Heat

Heat

By Minnow

I wanted to describe in words how it made me feel.

We had a cat: a cat of mixed stock. She used to go on heat, and all the tomcats in the neighbourhood would flock to the back garden and mount her, one by one. They would straddle her, their bodies stiff and quivering, their eyes glazed, until the business was done.

Was it any different with those two animals? I think not. Lupin really did become an animal every month, so one could hardly expect better from him, at least. True, unlike the mating cats, they were both male, but the essence of the act remained. Casual, if not actually seasonal, the mindless lust that could be satisfied by any other: just that there were not many 'others' like Black and Lupin at Hogwarts. Certainly, in all my time there I never came across another pair of queers.

It wasn't hard to imagine what Black's family thought about his inclinations. The story around school was that he had run away from home. The Slytherins at least knew the truth, that his family threw him out when they found out about his shenanigans with Lupin.

Sometimes, I almost felt sorry for Potter. Black was supposed to be his best friend, his comrade-in-arms, but he was always off somewhere with Lupin; and I had some proof of this, because I often stumbled upon them when I was on my way somewhere else. On the first occasion, they were in the Potions Dungeon when I happened to go back to fetch some basilisk venom I'd forgotten earlier, after the lesson. They spent quite a lot of time in the Potions room, in fact. The official version was that Black gave Lupin remedial Potions lessons because he was such a dolt at the subject: but I believe that was just an excuse.

I opened the door, and was assailed by unholy moaning, like a soul in agony. Did I mention that my cat, when she was mating, used to keen, a low, continuous drone that stopped only once the male had finished with her?

The sound made my hackles rise. I went in to investigate, and saw the pair of them - well, I never have been conversant with what exactly two boys would do with each other, but I saw enough to know that Black and Lupin were probably going about as far with each other physically as it was possible to go.

No, I did not want to see. For a minute, I was actually rooted to the spot, watching Black thrusting against Lupin, the two of them locked at the lips, naked and damp with sweat. I think I was in a state of shock.

I hated them then. Hate is probably not strong enough a word. Hated them for defiling the Potions room - for a long time afterwards, I'd look around my domain and see a ghost of those two bodies moving as one - and for not locking themselves away to perform their perverted acts as far as possible from decent eyes. I felt contaminated, unclean.

It was tempting, once I had recovered, to make myself known to them. I would have loved to shock them as much as they had shocked me, to embarrass them, to make them squirm. I would also have loved to report them to the Headmaster: but I was disillusioned by the way he had treated Black, his golden Gryffindor boy, after he exposed me to the werewolf. Not even a real punishment! If I told him that Black and Lupin were - well, I suppose one would have to say 'fucking', though the word 'mating' might be more apposite in the context - against a wall in the Potions Dungeon, no doubt he would make Lupin Head Boy on the spot and give Black some special award.

Whatever the reason, I kept silent, leaving the room as noiselessly as I could and pulling the door to firmly behind me.

At dinner, I kept my eyes on the Gryffindor table to see whether Lupin or Black would show any signs of the shame they ought to be feeling. But not a bit of it. Black was joking with Potter, and Lupin was sitting with his prefect's badge on the front of his robes, and he even had the nerve to come over to the Slytherin table and tell one of the Fourth Years off for throwing a piece of bread across the Hall. I very nearly said something, but held my tongue. All the same, I was seething inside. The image of Lupin in the Dungeons was burned into my mind, his back against the wall, his face contorted, his legs gripping Black's hips as Black thrust into him. Like the dirty hypocrite he always was, he actually looked me right in the eye before he went back to his own table, a defiant, superior look.

No wonder I detested him and Black so. Their arrogance, their assumption that every rule was to be broken, as long as they were the ones that broke it. The way they and their friends thought they were so clever when they bullied or hexed someone.

After that day, I seemed to stumble on Black and Lupin just about everywhere I went. Not that I made a habit of spying upon the pair. But once I had found what they were up to, I realised they were hardly discreet. Corridors, empty classrooms, secluded parts of the grounds, they treated Hogwarts like their personal playground, with no regard for who might be watching or listening. No doubt they would have accused me of following them round: that would have been typical of those two. I admit that sometimes Lupin would turn and give me that slightly hostile look he reserved for everyone but Black, as if Black were his prey and nobody was to come near him. As if I would have had anything to do with Black, especially not in the filthy way Lupin did.

They were just rutting animals, and they repulsed me. That mindless, blind thrusting, those bodies struggling against each other, as if they were fighting, the eyes closed, always closed, their mouths open against each other's, sucking and licking as they gasped and cried out.

I got to know the variety of those gasps and moans quite well, after a while. My original analogy of a cat's keening was sound, in essence, but in fact Black and Lupin had a rather wider repertoire of noises. There were the faint gasps when they were just starting to caress each other, when they were brushing lips rather than kissing deeply. Then, they would be silent for a while, and they would breath irregularly, noisily, almost panting sometimes as if they'd been running a race. At the end, their moans would be longer, more drawn out, and this would be like the cat, the sound I heard through the Potions Dungeon door. And finally, they would sometimes swear but always cry out each other's names. I must confess, that surprised me at the start: animals surely do not differentiate between their many different mates? But then, as I said earlier, there were no others of their kind at Hogwarts, or in any respectable wizarding community.

It amused me to reflect how the Blacks had reacted to their older son's vicissitudes. A boy, a werewolf, a half-blood: yet it did sometimes make me angry when I thought how my own father, whom I had never deliberately displeased or disobeyed, still beat me when he had been drinking firewhisky; and he drank constantly. Yet Black could just walk away, unscathed: he had been disowned, as every pureblood family knew, yet he didn't even seem to care. I hated that he could avoid suffering like that.

There were times when I would try to imagine how Black and Lupin could have become so close. I say 'so close' as a euphemism for their obscene acts, because I am being charitable; Merlin knows, I would have sliced my throat open before condoning their actions.

Black, as everyone conceded, was undoubtedly handsome. He had the high cheekbones some people consider fine, black hair and grey eyes. Regulus told me with a sneer that his brother was very vain, because since birth he had been praised for his looks. 'Though many of our family agree I have far more character to my face,' he told me. That was certainly the case: once you knew about Black's predilections, it was easy to see his face as a bit too girlish, a bit too regular, a bit too expressive.

Lupin was ordinary. He was nearly as tall as Black - they were both taller than me, which annoyed me in boys of such low character - with light brown hair and light brown eyes. His skin was pale, and he often looked sick, with bruises under his eyes. However, even a few of the Slytherin girls thought him captivating. 'He's so frail,' they cooed. 'He looks like a starving poet.' Of course, no Slytherin would seriously want a starving poet, unless he was a pureblood who chose not to live off his inheritance.

At least Black had been disinherited. That comforted me. I thought of how little inheritance I, the only son of a once-proud family would enjoy. My father had drunk away a fortune during my childhood, and impoverished the family altogether since I had attended Hogwarts. We didn't have a fine, London home any more, but a tiny, terraced house in the shabbiest of all wizarding streets. The sort of house with walls so thin that you could hear every sound from the house next door. I did laugh when I wondered how neighbours like ours would cope with a couple like Lupin and Black and their constant noises.

I didn't understand why they needed to be at it so often. Heat is intense, but it lasts a short time: after a few days, the tomcats would disappear and life would go back to normal. Eventually, our cat would have kittens, and my father would drown them. He made me watch, just once, though never again.

But Black and Lupin seemed to seek out some private spot almost every day: and no doubt they also fucked in their dormitory at night, another reason for me to feel just a tiny bit sorry for Potter, and that friend of theirs whose name I could never remember.

They took enormous risks, those two. I once blundered into them, almost literally, behind the greenhouses: this time, they had only got about five minutes before our joint Herbology lesson, so they were not actually having sex, just standing against a tree fully clothed but pressed up close to each other; panting, kissing, as usual, frenetic, not even noticing as I stepped back, surprised, and almost ran off to class. They were late, of course; they strode in, heads held high, perfectly poised, as if they hadn't just been... And Lupin reached up and casually polished his prefect's badge with the sleeve of his robes, and said, in his calm, polite voice, 'Sorry, Professor. We had to help tidy the Transfigurations room.'

Usually, they chose rather less public places to indulge their perversions. I don't believe they wanted to get caught. Lupin was already on very thorny ground, because if just one parent found out he was a werewolf even that dolt Dumbledore would be forced to expel him. As for Black, he was homeless, in effect, and he surely did not want to be thrown out on to the streets. Though the streets might have been the best place for him; he could have plied a filthy, but lucrative trade with his body.

It did seem that his body was reserved for Lupin, mainly because Lupin, as I mentioned, was possessive, predatory, would hardly let even Potter and the other boy near Black. I noticed him in our shared NEWT classes, like Defence Against the Dark Arts and Transfiguration, watching the other two boys whenever either of them addressed Black. Potter would say something like, 'Hey, Sirius, are you coming to watch the Quidditch practice tonight?' Black, of course, was thrown off the team after the incident with the werewolf. Lupin would listen intently, stop whatever he was doing and look at Black almost - menacingly? But of course, Black was not to be owned, and he'd say, 'Fine. Moony and I'll be along.' And Potter would nod, as if the inclusion of Lupin in the invitation went without saying.

I was never sure if Potter knew about them. There was talk, mainly among the Slytherins, because Regulus told us some of what was going on in the family, and why Black had been banished: not all, because the Blacks closed ranks in a crisis. Gossip had it that they used to kiss and fondle each other in their common room in front of pupils from all age groups, even the youngest First Years, because they were completely unconcerned about anything beyond their own desires. That was just a rumour, to be fair, though I could easily believe it. But I don't think any gossip reached the Gryffindors, or if it did they simply ignored it. Black had such power, with his undoubted charisma, that he could persuade his friends and fellow house members to believe that any lie he told them was the truth.

The Potters, for all their silly liberality, were a very old, pureblood family, and Potter was no rebel, not the way Black was. I really thought that he might have felt just as I did about those two, that is, revolted, and in his case ashamed that his best friends could behave like that. He certainly seemed to treat them the same as he always had, so they probably kept their foul secret to themselves. If that were possible in a shared dormitory. But whatever Black's many, many faults, he was good at Charms, and could no doubt perform excellent silencing and privacy spells.

Not that he bothered when he and Lupin were simply, say, strolling round the grounds, with an eye to where they could indulge their constant lust next. I was discreet, always, if I were going anywhere near the same direction as they were. I would keep my distance, walk quietly and stealthily. Like a cat. Like a cat that was not mad to respond to the cries of a female on heat. Or another male, even.

Sometimes, I would listen to them talk. I was intrigued, I have to admit, to know what they would talk about, those two with their constant need for gratification. What would be left for them to say, once they had explored every inch of each other's bodies with fingers and tongues and lips? When they had fucked until they must surely be sore and aching and hardly needy any more, the way Black and Lupin were?

In the woods one time, I was just close enough to hear them from behind my tree. 'Was that good, Moony?' Black said, in a different voice from his usual arrogant tone; softer, gentler. They were lying tangled together on the muddy ground; it must have been uncomfortable, but they didn't seem to notice.

'Yes. It was brilliant. I wish...'

'What?'

'That everything would just go away. That it could be, well, simple.'

'Oh, Remus, it's never going to be simple,' Black sighed.

'No. I know.'

They snuggled close to each other then, and kissed, not deeply, but as if they were at the very start of a romance, tentative, not going to go further. When they drew apart, Black mumbled something that sounded 'I do love you, Moony,' and Lupin, his face hidden in Black's shoulder said something I couldn't hear, in a muffled voice, but no doubt it was equally sentimental, because Black smiled; like his voice, his smile was different, not his usual broad grin, but tender, almost caressing. 'We should be getting on,' he said then, starting to sit up. 'Prongs is waiting for me to finish my half of our Charms essay.'

But Lupin pulled him back down, and soon they were at it again. This time, I didn't wait to see them, but made my own way back to the castle and homework. I felt, as always after watching them, dissatisfied, even frustrated. Sometimes, it seemed as if my body were conducting a mutiny against my mind, as if it wanted - well, wanted what they had, I suppose. Wanted to bury itself in another body, to kiss with abandon, to have orgasm after orgasm, as they did so effortlessly, to feel that wonderful loss of control as I came, spurting not against my own hand, but someone else's, someone else's mouth or body. And it was a lack, a lack of something that I didn't fully understand.

Like when they spoke of love. Whenever I heard them, after the moans and cries there would always, eventually, be some mention of it, some mention of whatever it was they thought made them superior to animals on heat. Love. The way they looked at each other across the classroom sometimes, or at meals. When they held hands under the table, assuming nobody would notice; except I did, because I noticed everything about them. The way their eyes seemed to light up when they caught sight of each other. It wasn't to do with touching or sensation at all.

An abstract concept like love didn't excuse their behaviour, of course. I was no deviant who might assume it did. I knew that two boys could not be together. It was unnatural. What they did was unnatural. And because I hated them so, I looked forward to the day when they'd be caught, punished, shamed.

In a strange way, my hatred helped me cope with my own problems. When I was forced home for the summer holidays, I would shut myself in my room, quiet as possible, hoping my father would forget I was there and not trudge up the stairs heavily, each step vibrating under his tread, with his leather belt dangling from his hands. Such strong hands, strong arms, muscled still in spite of all the drink, arms that could wield a strap with the maximum of pain. Then, I would close my eyes and think how sweet it would be when Black and Lupin were utterly disgraced.

Sometimes, my father would be unable to wait, and would stay downstairs and use his fists on my mother instead, and she would scream and cry out. I used to imagine I was back in the grounds at Hogwarts, crouched behind a tree in the woods, listening to the two boys as they came. Soon afterwards, I'd fall asleep, and wake relieved that I was another day closer to returning to school.

End