Remus in Furs

Remus in Furs

Severus, severus, speak so slightly
Severus, down on your bended knee
Taste the whip, in love not given lightly
Taste the whip, now plead for me

--The Velvet Underground… modified oh so slightly

_____________

Remus stared at Marina Suzzane, their grey eyes mirroring each other, swimming with bitter tears that spoke of decades of rejection, loneliness, and grandmothers who didn't like their refrigerator art.

"Oh Remus..." said Marina.

"Oh Marina..." Remus replied. "I feel that all my deepest emotional problems could be cured in an instant, if only I could engage in a snogging session with a beautiful-yet-single, sensitive woman."

"Every little girl," Marina replied, wiping the tears from her smooth and lovely face, "from the time she's ready for her first training bra--which is, in this estrogen-polluted world, about the age of seven and a half--dreams of nothing but healing a wounded man's woes with her magic spittle."

Remus wiped his eyes, hardly daring to hope that she was implying what she seemed to be implying... could it be... no! It was impossible! No one would snog a monster like him... even Padfoot refused to mount his leg... it couldn't be that a woman so perfect--

But Marina went on, "My deep emotional problems--which you shall hear of at great length, I promise--have prevented me from doing my womanly duties until now. But even though I'm nearly forty, Oil of Olay and anorexia have kept me lovely for my Man."

They drew closer to each other, staring into each other's eyes for as long as they could (which wasn't long, since they were both forty and things got fuzzy close up). Soon they were engaged in a long, wet snog, which I won't describe since it would force me to up the rating, and probably to projectile vomit as well.

Suffice it to say that any and all bacterial and viral diseases possessed by either party were thoroughly and juicily exchanged.

They were interrupted by the appearance of Sirius, who clasped his hands over his heart at the spectacle. His bad-boy nature tempted him to tease, but he overcame this childish urge and burst into tears instead, touched by the sight of his lupine friend engaging in primate mating behaviors at last.

"R-remus..." he wept. "You're--you're--NORMAL!"

Marina and Remus separated with a wet smack, like the sound of the giant squid disengaging from his sunbathing rock on a warm summer's day.

"Oh, Sirius, I know your manly hormones will arouse jealousy in your, um, heart," said Marina understandingly. "Especially since I am so thin and well-preserved. But wait! I know a spell. It's the only one I know, but it's all a girl needs."

Waving one manicured hand, she said "Bimbettica duplicita!"... and suddenly, her twin came to stand beside Sirius. She was a bit taller and a bit darker, so she matched him as perfectly as Marina matched Remus.

"Hemmo, Sirush," she slurred, already kissing him so hard she couldn't speak. "Namesh Maria Susanna."

The four-way snog went on for a good long time, until mouths were dry on everyone's part.

Sirius, however, stepped back. "I love you, Maria," he said, wiping away some tears. "More than I ever thought I was capable of loving... I sense that your horrible angst from ripping your bodice at the Junior Prom more than parallels my twelve years in Azkaban... and yet, I feel that something is missing."

"A plot?" suggested Remus, wiping his mouth. "Marina, dearest, I do love you, but do you always have so much garlic for lunch?"

"Look who's talking, dog breath!" Marina retorted.

"Enough of that," said Sirius, re-uniting the lovers in his harsh, bad-boy, yet sensitive way. "You're right, Remus--we need a plot. Let's bring on the Death Eaters."

"And it should be a full moon, too," Remus suggested.

"Oooh..." Marina clutched her stomach. "I feel funny!"

"Yeah, you should," Remus replied. "After all that snogging, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if you're a werewolf yourself now."

"What?" gasped Marina. "You fiend! You're--you're CONTAGIOUS?" An evil glimmer appeared in her eye, and she laughed a deep cackle that Lord Voldemort himself would have envied. "Well, wolf-boy, the reason no one's ever snogged ME before is that I'M CONTAGIOUS TOO! Muahahaaaaaa....."

"No...." gasped Remus, looking down at his hands which were becoming soft and white, with a charming engagement ring on one finger. "Sirius... help..."

But Sirius had caught it too. By the time the Death Eaters arrived, all four of our protagonists were sitting in the kitchen, baking chocolate chip cookies and thinking up baby names.

"Help!" squealed Sirius. "It's Lucius Malfoy!"

"Lucius, can't we all get along for our children?" Remus asked.

Lucius looked toward his hooded goons. "This is worse than I thought," he hissed. "There's only one cure for the Mary Sue Syndrome--Let's get out of here."

They Disapparated, leaving Remus and Sirius to argue whether "Remus Junior" or "Sirius Junior" sounded cuter.

Fortunately, the cookies were burned, so Remus was very, very hungry when the moon rose. He devoured Maria down to her bones (considering her fashionable thinness, this wasn't saying much) and thereby liberated Sirius from the spell. Sadly, however, Marina--being a werewolf herself--was spared. All Remus managed to do was inflict some gashes on her snout, which he then wept and agonized over the next morning.

Now that he was cured, Sirius could tell just how dire the situation was. "Snap out of it, old buddy," he prompted, performing Avada Kedavra on an innocent little lad walking by their cabin, just to prove to himself that he could. "Here… have a bone." He threw one of Maria's femurs at his friend.

Remus burst into tears. "No… no… I'm a monster… I'll go to Azkaban!"

"And what will become of your puppies?" wailed Marina, clutching her already-bulging tummy.

Soon the tears were up to Sirius' ankles, and he knew that if he didn't get expert help fast, there would be no cure. "I'll be back," he promised Remus in his best brave tone, desperately hiding the quaver in his voice as he Disapparated.

________

"What do you want, Black?" sneered the oily tones of Severus Snape as Sirius came bursting in on him in the dungeons. Snape was standing over a frothing and grayishly smoking cauldron, snipping off mouse tails one by one into the brew. The remains of the mice he threw into a large box labeled Owlery.

"Severus," said Sirius as bravely as he could, "I don't like you any more than you like me, but I come to ask you a favor--as a potion brewer and as an enemy of the Dark Side."

"Let's not bring my loyalties into this, Black. What do I need to do to save your luckless- yet-voluptuous backside this time?"

Sirius couldn't help but glance over his shoulder to see if it were really true that his bottom could be considered voluptuous. He concluded that Severus was deprived, because despite Remus' Magical ThighMaster, Sirius was still at least twenty pounds underweight.

"It isn't me, Snape." Sirius tore his thoughts away from his gluteus maximus. "…It's about Remus. He's under the spell of a powerful Dark Curse."

A thin smile twisted one corner of Snape's mouth, and he emitted a noise like a beagle being trod upon--a laugh, Sirius realized. "Well, Black," he sneered, continuing to make these terrible noises, "so what else is new?"

"No, but--" Sirius stammered, taken by surprise. "I mean, another one."

"Careless, isn't he, that boy?" laughed Snape, finishing with the final mouse and stirring at the thick liquid with an enormous marble pestle (ooh, Freudian).

"This isn't funny, Severus," Sirius hissed. "I might be friends with a werewolf, but a Mary Sue is something else altogether."

There was a ringing silence, punctuated only by a blurp as the thick gray liquid in the cauldron formed a bubble.

Severus lifted a spoonful of the potion, held it under his nose, and took a deep sniff. "…A what, Black?" he asked in a low, menacing whisper.

"A Mary Sue!" Sirius blurted. "She got his soul! He's baking cookies! She's about to have -- puppies!"

Snape couldn't grow paler, but his face became, if this were possible, almost green. The spoon fell into the cauldron with a splash. "If this is a joke, Black--"

"I swear on your mother's loyalty to Voldemort," Sirius promised.

"Good--hey! you leave my mother out of this." An expression of cruel triumph twisted his pallid features. "The Mary Sue Curse is notoriously difficult--some say impossible-- to break." He reached over to the shelf and took down a slightly tarnished but still wickedly sharp dagger, its handle carved into the snarling face of a wolf. "I'd say it's about time your old friend was put down, don't you say? It's the humane thing to do."

"Noooo…." cried Sirius, the remnants of his own curse causing him to whimper like an overgrown Newfie. "We have to try… I'll do anything…"

"Anything, you say?" The triumphant gleam reappeared in Snape's eye. He returned the dagger to the shelf and handed the pestle to Sirius (really Freudian). "Well… you can start by giving the Collagen Concoction twenty-one hundred clockwise stirs. Don't skimp, I'm watching you. Done right, it makes the skin return to a state of youthful suppleness--" He stopped, as though he'd gone too far. "STIR!" he barked.

So Sirius did. Sweating in the stuffy dungeons, the smell of the gray potion reminding him painfully of the time he'd spent living off rats, he stirred to save Remus' soul.

Snape paced the room, occasionally giving Sirius pinches in quite intimate locations. "There's a flower that grows only on the highest point of the tallest mountain on the lost continent of Darkwreingle," he intoned. "Seven days' journey across man-eating rocks and under a sky that rains fire and blood. Are you up to it, Black?"

"I'll do anything," Sirius repeated, still stirring.

"Indeed." Severus smiled. "…You know, Black, you were a lot better looking before you went to Azkaban."

"That's to be expected, isn't it?" Sirius wondered idly, blocking out the conversation by thinking of Remus.

"You've still got good triceps, though… Don't fancy me, do you, Black? What would you really do to save your friend?"

Sirius remembered his long snogging session with Maria, and thought about all the puppies he'd have to kiss and the showers he'd have to attend if Remus remained under the Curse. Surely anything Severus wanted would be less repulsive?

"Actually," he said, his voice tight with a vain attempt at sincerety, "I've always somewhat fancied you, Severus. Just promise me one thing…"

Snape unbuttoned his robe and let it fall to the floor, standing before Sirius in nothing but a pair of Bertie Botts Every-Flavor Underpants (they keep their X-rated line rather low-profile). "What is that, Black?

Sirius gave the cauldron one last stir and stepped back. "…That you won't make me use any of that mouse lotion."

His gaze took in his old enemy Severus Snape, from triumphant leer to surprisingly well-developed abs to--well, let's stop there. The piercings and the single tattoo told Sirius something he'd always suspected, and he grinned to himself as he thought that really, this might turn out to be fun. Waving his wand, he conjured up a pair of leather handcuffs and a small riding crop.

But here we must leave them. Most of us, even those who would rather have our eyes put out by hot pokers than vote for George W., have a double standard: so that while what Severus and Sirius are about to do might be called Naughty, or even Immoral and Wrong, what Marina and Remus indulge in to make all those puppies is simply Wholesome.

Besides, if I were to describe their harrowing journey in search of the flower (oh my, Sigmund, eat your heart out), this fic might develop a Plot--and this, in the world of Mary Sues, is the biggest immorality of all.

________

Remus and Marina sat snogging and weeping on the couch. Why were they weeping so? Well, the canonical Remus has had a pretty hard life, I agree, but we never seem to be content with that--we always have to torture the poor guy some more: parents dead by Voldemort, an evil twin brother, infinite guilt and angst over what his werewolf self might do even though the poor creature never even gets a taste of human flesh! Perhaps Remus was weeping because he was so terribly hungry… or because he wanted to chase bunnies, but his human form was too clumsy… In the words of the great Snape, "Don't ask me to fathom the way a werewolf's mind works."

Marina, on the other hand, was easy to figure out. She wept because her parents and peers had taught her that this was what girls did to get and keep a Man. Well, that's not really all--let's give the poor creature some credit--she also wept because being pregnant with a litter of werewolf puppies is NOT fun.

"I know," Marina smiled up at her Love, bearing the pain for his sake. "Let's call them after your beloved and wise grandfather: Janus, Janice, and Janis."

"…I was thinking more along the lines of Crunchy, Nipper, and Fang," Remus suggested, one hand possessively on Marina's heaving tummy.

Marina burst into tears. "Oh Remus!" she cried. "How can you make light of this sacred moment! You may have played a huge role in causing the downfall of Voldemort the first time… and may play an even larger role this time… yet having puppies with me is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING in your life, and in fact in the whole universe!" Her tears flowed even more.

(By "Universe," of course, Marina meant "planet Earth," as she'd never been anywhere else--and was quite ignorant of the fact that the critters swimming happily in the Europan ocean had developed a much more convenient way to reproduce that involved neither baby showers, pregnancy, nor weeping. But let's not burst her bubble, so to speak).

Remus' eyes spun in his head from the force of the Curse. "Oh Marina," he wept, "you are so right. Of course we must name the puppies after my beloved grandfather, who loved me dearly even though I was a monster, and used to make me meat pies to take into the basement at the full moon. His girlfriend's name was Lovett--but let's not get into that."

________

They were still in this position when Snape and Sirius returned a fortnight later. The carpet had grown moldy from the tears, their lips cracked and dry from the snogging, and when Remus put his ear to Marina's belly he was sure he could hear tiny cute howls.

Snape held his vial of potion aloft. "LUPIN!" he bellowed. "You're a pathetic sight! And you call yourself a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher! This is all your fault, you know--if you hadn't deliberately stalled the class so that you wouldn't get to the chapter on werewolves, you might've gotten to the one on Mary Sues."

Remus hung his head. "You're right, of course, Severus," he said humbly. "I was never much of a teacher… or much of a wizard… but none of that matters now, now that I've found Love and Meaning in my life." He kissed Marina tenderly on her 40-year-old-yet-smooth cheek.

Sirius smiled rakishly. "It's OK, Severus, I can handle this." He took the leather handcuffs from his pocket and advanced on his friend.

Remus put up quite a struggle, but Sirius had had lots of recent practice. Finally Remus ended up tied spread-eagled to the wall with all of his clothes torn off.

"Whoa," Sirius grinned. "He looks pretty hot like this."

"Not even I thought you would stoop to bestiality, Black," spat Snape.

"No?" Sirius wondered, eyebrows raised. "You seemed to like it when I turned into Padfoot while--"

"SILENCE," roared the enraged Potions Master. He approached the helpless Remus and tried to pour the potion down his throat, but Remus fought, turning his head from side to side. "Black," he snapped, "I'm no veterinarian, you drug the beast." His eyes traveled over Remus' naked body. "I must say that ThighMaster hasn't done a thing for you," he sneered, jabbing a bony finger into Remus' chest. "And what's this? A werewolf with heart-shaped fangs?"

Sirius drew closer and took the vial. "Th-that's not from the wolf, Severus," he whispered. "That's the mark of--of this other Curse."

Snape sprang back as if stung. "If this doesn't cure him, we finish him off," he snapped. "I brought the dagger."

"Yes…" Sirius agreed ruefully. "You're right, he can't live like this."

Getting Remus to take the potion was a lot like trying to get a cat to swallow a pill--finally Sirius had to charm his mouth open and pinch his nose to make him swallow.

The effects were immediate. The glazed look left Remus' eyes, and the studly curl in his hair collapsed into his usual uncombed strands. His face no longer looked winsome and charming, but tired and concerned. The heart-shaped scar on his chest faded into nothing, leaving only the faint marks of an older battle with a banshee.

"Sirius," he exclaimed. "Severus. What are you doing here? What are these lace curtains and moldy rugs doing? Who is that woman?"

"Moony!" Sirius embraced him. "You're back!"

"Humph," muttered Severus, looking really very disappointed--then his eyes lit up as he saw that Remus was still in the handcuffs. "You’ve been a bad boy, Lupin," he scolded. "A very bad boy. Just can't stay away from those Dark Creatures, can you? Hanging around werewolves before you could talk… I hear you had a Dementor for a girlfriend off in Romania…"

"A vampire," Remus corrected mildly. "But--"

Sirius untied Remus and handed him his wand (Snape looked disappointed again). "She's a Mary Sue, Moony," he whispered. "You know what you have to do."

"I can help there," Severus offered with a leer.

Now, I don't presume to know what Remus thinks about when he conjures a Patronus. But it would be an even greater invasion of privacy to imagine what he thinks about when conjuring a Matronus--for you see, a Mary Sue can only be banished if you concentrate, with all your might, on a single, very perverted memory.

Let's just say that he didn't have any trouble with the spell.

Marina Suzzane disappeared in a flash of rose-colored light, and in her place remained nothing but a single yellow flower… a black-eyed Susan.

Remus picked it up, and was about to gaze at it sadly when Sirius wrest it from his hand and crushed it into dust.

"Moony," he snapped, "quit being so damned--moony. She was a MONSTER. She tried to take your soul."

"Oh, yes, Sirius, I know," said Remus in his usual tone of quiet melancholy. "But you know, the snogging was fun. Someone like me rarely gets the chance to snog anyone but monsters. And she had much better breath than the vampire or the manticore," he added glumly.

"Don't expect our pity, Lupin!" snarled Snape. "We saved your wretched hide, and not for the first time, I might add."

"All right, Severus," Remus replied courteously. "I am grateful for your help, but are ad hominem attacks really necessary?"

"Ad hominem?" Snape cackled. "You flatter yourself, Lupin; more like--"

"Sevvie!" Sirius interrupted, the stern tone belied by the nickname. "That's enough. Remus is my best friend, and this isn't going to change just because we're lovers."

"Sirius--Severus--?" exclaimed Remus. "You--?"

"Somewhere on the arduous journey to Darkwreingle, we found that we had more in common than we knew," Sirius admitted, clasping Severus' hand.

Remus took in the handcuffs, the leather robes, and most of all the look of contentment on Severus' usually oh-so-bitter face.

"Well," he said, smiling. "I'm nothing if not open-minded. Can I take pictures?"