Golden Eyes

It isn't that you don't favor one over the other, not at all; your preference is very clear. It's that they both have their appeal, especially when you imagine them together, as you often do, slick with sweat and clawing and biting and panting. Your mind puts them in many places: caves, forests, gilded bathrooms, stone hallways, even that foul place Black calls a home. You visit there, sometimes for Order business, sometimes just to drop off the Wolfsbane potion and you imagine the noise of them fucking (even you aren't so inclined to self-torture to call it "making love") adding to the cacophony of Black's infernal mother.

But you don't know what Remus's home is like, so there you are free to imagine yourself, in shabby, small rooms with second-hand furnishing, or laying him down (this, you permit yourself to call "making love") in the unruly herb garden Remus smells so fragrantly of. You imagine burying your face in his neck as he whispers nonsense to you, and try to pretend that you know what it is like to love someone so much that you would sacrifice everything to be with them. Would Remus love you better if you would die, lose your mind, risk imprisonment in Azkaban for his love? All that you can see is that tired smile, those astoundingly gold eyes looking right into yours.

You don't know what it would be like to take care of him after a full moon, but Black doesn't seem to have too hard a time of it. You imagine steamy kisses as you bathe his shivering body gently, one hand supporting him like a baby. Never in your life have you shown tenderness like that to another, or had it shown to you, so the dream is vague and returns often to a few split seconds of bringing up a soft wet cloth to his bare chest, his wrists, his back. You can almost smell the soap, that lavender scent that makes you dizzy whenever you stand too close to Remus.

Your mind glances, every so often, at the memory of Remus transformed, but it is never closely examined anymore. Yes, you hated him for many years, but it was hatred born out of the rejection you imagined you suffered when the werewolf nearly killed you. It was that awe - and can you call it love? - that was twisted when you were so sure he was helping Black access Hogwarts. It would have been as if he had betrayed you, if he had had any loyalties to you in the first place.

It is only when Black dies that you finally see Remus's home, to find that it is exactly the way you have pictured it. You don't know why you go to see him; you clutch the Wolfsbane Potion like a lifeline but you know you want to comfort him. You would have flown, to give yourself time to think of what to say, but realize also it would give you time to talk yourself out of going. You Apparate instead, and find yourself in the middle of a beautiful orchard, the rambling herb garden plain in sight. It is almost the end of the school term (you find yourself marking time that way, like a student) and the blossoms have already gone the way of Black, with little buds of fruit just beginning to show. It takes Remus some time to stir as you knock on his door. A glance inside showed him sitting, motionless at a table, eyes trained straight ahead and nearly unblinking. He smiles vaguely at you as he opens the door and admits you in, and you are struck by the slowness with which he moves. He lowers himself stiffly back into his chair and you calculate how long it's been since the full moon. He's already had a transformation since Black's death, and you think to yourself that it shows. He looks at you as you stumble through words, with that tired smile you think of so often, and you find yourself with nothing to say under eyes like his.