The Dating Disasters of Sirius Black

Part 5: Suzanna Hooper, and the Secret Project

Early February, Sunday afternoon, Gryffindor Tower

Things didn't feel like they were going very well.

Remus was miserable. Christmas had been horrible; stuck at school on his own. Normally if he had to stay at school for the holidays at least one of his friends would stay with him if he couldn't go home, and they always had fun. But this year Sirius had gone to James' and Peter had gone home, and Remus had been left out. And even worse, his friends had been very distant towards him since they got back. They were always elsewhere, avoiding him, too busy to spend time with him.

It really hurt.

He knew it must be their Secret Project. There had been some sort of breakthrough just before Christmas, he'd surmised; they'd certainly seemed extra excited, and they'd had to be together for the holidays so they could work on it more.

One thing that inexplicably really hurt him was Sirius' betrayal. Sirius had been on a date with Suzanna Hooper last Saturday, and he hadn't come and told Remus about it the following Sunday. Remus knew he made out that Sirius' various silly romantic mishaps were nothing but annoying, but secretly he loved to hear about them. It wasn't so much that the stories were interesting in themselves, he mused, but it was the ritual of it, the fact that Sirius trusted him so much, that he was comfortable enough with Remus to tell him those things so honestly.

Remus didn't like to admit, even to himself, that Sirius was his favourite, but he was, wasn't he? Peter was friendly and funny and daft and loyal. James was wonderful and silly and so lucky, but the main reason Remus wanted to be like James so much was because he had Sirius. Because James was Sirius' favourite person.

Sunday afternoons were the one time when Remus had Sirius Black all to himself.

Remus sighed deeply. It was now Sunday again and he had decided to give Sirius one last chance to tell him about his date. He dragged his feet up the stairs to his dormitory, hoping desperately that his friends weren't holed up in there, involved in experiments that weren't for his eyes.

He reached the door, annoyed to hear voices within. The weather was terrible, so James' Quidditch practice must have been cancelled. Brilliant.

'...I can't believe that!' James squealed with laughter that drifted out though the door to Remus' ears.

'Possibly the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me,' admitted Sirius.

'That can't be true,' Peter told him.

'Ha!' yelled James.

'Okay not the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me, but definitely the most embarrassing date I've ever been on.'

Remus leaned gently against the door-frame, letting that sink in horribly.

'I wondered why you wouldn't talk about it before,' commented James, 'I suppose you didn't want to admit to yet another thing that I'm better than you at.'

'You are not better than me at anything, Potter,' Sirius told him coldly, 'and I am most certainly better at this.'

There was a sniggering sound that had to have come from Peter.

'Peter, are you going to stop that?' James snapped suddenly.

'I'm not doing anything,' he replied sulkily.

'You are,' Sirius insisted, 'you're fidgeting. You're nervous.'

'What if I can't do it this time?'

'You know you can do it. We know you can do it,' James told him reassuringly.

'You are one to talk about nervous, Potter, I think Petey would be a lot more relaxed if you'd stop pacing.'

'Oh and you have no nerves at all,' James bit back. They were clearly all on edge about something.

'All I know is that I'm always right.'

'Huh.'

Remus dragged in a long breath and knocked on the door.

'What?' snapped Sirius.

Remus pushed the door open and entered the room, full of nerves himself.

'What the hell are you knocking for? This is your room!' exclaimed Sirius.

'Well I never know what you'll be doing at the moment,' Remus mumbled, trying not to sound pitifully pathetic and needy and desperate.

'Oh, that's it, you think me and James and Peter are having wild orgies without you?' Sirius mocked him.

That comment broke the tension, for James and Peter at least, and they laughed a bit too hard with relief.

Remus sighed. 'Yes, I've been terribly jealous,' he drawled. It didn't come out sounding like a joke though because, in reality, Remus had been terribly jealous. Still was.

James could obviously see this clearly; Remus knew he often had a surprising amount of common sense, despite the way he acted sometimes. 'Well don't worry; we're finished now.'

'Yeah, James' cock is too small, it really wasn't worth my while,' grinned Sirius.

Peter laughed again, but Remus realised it wasn't because he found Sirius funny, it was just because his nerves were shot to threads. Even Sirius was acting nervous; bad, silly jokes were the only way he could try and hide it.

Remus realised that Sirius was scared too, which was intensely worrying. Not just because Sirius never got nervous, but because he certainly wouldn't be nervous if there wasn't something big and important going on right now.

Sirius is scared, thought Remus, probably more frightened even than Peter is.

Oh fuck.

Remus noticed for the first time that he was standing in the middle of their room, his friends gathered around him, him being the centre of attention.

James was standing in front of him; gangly, since he'd grown so much in the last year, and full of tension and pent-up energy. Remus would guess that he had been pacing the length of the room for some time now, his frustration compounded by the loss of his usual Sunday Quidditch practice. Yet he was clearly excited about something, and it seemed like it was at least partly a good sort of excitement; he had an eager look to him.

Peter was sitting on the floor next to Remus' bed, curled into himself protectively. Peter was a twiddler, and his fingers now moved purposelessly and with ridiculous speed, intertwining themselves over and over. It was obvious, to Remus at least, that he was completely unable bring himself to meet anyone's eyes, or not properly anyway, and not for any length of time.

Sirius would have looked relaxed to any casual observer, anyone who didn't know how to check him closely. He had draped himself on James' bed and was carefully studying Remus. If you knew how to look at him closely, like Remus knew he could, you would be able to tell it wasn't true relaxation; he was more like a panther waiting to pounce.

'What is it you've finished?' Remus asked eventually.

There was silence in the room. Sirius and Peter both looked to James to answer. James was studying Remus warily, then suddenly his composure broke and he turned to Sirius. With the burden laid on him, Sirius actually laughed nervously.

'What did you do?' Remus asked more urgently. 'Nothing illegal, I hope.'

'It was your idea, James.' Sirius' voice was stony cold.

'It was a joke!' James blurted out desperately. 'A daft joke! Honestly! I didn't think we'd ever end up actually... actually doing it.'

'I would like it if you were serious, and we could stop talking about imaginary orgies. Did you do anything illegal?'

'I wasn't talking about orgies.'

'Really illegal,' moaned Peter.

'What?'

'It's really, really illegal,' he whimpered.

Remus closed his eyes. 'That's why you didn't tell me.'

'Partly,' admitted James.

'So you are going to explain now?'

'Not y-'

'Fine.' Remus whirled around and stormed angrily out. He couldn't be arsed with them being like this.

#

Remus was walking out of the library two hours later when someone shouted 'Stupefy!' and everything went black.

#

Lying on the wooden floor felt very familiar, that was how he knew he was in the shack.

'I did what I was told, didn't I?' someone was shouting.

'You said you'd get him for us, you weren't supposed to actually get him.'

'You didn't say how, did you? Next time you had better be more specific.'

'Oh yes, next time I ask you to borrow Remus' History of Magic textbook for me or something I'll be sure to remind you not to hex him as well. For fuck's sake, when do I need to remind you not to stun one of your friends?'

'I thought it would make this easier.'

'Oh, I see. He already doesn't trust us, so you thought kidnapping him would help things. Yes I definitely see where you're coming from now.'

'Yes, well you don't get it.'

'I don't get what?'

'You're still ashamed of this.'

'Ashamed of it?'

'You are! And he certainly is! Like this is something to be ashamed of!' Sirius' voice was hard and bitter.

'So you are shagging then?' Remus asked, sitting up and folding his arms.

Sirius gave him a mad look.

'Look, Remus, I'm sorry about him,' James glared at Sirius. Peter was huddled in a corner looking scared again. 'But now we have to show you something.'

'Oh fuck off Potter, mincing around this like a bloody girl. We didn't do anything wrong!'

'We did,' whined Peter, 'we could get arrested...'

'No we couldn't! We're not of age yet! They'd hardly put three teenagers in Azkaban for this!'

'But-'

'Oh shut up you little rat!'

Peter made a little hiccupping noise, which Remus thought was strange, Peter would normally be trembling with Sirius shouting at him like that, but instead he seemed to be laughing.

'Shut up!' Sirius shouted again. 'This is, without a doubt, the nicest thing I've ever done for anyone. Ever.' He seemed to be talking to his other two friends, but was staring straight at Remus. 'We've worked solidly for three years to achieve this, and normally I would never work and study that hard for any reason, not even for my own benefit, and I've not having you two being ashamed of it,' he jabbed a finger at James, 'and I'm not having him condemning us for it.' He glared down at Remus, who was still sitting on the floor. 'Now who's going first?' He held a hand down and roughly dragged Remus to his feet.

'Not me!' exclaimed Peter. Remus remembered Peter's nerves from earlier, which were back in abundance.

'I think you should, Black,' Remus told him. They watched each other carefully.

'Yeah, Black, seeing that you're so confident about all this,' James taunted.

'Okay.' Sirius took a deep breath.

'Is it not working?' James teased in a sing-song voice.

'I'm not trying yet,' Sirius replied through gritted teeth, 'I was going to explain first.'

'Well get on with it then, Peter isn't looking too good.'

Remus didn't take his eyes off Sirius.

'This was going to be your birthday present,' Sirius told him, 'but we didn't think it was fair to wait that long.'

'You were impatient, you mean,' interrupted James.

'That too,' Sirius accepted calmly.

'You did something illegal as a present for me? Are you insane? Did you think I would be pleased? Did you think I wouldn't mind if it was for me? Did you actually-'

Suddenly Sirius had him by the throat and pinned him to the wall. 'Shut up,' he hissed, eyes flashing venomously. 'I don't care whether or not you're pleased, do you get that? I don't care. We're your friends, and if this is all we can do, then so be it. I don't care if you don't want us; you're stuck with us. It took us ages to think of the only viable solution to this,' he gave Remus a shove and pushed his face even closer, until they were sharing each other's breath, 'and even then James only meant it as a joke. And then it took us three years until we could do it. And here we are.' He spat the last words in Remus' face, then shoved him away so his head banged off the wall.

And here we are what, Remus thought.

'Well I'm glad we're discussing this so amicably,' James said sarcastically.

'This was meant to be all nice,' Peter moaned, looking like he might cry.

'Yes well it isn't my fault Remus is being a twat about it.' Sirius turned and walked away from him.

'You've ignored me for two months! You just kidnapped and threatened me, then told me you'd done something illegal and it was my fault! What is it that I'm supposed to be taking well?'

'He has a point,' James noted dully, shifting uncomfortably, trying to get his body to appear relaxed, but failing.

'If you'd just tell me and let me decide if I'm going to be a twat about it or not.' He strode towards Sirius. He quite wanted to punch him, actually. Punch him hard, right in the face, something he hadn't done since he was twelve. Well of course he had punched Sirius since then, but he'd never really meant it so much as he felt he would now. Though he knew the blame should be laid equally at James' feet, it was always Sirius that made his blood boil like this.

Sirius appeared to be deciding.

'Just show him,' whined Peter. Remus started carefully flexing his fingers and balling up his fist.

'Sirius!' James yelled, his eyes on Remus.

'Okay.'

Remus hardly knew what had happened, one second he was trying to out-stare Sirius, deciding where to punch him, next thing, he was slammed onto his back and there was a big black dog sitting on his chest.

It was heavy, and it was licking his face with gusto. James and Peter were laughing, though Peter added, 'I don't know how he does it so quickly, he is better than you, James.'

And the dog got heavier still and then it was Sirius' dark-grey eyes staring into his again. Remus tried to sit up but couldn't.

'I don't get it, you can all do this?' he asked of his friend.

'Yes,' Sirius whispered into his mouth, one hand clutched around Remus' jaw.

'Let me see,' he asked cautiously, attempting to ignore the disturbing closeness. Sirius let him sit up, but didn't get out of his lap, as if there was still some doggy-ness inside him.

'Ohhh...' moaned Peter, screwing up his eyes and even his whole face, fists clenched close to his chest. Nothing seemed to happen until James placed an encouraging hand on his shoulder, then he started to shrink slowly. Remus could no longer see Peter, there was just brown-ness and hair, and even Sirius smiled when finally there was a fat brown rat where Peter had been. Then he shot up again, quickly changing back to boy-form, falling onto his arse.

He grinned triumphantly from his seat on the floor. 'I'm better at changing back,' he gasped.

'Why didn't you just show me this before?' Remus asked incredulously.

'We wanted to surprise you,' James told him.

'And someone gets his antlers caught in the curtains,' Peter laughed happily.

'Antlers?' Remus asked.

James nodded smugly.

'Don't start him,' warned Sirius, 'he thinks he's got the best form. But we know it's only to make up for how ugly he is as a human.'

'Well the antlers explain how my bed-curtains got ripped like that. Show me.' He stared intently at James.

James smiled gently, then changed slowly into a stag.

'Wow. Hey, careful with those.' Remus and Sirius were forced to duck away to avoid being speared on James' antlers as he bowed to them.

'Yeah, he's not so good with that yet,' smiled Sirius.

'This is amazing. How illegal is it?'

'Not terribly, probably like apparating without a licence, though it can go even more wrong.'

Remus didn't want to think about what was so much worse than splinching.

'But I still don't get it. Why?'

'Must you be such a thicko Moony?' Sirius was looking at him weirdly, though Remus' attention was suddenly caught by James transforming back.

'It is easier to go back, isn't it?' he said to Peter. 'And really, Remus, could you be any dafter?'

Remus knew this was serious because James had said 'dafter' as opposed to 'any more of a stupid wanker'.

'Werewolves are only dangerous to humans.'

Remus stared in awe at his friend James, silly, mad James, part-time stag. He could hardly believe this. He'd never even thought about it like this, never even thought that there were options, that there was something that could be done. He'd just forced himself to accept his condition, to accept that he was a werewolf and he always would be. But James, mad, clever James had actually found a way round it.

He looked at Peter who looked happy and nervous and hopeful. He didn't even need to look at Sirius because he could feel the beaming grin on the boy's face, not two inches from his own.

They'd done this, all this, just for him, just to make his life better, easier, just so they could be with him in his darkest hour.

'You're going to cry like a girl now aren't you?' Peter said cheerfully.

'No,' Remus mumbled. He knew he shouldn't cry. It was, after all, one of the first things you learned when you started at boarding school. Don't cry. Ever.

He grabbed Sirius by the shoulders and made him turn around so he could hide his face in Sirius' neck.

'Ahem,' James coughed falsely. Remus squinched his face up, then tried leaning back and blinking repeatedly.

It would have been nice, Remus thought as he pressed his face to Sirius' back, if he could have told himself he was crying with happiness, with pleasure, but he knew he was crying mainly with relief. Not only did his friends still like him, not only had they left him out only for a good reason, not only had they put themselves in great danger to try and help him; but they still liked him enough to go to such lengths. They still loved him and they'd done this purely for him.

Sirius squirmed in his lap.

'All done?' James asked pleasantly.

'Er.'

Sirius wriggled again, and then he was no longer being sat on by a teenage boy, but by a large dog. It licked his face sloppily and Remus was grateful for Sirius' unusual display of compassion. Now, technically, no one could prove that he'd cried, not if they hadn't seen any evidence of it.

'Moving swiftly on,' James clapped his hands together.

When Sirius transformed back and got up, Remus noticed there was a small, suspicious wet patch on the back of his shirt between his shoulder blades.

'You could have done something horrible to yourselves, couldn't you?' he asked them accusingly, still sitting on the floor.

'Don't nag, Lupin; we've had enough of your femininity for one day,' James informed him briskly, 'just forget it, it's done now.'

Remus took a deep breath. 'Okay.'

'Good.'

'So what exactly are we going to do with this next full moon?'

'Well.' Sirius' eyes were on fire and his hands moved expressively as he spoke. 'Pomfrey leads you out here. Pomfrey buggers off. You transform. We sneak out of the castle under the cloak. We transform. Peter presses that knot on the Willow. We get you out of the Shack. The four of us rampage over the castle grounds until the moon goes in. We drag you back to the Shack, then do a runner before Pomfrey comes for you. Genius.'

'But what if-' This was something that Remus found hard to say. 'What if I hurt-'

'You won't,' Sirius said quickly, 'we won't let you.'

'Yeah, this is the geniusest bit. I'm a stag, Sirius is a big fuck-off black dog, for fuck's sake, Peter can fit into tiny places. We'll hold you. Stop you getting away, stop you doing something dangerous.'

'Wow.'

#

Remus closed his eyes, finally happy for the first time in weeks.

They'd missed dinner of course; too absorbed in planning the fun they would have in a few days time. Remus felt totally delirious. It was total madness, yet it would work. It really would.

James had been doing that mad twitchy thing he did when he had a brilliant idea for a prank. Peter had been gazing adoringly at James, though for once it hadn't bothered Remus, because he'd probably been wearing the same expression himself. Sirius had got totally over excited and, unable to express his excitement properly, had turned into a dog again and raced around the room like a lunatic, tongue and teeth and claws all over everybody.

Then they'd had to sneak some food from the kitchens and they'd retired to the dormitory to discuss things some more.

It had been a long day, and he'd got almost no revision done, but he couldn't have been happier. He couldn't even imagine just how wonderful the next full moon would be. They'd planned it like it would be fun, another trick or prank or game, not the shameful agony Remus usually experienced.

He heard a strange snuffling noise and a big black dog jumped onto his bed. 'Sirius.' He smiled down lazily at him. 'You're going to need a proper doggy name too, you know. Especially if you insist on calling me Moony all the time.'

Sirius growled softly, then dove under the covers and Remus yelped as there was huge black doggy-ness everywhere. It rifled through the sheets, lifting them clean off the bed with its size, and trod very heavily all over him.

'Stop it, you great fat lump. And if you're going to stomp all over me with your big paddy-feet, at least have the decency to put your claws away.'

Sirius whined but settled, leaning his hot, hairy dog-body against Remus' side. Remus found it strange trying to think of the animals he'd seen so much of this afternoon as the same people as his friends, even though he knew they were. Equating James and the majestic, noble stag was difficult for Remus. And even the timid, panicky, squeaky rat-ness somehow didn't totally correlate with his idea of Peter. But somehow this dog was just so Sirius that he had no trouble with it.

And he had no trouble sleeping next to it either.

#

Remus woke up to find that yesterday hadn't all been a dream; the fact that Sirius was still in his bed, his skin and pyjamas covered in bits of rough black dog hair, was testimony to that.

Next to him Sirius yawned widely and bit his ear.

'Ow!'

'Sorry; natural dog instinct.'

'I don't think you need me to tell you about natural werewolf instincts.'

'Right. Sorry. And I really should be trying to curb those dog instincts, don't want them getting me into any more trouble.'

'Oh yes, what did happen with poor Suzanna Hooper?'

'How did you guess? Well she was a bit boring anyway, so I was thinking about the whole Animagus thing, and I may have got a bit too... licky. You know.'

'Oh god.'

'I know. I think she thought I was some sort of mad freak pervert.'

'No comment.'

'You really wanted to know, didn't you?'

'Know what?'

'What happened with Suzanna. You were interested. You have no love-life to speak of so-'

'Shut up.'

'I'm sure it's perfectly normal; living vicariously through my exciting exploits.'

'That is not what-'

'Yes, you tell yourself that. Moony.'

'You can joke; Moony is going to tear you to pieces.'

'Oh really?'

'Really.'

'Are you excited?'

'Excuse me? I hope to god you aren't,' Remus smirked.

'What? Oh... no, I mean, about, you know, the full moon,' Sirius stuttered, vaguely panicking.

'For once I think I actually am.' Remus relaxed back on his pillow, smiling dreamily.

'Well,' Sirius said, regaining his usual cockiness, 'the first thing the big black dog is going to do is lick you all over- actually, now's as good a time as any...'

'No! Ah! Get off-'