summer_jackel | My Fandom Kills Puppies...

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My Fandom Kills Puppies...

So. New fic, anyone?

Let me explain myself. Musesfool, in her LJ, got bored and requested fics based on her (very cute) avatars if there were any bites. I looked through 'em, not intending anything, and then one of 'em kinda...well...reached out and bit me. It was such a short and easy fic to do, I had to write it.

But. It's Harry Potter. I generally won't even go near HP fanfics (unless Musesfool writes 'em, she's that good ;). So I went and broke my cardinal anti-HP rule. There will never be another one.

But I have to admit I did want a shot at these three chars.

So. Fic is to be had in the comments of this post. Be warned; it is m/m/m, NC-17-ish, angsty, and involves critters, or at least wizards in non-human shape. It was supposed to be about Sirius, but really is mostly about James, I think.

Disclaimers: these characters not even close to remotely being mine. Happens after 'Order of the Phoenix', so spoilers.

It needs a title. If anyone would be so kind?

And of course, if you give me feedback, I will be so very, very happy.

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Outside the house, the night is clear and cold, and lonely. The monster in him can sense the coming of the moon, and as always he can feel its eagerness spilling into his heart with bloodstained glee. The man in him is too tired to be frightened or resentful anymore, to rail against it as he once had or to welcome it as he had once even longer ago.

Remus Lupin stares moodily at the potion for a moment before downing it in one smooth gulp, his throat tightening at the bitterness, his stomach lurching in revulsion as he bites back a gag. Sharp it is, so bitter, as though he were swallowing all the schoolboy poison in Severus’ jealous heart---but he is grateful to the Potions master, and at any rate never could hate him, not even back then. He is sad now that their old rivalry never died, when virtually everything else has.

And if the brew is bitter, it is welcome, for a lesser pain might briefly distract, and it is so much less bitter than the rest.

“You can’t take that!” Molly had protested in horror when she’d heard the ingredients, “it will kill you!”

“Better than the reverse, my dear,” he’d told her lightly with a kiss upon her worry-furrowed brow. “Afterwards, I take the antidote, you needn’t be concerned. Just be a dear and don’t tell Harry.”

He had lied to her, of course, though only through omission. The antidote he has ready for the next morning is always too little, too late. Remus can feel it burning into him, caressing his vitals, touching him in a closer way than Snape ever had, curing him, killing him by degrees. He wonders sometimes if Severus could have made it gentler, if this is a calculated and deliberate revenge, a species of murder. He no longer cares.

There was a remedy with joy in it once, but it is gone now, so long ago.

When the change comes, the were snarls in fury, held in check by its chemical chain. The man breathes relief that the killer is denied. Mere wolf and harmless, Remus Lupin stands on the rug in the room that had been Sirius’, and the simple animal in him does not understand.

Run, it calls to him, run beneath the moon and in the trees in the beautiful autumn air. It does not understand why it must den now, why it must stay inside. The house whispers encouragement, stroking the pent killer; there is in this house that which would welcome a werewolf. There is anguish in the house, fresh sorrow and old malevolence.

The house grieves as the man grieves. The wolf is only confused.

Was there not a pack, once, others who took him in the depths of the woods and ran beneath the moon?

He is a tall wolf, huge, but gaunt, a little bony, and without the were’s mad gleam his yellow eyes are only tired. His pelt was once silver, thick and gleaming in creamy moon---

---(“God”, James had said once, “you’re beautiful when you’re an animal---”)

---(“He’s beautiful even when he isn’t a wolf”, Sirius smirked, and kissed him as he held him down, “And he’s always an animal---”)

---but silver has long since gone to dusty gray, and the scars in his skin have made the fur rough, uneven. The long, clean lines of his canon bones seem too fragile for his weight, but then that is a common illusion with wolves, too light, too graceful to be what they are. His paws are worn, claws blunted.

The wolf lays his long muzzle in the coverlets, smelling, searching, the need in him unbearable. It has been two phases of the moon, and his scent is almost gone---cruel, time was ever so cruel to them, too short. Don’t do this, begs the man, don’t do this, he is gone, but the wolf cannot understand and buries his black nose in the featherbed they had shared, and remembers the soft flews of the black dog, tongue caressing him, and scent, pack scent, brother, hunt-mate, love.

Where is the black dog?

And the man says, wearily, Sirius is gone, there’s no use in it.

The dog? The stag?

To an animal, time is malleable. The moon phases, phases, and it is all the same woods, the same running, the long and joyous endless hunt. A wolf understands loss, but not always the permanence of loss. Before Snape’s potion, the monster’s killing lust occluded the searching, wistful frustration of a simple wolf, and if there is anything Remus regrets about his colleague’s invention it is this.

Aware of himself and who he is, Remus Lupin does not leave the room, but he cannot stop his beast’s sorrowful searching, the knife-fanged grief that tears him within.

Oh, Sirius.

The wolf curls itself in a dusty ball in covers that had been Sirius’, that they had shared so briefly those last few stupid weeks. Wasted, for they had not been savored for the precious things they had been, for all the things they had never said.

He remembers the feel of Sirius’ thin body against his, the sharp point of bone at rib and hip, the feverish animal heat. Their scent is fading from the empty bed.

Remus Lupin lifts his scarred gray muzzle and howls, calls fruitlessly for a remembered pack.

“Full moon night, Moony, have we plans?”

James’ smile is languid and full of mischief, all mussed black hair and willow slenderness and so beautiful that it is all Remus can do to keep himself from climbing onto him and nipping that smile away with wolfish kisses. There is that hint of wildness in James’ eyes, play that is just this side of cruelty, eagerness. Remus cannot resist it and does not want to.

They are eating their lunches on the sun-drenched lawn. Sirius shakes himself like a dog and bares his teeth playfully at James. “I don’t know about you, mate, but I have plans for him tonight.”

“Oh do you, Master Padfoot?”

Sirius’ laugh is a bark of joy. So much later, when Remus holds the gaunt and battered thing his Padfoot has become between his knees in the antique tub, he pours warm water across his lover’s pale back and nuzzles it gently. Remus remembers that pure and hopeful, baying laugh, wishing that the water could cleanse away his regret and all the awful years.

Wolf and dog run again that night, rough gray fur and matted black. Muzzles share breath, and the dog’s wide mouth closes on his nape, so carefully. When Sirius mounts him, it is so achingly familiar, so wonderful, the very feel of youth again. But Padfoot is lighter now, wasted by grief and dementors and running, and it is all new, all different. There is so much between them that they do not know how to begin to say it all.

It is enough, thinks the wolf as the dog covers him, caresses him with paw and tongue and member, captures him utterly, it is enough.

But he never again hears that pure and baying laugh.

***

A deer is a prey animal, and they tease James about that, especially when Wormtail is not with them to become offended and shy. You know what wolves do to deer, don’t you?

Oh, you try it, you just try it, boys.

James’ languid, secret smile is enough to pool the blood in Lupin’s cock, when he stares across the room at him in Potions and lets the spark of fire leach into his deep and deerlike eyes. He knows it, demon thing he is, and tortures Remus whenever he can.

At night, in the chamber they all share in Gryffindor, it is the dark of the moon, and Remus slips soundless behind the heavy curtains of the bed. “You shouldn’t tease a wolf like that,” he whispers, and James lifts a dark brow as the other boy encloses him in wiry arms.

“Pull me down, then.” His mouth is hot, his soft voice low and angry with passion. “Moony, pull me down.”

So there are times when he is only too happy to be taken. But the king stag, the hart in his prime, is no natural quarry of wolves, and in the full belly of the moon when he stands tall with the clear light silvering his tines and the glossy musculature of loin and shoulder, it is Lupin who submits, ultimately, always.

“You’re just outclassed, Moony, “ Sirius laughs, showing teeth and eyeing James like he were part of lunch and not company for lunch, “what’s needed is dogs if you’re going to take stag. That’s how it’s done.”

“Oh, ho!” Light dancing in the dangerous eyes, catching blue highlights in the messy black hair, the pale and tender skin, makes something melt in Remus, curl upon its back with the sweet, delirious pain of want.

“Dogs, plural,” laughs James, gesturing with his wand. “You’d need a whole pack, mate, if you ever wanted any hope.”

“We have a pack,” Remus breathes quietly, and the intensity in his eyes is enough to still the banter in James’, make his own want well up like a cornered thing as Sirius lays his head in the grass as close to Lupin as he can without being obvious.

It is a dangerous edge that they run, Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs, and there is not always joy in it.

Running, endlessly, and there is not anything so beautiful, nor any magic so potent as the giddy truth of hoof and paw on grass and stone, and clear, cool air and moonlight. But silver head raises and lips curl back, scenting, were rising in the wolf.

The black dog barks a warning and the tall hart nods his fine head, the dewdropped membrane of his cervine nose understanding distant human spoor. The werewolf turns with hunt-madness in his eyes, and the dog lunges, grabs his scruff and pulls him down.

In earnest, they fight, snarling and yipping. Frightened, the rat scuttles into the grass; the tawny stag lunges forward just as the wolf, thinner and wilier, slips free of the dog. Remus growls and dances aside; James chases, his head lowered, his antlers wicked, deadly and sharp.

Prongs is the strongest of them; he outruns and boxes the werewolf in, teases and goads him. Sharp fangs graze flesh, pulling away a strip, freeing bright blood in a pure, warm torrent. Suddenly Moony obeys instinct and dashes for that tender and ultimate place in the stag’s belly. Prongs whuffs rage, lowers his head, and the sharp tine comes up beneath his tormentor’s long, silver jaw.

I’m done for, thinks the human in Lupin, distantly, as the wolf crumples, as the dog lunges in horrified fury. And maybe it is for the best. You can have me, mate, you can have me. And you are both so beautiful.

***

Later, he comes to, a boy again, and feels the inexpert bandages covering his sore neck. James and Sirius are arguing, or rather, Sirius is dressing down his miserable and silent companion.

“How could you? Damn you, you almost killed him!” Sirius’ eyes are wild, his voice shrill, practically quivering with pent and manic energy. James hunches miserably on the bed, but Remus can sense the rage building in him, welling and terrible and ugly.

“But he didn’t,” Remus breathes hoarsely through his torn throat, “He didn’t.” And suddenly there is the shaking haven of Padfoot’s arms, and James’ heaver presence enfolding them both. “Have I told you,” he sighs, “how much I appreciate you people?”

It is a game they play, stag and dog and wolf, and then autumn and the rut comes and they play it in earnest. Then there is the rich earth scent, the ginger and pumpkin so pervasive in Hogwarts twined into their hair and their clean male scent as Sirius licks the tight plane of James’ belly, lower. Remus exhales, the tendons in his jaw flexing as his cock flexes, immediately, undeniably full.

“Why so shy all of a sudden, Moony,” James teases, his voice a low growl, and that is all he needs, all he ever needed.

Beneath the harvest moon, Prongs stands glaring and rampant, his neck heavy and thick with the sturdy muscle, curling fur and deep musk of a king stag. His antlers are many-tined and branching, and they tear and refract the moonlight as his graceful, deadly-sharp hooves tear the rich, black earth.

There is a fine madness in the hunter-brown velvet of his eyes, and for the first time, Remus feels at the advantage, for there is no human spoor on the air, not this night.

The great black dog pads up, wagging in that stiff way that is more wolf than dog, and Prongs lowers his magnificent head to caress the blunt, black, mastiff’s muzzle. Remus’ heart seizes in his narrow lupine chest, and he thinks, this is magic, then, no, this is life. This is why.

Sirius licks the deer slowly along the high, refined plane of his cheek, beneath the liquid eye, then gently, so gently takes the soft nose in his jaws in a parody of the killing grip. Prongs whuffs hard, shivering, and for a moment, they only stand there in the moonlight.

The stag rears back suddenly, and bells, and races off moon-swift into the forest. Sirius bares his teeth, white and fierce as the gleam in his eyes; the male tip of him is brick red against shaggy black fur, and that in itself is enough to breathe fire into the wolf’s eyes, and blood, and bone. Remus’ muzzle curls in a doggy grin.

And so they run, long, hard, until their tongues loll from slavering jaws and it is only a delirium of speed and chasing and biting autumn air, the irresistible beauty of James’ scent on the wind, and theirs, mingled.

They catch him eventually, of course. They catch him high on a bluff, October winds catching in the curls of his rut-thick neck smelling of pine and seaweed, and he is so ready as they pull him down. The killing glee does not rise in him, were rage or wolf’s simple practicality; this is something else entirely. The stag, giving of himself, is not prey.

Sirius rises above him, strong and glossy, so full of joy. Lupin holds Prongs carefully by the nose, tastes sweet blood and sweeter musk, the pulse of life in his shaggy throat and thinks, yes, please, this and only this, here and now, forever.

But forever is something that all the magic in the world cannot create, and Moony, alone, lifting his muzzle to the ceiling of the dusty, grieving house, understands this. The wolf will too, in time.

There is a quiet knocking at his door, and before Remus can bark a worried protest, Harry slides in, his cat-green eyes apologetic and nowhere near wary enough.

Appalled at the risk, the werewolf curls his lips back from his dagger teeth in a lupine expression he knows is most impressive. Harry, hopelessly brave child that he is, only watches him appraisingly; at least there is a wand in his hand.

After a moment, he shrugs and sits down on the bed. Lupin tucks his muzzle into long gray paws, hating how it hurts him to look, to be so near. The years have put growth on Harry; he will have his father’s grace and willow-suppleness, Remus thinks, though there is more of Lily in the bones of his face and the kindness of his eyes. Really, that last is an improvement, which James would be the first to admit.

And the shadows, the new pain in his young features which shines when he thinks his friends are not looking, the brittle loss: that is all Sirius. Not Harry, the thin wolf thinks, closing his tired yellow eyes, not Harry, please let him be spared all this, but it is too late already and they both know it. Were they really any of them ever just boys, just children?

“I heard you howling,” sighs James’ son, who Remus loves as though he were his own, with a fierce, forlorn protectiveness. “I thought you might want company.”

Oh, child of my pack. Lupin shows his fangs again, rumbling softly.

“Snape’s potion keeps you safe,” Harry says softly, watching the wolf with cool, level eyes that hold too much grief. “You won’t hurt me. Anyway, I don’t think I care.” Then, “I miss him. Remus, I miss him so badly. I never had the chance to know him, even.”

Any of them, Lupin thinks, and sighs, and gives it up, whining softly. You never had the chance to know any of them, and I, who did...never enough time, there is never enough.

Harry reaches out carefully, and touches Remus’ soft, notched ears, brushes the silky, threadbare muzzle, reaches finally under the long jaw where Prongs’ old mark still leaves a deep line bare and shiny. Someday, he thinks, I will tell Harry that story, or at least try. If there is time.

The old wolf lays his head against Harry’s knee as the boy strokes him absently, and together they watch the silver moon track slowly through the darkness. Outside the house, the night is clear and cold. For now, it is enough.

fin

Wow. Thank you. That's lovely and sad.

yay, you liked it, I'm so pleased. :) My only HP fic, and one of the very few m/m stories I've ever done (mostly b/c I'm never sure if I'm getting it "right"), I was a little worried about this, um, puppy. You, of course, have the Sirius/Remus thing down par exelance.

So sad and so beautiful. I love how Harry is so defeated at the end, and Remus' resolve to tell him a little more about those who loved him, those he never knew.

Thank you. =) I didn't want it to be totally unremediatedly dire...I wanted it to have a little hope at the end...just a tiny little bit. It pleases me to no end that the story seems to be having the effect I wanted.

Oh, my. Beautiful! (See icon!)

*laughs hard at your icon!!* LOLOLOL
I'm glad you like it. =)

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