The Effigy: Chapter Four (part 1, continues)

[nyxfixx]

4.

Remus went home to the cottage he shared with Sirius, and by the time he got there, Sirius, just as he’d said he might be, was indeed there ahead of him, vastly excited by what he’d discovered following Bagman as Padfoot.

“Augustus Rookwood!” he’d crowed. “He’s the one, I’m sure of it. Ludo hit a few more pubs after we left, got himself good and pissed, and then dropped in to catch a spot of exotic dancing at Salome’s Veil down at the end of Knockturn. And who should show up just as Bubbles the Great was halfway through her Dance of the Vanishing Mists but that fine, upstanding Ministry official … Mr. A. Rookwood!”

Remus tried to imagine a big black dog creeping inside an after-hours strip club without being seen by any of the bouncers and came up a bit short. But Padfoot was nothing if not ingenious, he knew.

“Quite an eye-opener, in any case…” Sirius was musing. “I must say, that Bubbles has the most enormous pair of-”

“This is suggestive information, Sirius, certainly,” Remus interrupted. “But hardly conclusive. We’ll have to wait and see how and if the planted information filters into the Ministry. Rookwood might have been there for any number of reasons. After all, he could have come just to enjoy Bubbles and her huge set of-”

“Oh, honestly, Remus,” Sirius interrupted. “I’ve never taken old Gussie for a wizard who’d frequent sleazy strip joints in the worst part of Knockturn Alley, have you? Not at all his sort of thing - he must have been there for Bagman, not Bubbles, well-endowed witch though she is. You’ll see that I’m right, in the next few weeks. How did it go with the … the effigy? No problems?”

Remus blinked at this question, and found himself doing some very fast mental back-pedaling. He was still unsure what, if anything, he intended to tell Sirius about the magical reflection he’d cast, and he still needed some time to think it all over. All he knew for a fact was that he never wanted Sirius to cast this particular spell again; but he really had no idea at all of how he would go about explaining his feelings to his friend.

“The … effigy … served its purpose perfectly,” Remus finally answered, after some hesitation. At least he could be truthful on that score, up to a point. “I have no doubt that it looked absolutely convincing to anyone who might have been watching. It was … it was extremely lifelike, you may be sure. But …but right now … I’m tired and I’d like to get some sleep. We can discuss everything in the morning, all right?”

Sirius looked at Remus sharply. He’d heard the slight strangeness in the tone of Remus’ voice, of course. Remus sighed. It was damned near impossible to hide emotional upheaval from Sirius Black. He could sense the subtle twistings of the heart as unerringly as Padfoot could sniff out a bone.

“Remus?” Sirius promptly asked. “Did anything go wrong? Was there some problem with the spell? Did you-?”

Right on schedule, Remus thought to himself, both resigned and annoyed, and sighed again. “Look, Sirius - I really am completely knackered. Everything worked fine, all right? We can go over all the details tomorrow. I’m going to bed.”

Sirius, of course, was also perfectly capable of sensing when Remus had shut the iron door, and he’d temporarily abandoned all further questioning as a pointless waste of time and energy. So, they had gone to bed, just as Remus had insisted, and though Remus had imagined that he’d find sleep elusive that night, in the end, he turned out to have been mistaken. Fatigue and the evening’s excitement and all his uneasy indecision about what to say to Sirius had worn Remus out more than he’d known, and he’d fallen deeply asleep not long after his head hit the pillow.

But only an hour or two later, he’d awakened suddenly in the dark, and had sat bolt upright in the bed he shared with Sirius.

He could see nothing, and he heard nothing other than the soft, even breathing of Sirius in bed beside him. But something had awakened him abruptly - he just couldn’t say exactly what.  He fumbled about on his bedside table for his wand, feeling for it in the dark.

Sirius beside him stirred, aroused by Remus’ movements, and then spoke, voice thickened with sleep. “Mmmm? Moony? Something - something wrong?”

Just as Sirius was shaking off the last shreds of grogginess and sitting up in bed himself, Remus’ hand closed on his wand. He took it up and muttered “Lumos.”

The sudden dim glow revealed Sirius’ effigy, standing silently at the foot of their bed like a specter and gazing at both of them intently.

Sirius uttered a short, sharp cry and Remus dropped his wand on the bedclothes between his knees. The effigy’s face was painted with changing shadows as the light at the end of Remus’ wand was muffled in the blankets.

“What the fuck?” Sirius gasped, hand pressed against his chest.

“You!” the effigy barked, glaring at Sirius. “You idiot! You fucked up the Arithmancy calculations! I’m still here!”

Sirius gazed, slack-jawed, at his magical copy for a long moment. Then he turned slowly to Remus.

“Was there … anything …about tonight … that you forgot to tell me, Moony?” he asked.

Remus managed to get his own wild breathing under control enough to sigh a bit. He might have known that in the end, he’d be the one to get blamed for the whole bizarre fiasco.

“I went to the pentacle, just like I was supposed to,” the effigy was saying. “My purpose was fulfilled, my time was closing, everything according to plan, no hitches. I stood there and I waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing happened. You got my duration interval wrong, Sirius.”

Sirius was getting out of bed, shaking his head. “Not the only thing I got wrong, apparently,” he muttered, with a small accusing glance at Remus.

“I was going to tell you, Sirius, really I was,” Remus said. “I just didn’t know … exactly … how to put it. I needed to sleep on it.”

“Hmmph,” was Sirius’ only reply. He began to rummage in the large chest where he kept all his notes, implements and magical supplies. Remus retrieved his wand and lit the lamps at either side of the bed.

The effigy drifted over to where Sirius was furiously pulling stacks of untidy papers and so forth out of the chest and looked over his shoulder.

“It’s not his fault, you know,” it said to its creator. “Are these your notes? Is this where I came from? What a mess! Honestly, how can you find anything in here?”

“I know where everything is…” Sirius answered absently, still shuffling through stacks of scribbled notes and calculations. The effigy touched his arm to get his attention. He jumped a bit, and then forced himself to look it in the eye. Remus was struck by a sudden realization of how terribly strange it must seem to Sirius to do that.

“What?” he snapped at his magical copy.

“Sirius. Sirius, please…” it answered, after a pause, in a small voice. “Please tell me what I’m supposed to do now?

Sirius stared at himself for a moment, and then slowly put his own hand on his copy’s shoulder and squeezed a bit. “I … we… the first thing we’re going to do is see … where we went wrong on the formulae, all right? We …we’ll need to recalculate your interval.”

“Oh. Oh, that’s good, then. Yes, that makes sense,” the effigy said.

“Ah, all right, here we are,” Sirius muttered, gathering a motley assortment of notes into a single bundle. “These are my calculations, and here are some of the development notes, lists of ingredients, some of the original incantations … Remus, come here, would you? I want you to rerun my formulae, recheck them, see if you get the same results as I did … and … and you …” he said, glancing again at his effigy. “When did you first notice that you’d become …aware? Do you remember?”

Remus rose from the bed and took the stack of Sirius’ papers over to the bureau and pulled a quill out of one of the top drawers while Sirius guided the effigy over toward the bed.

“Sit down for a moment,” he said to it. “Think. What do you remember?”

It sat down slowly and then looked up at him. “I don’t know. There wasn’t a specific moment, exactly. It was just … I just felt more and more … alive. Moony was talking to me, and I was listening to him, and I … I remembered how much I loved him … and …”

Sirius was staring into his reflection’s eyes. “You remembered that you … loved him?”

“Well … yes and no, in a way. I did remember, yes, but I was also thinking it was ridiculous, you know? Because how could I ever have forgotten it in the first place? I’ve always loved him.”

Sirius sort of sagged into a sitting position beside the effigy. “But you can’t have, you know. You can’t always have loved him, because four or five hours ago, you didn’t exist at all. You … you have no history.”

The effigy looked intently at Sirius. “I have yours, I suppose.”

Sirius buried his face in his hands and groaned. “Godric’s Blood. This is, without a doubt, the most bollocksed-up botch of things I’ve ever made!” He uncovered his face and looked at the effigy again.

“I am so sorry,” he said. “You must know I’d never have wished any of this on you deliberately. I’m sorry for what I’ve done to you.”

Oddly enough, the effigy smiled. “I think … we … may be a bit too eager to take all the blame and snap up all the guilt, if you don’t mind my saying. It’s not entirely realistic. You thought I’d just be an empty-headed straw man, I do understand that. Nothing in my head, nothing in my heart, not much more than surface to me at all. But you know, I actually don’t mind being a little more than that, when all is said and done. Even if it is only for a little while.”

Remus had just finished double-checking Sirius’ notes and brought them back over toward the bed where Sirius was sitting side by side with his effigy. He was struck, for a moment, by the sight of them side by side like that, legs loosely crossed in precisely the same way, dark heads tilted at the exact same angle. He felt a minute tightening in the muscles of his lower belly, a faint and passing heat in his skin. His steps slowed momentarily, and then he shook it off.

“All right,” he said to both of them. “I can’t find anything wrong with the calculations, per se. But I do have an idea. Sirius, did you factor in the Law of Three-Times-Three when you were running these formulae?”

Sirius blinked. “No, of course not. It’s essentially a transfiguration spell. Three-Times-Three doesn’t apply - I didn’t cast the spell on anyone, I just transfigured a preexisting object. A reflection from a mirror.”

“Is that right?” the effigy said, interested and a bit impressed. “That’s really very clever, I must say. Magically defining a reflection as an object. I think I’d have guessed contagion and sympathy rather than transfiguration as the essential principles, if I’d had to hazard a guess.”

“Well, there were some small elements of contagion too,” Sirius assured his mirror image. “A touch of sympathetic magic as well. I did use some of my hair, sweat, and a drop or two of blood. But the real heart of the pentacle was the mirror and the reflection in it, because-”

“Because you had to have the image as the baseline, right? But you also had to separate the image from the mirror, yes? And to keep the magical framework fluid, you must have-”

“I used mercury, that’s right. But I had to balance it out with-”

Remus snorted, trying not to laugh. They both looked up at him, slightly startled. The two of them, it appeared, would very likely have been content to talk shop all night long, if he didn’t interrupt them. He felt an unaccountable sense of bemused delight.

“If the two of you will forgive me for interrupting your little chat, I was still wondering about the duration interval and Three-Times-Three. Sirius, it’s true that the Law only applies if you’re casting a spell on a sentient being, so it was logical not to allow for it, originally. But your …your copy, here - he is a sentient being. Or he was, as soon as you brought him into existence. So …”

“What are you saying?” Sirius asked. “Are you saying that-?”

“I’m saying that I think you got the duration interval right until he materialized in the pentacle. But as soon as that happened, and he was sentient, the Law was invoked retroactively. I think the interval increased by a factor of three the moment he appeared.”

Sirius and his copy looked at one another for a moment.

“That could…” Sirius began.

“Make sense,” the effigy finished.

“So, then, the correct interval would be-” Sirius said.

“Eleven hours and fifteen minutes,” Remus said, and moved around the bed to his bedside table, where he picked up his watch. “Of which, about five hours have already elapsed. It’s almost midnight now, so ...”

“Ah. All right, then,” the effigy said, sounding a bit relieved. “So, I’m done about … a quarter after six this morning.”

Sirius stared at the effigy, hard. “And that … that doesn’t bother you?”

“Of course not. Why would it? At least I know where I’m going and exactly when I’ll get there. But you and Remus - real people - you don’t. Frankly, I don’t know how you can stand it, not knowing. All that uncertainty would drive me round the twist.”

Remus sank down into his side of the bed while he thought about this. Profound philosophical questions coming on top of profoundly weird magical mishaps seemed a bit much to him, at that moment. Sirius, slightly amused, grinned at the effigy.

“Oh, well,” Sirius said. “Part of the price one pays for being human - not really knowing anything about anything important. In a way, the uncertainty can be … what makes it interesting. It’s just something we all get used to.”

“With varying degrees of success,” Remus added. “Mortality has always presented something of a problem to the thinking being.”

Sirius chuckled. “Moony here has the makings of a first-class cynic somewhere in him,” he remarked to the effigy. “That’s why he needs a scatterbrain like me on his team. To cheer him up.”

“I know he does,” the effigy said, also chuckling.

Remus did not know whether to be charmed or irritated by this apparent like-mindedness between Sirius and his magical copy. On the one hand, it was amazing and entrancing and an utterly, utterly unique experience. On the other hand, he just wasn’t sure how much he liked the idea of the two of them ganging up on him.

They were both looking at him, identical fond smiles on their handsome faces.

Remus felt another small stirring in his lower belly and this time, he correctly identified it as an owl-post from his libido. His scholar’s mind immediately supplied a literal translation:

Potential once-in-a-lifetime erotic encounter! Golden opportunity! Seize the day!

He did his level best to squash these stirrings before they could take hold and cause him to do something untoward. His libido might not have any standards of decency or conscience, but his higher intellect certainly did. He opened his mouth and heard himself talking to the effigy.

“So, now that we know how long you have, the question is - what are we going to do with you for the next six hours? We’ll have to think of some way to pass the time…”

Remus heard the slightly husky tone in his own voice, and could have strangled himself on the spot for making such a suggestive remark.

Both Sirius and his effigy had also clearly heard that husky tone as well, since they both immediately came to full attention in all the subtle ways that Remus, over many years of being Sirius’ lover, had learned well. Their bodies shifted slightly on the edge of the bed, turning to face him more fully. Sirius tossed his head lightly, shaking his hair back out of his face. The effigy’s posture changed by a fraction, spine curving fluidly and head tilting just a bit to the side. The effigy’s nostrils flared a tiny touch and Sirius’ lips parted minutely. They both gazed at him intently, both sets of pupils dilating.

And then they both smiled at him, both spontaneously displaying that uncannily beautiful smile that was for Remus alone. An expression that had always melted Remus’ heart on sight and that he had never had one iota of resistance to. This time, magically doubled before his eyes.

Another message from his libido followed; this time, a Howler:

OH! OH YES! GIMME THAT! AT ONCE!

“Hmmm…” Sirius purred. “Moony, did you have some specific pass-time in mind?”

“Mmmm…” the effigy also purred, and glanced at Sirius. “He looks like he knows some wonderful secret, doesn’t he?”

“Maybe he does,” Sirius said. “He’s certainly blushing enough.”

“I’m not blushing,” Remus asserted forcefully and completely untruthfully.

Sirius turned to the effigy. “You know, I think the real question is - what would you like to spend the rest of your life doing? Any ideas?”

To Remus’ great surprise, the effigy blushed. Sirius seldom blushed; he was so rarely embarrassed by anything. Remus discovered that he found it delightful, seeing that slightest rosy cast on Sirius’ cheeks, even if they weren’t really Sirius’ cheeks. His belly tightened by another notch and he felt a heat rising in his nether regions.

“Well, I …” the effigy said, and paused to swallow. “Moony did sort of … promise me a kiss at the pub, earlier tonight…”

“Did he, now?” Sirius asked, with a certain comical severity.

“I think he was just being polite, though,” the effigy quickly added.

Sirius laughed outright. “He is very well-mannered. Everyone says so.”

Remus had had just about enough. “You supercilious wankers can just stop making fun of me right this minute! It’s hardly fair, you know, both of you! And stop talking about me as though I wasn’t even in the room!

“You…” he then said to the effigy. “Come here.”

The effigy grinned, delighted, but then paused and turned to Sirius. “Is it …is it all right? You don’t mind, do you?”

Sirius’ face curved into a slow sensuous smile and he settled back a bit against his pillows. “Go ahead. I can deny him nothing, after all.”

“You know, I have a strong suspicion that I won’t be able to either,” the effigy said. He leaned in toward Remus, stretching himself across Sirius’ legs. “So … Moony, old thing. Moony. May I kiss you?”

Remus looked into the effigy’s beautiful face, taking in the full, expressive mouth, the milky skin, the glossy black hair and the bright eyes. Then he glanced at Sirius, taking in all the same familiar features once again. A previously undiscovered door opened in his mind and heart.

“Yes,” he said to the effigy. “Yes, you can kiss me. In time. But kiss him first, though.”

He waved his hand at Sirius, who, to Remus’ distinct pleasure, immediately also blushed, thus completing the resemblance to his effigy to the last, intimate detail.

“Oh. Oh, wow,” Sirius said, very quietly. “I … I don’t know…”

The effigy was staring at his maker. “That … that would be …”

“… incredibly strange,” Sirius finished.

Remus smiled. “Just think of it as-”

“The most unbelievably complicated example of masturbation ever devised?” Sirius asked sharply.

“If you like…” Remus said, now grinning. “Go ahead. Do it. Unless, of course, you’re chicken…”

Both Sirius and his copy looked mortally offended by this comment.

“Both of you,” Remus added.

“Hmmph,” Sirius snorted, and put his hands on his mirror image’s shoulders and pulled him closer.

“Right, then,” the effigy snapped, and curled himself into Sirius’ lap and put his arms around his neck.

Their heads tilted toward one another and a sheaf of Sirius’ hair fell forward into the effigy’s face. He brushed it away slowly, and their lips met. Met and held, and then met more deeply. It was the most insanely erotic sight Remus had ever seen in his life. The burgeoning erection between his legs promptly firmed right up and began to throb.

The magically enhanced kiss went on, and deepened still more, and Sirius put his hands into his copy’s hair and the effigy dropped his hands to Sirius’ waist and pressed himself more fully against his creator. Remus’ mouth slid open as he watched them and his breath became ragged. The two of them finally broke apart with an identical weak groan.

“Voyeurism…” Sirius gasped.

“Exhibitionism…” the effigy gasped.

“God Almighty,” Remus gasped. “Do it again.”

Sirius and the effigy both burst out laughing.

“He doesn’t look at all kinky,” the effigy remarked.

“I know,” Sirius said. “He looks like a tweedy, bookish, stodgy stuffed-shirt of a professor. It takes everybody in.”

“But we can deny him nothing,” the effigy added, and put his hand to the fastenings at the collar of Sirius’ robes and stroked the partially exposed skin of his throat. “May I … would it be all right if I …”

Sirius slow smile became unimaginably sensuous as he arched his neck into the effigy’s caress. “Ask Moony. He seems to be the one calling the shots here.”

The effigy duplicated Sirius’ sensual smile precisely and kissed Sirius’ throat while gazing directly into Remus’ eyes.

“I was wondering if you’d like to see a little more skin, Moony?” the effigy asked.

“I find that I wouldn’t mind too much,” Sirius put in, also staring into Remus’ eyes while slowly running his hand down the effigy’s backbone. “In case you were concerned…”

“I … I’d like to see a lot more skin,” Remus answered, breathlessly. “Now. Please.”

Sirius chuckled; it sounded almost like a purr. “We have our orders,” he said to the effigy.

Sirius only had light silken bed-robes on, loose and comfortable and easy to open. The effigy, of course, was still dressed in a perfect copy of Sirius’ street robes, from earlier in the evening. The two of them seemed to have hit on some unspoken mutual agreement, because they concentrated on unwrapping the effigy’s more complex costume first. Sirius pushed the cloak off the effigy’s shoulders and let it fall to the floor while the effigy undid all the fastenings at his own throat and at his breast and shrugged the loosened fabric off of himself. It pooled around his waist and Sirius laid his hand on the effigy’s now bare chest.

“Would you stand up for a moment, please? Don’t trip on all these clothes, though.”

“Moony?” the effigy asked. “Do you want me to stand up?”

Remus nodded silently, absolutely rapt.

The effigy rose to his feet and the bunched robes at his waist slipped down his hips and legs to the floor. Sirius reached out and curled his hands around the effigy’s almost bare hips, gathering the waistband of his copy’s pants into his hands. He glanced over his shoulder at Remus.

“Shall I? Last chance to change your mind, you perverse thing.”

“Change my mind?” Remus answered him. “Are you mad?”

Story Continues