SDS - Changelings - 11/13
CHANGELINGS
[ masterpost]
Chapter Eleven: 1981
In the Gryffindor common room, Remus and Sirius are up late. Sirius to burn letters, Remus to read books. It's a suitably ironic ritual, Remus is beginning to think, and proves just how different they are from each other.
Strange that he almost likes it, then.
"What are you reading?" asks Sirius, mostly because he doesn't like silence. It's thanks to his three friends, though mostly Sirius, that Remus has developed great skill in being able to talk and read at the same time.
"Jacques Prévert," he says.
"Pervert?"
"Prévert, Sirius."
Sirius huffs and skewers a few more fat envelopes on the poker he's transfigured into something along the lines of a trident. Regal and pouting before the flames, he looks a bit like Satan, the tempter.
"I liked the Kafka bloke's better. Man had the bollocks to write a nine page letter to his father, detailing his complaints. I bet Master Kafka didn't send him any Howlers." Sirius pokes another letter onto the trident and holds it over the fire, as if he's roasting sausages.
"Hermann Kafka was a Muggle. I doubt he was sending anyone Howlers."
"Muggles have it good," says Sirius, edging his letters into the centre of the flames. Remus lets all the retorts that come to mind fall away. Sirius is hardly in a good mood, no need to press him on sore points.
"I didn't think you knew German," says Remus instead. "You had me translate whole paragraphs for you, and hung over my shoulder the entire time, trying to pronounce it."
Sirius looks up. "Oh, no, I don't know any. Just French, thanks to Mummy dearest and a legion of tutors." He gives the little book in Remus's lap a withering glance.
"Then you might want to rethink your stand supporting Kafka's bollocks," Remus informs him. "He had a huge inferiority complex when it came to his father."
Sirius shakes his head. "'A true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, and knowledge of human nature'. Sounds pretty scathing to me. I think you've been fooled, you and Kafka both. He's no weakling."
"How do you remember all that?" demands Remus. "I translated that sentence for you two weeks ago!"
Sirius shrugs and twists his ring. "Easy," he says. "Just remembering." He tosses a letter in Remus's lap.
"Keep this one for me, will you? It's from Andromeda, and I don't want it mixed in with the others." He gestures to the pile that's built up over the course of the week.
"Sure," says Remus, and goes back to his little book, keeping it carefully angled out of Sirius's line of sight. If Sirius realizes he's not only reading in French, but reading French poetry, he'll never hear the end of it.
Sirius taps the trident on the hearth, knocking off the last of the shriveling ashes. He reaches again for the pile and spears new ones on.
"How did you learn so many languages?" he asks.
"What?" says Remus. He's in the midst of "L'Ordre Nouveau", and rather wishing he wasn't. It hits a little close to home, even if the drama with Rosier and the others is more than a month old by now.
"Your languages. Why did you decide to learn them?"
Remus laughs softly. "Dumbledore, actually. When I was little, I was mostly home schooled, after…after. So I could learn what I felt like. Dad told stories, more like fairy tales really, about a Professor who spoke a thousand languages at a magic school up in Scotland."
Sirius's lips quirk. "You would choose to learn them, Moony. I spent most of my time finding new ways out of the house. I could see the lights from the windows."
"Lights?"
"Soho. It's always lit up, all through the night. I would try to run away to the light. There was a trellis, down to the garden. It would never hold my weight now, but I think it's still there. I always climbed down at night, to chase the lights all over London. Half the time I couldn't make it back by morning, and there would be this little boy in wizard's robes, wandering about and scaring the milkmen."
Remus gives a muted laugh and picks at the corners of his book with his nails. "The horror of the neighborhood, no doubt."
"No doubt," echoes Sirius, gazing at his charred letters. "Which is your favorite? Language, I mean."
Remus leans back in his armchair and thinks about it. He knows four fluently; choosing one feels like selecting one of his fingers as the best and chopping the rest off.
"I feel like I should say Welsh."
Sirius snorts. "I didn't ask what you felt like you should say."
Remus just shrugs. "It's where I come from. I feel like I owe it the place of favorite. For Mam, especially."
"It's all about where you're coming from, and where you're going. Isn't it?" Sirius says. It's not a question; it sounds like a supreme law of the world.
Remus isn't sure it's right. Laws can be rewritten. Rules can crumble.
"What about…now?" he asks. "Surely now matters a little."
Sirius gives a little dry, humorless laugh.
"No one cares about now. Surely you've noticed." He gestures at the piles of letters, now flaming and slipping between the logs in the fire like salamanders. "Now is just a phase."
"Phases are important." Remus can see the moon, waxing gibbous, rising across the windows of Gryffindor tower.
"I'll believe it when I see it," says Sirius.
Seeing that this discussion will get nowhere, not tonight anyway, Remus changes the subject.
"Do you still remember your French? I haven't heard you speak it since…first year, I think. And even then it was just to annoy everyone."
Sirius chuckles and grins. "Maybe I should try that again. But apparently it wouldn't work on you, seeing as you'd understand everything I'd say."
"Padfoot, I don't understand half of what you say in English," Remus informs him.
Sirius leans over and gives his shoulder a shove. "You'll just have to learn to listen," he teases. There's a pause. "I guess I do remember it. My French. It's one of those things that just doesn't go away, I suppose." He fiddles with the trident, out of letters to burn. "My cousins have stopped speaking it. They say it's unpatriotic or disloyal or something. Apparently their stupid leaders only speak English, so that's what they're going to do, too. Or maybe it's just because Bellatrix speaks the worst French I've ever heard."
"A delicate flower, your Bellatrix," says Remus. He's never forgotten the curse Bellatrix used on Platform Nine and Three Quarters. It's been over two years now.
Sirius stands and stretches. "Finish up your perverted French book and let's go to bed. I think McGonagall's about to assign one of her Essays of Certain Death. We'll need a bit of preemptive sleep."
"She does have that glimmer in her eye again," says Remus, standing and handing Sirius Andromeda's letter. Sirius takes it and transfigures the trident back into a poker.
Remus spares a last glance for the moon, a last thought for phases, before they head up the stairs.
On day before the full moon that falls in November, Hogwarts is covered in snow that's been coming down almost constantly for the past week. The teachers are starting to consider tunnels leading out to the Herbology greenhouses.
James is helping Peter with his Animagus transformation in the dormitory, so Sirius volunteers to keep Remus busy.
It's noon on a Saturday, and the snow is falling in little flurries. They take the last of the fags Remus gave Sirius for his birthday and climb on top of Gryffindor tower, slipping and swearing until the find a good spot to settle down on the icy tiles.
"We're going to catch hypothermia out here," says Remus, mostly to make conversation. He's not really worried, even if they are sitting hundreds of feet in the air on a snowy rooftop.
"And then Wizardkind invented the warming charm," says Sirius. The words come out funny because he's already got a cigarette clamped between his teeth. It tastes papery and cold.
He pulls one out of the packet for Remus who flexes his fingers, stiff from the cold and stiffer from the impending moon, and says, "Light it for me, Sirius."
Sirius puts it between his own lips, sucks a little, and lights the tip with his wand. He takes a tiny drag, and then leans over and presses it between Remus's lips.
"Thanks," says Remus simply, and takes a long breath. He closes his eyes and sighs it out. Cigarettes help him relax a little before the moon.
Sirius lights his own. He likes the feel of the heat so close to his face, the brightness of the ember on the end.
They're quiet for a bit.
"You know," says Remus around his fag, "In 1981 the full's going to fall on your birthday."
Sirius looks surprised. Remus laughs at him.
"Why the face? It's all predictable, you know. I could tell you for every year. Not off the top of my head though. I can only remember the important ones."
"How old are we in 1981?" asks Sirius, tapping his cigarette on his knee. Remus reaches over automatically to brush the ashes off Sirius's robes. No need to give McGonagall an excuse to throw them into more detentions than they already get.
"Twenty, twenty-one, about. Depends when in '81 you mean."
"Yeah, that sounds about right," Sirius says.
An owl becomes visible through the clouds and snowfall. It tumbles shakily towards the owlery, no letter visible. It's nice to see an owl without another letter waiting for Sirius.
"It's actually a goal of mine," says Remus.
"What is?" asks Sirius, trying to track his smoke through the air. It's difficult; he can't tell what's from the cigarette and what's frozen breath.
"1981. I realized the full would fall on your birthday years ago. I decided…." Remus pauses and quirks his lips, gesturing with his cigarette held shakily between two fingers. "I decided that it was my goal to make it to 1981."
Sirius feels as if he's got no breath in his lungs.
"Live 'till 1981, you mean?" It's surprisingly hard to say.
"Yeah." Remus gazes up at the gray sky, then turns to Sirius. "I thought you knew. Not about that year, about my life expectancy."
"I do," says Sirius, teeth clamped around his cigarette, crushing the filter. He adjusts the fag a little, so he can finish it without biting off the end.
"It's a bit of a long shot, you know," says Remus. There are snowflakes in his brown hair.
"I know."
If the world were a book, Remus thinks, they would have ended the moment like that and gone back inside, but they've got a good amount of cigarette to smoke before they start burning the filters. It would be a waste.
He doesn't think Sirius will talk again, but he does.
"What are we?"
"People. Well, maybe one-and-a-half people."
Sirius sighs out a laugh, husky with the smoke in his throat. "You make it sound so simple."
"Isn't it?"
"I can't help it. The details get in the way," Sirius says, taking a particularly hard puff.
"It's not so bad, when you look at all of them at once. 'People' are just a summary of details."
"Do normal people spend their Saturdays sitting on top of towers in the snow, smoking birthday cigarettes?"
"I couldn't say, Padfoot." Remus is always oddly patient with him.
"Probably not," says Sirius. Their knees are touching. "Poor buggers, normal people."
Remus laughs and leans his head on Sirius's shoulder.
"Right," he says.
They sit like that, watching nothing happen.
"You nearly done?" asks Sirius.
"About." Remus takes one last drag. "Yeah, done."
Sirius stands and helps Remus up. His joints crack almost comically loud.
One after the other, they throw the burning dog-ends as far as they can over the edge of the tower. Neither tries to see where they fall, just clamber back up the slippery tiles and back through the trap-door.
The moon that comes that night puts Remus in the hospital wing for three days straight. Once Pomfrey finally releases him to classes, he takes to spending all his free time in the library in an attempt to catch up on all the make-up work.
"If you were in trouble, they'd help you, right?" asks a voice from the stacks.
Remus jumps and spills his ink bottle across an absolutely horrendous essay on unicorns. He'd thought the library would be mostly empty, with everyone down enjoying lunch or playing in the snow on the first sunny day in what feels like ages.
"What brings you here, Lily?" Remus asks, shakily clearing up the mess with his wand. The essay still looks a little stained, but it was hardly legible to begin with. His hands are covered in thick gauze and bandage, which does nothing for his handwriting.
"I'm trying to think of a list of advice for muggleborn students," she says, chewing on her quill.
"Is it really that bad still?" asks Remus.
"Not yet. I think Rosier getting thrown out scared off the worst of them." Her green eyes are dark and serious. "I don't see it staying this calm. That hardly felt like a resolution. Anyway, you're avoiding the question, Remus: If you were in trouble, wouldn't they help you?"
"Who?" asks Remus, even though there are only three people in the world she could be talking about.
Lily looks down at her work. "Your friends," she says.
"I thought you hated them."
"Oh, I do. I definitely do." She looks up again, stares right at him. "But I have to trust them, don't I? Trust idiots to face Rosier and Lestrange and Wilkes like they did that day. I wasn't even there. I walked back up to the castle. I have to trust them to help you when you need it. You're one of them, Remus. They'll help you, right?"
Remus pales.
"If I needed something, sure," he says, reaching for his quill again.
Lily sighs and rubs her forehead. The winter sunlight makes her hair a harsh red.
"Are they helping you now?" she asks, voice direct and strong. "They are, right?"
Remus's hands clutch the edges of the table. He fights down the urge to bolt. She's just hinting. She's not screaming or frightened or running for Dumbledore.
"Do I look like I need help?" asks Remus.
Now Lily goes pale. "You look like you're - oh, that's morbid. Yes, I think you do. And I have no idea what to do or where to start." She stabs her quill with particular viciousness into her ink pot. "So I have to trust them."
"They're not that bad, Lily, if you'd just give them a chance."
She gives him a withering look.
"Really, when you're not around James isn't nearly so bad."
"What a great comfort," says Lily dryly. "Are they helping you?"
Under all the bravado she looks so much like she just wants to hear a yes.
"They're just kids," says Remus, unable to look at her. "They're great friends, but they can't be expected to work miracles."
"So they're not." Her words are hard, clipped.
"Listen, you don't know them so well. They do help out when I, er, need it. They've helped me more than you can ever know, Lily. They've done enough," Remus finishes fiercely.
"Right," Lily nods stiffly, gathering her papers. "Right. I'll see you later, Remus, I'm going to go get some lunch."
She disappears between the bookshelves. Remus sighs and rubs his face gingerly. What the hell did she want him to say? That he knows he looks like he's terminally ill. That, by some technicalities, he really is terminally ill. It's not like he, or his friends, can help it. There's nothing anyone has ever been able to do to cure a Werewolf since the earliest documentation of lycanthropy in ancient bloody Persia.
He leans his throbbing head on the table and glares blearily at the unicorn essay. Footsteps approach.
"What was Evans doing here?" asks Sirius, throwing his bag on the table.
"No idea," Remus lies. "Maybe studying? I'm sure you've heard of it." He glances up at Sirius. "I have a strange question."
"Mmm," says Sirius, half-listening. Remus sighs.
"Do I look like I'm dying?" he blurts, all at once.
Sirius freezes for a second, just a second, then flops down into the chair across from Remus.
"My twenty-first birthday, Remus, you promised," he says, gaze steady.
"I didn't promise," whispers Remus, rubbing his head. "I made a goal, it's different. I try to only make promises I know I can keep."
Sirius's eyes are more steely by the minute, and Remus thinks he can detect a little panic in them, and a lot of words Sirius can't say. Maybe he doesn't know what he wants to say.
"I strongly suggest you take the leap and make that a promise." Sirius's hands fist on the table. He's inescapable; magnetic. "Promise me."
Remus looks around for Madam Pince or stray students in the shelves. He leans forward.
"Sirius, that is insane."
"Promise me. Before I go kill Evans for suggesting you look like a walking corpse," Sirius hisses.
"Bloody - she didn't say that!"
"Promise me. 1981."
"Sirius, will you let that go! I didn't even mean to tell you," whispers Remus. "I'll do my best, alright?"
"No," says Sirius. "Promise. And for my birthday that year I'll want another promise. Then another, then another." His voice is low, rough but sure. "Promise me."
There's no saying no to Sirius. Not really. He's saying it before he means to.
"Alright. I promise."
Sirius claps his hands and stands. "Great. Smashing. Come on, Moony, let's get some lunch in you. And me. I'm starved."
"Where's Moony?" asks James, alone in the common room when Sirius trots down the stairs. He's missing a shoe and suspects it's probably in one of the rafters.
"Packing. He'll be a while. Apparently socks are supposed to be folded."
"Madness," snorts James. He looks up from his Quidditch magazine. "You're still sure about going home? My parents would be glad to have you back. They say they never cared about that garden shed, anyway. And last Christmas was loads more entertaining with you around."
"Of course it was," says Sirius, scanning the vaulted ceiling. "But I think Mother and Father would just drag me back to London, kicking and screaming. I don't need your parents to see that."
James shrugs. "They're purebloods too. They know the Blacks."
Sirius snorts. "I'm still surprised they let me past the front door. Did you know Pete's mum won't let him even mention my ever visiting Bristol?" Sirius looks around. "Where is Wormtail, anyway? His stuff's still strewn across the dorm. I don't want to touch it, and it's on my things."
"Er, yes. Wormtail's actually in the hospital wing." James, the evil bastard, is suppressing a grin. "He's trying to explain to Madam Pomfrey that he has no idea just how he shrunk his liver to about the size of a pin."
Sirius winces. "Merlin, how small is a rat liver, anyway?"
"About as small as his-"
"Padfoot and Prongs, you nutters, I know you can hear me!" shouts Remus from the dormitory. "Who thought it would be a grand idea to turn my scarf into a snake?"
Sirius looks guilty. James looks envious.
"Because I'm currently on top of James's bed, trying to fend it off with his collection of Stalking Lily Evans photographs. They aren't the best weapons against FANGS you know."
James jumps up, panicked. "You're WHAT? Keep your voice down, mate!"
"I've surrendered to my fate," calls Remus. "These photos are too disturbing. They've slaughtered my survival instinct."
"THOSE ARE WORKS OF ART!" shrieks James, taking the stairs two at a time.
"Bugger," says Sirius, watching him go. He drums his fingers on his own hip, for lack of a better surface, and snatches up James's abandoned Quidditch magazine. A hidden copy of Transfiguration Today falls out of the pages.
"Prongs, you strange man. You're a closet student."
He searches the common room for a bit until he finds an abandoned quill and a half-dry ink pot. Opening Transfiguration Today to the page James has marked - new developments in partial human transfiguration - he scribbles:
Prongs: Haven't we waited long enough? When can we TELL HIM?
After a second's consideration he underlines it about five hundred times, then casts a quick drying charm, listening carefully to the continued thumps upstairs. He closes Transfiguration Today and tucks it inside Quidditch Quarterly, leaving it all on the armchair James just vacated.
Finished, he climbs out of the portrait hole and heads for the hospital wing to rescue Peter from the clutches of Madam Pomfrey. Packing can wait, of course. Preferably forever.
There is absolutely no word from London over Christmas. Not a note, not a present, not a single broken trinket shows up by owl post. In Wales it rains. Presents come from the other two. Sweets from Peter, who's invented something he calls a Chocoball for the event. It's dark chocolate around a filling of strawberry mousse and clotted cream, about the size of Remus's fist. They do wonders on the long, cold evenings when everyone sits around the cottage, not angry, but not speaking either.
James sends more candies; sherbet balls and pepper imps and cauldron cakes, along with a new set of temperamental Gobstones. Mam thinks they're unsettling, but Dad turns out to be quite proficient.
Then finally, around New Years, a letter comes, but not from Sirius.
Remus Lupin,
I am Andromeda Tonks, Sirius's cousin. Sirius sent me several galleons before your term at Hogwarts ended, along with a letter requesting that, should he be unable to communicate due to family trouble, I send three people letters admonishing them "not to worry" and to use the money to select each a Christmas gift.
I will be frank with you, Mr. Lupin, as you seem to be the most mature of Sirius's friends. I hesitated to fulfil this request of Sirius's. I am no longer part of the Black family, and I want nothing to do with them and their issues. I have a family of my own now, and we are vulnerable in these times.
Sirius is your friend, Mr. Lupin, and from what I have seen he is that before all else. But to the rest of the world, he is the heir of the House of Black. On his seventeenth birthday he will take over the role of his father as the King of a pack of mad dogs.
I tell you this because I believe knowledge is power, and from what I have heard of you, I think you would agree. And for Sirius's sake, I think at least someone aside from himself should know what awaits him. His parents have less than two years to get him under control. Try as I might, I am a realist. I cannot foresee anything good.
Enclosed is a gift certificate for Flourish and Blotts. Sirius suggested that you would enjoy books.
Happy Christmas,
Andromeda Tonks
Remus sits down hard on his bed.
"That was the most depressing Christmas card I've ever read," he mutters to himself. Again he wonders why everyone seems comfortable coming to him. Why not James, who is admittedly an idiot sometimes, but is also the undisputed leader. At heart he suspects that James is the most mature of all of them.
Very, very, very deep down, that is.
Sighing, Remus eyes his locked desk drawer. He's got to copy this letter down and send it along to James, who should've been the one to get it anyway. It would be much easier with his wand; he's got copying spells down to a few seconds now. Sighing, he pulls out a quill and tosses Andromeda's owl the rest of his breakfast. It gives him a look like it knows it's being bribed, but settles down to pick at the food anyway.
On the train back to Hogwarts the four of them pile into a compartment together. James is loaded down with spiced biscuits, which he passes around, and Sirius conjures up some milk. He's cheerful enough, Sirius, but whenever his grin slips his face becomes tired and gaunt and his eyes flicker like something hunted.
James and Remus exchange glances, worried.
The compartment door slides open and their heads all whip around.
"Merlin, Potter, put that wand back in your pocket. Who were you expecting?" asks Alice Shepperd. Frank leans against the compartment door behind her.
"Hey Shepperd, hey Frank," says Peter. "Don't mind us."
"Have you lot heard?" asks Alice, nearly ignoring Peter.
"Heard what?" asks James, stuffing his wand back into the pocket of his Muggle jeans.
"The Prewett brothers. They're gone."
James frowns behind his glasses. "What do you mean, 'gone'?" he demands.
Frank and Alice dodge as two second years race down the corridor, closely followed by a red-faced Prefect.
"Gone how?" asks James again when they reappear.
"They dropped out. Just like that, over Christmas."
"What?" asks Sirius. He looks like he didn't mean to say anything but is too shocked to care.
"But they only had one semester left!" says Peter. "Didn't they want to be…Aurors or curse-breakers or something?"
"I don't know," says Alice, shaking her head, "I can't understa-oh, hi Marlene."
"Gossiping, Alice?" teases Marlene. Alice flushes.
"Oh, leave her alone, Marlene," says Frank, wrapping a hand around Alice's waist. Marlene's eyebrows shoot up.
"And how long have you two been together?"
"My gossip for your gossip," says Alice with a quick grin. She sobers. "We were talking about the Prewetts."
"Everyone's talking about them, all up and down the train," says Marlene, leaning against the doorway. She sighs. "It's not like they're making a big secret of it. Though they would create all this drama."
James shrugs. "Big exit," he says. "I'd do it too."
"I have no doubt," mutters Frank.
Marlene shoots them all a look.
"I'm being quiet, Marlene," says Peter helpfully. James elbows him.
"Do you know why they left?" asks Remus quietly.
"Just politics," she says, shaking her head. "Listen, I've got to go."
Abruptly she turns and leaves, Alice and Frank trailing after.
"Politics?" Peter exclaims to no one in general. "They're only two years older than us!"
The train clatters on in uncomfortable silence.
"I have heard…" says James, trailing off. "You know, Marlene's older sister, graduated last year? I think she was going to work in the Ministry when she got out of school, brilliant witch, but she changed plans at the last minute. Marlene said the same thing, that it was 'political'."
"Well, they can only be doing something good," says Sirius. "Because they're certainly not aligned with my family."
"Godric," says James, rubbing his temples. "It's like a bunch of secret societies."
Sirius's face flashes for a moment, and Remus sees something terrified and dark.
"Yeah," Sirius says with a tremulous laugh. "Sounds crazy, doesn't it?"
If anyone notices that his hands are shaking, none of them mentions it.
Next Chapter