I Know the Truth Now

On Wolves Again

Crucial to pack society is, not only the hierarchy system, but also the language of truth--this seen in the eyes. All wolves--and most canines--follow this system of communication, challenge, and submission. The language of the eyes determines who belongs to what caste, who the dominant one and who the submissive, the better hunter, who eats the most, whom one will take as a mate. In a small scuffle or disagreement, such as over a kill, the challenge is met in the eyes: the stronger member will maintain the gaze, while the weaker will finally look away in defeat. In this, deaths are avoided. The Alpha Male ultimately can be held in no one's gaze aside from his mate's, determining him the strongest. It is a language we as humans think we have forgotten, but use every day.

Part Three

It never was and never will be,

You don't know how you've betrayed me

And somehow you've got everybody fooled...

Genial firelight flickered off the colored glass of wine bottles and danced warmly through honey-tinted butterbeer, to look as amber, perhaps concealing a firefly trapped in suspended flight within. The babble of talk was a low, sweet drone that sang like lullaby, but even this did not seem to encourage a widely alert one-year-old to sleep. Little Harry Potter instead sat rather contended on his father's shoulder, glancing around avidly at the members of the Order of the Phoenix. Many of them couldn't help but continually turn and wave at him through the pre-meeting bustle and whispering; Dumbledore's eyes kept twinkling, and even Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody spared the toddler a fond smile. Lily Potter, however, did not appear particularly pleased with her husband's liberalness. She hovered around his right shoulder, as though the hand that supported her son would suddenly turn transparent and the child would topple through it. Sirius, standing on James's left, laughed at her in between deep gulps of wine and making funny faces at Harry, along with the occasional suspicious glance over his shoulder.

Remus Lupin felt Sirius's eyes rather heavily on him, though they weren't entirely the reason for his uncomfortable state at the moment. His mind had been lapsing into stages of burning guilt and shame all night, and he had wondered more that once that evening if Dumbledore could see it. And he, like Lily, was lingering nervously near to Harry, acting as a backup should Lily miss. One never knew with precocious one-year-olds. After a while of this, Harry began looking around and checking for Remus's position each time it changed, searching with anxious green eyes. The boy seemed afraid to lose sight of him, and each time he received a reassuring smile from his "rediscovered" Uncle Moony, he grinned widely. That was just Uncle Moony, forever on unsure footing, everyplace at once, chaotic and hard to pinpoint; his only stability being that, when found by Harry, he was always looking right back, showing that his eyes had never left him.

Remus beamed as Harry swung his head around once again, searching for him in the sea of bodies. An amusing game--he found himself ducking behind Dedalus Diggle (hard to do, as he was quite a small man), before returning to his place beside Lily, who was attempting unsuccessfully to coax James into lowering her son. The Order was far too large to sit at a table; instead, the one long board down in the Hogwarts basement was reserved for the precious liquor bottles and peppermint humbugs, while most of the members stood (save a few who were older, and those injured from a recent brush with Death Eaters), and Dumbledore spoke from atop a high stool at the front, emphasizing his great height. Peter Pettigrew, standing in front of James and Lily, looked back at Sirius and Remus, when the former had reached up to tickle Harry just as the later reached up to steady him.

"Padfoot, Moony, stop playing around!" Peter hissed while James laughed. "Or you'll make him fall!"

Harry threw a distinct scowl at Peter, and said, simply, "Buh!"

Lily, however, looked accusingly at Remus and Sirius, and opened her mouth to reprimand them--

"Give it a rest, Evans," James teased gently, using his old address for her from their school days and calming the situation. "He's fine--gotta get used to the altitude for flying, don't you, Harry?" He looked up at his son, hazel eyes proud and bright. "Mummy and Uncle Moony worry too much, don't they?"

"We do not!" was Lily and Remus's unanimous, indignant reply, even as they continued to hover around James's shoulder edgily. James chuckled in a serene way at this, Peter gave a shrill, nervous little laugh to match him, and Sirius snorted audibly into his wine, still eyeing Remus with some uncertainty.

"Alright, your attention please!" boomed Dumbledore's voice from high above the spindly-legged stool (they suspected he'd borrowed it from Ollivander.) "Everyone! Our young members included." He winked, inclining a head to both a cheerily waving Harry and a sleepy-eyed Neville Longbottom, several yards away in his mother Alice's arms; several members of the Order found it difficult to find trustworthy babysitters in such dark times, and the toddlers, too young to really understand what was happening, were allowed to accompany their parents to meetings, while older children were entertained by house elves in the kitchens. A collective laugh went around the crowd at this comment. It was a curious thing to see the Order members laughing; they'd just lost the Prewett and the Bones families, and little Susan Bones, who had once played with Harry and Neville, was off living with her aunt Amelia. Only the glow of young life still in their midst seemed to spur the resistors onward. Dumbledore's face sobered, as though sensing this.

"We have suffered a terrible loss. They were friends and allies, brave fighters and strong minds. The sacrifices that have been made must not go wasted, and we must fight on. Lord Voldemort is gaining power and support by the second, another pack of werewolves have fallen to him--we must thank our Remus Lupin for this information. And now, James, Lily, forward if you please--tell us what you found in your reconnaissance last week in Kent. A close call, as I've heard, wasn't it?"

James reluctantly slid Harry off his shoulder and, after hugging him tightly for a small moment, handed the little boy gingerly to Sirius.

"Uncle Pah-foo!" exclaimed Harry happily, making Sirius grin with almost indecent enthusiasm.

"There you go, Harry, stay with your Uncle Padfoot," soothed James, before he and Lily strode up to Dumbledore from their position in the back of the room.

"Don't worry, Prongs, I got him," said Sirius, pulling Harry more securely into his embrace, before looking up at Remus with distinguished, triumphant smugness. Remus glanced away quickly, unable to hide that dangerous fire in his eyes; Peter, all the while, listened actively to James's recount of his and Lily's most recent close-shave with Voldemort's dementors--all three, James, Lily, and Peter--blissfully oblivious. Subconsciously, Remus edged nearer with an almost too-casual gait, making Sirius snigger.

"How's it going, Moony?" he asked in a falsely pleasant undertone.

"Oh, rather well... full moon's a far way off... I found a nice job at a bookstore in Nottingham, you know," was Remus's light reply, mouth twitching as Harry turned to face him.

"Uncle Mooie!" he exclaimed, holding out his arms to be held. Sirius, however, now somewhat put out, held on tighter, eyeing Remus.

"No, no, pup. Daddy told you to stay with Uncle Padfoot," he whispered. "Shush now, alright?"

Remus's eyes narrowed and he moved closer to Harry protectively. "Maybe he'd feel better if I stood right here," he muttered, as nonchalantly as one can with teeth gritted.

"And maybe you should just go keep Wormtail company, huh Moony?" Sirius suggested a bit aggressively, his tone dangerous as their eyes met in a wake of fearsome electricity. Had they began circling, the casual observer might not have been surprised.

"Oh, I don't think so," was Remus's calm, barely breathed reply. Their faces had grown closer, eyes never parting once, waiting for the other to break contact. Just a game--first to look away lost.

Lost what?

Harry, now growing uncomfortable under the tightness with which Sirius held him, began to squirm, then to whimper. He was a rather quiet child, if energetic, and cried little; still, the feeling of Uncles Padfoot and Moony at one another's proverbial throats with teeth bared was not a comforting one.

"Da-da..." Harry protested weakly, knowing that Daddy was the only one capable of stopping Uncle Padfoot and Uncle Moony from fighting, whose presence, strong and commanding and safe, could make everything right again. He smelled of air and light and sky, the grass he had no trouble tumbling in while playing with Harry, the lemon tea that Mama made in the kitchen that he would sip calmly, reading things in the paper that outraged those who spoke of them. Fresh dirt from Mama's flower beds full of lilies, flowers put on graves but full of life when at home; mud on wet days and the droplets of rain that he stepped intrepidly, even happily through, unbent by any storm to return with twinkling, brilliant eyes. Daddy could make the world stop spinning if it revolved too fast.

Remus broke eye contact reluctantly at Harry's low plead for help. "Sirius, you big--ease up, you're holding him too tight!" he hissed, exasperated, at once stopping the moment.

"Oh--sorry, pup!" muttered Sirius, clearly ashamed of himself and loosening his grip a bit. Remus's gaze on him was hot, though he kept his voice steady and aloof.

"You could have hurt him! Lily would have had our heads, not to mention what I would do to you--"

"S-Sirius... R-Remus... give it a rest, before Dumbledore comes back here..." came Peter's voice unexpectedly, appearing at their elbows and glancing nervously at an again-scowling Harry.

"Buh!" the toddler once more threw in his direction with distaste. "Buh, buh, buh!" And with that final declaration, Harry buried his face in his godfather's shoulder, not to reappear again. Peter shifted nervously, but went unnoticed by Sirius and Remus, the former stroking the little boy's back soothingly, throwing the occasional nasty glance at his friend, the latter glaring at him with something akin to strong jealousy, tinted by an undistinguishable emotion, a haze behind his eyes that wasn't entirely human.

Perhaps years of running together had a hand in both thinking, at the exact same moment in time, "Traitor."

Peter edged away from the little boy and his fellow Marauders, Adam's apple bobbing with a deep gulp at bitter bile in his throat, returning to quietly listen Dumbledore's shrewd ideas and greet James coming back with a smile.

Part Four

I run along a darkened stone corridor, my hand reaching out for the handle of a door--I am past it, my heart yearning for something beyond. A circular room lit by blue candles; whispering voices beckon me irresistibly through the right passageway. Leaping down stone tiers--and there it is, the veil moving as though tickled by a wan breeze in its rounded archway. I almost see a translucent hand pass through its opening and crook a single finger, a whisper a little louder than all the others, calling to me.

"Awww... did you love him, Baby Potter?" cackles Bellatrix Lestrange's voice from somewhere in the cold room--so cold so vast, so dark--I'm drowning, and an icy grip fastens itself around my heart.

"Yes... I do."

The Death Eaters' silvery laughter, a high-pitched, terrified scream amid a sea of sickening green light, gray eyes reflecting the tranquil twilight sky, a tombstone and a man breathing raggedly against the skin of my neck... The archway with the black veil and whispering voices, my heart pounding, finally, this time I'll go through it!

' And the encircling embrace of Lupin's arms around my chest, warm and vivid and solid and real, holding me gently and firmly away from the veil.

These are the thoughts that haunt me now... evidence that Lord Voldemort's mind has become a part of mine, no matter how great or slight... For these are not his thoughts anymore. They are mine. My memories, my obsessions... and my fantasies. Tearing through savage forests in the pre-dawn hours, answering the boiling electricity of my blood, born or placed there by my life, I do not know--perhaps a mixture of both. Damp leaves and diamond bright sky, sharp with night breezes and crisp with the smells of nocturnal creatures. A coyote's offal, rotting flowers, the half-eaten corpse of a dead elk, gracefully sprawled, beautiful and regal even in death. These are my elders, the heritage of my blood, calling to me and spurring me to follow them, the beckoning hands towards rushing death I try to follow. The shade of the Grim, his throat torn out by an unknown predator and left to be eaten by maggots. Death lilies, rotting before the early frost freezes them in eternity on the edge of stagnant water. My thoughts, and mine alone.

I awoke with a start and stared around, greeted by a dimply-lit room, whose shadowed details had become blurred by my lack of glasses. Gazing left, I found both them and my copy of Defensive Magic and Its Uses Against the Dark Arts, Vol. III. The low light emanated from dying embers in the grate nearby, and I fast realized I was laying out on the old couch in Lupin's room, having most certainly fallen asleep reading with him. His old paperback Macbeth lay on a low table between myself and his chair, where he'd left it, covered me with a quilt, and gone to bed some hours ago--given the state of the fire--and the steady sounds of his deep breathing reached me, comforting my mind after another of my nightmares. Weeks of Occlumency have assured me that my dreams reflect only my own thoughts, and not the Dark Lord's. Aside from the pain in my scar and the occasional brief flash of a muggle's death, my mind is an empty room for me to occupy--and for Lupin to see.

I leaned into the deepest corner of the couch cushions, seeking to be safely surrounded on all sides, protected from the very thoughts than continued to swim around my brain--I want to open up my skull and scratch at it with long, stained claws, beat at the matter there and pour the thoughts out in bright splashes of blood--remembrances of death and violence and loud, terrible screams. Lupin stirred restlessly on the bed, as though disturbed by my miserable musings and the traces of nightmare seeping back into me. I wondered briefly if he too was suffering my night terror then--if the same black, horse-like spirit who abducts me each time sleep overtakes my body frequents him as well--and swallowed a childish urge to wake him up and tell him "I had a bad dream," just as a frightened four-year-old would.

And an even more childish urge, I found, replaced the last--crawl under the covers and hold tightly onto him, afraid the hands behind the veil would reach out and claim Lupin instead of me. No more. I squeezed my eyes shut and willed myself to leave the warm safety of the room, the sound of his steady breathing, the assurance of his heart pounding in a soft, entrancing rhythm that invited me to fall into it heedlessly. I had to be there. Just had to see the veil, nothing else. Just stand before it. I didn't even bother to put on my glasses; I could find that veil at four in the morning with eyes closed.

The uncarpeted portion of the floor greeted me coldly and inhospitably, as though the biting chill in the very wood of Lupin's room chided me to get back to bed and stop acting foolish. I ignored it. An ember crackled loudly, a warning voice to get under the covers before it got angry with me and I received a time-out. But I persevered, my hand at last reaching the knob--

"And where precisely do you think you're going at two in the morning, Harry James?" issued a stern voice from my right. Lupin sat rather serenely on the edge of his bed, obviously savoring having caught me in the act and using the "you're-in-big-trouble" voice I often recognized in Mrs. Weasley when addressing the twins. I froze instinctually, hand falling to my side. "Come here," Lupin continued, patting the space beside him. I walked toward the bed, defeated, and sank down, hands in my lap like a child. "You were talking in your sleep," he said gently, a sad look catching in his face, where the premature lines found themselves deeper grooved in shadow, cast from the dim embers' glow. "Thrashing about--like you were running from something. Corridors still haunting you, Harry?"

So he knew. I brought myself to meet that gaze and nodded slightly, not so much in affirmation as resignation.

"What else?" He was choosing to let me tell him, rather than just smell the terror and pain and death that drenched my skin, pouring out of my thoughts and soul--though I'm sure it was painfully obvious to his olfactory, one way or another. Had he heard the screams, felt the rotting hands and smelled the raw, terrible fear in my memories during our Occlumency lessons? A thought is like a virus--it can eat steadily away at you, turn your insides to stagnant liquid and noxious vapor, consume its way hungrily into the shredded tissues of your heart and transform your muscles to a moist, shapeless slush, until there is nothing left but a sultry marsh and the virus/thoughts themselves--all this, with one key difference. Thoughts never leave you. It can be imagined that they are forgotten, pushed away and purged, but truthfully that are always there, waiting, waiting, waiting. To feed again.

Could I tell him it is always him that stops me? Pulls me back, holds on tight, leans close to my ear and reminds me he draws breath? Reminds me that there is life on this side of the veil worth staying for? Awakens tiny candle and lantern lights long dormant within me, communicating meanings I don't yet quite understand? Could I tell him that, even as I tried to wander to the Department of Mysteries, a part of me wanted nothing more than to crawl under a blanket with him and listen to his breathing?

"I saw Death." A simple answer for so great and complex a thing, but no words of mine could do it justice. Lupin nodded in the failing firelight, and placed a warm hand on my knee. "Professor..." My voice sounded weak and hollow even to my own ears. He's accepted the fact that I'll never be able to call him by his first name. He is unchanging, set in one position and place, Professor Lupin. "I was thinking... Dumbledore said that... since I saved Pettigrew's life--there'd be a connection between us. That one day I'd be thankful for it--but I don't want to be connected to him. Or Voldemort. Or any of them."

I could feel Lupin's wry smile. "Like carrying Death around on a chain with you, isn't it? I know how that feels, believe me--but you were connected to Peter long before you saved his life--we both were. It's not something that can be changed, nor for you to stay awake worrying about. Trust me Harry, this is something I know a lot about. I've been waking up just like you just did for the last sixteen years."

With swansong cracks and pops, the embers had begun to weaken, causing the light to fall fatally into near nothingness. Now Lupin had a distinct advantage, as I could no longer see his face, though I felt sure he could still see mine.

"What we were, Harry--how could I ever describe it to you? When we ran in the Forbidden Forest together, we could hear each other's heartbeats, and realize they moved in synch--I can remember the exact rhythm of James's breathing as he ran at our forefront, proud and strong, the patter of his hooves as they hit the earth almost soundlessly, confidently; the melody of Sirius's heart as it pounded against his ribcage, the smell of his fur as it grew cold against the night wind--the thought that I will never hear those sounds again, smell them near me when I run... and all because of Peter Pettigrew." I felt his body stiffen, the hand on my knee tighten, in a half-desperate, half-protective grip. "I want to hear him scream, Harry. I want to taste his blood and feel it heavy on my hands, know he's terrified, let him run and think he's gotten away--and then there I'll be, waiting for him." He swallowed, shaking harshly, and I received the distinct impression that these were thoughts he had never uttered aloud to anyone before--whom would he tell, aside from Sirius, whom he would never have to tell, who most likely felt and thought the exact same?

I didn't realize there were tears on my cheeks until Lupin wiped one softly away. I leaned against him, hungry for the warmth there, seeking to ease away his thoughts and knowing I never could, just as he could do nothing to banish mine. Darkness began settling down on the room like a caressing blanket.

I think I was awake when I felt warm lips brush lightly against mine.

I don't know. It might have been just a dream.