Obligations

Obligations

Chapter One: Visions

* * * * *

Sirius could still remember the first time he had seen Remus like this, post transformation from wolf to man. Then it had been a terrifying experience. Now it was almost marred by the impatience of waiting for it to end.

Eventually, the terrible transformation ceased and Remus stood, sweating, covered in blood - most of which was his own - and looking vulnerable and lost. Sirius watched him silently, before moving towards him with a blanket. The young man’s hazel eyes picked up the glistening light thrown out by the dying embers of the fire and when they turned to Sirius, were full of terrible sadness. Turning away, Sirius banked up the fire before finally turning once more to face the werewolf – his friend.

His eyes were drawn, as always to the oval scar in Remus' side, the scar that marked him as different, the legacy of the werewolf that had bitten him all those years ago. Every time Sirius saw that scar, he shuddered. Not out of fear, but out of pity and sympathy - two emotions which he knew Remus Lupin despised, especially coming from his friends.

The eyes that were still full of pain and bemused confusion from the transformation swung towards Sirius, and Remus' face broke into a slightly bitter smile that melted into an expression of warmth. Sirius smiled back and crossed the short distance that separated them, putting his arms around Remus and embracing him swiftly.

"Welcome back, Moony."

"You waited for me. Again."

Doubt? This was not something Sirius had heard in Remus' voice before. Remus was the cool headed, rational one of the Marauders. The one who stopped the others from making TOO much trouble, who came up with half the plans in the first place. He was, to coin a phrase, the brains of the outfit. He, Sirius, was the impulsive, more impetuous one. But right now, Remus sounded...almost as though he no longer understood what it was that had kept the four friends so closely bonded all these years.

Studying his friend’s face carefully was fruitless. Lupin's face was a stoic mask. "Of course I waited for you. You are my friend, Remus. You surely don't doubt that?"

"Of course I doubt it," said Remus, in a strange, wistful sort of way that unnerved Sirius to the very core. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Oh, Remus, do you really think that little of me? Of any of us?" Sirius was hurt that his friend could still not, even after all these years, consider - even for a moment - that he was not loved, not cared about. "I told you all those years ago. I would die for you. For James. For Peter. You are my friend and I promised I would always be here for you."

"That's the point, isn't it, Sirius?" Remus' eyes, glowing in the firelight closed. "You have nothing else. Every month you are by my side. You've never known what it is to...to leave me. To branch out on your own like Peter and James have. To be yourself for once and not my keeper." Lupin sat down heavily in one of the chairs in front of the fire. “I’m holding you back and that makes me feel so terribly, terribly guilty.”

Slightly irritable, Sirius folded his arms defiantly. “You want me to leave you on your own? Is that it?”

This was the Sirius that Remus Lupin knew and remembered. The stubborn boy who would stand as solid as a rock for what he believed in and be knocked down by nobody or nothing once his mind was made up.

There was a long silence, and during that time, Remus refused to meet Sirius' eyes. The werewolf stared into the dancing flames and then finally spoke. "No." he said. "I don't want you to leave. But you will."

"Remus, what IS this?" Sirius was becoming exasperated by his friend's mysterious manner, his cryptic words. "What's happened to you?"

"Last night..." Finally, Remus turned to look directly at Sirius and there was a deep pain in his eyes that made Sirius yearn to hug his friend close, but he kept his distance, caught up in the expression on Remus' face. "Last night, I left the Shack. I went out. And...oh, Sirius..."

Remus suddenly broke off in a sob, burying his face in his hands. This was more than Sirius could bear. He moved to Remus’ side and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Remus...what happened?" He knew, of course. This reaction could only have been brought about by one thing.

Remus had bitten someone.

"You warned me it would happen one day, Sirius, and you were right," said Remus, sniffing back the tears. "But I never listened to you. I believed I could learn to master the monster that I am."

"Who?"

"Does it matter?" Remus brushed aside the question angrily. "The fact is, Sirius, I BIT someone. Last night, I called another werewolf into being. I SIRED them. And..." He chewed his lip, and hung his head. "The gods forgive me, I loved it. It was...fulfilling. It felt right. It was something I'd always wanted to do, but managed to resist."

Sirius was silent. Remus continued, wretchedly. "It's like a drug, Sirius. And now I've had my first taste of it, I don't know that I can turn my back on it."

This was the moment that Sirius had always been afraid might happen. The day that Lupin decided he wanted to live the life of a werewolf, a creature of darkness, and cease being the fun-loving, lighthearted man that Sirius Black would quite willingly die for.

"You must, Remus," said Sirius, firmly. "You must be stronger than this."

"You can't even begin to understand it, Sirius," said Remus, almost snappishly, ignoring the look of hurt in Sirius' blue eyes. "It's a primal urge. When I transform, I don't quite understand what happens to me. But I remember afterwards...and I remember biting that person last night."

"Did you know them?"

"No. I didn't know them."

Sirius was curious, despite the underlying horror he felt at what Lupin had done. "Was it a man? A woman? A child? Wizard or Muggle?"

"Stop it!" Remus clasped his hands over his ears. "No more questions, Sirius!"

"I'm sorry, Remus. I don't want to hurt you. I just so want to understand what drives you..."

"What drives me, Sirius, is the need to transform once a month. Nothing else. If I didn't have that, what would I be to you? Just another wizard. Nothing special, noone of consequence."

“Absolute crap.” Sirius was more vehement than he meant to be, but calmed himself down. “You were the brightest student in Gryffindor. If people knew that it was you who helped me and James get top marks while yours suffered…” They had made a pact with Remus long ago. He enjoyed seeing his friends succeed – although he’d given Peter Pettigrew up as a lost cause.

Remus waved aside Sirius’ defence almost idly. “I’m nobody special, Sirius,” he reiterated. “Just another guy. Just a twenty-two year old wizard who can’t sever the ties with Hogsmeade simply because he got so used to the Shrieking Shack.” He looked around the rickety house with barely concealed dislike. “You and James and Lily and Peter…you have the world at your feet. All I have at my feet…” He looked down, and for the first time realised he was still naked beneath the blanket. “Is the floor.”

He moved across the room to the chest of drawers where he’d put his clothes and pulled them on. “I want to be like you,” Remus carried on. “But I’ll never be like you. I sometimes feel…”

He fell silent and moved to stand in front of the mirror, wincing at the lacerations on his arms and chest. He slid the robe over his slender shoulders and it fell in soft waves, covering the evidence of his self-mutilation. Sirius remained silent and watched the other man carefully. He’d never seen Remus like this.

“Sometimes I feel that I need to be with my own kind,” Remus finished, slowly. “Other…you know. Werewolves. Perhaps that’s why I lost control. Perhaps that’s why I went out and bit someone. Because I need someone who…who’s like me. Who understands what transformation is like, who…”

Sirius could feel desperation, cold, violent, almost all-consuming welling up in his throat. “I know what transformation’s like, Remus,” he blurted, and almost instantly the tall young man had vanished to be replaced by a shaggy-coated, bear-like dog. Despite his current sense of concern, Remus cracked a smile as the dog stared up at him with huge, brown eyes and wagged its tail.

“Padfoot…” He patted the dog’s head, gently. “Padfoot, change back.”

The dog whined slightly and put its head on one side. Remus turned away, stifling a laugh. There was something so appealing about Sirius-in-Dog-Form. But now was not the time for tickling Sirius’ tummy. He forced himself to look stern. “Change back.”

There was a pause, then an inrush of air. Sirius pouted at Remus. “You’re no fun sometimes, Moony.”

“We have to find my…” He balked at the word ‘victim’. It seemed so…unlike him. Yet…

Remus Lupin was no fool. He knew that the driving force of the lycanthrope was to spread its taint, to bring the moon-lust to as many humans as he could manage. Yet in his twenty-two years of life, only six of which had been werewolf-free, Remus Lupin had controlled that insatiable urge. He was unfailingly proud of that achievement, and now he had broken it.

Sirius sighed and patted Remus gently on the arm. “Your new companion. I know, Moony. I know.”

Remus looked at him gratefully. Sirius had the uncanny knack of making everything seem somehow brighter. He considered the other man for a while, then sighed.

“We can’t tell Peter or James. Or Lily, for that matter.” James’ fiancée, whilst dear to Remus’ heart was still…well, who she was. That she had gently rent their seemingly unbreakable foursome asunder had left a raw and bleeding wound somewhere in Remus’ soul. It was sheer jealousy and well he knew it, but still.

We can’t tell.

We can’t tell…

How well those words stuck in Remus’ mind. How constant and vivid the memory of them. Unwilling to succumb to the memory, he dug his nails into the flesh of his arm, but still the memory assailed him.

* * * * *

"Remus! Come back here!"

"Mama, I only want to run on ahead..." The six-year old boy with the untidy light brown hair and large, intelligent hazel eyes pouted at his mother. "It's not often we get out this far from home..."

"Walk with your mother, Remus." His father, a burly, well-muscled man was walking alongside the slender, pretty woman who had called his name. Remus both loved and respected that man. But there was something about him tonight...something about the gun that was over his shoulder. He was on a mission this night, and a mission that would not be denied.

Remus slowed down his youthful run and fell into step next to his mother, slipping his small hand into hers.

"Your father wanted us to come with him on this hunt, Remus. There is something out there that's been killing all the livestock on the farms and it is your father's duty to the village to do something about it." Remus' father was the village peacekeeper, and the little boy nodded sagely. His mother continued, pushing a lock of hair out of her son's eyes. "He did not want to leave us alone and unprotected. So we must stay with him. Do you understand?"

"Yes, mama, I understand." Remus was a good boy, she thought, squeezing the child's hand affectionately. Good, well mannered, quiet and gentle, her son was growing into a person she was becoming very proud of.

The family continued walking.

And not one of them had noticed the glittering eyes in the shadows that had watched their progress.

Until it was too late.

Until Remus had screamed in sheer terror as the huge beast leaped out of the darkness, knocking him away from his mother and pressing him to the ground. Briefly, as fleeting as a snowflake, Remus' eyes had locked with those of his assailant and he was filled with the hideous knowledge of what was going to happen.

Then the teeth had sunk into his side and he had remembered no more.

* * * * *

When he had regained consciousness the following day, Remus was lying in his own bed, a bandage wrapped around his torso. Through his haze, he could make out the voices of his parents talking in low, anxious voices.

"It was a werewolf. It bit him. I have to do this."

"You can't! He is our son!"

"He will become a monster, Claudia."

Remus did not understand what they were speaking about and tried, unsuccessfully, to sit up.

"You can't go in there and kill a helpless child! Anton, I'm begging you! There must be...another way..."

"Don't cry, mama," he tried to say, but no words came out.

"We can’t tell! You saw what he changed in to, lying in the square. Just thank the gods that he is so weak that the attack left him unconscious! Claudia - he will become a monster with the ebb and flow of the moon's cycle! Do you think he will survive that? Claudia, understand this. We can’t tell."

"You can't kill him..." His mother's tears engulfed her words and Remus knew fear for the second time in two days as the door to his room opened and his father's heavy footfall could be heard walking towards the bed.

"Forgive me, Remus," he whispered, looking down into his son's open eyes, the childish, terrified face. "This is for your own good."

And Remus found himself looking down the barrel of his father's shotgun.

He squeezed his eyes shut.

There was a single gunshot.

* * * * *

“Remus!”

Sirius touched his friend lightly on the arm. The other man jumped as reality settled on him again. Sirius’ eyes softened. “Again?”

Remus nodded. “Again.” The dream, the vision – call it what you will – had been growing steadily stronger for some days now, and Remus could find no discernible reason for it. He had relived that moment one too many times and maybe it was the underlying cause of his urge to bite.

Maybe.

He sighed into the dying fire.

“Let’s go see James,” he said, eventually.