siren thought she could almost hear a faint buzzing of wings.

"What do you want?" she asked briskly, to test his spine, and as he looked at her, at last fixing his eyes on something, she felt the ends of her golden hair curl. His imaginary wings folded back on his shoulders. He seemed to be trying to burn his own impression of himself into the walls of her skull.

He had dyed, black hair, and his eyes were brown and insisting. Not stubborn, but insisting. What are you going to do about it, they seemed to ask as he adjusted his red-and-black striped sweater on his body's feeble attempts at shoulders.

"Pint of beer, please," he said and sat down on a bar chair two spaces away from Remus. His voice was quite deep, and though it resisted his childlike face by its maturity, it wasn't hoarse or rusty. Siren guessed early twenties. While putting down his ruffled, heavily badged bag, the boy gave Remus's shabby appearance a quick glance before looking back at Siren.

"What kind?" she asked him with an empty glass in her hand, her voice yielding slightly to his insistence.

He thought for a moment, regarding the taps. "The McDragon bitter."

She poured the beer and the soft, fuzzy sound of liquid hitting glass rose up and hung in the space above the bar for a short while, before it descended back behind the taps again and the air settled.

"Two sickles, please," she said as she put the glass on a cardboard disc on the counter.

The boy gave her three.

"Do... you want anything back?" she said uncertainly.

"No, keep it. You are incredibly beautiful. My name is Mark."

She smiled widely at him, letting all pretence fade, and he returned the smile, which though much smaller than hers, and slightly crooked, resulted in a brightening of his face, and a warmth to his dark eyes which exceeded hers.

"Had you been older, that would have sounded appalling," she said. "The charm of the bold young is cruel to the old people, really." She poured more tea for Remus from the pot which stood next to the beer taps behind the bar. He leaned a little closer to his book.

"So this is a werewolf-pub then?" the boy named Mark asked her. Siren raised her left eyebrow, and in a side glance she could see that Remus was fighting with himself not to raise his right one, though he hadn't stopped reading.

"Yes," she said. "Aren't we exotic. But please don't feed us."

"I wasn't going to," Mark said and shifted in his chair. He twisted the shoulder-strap of the bag around his foot, and Siren put a small bowl of Pruckwald's popping peanuts in front of him on the counter.

"We tend to get rather more than peckish if you start, you see," she said.

She smiled her seductive smile at him, which always terrified people who knew what she was because it was so easily misinterpreted as hunger, and went to clear a table from which a group of three wrecks had just half-crawled away. The boy wasn't visibly affected, though. He looked at Remus for a moment, and then away again into the depths of his beer. He made a grimace at his reflection in the glass and gave another look at his neighbour.

"What are you reading?" he asked.

"Ehm, it's... it's just a novel," said Remus with a short, polite smile of acknowledgement. He could feel the eagerness to expand shining in his own eyes, so he withdrew them to his private space quite quickly, thinking it rude to impose his reading on others.

"Oh," said Mark. "Is it porn?"

"What?" Remus asked, taken aback and very nearly blushing.

"Pornographic?" said Mark innocently. "I just wondered, since you were so reluctant to talk about it."

"Oh," said Remus, pausing and frowning. "No, I just didn't think it was of any interest, that's all."

"What's the title?"

Remus smiled wryly and turned his head properly towards Mark at last.

"Full Moon," he said. "And no gibes, please."

"So it's about werewolves?" asked Mark.

"No, actually, it's about loving young hearts that have to go through humorous ordeals in order to unite aortas," answered Remus.

"I see," said Mark. "So there is snogging in the moonlight and stuff?"

"Well, no," said Remus lightly. "The men in this book don't seem to be aware, though they are certainly physically attracted by the women, that there are even more pleasures to marriage than to kiss the beloved object's hand each day."

Mark laughed, though not effusively, nor loudly. Siren had returned to see it, however, and looked at them in turn with a surprised expression at this quickly established jocosity.

"We've been talking literature," Mark explained. "Did you know there are adult people who don't know about sex in that book?"

"It isn't devoid of sexual love," Remus interjected. "It's just that it is undermined, sometimes with humorous intent; sometimes implicitly in a -some might say exaggerating- interpretation of the expression 'courtly love'."

"Off he goes," said Siren, flung a kitchen towel over her shoulder and directed the hovering flock of empty glasses she was levitating into the back room to wash up.

"Very Edwardian and perfectly delightful to read," said Remus, ignoring her. "It completely mucks up my grammar, though. Forgive all the subordinate clauses."

"That's okay, I don't think I remember what a subordinate clause is anyway," Mark said with a shrug.

"Why have you come here?" Remus asked interestedly and closed his book.

Mark thought for a moment. "Well," he then said in a low voice and beckoned Remus to lean closer. So Remus did, looking a bit critical, but giving the boy a chance. "I am in fact a secret Auror agent from the Ministry of Magic," said Mark, "and I am looking for a particular man, or should I say monster. He is a werewolf you see. Perhaps you have noticed him: he is a stoutish, kind of fat Chinese man, with an eye missing and a peg leg made of pure gold? Carries a shawl with a pattern of Pekineses round his head? Goes by the name of Wild Wolf Will?"

"I wish I got the joke," said Remus, straightening up again with a small, uncertain smile. "But I didn't, sorry."

"Why do you think I'd come to a werewolf-pub?" Mark suddenly burst out, exasperated. His voice sounded odd when loud, and a few werewolves turned to look at him.

"My God," said Remus quietly, the possibility finally striking him. "Have you been bitten?"

Mark looked grave for the first time, and took a dramatic swig of his beer for effect. He didn't feel very confident, though, and tried to swallow how much he wanted to make a more than good impression along with the beer.

"Yes," he said once he had swallowed.

"Really?" said Siren, who had come back out behind the bar again after having charmed the sink to wash the glasses. "When? You look very fresh and untainted."

Mark studied them both with fierce, flickering glances. "A month and a half ago," he said. "I didn't know until I changed the first time. What happened was that I was really drunk, and I'd fallen asleep in a ditch, and then the next morning I woke up sort of bloody, with some marks of teeth and some kind of vertical scratches, but I just cleaned them, put on some bandages and let them heal. Stung like hell, though, and then the next full moon, I transformed." He paused. "I found out that it must have been sunrise which had stopped the werewolf, 'cause the blood was fresh when I woke up and obviously it hadn't killed me, but I still couldn't see it anywhere near me."

"And we who thought you were just coming to have a look at the local wildlife," said Siren lightly, tossing her hair over her shoulder in a haughty manner. "We get quite a lot of youths being radical down here, and you do look a bit on the radical side. But when we thought that the black eyeliner was a giveaway to mark you as a tourist, it evidently wasn't. A lesson learnt. Don't judge a bloke by his badges, as Remus would say."

"Ah," said Mark, looking flustered and spinning his beer in his glass.

"You should have seen a Healer about it, though," said Remus with concern. "Even if it's done when it's done, the wounds themselves can get infected, and that's no picnic."

"They're all right now," said Mark, becoming restless with a fit of mild annoyance. He twirled the bag's shoulder-strap once more around his foot.

"Good. Have hereby finished patronising," muttered Remus and sipped his tea. Mark shifted in his chair again and smiled wryly into the beer.

"As for the disappearance of the werewolf," said Remus, "I think it must be the human reflex pulling him away, if the sunrise was near. Research shows that the power the unconscious human mind deep within the werewolf can have, is immense, and a human burst of consciousness and regret can pull the werewolf into hiding extremely effectively."

Mark looked up with interest, and suddenly saw the various disgruntled, humoured or bored-looking paintings of rumoured werewolves lining the walls along the roof. A few of the depicted people, flushed and embarrassed or simply angry, kept trying to force their way out of the edges of their frames without success.

"You know, I don't buy your dratted research one bit, Remus," Siren said suddenly. "You have to stop defending this lot eventually, and it will be a terrible blow on the head when you're forced to admit it.

"Remus does research on werewolves," she added in Mark's direction and gave him a meaningful look indicating madness as she re-tuned the wireless on the counter, which had gone into what sounded like a waterfall-broadcast.

"Why is that bad?" asked Mark. Siren looked irritated at this immediate questioning of her judgement and kept poking the wireless with her wand.

"Because it's just naïve!" she said exasperated. "All it does is trying to gloss over the facts and show humans some sort of respectable caricature of a werewolf, and then, there are suddenly five werewolf killings with accompanying news coverage, and we're worse off than before because we've been known to try and tell people we're not dangerous."

"You're pretty cynical about it for a woman who serves them drinks," Mark remarked.

"Realistic," said Siren. "Here's your brandy, sir."

"Fanks, Thiren!" The short man who had ordered the brandy caught the glass she had levitated over to him across the bar, and scuttled bandy-legged away with it as Siren returned to the wireless. "It's realistic," concluded Siren, "nothing more. It's not our noble natures which make us run for it. Sorry if it gets you down, but it's true."

"But if the werewolf disappeared from the scene of the crime, how do you find out what actual human person bit you?" Mark asked. "If you can call them human when they're in human shape, that is." The wireless gave a squeak.

"Oi, Siren!" a tall, skinny man with long, brown hair shouted in an Irish accent from the other side of the room, "fix that thing, will you; Celestina came on over two minutes ago." He was joined by a chorus of gruff voices wishing to underline their support for the quick recovery of the wireless.

"I'm working on it, for Merlin's sake," Siren shouted back across the room. "I didn't find out," she continued in Mark's direction, using her normal voice as she continued to fiddle with the wireless. Now she was poking it with her wand, now turning the knob around. "No idea who it was. Could be a regular here for all I know. You won't find out unless you catch him red-handed so to speak. No werewolf is fool enough to admit to anything, unless there is proof."

Remus said nothing to all this, and continued reading as Witching Hour at last sounded out into the room, and Mark and Siren talked werewolf in low voices. They were occasionally interrupted by the pub gradually filling up and Siren having to serve the customers or clear tables. Sometimes there were shouts encouraging her to turn up the sound, and the noise in the place increased slowly, but surely as the afternoon passed. Mark observed as closely as he could each and every werewolf he saw, and tried to distinguish between them. But it was difficult. They seemed to blend together into a uniform mass once they joined others, and even from the beginning they seemed very much alike each other; clad in worn-out garments in faded colours and all of them grunting with the same sort of despairing, unfulfilled hunger. Most of them looked like they had problems standing properly, but somehow, it didn't seem to hinder them; it was more of a natural crouched attitude as though they were constantly preparing for a leap forwards. Mark didn't like the way they moved. It looked like they attacked everything they touched, but he could see that their ragged clothes played a big part in creating this impression of savageness. He wanted to believe that with hygiene and clothes, they would look a lot like him, or perhaps Remus. He wondered how Siren managed to look so good, and concluded that she had probably sold her soul to the devil, and that that was no ideal for these werewolves. No, rather like him or the Remus guy, he decided; that was how they should all strive to be.

"One," said an old woman who had walked up to the bar, clad in a beautiful, but extremely old and dusty cloak of green velvet. She had wispy, white hair and yellow eyes, and winked furiously. "One. One - I, one-"

Siren poured a cup of coffee. "Here," she said. "Have some coffee."

"No," said the woman fiercely, wheezing the word, and passed the cup back. It rattled at the touch of her quivering fingers. She growled an inaudible, longer word and gripped the bar with both hands; knuckles white, but her grip weak. "One-one-one, I- one-" Remus helped her to a table, where she reluctantly sank down into a chair, and brought her the cup of coffee, which she drank in slow, reluctant sips. Her hands were shaking now. He sat with her for almost half an hour, and listened patiently to her repeated growls of trying to order firewhisky. Mark felt something swollen and dry rise up in his throat and tried to swallow it as the woman started shaking so hard she could hardly remain on the chair.

"Don't worry about her," said Siren. "They don't get any worse than that, I promise."

Mark hitched up his shoulders and leaned forwards onto his crossed arms on the bar counter, chin on his knuckles.

"The higher they fall from, the worse they cope," Siren continued airily as Celestina Warbeck interviewed some up-and-coming actress on the stage. "She is," Siren continued, "or was, a member of this very respectable Scottish pure-blood clan. But her family shunned her when she got bitten. Had a bit of a breakdown. Never the same since."

"You shouldn't waste so much time on her," she said when Remus returned at last from the whispy-haired, old woman and picked up his book again.

"She hasn't got anybody else," he said in a low voice, and defiantly resumed his reading. Mark watched Siren give him a warm look and refill his cup with tea again. He vaguely wondered how much tea Remus could consume in an afternoon, and decided to keep a record, starting on three cups he had already seen him drink. He began to feel a little at home here, and though that was of course very disconcerting in one way, it felt better than what the last half month had.

But at that moment, one of the werewolves who had come down into the pub a while after Mark, approached him with his wand aloft and threatened to curse him, believing him to be all human. This made Siren point to the door with a fierce shout and dangerously glinting eyes, and there was complete silence and a lot of turned heads. The angry werewolf needed more physical persuasion, however, and as Siren steered his staggering body slowly outside at wandpoint, to the protests of some of the other pub-guests and the jeers of others, Remus and Mark exchanged looks without knowing how it had happened. Remus had been reading intently and Mark had looked defiantly back into the werewolf's eyes. But now, he and Remus looked at each other. As the talking began once more, they both looked away again; Mark down and Remus where Siren had disappeared.

"Who wrote that book?" Mark asked, off the point, but deliberately so.

"Man named Wodehouse," said Remus. "Muggle writer. He's written cauldronloads."

"Is he good?"

"Well," said Remus, considering for a moment, "his books are certainly a remedy I would readily suggest to anyone momentarily suffering a slight depression about being a werewolf."

At that moment Siren returned, shaking the mane of long, blonde hair out of her eyes, and Mark picked up his glass and let the bag slide from his ankle and into a heap on the floor.

o

When he opened the door in answer to the doorbell one afternoon, Remus was taken aback at finding that particular familiar face there, but surprised at how slight his surprise was.

The boy lifted a hand weakly, the other holding a completely black, heavy looking member of the suitcase category which looked oddly at home with his own youthful appearance.

"Hi," he said grimly.

"Hello," said Remus. "Er, right; you are..."

"Mark. McKenzie. I was in The Shrieking Shack the other day..."

"Don't think I don't remember you, I just couldn't think what your name was."

"Siren gave me your address. Can I come in or something?" asked Mark.

"Certainly," Remus replied quickly and moved aside. "I'm sorry. Of course."

Mark dropped his bag just inside the door and looked around in the dim light the small hall window offered. Remus closed the door behind him and beckoned him further inside.

"The people I lived with kicked me out," Mark said loudly as Remus walked in front of him through a small, long, narrow and unlit hallway without windows, and into the living room at the end. "It's this place a bunch of people I work with share, you see; we run this paper, and ever since I found out about this, they didn't want me there, so I've been living with different friends. And none of them were any keen to have me there tonight, which I can understand, really, but it sucks. Most of my stuff's in different places around town, though."

"Yes," said Remus, over his shoulder as he made some things on the floor bundle themselves together to take up less space, "I understand." Oh, God, he thought. 'I understand.' Quite. Because I've been tossed off all my bohemian friends' sofas lots of times when the full moon approaches. Lycanthropy's a bitch.

"So," said Mark cautiously, still standing in the hallway. "I was wondering if I could stay here tonight, if it's not too much trouble."

Remus returned to where Mark was standing. He gave him a half-smile and stroked the hair tiredly out of his eyes.

"Yes, of course. Come in."

As he crossed the threshold from the narrow hall, back into the small quadrate which was his living-room, Remus became painfully aware of how plainly his loneliness showed in there. Spartan furniture and books. A few photographs of dead friends on the mantelpiece; that was it. And one of Siren, but that didn't make it better.

Mark walked straight up to the photographs and looked at them.

"I can pay if you like," he said and picked up the picture of Siren. "I've got this job in Madam Malkins' still." Siren was laughing in that picture, her head tossed back and her hair blowing back from her face. It looked almost artificial. Remus didn't know when it had been taken, she'd just given it to him once, and he had liked it so much because of her silent, moving laugh.

"I think you're really great together," Mark said and held the picture at arm's length for a moment, looking at it with analytical eyes. He pondered on the injustice that some people looked good from all angles.

"What do you mean?" asked Remus, his hands in his pockets.

"I mean, you're not like most couples, are you? And it probably helps the bad psycho-vibes you get when the werewolf roars up in you, if you're dating someone who knows what it's about and can't complain if you go a little mad because she's like that herself. Can I ask you something, though? Is the sex -you know- especially good? 'Cause I've been wondering if maybe..."

"Mark..." Remus said warily.

"I mean, I totally get that we're still in this shape most of the time, and that the parts fit in the same way, but when you all of a sudden get all carried away over things like bacon, like I do anyway, why not..."

"Siren and I are not a couple," said Remus with a laugh. "Never were. Just friends fighting decay among our kind. But the platonic unity certainly helps."

"What?" Mark looked surprised. "You're not together? Why the hell not?"

Remus performed his half-smile again and dug his hands deeper into his pockets, looking coldly analytical, feeling flushed.

"She doesn't date werewolves; it's a principle of hers, and I don't... date."

"Oh." Mark shrugged and placed the picture back on the mantelpiece. "Well, it's a pity."

"We get by," said Remus and loaded his words heavily with sarcasm as he moved towards the small sofa, armchair and table in the corner and at the same time almost in the middle of the room. "Would you like to sit down? I'd offer you a drink or something to eat, but I find that it's easier to transform on an empty stomach. Of course, if you're hungry, though..."

"It was just the way you said something like 'we get a lot of radical young people' and stuff," said Mark and flung himself on the worn-out, green sofa, taking in the room's oppressive, low-ceilinged character.

"It's quite all right," said Remus and sat down in the armchair. "I forgot to ask you: what happened on your first full moon transformed?"

"I survived."

"I mean, you didn't harm anyone, did you?" Remus asked him. "Oh," he said suddenly. "I just have to fix something. Excuse me." He got up and Mark watched him leave, telling him first to make himself at home until he came back, and then coming back a little while later with some things, putting them down on the floor and beginning to charm the room shut with invisible barriers.

"I prefer to transform in the living room," said Remus. "I hope that's all right with you?"

"I..." said Mark, a little put out. "Yes, I don't really know what an objection could be."

o

That night was very different from the last one Mark had spent under the full moon. He woke up the next morning believing, to his surprise, that he would survive. Remus sat beside him on the floor, his back leaned up against one of the heavy, wooden bookshelves from some kind of dark tree, which lined the walls of the room and made it seem even smaller than it was. They were crammed to bursting with all sorts of books and last night, Mark had thought that he would like to explore them the next day. He didn't feel up to it quite yet, though. Remus was wearing his trousers and a shirt which was buttoned carelessly unsymmetrical and sparse, only three buttonholes having found a button, and not one of them its proper mate. His eyes were closed and his face drawn. It looked lined in the cold, ruthlessly revealing morning light from outside. Mark lay sprawled on the floor, and had a large and thick blanket over him which just covered his feet. When he stretched a little, the blanket no longer covered his toes, which were nipped at by the cold, and an excruciating pain exploded inside of him, shooting from somewhere on the inside of his navel and crashing the immediate moment later into his head and all the other points furthest from the centre. He expelled a low, quaking moan of wheezing agony. Remus opened his eyes, saw his protégé twitch in pain and leaned languidly and cautiously down over him and helped him over on the side so that he wouldn't choke on his sick as he threw up again. Mark's whole body was shaking uncontrollably as the cramps started once more. Something wet, warm and rough made of fabric swept across the nether part of his face and his mouth, but he couldn't see what it was through the mist and the tears caused by the vomiting, and then there was something cold. The edge of something cold and iced touching his lips, and as the first drop entered his mouth, he felt his thirst at last and began gulping the water greedily.

Finally, after about another half hour, he came to conscience again having endured a few more cramp attacks, but no more throwing up. Remus was looking at him now. He was just as dishevelled and tired as before, but his face was twisted, with great effort, into a weak smile of recognition and of victory. We have reached shore, thought Mark. We won't drown now, because we have floated ashore and there is no longer a doubt that we will live.

He suddenly became aware of how high up his head was. It was now resting in a bundle of blanket that lay in Remus's lap, which - with his knees bent - made a practical V for a bundle of blankets and Mark's head to rest in. Or an M, actually, if you counted his calves and the bookshelf his back was leaning against. His right arm lay protectively across Mark's chest, holding in place the heavy, dark blue blanket which would have slid right off and made him cold if something hadn't held it there.

Stop this, thought Mark - cautiously, not to cause another explosion by too much and too aggressive thought. You're not a virgin who has just been saved by a bloody dashing prince. Mark carefully felt the skin of his sticklike arms and his chest slowly with his fingertips, and they quickly discovered some discrepancies in the smoothness of the skin. But it wasn't the wounds he had expected, it was something softer. Remus lifted his arm so that Mark could pull down the dark blue woollen blanket a little. He had been patched up and bandaged, and the wounds he had made on himself - by burying his claws underneath the skin in front and pulling savagely and defiantly across to the other side - had been cleaned and covered so that they didn't hurt any more. He felt that they were there, but they didn't hurt. There were more than last time, but he preferred this by far to the taste of blood in his mouth when he came to conscience and later seeing the girl, as pale as the sheets she was lying on in the Muggle hospital. And her silent parents with their lips tightly pressed together in pain and worry; her father holding his daughter's hand up to his mouth and breathing into it, as though he thought he could breathe consciousness back into her lifeless, living body.

Mark leaned back again and closed his eyes, feeling his head spin from having lifted it to look down, and he remembered how the process of patching him up had proceeded. Or rather, his skin remembered - every touch - and retold the story to the slow, lagging mind.

It is not worth a detailed narration, though. It was not eventful, only practical, reasonable and perfectly innocent. This, oddly, annoyed Mark so immensely that he felt anger rise and prepare to cause pain and mayhem in him once more. So he frowned with concentration, took a deep, shaking, foul-tasting breath and let it out again slowly. He opened his eyes and looked at Remus's face above him.

And it was in that moment, when with no reason behind it and no healing intent Remus Lupin stroked his hand gently from Mark's cheek, up across his sweaty forehead and through his black hair, that Mark fell in love with him.

o

"Would you like to go to Completely Miserable Hour?" Remus asked from the depth of his ridiculous and enormous orange and brown armchair. With heavy eyelids and figure contentedly limp, he addressed Mark who now laid spread out like a star in the sofa, covered in layers of soft eiderdown. Mark's face glided into a sleepy smile as he shifted his hot-water bottle with his feet and twisted his head deeper into his avalanche of conjured pillows.

"I think I'd rather stay in this one," he said in a drowsy voice, adding with a full moon hangover slowness, "it being rather an enjoyable one and me being inclined not to seek misery in this life or the next, as it were, unless for very particular and well-founded reasons."

"You have been reading Wodehouse," said Remus, tone teasingly accusing, and voice comically drowsy.

"Well, you told me to," said Mark. "Found the whole collection in my Muggle gran's attic."

"Good boy. Well, okay, I'll stay here with you then, if you don't mind."

"What is it, though, the completely miserable one?" Mark asked after a short silence.

"Oh, you don't know?" said Remus sleepily. "Well, of course you don't," he added, mind still working slowly. "I'm sorry," he said. "It's in The Shrieking Shack, from three to four on the afternoon after every full moon. Free drinks for all werewolves."

"How the hell do you keep a budget with..." Mark suddenly yawned, "...with that kind of offer?"

"I'll tell you some other time," said Remus.

Pause. Remus yawned too - contaminated by this action by the other - holding the back of his hand politely in front of his mouth.

"I say that t'is jolly a funny name, what?" said Mark.

"Hey, Wooster," droned Remus. "Put some chocolate in your mouth and think your sentence construction over."

Mark leaned towards the table, regarded its contents carefully and chose a bite of white chocolate which he put in his mouth and let melt on his tongue as he watched Remus lean back in his chair, eyes half closed and greying hair very ruffled. "Gayt ho, Gjeevch," Mark said through the chocolate as he watched him. The bags under Remus's eyes were less distinct now, but the tiredness in his limbs and face had not lessened.

"I say. Jolly funny name, what?" said Mark after another pause.

"Very good, m'lad," Remus said with a small, low-pitched laugh. "Drop most articles and conjunctions unless they are part of colloquial language and epigrams, and you are on the track."

"Can I have some more chocolate?" asked Mark.

"Don't be silly," said Remus. "All you can eat."

"You know what," said Mark. "I totally take back calling you Jeeves. You are so totally Gussie Fink-Nottle."

"You know what you are?" said Remus.

"Gow?" (transl: "No", with mouth full of chocolate)

"You," said Remus, "are totally aunt Agatha."

"No, I am..." Mark looked thoughtfully at Remus, and then suddenly, his eyes gleamed. "I am so Bingo Little!" he exclaimed excitedly.

"Bingo Little?" (incredulous) "You couldn't be Bingo Little to save your life. No, I say you're aunt Agatha."

Mark snorted with mock haughtiness.

"I am so Bingo Little," he said. "Fuck you, newt lover."

"I always fancied that I was rather more like Lord Emsworth," said Remus thoughtfully.
Mark let out a feeble roar of laughter.

"I attacked someone," he said suddenly before he had finished laughing, surprising himself as much as Remus. "She is in a hospital, she is a Muggle girl I dated a while back, and she is in a coma. I can't have bitten her, but I don't know how I know it, because her blood was in my mouth, but I know I can't have, though I attacked her. She is still unconscious."

There was a short silence.

"Have you been to see her?" Remus asked at last and put down his chocolate.

"Never... in the room," said Mark. "But I couldn't stay away."

"Should we go and see her tonight?" said Remus.

"Yes," said Mark, surprised at this offer, but glad of it, "I think we should."

o

Mary Hunter was a pale girl of about twenty. Mark and Remus watched her through a small pane of glass in the door leading to her room. She was awake now, and her parents sat by her bed, smiling through tears while Mark stood outside, shaking wildly.

"Come on," said Remus, touching his arm gently. Mark closed his eyes and frowned in concentration, and soon, by force of mind, he stopped shaking. He turned and let Remus lead him back outside and home. Home, thought Mark. That happened fast.

o

When Siren informed Remus that Mark had come into the Shack one day holding hands with a boy (making her turn over a bottle of wine) and then sticking his tongue all the way down to the poor boy's appendix by the looks of it, Remus had raised his right eyebrow and said "Oh. I didn't know that," and let it stay at that. But he had to admit to himself that it was a bit awkward. He assumed that anticipation of his awkwardness was part of the reason why Mark hadn't told him before he moved in permanently, but all the same, it was a bit slack on the decorum. Remus gladly let him stay without confronting him with it, however, though he one morning managed to democratically offer Mark to share his bed; a statement which made him splutter and blush in result, but by which he had only intended to indicate that he, Remus would not mind at all sleeping on the short, green sofa on alternate weeks, so that Mark could enjoy a proper mattress now and again. But Mark said that as Remus was the combination early-to-bedder and late reader, he, Mark, creature of the night, rather preferred things as they were; roaming downstairs and getting in occasionally very late as Remus slept silently upstairs. And Remus consented happily.

o

"But here's the thing:" Mark said completely inconsequentially one evening. They had been drinking wine, reading separate Wodehouse novels, laughing and asking the other what part he was laughing about. He looked insisting and sounded frustratedly eager for the upcoming subject. "The reason I ended up living here, actually," he said, "was that I got so bloody tired of answering stupid questions about werewolves from everyone. And then there was a lot of pointless fucking around right after I found out..." He paused and re-filled his glass. As he leaned back again, he continued, off-handed: "though some people I lived with after I found out are -you know- just friends; proper friends, who don't mind me being there until the actual full moon." He clenched a fist. "But there aren't many left, and it pisses me off." Remus looked down at his hands. "I know this is such a daft thing to say, but I know wouldn't have been such a shitty person that I'd have ditched someone as a friend because of it."

Remus now looked up at him in a way that made Mark sit up and toss a nearly empty pack of cigarettes at him.

"I would not!" Mark exclaimed. "I wouldn't have ditched someone for something like that."

"I am not saying you would have," said Remus, smiling. "But you're that sort of person who just can't understand why the rest of the world can't behave exactly as you would have and think is right. And though it may be true that you really would have shown more moral fibre, it causes trouble to generalise from your own standpoint. I've known another person like that, and...well, sometimes, you just can't expect the same superiority from others as from yourself."

Mark sighed heavily and tried to get Remus to look back into his eyes.

"It's just that I don't know what to do any more," he said, somewhat fiercely, "'cause I can't see it from the outside now. I mean, why is it so difficult? To... to keep someone or just find someone who'll want you, I mean?" He continued to look tentatively at Remus, who raised his eyebrows at him. "Because I haven't been able to..." continued Mark, "I mean, I used to be able to... you know, to get about anyone I wanted. But now, when I tell the people I hit on, because I'm not not going to do it, they just turn very pale, and then they're really friendly the rest of the evening, and avoid being alone with you, and then, they go home really early, at like two, and never send another owl or floo you or anything." He looked over at Remus, a frustrated frown on his brow.

"Well," said Remus and looked thoughtfully out the window past him. "I think it probably is more difficult to find a... partner A.W. But you sound as though what you really want is a storage room full of them, while you really only need one."

"A.C.?" said Mark with a grin.

"After Contamination."

"That's what I thought."

There was a short silence as Mark considered

"I think I begin to understand why Siren doesn't date werewolves as a rule," he said, "but why she doesn't date you, I still don't get."

"She is going to be someone completely human's extremely wealthy mistress," said Remus seriously and took a sip of wine.

"Oh. That's her plan, is it?" Mark looked humoured, but Remus answered composedly, eyes half-closed:

"Yes."

"A bit dim, don't you think?" asked Mark

"It's not my place to judge Siren's choice of partner," said Remus.

"Well, it is if you're the alternative," Mark argued.

"But I'm not."

"Though you'd like to be."

"Oh, can it, for Merlin's sake."

"Why so upset? Afraid to admit your feelings?"

"No, just tired of the prejudice against the merits of celibacy."

"You can't be serious about that. You can't seriously survive without sex, can you?"

"Yes, I can. Marvellously gifted."

"All right, you are. But I have noticed something exciting, though."

"Tell me." Eager to get away from the subject, Remus sat up and opened his eyes again.

"Some people," said Mark, "and it's actually more than you'd think," he added, straightening his back excitedly and demonstrating his point by flinging out his arms as though to embrace the large crowd in question, "actually find it a real turn-on. The thing is: those people never dare do anything about it, 'cause they're afraid of what people will think." He shook his head hopelessly at this shocking fact before he continued. "I danced with this girl last Friday, who heard me telling some other people about it, and she like grabbed me when everybody was out on the dance-floor, and looked like she almost came when I gave her the carnivorous look; you know, the one that Siren's got too."

"Ah, that one," Remus said quietly.

"Yeah. And afterwards, she just disappeared, and when I saw her again, she didn't dare to look at me again for the rest of the evening. But I think she really likes me. But I think maybe you should take over. She'd fuck you in a minute."

Remus coughed on his wine and had to put down his glass. When he had cleared the airways again, he looked at Mark as though he had just told him something unbelievable.

"I beg your pardon?" he said. Mark gave a wry smile.

"I just mean," he said calmly, "that I don't really want her. I don't really fancy... you know, girls. You know that girl, Mary Hunter?" he said. "That was like, you know, the Denial Project for me. And I just thought I'd... I don't know, tell you about that, I suppose. About time, I figured."

"That's..." said Remus, clearing his still itching throat once more, "all right." He tried to sound less awkward than he felt, but wasn't sure he succeeded, as his voice was hoarse with the choking of the wine.

"Really?" Mark looked suddenly anxious, which made a fierce contrast to his previous, extremely audacious and self-certain speech.

"That would be a shitty friend, wouldn't it;" said Remus, "tossing someone out of the house just because he's got a carnivorous preferment of people he likes to sleep with that he doesn't have control over?"

Mark beamed at him.

"You're such a wonderful werewolf, you know that?" he said happily and summoned his pack of cigarettes from the floor next to Remus's chair.

Remus grabbed his book for safety and gave Mark a small, neutral smile.

"So," said Mark, "there it is: the world of perverts open to us both, if we will only embrace it. The point I was going to make, I suppose, is that not everything is hopeless, even for a Gussie Fink-Nottle like yourself."

"Comforting to know," said Remus. "I think I'll go to bed."