Fucking weird.
Title: of Identity
Authors: purple_chalk and nothingbutfic
Rating: Adult
Pairings: Remus/Sirius, James/Sirius, Remus/Snape, Remus/Tonks, Remus/Zacharias Smith, Remus/Various others, possibly with a side of Lily and/or Peter.
Warnings: Um. Genderfuck, identityfuck, non-con, dub-con, pretend!incest, infidelity, AU, character death (maybe), dark, general fucking weirdness.
Summary: Remus is not feeling entirely himself.
Notes: Betas include gyzym and, much more recently (this thing has been long in the making) she_eats_worlds. If anyone says anything about the relevance of this to thedressingroom they get a point. Um. And when I say fucking weird, I mean weird even by my standards.
“You’re insane,” Remus tells Sirius. This is not an entirely new topic of conversation, and Sirius responds to the cue perfectly.
“But Moony-“
“Absolutely not. Do you have any idea how illegal most of these ingredients are? What are you going to do with it, anyways?” The questions are the usual, obligatory ones. It's tradition, this banter; Remus crosses his arms over his chest, and Sirius knows that means he’ll have to try harder.
“Chocolate?”
“You take me as that easy?” The smirk is light, and anyone but Sirius would never have noticed it.
“Want to watch?”
“He’ll kill us both, and then Lily will dig us up to kill us, then him.”
“Yeah, but do you wanna watch?” Sirius repeats, grin plastered haphazardly.
A pause. It’s obvious that Remus has to weigh it heavily in his mind. “If we get arrested,” he says, with a slight air of ceremony, “I’m claiming not to know you.” Sirius takes this as the best he’ll get, which is definitely good enough to be getting on with.
***
The potion is ridiculous. Remus is decent at brewing, but he’s never tried anything like this before. It is, therefore, with a slight air of guilt that he asks Lily for a bit of help. He says nothing to suggest what he’ll be using the information for-he’s far too wise for that, which is why he’s not letting Sirius do the talking-but he does get enough to find out where Slughorn keeps the boomslang skin.
They brew it in a niche that Sirius has found behind a tapestry of Wilhelma the Whimsical, and to pick the fluxweed Sirius has to skip out on a full moon, complaining of a stomach ache. When they’ve finally gotten to the final stage, Sirius neglects to tell Remus how he got Lily’s hair. The potion turns a lovely emerald green, and Remus does his best not to run screaming for the Headmaster’s office as he watches his friend’s features soften, his hair lighten and tumble down, shining like copper in the wandlight, breasts insinuating themselves under unaccommodating robes. They both squeeze back under James’ cloak, Remus breathing a little heavily at the proximity, and manage to make it all the way back to the dorm somehow. Remus keeps the cloak, and Sirius goes off in search of James.
***
Exactly three minutes later, Sirius has dragged James back to the room by his tie, and Remus hunkers down in a corner under the cloak, trying not to feel like a horrible person for instantly hardening at the sight of James, gasping and senseless, pushed against the door by Sirius. Sirius is obviously enjoying it-he makes new and interesting noises when James’ hands sneak up his shirt, and James makes new and interesting noises when he finds no bra restraining Lily’s perfect breasts. The shirt comes off very quickly after that, and Remus has to stifle a small gasp when James’ follows. Clothes pile up on the floor, and Remus’ hand has somehow managed to get into his pants without asking permission.
It is a mark of Sirius’ sheer bloody-headedness that they even make it to the bed. James is moaning ridiculously, and it takes a good bit of handling to get him onto his back, Sirius straddling him obscenely. Remus is afforded a magnificent view of James’ cock, arching up desperate and needy against Sirius’ labia before Sirius takes hold, aims, and drives himself down mercilessly. Instantly, James is proclaiming his undying love for Lily, and it takes a thorough, sloppy kiss to shut him up. A rhythm throughout the room is quickly established, and the ridiculous noises drown out Remus’ breathing, for which he is grateful.
Remus comes an instant before Sirius does, and James quickly follows. There is no warning-it is rather like a tidal wave has swept the room, really, and for that moment they all momentarily forget who they are and what they’re doing and why it is so-so-so wrong, and that moment is perfect and infinite.
Then their hearts start beating again, and Remus is the first to realize that Sirius’ time is nearly up. He has no way of conveying the information, so it is sheer luck that Sirius also remembers that he is not Lily forever, and that he absolutely must get out of there right now. With an extremely lame excuse about the lav, he all but sprints from the room, barely leaving time to grab his robes on the way out. James looks like he’s going to cry.
Sticky and annoyed, Remus is left alone in the room with such an air of rejection that he positively cannot stand to witness. He breathes one lungful of it in, and stands up, clutching the cloak around him. It is with a monumental effort that he makes no noise when he stumbles across the room to stand over James, who is flat on his back and naked and dejected and somehow all the more delicious for it. Remus lets out a little sigh, then draws his wand and calmly obliviates him.
***
“You have to stop doing that,” Remus says over dinner. James is in the Hospital Wing with a reported mild concussion. Peter is notably absent.
“Hot, though, yeah?” Sirius’ smirk over his potatoes is almost unforgivable.
“You’ll destroy him.” Remus toys with the carrots, because he hates the color orange.
“He doesn’t know, and he likes it, doesn’t he? And I know you like it, eh, Moony?”
Remus can only sigh, and try not to fling his carrots at Sirius, because that would be petty and Prefects aren’t allowed to be petty. Sirius takes this as how it’s intended, for once.
“Chocolate?”
“You can’t bribe me out of my guilt, Padfoot.”
“Blowjob?” Three nearby first years do a comical double-take in perfect time.
“Fine, but no more after this, alright? You’ll break him, or Lily will.”
Sirius grins, with the clear indication that half the fun of it all is making Remus fret like this. “Yeah, yeah. Pass the pumpkin juice.”
***
Sirius gets away with it one more time after that, with Remus close on his tail, obliviating carefully. It’s odd that James never seems to notice that Lily’s wearing the wrong uniform, or that her Head Girl badge is absent, or that she seems to have forgotten all those times when she declared that she would rather die, but Sirius obviously isn’t going to be the one to point that out, and by the time Remus would have an opportunity to do so, James doesn’t even remember the whole thing.
The third time, however, the potion never gets finished. It’s the third full moon Sirius has missed in as many months, and Remus wakes up in the Hospital Wing having nearly gored himself. James is sitting by his cot, sporting an impressive sling and looking vaguely murderous. When Sirius shows up just before dawn, James tackles him immediately upon sight. Remus pretends to be asleep.
“No more stomach-aches,” James hisses, slamming Sirius (somehow noiselessly) against the wall. “You know how much help Wormtail is, and I don’t have claws.”
There is something visceral and amazing about this scene, cast in that gray-purple pre-dawn wash of not-light. Remus can’t help but watch from under his lashes, immobile but alert, breathing lightly.
“I-ow, fuck, Prongs, leave off,” Sirius ducks to the left, under James’ arm. James grabs him by the scruff of the neck and throws him back against the wall face-first. Remus can hear the puff of breath when Sirius’ nose gets squashed. It occurs to him that something is very, very perfect about Sirius’ hurt breathing. He hopes James punches him.
Instead, James leans in to growl viciously in Sirius’ ear, “Moony needs us, you fucking idiot. Moreover, intestines should stay on the inside. Your teeth are required. Got it?” He gives a bit of a shove, and Remus nearly whimpers at Sirius’ whimper.
***
After that, Sirius doesn’t ask Remus for any more potions help. He’s skittish around James for a good week, and sheepish around Remus for a good month. January’s full moon, however, goes off without a hitch, and somehow that means all is well again. Immediately, Sirius approaches Remus with the brilliant idea of an alternative to Polyjuice.
“Isn’t that even Darker?” Remus frowns, because it actually seems somewhat comical this way.
Sirius grins with the right side of his face more than the left, and Remus notes that his pulse reacts to this for some reason. “Not really, we’re not stealing anyone’s essence or anything, just their face.”
“And you think he won’t notice? Lily, if you’ve not noticed, has breasts. Big ones.”
“Sensitive nipples, too.” Sirius grins, and Remus quickly decides that he never, ever wanted to know that. “Anyways, it’ll work if I get a male’s face.”
Remus stares blankly at him for a moment, contemplating just slapping him and walking away. Instead, “You realize, of course, that it kind of defeats the purpose of seducing a straight boy, right?”
The grin broadens rather terrifyingly, and Remus chooses not to pursue the question further.
***
On Valentine’s Day, Sirius waylays Remus in a corridor near Charms, yanking him into a storage cupboard. He muffles Remus’ frantic objections with a hand, and there is just enough light to see the alarming smile on Sirius’ face, and the alarming bulge in his robes.
“M-ghwha,” Remus manages, and Sirius whips brown paper package from under his robes.
“I’ve got the stuff,” he announces, clearly delighted. Remus bites his hand to regain speech.
“What stuff?” he snaps, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve irkedly.
“The mask-making stuff! Honestly, Moony, keep up! Now, we’ll test it on me first, and you can use it to give me an alibi so I can go get some things, and we’ll do maybe a Slytherin or Peter or someone and it’s going to be brilliant, remember?”
Remus remembers, but he’s not sure he quite wants to. It all seems rather weird, even relative to Sirius’ normal weirdness. Still, he can’t help but help out, because that’s just what Remus does.
***
This leads to Sirius lying flat on his back on the floor of the dormitory, breathing through straws in his nostrils. There is a cardboard box around his head, and the box is filled with goop. The goop is made of algae, apparently, and Remus has read that the goop is fantastic for the skin. This does not stop it from being somewhat disgusting-it is warm, and an unappetizing shade of hospital green, and it runs down through the cracks in the cardboard and gets into Sirius’ hair. Remus closely monitors Sirius’ breathing, because the book stressed that as very important. He is leaning close over him, ear to the straws, listening. It’s oddly intimate, and all the weirder because of it.
The goop sets slowly as it cools, and Sirius makes an odd humming noise when Remus starts wrapping the wet (also warm) plaster bandages around the goopy mound that is Sirius’ face. This is the tricky part-he has to wrap the bandages around the straws without nudging them, as this will either dislodge them, or cause Sirius’ nostril to bleed and thus obstruct airflow. There is a near miss, because Remus’ wrists don’t actually bend that way, but finally the plaster is wrapped and hardening. Remus comments that Sirius looks like a deranged obese mummy, and Sirius calmly flips up a very rude signal.
When the plaster is hard, there is the awkward moment where Remus has to help Sirius sit up, whereupon the mold simply slips off of his face-perfect-and then there is the even odder moment of looking at Sirius’ face in negative. The goop has hardened to a somewhat spongy, firm material, and the plaster keeps it all in. Remus briefly considers that there might be some grander metaphor, but that’s too weird to contemplate.
Next, they layer the charms into the mold. They remove the air bubbles, then set down the first glamour-the skin. It’s fairly disturbing, looking at the insides of Sirius’ skin painted over the insides of his face. The next feature is merely adding details to the skin. The goop did not pick up the pores and crevices, but the charm does. Then eyebrows and eyelashes are added. The lips are detailed, the muscles are layered in beneath the skin to fill it out, and one last charm sets it all together. When they lift the mask out, it shifts and slips a little. Sirius hands it to Remus, who stares down at it blankly.
Whoever wears the mask, because of the charms layered in, will look exactly like Sirius from the neck up. The eyes don’t change, though, nor the voice. There’s a bit of danger in that, but Remus has been practicing his imitations, because he knows what Sirius will want to try first.
***
It takes a true narcissist to be this turned on by fucking himself, Remus decides. That doesn’t mean he really minds-a cock is a cock, and Sirius’ cock is rather one of his favorites, so he’s not one to question the motives behind that-but it is a bit odd that Sirius gasps his own name when he comes. Remus wonders why he couldn’t have just gotten a mirror and wanked, but says nothing because he is also busy gasping Sirius’ name and coming.
It takes a little while to get used to the mask. It's not enough to look like Sirius-- Remus has to learn his walk, his tone of voice, his gestures, the way he moves his head, what he might say in any given situation... everything. He does have a bit of a head start, having observed Sirius closely for years, but he still has to study him before he's willing to wear the mask out around the castle. It's intimate, getting to know these things about Sirius, asking him such inane questions.
Over breakfast on a late February Wednesday, Remus thinks of something.
"Padfoot, how do you talk to your brother, normally?"
James and Peter stop eating to stare. Regulus is never, ever mentioned, and for good reason. Their jaws drop when Sirius neither storms off nor hits Remus. "We both feel a bit betrayed, and we act like it. Bit self-righteous, too. Difference is, I'm right."
**
The next mask, Remus doesn't know about until he walks into the dorm one day to see Regulus lying on Sirius' bed.
"Moony," Regulus says, and gives a tense sort of smile, and Remus puts away his wand without remembering when, exactly, he'd taken it out. "You like him, don't you?"
"Sirius..."
"Come on. You've been asking, you've been watching him... Want to fuck him?"
"This is wrong."
"Subjective term. Come on." Sirius and Regulus have almost the same eyes, and Remus almost forgets which is which, in his head. Sirius must have thought about this, because when Remus kisses him, he kisses like Regulus might-- cold and hard and almost biting, sharp but not angry. It's too easy to give in, and somewhere in the fuzzy recesses of Remus' mind as he grunts Sirius' name when he comes, it occurs to him that this could get very dangerous, very fast.
**
It's a game, like silent guerilla warfare throughout the castle. Remus wears Sirius, and Sirius wears Regulus, and they try not to get caught snogging in the halls. Sirius (Regulus) pounces on Remus (Sirius) whenever he's alone, or else Sirius (Remus) sees Regulus (Sirius) lurking in the halls, and comes quietly up behind him to bite his neck. Remus is confused, but that's nice, because he gets to be Sirius and he gets to fuck Regulus, and he wakes up with only the vaguest notion of who he is and what he's doing.
In March, Remus is without his mask, but sees Regulus (Sirius) in a corridor and can't help but sneak up. Sirius (Regulus) doesn't sense him, doesn't turn until Remus' arms are wrapped around him and his teeth are in his neck.
"What the fuck are you--" Regulus (Sirius) starts, but this is part of the game. Sirius knows to play the part, and does so flawlessly. Remus gives a low growl, because that's how it's done, and Sirius-- Regulus-- it would be easier to just think of him as Black, so Remus does-- melts back into him, with a slight, helpless moan.
Remus doesn't speak, and Black doesn't, either. He twists in Remus' arms for an unquestioning kiss, and Remus gets him back against the wall, a thigh between his legs: friction, and pressure, and heat. Black is never quite as cold as Remus expects him to be, and it's a bit of a thrill that when his hands tug on the back of Remus' neck, the tips of the fingers are freezing. He turns Black around again, to face the wall. Trousers descend, Black's arse pale when bare, and Remus always has to take a moment to marvel at the perfect beauty before taking him.
Remus is rough, because that's how the game is played, but he fists Black's cock mercifully, and Black looks as if he'll probably come just after Remus.
Remus grunts Sirius' name when he comes, like he always does; always has, really. Black jerks away, whips around to stare at him.
Remus realizes that Sirius has more blue in his eyes than his brother. There is a difference. Regulus chokes, hands shaking, leans back against the wall.
"s'That what this is? Can't get in my brother's pants, so you'll just... accost me?" It looks like Regulus isn't breathing properly, he's reaching for his wand but his hands are shaking too much to aim. His cock is still hard, and looks ridiculous. Remus turns and runs.
**
Remus (the real one) can't look at Sirius (the real one) for a week. Sirius doesn't ask; Remus suspects he knows, somehow, and doesn't really fancy bringing it up over breakfast. James gives them odd looks, but ignores it, and Peter makes feeble attempts at getting them to reconcile, because he always does that.
Exactly seven days after Regulus, Remus grabs Sirius (hoping that it's the real one) and drags him into the dorm. "James," he says, simply.
"Moony, what--"
"Make me one of James." Remus' voice is terrifying even in his own ears, and Sirius takes a step back.
"He'd never agree."
"You got Regulus, though."
"I shouldn't ask--"
Remus cut Sirius off with a sharp shove. "No," he growls, "You shouldn't. I want one of James."
"What will you do?"
"Same I've been doing," Remus answers, and Sirius takes another large, obvious step backwards.
**
When Sirius hands James' face to Remus, he looks impossibly tragic. "I don't know who you are anymore, Moony," he murmurs.
"Neither do I. That's the point."
**
As James, Remus can have any girl at Hogwarts. He tries one, decides that the female anatomy reminds him too strongly of a sea creature, then cuts a swath through the Hufflepuff and Gryffindor boys. As Sirius, he cuts a swath through the Ravenclaw boys. He then decides that one more mask might be appropriate.
"Peter?" he asks Sirius, who snorts.
"Why would you want Wormtail? Boringly straight, you'd never convince anyone if you went to go seduce someone."
"Just do it." And Sirius does, because that's how the rules have changed.
**
With Peter's face, Remus discovers, he can hear the secrets of the whole castle. People talk about things in front of Peter Pettigrew with hardly a second thought, and that is its own power just like James' charm and Sirius' allure. As Peter, Remus learns about Snape.
**
"Snape." Remus knows how to walk like Sirius walks when he is roaring for a fight: like his balls are too heavy, like it would hurt to take smaller steps.
"Black." Snape does not stop walking.
"Stay the hell away from him." Remus' wand is drawn, held down at his side, grip tight like Sirius'.
"Give me one good reason." Snape finally stops, and turns to face him.
Sirius is unreasonable. Sirius is rash. Remus could quietly tear Snape to pieces, but Sirius would just blow up. "I'll make you wish you'd never oozed forth from that whore." It doesn't actually make a lot of sense, but Remus heard Sirius say something similar, once, and everything makes more sense when one's wand is raised. Snape's wand is out before the sentence finishes, and they stand perfectly still for a moment.
"I'll bet he hasn't told you," Snape finally murmurs, a wicked glint in his eyes. Remus is almost insulted that Snape thinks so little of his integrity, but Sirius would just be righteously infuriated. "I'll bet you have no idea what kind of monster you sleep with at night..."
So he knows. Of course he knows! Remus knows that Snape watches even more closely than he, and that Snape has been doing so much longer. It makes perfect sense for Snape to know, but Sirius would still be thrown off.
"Oh.. oh yeah? You want to see a monster?" Remus feels himself speaking, but it's Sirius' voice he hears. "Thursday night, you press the knot on the Whomping Willow, you'll see what a monster really is."
There is a moment of deathly silence. Remus looks down on himself from above, having just watched himself commit murder. They lower their wands slowly, and in tandem. They both turn away, and break into a run.
**
The morning after is the worst of his life. Sirius is hysterical-- Remus thinks he must've told Snape something, for him to apologize this much. Remus considers the interesting idea that he and Sirius told Snape on the same day, and Snape might have thought he was going mad.
James is mad at Sirius, so Remus has to be, too. Of course, had he not been Sirius, he actually would be mad. But he knows exactly what it is like, to be Sirius, and he knows exactly what it is like, to be James.
Weirdly, Remus has no idea what it's like to be Remus. He asks the Hospital Wing ceiling, after everyone has been sent away. "Do you know what it is like, to be me?"
Upon considering the phrasing of the question, he realizes that it sounds wrong. He tries: "Who am I?"
The ceiling does not answer. Madame Pomfrey puts him back together and sends him off to Dumbledore. Snape and Sirius are waiting, and Snape gives him the oddest look.
***
***
Only one week before Remus starts teaching, Snape shows up, unannounced. When Remus opens the door, he says, "Black's eyes weren't hazel."
"No," Remus says, because there is nothing else. "They had more blue than gray."
"Someday, I think I shall kill you," Snape says clinically, and then leaves.
***
Teaching is the strangest thing Remus has ever done. Most of his older students are slightly taller than him, and most of his colleagues have known him since he was eleven. Only Snape sees through the pleasantry and cardigans, but that's nothing new. Almost nothing has changed since he left Hogwarts.
He knows he shouldn't, but he can't bear to part with them, so he brings the masks with him. He keeps them in a drawer, carefully set so as not to lose their shape. He has acquired a few more over the years: two lovely Muggle boys he met on his travels, one pretty young wizard he found in Knockturn Alley, and Lily Evans. He has only worn Lily's face once; the mask was made only two months before her death.
It takes great strength of will, but Remus manages not to so much as look at the masks for a whole month. The castle throbs with nostalgia; memories drip from the walls, and Remus finds it difficult to be Remus in this place. The portraits seem to mock him, the ghosts give him strange looks, even Peeves seems to know. A week after his first full moon in the castle (the sanest and most painful he can remember, thanks to Snape's potion), he finally gives in to temptation. He wears Regulus, because James looks too much like Harry and because it still hurts too much to look at Sirius or poor Peter. It's far too easy to seduce one of his Hufflepuffs: Diggory gasps and begs prettily, and nearly faints when Remus swallows. He nearly faints again when Remus stands to kiss him. Remus has almost forgotten how much he loves Hufflepuff boys.
It's infinitely easier to teach Defense after that. He doesn't have to force it, so much, nor does he twitch when a ghost or portrait glances at him suspiciously. Simply having the escape available keeps Remus more sane.
***
The night before the second full moon of the term, though, Remus is restless. His fingers itch, and he imagines that the stone walls are whispering to him all the foul things he has done. He slips Sirius on, well past midnight, because it is good to be Sirius when one is restless like this. He sneaks out of his own rooms, forgetting that there's no reason to sneak, and prowls down random flights of stairs, enjoying the slight pump of adrenaline that comes from being Sirius Black after hours in Hogwarts.
He finds himself in the dungeons, and wants to make mischief. He's never been to Snape's private chambers, but he guesses they must be where Slughorn's had been. He sets up a careful charm, which will trigger when Snape leaves the room, and which make it so that any undergarment Snape tries to put on will vanish exactly five minutes after he does so. Being Sirius, however, does rather impede upon one's foresight, and Remus completely forgets to account for any wards Snape might have set up. Snape (dressed in a blue and white striped nightshirt that would be quite comical under any other circumstances) has Remus pinned to the corridor wall by the throat before Remus remembers himself. He gasps for air, and Snape sees the face and presses harder.
"I knew it," he hisses, and Remus feels faint. "It's not Polyjuice-- what devilry are you working, werewolf?"
Remus can't answer, having not the oxygen to do so, but he does have enough control of his hands to slide the mask off. Snape doesn't let go, but nor does he press any harder.
"You look like something Oscar Wilde wrote," Snape snarls, and Remus has no idea what that means. He remembers that he's a fully-grown man and a werewolf, and he throws Snape off because he can. He pants, raggedly.
"Who are you?" Snape's breath is hot on his cheek, and Remus isn't sure why he's still against the wall. He doesn't answer, and Snape puts one hand across his throat, squeezing and pressing slowly.
"Who are you?" Remus closes his eyes; the mask feels heavy in his useless hand. Snape presses.
"I don't know," Remus manages, his voice tiny and empty and choked.
"Who are you?"
"I don't know." Remus doesn't know how he can still talk at all, and he's getting dizzy. Bright red-white spots prevent him from focusing his eyes.
"Who are you?" Snape is nearly shouting, now, and Remus' head falls back against the stone wall with a nasty crack. He feels nostalgic and detached and empty and zen.
"No one," he exhales the very last of his breath and the dark is very bright, and then very nothing.
***
He wakes up on a cold, hard surface, his back twisted awkwardly. His head is pounding, and the mask is gone. Snape looms over him.
"If you're dead," Snape says coldly, "I'm telling the Aurors that you slipped and broke your hip."
"And miss out on all that glory?" Remus hears himself mutter. "Might get an Order of Merlin for vanquishing me-- Lockhart did that, once."
"Lockhart can't vanquish a gnat. Get up." Something nudges Remus rather hard in the ribs, and he has to open his eyes to see that it is Snape's too-shiny too-black boot.
"Where is it?" Remus sits up quickly, then nearly falls back to the ground when his head protests.
"I'm keeping it."
"No, you can't--"
"It might be evidence." Snape gives a nasty smile down at him, and Remus wishes desperately that he could stand up. He makes it as far as all fours, but this isn't much better. "You might be letting Black into the castle. Might be working with the Dark Lord."
"Did he ever--" Remus can't find the oxygen to finish the question, and he is answered with a boot placed squarely atop his fingers. Snape does not put weight on it, merely makes Remus aware of his ability to crush them.
"Wouldn't you like to know," Snape hisses, and Remus tugs at his hand to get his fingers out from under that alarming boot, but Snape just presses hard enough to pinch.
Yes, Remus would very much like to know, but he'd also like to keep all his fingers. He doesn't answer. It occurs to him that it hasn't even occurred to Snape to ask if there is more than one mask. It occurs to him that it's kind of silly, to be kneeling like this in front of Snape. He doesn't need to break his fingers to get out of this--a quick tug behind Snape's knee with his other hand will destabilize him, and a bit of a lunge with his shoulder has Snape on the ground. He's up and running before either of them know what's going on.
When he gets back to his own quarters, breathless and panting and painfully hard, he realizes that he left the mask with Snape.
***
Nothing is said for two weeks. There is a break-in on Halloween, and Snape looks about ready to kill Remus for a few days after. In November, it gets cold, and Remus still hasn't ventured out in a mask. He jerks off wearing James once, near new moon, but other than that he keeps them hidden away.
During the waxing gibbous, after a particularly long day, he comes back to his chambers to find Sirius there. The only difference is the height-- Snape had always been just slightly taller than Sirius. It's not enough to break the illusion, though, and Remus has Sirius pressed up against the wall with a desperate kiss before he even bothers to wonder what Snape is trying to prove. Sirius moans and kisses back, just like he always did, and Remus doesn't wonder how Snape knows how Sirius kissed. He doesn't want to know.
Sirius (Snape) might be taller than Remus, but Remus is stronger. The second time Sirius moans (the voice is darker and more demanding but the difference is easy to ignore), it's not difficult to drag him to the bed and pin him. Remus is frantic, breath hot and shuddering, and there's no time for undressing, simply robes hastily shoved up over hips and oh he's wearing nothing under and it's perfect. Snape (Sirius) begs and whines and spreads his legs incoherently, and he even smells like Sirius and Remus can't not, can't look away from Sirius' face when he fucks him (fast and brutal like both of them deserve), moans Sirius' name when he comes, just like always.
Remus doesn't remember falling asleep, but he's alone when he wakes up. The sheets have been cleaned, but still smell faintly like Sirius (Snape). Snape won't look at him over breakfast.
***
Nothing is said for months. Harry finds the Map, Remus takes it, Snape confronts him, and neither of them mention it. Remus guesses Snape must still have the mask, but can't think how to get it back. He half-expects Snape to appear in his chambers again, but he never does.
In June, Remus finds himself watching the Map, tracking Snape's movements. He'd never known how much time Snape actually spent with Minerva. He feels vaguely territorial, but of course there's nothing to be done about it. The evening of the full moon, a few hours before it's due to rise, some swift motion catches his eye. There are a number of unfamiliar names on the grounds, at Hagrid's hut. He sees Dumbledore there, and Macnair. Remus always feels a bit nauseous at the thought of Macnair, and nearly looks away. However, in the cluster of dots, a name catches Remus' eye.
It takes Remus three whole minutes to make the necessary logical leaps, and he watches, transfixed, when Sirius collides with them. It makes so much sense, and he's running before he knows what he's doing. He sprints across the grounds, wand out. Once in the tunnel, Remus slows to a walk. It wouldn't do to alarm the children any more, and he trusts Sirius to protect them from Peter... It makes too much sense, and Remus almost wishes he'd worn James' face, just to see Peter's face at that.
Then everything promptly goes wrong. Remus wakes up in the forest. Peter has escaped. Sirius has run away. Snape has gotten him fired. Oddly, it's that last part that makes him the angriest. He storms into Snape's office, pins him to the wall, hisses in his ear. Snape doesn't look the least bit surprised. There's no argument; Snape doesn't even bother to deny it.
"And I want my mask back," Remus hisses, biting at Snape's ear. Snape shivers, then tenses.
"You took it back, idiot. Months ago."
Before Remus can answer, an owl sweeps into the room. Snape snatches the scrap of parchment, and reads aloud as the owl sweeps off.
Moony,
Thanks for my face back, I'm sure it'll come in handy. I've missed that... sorry I couldn't come back before I had to run again. When my name is cleared, maybe we'll find time.
S.
The scowl on Snape's face is absolutely terrifying, but Remus takes the note from him and tosses it over his shoulder. "Yes, I know," he says. "Someday you'll kill me." He presses an unnecessary kiss to Snape's twisted lips, then goes to pack.
***
***
Nothing is said for two years. Somehow the war restarts itself, and Remus finds himself in Sirius' parent's house, helping him battle it. The reunion is a bit odd, but they settle into a regular routine involving adventurous sex daily, and Remus decides that he doesn't terribly mind. There's something absolutely stunning about the way Sirius wears Lily's mask, the way the long red hair swings across his flat, scarred chest as he rides Remus, Lily's pretty face contorting as she impales herself. The one mask they never use, nor even mention, is Regulus. It seems somehow more wrong, in this house.
The war, of course, means that the Order starts up again. The house fills up quickly when summer starts, and meetings sometimes go well past midnight. Remus gets better at his silencing charms as Sirius gains his old strength back, and the night Snape first returns to the Order is the same night that Remus and Sirius have sex standing up (pressed against the wall, Sirius' legs wrapped around Remus' hips, James' pretty face twisted and eyes squeezed tight shut). Immediately, the old fight starts back up. It's entirely too predictable.
In the week before Remus is meant to go fetch Harry, Snape catches them no less than three times, and in three separate rooms. The first time, they're in the dangerous Black Library, and Sirius' face is naked, his own ruined self exposed. He's over the armchair, gasping and cursing, and Remus sees Snape in the doorway an instant before he comes. When he looks up again, he's gone. The second time, Sirius wears his younger face. Remus has him on his back on the floor, in one of the sitting rooms they've spent all day cleaning. This time, Snape lingers until just after Remus comes, then again, disappears without a word. The third time, it's the night before Harry's arrival, and Sirius wears one of Remus' pretty Muggle boys, long dirty-blond hair and tan skin, as he sucks Remus off in the attic where they've been evicting various terrifying creatures. Snape gets there earlier this time, and Remus keeps his eyes open, holding Snape's cold gaze, until the very last second. He moans the right name when he comes, thank goodness.
Once Harry's there, there's no time or privacy. Molly's fussing reaches epic levels, and Snape becomes noticeably scarce. Meetings are horrendous. Dumbledore is painfully vague, Harry is chomping at the bit, Sirius is going crazier, Snape is trying his damnedest to make it all worse. Remus finally fucks Snape the night before term begins, both of their faces bare, both of them with their eyes screwed shut because of it. The house empties again, and Sirius is beginning to get a bit scary. He punches through walls, spells them fixed, then does it again. He spends an entire night doing this, and he spends his days with Buckbeak. Remus can't fuck him without a mask on one or both of them, now. The year passes like that, and by May Remus is starting to consider getting a new mask, though he can't decide who he'd want for it. Nymphadora Tonks is acting strangely.
Remus has never actually considered sleeping with her. She's bright and loud and alive, and he does like that, but it simply never has occured to him. Finally, he notices when she starts shifting her face around every single day, sometimes more often. She can be anyone she wants, without the masks. She can be anyone he wants, without the masks. It's thrilling, and it's not hard to get her into bed. He watches in awe as her body shifts and flows, changing and warping. She asks what he wants, and he says he wants her as many ways as he can get. There's nothing, nothing more erotic than when she changes as she comes, (then again, then once more) when he finally lets go. He doesn't need to remember any names, with Tonks. She is everyone, she is anyone, and he can't get enough of it. He shows her the masks, and they go through an unimaginable number of combinations, sometimes mirroring each other perfectly.
It goes wrong because Sirius knows, it's impossible not to. The whole house can hear Tonks, she's anything but a quiet lover, and Sirius spends more and more time twitching and talking to the hippogryff. He's aching to get out, to move, to do something, and Remus can tell.
When Sirius dies, Tonks stops changing. Remus finds that sex is uninteresting, and she gets even more depressed. They stop altogether, even though Molly has finally sat up and taken notice enough to start dropping hints that they should make it more permanent. Remus claims that he's too old, too poor, too dangerous for a relationship, and it's true. It just hadn't bothered him at all before.
The next year is quiet, almost. Remus goes to spy, because that's just what he does, when necessary. The masks are useless with the werewolves, but that doesn't mean Remus can't still act. He wonders if, when the war is over, he could get a career in theatre.
He fucks Snape just once during that year, only a week before it all goes wrong again. Snape asks him to wear Regulus, and Remus does, and can almost--almost guess what Snape means by it. He's not entirely surprised.
He is, however, rather surprised and annoyed when Tonks all but proposes marriage to him, entirely out of the blue, and intentionally in front of Molly. He gives as non-committal a commitment as is possible, and flees the country as soon as he can, presumably on Order business.
The war barely lasts another nine months. Harry does what Harry's supposed to do, and a lot of people die, and Voldemort conveniently happens to be one of them. He's immediately reinstated as Defense teacher, and he's almost annoyed at Minerva for the implication that he couldn't get a job anywhere else. He doesn't learn until the start of term feast that both Snape and Tonks are dead, and he pointedly does not ask how.
After that, life is easier. Remus acquires one new mask: a pretty Hufflepuff seventh-year, who seems to get some sort of enjoyment from disputing every single point Remus makes in his N.E.W.T. lectures. Smith gives the impression of lazy sarcasm that would almost make him seem more Slytherin than Hufflepuff, but for the unflinching, uncomfortable honesty that colours each of his interruptions, and the seeming ignorance of exactly how offensive he’s being at any given moment. Remus knows perfectly well that he’d never have noticed Smith with Harry here (James’ face is an extremely distracting one), but he doesn’t feel at all guilty about noticing him now. Halfway through the year, Smith apparently discovers socialism, because every single lecture after February turns into a heated discussion among the students about Marxist theory and socioeconomic inequity. Remus strongly suspects that it’s Smith’s way of rebelling, since he has neither shaved all his hair, nor grown it out, nor charmed it some alarming colour by the age of seventeen.
“Professor.” Every time Smith raises his hand during class, Remus mentally waves goodbye to his lecture notes.
“The proletarian struggle of werewolves, Smith?” He has always felt strange, teaching this chapter. Still, it’s better than when Snape did. (He still sometimes wishes Snape had kept his promise.)
“The wrongful incarceration of-"
“Yes, I know,” Remus heads him off early, before the rest get involved. “I went to the trial, I knew him personally. However, if you recall from the assigned reading, we’re actually talking about defending oneself against a werewolf in its transformed state. Legal rights are later.”
“We’re discussing the legality of-" Smith’s face has a way of lighting up in anticipation when he’s promised an opportunity to pontificate.
“Yes. Next week, if you remember from the syllabus. Can we move on?”
The mask, of course, is not something he can get right away, even though Remus knows immediately upon noticing him that he wants Smith's face for his own. It has to be consensual, and the subject (victim?) has to know what they're doing as it's being done. Remus' competence with memory charms has proven useful in this until now, but somehow he thinks that he would rather wear Smith with the knowledge that Smith knew. By the start of term, Remus has already devised a plan.
First, he starts wearing Sirius' young face about the castle. It's not hard to catch Smith on his own a few times-- he says he's a seventh-year Gryffindor, and stands a little too close and lets his face slide into that mischievous smirk Sirius used on all the girls. It's fairly easy, the fourth time he sees him, to press Smith back against the nearest tapestry (the subjects of which don't seem to particularly mind) and kiss him, demanding and playful and easy like Sirius.
“Hey,” Smith mumbles, and there’s some token resistance.
“Not okay?” Sirius lets his hair flop into his eyes, looking pleasantly askew.
Smith pauses, then tugs him back for more. Sirius chuckles into his mouth and Smith is just like a thousand pretty boys seduced this way-so easy, almost nameless, never faceless. He doesn’t close his eyes while he kisses him. He's gone before Smith can ask his name. Remus knows the castle too well by now-- almost as well as the castle knows him.
The act is alarmingly thin; sheer scheduling should make it quite clear that Remus couldn’t possibly be a student. He’s never at meals, not in any classes, and, of course, is never in the same room as himself. As such, he’s a bit surprised that Smith (who insists upon the third wild kiss in a darkened corridor that Remus call him Zach, so Remus takes the middle ground and calls him Zacharias) falls for it quite so hard.
Around the fifth kiss, with Remus hands shoved under Zacharias’ untucked shirt and gripping his hips, grinding forward, Zacharias between panting breaths, “When can I see you again?” Remus still hasn’t given him a name. They’ve hardly spoken, and it’s nice and easy that way.
He doesn’t answer, just silences the boy with a harder, sharper kiss, and leaves twice as fast that time.
Next to nothing is said until Tuesday in May, close enough to the full moon that Remus can tell Minerva he's not feeling well and can thus miss dinner. Remus wears Sirius to the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall. He checks his appearance just before entering the Great Hall-- he normally wouldn't bother, but the lighting is more revealing than the rest of the castle, and he doesn't care to answer those questions just yet. Shrugging his shoulders back a bit and letting them drop into a more casual, confident posture, he leans against the pillar just across from that entrance, and waits with that trademark smirk on his face. Zacharias comes straight to him, as if drawn. It's all way, way too easy; Remus grabs his hand, and they race through the castle, rebounding off corners and nearly flying up staircases. Sirius could always run faster than Remus could, and Zacharias is panting when he asks where they’re going, laughing a bit at the weird pleasure of moving this fast. Remus doesn’t answer, and doesn’t need to-soon enough they’re back to his own office. Zacharias even laughingly asks what happens if Lupin is in his office when they get there, even as Remus has him pressed against the door, tie undone, hair tussled and cheeks bright. Remus wonders the same thing.
Inside, Zacharias’ voice goes all hoarse and low, still breathing heavy. “On his desk?” He smirks, just like the look he gets when he can successfully derail a Defense class. “Mess up all his papers-"
He’s cut off, because Remus is kissing him again, fumbling open his various buttons, and by the time he has him bent over the desk with his pants around his knees, Zacharias can’t exactly speak coherently anyways. He moans things like “yeah” and “more,” and when Remus finally pushes in (one smooth thrust, just like Sirius, or Snape, or Tonks, or whoever), there’s a funny little whimpering noise that may or may not be a name.
He takes the mask off when Zacharias isn't looking. As it were, this happens to be when the boy's forehead is pressed to the cool wood of the desk, to abate the burn of Remus' cock up his arse. He says nothing until after they are sated, and Zacharias turns around to look, and doesn't scream or threaten to turn Remus in. Remus takes this as a very good sign. In fact, he bursts into laughter, which leaves Remus a bit off balance, and somehow talks his way into Remus' bed.
***
Zacharias is amazingly quick at insinuating himself into Remus' life. Within half an hour of breathless post-coital conversation he's managed to wave off the entire matter of identity with nothing so much as a charming smile and some glib comment, and moves swiftly on to the more important matters in life, like when they're going to fuck next. He admits that he had been planning to ask Remus out (the mere idea seems bizarre, even in retrospect), and some matters of discretion are handled. (It pains Remus slightly that this is not the first time that pillow talk has centered around not getting arrested.)
After that, teaching seventh-year classes is hell. Zacharias thinks himself terribly witty and clever when he orally molests his quill in class, or leaves his uniform in just enough disarray that Remus can't help but notice. The debates about proletarian uprising are somehow laced with innuendo, and little provocative leers. This really should be reason enough to stop, but Remus finds he's too easily riled; each small trespass earns Zacharias some small not-quite-punishment. The boy takes it as a game, as much as Sirius ever did, though he's never so glib about it as Sirius had been. He's playful, but still somehow painfully earnest. If it were anyone else, it would be uncomfortable.
Somehow, despite all common sense, the affair continues after Zacharias leaves Hogwarts. He gets an entry-level job at the Ministry, bubbling with ideas and ideals. Within the first few weeks they manage to crush all of his realistic hope that change is possible, but he still talks politics post-orgasm, his eyes bright and excited, voice soft and hoarse and intense.
Meanwhile, Remus stagnates.
They settle, somehow, into a routine; Zacharias takes the Floo from Hogwarts to the Ministry, Remus teaches impressionable young children how not to get themselves killed out in the great wide world, they take their evening meals separately, Zacharias comes back just after lights-out, they have mind-blowing sex, then talk about their respective days at work. It's beyond unlikely, that this should be possible. Remus stays tense, ready to bolt. He can't help but wait for the other shoe to drop, hammer to fall, the revolution to come. (He knows, from Zacharias' tired, ceaseless chatter, exactly who in the Ministry will be first up against the wall when said Revolution (he says it capitalized) comes.) Things, Remus knows, never work this way. Stability is not something he can count on, and stasis is not a true state.
**
The last time they have sex, Remus is wearing Zacharias' face. (Making the mold for the mask was the most intimate thing they could have done, and Remus gets hard merely looking at it.) Zacharias' own face is bare; it's not quite like making love to a mirror, but Remus is swept breathless by the sheer perfect symmetry of it, and they come in tandem, for that moment identical as they groan twin groans, their faces twisted helplessly exactly the same.
The next day, a Saturday, they decide to go out to the cinema and disparage the actors quietly. Crossing the road in front of the train station, Zacharias is excited, beautifully alive. He walks faster than Remus, his step springy, bordering on cliche, and--
The obscene, horrific, inexcusable part of it is that Zacharias' expression when the car hits him is exactly the one he made during orgasm, not twelve hours ago.
Sunday doesn't happen.
Monday, Zacharias goes into work, eyes still red and puffy. Someone asks him what's wrong, and he gruffly tells them his friend Lupin passed away over the weekend. Monday night finds Zacharias in a near-empty pub, his forehead set firmly on the rim of his (fifth) empty mug. The bartender gently suggests that Mr. Smith might want to exchange some sort of currency for the alcohol he has thusfar consumed, if he wishes to continue. Zacharias looks up, his face weird, as if attached to the wrong person. "You're insane," Zacharias says, voice dangerous and soft. "Do you have any idea how illegal most of these ingredients are?"
"Now, listen," says the bartender, "Don't want any trouble, just making sure you're good for your tab, that's all."
"You take me as that easy?" Zacharias smirks, but it's distorted, somehow. "He'll kill us both--" The bartender takes half a step back.
"Anyways, think you've had enough for the night, eh?" he laughs nervously.
"If we get arrested," Zacharias whispers, "I'm claiming not to know you." His voice breaks, crumbles, and he sags in on himself. "I'm claiming not to know you."
Authors: purple_chalk and nothingbutfic
Rating: Adult
Pairings: Remus/Sirius, James/Sirius, Remus/Snape, Remus/Tonks, Remus/Zacharias Smith, Remus/Various others, possibly with a side of Lily and/or Peter.
Warnings: Um. Genderfuck, identityfuck, non-con, dub-con, pretend!incest, infidelity, AU, character death (maybe), dark, general fucking weirdness.
Summary: Remus is not feeling entirely himself.
Notes: Betas include gyzym and, much more recently (this thing has been long in the making) she_eats_worlds. If anyone says anything about the relevance of this to thedressingroom they get a point. Um. And when I say fucking weird, I mean weird even by my standards.
“You’re insane,” Remus tells Sirius. This is not an entirely new topic of conversation, and Sirius responds to the cue perfectly.
“But Moony-“
“Absolutely not. Do you have any idea how illegal most of these ingredients are? What are you going to do with it, anyways?” The questions are the usual, obligatory ones. It's tradition, this banter; Remus crosses his arms over his chest, and Sirius knows that means he’ll have to try harder.
“Chocolate?”
“You take me as that easy?” The smirk is light, and anyone but Sirius would never have noticed it.
“Want to watch?”
“He’ll kill us both, and then Lily will dig us up to kill us, then him.”
“Yeah, but do you wanna watch?” Sirius repeats, grin plastered haphazardly.
A pause. It’s obvious that Remus has to weigh it heavily in his mind. “If we get arrested,” he says, with a slight air of ceremony, “I’m claiming not to know you.” Sirius takes this as the best he’ll get, which is definitely good enough to be getting on with.
***
The potion is ridiculous. Remus is decent at brewing, but he’s never tried anything like this before. It is, therefore, with a slight air of guilt that he asks Lily for a bit of help. He says nothing to suggest what he’ll be using the information for-he’s far too wise for that, which is why he’s not letting Sirius do the talking-but he does get enough to find out where Slughorn keeps the boomslang skin.
They brew it in a niche that Sirius has found behind a tapestry of Wilhelma the Whimsical, and to pick the fluxweed Sirius has to skip out on a full moon, complaining of a stomach ache. When they’ve finally gotten to the final stage, Sirius neglects to tell Remus how he got Lily’s hair. The potion turns a lovely emerald green, and Remus does his best not to run screaming for the Headmaster’s office as he watches his friend’s features soften, his hair lighten and tumble down, shining like copper in the wandlight, breasts insinuating themselves under unaccommodating robes. They both squeeze back under James’ cloak, Remus breathing a little heavily at the proximity, and manage to make it all the way back to the dorm somehow. Remus keeps the cloak, and Sirius goes off in search of James.
***
Exactly three minutes later, Sirius has dragged James back to the room by his tie, and Remus hunkers down in a corner under the cloak, trying not to feel like a horrible person for instantly hardening at the sight of James, gasping and senseless, pushed against the door by Sirius. Sirius is obviously enjoying it-he makes new and interesting noises when James’ hands sneak up his shirt, and James makes new and interesting noises when he finds no bra restraining Lily’s perfect breasts. The shirt comes off very quickly after that, and Remus has to stifle a small gasp when James’ follows. Clothes pile up on the floor, and Remus’ hand has somehow managed to get into his pants without asking permission.
It is a mark of Sirius’ sheer bloody-headedness that they even make it to the bed. James is moaning ridiculously, and it takes a good bit of handling to get him onto his back, Sirius straddling him obscenely. Remus is afforded a magnificent view of James’ cock, arching up desperate and needy against Sirius’ labia before Sirius takes hold, aims, and drives himself down mercilessly. Instantly, James is proclaiming his undying love for Lily, and it takes a thorough, sloppy kiss to shut him up. A rhythm throughout the room is quickly established, and the ridiculous noises drown out Remus’ breathing, for which he is grateful.
Remus comes an instant before Sirius does, and James quickly follows. There is no warning-it is rather like a tidal wave has swept the room, really, and for that moment they all momentarily forget who they are and what they’re doing and why it is so-so-so wrong, and that moment is perfect and infinite.
Then their hearts start beating again, and Remus is the first to realize that Sirius’ time is nearly up. He has no way of conveying the information, so it is sheer luck that Sirius also remembers that he is not Lily forever, and that he absolutely must get out of there right now. With an extremely lame excuse about the lav, he all but sprints from the room, barely leaving time to grab his robes on the way out. James looks like he’s going to cry.
Sticky and annoyed, Remus is left alone in the room with such an air of rejection that he positively cannot stand to witness. He breathes one lungful of it in, and stands up, clutching the cloak around him. It is with a monumental effort that he makes no noise when he stumbles across the room to stand over James, who is flat on his back and naked and dejected and somehow all the more delicious for it. Remus lets out a little sigh, then draws his wand and calmly obliviates him.
***
“You have to stop doing that,” Remus says over dinner. James is in the Hospital Wing with a reported mild concussion. Peter is notably absent.
“Hot, though, yeah?” Sirius’ smirk over his potatoes is almost unforgivable.
“You’ll destroy him.” Remus toys with the carrots, because he hates the color orange.
“He doesn’t know, and he likes it, doesn’t he? And I know you like it, eh, Moony?”
Remus can only sigh, and try not to fling his carrots at Sirius, because that would be petty and Prefects aren’t allowed to be petty. Sirius takes this as how it’s intended, for once.
“Chocolate?”
“You can’t bribe me out of my guilt, Padfoot.”
“Blowjob?” Three nearby first years do a comical double-take in perfect time.
“Fine, but no more after this, alright? You’ll break him, or Lily will.”
Sirius grins, with the clear indication that half the fun of it all is making Remus fret like this. “Yeah, yeah. Pass the pumpkin juice.”
***
Sirius gets away with it one more time after that, with Remus close on his tail, obliviating carefully. It’s odd that James never seems to notice that Lily’s wearing the wrong uniform, or that her Head Girl badge is absent, or that she seems to have forgotten all those times when she declared that she would rather die, but Sirius obviously isn’t going to be the one to point that out, and by the time Remus would have an opportunity to do so, James doesn’t even remember the whole thing.
The third time, however, the potion never gets finished. It’s the third full moon Sirius has missed in as many months, and Remus wakes up in the Hospital Wing having nearly gored himself. James is sitting by his cot, sporting an impressive sling and looking vaguely murderous. When Sirius shows up just before dawn, James tackles him immediately upon sight. Remus pretends to be asleep.
“No more stomach-aches,” James hisses, slamming Sirius (somehow noiselessly) against the wall. “You know how much help Wormtail is, and I don’t have claws.”
There is something visceral and amazing about this scene, cast in that gray-purple pre-dawn wash of not-light. Remus can’t help but watch from under his lashes, immobile but alert, breathing lightly.
“I-ow, fuck, Prongs, leave off,” Sirius ducks to the left, under James’ arm. James grabs him by the scruff of the neck and throws him back against the wall face-first. Remus can hear the puff of breath when Sirius’ nose gets squashed. It occurs to him that something is very, very perfect about Sirius’ hurt breathing. He hopes James punches him.
Instead, James leans in to growl viciously in Sirius’ ear, “Moony needs us, you fucking idiot. Moreover, intestines should stay on the inside. Your teeth are required. Got it?” He gives a bit of a shove, and Remus nearly whimpers at Sirius’ whimper.
***
After that, Sirius doesn’t ask Remus for any more potions help. He’s skittish around James for a good week, and sheepish around Remus for a good month. January’s full moon, however, goes off without a hitch, and somehow that means all is well again. Immediately, Sirius approaches Remus with the brilliant idea of an alternative to Polyjuice.
“Isn’t that even Darker?” Remus frowns, because it actually seems somewhat comical this way.
Sirius grins with the right side of his face more than the left, and Remus notes that his pulse reacts to this for some reason. “Not really, we’re not stealing anyone’s essence or anything, just their face.”
“And you think he won’t notice? Lily, if you’ve not noticed, has breasts. Big ones.”
“Sensitive nipples, too.” Sirius grins, and Remus quickly decides that he never, ever wanted to know that. “Anyways, it’ll work if I get a male’s face.”
Remus stares blankly at him for a moment, contemplating just slapping him and walking away. Instead, “You realize, of course, that it kind of defeats the purpose of seducing a straight boy, right?”
The grin broadens rather terrifyingly, and Remus chooses not to pursue the question further.
***
On Valentine’s Day, Sirius waylays Remus in a corridor near Charms, yanking him into a storage cupboard. He muffles Remus’ frantic objections with a hand, and there is just enough light to see the alarming smile on Sirius’ face, and the alarming bulge in his robes.
“M-ghwha,” Remus manages, and Sirius whips brown paper package from under his robes.
“I’ve got the stuff,” he announces, clearly delighted. Remus bites his hand to regain speech.
“What stuff?” he snaps, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve irkedly.
“The mask-making stuff! Honestly, Moony, keep up! Now, we’ll test it on me first, and you can use it to give me an alibi so I can go get some things, and we’ll do maybe a Slytherin or Peter or someone and it’s going to be brilliant, remember?”
Remus remembers, but he’s not sure he quite wants to. It all seems rather weird, even relative to Sirius’ normal weirdness. Still, he can’t help but help out, because that’s just what Remus does.
***
This leads to Sirius lying flat on his back on the floor of the dormitory, breathing through straws in his nostrils. There is a cardboard box around his head, and the box is filled with goop. The goop is made of algae, apparently, and Remus has read that the goop is fantastic for the skin. This does not stop it from being somewhat disgusting-it is warm, and an unappetizing shade of hospital green, and it runs down through the cracks in the cardboard and gets into Sirius’ hair. Remus closely monitors Sirius’ breathing, because the book stressed that as very important. He is leaning close over him, ear to the straws, listening. It’s oddly intimate, and all the weirder because of it.
The goop sets slowly as it cools, and Sirius makes an odd humming noise when Remus starts wrapping the wet (also warm) plaster bandages around the goopy mound that is Sirius’ face. This is the tricky part-he has to wrap the bandages around the straws without nudging them, as this will either dislodge them, or cause Sirius’ nostril to bleed and thus obstruct airflow. There is a near miss, because Remus’ wrists don’t actually bend that way, but finally the plaster is wrapped and hardening. Remus comments that Sirius looks like a deranged obese mummy, and Sirius calmly flips up a very rude signal.
When the plaster is hard, there is the awkward moment where Remus has to help Sirius sit up, whereupon the mold simply slips off of his face-perfect-and then there is the even odder moment of looking at Sirius’ face in negative. The goop has hardened to a somewhat spongy, firm material, and the plaster keeps it all in. Remus briefly considers that there might be some grander metaphor, but that’s too weird to contemplate.
Next, they layer the charms into the mold. They remove the air bubbles, then set down the first glamour-the skin. It’s fairly disturbing, looking at the insides of Sirius’ skin painted over the insides of his face. The next feature is merely adding details to the skin. The goop did not pick up the pores and crevices, but the charm does. Then eyebrows and eyelashes are added. The lips are detailed, the muscles are layered in beneath the skin to fill it out, and one last charm sets it all together. When they lift the mask out, it shifts and slips a little. Sirius hands it to Remus, who stares down at it blankly.
Whoever wears the mask, because of the charms layered in, will look exactly like Sirius from the neck up. The eyes don’t change, though, nor the voice. There’s a bit of danger in that, but Remus has been practicing his imitations, because he knows what Sirius will want to try first.
***
It takes a true narcissist to be this turned on by fucking himself, Remus decides. That doesn’t mean he really minds-a cock is a cock, and Sirius’ cock is rather one of his favorites, so he’s not one to question the motives behind that-but it is a bit odd that Sirius gasps his own name when he comes. Remus wonders why he couldn’t have just gotten a mirror and wanked, but says nothing because he is also busy gasping Sirius’ name and coming.
It takes a little while to get used to the mask. It's not enough to look like Sirius-- Remus has to learn his walk, his tone of voice, his gestures, the way he moves his head, what he might say in any given situation... everything. He does have a bit of a head start, having observed Sirius closely for years, but he still has to study him before he's willing to wear the mask out around the castle. It's intimate, getting to know these things about Sirius, asking him such inane questions.
Over breakfast on a late February Wednesday, Remus thinks of something.
"Padfoot, how do you talk to your brother, normally?"
James and Peter stop eating to stare. Regulus is never, ever mentioned, and for good reason. Their jaws drop when Sirius neither storms off nor hits Remus. "We both feel a bit betrayed, and we act like it. Bit self-righteous, too. Difference is, I'm right."
**
The next mask, Remus doesn't know about until he walks into the dorm one day to see Regulus lying on Sirius' bed.
"Moony," Regulus says, and gives a tense sort of smile, and Remus puts away his wand without remembering when, exactly, he'd taken it out. "You like him, don't you?"
"Sirius..."
"Come on. You've been asking, you've been watching him... Want to fuck him?"
"This is wrong."
"Subjective term. Come on." Sirius and Regulus have almost the same eyes, and Remus almost forgets which is which, in his head. Sirius must have thought about this, because when Remus kisses him, he kisses like Regulus might-- cold and hard and almost biting, sharp but not angry. It's too easy to give in, and somewhere in the fuzzy recesses of Remus' mind as he grunts Sirius' name when he comes, it occurs to him that this could get very dangerous, very fast.
**
It's a game, like silent guerilla warfare throughout the castle. Remus wears Sirius, and Sirius wears Regulus, and they try not to get caught snogging in the halls. Sirius (Regulus) pounces on Remus (Sirius) whenever he's alone, or else Sirius (Remus) sees Regulus (Sirius) lurking in the halls, and comes quietly up behind him to bite his neck. Remus is confused, but that's nice, because he gets to be Sirius and he gets to fuck Regulus, and he wakes up with only the vaguest notion of who he is and what he's doing.
In March, Remus is without his mask, but sees Regulus (Sirius) in a corridor and can't help but sneak up. Sirius (Regulus) doesn't sense him, doesn't turn until Remus' arms are wrapped around him and his teeth are in his neck.
"What the fuck are you--" Regulus (Sirius) starts, but this is part of the game. Sirius knows to play the part, and does so flawlessly. Remus gives a low growl, because that's how it's done, and Sirius-- Regulus-- it would be easier to just think of him as Black, so Remus does-- melts back into him, with a slight, helpless moan.
Remus doesn't speak, and Black doesn't, either. He twists in Remus' arms for an unquestioning kiss, and Remus gets him back against the wall, a thigh between his legs: friction, and pressure, and heat. Black is never quite as cold as Remus expects him to be, and it's a bit of a thrill that when his hands tug on the back of Remus' neck, the tips of the fingers are freezing. He turns Black around again, to face the wall. Trousers descend, Black's arse pale when bare, and Remus always has to take a moment to marvel at the perfect beauty before taking him.
Remus is rough, because that's how the game is played, but he fists Black's cock mercifully, and Black looks as if he'll probably come just after Remus.
Remus grunts Sirius' name when he comes, like he always does; always has, really. Black jerks away, whips around to stare at him.
Remus realizes that Sirius has more blue in his eyes than his brother. There is a difference. Regulus chokes, hands shaking, leans back against the wall.
"s'That what this is? Can't get in my brother's pants, so you'll just... accost me?" It looks like Regulus isn't breathing properly, he's reaching for his wand but his hands are shaking too much to aim. His cock is still hard, and looks ridiculous. Remus turns and runs.
**
Remus (the real one) can't look at Sirius (the real one) for a week. Sirius doesn't ask; Remus suspects he knows, somehow, and doesn't really fancy bringing it up over breakfast. James gives them odd looks, but ignores it, and Peter makes feeble attempts at getting them to reconcile, because he always does that.
Exactly seven days after Regulus, Remus grabs Sirius (hoping that it's the real one) and drags him into the dorm. "James," he says, simply.
"Moony, what--"
"Make me one of James." Remus' voice is terrifying even in his own ears, and Sirius takes a step back.
"He'd never agree."
"You got Regulus, though."
"I shouldn't ask--"
Remus cut Sirius off with a sharp shove. "No," he growls, "You shouldn't. I want one of James."
"What will you do?"
"Same I've been doing," Remus answers, and Sirius takes another large, obvious step backwards.
**
When Sirius hands James' face to Remus, he looks impossibly tragic. "I don't know who you are anymore, Moony," he murmurs.
"Neither do I. That's the point."
**
As James, Remus can have any girl at Hogwarts. He tries one, decides that the female anatomy reminds him too strongly of a sea creature, then cuts a swath through the Hufflepuff and Gryffindor boys. As Sirius, he cuts a swath through the Ravenclaw boys. He then decides that one more mask might be appropriate.
"Peter?" he asks Sirius, who snorts.
"Why would you want Wormtail? Boringly straight, you'd never convince anyone if you went to go seduce someone."
"Just do it." And Sirius does, because that's how the rules have changed.
**
With Peter's face, Remus discovers, he can hear the secrets of the whole castle. People talk about things in front of Peter Pettigrew with hardly a second thought, and that is its own power just like James' charm and Sirius' allure. As Peter, Remus learns about Snape.
**
"Snape." Remus knows how to walk like Sirius walks when he is roaring for a fight: like his balls are too heavy, like it would hurt to take smaller steps.
"Black." Snape does not stop walking.
"Stay the hell away from him." Remus' wand is drawn, held down at his side, grip tight like Sirius'.
"Give me one good reason." Snape finally stops, and turns to face him.
Sirius is unreasonable. Sirius is rash. Remus could quietly tear Snape to pieces, but Sirius would just blow up. "I'll make you wish you'd never oozed forth from that whore." It doesn't actually make a lot of sense, but Remus heard Sirius say something similar, once, and everything makes more sense when one's wand is raised. Snape's wand is out before the sentence finishes, and they stand perfectly still for a moment.
"I'll bet he hasn't told you," Snape finally murmurs, a wicked glint in his eyes. Remus is almost insulted that Snape thinks so little of his integrity, but Sirius would just be righteously infuriated. "I'll bet you have no idea what kind of monster you sleep with at night..."
So he knows. Of course he knows! Remus knows that Snape watches even more closely than he, and that Snape has been doing so much longer. It makes perfect sense for Snape to know, but Sirius would still be thrown off.
"Oh.. oh yeah? You want to see a monster?" Remus feels himself speaking, but it's Sirius' voice he hears. "Thursday night, you press the knot on the Whomping Willow, you'll see what a monster really is."
There is a moment of deathly silence. Remus looks down on himself from above, having just watched himself commit murder. They lower their wands slowly, and in tandem. They both turn away, and break into a run.
**
The morning after is the worst of his life. Sirius is hysterical-- Remus thinks he must've told Snape something, for him to apologize this much. Remus considers the interesting idea that he and Sirius told Snape on the same day, and Snape might have thought he was going mad.
James is mad at Sirius, so Remus has to be, too. Of course, had he not been Sirius, he actually would be mad. But he knows exactly what it is like, to be Sirius, and he knows exactly what it is like, to be James.
Weirdly, Remus has no idea what it's like to be Remus. He asks the Hospital Wing ceiling, after everyone has been sent away. "Do you know what it is like, to be me?"
Upon considering the phrasing of the question, he realizes that it sounds wrong. He tries: "Who am I?"
The ceiling does not answer. Madame Pomfrey puts him back together and sends him off to Dumbledore. Snape and Sirius are waiting, and Snape gives him the oddest look.
***
***
Only one week before Remus starts teaching, Snape shows up, unannounced. When Remus opens the door, he says, "Black's eyes weren't hazel."
"No," Remus says, because there is nothing else. "They had more blue than gray."
"Someday, I think I shall kill you," Snape says clinically, and then leaves.
***
Teaching is the strangest thing Remus has ever done. Most of his older students are slightly taller than him, and most of his colleagues have known him since he was eleven. Only Snape sees through the pleasantry and cardigans, but that's nothing new. Almost nothing has changed since he left Hogwarts.
He knows he shouldn't, but he can't bear to part with them, so he brings the masks with him. He keeps them in a drawer, carefully set so as not to lose their shape. He has acquired a few more over the years: two lovely Muggle boys he met on his travels, one pretty young wizard he found in Knockturn Alley, and Lily Evans. He has only worn Lily's face once; the mask was made only two months before her death.
It takes great strength of will, but Remus manages not to so much as look at the masks for a whole month. The castle throbs with nostalgia; memories drip from the walls, and Remus finds it difficult to be Remus in this place. The portraits seem to mock him, the ghosts give him strange looks, even Peeves seems to know. A week after his first full moon in the castle (the sanest and most painful he can remember, thanks to Snape's potion), he finally gives in to temptation. He wears Regulus, because James looks too much like Harry and because it still hurts too much to look at Sirius or poor Peter. It's far too easy to seduce one of his Hufflepuffs: Diggory gasps and begs prettily, and nearly faints when Remus swallows. He nearly faints again when Remus stands to kiss him. Remus has almost forgotten how much he loves Hufflepuff boys.
It's infinitely easier to teach Defense after that. He doesn't have to force it, so much, nor does he twitch when a ghost or portrait glances at him suspiciously. Simply having the escape available keeps Remus more sane.
***
The night before the second full moon of the term, though, Remus is restless. His fingers itch, and he imagines that the stone walls are whispering to him all the foul things he has done. He slips Sirius on, well past midnight, because it is good to be Sirius when one is restless like this. He sneaks out of his own rooms, forgetting that there's no reason to sneak, and prowls down random flights of stairs, enjoying the slight pump of adrenaline that comes from being Sirius Black after hours in Hogwarts.
He finds himself in the dungeons, and wants to make mischief. He's never been to Snape's private chambers, but he guesses they must be where Slughorn's had been. He sets up a careful charm, which will trigger when Snape leaves the room, and which make it so that any undergarment Snape tries to put on will vanish exactly five minutes after he does so. Being Sirius, however, does rather impede upon one's foresight, and Remus completely forgets to account for any wards Snape might have set up. Snape (dressed in a blue and white striped nightshirt that would be quite comical under any other circumstances) has Remus pinned to the corridor wall by the throat before Remus remembers himself. He gasps for air, and Snape sees the face and presses harder.
"I knew it," he hisses, and Remus feels faint. "It's not Polyjuice-- what devilry are you working, werewolf?"
Remus can't answer, having not the oxygen to do so, but he does have enough control of his hands to slide the mask off. Snape doesn't let go, but nor does he press any harder.
"You look like something Oscar Wilde wrote," Snape snarls, and Remus has no idea what that means. He remembers that he's a fully-grown man and a werewolf, and he throws Snape off because he can. He pants, raggedly.
"Who are you?" Snape's breath is hot on his cheek, and Remus isn't sure why he's still against the wall. He doesn't answer, and Snape puts one hand across his throat, squeezing and pressing slowly.
"Who are you?" Remus closes his eyes; the mask feels heavy in his useless hand. Snape presses.
"I don't know," Remus manages, his voice tiny and empty and choked.
"Who are you?"
"I don't know." Remus doesn't know how he can still talk at all, and he's getting dizzy. Bright red-white spots prevent him from focusing his eyes.
"Who are you?" Snape is nearly shouting, now, and Remus' head falls back against the stone wall with a nasty crack. He feels nostalgic and detached and empty and zen.
"No one," he exhales the very last of his breath and the dark is very bright, and then very nothing.
***
He wakes up on a cold, hard surface, his back twisted awkwardly. His head is pounding, and the mask is gone. Snape looms over him.
"If you're dead," Snape says coldly, "I'm telling the Aurors that you slipped and broke your hip."
"And miss out on all that glory?" Remus hears himself mutter. "Might get an Order of Merlin for vanquishing me-- Lockhart did that, once."
"Lockhart can't vanquish a gnat. Get up." Something nudges Remus rather hard in the ribs, and he has to open his eyes to see that it is Snape's too-shiny too-black boot.
"Where is it?" Remus sits up quickly, then nearly falls back to the ground when his head protests.
"I'm keeping it."
"No, you can't--"
"It might be evidence." Snape gives a nasty smile down at him, and Remus wishes desperately that he could stand up. He makes it as far as all fours, but this isn't much better. "You might be letting Black into the castle. Might be working with the Dark Lord."
"Did he ever--" Remus can't find the oxygen to finish the question, and he is answered with a boot placed squarely atop his fingers. Snape does not put weight on it, merely makes Remus aware of his ability to crush them.
"Wouldn't you like to know," Snape hisses, and Remus tugs at his hand to get his fingers out from under that alarming boot, but Snape just presses hard enough to pinch.
Yes, Remus would very much like to know, but he'd also like to keep all his fingers. He doesn't answer. It occurs to him that it hasn't even occurred to Snape to ask if there is more than one mask. It occurs to him that it's kind of silly, to be kneeling like this in front of Snape. He doesn't need to break his fingers to get out of this--a quick tug behind Snape's knee with his other hand will destabilize him, and a bit of a lunge with his shoulder has Snape on the ground. He's up and running before either of them know what's going on.
When he gets back to his own quarters, breathless and panting and painfully hard, he realizes that he left the mask with Snape.
***
Nothing is said for two weeks. There is a break-in on Halloween, and Snape looks about ready to kill Remus for a few days after. In November, it gets cold, and Remus still hasn't ventured out in a mask. He jerks off wearing James once, near new moon, but other than that he keeps them hidden away.
During the waxing gibbous, after a particularly long day, he comes back to his chambers to find Sirius there. The only difference is the height-- Snape had always been just slightly taller than Sirius. It's not enough to break the illusion, though, and Remus has Sirius pressed up against the wall with a desperate kiss before he even bothers to wonder what Snape is trying to prove. Sirius moans and kisses back, just like he always did, and Remus doesn't wonder how Snape knows how Sirius kissed. He doesn't want to know.
Sirius (Snape) might be taller than Remus, but Remus is stronger. The second time Sirius moans (the voice is darker and more demanding but the difference is easy to ignore), it's not difficult to drag him to the bed and pin him. Remus is frantic, breath hot and shuddering, and there's no time for undressing, simply robes hastily shoved up over hips and oh he's wearing nothing under and it's perfect. Snape (Sirius) begs and whines and spreads his legs incoherently, and he even smells like Sirius and Remus can't not, can't look away from Sirius' face when he fucks him (fast and brutal like both of them deserve), moans Sirius' name when he comes, just like always.
Remus doesn't remember falling asleep, but he's alone when he wakes up. The sheets have been cleaned, but still smell faintly like Sirius (Snape). Snape won't look at him over breakfast.
***
Nothing is said for months. Harry finds the Map, Remus takes it, Snape confronts him, and neither of them mention it. Remus guesses Snape must still have the mask, but can't think how to get it back. He half-expects Snape to appear in his chambers again, but he never does.
In June, Remus finds himself watching the Map, tracking Snape's movements. He'd never known how much time Snape actually spent with Minerva. He feels vaguely territorial, but of course there's nothing to be done about it. The evening of the full moon, a few hours before it's due to rise, some swift motion catches his eye. There are a number of unfamiliar names on the grounds, at Hagrid's hut. He sees Dumbledore there, and Macnair. Remus always feels a bit nauseous at the thought of Macnair, and nearly looks away. However, in the cluster of dots, a name catches Remus' eye.
It takes Remus three whole minutes to make the necessary logical leaps, and he watches, transfixed, when Sirius collides with them. It makes so much sense, and he's running before he knows what he's doing. He sprints across the grounds, wand out. Once in the tunnel, Remus slows to a walk. It wouldn't do to alarm the children any more, and he trusts Sirius to protect them from Peter... It makes too much sense, and Remus almost wishes he'd worn James' face, just to see Peter's face at that.
Then everything promptly goes wrong. Remus wakes up in the forest. Peter has escaped. Sirius has run away. Snape has gotten him fired. Oddly, it's that last part that makes him the angriest. He storms into Snape's office, pins him to the wall, hisses in his ear. Snape doesn't look the least bit surprised. There's no argument; Snape doesn't even bother to deny it.
"And I want my mask back," Remus hisses, biting at Snape's ear. Snape shivers, then tenses.
"You took it back, idiot. Months ago."
Before Remus can answer, an owl sweeps into the room. Snape snatches the scrap of parchment, and reads aloud as the owl sweeps off.
Moony,
Thanks for my face back, I'm sure it'll come in handy. I've missed that... sorry I couldn't come back before I had to run again. When my name is cleared, maybe we'll find time.
S.
The scowl on Snape's face is absolutely terrifying, but Remus takes the note from him and tosses it over his shoulder. "Yes, I know," he says. "Someday you'll kill me." He presses an unnecessary kiss to Snape's twisted lips, then goes to pack.
***
***
Nothing is said for two years. Somehow the war restarts itself, and Remus finds himself in Sirius' parent's house, helping him battle it. The reunion is a bit odd, but they settle into a regular routine involving adventurous sex daily, and Remus decides that he doesn't terribly mind. There's something absolutely stunning about the way Sirius wears Lily's mask, the way the long red hair swings across his flat, scarred chest as he rides Remus, Lily's pretty face contorting as she impales herself. The one mask they never use, nor even mention, is Regulus. It seems somehow more wrong, in this house.
The war, of course, means that the Order starts up again. The house fills up quickly when summer starts, and meetings sometimes go well past midnight. Remus gets better at his silencing charms as Sirius gains his old strength back, and the night Snape first returns to the Order is the same night that Remus and Sirius have sex standing up (pressed against the wall, Sirius' legs wrapped around Remus' hips, James' pretty face twisted and eyes squeezed tight shut). Immediately, the old fight starts back up. It's entirely too predictable.
In the week before Remus is meant to go fetch Harry, Snape catches them no less than three times, and in three separate rooms. The first time, they're in the dangerous Black Library, and Sirius' face is naked, his own ruined self exposed. He's over the armchair, gasping and cursing, and Remus sees Snape in the doorway an instant before he comes. When he looks up again, he's gone. The second time, Sirius wears his younger face. Remus has him on his back on the floor, in one of the sitting rooms they've spent all day cleaning. This time, Snape lingers until just after Remus comes, then again, disappears without a word. The third time, it's the night before Harry's arrival, and Sirius wears one of Remus' pretty Muggle boys, long dirty-blond hair and tan skin, as he sucks Remus off in the attic where they've been evicting various terrifying creatures. Snape gets there earlier this time, and Remus keeps his eyes open, holding Snape's cold gaze, until the very last second. He moans the right name when he comes, thank goodness.
Once Harry's there, there's no time or privacy. Molly's fussing reaches epic levels, and Snape becomes noticeably scarce. Meetings are horrendous. Dumbledore is painfully vague, Harry is chomping at the bit, Sirius is going crazier, Snape is trying his damnedest to make it all worse. Remus finally fucks Snape the night before term begins, both of their faces bare, both of them with their eyes screwed shut because of it. The house empties again, and Sirius is beginning to get a bit scary. He punches through walls, spells them fixed, then does it again. He spends an entire night doing this, and he spends his days with Buckbeak. Remus can't fuck him without a mask on one or both of them, now. The year passes like that, and by May Remus is starting to consider getting a new mask, though he can't decide who he'd want for it. Nymphadora Tonks is acting strangely.
Remus has never actually considered sleeping with her. She's bright and loud and alive, and he does like that, but it simply never has occured to him. Finally, he notices when she starts shifting her face around every single day, sometimes more often. She can be anyone she wants, without the masks. She can be anyone he wants, without the masks. It's thrilling, and it's not hard to get her into bed. He watches in awe as her body shifts and flows, changing and warping. She asks what he wants, and he says he wants her as many ways as he can get. There's nothing, nothing more erotic than when she changes as she comes, (then again, then once more) when he finally lets go. He doesn't need to remember any names, with Tonks. She is everyone, she is anyone, and he can't get enough of it. He shows her the masks, and they go through an unimaginable number of combinations, sometimes mirroring each other perfectly.
It goes wrong because Sirius knows, it's impossible not to. The whole house can hear Tonks, she's anything but a quiet lover, and Sirius spends more and more time twitching and talking to the hippogryff. He's aching to get out, to move, to do something, and Remus can tell.
When Sirius dies, Tonks stops changing. Remus finds that sex is uninteresting, and she gets even more depressed. They stop altogether, even though Molly has finally sat up and taken notice enough to start dropping hints that they should make it more permanent. Remus claims that he's too old, too poor, too dangerous for a relationship, and it's true. It just hadn't bothered him at all before.
The next year is quiet, almost. Remus goes to spy, because that's just what he does, when necessary. The masks are useless with the werewolves, but that doesn't mean Remus can't still act. He wonders if, when the war is over, he could get a career in theatre.
He fucks Snape just once during that year, only a week before it all goes wrong again. Snape asks him to wear Regulus, and Remus does, and can almost--almost guess what Snape means by it. He's not entirely surprised.
He is, however, rather surprised and annoyed when Tonks all but proposes marriage to him, entirely out of the blue, and intentionally in front of Molly. He gives as non-committal a commitment as is possible, and flees the country as soon as he can, presumably on Order business.
The war barely lasts another nine months. Harry does what Harry's supposed to do, and a lot of people die, and Voldemort conveniently happens to be one of them. He's immediately reinstated as Defense teacher, and he's almost annoyed at Minerva for the implication that he couldn't get a job anywhere else. He doesn't learn until the start of term feast that both Snape and Tonks are dead, and he pointedly does not ask how.
After that, life is easier. Remus acquires one new mask: a pretty Hufflepuff seventh-year, who seems to get some sort of enjoyment from disputing every single point Remus makes in his N.E.W.T. lectures. Smith gives the impression of lazy sarcasm that would almost make him seem more Slytherin than Hufflepuff, but for the unflinching, uncomfortable honesty that colours each of his interruptions, and the seeming ignorance of exactly how offensive he’s being at any given moment. Remus knows perfectly well that he’d never have noticed Smith with Harry here (James’ face is an extremely distracting one), but he doesn’t feel at all guilty about noticing him now. Halfway through the year, Smith apparently discovers socialism, because every single lecture after February turns into a heated discussion among the students about Marxist theory and socioeconomic inequity. Remus strongly suspects that it’s Smith’s way of rebelling, since he has neither shaved all his hair, nor grown it out, nor charmed it some alarming colour by the age of seventeen.
“Professor.” Every time Smith raises his hand during class, Remus mentally waves goodbye to his lecture notes.
“The proletarian struggle of werewolves, Smith?” He has always felt strange, teaching this chapter. Still, it’s better than when Snape did. (He still sometimes wishes Snape had kept his promise.)
“The wrongful incarceration of-"
“Yes, I know,” Remus heads him off early, before the rest get involved. “I went to the trial, I knew him personally. However, if you recall from the assigned reading, we’re actually talking about defending oneself against a werewolf in its transformed state. Legal rights are later.”
“We’re discussing the legality of-" Smith’s face has a way of lighting up in anticipation when he’s promised an opportunity to pontificate.
“Yes. Next week, if you remember from the syllabus. Can we move on?”
The mask, of course, is not something he can get right away, even though Remus knows immediately upon noticing him that he wants Smith's face for his own. It has to be consensual, and the subject (victim?) has to know what they're doing as it's being done. Remus' competence with memory charms has proven useful in this until now, but somehow he thinks that he would rather wear Smith with the knowledge that Smith knew. By the start of term, Remus has already devised a plan.
First, he starts wearing Sirius' young face about the castle. It's not hard to catch Smith on his own a few times-- he says he's a seventh-year Gryffindor, and stands a little too close and lets his face slide into that mischievous smirk Sirius used on all the girls. It's fairly easy, the fourth time he sees him, to press Smith back against the nearest tapestry (the subjects of which don't seem to particularly mind) and kiss him, demanding and playful and easy like Sirius.
“Hey,” Smith mumbles, and there’s some token resistance.
“Not okay?” Sirius lets his hair flop into his eyes, looking pleasantly askew.
Smith pauses, then tugs him back for more. Sirius chuckles into his mouth and Smith is just like a thousand pretty boys seduced this way-so easy, almost nameless, never faceless. He doesn’t close his eyes while he kisses him. He's gone before Smith can ask his name. Remus knows the castle too well by now-- almost as well as the castle knows him.
The act is alarmingly thin; sheer scheduling should make it quite clear that Remus couldn’t possibly be a student. He’s never at meals, not in any classes, and, of course, is never in the same room as himself. As such, he’s a bit surprised that Smith (who insists upon the third wild kiss in a darkened corridor that Remus call him Zach, so Remus takes the middle ground and calls him Zacharias) falls for it quite so hard.
Around the fifth kiss, with Remus hands shoved under Zacharias’ untucked shirt and gripping his hips, grinding forward, Zacharias between panting breaths, “When can I see you again?” Remus still hasn’t given him a name. They’ve hardly spoken, and it’s nice and easy that way.
He doesn’t answer, just silences the boy with a harder, sharper kiss, and leaves twice as fast that time.
Next to nothing is said until Tuesday in May, close enough to the full moon that Remus can tell Minerva he's not feeling well and can thus miss dinner. Remus wears Sirius to the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall. He checks his appearance just before entering the Great Hall-- he normally wouldn't bother, but the lighting is more revealing than the rest of the castle, and he doesn't care to answer those questions just yet. Shrugging his shoulders back a bit and letting them drop into a more casual, confident posture, he leans against the pillar just across from that entrance, and waits with that trademark smirk on his face. Zacharias comes straight to him, as if drawn. It's all way, way too easy; Remus grabs his hand, and they race through the castle, rebounding off corners and nearly flying up staircases. Sirius could always run faster than Remus could, and Zacharias is panting when he asks where they’re going, laughing a bit at the weird pleasure of moving this fast. Remus doesn’t answer, and doesn’t need to-soon enough they’re back to his own office. Zacharias even laughingly asks what happens if Lupin is in his office when they get there, even as Remus has him pressed against the door, tie undone, hair tussled and cheeks bright. Remus wonders the same thing.
Inside, Zacharias’ voice goes all hoarse and low, still breathing heavy. “On his desk?” He smirks, just like the look he gets when he can successfully derail a Defense class. “Mess up all his papers-"
He’s cut off, because Remus is kissing him again, fumbling open his various buttons, and by the time he has him bent over the desk with his pants around his knees, Zacharias can’t exactly speak coherently anyways. He moans things like “yeah” and “more,” and when Remus finally pushes in (one smooth thrust, just like Sirius, or Snape, or Tonks, or whoever), there’s a funny little whimpering noise that may or may not be a name.
He takes the mask off when Zacharias isn't looking. As it were, this happens to be when the boy's forehead is pressed to the cool wood of the desk, to abate the burn of Remus' cock up his arse. He says nothing until after they are sated, and Zacharias turns around to look, and doesn't scream or threaten to turn Remus in. Remus takes this as a very good sign. In fact, he bursts into laughter, which leaves Remus a bit off balance, and somehow talks his way into Remus' bed.
***
Zacharias is amazingly quick at insinuating himself into Remus' life. Within half an hour of breathless post-coital conversation he's managed to wave off the entire matter of identity with nothing so much as a charming smile and some glib comment, and moves swiftly on to the more important matters in life, like when they're going to fuck next. He admits that he had been planning to ask Remus out (the mere idea seems bizarre, even in retrospect), and some matters of discretion are handled. (It pains Remus slightly that this is not the first time that pillow talk has centered around not getting arrested.)
After that, teaching seventh-year classes is hell. Zacharias thinks himself terribly witty and clever when he orally molests his quill in class, or leaves his uniform in just enough disarray that Remus can't help but notice. The debates about proletarian uprising are somehow laced with innuendo, and little provocative leers. This really should be reason enough to stop, but Remus finds he's too easily riled; each small trespass earns Zacharias some small not-quite-punishment. The boy takes it as a game, as much as Sirius ever did, though he's never so glib about it as Sirius had been. He's playful, but still somehow painfully earnest. If it were anyone else, it would be uncomfortable.
Somehow, despite all common sense, the affair continues after Zacharias leaves Hogwarts. He gets an entry-level job at the Ministry, bubbling with ideas and ideals. Within the first few weeks they manage to crush all of his realistic hope that change is possible, but he still talks politics post-orgasm, his eyes bright and excited, voice soft and hoarse and intense.
Meanwhile, Remus stagnates.
They settle, somehow, into a routine; Zacharias takes the Floo from Hogwarts to the Ministry, Remus teaches impressionable young children how not to get themselves killed out in the great wide world, they take their evening meals separately, Zacharias comes back just after lights-out, they have mind-blowing sex, then talk about their respective days at work. It's beyond unlikely, that this should be possible. Remus stays tense, ready to bolt. He can't help but wait for the other shoe to drop, hammer to fall, the revolution to come. (He knows, from Zacharias' tired, ceaseless chatter, exactly who in the Ministry will be first up against the wall when said Revolution (he says it capitalized) comes.) Things, Remus knows, never work this way. Stability is not something he can count on, and stasis is not a true state.
**
The last time they have sex, Remus is wearing Zacharias' face. (Making the mold for the mask was the most intimate thing they could have done, and Remus gets hard merely looking at it.) Zacharias' own face is bare; it's not quite like making love to a mirror, but Remus is swept breathless by the sheer perfect symmetry of it, and they come in tandem, for that moment identical as they groan twin groans, their faces twisted helplessly exactly the same.
The next day, a Saturday, they decide to go out to the cinema and disparage the actors quietly. Crossing the road in front of the train station, Zacharias is excited, beautifully alive. He walks faster than Remus, his step springy, bordering on cliche, and--
The obscene, horrific, inexcusable part of it is that Zacharias' expression when the car hits him is exactly the one he made during orgasm, not twelve hours ago.
Sunday doesn't happen.
Monday, Zacharias goes into work, eyes still red and puffy. Someone asks him what's wrong, and he gruffly tells them his friend Lupin passed away over the weekend. Monday night finds Zacharias in a near-empty pub, his forehead set firmly on the rim of his (fifth) empty mug. The bartender gently suggests that Mr. Smith might want to exchange some sort of currency for the alcohol he has thusfar consumed, if he wishes to continue. Zacharias looks up, his face weird, as if attached to the wrong person. "You're insane," Zacharias says, voice dangerous and soft. "Do you have any idea how illegal most of these ingredients are?"
"Now, listen," says the bartender, "Don't want any trouble, just making sure you're good for your tab, that's all."
"You take me as that easy?" Zacharias smirks, but it's distorted, somehow. "He'll kill us both--" The bartender takes half a step back.
"Anyways, think you've had enough for the night, eh?" he laughs nervously.
"If we get arrested," Zacharias whispers, "I'm claiming not to know you." His voice breaks, crumbles, and he sags in on himself. "I'm claiming not to know you."