Rise from the Ashes

Chapter 3: ambitions like ribbons

"Faster," Cedric said, panting as sweat streamed down his face, and he groaned, pressing his lips together to muffle the sound. Roger had him pinned up against the wall, pressing his shoulder almost painfully against Cedric's collarbone.

Roger chuckled and tightened his grip, continuing the slow pace up and down Cedric's cock. "M'not ready yet. You're being greedy today."

Cedric narrowed his eyes, then grinned. He grabbed Roger's arse with his right hand and pinched, and Roger yelped, letting go.

"Don't touch my arse, you bloody poof."

Cedric rolled his eyes. Right, because holding another bloke's cock in your hand and jerking him off didn't make you a shirt-lifter. He twisted his body and slammed Roger up against the back wall of the cupboard, and leaned in close. He could feel Roger's breath on his chin, but it was too dark to see anything. A mop fell over and smacked him in the head, and he impatiently brushed it away, wincing as it clattered loudly to the floor.

"Right," Cedric said, once the noise died away, "where were we? Oh yeah, you were jerking me off."

"Idiot!" Roger spluttered. "Someone'll hear!"

"Shush. How many times have we done this now? Nobody's gonna hear," Cedric said, bracing himself against the wall with his left hand, and reaching under Roger's robes with his right. He grinned when Roger groaned and a hand fumbled to grab at his still-hard cock. "That's a good boy, Davies," he murmured. "Was beginning to think you'd forgotten how."

"Fuck you," Roger gasped.

"Some other time," Cedric replied, speeding up his strokes as Roger thrust into his hand. "Now who's a greedy bastard?"

"Bloody...poof," Roger said, panting heavily in the darkness, but sped up the pace of his own stroking to match Cedric's. "Fuck, gonna..."

"Faster," Cedric said again, thrusting his own hips, his hand jerking roughly at Roger's cock, and turned his head to the side, biting his upper arm and closing his eyes, his face scrunched with tension, pulse roaring in his ears. "Aaah!" he cried out, unable to keep his head from falling back as he came. His sticky hand told him Roger had finished as well, and he released him, turning away and slumping against the wall beside him.

He heard a rustling of cloth and felt Roger's arm brushing against his.

"Lumos. Merlin's balls, Diggory. Your aim is still crap. Scourgify."

Cedric blinked in the sudden light and turned his head away, still feeling the euphoria of orgasm and not ready to move just yet. Three months on, and Davies was still a cunt. Wanking's supposed to be messy, you arse. He kept his tongue, however, and concentrated on relaxing his breathing.

Roger straightened his robes, his wand still lighting the small broom cupboard. "You coming?"

"I just did," Cedric said, smirking.

Roger snorted. "Tosser."

Cedric raised his eyebrows. "What is it with you Ravenclaws? No sense of humour. Besides, you started it."

"I started it? The bet was your idea, Diggory, and need I remind you, you lost."

"That was months ago, last term, and it was meant as a one time thing. How many times has it been since? Five? Six?" Actually, this was the eighth time, altogether. Not that he was keeping track or anything. "And I meant today. You were the one who came up to me. 'Oi, Diggory, I need a word!'" he said, imitating Roger's clipped tone. "You needed more than a word, eh?"

"Fuck off." Roger looked at his feet and shuffled a bit, kicking the felled mop against the shelves along the side wall. "Probably best if we leave separately, anyway. I'll see you around."

Cedric nodded and slid the rest of the way down the wall as Roger left, taking the light with him. The reek of sex was pungent in the dark, musty smelling cupboard, and he leaned back against the wall, pulling his knees up toward his chest, resting his arms and his head against them.

The bet.

The bet he had meant in jest, initially, but his pride wouldn't allow him to retract in the face of Davies' mockery. He'd certainly had a sense of humour then.

"Loser sucks the winner off? Do I look like a bloody poof?"

Cedric had cringed inwardly, but his face showed as much teasing scorn as he could muster. "No, you look like a twat. Scared you'll lose? I didn't know you were such a bloody coward, Davies. Imagine that," he'd said, lifting his chin defiantly, "a chicken afraid of a cock."

Davies had been incredulous, and Cedric had to admit to himself that he'd been far too cheeky about the whole thing. Pride is a fucking bastard. They'd gone back and forth with the insults and finally settled on a wank, which was a bit less ostentatious than a blow job. And good thing, too, seeing as Ravenclaw had completely flattened Hufflepuff, and he hadn't really relished the idea of Davies' cock anywhere near his mouth to begin with. He was convinced that the things men did in the name of arrogance would someday be the downfall of his entire gender.

Cedric had taken a nasty Bludger to the back, which allowed Cho to grab the Snitch from right under his nose. She'd been gracious and almost apologetic about it, and he was fairly sure she'd been flirting with him besides, but she'd been sweet nonetheless. Davies had crowed like the cock that he was, the cock that Cedric was about to become intimately familiar with.

He shook his head, smiling sardonically in the dark at the memory, as he took his wand from his pocket and cleaned himself off. The cupboard still smelled of sex.

Davies was a bit of a prick, completely full of himself, and he preened when the girls made cow eyes at him. He could pull practically anyone he wanted, whenever he wanted, but he hadn't pulled in months now. Not since Gilly had dumped him, humiliated him rather spectacularly, in front of half the school in the Three Broomsticks on Halloween. Well, he's pulled me. Or my cock, anyway, he thought, chuckling ruefully.

He had no idea why he continued this...charade. And it was a charade. He wasn't attracted to Davies, though he conceded that he was quite fit. And these encounters were far from romantic. It was all about ego, something they both had in spades, although Cedric liked to think that he was extremely humble in comparison. He knew he was competitive, and he was honest enough with himself to admit that he was good looking and intelligent, and a damn fine Quidditch player, and he could pull just as well as Davies could--if he wanted to. But he still wasn't a conceited prick like Davies.

He liked girls, their soft breasts and delicate fingers, the sweet scent of their hair as they brushed past him in the halls. He'd dated Evangeline last year, and he took Reyna to Hogsmeade last Halloween--where they'd witnessed Gilly's tirade--but neither of the girls had been willing to explore the more physical side of the relationship, not the way he wanted, and Cedric was too much of a gentleman to take what wasn't offered. Snogging was expected, of course, and Angie had let him feel her up a couple of times, but she balked at the idea of touching him in return. Not where it counted. What was it about birds, anyway?

The rough physicality of these encounters with Davies had surprised him, and excited him. Wanking was fantastic: he loved how his own cock felt in his hand, and he did it often, but this.... There was a power in it, an element of recklessness that was completely different from his slow, hesitant encounters with girls, and also different from his own solo explorations.

Having another bloke's hand--large like his own, and rough, callused and strong--touching him was arousing beyond anything he'd experienced before. It had frightened him at first, and it still did. Lately he found himself wondering what it would be like to kiss a bloke, but he wasn't ready to try, and he certainly didn't want to try with Davies. Davies would knock out his teeth if he tried, anyway, and the thought of spending a night in the infirmary growing them back was even a less pleasant thought.

He still liked girls, though. Maybe it was an adolescent thing, to do with hormones. He wasn't worried. Not much, anyway, though he wasn't about to discuss it with any of his friends. Some things should remain private, and as outgoing as he was, he was still discreet. Davies could call him all the names he wanted; he didn't care a fig what a prick like him thought. They got off with each other occasionally and nothing more.

He got to his feet, tucked himself back into his pants, and stowed his wand back in his pocket. It was getting late and he was hungry. He pressed the button on his watch and '4:46' glowed in the air. Dinner was still nearly an hour away. Maybe a side trip to the kitchens was in order. He picked up his book bag from the floor next to the door and tripped over the mop head, stumbling out into the corridor.

He caught his balance and pulled the door closed behind him, tugging on his robes which had snagged in the elastic of his pants, and adjusted himself. He turned around to leave and started back in surprise at a tall, blond-haired student who was standing in the middle of the hall only a few feet away, holding a piece of parchment.

He blushed and raised his chin in a gesture of defiance. "Sorry, didn't see you there."

The boy didn't say anything, just stared at him, mouth slightly agape.

"Right then, I'm late," Cedric said, frowning. He didn't know this boy, couldn't remember ever having seen him before, but there was something familiar about him. Maybe it was the eyes. He looked for a house badge on his robes, but the parchment obscured his view. The boy was still staring at him, however, and it was starting to make him feel self-conscious. He inhaled through his nose and grinned, turning up the charm that served him well in times of unease.

"See ya," he said, and brushed past him, their shoulders touching for the briefest of moments. He could feel the boy's gaze following him as he walked away, but resisted the urge to turn around. His stomach rumbled, distracting him, and his thoughts turned to more important things, like Yorkshire pudding with beef gravy.

**

Teddy continued to stare long after Cedric had gone. He'd seen him on the map, and before he'd realised what he was doing, he was standing outside the cupboard. He desperately wanted to talk to Cedric, although he had no idea what he would say. Cedric, the real corporeal Cedric, didn't know him. No matter which face he put on, Cedric still wouldn't know him. Couldn't possibly know him. It was stupid, he knew that, and he winced at his own foolishness.

"Bugger," he muttered, and leaned up against the wall. The nearby portraits glanced at him at first, but they quickly returned to their own business. A student was a student, and even in his own time, most of them wouldn't notice an extra one. Or twenty.

He'd changed his face so often these last weeks, if anyone had been observing, they'd realise that something was awry with the budding student population. He wondered if he should try another tactic. The influx of never-before-seen students who never attend classes might start to arouse suspicion, if it hadn't already, though he did make a point of avoiding teachers as often as possible, and he looked down so often, he'd developed a persistent crick in his neck and become fairly intimate with his shoes. Hiding from Professor Dumbledore had become quite the game, made more difficult by the entrance to his office, so close to the Room of Requirement, but so far, he seemed to be winning.

He watched the map, and saw that Cedric had entered the kitchens. So he knew to tickle the pear as well. Harry had told him that secret his first year, and he wondered, idly, who had told Cedric. One thing he'd noticed during his time here was, despite the terrors looming without, there was a continuity to Hogwarts. Very little changed over the years. The password to the prefect's bath was the same; the chain on the toilet in the last stall of the boys' sixth floor bathroom still stuck when you pulled too hard, and you had to jiggle it to stop the water from running continuously; The portraits and tapestries, statues and suits of armour, with very few exceptions--Cedric's portrait being one he was sure of--were almost exactly as he remembered them, in the same places they occupied in his time, as they had for centuries.

There was much less inter-house mingling than he was used to in his own time, but that worked to his advantage. Most students who did notice him would simply presume he was in another house, and with the bland and unmemorable features he'd assumed with each new alteration to his appearance, he'd be quickly forgotten.

The teachers were different, and the faces of the students changed constantly, but the essence of the building and its atmosphere remained, solid and dependable, separated from the rest of the world, as if these walls kept their own time. It was a comfort to him, this place he knew and loved so well, and the familiarity kept him sane, gave him perspective. With the added benefit of the map and his Metamorphmagus abilities, it was also turning out to be a grand adventure, and he grinned, finding himself at peace for the first time in the month since he'd arrived.

He glanced down at the map and spotted the dot representing Mrs Norris, the creepy old caretaker's cat, and it was heading in his direction. He wasn't exactly out of bounds; it was hours until curfew, and he could easily pin his prefect badge to his robe and avoid trouble with that deception, but it was best to avoid being seen at all. He found a clear route and headed down towards the kitchens to wait. He'd hide in the alcove behind his old friend, Casimir the Boorish of Lickey End.

"...who met with a foul and sticky end..." he sang tunelessly, grinning as he ducked behind a tapestry, into a hidden passageway.

**

Teddy lay naked on his bed, staring up into the canopy, his hand rubbing lightly over his groin, idly toying with the beginnings of an erection. It was still early evening, but he didn't have anywhere to be, and nowhere to really go, besides. He could only spend so much time in the library and it was always a risk to wander the halls, map or no. And there were only so many times he could stare at the dots on the map marked 'Remus Lupin', 'Harry Potter', or 'Cedric Diggory'.

He'd considered going into Hogsmeade many times -- he was sure the secret passageways out of the school could easily get him past the Dementors--but once he was there he had no place to go either. The three Knuts he'd had in his bag wouldn't buy him more than a sugar quill at Honeydukes and certainly wouldn't buy him a Butterbeer or a bottle of Ogden's Old. He thought about going just to get some fresh air, but he had no cloak, and the notion of freezing his bollocks off just to wander the streets was not appealing.

So it was either read and revise, play Exploding Snap by himself, or wank in the evenings, and wanking usually won out by default.

He thought about his friends and family back home, Simon and Gwen, Gordon, Fezzie, his Gran, Harry and the kids, and wondered if they missed him. If time was passing there at the same rate, then they would surely know that he'd vanished. He hadn't told anyone of his idea, so nobody even knew where to look. Right, as if they'd be able to guess what had happened even if they did know. He was sure they were worried, probably frantic by now, and he hated that he was putting them through such grief.

There wasn't anything to be done about it. He couldn't very well give Harry a letter that said "Do not open until February, 2016", though the notion did amuse him. He didn't even know if the Room would send him back. The thought that this was a one-way trip was always there in the back of his mind. The only way to know for sure would be to try to go home, and he simply wasn't ready to do that yet. He had something important he needed to do first. When he did get home, he was sure they'd forgive him, eventually.

He thought about his encounter with Cedric earlier. It had been strange, and oddly fascinating. He started cataloguing the personality differences he'd observed between the real Cedric and portrait Cedric to pass the time. Real Cedric smiled more, laughed and joked with his friends and exuded such confidence. Not that his portrait-self lacked these qualities completely, but the fact remained that it was only a replica, and a lonely one at that. Teddy felt a surge of sympathy with his portrait friend.

Here he was, surrounded by people; people he knew and loved, yet he was utterly alone.

No Simon to banter and compete with, nobody to have a drink with, revise with--hell, he had no classes to go to or homework to do in the first place, though he was making a slight effort at keeping up with his N.E.W.T studies--nobody who would touch him with any kind of affection. It was a grand adventure to be sure, but it was lonely as hell.

Oh. He was lonely, he realised as he continued to stroke himself, and that, he decided, was what made him seek out Cedric earlier. The camaraderie he had with Cedric's portrait was friendship of a sort, and seeing him today, the same brown hair and grey eyes, same smile, had simply triggered...what? It didn't matter. He was fine. He could deal with his temporary loneliness for a few more weeks. Cedric has his own friends, he didn't need another. Distance was necessary, kept temptation in abeyance. Cedric's fate was sealed long ago, written in the stars as the Centaurs would say, and he could do nothing.

He couldn't change the past, could not change it, it was wrong, it was dangerous, no matter how alive...that cocky grin when he winked at me, graceful fingers, blood-warm skin...

He came unexpectedly, and it left him bereft and even lonelier than before.

**

Remus stared at the parchment on his desk. He'd taken it from his drawer nearly every day since he'd confiscated it from Harry, but could not bring himself to utter the password that would unlock its secrets. It had taken all of his strength that day to keep his calm before Severus and Harry both. He'd recognised it immediately, of course. They'd spent countless hours creating it, pouring so much of their very selves into such a fragile piece of parchment, and he marvelled at its durability, nearly twenty years on.

It had been their masterpiece, the ultimate tool for the discerning mischief makers they had been, a work of sheer brilliance. Seeing it again, all these years later....

But how had Harry come to possess it? Filch had confiscated it two weeks before they'd left school--they'd been careless returning one night from an unauthorised post-N.E.W.T. jaunt into Hogsmeade, and their inebriated state had made it easy for the crotchety caretaker. They'd rudely laughed at him when he tried to give them detention and, red-faced and furious, Filch had made them turn out their pockets. Now as a fellow faculty member, he felt some remorse over the incident, but never enough to actually apologise for all the years of torment they'd caused him. Those were the happiest times of his life, and while he had many regrets, too numerous to count, he could not bring himself to feel remorse for any of those cherished memories.

The memories.... He'd finally reconciled them, or so he thought. Returning here, even as a favour to Dumbledore, was not something he'd wanted for himself. His memories of this place were thicker and more plentiful than cobwebs, and everywhere he turned, they assaulted him. Not a tender brush against his cheek, but a knife deep in his belly.

For years he'd bottled them up, kept them separate and safe, cherished them as part of a life that could have been, and in that way, he could live with them. The more we lie to ourselves, the easier they are to believe, after all. Coming back had nearly shattered his fragile glass bottle, and it had taken months for the dreams and nightmares to recede.

Until he'd laid eyes on the map.

The Marauder's Map had been the bursting of a dam and a thousand Reparos couldn't fix the damage left behind in its wake. The pain and grief of a thousand nightmares visited upon him daily, and not content to confine themselves to dreams, they flowed into every waking hour, mingling until everything he touched was tarnished. The thought of losing any more than he already had was more than he could bear, so he resorted once again to his game of self-subterfuge. It was so easy, so instinctive, that he hardly ever noticed anymore.

Above all, there was the very real possibility of seeing the little black dot bearing Sirius' name. It was one thing to see it in a dream, and he could lie and spout excuses until he died, but the reality had the potential to break him utterly.

He was a terrible coward, and his only saving grace was that he had the courage to admit that much.

He'd tried to hate Sirius, and for a while, after he lost James and Lily and Peter, he'd managed rather nicely. He'd been almost disappointed that Sirius had been whisked off to Azkaban so quickly; he'd wanted nothing more than to spit in his face. In the heat of his loathing, the lack of a trial due to all of the evidence had been a good thing as far as he was concerned. But then the heat of anger turned to despair in the face of everything he'd lost, and he'd lost everything that had ever mattered to him. In his weaker moments, he formulated excuses--Imperius or some other magical means of coercion, blackmail, mistaken identity.

His heart would never be able to fully believe that Sirius could betray James of all people. If a wizard's essence, his soul, were a visible construct, surely the threads that made up the core of both James and Sirius had somehow joined and twined. They were one being in two bodies.

And then he'd remember the photos of his arrest, Sirius laughing, haughtier than ever, and another part of him would die inside. His only solace in James' death was that James never had to live with the betrayal of his other self. No, Remus was the one to bear that burden alone, and the weight of it bowed him down, made him less than a man, a coward.

The cruellest burden, however, had been the knowledge that despite everything, he still loved Sirius. Sirius was a part of him, at times, one of the very best parts, and would remain so until he died. That was his deepest secret, the one that filled him with the most shame, the one that enabled and encouraged his cowardice.

Harry was so young. There was no possible way for him to understand the consequences, the unspeakable price of a Dementor's Kiss: the soul devoured with no hope of redemption. Sirius' fate. No matter what horrendous acts he had committed in life, Sirius, that brilliant and once-beautiful star, one of the cornerstones of Remus' youth, did not deserve eternal damnation.

He removed his wand from his pocket with a shaking hand, twirled it aimlessly between his fingers, still unwilling to touch it to the parchment. A knock on his office door startled him from his reverie, and he quickly shoved the map in his drawer before answering.

"Come in," he called, his voice still thick with grief and the pain of memory.

The door opened, and Roger Davies poked his head inside, tentative.

"I--I'm sorry, Professor," he said, his voice scratchy. "I can come back later if you're busy."

Remus sat up straight, forced a smile and beckoned. "No, that's fine. I could use the distraction, to be honest. How can I help you, Mr Davies?" The map could wait, and he supposed it might be for the best if it did.

**

Teddy strode into the room, trying to affect an air of confidence. His stomach felt a bit queasy, but he ignored it, taking a seat in one of the chairs before the desk. This was the hard part. It was one thing to imitate a person's appearance, but it was quite another to mimic a voice. The alterations he made were external in nature, not internal, and while he could change the size of his larynx, unlike Polyjuice, he could never make it exact. His solution was to feign illness with a well-timed sore throat.

"It's--" He made a show of trying to clear his throat. "Sorry, it's to do with that essay you set us. I have some questions."

"Nasty bug you've got. You should go see Madame Pomfrey when we're finished," Remus said, steepling his fingers on the desk. "For now, ask away."

"Thank you, sir. Er, well, I was thinking about writing my essay on the dangers to wizarding and Muggle society that certain creatures pose, and I was doing some research on werewolves in particular." Teddy fiddled with the collar of his robe. Why had he said werewolves? He'd been practicing a speech on Dementors and Lethifolds! Idiot!

Teddy looked up at his father, but Remus' face was perfectly composed, no noticeable tension anywhere in his expression or in his body language.

"And you needed to see me because...?"

"Oh, right, sorry, sir." Teddy blinked. What the hell was he going to say now? "I, er, well most books about them seem to take a, well, a hostile stance. How to spot them, how to kill them, stuff like that, but they all ignore something I read in another book that I thought was pretty important."

Remus raised his eyebrows and inclined his head. "Which is?"

"Well, a werewolf is only technically a werewolf one day a month, and not even the whole day, just when the moon's out."

"There are many who would disagree with that presumption, Mr Davies. The Ministry included."

"Well, that's just stupid, isn't it?"

Remus shrugged. "I don't know. Or, to be more precise, you'd have to define stupid, and apply it to the Ministry's motives and actions. Werewolves are in fact dangerous, Mr Davies, and I assure you that you would not want to stumble across one during a full moon." He absently tapped the tips of his fingers together.

"Well, yes, I know that. But what about the other days of the month? Fantastic Beasts is, at best, fairly neutral, though not very informative, but I came across one called 'Hairy Snout, Human Heart', which seems to contradict the other books, and even goes so far as to criticise the Ministry."

Teddy was watching Remus carefully, and he saw the twitch of lip, the hesitation of his fingers, when he mentioned 'Hairy Snout', gestures so minute, he'd have missed them completely if he hadn't been looking. He'd first read that book when he was six, and by the time he was sixteen, knew it almost by heart. After Harry had told him the story of how Sirius Black and James Potter had become Animagi for his father, he was convinced that not only was the book about his father, but that James and Sirius had written it.

Remus leaned back in his chair. "Ah, yes, the sympathetic werewolf. It's a moving story, I'll grant you, but is it true? Or, for purposes of research, is it fact?"

Ninety minutes later, Teddy left his father's office with mixed feelings. It had been harder than he'd thought to keep up the charade, and there were several times where he'd nearly blurted out the truth. For the entirety of their discussion, which had actually become heated at several points on his part, his father had remained neutral and had drawn the conversation in such a way that Teddy was forced to argue from both sides. Teddy marvelled at the strength and courage it must have taken to do so, to sit there so calmly and rationally.

There was one exception, when Teddy had brought up the topic of werewolves having children. For the first time in their conversation, his father had looked troubled, and while he didn't come out and say it, it was evident that he was opposed to it. Obviously he had changed his mind in the intervening years, but it was still disconcerting.

Perhaps he had been an accident, but his parents had been married before he was conceived, hadn't they? And Harry had told him many times that his father loved his mother. It was a subject he didn't really want to think about, so he turned his thoughts to what would happen when the real Roger Davies turned in his essay after the Easter holidays on a completely different topic. It didn't matter, he'd be gone before then. His reason for coming was to meet his father, and he'd finally done that, though he wished it could have been under different circumstances. Staying here much longer was dangerous, and he knew he had to go home soon.

Lost in thought, he turned the corner and slammed into someone. The collision made him lose his balance, and he fell flat on his arse.