As Water Loves

In the terrible light of the moon, the long hours were wishbones the werewolf snapped wistfully between his jaws. They had never come true before.

ii.

9 June 1994

There was firelight, and a huge hourglass, and the heap of grading sheets Remus had yet to sort through and fill out. There was a half-eaten bacon sandwich on a plate that teetered precariously on a corner of his desk. Everything looked soft and unsteady in the wavering flickers from the hovering candles in the office; as though the objects in the room were only half-certain of what they would have been in steadier light. The windows had been latched and shaded against the coming moon.

It was half past eight by the ancient hourglass Remus insisted on using during a particular time of the month; wristwatch bands, if he had forgotten to remove his watch, were liable to snap during his transformations, and he could ill-afford to keep replacing them. The hourglass was enormous: four feet high and unbreakable, and normally kept concealed in a wooden cabinet where he also kept his spare boggarts and shrimp-smelling sacks of grindylow feed. He could force the malicious creatures into a spare desk drawer at a pinch. Remus, his fingers scrabbling like crab feet as he pulled the parchment grading sheets toward him, vaguely fretted that Severus had not yet arrived with his Wolfsbane Potion.

When he fumbled about absently for his quill, preparing to record Neville Longbottom's full marks (warranted for effort) his fingers encountered the familiar folded parchment instead, weighted down under the inkstand. Remus jerked his hand back as though it had been singed, studying the parchment apprehensively and nibbling at a fingernail; a nervous habit he had been unable to break. He counted consequences, considering the likelihood of Harry disobeying instructions, and how much he would have to hurry to catch up with his work -- glancing at Neville's grading sheet ruefully -- before coming to a decision.

Remus moved his work carefully to one side before nudging over the inkstand and hauling the Marauder's Map out from under it. It was strange how little the crevices of the folds in the parchment had frayed over the years. Dozens of tiny dots crawled over the surface of the parchment, pismire versions of the actual occupants of the castle. He scanned the library and Gryffindor Tower, before moving his eyes over the grounds around Hagrid's hut.

He found Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley huddled tightly together so that their names overlapped and moving across the grounds swiftly, towards Hagrid's hut. Behind the building the hippogriff Buckbeak moved about restlessly, tethered, perhaps, in the pumpkin patch.

Remus kept an unsteady watch for ten minutes, an eye out for any dementors who had moved past the gates into the school grounds, and penitently inking in Neville's grades and progress report. Then Finnegan's. Then Patil's. The children had not yet emerged from the gamekeeper's hut.

Ten more minutes passed, and Remus had become absorbed in casting about for diplomatic terms to describe Gregory Goyle's progress in his class, when he caught sight of Albus Dumbledore, Cornelius Fudge, Carolus Quarry and Walden MacNair moving across the parchment. He dropped his quill, spattering Theodore Nott's record sheet, and pulled the Map towards him.

His eyes widened in disbelief at the four dots leaving the hut, hurrying jaggedly along the edge of the forest.

And further away, in the trees, he caught sight of someone else he had never expected nor hoped to ever see in Hogwarts again.

~~~

12 June 1976

"Why are we doing this?"

The dormitory had been, thankfully, empty. James and Lily had run off somewhere to be alone, and by various unfair machinations, which included drugging his drink at the Leaving Feast, they had managed to throw off Peter. So they had the room to themselves.

Sirius ran the palm of his hand over the side of Remus' thigh, pulling it up, gently, towards his chest, opening him again. He eased nearer to him, into him, tepid stickiness pulling wherever their skin touched. Remus closed his eyes when Sirius mouthed his shoulder messily; it had been good earlier in the evening, but now he was too tired and it had happened too many times to be anything but sore. He wondered whether he would be able to walk in the morning.

"What do you mean?" Sirius panted, and twisted within him, suddenly. Remus shuddered with pleasure, despite himself. "I should think the why would be self evident. Don't you?"

I'll have to stand on the Hogwarts Express all the way home, he thought wearily. No way I'm sitting down on a jolting train after this.

"What I meant was," Remus began hesitantly, voice muffled between his forearms, "are we doing this because it's fun, or because it means something?" The rocking motion carrying them both stopped. Remus plowed on gamely. "Are we still going to be doing this after tomorrow? Are we ever going to be out in the open about this?"

There was silence from the boy behind him.

"And what if we did tell everyone?" Sirius asked behind him, coolly, furiously. "What did you think would happen? That I'd sweep you off your feet, ask you to stay in my stinking little flat in the London alleys, that Lily and James and Peter would throw us a big housewarming party and we'd live happily ever after?" Sirius pulled out, and rolled onto his back, away from him. "In case you never knew, Moony, happy endings don't happen to people like us."

Remus felt very cold.

The mattress lurched as the body beside him shifted uneasily. "I don't know what's wrong with you. I thought we were just having fun," Sirius whispered fiercely.

"We were having fun," he answered meekly. "I just wanted to know what to expect after tomorrow." He reached behind him blindly, running a cajoling hand over Sirius' arm. "Come back now. Please."

After a sullen moment, Remus felt a warm body press clammily against his back, and the familiar bitter burn. He gritted his teeth, savouring the unpleasant sensations. He had thought he would never feel them again after that night.

~~~

9 June 1994

"Where is he, Sirius?"

Blacker even than his name and gaunt as a lightning-struck tree, he never took his eyes off the wand Remus kept aimed at his heart, and warily pointed, with a finger trembling with certainty, at the boy lying on the floor.

"There."

Remus turned cautiously, squinting through the flying dust motes and fragments of cobweb at the shrilling rat Ron kept clutched to his chest.

"But it couldn't be..." he found himself saying aloud, even as the startled hope that had begin to flutter in his throat half an hour ago, bent over the Marauder's Map, flickered upward higher and faster. He could hardly speak around its beating wings.

"But then...," Remus stuttered, eyes fixed on the man he had hated, burned for, for over twelve years, "... why hasn't he shown himself before now? Unless... unless he was the one... unless you switched... without telling me?"

The man nodded slowly, wordlessly.

He reached for Sirius, then, gathering up a body he could barely feel beneath the filthy, ragged robes, into a fierce embrace. He could feel hair caked and matted with dirt, and the sour scent of unwashed skin. The man in his arms was muddy and soiled and bedraggled, a far cry from the beautiful boy Remus had ached over eighteen years ago, but he felt as though he could have anchored himself to him forever.

~~~

The wolf ran through the purlieus of the forest, flying over fallen leaves and broken branches, the flinty scent of the moon full and sweet in his nostrils. The moon smelt of blood and salt, of the sea she drew with countless predators' eyes glimmering in the darkest depths.

The big black dog bounded in his wake, relentless in its chase. The wolf dimly remembered there being other beasts before, a stag that leapt and kept him inexorably at bay with its arrow-sharp antlers, and a rat that squeaked and cowered fearfully in corners and the crooks of tree roots whenever he snapped at it in annoyance.

But tonight there was only the dog following his footfalls.

He turned into a thicket of trees, sprinting onward a few more yards, then doubled back upon himself with lupine cunning, paws darting surely over the silent forest floor, to crouch behind the trunk of an oak tree. Stilling the anticipatory growl that hummed deep in his throat, the wolf waited with the twitching patience of birds.

An owl flew overhead; small animals scuttled in the undergrowth, away from the coming battle. The wolf parted his jaws to lick at his ebony lips, his ivory fangs. His tongue tasted mud and thistles in the night wind, and the salty promise of blood.

After an age, the big, black dog padded forward into the clearing, the wolf's living shadow that had been unwillingly cut free. It looked to the left, then to the right, an anxious whine rising from its throat. It panted in the open air, breath rising in clouds of steam, raising its muzzle to sniff at the clouds and moonlight.

The werewolf gathered himself, power and blood pooling in the sickle-curves of his haunches. The hunger-water a sweet pool in his mouth, the wolf coiled back, and leaped.

Although his claws scraped at the dog's ribs, his fangs clicked over empty air. The dog had turned at the last moment, rolling over on its back and scrambling to right itself. It turned, snarling and slavering at its attacker, fur rising over its scarred, scrawny flanks; the wolf's paws were speckled with scarlet, and he could have howled for satisfaction if the battle were over. But it was not over.

Again and again, they flew at each other, foreclaws and backclaws raking at tender underbellies and catching in the crevices between their ribs. But though the werewolf's teeth groped and nibbled towards the dog's tender throat and the hot vein within it, the dog twisted and flailed like a salmon on a fishing line to avoid his bite, and did not bite back.

Finally, the dog tore itself from the wolf, losing patches of fur in its retreat, and pulled back, licking at a wrenched paw. It scampered to the edge of the forest clearing back in the direction of the castle, injured and exhausted. It looked back at the wolf, wretchedly, regretfully, before it loped away in defeat.

~~~

10 June 1994

Hours later, awake and human, Remus found blood caked beneath his fingernails.

He made this belated discovery lying in his musty bed, on the morning he was to leave Hogwarts. He knew Peter had escaped, all through his carelessness. He knew the Sirius and the children had nearly been kissed by the Dementors, because he had neglected to take his potion. He knew Sirius was once again a fugitive, and likely never to have a proper home and a little peace while Fudge remained Head of the Ministry. He knew he had tendered his resignation to Dumbledore. He knew that he ought to get up and make his way to his office, and gather his belongings to leave the room clean for its next occupant - most likely Severus. Perhaps it was this last thought that made him lift his hands above him instead, and spend long minutes studying the sanguinary crescents that tipped his fingers.

Absently, almost as though he had no idea what his hand and mouth were doing, Remus scraped the underside of his fingernails against the edge of his lower teeth and, suckling carefully, neatly lapped the blood up. When his hands were clean, he got up and dressed, and went off to drain and collect his grindylow tank.

Remus also keeps his secrets.