(no subject)
Heyooo here's more of the Remus-Lupin-is-a-murderer-OR-IS-HE AU.
Sirius Black is 26 years old when he floos into the upstairs fireplace of the British Auror consulate just outside of Nice, France, and promptly trips over the dead body lying across the hearth.
“Bugger,” he hisses, mostly because he’s hit his shin on the sharp edge of a side-table, and not necessarily because he’s noticed what it is that he’s tripped on. When he turns, and does notice, he adds, “Fuck.”
He stares at it.
It’s a body. It’s on the floor. It’s a man, a middle-aged man, with grey in his hair and blood on his mouth, and thick, ragged scars lining his hands and face. There is a greenish and strangely porcelain quality to the skin; it looks both brittle and rubbery. There’s a bad break in one of the man’s left fingers. His eyes are half-open. He’s lying face-up on the floor, and he’s definitely dead.
“Fuck,” says Sirius again, slightly awed. “What the f - ”
“Whos’er?” A voice filters in from the next room, which is dark, and half-hidden by a dingy curtain hanging over a corner of the doorway. There is a shuffling noise, and then an unintelligible mutter; an uneven spread of buttery light spills across one wall and down to the floor, and a big, square shape lumbers into the doorway in silhouette.
“Ah - “ Sirius grips his shin and finds his gaze shifting back to the corpse at his feet. “I’m from London -- “
“You’re early,” says the shape in the doorway, which has a rough Northern voice and the edge of perhaps several tumblers of whiskey. “Auror Black, was it?”
“Yeah, I -- “ he straightens. “Junior. Magical Beasts.”
“Ah - Black,” says the shape, as it steps forward into the room and reveals itself to be a hulking man with great bristly hair on his head and chin, in shirtsleeves and vest, tweed trousers, heavy boots, and a thick blackwood wand stuffed down the front of his waistband.
Vigilance, thinks Sirius, automatically, in Moody’s cantankerous roar.
“Acteon Grimwoard,” says the man, extending a thick-fingered hand. “British liaison.”
Sirius grips it, suddenly aware of how clammy his own palms are. “Sir.”
“Ach, call me Grimmy,” says the man, and his face splits in a harsh-edged smile. There’s a wide, dark gap in the front of his mouth, where two teeth are missing. “You’re the one they’ve sent in the Lupin sighting, aye?”
“Yeah,” Sirius finds his eyes drifting to the dead body by his feet. “Yeah, s’me. I, ah - “
“Bit of a young one for this kind of work, aren’t ya?” Grimwoard sticks him with a skeptical side-eye as he moves to behind a heavy, darkwood desk, piled with papers and books, and begins to rifle through the detritus. “This one’s as armed and dangerous as they come, so I hear.”
“Not heard wrong,” Sirius mutters, dragging his gaze upward. “Got a personal stake, is all. Argued for the case.”
Grimwoard hums, big hands shifting a stack of a dozen-odd books in one go. Then, he pauses, as something seems to clarify. “Not, Black, is it?” he narrows his eyes, the meagre light catching their reflection. “That Black?”
Sirius feels his jaw go tight. Yes, it’s me, fuck off. To be famous, he thinks, for having your whole life fall apart around you in the blink of an eye. It does grate on you, after a while. It does make you want to strangle a few half-dozen unsuspecting strangers every now and then, he thinks, for giving you that very particular look of recognition huddled in a sappy varnish of pity.
“Yeah,” he says, instead. “That Black.”
“Christ -- “ says Grimwoard.
“ -- could you,” Sirius interrupts. “Just. D’you know you’ve got a dead bloke on your floor?” He jerks his thumb at the corpse beside him.
Grimwoard looks confused for a moment, and then smacks his forehead with an open palm. “Ah! Sorry, there. Did say you were early -- was gonna get the boys to deal with it before ya came in. We only picked him up this morning, y’see.”
“Who -- “ Sirius risks another glance at the waxy face.
Grimwoard shrugs. “Picked him up at a rubbish dump outside the city. Someone thought it might be Lupin. Not him. But definitely werewolf, I’ll give ya that. Went at the French boys with claws out, if y’get my drift.”
“How d’you know -- “ Sirius feels that familiar lining of bile start to build up in the back of his throat. “Not full moon for weeks.”
“Tattoo,” grunts Grimwoard, gesturing with an elbow at the man’s form. “Registered ten years ago or so, by the number.”
“He’s British?” Sirius’s gaze snaps back to the other man. “What the hell’s he doing all the way down here?”
“Loads of ‘em,” Grimwoard grabs a thick, moldy-looking file from underneath a dust-encrusted French-to-English dictionary. “Ah -- here we go. They all come down this way the last few months, seems like. France law not so hard on ‘em. Can get a job, don’t need to be checking in at the Ministry every thirty days, people don’t look at ‘em so queer, you know?”
Sirius shakes his head. “Hadn’t heard that. Just the suicides.”
“Aye, that too.” Grimwoard comes around the desk again and extends the file to Sirius. Sirius can see his gaze pause and slide, shifting down into the space of the dead man’s own half-opened eyes, blank and shadowed. “Although, can’t be sure this wasn’t one o’ those either, I suppose. By Auror, and all that.”
He feels his throat tighten again, like it’s already begun to grow a thin coating of mold in the dusty room. The file, when he takes it, is heavy and almost sticky to the touch, part of the leather binding crumbles off against his fingertips. When he flips the cover, the name is there, like it’s always there -- REMUS JOHN LUPIN -- and a helpfully descriptive statement -- WEREWOLF ALWAYS ARMED AND DANGEROUS -- and a copy of the wanted poster -- WANTED FOR MURDER, TREASON, MAGICAL BEAST MINISTRY TRUANCY -- always the front page, looking just like it did when it was printed in the first months of 1982 and Sirius pinned sixty-seven of them up on the walls of his apartment like an obsessive child.
In the poster, Lupin is nineteen, wearing a v-neck jumper and a faded oxford shirt, unbuttoned at the neck. His hair is just past his jawline, with that awful, awkward cowlick that was only made worse by a hack job haircut by James a few months earlier. He has scars on his neck - the long one, and the short one curved like the sliver edge of the moon - and across his face - the three of them stacked across his right eye and the bridge of his nose, strangely clean at the edges, like the beginning smudge of a crosshatch. In the poster, Lupin raises his downcast eyes, notices the camera, and flashes an eyetooth: that beared-down not-quite smile of discomfort when asked to present himself. It lasts a half-second -- Sirius has counted all of the ones he’s ever seen -- and then there is a bunching in Lupin’s jaw, and he lowers his gaze, his head turned away. And then it starts again.
They asked him for the photograph.
They asked him for a photograph, really, and it was the only one he had that he first saw that wasn’t brimming to the margins with James, or Peter, or Lily, or Harry, or himself, so he grabbed that one, the one that he took of Lupin when they were nineteen in the kitchen of James Potter’s house at 11:36 in the morning (or 11:38, something like that, close enough). And so this is the face of Remus Lupin that has been staring at him every day for the last five years. From billboards, his own apartment walls, then pub doors, then train stations, then through other torn posters, then from the Ministry’s list, then from his own desk, and now from other people’s files.
“You’re gonna be the one to catch ‘im, then?” says Grimwoard.
Sirius wrinkles his nose a little, flicks the edge of the wanted poster. He’s heard that tone before.
“Yeah,” he mutters. “Suppose so.”
“You don’t think he’s ended up like the others?”
“What others?” he lifts the edge of the poster, tracing his finger down
“The ones that cannae take it any more,” says Grimwoard, gesturing vaguely. “Themselves.”
He shakes his head. The poster falls back into place. Lupin’s eyetooth flashes.
“Nah,” he says. “He was always a fucking coward.”
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