Resolution On A New Year

Resolution On A New Year

In 1990, when New Year's Eve fell on the full moon, Remus found himself wandering across the wild North American plains near the Alberta-Montana border as he waited for his monthly transformation.

By now Remus had been traveling for over nine years, since the events of Halloween 1981, still unwilling to settle anywhere permanent after all this time. A nomad now, he was methodically working his way through the countries of the world, having reached the western part of North America in early winter. He quickly realized it was not the ideal time to visit, but here he was, somewhere between hope and the cold curtains of hell, waiting for New Year's Eve and his monthly curse to come and go and leave him in peace.

He still heard from Dumbledore from time to time, wondering how he was doing. Every time an owl from Dumbledore came his way, traveling the vast expanse of sea and land to find him (and he always marveled at the owl's uncanny ability to do so), he sighed at the crisp emerald writing, always asking the same thing: When will you return? He always replied Not yet, and sent the owl back to Hogwarts. He felt like Dumbledore's equivalent of the prodigal son, or something. All he knew was that England was far too close; perhaps if he traveled long enough and far enough, he could outrun the secrets and lies that insisted on following him through Dumbledore's missives. Though lately the intervals between the letters had lengthened, so he hoped they soon would stop entirely and leave him be as he wanted.

Remus worked his way across North America by hitchhiking and doing odd jobs; Wizarding if he could find them to keep his skills sharp, though Muggle work was just as welcome and often paid better. Whatever brought him enough money anyway to survive--though he'd been shocked at the harshness of the plains, finding survival there in the blowing snow and cold dryness much trickier than in the cities. On the plains he had to rely on the kindness of strangers more than he'd ever expected.

Like now, as he sat in the relative warmth of the semi's cab, listening to its driver drone on for the moment about how he was going to miss something called the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day because he had to be somewhere called Vancouver tomorrow night, or else.

For the life of him Remus couldn't understand what flowers had anything to do with the Muggle game of football that wasn't even proper football, but some hyped up form of Muggle rugby.

(Though at least he understood the difference between North American football and British football now. He could hear Sirius still mocking him in his mind. Bloody plonker, useless you are at sports! Always were! Now Quidditch on the other hand...)

If Remus thought about it, he could understand how the trucker had been only too happy to pick up the ragged-looking hitchhiker at the truck stop near Sweetgrass on the border. He saw how one too many long-hauls with nothing to talk to but a radio made the driver glad for Remus' company, even if Remus was a man of not only very few words but also with a very odd accent.

They drove mainly in silence, trading the occasional small talk (more correctly, the trucker talked, and Remus listened), until about an hour away when Remus asked him to stop because he'd reached where he was going. The trucker stopped at the wayside, then looked around in confusion at the lonely intersection of highway and range road, seeing no buildings or anything in sight that could speak of a home or even refuge from the weather.

The trucker gave him an all-too-obvious "Are you having a laugh?" look that reminded Remus of Sirius in another time, another place.

"No way. No bloody way, bud. You'll fucking freeze out here," the trucker warned, clearly unwilling to release his passenger to certain death by exposure.

Remus smiled kindly and raised his wand that he'd hidden surreptitiously up his coat sleeve. He'd been afraid of resistance. But the trucker really did not need to know why he was out in the middle of nowhere, so...

"Obliviate," he whispered, and the trucker's face went blank.

Remus simply nodded, smiled again and thanked him for the lift, swinging his rucksack over his shoulder as he opened the door and slid out of the cab onto the frozen gravel.

"See ya round then," the trucker said, still dazed, and shut the door.

Outside the warm and close cab that smelled of heat and processed beans, burnt coffee and fermenting sweat, Remus shivered with the biting blast of cold and watched the semi lumber west on the two-lane highway, until it became a small speck winking out of sight in the falling dusk. Not one vehicle in that time passed him as he stood at the crossroads.

Perfect.

Walking away from the intersection heading south, Remus crunched through the slight dusting of snow on the frozen grass, blades snapping under his worn boots. He felt safer transforming here than he had anywhere else in his travels. Nothing but rolling land and arching sky and bitter cold, not fit for man or beast, far from anything that might approach civilization; here he would not be able to harm fellow humankind. Or Wizardkind for that matter; not that he ran across many Wizards out here but still he was always mindful.

Hunching against the wind, chin buried in his collar, in his pockets he carried stones warmed by magic, curling his fingers around them to keep them from freezing. Though it was early still, not quite evening, the night was insanely cold (later he learned the temperature dropped to below minus twenty-eight, not counting the wind chill). Yet the sky was crisp and clear; the stars appeared magnified in the heavens, not obscured by any sort of smog or haze, extending endlessly through the falling blackness of night.

Looking up at the sky, craning his neck and feeling the warmth slip away, Remus turned to face southeast, towards the star he knew watched over him, even after all this time and space, hurt and betrayal that eventually had led him here to one of the loneliest places in the world. It would not be long now, he knew. He wondered briefly if Sirius saw his namesake star from Azkaban too. Only their relative locations in the sky were different, their respective vantage points half a world, a lifetime, away.

"Happy New Year, Sirius," he murmured, his face open to the cold air. "May 1991 be better for both of us than 1990 was." It was his traditional New Year's resolution, first made in 1981 and uttered every year since. Every year Remus tried to keep his end of the bargain, though largely to little avail. For him, it meant peace, or reckoning; both were in sadly short supply, no matter how far he ran.

He did not need his watch to know the imminent rise of the full moon over the far horizon; the magic in his blood hummed, the aura of his innate lycanthropy casting a faint glow over his body and growing stronger by the second. He found a small hollow, still cold but at least protected from the howling wind. Quickly he stripped naked, shoving his clothes into his rucksack, fastening it securely to the bush, shivering violently with cold. Soon the cold would be the least of his worries. He curled into a ball and rocked back and forth. Not long now--

Then he felt the old familiar shimmer of pain deep in his bones, heralding the transformation, and the last coherent human memory he had was the red-tinged green shimmer of the Northern Lights in the sky, humming to him in counterpoint to the magic, a sort of merciful lullaby to sing him to sleep, even as the animal part of him awoke.

~~~

The sweet, salt-iron tang of blood hung heavy in his mouth as Remus drifted back up to consciousness. Licking his lips, he recognized from the subtle flavour that it was not his own. Thank Merlin for that at least. A glance to the snow-covered grass on his left, at the mangled corpse of something that once might have been a rabbit, confirmed that thought.

His head hurt, as it always did afterwards; there were the usual aches and pains that came from his bones breaking and re-knitting twice in one night. But strangely it felt no worse than any garden-variety hangover. He marveled at that, as he quickly ran through the usual survey in his mind. There were no major injuries beyond those sustained from his transformation.

Even more amazing was that he did not feel as cold as he knew he should feel, given the sub-zero temperature; indeed, he felt almost warm, almost comfortable. It had been a good night then, a very good night, something he had not had since--

Perhaps it was a good omen for the New Year that had arrived. He hoped so anyway. Though he wondered why it went so well.

Then he felt nuzzling on various parts of his body and the sounds of curious sniffing around his ear.

He looked up to meet a pair of pale grey eyes in a jet-black face, staring down at him with a direct gaze so familiar that his heart jumped into his throat.

"P--Padfoot?" he whispered in disbelief.

His rational mind knew it cannot be; it cannot be, for Sirius was safely locked away in Azkaban.

The dog did not answer to the endearment either, so he knew it was not true.

But turning his neck gingerly, Remus met the eyes of the rest of the wild dog pack that stood and formed a circle around his body, panting in unison. He blinked, not understanding at first--

Then the events of the previous night came in flashback, not fully formed memories but snapshots, glimpses of the feral mind that lived only in the shadows of Remus' own; of running, frost lining the wolf's lungs as the wind streamed through its coat, lifting its wolf's face to the moon, howling; the red-tinged green hum of the Northern Lights cascading down on the dusting of snow; and the pack of glorious new mates, this pack, joining the wolf as if by magic itself, matching the wolf's sure trot across the landscape.

The alpha dog, the black one he realized now, had taken the wolf on, challenging the wolf to the traditional fight for leadership; the wolf had been only too eager to oblige, nipping and lunging at the dog, finally establishing its right as new alpha by subduing the dog and digging its jaws lightly into its neck.

Another flashback to the pack accepting the interloper as equal, smelling and bowing to the human now subverted to the wolf; the rest of the pack falling in step behind as the wolf and the wild dog loped together across the prairie, stride for stride.

Howling, romping, chasing prey (Remus vaguely remembered glimpses of taking down an antelope, the roar of fresh blood in his ears)--the wolf had not been one with anything since the last run it had taken with its own pack mates nine years ago.

He shivered again, though not from cold this time. The pack huddled with him, curling around him and loaning him their body heat by instinct to keep him warm. Even transformed back to his naked human self, they automatically accepted him as one of their own, and Remus felt a hot prickling in his eyes.

Not his pack, never his pack, never again--but they accepted him all the same.

He lay recovering as the sun rose on the eastern horizon, climbing higher in the sky, as the day dawned blue and crisp. His adopted pack kept tight around him with their nestled bodies until he rose shakily to his knees to feel around for his rucksack. He shrugged as rapidly as he could into his clothes, stamping his feet into his boots and trying not to wince. The pack still hung close so he was not unduly exposed to the biting wind.

When he stood at last, the alpha dog whined slightly and nuzzled his thigh.

"I'm sorry, but I have to go," Remus whispered, so hoarse he could barely hear his voice. He had done a lot of howling, he realized belatedly. Good howling. Joyous.

The dog gazed back up at him, blinked and bowed its head as if in acquiescence. Remus' hand fell lightly into the dog's ruff and scratched it, officially transferring the leadership of the pack back.

"Thank you," he croaked. He wanted to say more, but couldn't; he hoped the dog understood.

The pack accompanied him back over the prairies to the highway to wait, back to the intersection of the range road, again huddling close to him to keep him warm; Remus charmed more rocks at the roadside so they all could share the heat. They stayed by his side until Remus saw the first inkling of life on the highway at mid-morning, another semi lumbering down the road from the west. The dogs moved off as the semi approached, sitting in a semi-circle and watching from a distance over a small hill, as if ensuring Remus' safety.

The semi stopped and the door opened; a welcome blast of heat from the cab hit his face as the trucker looked Remus up and down warily. The man was not the same one who dropped him off yesterday afternoon, but was definitely cut from the same cloth; big and burly and not a little confused at finding Remus alone in the middle of nowhere.

"You stranded, bud? Need a ride into town?"

Remus simply nodded, his voice too strained to talk.

"Well, get in and I'll take you to Sweetgrass at least. Christ, man, how'd you get stranded way the hell out here? Where's your vehicle?" he asked.

Remus felt the eyes of the pack watching him as he swung himself up into the cab of the semi and closed the door. Back to humanity, back to his life such as it was--but New Year's Day, 1991 had started off far better than he thought it ever would. He watched the pack, still sitting patiently on their knoll, recede in the semi's side view mirror, until they too became specks in the daylight, winked out and disappeared.