Stag Night

Stag Night

~ IV ~

Lone Wolf

Peter took a deep breath and raised his eyes. James. Sirius. Remus. They looked at him with a mixture of amusement, pity, and curiosity, a look familiar to the short fat boy who'd always needed rescuing, who had struggled with the Animagus Charm to find that the only transformation he could manage was boy-to-rat. Wormtail, they called him. It was funny to them, so funny that Peter even shared in the joke. Good old Peter.

“Please. I'm going to be in so much trouble from--”

Peter faltered, his eyes darting from face to face. Sirius smirked, but James still seemed sympathetic. As usual, he couldn't read the look on Remus’s face. Why was it so stuffy in the pub all of a sudden? Remember to breathe, you idiot. He sucked in a lungful of air.

“--from Father. I did, er, borrow the key without asking and when he finds out. But, I don't care, you see, because…because you've all stuck by me in some pretty bad spots. Remember at school when that passageway collapsed up on the fourth floor and you stayed to dig me out, even though Filch was on his way? I thought I was dead for sure.” Peter chortled feebly and then hurriedly continued, “…and there's so little that I could do in return. I'm not strong or clever or brave like you are. I know that. So, I thought that I could at least try to do this for James, because of all we've been…because we have to stick together, you know, and I-- This is all that I have to give and….since I'm going to be punished anyway, why don't we at least have a bit of fun first, eh?”

Silence haunted the table like an unhappy ghost. The pub had begun to empty out and that left less and less noise to fill in the empty spaces between the four of them.

The scrape of the chair on the floor was palpable as Remus sat down. “You've all stuck by me in some pretty bad spots.” The words set off a chain-reaction, trapping him in a web of remembrance, bringing back sights and sounds that weren’t all fond memories.

“I'll go first, then,” James pronounces solemnly as he looks at the other boys seated in a circle on the dusty floor of the Shrieking Shack.

“It bloody well better be me,” Sirius laughs and raises his wand. “If this charm doesn't work, then someone's going to be hauled up before Dumbledore...”

Pain. The all-too-familiar pain of transformation squeezes his bones and stabs his muscles. He gasps for breath. He claws at the floorboards like a half-drowned sailor who's finally found the shore. The room swims before him. He sees the horns of a stag and tries to focus on the large dark eyes. Can this be real? It's the wet tongue of a big black dog licking his cheek that convinces him he's not dreaming...

Dimmest of all was the memory that he'd tried to forget a thousand times. Trying only made him relive it again, and again.

He stands at the end of the tunnel and looks back through a haze of pain, most of the human torn away from him already. Enough remains to see that Severus Snape stands at the other end, mouth open, yelling words that no longer make sense. He tenses, ready to spring, but before he can close the gap between them, the boy disappears. He runs down the tunnel on four legs and--there it dissolves, not enough of the human left to hold onto the thread...

Remus found himself staring at the pub's front door, the one that led out into the dark and dirty streets of Muggle London where a bloke could be anyone or no one, where being faceless and lost was as effortless as water flowing down hill. He turned back to the earnest and troubled look on James’s face, and could feel his friend's mind tugging at the tangled knot of their predicament, trying to work out what would be “best for us all”.

In the end, Remus and James spoke up at the same time.

“Well, I don't suppose--”

“Peter, you shouldn't--”

They both laughed and James nodded to Remus who began again, “I don't suppose that any of us is going to get a decent amount of sleep, so we might as well carry on and see this club of Peter's.”

Sirius gave a low whistle and pocketed the key. He stood and hauled James along with him.

“This may be our only chance,” he said over James’s stiff-necked groans, “to see how those rich sods party. Yeah, and like Peter said, his old dad would be delighted to give you a smashing send-off.”

“Mind you watch yourself.” Peter sprang up and scurried around the table to James’s side, buzzing like a bee in a field of wildflowers. “Don't want you getting hurt before we get there. Heh-heh. This'll be just the thing; you'll see.”

Remus rose more slowly, contemplating Wormtail's mercurial nature as he watched James and Peter thread their way through the tables on the way to the Leaky Cauldron’s back door. He mused out loud, “Do you think Peter's telling us the whole story about that key? His father can be a bit of an ogre, but I wonder…”

“You coming, then?” Sirius, now standing too, leaned heavily on the table as he scrutinized his friend. This time there was concern rather than scorn written on his face.

“Sure. Wouldn't miss it,” Remus replied. He avoided Sirius’s stare by reaching down to retrieve his well-traveled jacket, which was artistically spattered with Cornish mud. What's gotten into me? he wondered, letting his eyes wander across the thinning crowd in the public room.

The Leaky Cauldron specialized in dark corners where conversations could be held between people who didn't want to be seen or heard. Often, the air itself shimmered, a sure sign that an Obfuscatus Charm had been cast by those who really wanted privacy. Evan at this late hour, a smoky haze still lingered, doing a good imitation of a confusion spell. A pair of hags puffed away on long pipes that usually contained a sticky black pitch approximately equivalent to road tar. At the fireplace, an elderly wizard was having a smoke ring-blowing contest with a large party of dwarves. They'd been at it for a while, judging by the clouds of multicolored smoke hanging over them.

How foolish he had been--lulled into believing in fairness and justice by the years he'd spent at Hogwarts--to think that anyone in the wizarding world would want to hire him. Werewolf. Abomination. Creature of Darkness. He'd had all those epithets (and worse) hurled at him during his fruitless search for a job. He was beginning to lose hope, despite encouragement from his friends as well as from Dumbledore. Since there seemed little happening on the job front, he'd hit upon the idea of a spring walking tour of Cornwall. He had the time (plenty of it) and had always wanted to see more of that country. Sirius had been right about the lure of ruined castles and caves that often sheltered unusual Dark creatures or that still held traces of the old, Dark spells. Perhaps his fascination with the Dark Arts boded ill. He worried about that sometimes, too, being officially classified as a creature of Darkness himself.

His friends worried about him, too. James and Peter wouldn’t say anything to his face, but Sirius was another matter. They’d nearly had a row about this very subject two weeks ago, right before Remus had left for his ill-fated walking tour of Cornwall.

“You look like shit, Moony,” Sirius pronounced at the sight of Remus, who had just appeared in the doorway that separated the tiny kitchen from the rest of the flat.

“Thanks very much. I’m always a bit knackered on the day after, you know that. And, you don’t look so well yourself,” Remus said dryly. Sirius was barelegged and wore a wrinkled, inside-out tee shirt. In his unshaven and pale-faced condition he might have been a recovering werewolf, too. “How late were you out last night? I let myself in around midnight and then fell right to sleep. I didn’t even hear you come in.”

“Don’t remember,” Sirius yawned and went back to fiddling with a Muggle machine on the kitchen’s single, crowded countertop, which was piled haphazardly with empty food cartons, beer bottles, and other flotsam and jetsam.

Dishes clattered as Sirius hunted through the jumble of cups and plates in the sink. He held up a glass to the light of the single small window. As it seemed to be clean enough, he filled it from the tap, and then poured the water into the top of the machine. This seemed to take all his concentration. There was a sharp click as he pushed a button on the machine, and then the thing began to hiss and rattle while steam came out the top.

“Too much to drink,” he chuckled with a shrug, “and then there was Sasha. She lives downstairs. Fantastic. Brilliant move on my part to take a flat in a building full of secretaries and shop clerks.” He looked directly at Remus, grinning. “Nice girls, and they’re all Muggles so they don’t have a clue, not the faintest idea, you know. I could--“

“No, thanks.” Remus shook his head and stared at the Muggle machine where brown liquid was now dripping into a clear glass pot. “Anyway, I’m leaving this afternoon after I get a few things in town.”

“Leaving? But, you just got here, Moony,” Sirius groaned. “Is this something that I’m supposed to know about?”

“I’m off to Cornwall, right? I sent you an owl about it before the full moon.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I remember,” he mumbled and ran a hand through his short black hair, still rumpled from sleep like the rest of him. “Sorry. Been so busy at work and with all the wedding rubbish…”

Neither spoke for a few minutes while the machine burbled and sputtered. Sirius turned his attention to the mess in the sink and made an attempt to sort it out. Remus, his arms folded, leaned against the doorway and watched his friend make precarious piles of dishes.

When the sputterings and rattlings finally ceased, Sirius inspected the pot of brown liquid by taking it from the machine and holding it up to the light.

“Coffee?” he asked as he poured a cup for himself “It’s really quite good. Nice little machine that runs on electricity. It’s new since the last time you were here.”

“Tea will do for me,” Remus answered. His stomach lurched suddenly and unpleasantly as the smell of coffee filled the kitchen.

“Hmph. The flat comes with electricity, you know, so I like to try these things out.”

Remus recovered from the nausea that hovered over him like vultures circling a fresh kill, and laughed weakly, “Irresistible, I know. Do you have another machine that makes tea?”

“Ha!” exclaimed Sirius triumphantly as he pushed aside a stack of plates and threw several paper food cartons on the floor in order to make space on the counter for a mustard-yellow electric kettle. Soon it was steaming, although not as fast as if it had been enchanted.

Remus watched him fill the kettle and listened to him babble on about heating coils, voltages and such arcana, amazed once again by his friend’s fascination with the minutia of Muggle life. Electricity was fairly astonishing, especially since Muggles had come up with it on their own, but all these machines were slow and cumbersome compared to the proper spells. Like most wizards, Remus had grown up largely ignorant of how Muggles got along day to day. Although his father had been a Muggle, his parents stayed within the wizarding community after he was bitten as a small boy. If his father ever missed any of the trappings of his former life, he never mentioned it.

“Here you go. No milk, I’m afraid,” Sirius said, after the water had been boiled and the tea steeped. He handed Remus a steaming mug and then gestured at a waist-high metal box tucked under the counter. “Might be a bit in the fridge actually, but--very scary in there. Let’s see about breakfast. Er, what have I got? Cornflakes, bread… Oh, I shall be very brave and look in the--” He leaned down and opened the door to the metal box. “There is a bit of milk, but it’s gone off. Aha! Here’s some bacon that doesn’t appear to be green.”

“I’m getting tired of this re-fridge-rator,” Sirius continued as he retrieved a paper-wrapped parcel and then stood up. “It keeps things cold, but they get rather moldy in a hurry. A simple Preserving Charm works much better. Want some bacon?”

“Yes, please,” Remus answered. He was ravenous after not being able to keep anything down on the previous day, the day after the full moon. It had taken most of his energy just to Apparate from his mother’s house in Oxfordshire, and a single night’s sleep hadn’t improved things much.

“Right, then.” Sirius went to work throwing bacon into a pan on the gas ring. Once he’d finished that task, he ducked into the little bathroom, which was stuck off the kitchen as an afterthought, and came back with his wand.

“No machine for cooking bacon?” Remus coughed to suppress a laugh when Sirius waved his wand to light a flame under the pan. Another incantation caused a fork to leap from the sink, float over to the pan and begin poking at the bacon.

Sirius ignored the question and said, “This trip to Cornwall, about a job, is it?”

“Bit of a holiday actually. I--uh--have some applications out, but I’m not likely to hear on anything for a while, so I thought I’d do a little sightseeing before the wedding. Lots of magical creatures, of course, and cursed castles and--“

“I get the idea,” Sirius said. He raised one eyebrow and gave Remus a penetrating stare, as the enchanted fork manically danced over the sizzling pan. “Bloody irresistible for you, hunting up Dark creatures.”

“Studying is more like it,” Remus said carefully, looking into his tea for a moment. “Outwitting demons or nasty fairies is quite tricky. There’s a lot of legend and misinformation and--”

“--and you could write a book about it.” Sirius finished with a forced laugh.

Remus nodded and sipped his tea. They’d been over this ground before and he didn’t want to revisit what was becoming a sore spot between them. He was spared from further discussion when Sirius decided that the bacon was ready.

Aside from the tiny kitchen and the even tinier bath, there was only one room in the flat and it served as dining room, bedroom, and parlor. This was obviously a place that no cleaning lady had ever dared to enter since most of Sirius’s possessions were jumbled about in plain view. Sirius cleared off a small table with a sweep of his arm, sending books, parchment and an empty beer bottle to the floor. They sat down without further conversation and fell to eating.

“Watch yourself, okay?” Sirius said with uncharacteristic worry after they’d polished off the bacon. “There’s a lot of nasty shit out there right now--not all of it demons and fairies. Voldemort’s little army is getting bolder every day and you’d be--” He gave an exasperated grunt. “I just wish you’d be more careful. You put yourself into places where…”

Sirius paused, his face troubled. He took a sip of coffee and looked intently into his cup.

“Where what?” Remus asked guardedly. “Where I’m sure to bump into the Dark Lord? Is that what you mean? After what happened to my father, how can--“

He shoved his plate into the teacup with a sharp clink. In the silence that followed he spread his hands flat on the table, palms down, and stared at them while he tried to calm himself. Those were fingers, human fingers, before him--not claws or paws or scales, or any of the other more fanciful things rumored about Lord Voldemort and his followers. Once again, he wondered if Sirius--and James, too, though James refused to bring it up--worried more about his safety or about his prospects for being recruited.

Sirius banged his own cup on the table and cleared his throat.

“Look, I’m not accusing you of anything,” he said in a gentler tone than before. “I just meant to say, that is--that no witch or wizard is entirely safe any more.”

“Business must be good, then,” Remus commented, suddenly interested in his cold tea.

“Booming. Couldn’t be better,” Sirius said with a shrug, less eager than Remus to change the subject. After an unsuccessful attempt to become an Auror, he’d landed a job with the Cerebus Protection Agency, a private firm that specialized in security for wizards. “We can barely keep up with the demand for Security Charms, enchanted alarms, and bodyguards. Today I’ve got to go to Cheltenham to--” He halted and looked at his watch. “Bloody hell! Is that the time? ‘Scuse me for a minute while I wash up.”

Sirius got up from the table and strode across the room to a large battered wardrobe. He rummaged through clothing, leaving an untidy heap on the floor, and came away with an armful that he carried to the flat’s tiny bathroom. Several minutes later he emerged, clean-shaven with his hair slicked down and wearing a somber, dark suit.

“You’d trust me to guard your wife and daughter at the races, wouldn’t you?” he asked.

“Mmmm. Depends on how old the daughter is,” Remus said.

“Good point,” Sirius smirked. He picked up his cup and downed the last of the coffee, but didn’t sit. A restless energy had seized him. “I’ll bet you could get a job at the agency. They’re always looking for good people and your wards are the best. I can personally vouch for your Fence Spell being able to stop a Quidditch player at top speed.” He paced the little room, kicking aside discarded clothing as he went. “Yeah. This is a great idea. Why didn’t I think of it before? I’ll talk to the head of the firm and--“

“Please don’t,” Remus interjected firmly. “I’m sure they’d want--“

“Five sodding recommendations, yeah. And I sweated like a goblin roasting on a spit about getting those recs,” Sirius interrupted in turn, “but you won’t have any trouble. All the teachers liked you at school.”

“You’re forgetting that I’m registered, Sirius,” Remus said slowly, dragging out each word. “Once I came of age, my records became public. Anyone who cares to enquire at the Ministry can find out what I am. And they would, of course. Can you honestly see a security firm employing a werewolf, especially with things as they stand now? “

“Hmph. P’raps you’re right. But, something will turn up for you,” Sirius said with a brief smile that fooled neither of them. “Anyway, it’s mostly bloody boring work and I won’t be there too much longer. I’m angling for something bigger.”

“Really? You mean they might take you as an Auror?”

“Damn right. Moody--he’s probably the most famous of the lot--well, I’ve been working with him on security for the wedding, y’know. And some of the things he’s done make me look like--let’s just say that if they let him become an Auror, I don’t see how they can complain about my record. I’ve learned a lot from him, even though he’s a right pain in the arse to work with. If Moody recommends me, they’ll take me this time.”

Sirius shifted mental gears and said, “Where in hell are my boots?” After rooting around the room, sending clothes and blankets flying, he pulled out his wand, crying, “Accio boots!” A pair of new-looking black boots emerged from a pile of clothing like dolphins leaping above the surface of the sea. He deftly caught them, and then sat heavily on the sofa to pull the boots on.

“You’re not Apparating all the way to Cornwall today, are you?” he said sharply, looking up at Remus with more concern than censure.

Remus shook his head. “I’ll take the train to Truro and go on from there.”

“Good, because you still look like shit,” Sirius said lightly. “Need money? I could lend you a bit, just in case you need… train fare to get back.”

“Thanks, but I’ll be fine. I’ve enough for the return trip, if it makes you feel better.”

“Great. You know that there’s this rehearsal dinner-thingy on the twentieth. James--or maybe it’s Lily--wants us all there.” Sirius paused while he tugged at a robe that was pinned underneath him on the sofa, then went on, “And after that, we’ll go out, just the four of us. James deserves a bit of fun, especially after having to deal with all of Lily’s relatives.”

Remus, who had been dragged along on pub-crawls before, merely rolled his eyes. Did James know what he was in for?

“You’re not getting out of this,” Sirius warned with a wicked grin. He stood and put on the robe, then pointed his wand menacingly at Remus. “I don’t care if a dragon attacks you; you’d better turn up.”

“Oh, I promise,” Remus smiled back at him. “Don’t worry about me, though. I’m sure I’ll be much safer on holiday than you are at work.”

Sirius laughed as he raised his wand, and then held it motionless, poised to begin the spell. A more sober expression marched across his face and he said firmly, “Any funny stuff and I want to hear about it, all right? You could be in a lot of danger, y’know, and if you don’t--Oh, hell, Moony, don’t look at me like I’m a complete idiot!” With a final and disgusted shake of his head, he raised the wand and swiftly brought it down to complete the Apparition spell.

“Take care of yourself, okay?” And he was gone.

“Right,” Remus replied quietly to the empty flat.

“Yeah. Wait'll they get a load of us at this sodding whorehouse, eh, Moony?” Sirius chuckled and then drained the remaining beer from the glasses on the table.

“What?” Remus tried to collect his thoughts as he folded his jacket over one arm. “Oh, they'd never suspect that we're a traveling road show of bestiality.”

Sirius laughed heartily and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, having consumed the last of the beer.

“You sure you're going to make it?” Remus tried to gauge his friend's level of intoxication.

“Don't give me that crap.” Sirius threw an arm over Remus’s shoulder and pulled him away from the dregs. “I can drink all of you under the table. Any time. Day or night. Awake or in my bloody sleep.”

“But, even you--” Remus began as they lurched through the obstacle course of tables and chairs that lay between them and the pub's back door. He checked himself because he didn’t want to start another argument.

“Hey, watch it!” yelled an angry witch, a puddle of Gillywater in her lap after Sirius crashed into her table. He took no notice, although Remus mumbled a hasty apology.

“Fantastic,” Sirius chortled thickly as he dragged his friend like a weedy log caught in a trawler's net. “This'll fix James right up. Be as good as new, he will. And Peter… Ha! Might be old Peter's only shot at getting laid.”

“Mmmm” was Remus’s only comment as he concentrated on navigating. He hoped that Sirius wouldn't feel like holding forth on his prospects. In fact, he was beginning to hope that the key to this mysterious brothel would turn out to be a practical joke. Only, Peter didn't have the imagination to dream up anything like this.

“Ah, Mr. Prongs and Mr. Wormtail,” cried Sirius gleefully as they rejoined the others at the door. “Mr. Moony and Mr. Padfoot beg to join you.”

He let go of Remus and staggered into James who pushed him away while protectively clutching his neck. Sirius ignored a very dirty look thrown in his direction and grinned.

“Onward, lads.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~